They can't hide that they are apps. Windows will warn you that it's an app, and tell you not to run it.
Is this true for XP-SP2 now? The last time I tried running a new program by double clicking on it, I was given no warning that it was not data or that it was the first time this program was run. Is this fixed in all the older versions of Windows as well, because frankly not having this warning is a huge UI failure and vulnerability.
You don't need to run as an admin to run Windows. We have hundreds of computers in the department which users do not have admin access on.
This is true, if you just want to run a few, particular programs, and they are the right programs. This is not true in general. I've tried running as a non-admin as have several other employees here. We could not do our jobs. Too much software requires you to be admin to run. This includes software from MS. Basically, running as a non admin makes getting anything done very, very hard. You can't install most applications, can't run some applications and run into situations where you need the admin password about once a week. Our sysadmin gave up on the idea after about 10 days.
Besides, if your e-mail client saying "Warning, this could be a virus don't run it" and then your OS saying "Warning this oculd be a virus don't run it" isn't enough, changing the OK to a password field isn't going to do any good.
I see you fail to understand layers of privilege or UI design. First presenting a cancel/OK dialogue in Windows is utterly useless most of the time. This is because most of them are written in techno-babble and so many are presented that the average user just stops paying attention and starts clicking OK reflexively. It is simply one of the stupidest UI designs ever. Users should be presented with dialogues only upon rare occasions. They should be in clear English (or whatever language). They should have buttons that actually describe something useful like, "I trust this program and want it to be able to do anything to my computer" and "I don't trust this, don't let it do anything." Of course, in practice that layer of privilege is unworkable. What is really needed is the ability to run programs in a sandbox and grant them privileges as needed, i.e. "Run this program but don't let it use the internet, alter my OS, or touch my files." Asking for a password to do privileged actions works very well, provided users are not constantly asked for a password and provided that they have the control they need to grant some privileges instead of all.
This particular virus is basically a trojan. It works because most Windows systems do not inform the user when they are running a program instead of opening data. It works because they are not warned when a program wants to do something unusual. How often do you want to download a program, or get it via e-mail and you want that program to be able to edit your personal files? The answer is so rarely it makes a lot of sense to make the default behavior restrict it from that action, and let it ask if it wants to edit them. That would have stopped this virus dead. A good UI, a workable non-admin account, and good default permissions are what it takes to stop 99% of these viruses. Until that happens, blaming users is premature. They are not given the tools and options they need.
Of course they have the RIGHT. They own the cable. Bought it, installed it, paid for it, and maintain the equipment that lights it up.
The government subsidized a lot of the building. They also seized right of ways and property via immanent domain. They also granted them a monopoly on running lines in certain right of ways. They also provide them with a special immunity for prosecution for breaking certain laws on behalf of their customers. All of this was done under the agreement that they would act as a public service and provide equal rights to use their bandwidth to competitors and clients. Before you go off about their rights, remember that if they fail to live up to their half of the bargain, the people as represented by the government should do the same. They should be prosecuted for every bit of child porn and copyright infringement copied from router to router. Any lines in public right of ways should be ripped up and the rights to use them sold to a competitor. Money spent subsidizing the networks should be reclaimed from them and spent paying off the national debt. This is not a free market situation, so don't try to apply free market rules. They made a deal, they have to live up to it.
Let's play devil's advocate. It is their network, why shouldn't they be able to do with it what they want? I mean we hear the I own the software I should be able to do anything I want with it all the time. How is this any different?
OK, here are a few differences. Does the government grant you a localized monopoly on using the software, enforced by federal agents? Does the government grant you immunity from prosecution for anything you do on behalf of your customers using your software in exchange for you not using your software in the proscribed way? Finally, did the government subsidize the creation of your software and facilitate its construction by seizing land and right of ways via immanent domain?
If you can answer "yes" to all of these, then I think the government should have a say in how you use your software.
I'll agree that the action against the policemen would be all of those three, but don't see any linkage between that and this kind of case.
Please read the earlier posts in the thread. We're discussing a proposed, theoretical instance of a DEA agent being a member of NORML, not the original instance of an employee of a law firm being fired for anti-DRM opinions.
Pardon my ignorance, but will you elaborate on this some more?
Sure, this is MS's embrace, extend, extinguish strategy. Open standards promote interoperability and competition, both of which are detrimental to MS's business. As a monopoly, anything that makes it harder for someone to move to an alternative product benefits them. They can assume most people are using their monopoly products, so they don't need to worry too much about interoperability for people switching to their monopolized products.
In this particular instance, MS benefits by implementing a broken version of the HTML and CSS specifications. Due to the market share they have due to their monopoly, they can assume almost all web sites will be tested on their OS with their browser. Thus, they can make the Web itself conform to a broken version of the standard, rather than the published standard. This is a huge barrier to competition in that other Web browsers have to spend engineering time gracefully dealing with Web pages which are broken by design. They can't just implement the MS versions of web standards because they are unpublished and because some sites do follow standards and then will rightfully report these behaviors as bugs.
The upshot is browsers that are not broken, can't read certain pages, because those pages are designed to work with a broken browser. To the end user this makes it appear that the browsers don't work as well as the MS offering, even though it is IE that is broken.
Further, not only does IE read a broken version of several standards, but Frontpage creates a broken version of the standard. That both major MS Web related pieces of software implement horribly broken versions of HTML speaks to an intentional design choice, rather than an accident. Also, MS has used this exact same method of operation to corrupt numerous other open standards in other areas of software interoperability.
MS is immune to the competitive pressures of the normal market due to their monopoly. They don't have to respond to customers so they intentionally give their customers a worse experience in order to strategically create a barrier to entry for other software.
I hope that explains things to you. I'm sure you can find a better explanation somewhere by searching for "embrace extend extinguish."
Whomever modded this flamebait is abusing the mod system. The previous post I made contains three on-topic answers to the previous poster's question, none of which are any any way inflammatory. I hope the meta-moderators properly deal with this.
Actually, it is. A monopolist has partnered with two cartels and all three of them have been convicted of illegally abusing their market positions. They are partnering to build an artificial barrier to entry in the convergence of their markets and to leverage their existing position to gain an advantage in new markets. This is most definitely a conspiracy and it is news. Here's a hint. It is illegal to use a monopoly to gain an advantage in other markets or to build barriers to entry to those markets. MS has partnered to do just that, implementing software restrictions to provide some parties with a market advantage using their monopoly on desktop OSs.
When pricing a product, you typically want to set a minimum price specifically for the purpose of eliminating the deadbeat/hobbyist factor.
Since when is an artificial restriction on use a "product?"
If the majority of your customers are businesses, they won't blink at a couple-hundred bucks for a product.
And you think that makes it ok or something? MS has a monopoly and they are using that monopoly to collect an additional toll from developers in the separate software application market. That is illegal.
What kind of dumb-ass uses a beta browser for their banking anyway?
The same kind of dumb-ass that runs an OS that won't let you install multiple versions of the same browser simultaneously; the same kind of idiots that use any version of IE for banking; and the same kind of morons that use a banking site that requires IE. Basically, I'd say that includes about 50% of the people who installed the beta.
The real question is if they will fix all the problems that people find before sending IE7 to retail.
You consider that a question? Well, here's the answer. No. Implementing a broken version of the standard benefits them so they will make sure there are plenty of bugs left in the way they implement HTML, CSS, etc.
This is on the front page for a number of reasons. First, it is somewhat indicative of the quality of the new software MS is planning to release. Yes, betas will have bugs, but no comment has been made about the remote exploit from MS, nor about the myriad failures to implement CSS properly. The number of bugs found in such a small time, is a meaningful metric and of interest to people here. It indicates to many of us, that the final version is still unlikely to properly implement the spec and that whatever new security practices MS is employing are probably not working to stop vulnerabilities. (Gee, big surprise.) The number of incompatibilities with current banking and other Websites is a useful indication to how much work the Web designers among us are likely to have ahead of us.
Second, because of the design of Windows and IE you can either install this beta for testing, or you can install the current IE, but not both. This means a number of people will install the beta, but end up also using it as an everyday browser, since they don't want to be constantly installing and uninstalling it for testing. Thus, security concerns with this beta may actually be a real concern. Those among us working to secure networks may want to account for this by restricting use of this browser for the time being.
Finally, the number of bug reports is a useful metric for gauging interest in the product, which is also of concern to people here.
Yeah, right, I'd like to see the demographic overlap there and I'll kiss your ass if it's below 90%.
You must be unfamiliar with the legal concept of "guilty until proven innocent."
I'm not so confident you've correctly assessed a court's opinion, unless you've got some directly relevant case law to share.
It's already covered in earlier posts in this thread, if you had bothered to read them. You can't fire government employees for their political affiliations or activism and you can't assume all members of some organization are guilty of a crime without proof, or all NRA members would be fired from the police for the aforementioned assault weapons legislation issue. So if you don't have anything of consequence to say, I'm going to stop responding to your uninformed blathering now.
I agree, it is not an ignorant position. It is a well crafted and very wrong position designed to give Bush a talking point that the uneducated or uninterested will not strongly oppose, while people who have a clue about science will be very angry and vocal about. This gives Bush a way to frame a debate he does not care about at all in such a way that his opponents waste a lot of time fighting an uphill battle educating people and to stop him from stopping scientific progress.
A ban on the "buying, selling or patenting human embryos" should be fairly universally acceptable, especially the bit about no patenting here amongst the slashdot hordes.
You can't patent an embryo now. Bans on buying and selling embryos serve what purpose again other than as a talking point and a way to interfere with capitalism and make research less effective?
A ban on "creating human-animal hybrids" is more debatable but we damn sure better get a line drawn somewhere and we better do it fast or science is going to race out ahead of ethics and make one hell of a mess for someone to clean up.
Issues of "debatable" ethics should be left to individuals to decide. hybrid human-animals are very, very important to a lot of research, from producing insulin, to models for curing basically every genetic component to every human disease in existence, whether it is cancer, MS, autism, or a huge range of other ailments. If you can't put human genes in mice and then do a lot of testing, there is just not really a lot of workable alternatives in many cases.
And that leaves his call for a ban on "human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments" which is where most of slashdot parts company.
Or we could wait until there is at least one documented, unethical practice that this is purporting to stop, and otherwise just let people do what they need to.
But I don't really like the thought of creating and killing millions/billions of things that are/maybe/might be/could have been/sorta/etc humans to get there.
Ok, then, what makes life valuable? Is it our genes or is it our personalities, intellects, and other actual human traits? A embryo, or hybrid that is useful for science has less in common with me than a lab rat and in my estimation is less valuable than a lab rat until it gains those traits.
So you feel uncomfortable or unsure about the ethics of this. That is just fine. If you have doubts, don't make any hybrids. Simple huh. Just don't try to force your views upon other people who feel differently. Every person must be responsible for themselves and needs to make their own choices. Arbitrary laws made to sway the uneducated, with 30-second sound bites, designed to get votes is not the way to do this. Passing laws is completely unneeded and counterproductive. The only reason this argument exists is as political fodder. Its easy take a topic that is hard to understand, then think up some questionable use and try to use that to propose over-broad legislation that will seriously stop the progress of science. Wait for your opponents to kill themselves trying to educate the public on how this means no more insulin, while occasionally feeding disinformation. It has worked for Bush up until now and it is still working.
You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means.
slashbots trash corporations for creating genetically modified foods yet they see absolutely no problem creating genetically modified people. Either genetic modification is OK or it isn't...
slashbots trash drunk drivers for driving cars over children yet they see absolutely no problem driving cars to work. Either driving is OK or it isn't...
I swear you must be the stupidest person I've ever seen post here. Please don't breed.
I think anyone with common sense would come to the conclusion that a dope-smoking DEA agent would make a poor agent indeed, and I'd bet that any court with the same would find as much.
Being a member of a political group that wants to legalize marijuana is not the same thing as illegally possessing or using marijuana, as I'm sure every court in the US would find. Nor would being a member be probable cause for believing that a person uses or possesses marijuana. Give it up already.
Except in this case 1) this isn't simply for political beliefs unrelated to the job, and 2) holding and *exercising* those beliefs makes the employee unable to effectively perform the job that is completely antithetical to their beliefs.
How do you figure that? How is performing one's job as a law officer in conflict with being a member of a political organization that wants to change one of those laws?
No, it's one step away from firing Republican campaign workers who are members of the Democratic party. See how stupid that would be? Same thing here.
Republicans and Democrats are competing against one another. DEA agents are not competing against NORML. One is a law enforcement bureau and one is a political activism group that is trying to get a particular law passed. By your logic no police officers should be able to be members of any political organizations that want to change laws, since that would be a conflict of interest. No police officers can join the NRA any more since they are supposed to arrest people with "assault weapons" even though the NRA wants that legislation overturned.
To fire someone whose actions and opinions are completely antithetical to your business and embarassing in front of clients? Think not.
Business? This thread is about a theoretical DEA agent. That is not a business. It is a government job that is supposed to be enforcing the will of the people. Perhaps you should read the preceding comments before posting.
In what sense, that you should be able to say and do whatever you want and your employer has to take it? That's not democracy, that's insanity.
You should be able to espouse a political opinion and engage in any activities that do not interfere with your duties without fear of retaliation from your employers (the government).
Hell it is. What law?
The constitution itself as the courts have ruled. The earliest I know of is Rutan v. Republican Party (1872). Basically you can't hire or dismiss government employees based upon their political party or opinions.
It's more of an IE being integrated with Windows problem, as many windows apps are more self-contained.
The majority of Windows programs, in my experience, fail to install multiple versions of the same program, because they scatter files in many locations, including the registry. This means a new version wants to put often incompatible files in the same location as an older version. Additionally, programs often only work if files are installed in a particular location. Programs are rarely self contained and usually have a folder with an executable and a number of other files in it, as well as a registry entry and often other files in other locations.
Now my brief excursion into a forced month of "Native American Studies" (tought by a real live injun activist!) would lead me to believe that Indians never killed humans until white man brought the notion of violence to them.
Drop out now. Seriously, if you have such disreputable teachers that require you to "learn" obvious historical inaccuracies you're better off finding a new place of education. Many native American tribes were plenty violent long before the Europeans invaded. Mind you, two wrongs don't make a right, and killing people for their land is not justified by the fact that they were already warlike. I would like to note, however, that the commonly presented practice of scalping historically seems to originate with Europeans who paid bounties for dead natives, with scalps as proof of a kill.
It's fine if some people don't want to buy the game because of it's content but trying to get the company to change the game IS censorship.
No, it is not. It is exercising the free market to influence corporations the only way they can be influenced, using money, or the lack thereof. If some company wants to print lies and racist propaganda, well that is their right. But it is a citizens right to refuse to buy them and to tell others not to buy anything from them too. That is what free speech is all about. The game company can make anything they want, but protesters can ask others to do what they want too. It works both ways.
They are in effect trying to tell me that I can't buy this game if I want to do so because they are trying to force the game to be changed and games with similar content not to be made.
They aren't telling you anything, except they'd rather you did not do business with someone they find unethical. They are trying to influence a company using free speech and their own actions. If you don't like the results, tough. It is part of being a free country.
To me, that is much more scary and is what really angers me.
You're angered and scared by people exercising free speech to tell everyone what someone else is saying is unethical?
I should have the right to say whatever i want...
You have that right.
...and I should have the right to buy products that say what I want.
You have that right too, but you don't have the right to dictate what some company makes more-so than anyone else. If you want the game, and others like it, fine buy it. If, however, enough people refuse to do business with this company because of their actions and you can no longer buy that game, well that is just people exercising their free market rights. You're not entitled to any games you're not willing to fund.
So how do you hit a moving tank with one, if you can't steer to follow the tank?
You keep the crosshairs on the tank. The missile does not stay in the crosshairs. Aiming is one thing. Steering a missile without knowing how it is going to move, however, is going to make you miss. It is unlikely that you can make the missile avoid an incoming anything and still hit your target.
The more energy you pour into it, the more sheilding they have to put around their computers, and the less range their ICGMs will have.
Adding more shielding is relatively easy compared to generating significantly more powerful microwaves. In fact, nuclear devices could detonate without any sort of computer if they can get within range. A purely mechanical detonation system, timed as the missile launches, is a practical solution. Your idea is not a very good one, IMHO.
But, the question needs to be asked, why would anyone know you are a Democrat? This isn't the sort of thing that they put on job applications.
Because they looked at the list of registered members of the democratic party. (At least in some of the more famous historical cases.)
Or, maybe it was getting your picture in the newspaper holding up signs at a political rally?
So you think it is acceptable to fire someone from a government job because they were attending a political rally? Yeah, that won't undermine the democratic process or anything.
See, sometimes political views creep over into the job. And when they do, it becomes a problem. Being a Democrat isn't the problem. Being an obnoxious Democrat is.
It is fine to fire government workers for doing something that interferes with their job. It is not fine to fire someone for supporting a different political party or organization. If you can't see why, then you don't understand what the election process is supposed to be doing.
TOW/Dragon missles are human controled to hit the target- the Russian ICBMs and Tomohawks are computer controld to hit a much further away target.
If you bothered to read the operating instructions for the TOW you'd see it says to keep the crosshairs on the target and DON'T try to steer the missile manually since it will miss when the missile swerves at the end.
As our Tow, Dragon, and Tomohawk systems use to avoid being shot down on their way to the target. And they're right- there ain't no defense against it YET.
What?!?
What!?!
Antitank missiles do swerve in flight, but only at the end and only so that they can hit the tank on the top, where it has less armor than the side. I don't think it would be practical to make a wire guided missile evade being shot down even if there was something to shoot it down. These are ground to ground weapons you're talking about.
I can think up a possible defense, but it'd be rather nasty on the environment- large microwave generators at a high enough power broadcasting a cone that cooks the electronics of any missile within range, thus making evasive missiles purely ballistic.
Ummm, yeah that sounds practical. You should work for the government on some of these stupid pork projects. Another way to do it is to attache a homing beacon to all of our enemies missiles, just like we had to do for the tests of our anti-missile shield, last time I checked the status. Railguns are the solution and everyone knows it, or something.
Put another way - Let's say Activision made this exact same game, but let the player pick between playing an "enlightened indigenous person" or a "evil caucasian male imperialist oppressor scum". Still a racist game?
Yes, because it presupposes that race is the defining characteristic as to whether or not someone is enlightened or evil. Giving a choice of behavior and/or race would be the way to go. If you're going to railroad the player, however, into one plot and one character, you should make sure that character is not a racist stereotype.
How does that compare to the trend in sci-fi and fantasy games to let the player take the role of someone other than the Gallant Knights in White Tights
Letting players choose is just fine, so long as they are not given the choices of racist stereotypes.
Playing the "bad guy" doesn't realy break any new ground in the entertainment realm.
Except this game does not portray this character as a "bad guy."
But if you want to feign some degree of historical accuracy, you can't rewrite core parts of that time period.
Yes, because historically all people were racist and hated natives and all natives were violent and evil. Portraying historically accurate racism is fine, so long as you do not build the game around a plot that furthers racism in and of itself. If you do so, be prepared to offend a lot of people and be prepared to suffer bad PR and possibly a boycott by those who disagree with what you are doing.
This guy's case is different, as he's paid to be an advocate for people and companies which are opposed to the values of an organization he leads.
This "guy" (I thought it was a woman) is once thing. The examples other people gave of people being fired from government jobs because they supported some political action is another thing.
This is not like the examples you give. Being a cop is not at odds with being a democrat.
That was a historical example. Police officers have been fired for being democrats, and likely still are in many places. Doing so is illegal (as established by the courts) so now people take care not to openly fire officers for that reason.
You'll note, I never argued that the original firing in this article was unlawful or even unethical. What I did object to was the ridiculous examples proposed by several posters, that would be not only unethical but illegal. I further objected to their foolish acceptance of such injustices as both normal and so acceptable that they would use them as examples of obviously "correct" behavior.
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They can't hide that they are apps. Windows will warn you that it's an app, and tell you not to run it.
Is this true for XP-SP2 now? The last time I tried running a new program by double clicking on it, I was given no warning that it was not data or that it was the first time this program was run. Is this fixed in all the older versions of Windows as well, because frankly not having this warning is a huge UI failure and vulnerability.
You don't need to run as an admin to run Windows. We have hundreds of computers in the department which users do not have admin access on.
This is true, if you just want to run a few, particular programs, and they are the right programs. This is not true in general. I've tried running as a non-admin as have several other employees here. We could not do our jobs. Too much software requires you to be admin to run. This includes software from MS. Basically, running as a non admin makes getting anything done very, very hard. You can't install most applications, can't run some applications and run into situations where you need the admin password about once a week. Our sysadmin gave up on the idea after about 10 days.
Besides, if your e-mail client saying "Warning, this could be a virus don't run it" and then your OS saying "Warning this oculd be a virus don't run it" isn't enough, changing the OK to a password field isn't going to do any good.
I see you fail to understand layers of privilege or UI design. First presenting a cancel/OK dialogue in Windows is utterly useless most of the time. This is because most of them are written in techno-babble and so many are presented that the average user just stops paying attention and starts clicking OK reflexively. It is simply one of the stupidest UI designs ever. Users should be presented with dialogues only upon rare occasions. They should be in clear English (or whatever language). They should have buttons that actually describe something useful like, "I trust this program and want it to be able to do anything to my computer" and "I don't trust this, don't let it do anything." Of course, in practice that layer of privilege is unworkable. What is really needed is the ability to run programs in a sandbox and grant them privileges as needed, i.e. "Run this program but don't let it use the internet, alter my OS, or touch my files." Asking for a password to do privileged actions works very well, provided users are not constantly asked for a password and provided that they have the control they need to grant some privileges instead of all.
This particular virus is basically a trojan. It works because most Windows systems do not inform the user when they are running a program instead of opening data. It works because they are not warned when a program wants to do something unusual. How often do you want to download a program, or get it via e-mail and you want that program to be able to edit your personal files? The answer is so rarely it makes a lot of sense to make the default behavior restrict it from that action, and let it ask if it wants to edit them. That would have stopped this virus dead. A good UI, a workable non-admin account, and good default permissions are what it takes to stop 99% of these viruses. Until that happens, blaming users is premature. They are not given the tools and options they need.
Of course they have the RIGHT. They own the cable. Bought it, installed it, paid for it, and maintain the equipment that lights it up.
The government subsidized a lot of the building. They also seized right of ways and property via immanent domain. They also granted them a monopoly on running lines in certain right of ways. They also provide them with a special immunity for prosecution for breaking certain laws on behalf of their customers. All of this was done under the agreement that they would act as a public service and provide equal rights to use their bandwidth to competitors and clients. Before you go off about their rights, remember that if they fail to live up to their half of the bargain, the people as represented by the government should do the same. They should be prosecuted for every bit of child porn and copyright infringement copied from router to router. Any lines in public right of ways should be ripped up and the rights to use them sold to a competitor. Money spent subsidizing the networks should be reclaimed from them and spent paying off the national debt. This is not a free market situation, so don't try to apply free market rules. They made a deal, they have to live up to it.
Let's play devil's advocate. It is their network, why shouldn't they be able to do with it what they want? I mean we hear the I own the software I should be able to do anything I want with it all the time. How is this any different?
OK, here are a few differences. Does the government grant you a localized monopoly on using the software, enforced by federal agents? Does the government grant you immunity from prosecution for anything you do on behalf of your customers using your software in exchange for you not using your software in the proscribed way? Finally, did the government subsidize the creation of your software and facilitate its construction by seizing land and right of ways via immanent domain?
If you can answer "yes" to all of these, then I think the government should have a say in how you use your software.
I'll agree that the action against the policemen would be all of those three, but don't see any linkage between that and this kind of case.
Please read the earlier posts in the thread. We're discussing a proposed, theoretical instance of a DEA agent being a member of NORML, not the original instance of an employee of a law firm being fired for anti-DRM opinions.
Pardon my ignorance, but will you elaborate on this some more?
Sure, this is MS's embrace, extend, extinguish strategy. Open standards promote interoperability and competition, both of which are detrimental to MS's business. As a monopoly, anything that makes it harder for someone to move to an alternative product benefits them. They can assume most people are using their monopoly products, so they don't need to worry too much about interoperability for people switching to their monopolized products.
In this particular instance, MS benefits by implementing a broken version of the HTML and CSS specifications. Due to the market share they have due to their monopoly, they can assume almost all web sites will be tested on their OS with their browser. Thus, they can make the Web itself conform to a broken version of the standard, rather than the published standard. This is a huge barrier to competition in that other Web browsers have to spend engineering time gracefully dealing with Web pages which are broken by design. They can't just implement the MS versions of web standards because they are unpublished and because some sites do follow standards and then will rightfully report these behaviors as bugs.
The upshot is browsers that are not broken, can't read certain pages, because those pages are designed to work with a broken browser. To the end user this makes it appear that the browsers don't work as well as the MS offering, even though it is IE that is broken.
Further, not only does IE read a broken version of several standards, but Frontpage creates a broken version of the standard. That both major MS Web related pieces of software implement horribly broken versions of HTML speaks to an intentional design choice, rather than an accident. Also, MS has used this exact same method of operation to corrupt numerous other open standards in other areas of software interoperability.
MS is immune to the competitive pressures of the normal market due to their monopoly. They don't have to respond to customers so they intentionally give their customers a worse experience in order to strategically create a barrier to entry for other software.
I hope that explains things to you. I'm sure you can find a better explanation somewhere by searching for "embrace extend extinguish."
Whomever modded this flamebait is abusing the mod system. The previous post I made contains three on-topic answers to the previous poster's question, none of which are any any way inflammatory. I hope the meta-moderators properly deal with this.
This isn't news, nor is it some grand conspiracy.
Actually, it is. A monopolist has partnered with two cartels and all three of them have been convicted of illegally abusing their market positions. They are partnering to build an artificial barrier to entry in the convergence of their markets and to leverage their existing position to gain an advantage in new markets. This is most definitely a conspiracy and it is news. Here's a hint. It is illegal to use a monopoly to gain an advantage in other markets or to build barriers to entry to those markets. MS has partnered to do just that, implementing software restrictions to provide some parties with a market advantage using their monopoly on desktop OSs.
When pricing a product, you typically want to set a minimum price specifically for the purpose of eliminating the deadbeat/hobbyist factor.
Since when is an artificial restriction on use a "product?"
If the majority of your customers are businesses, they won't blink at a couple-hundred bucks for a product.
And you think that makes it ok or something? MS has a monopoly and they are using that monopoly to collect an additional toll from developers in the separate software application market. That is illegal.
What kind of dumb-ass uses a beta browser for their banking anyway?
The same kind of dumb-ass that runs an OS that won't let you install multiple versions of the same browser simultaneously; the same kind of idiots that use any version of IE for banking; and the same kind of morons that use a banking site that requires IE. Basically, I'd say that includes about 50% of the people who installed the beta.
The real question is if they will fix all the problems that people find before sending IE7 to retail.
You consider that a question? Well, here's the answer. No. Implementing a broken version of the standard benefits them so they will make sure there are plenty of bugs left in the way they implement HTML, CSS, etc.
Why is this front page
This is on the front page for a number of reasons. First, it is somewhat indicative of the quality of the new software MS is planning to release. Yes, betas will have bugs, but no comment has been made about the remote exploit from MS, nor about the myriad failures to implement CSS properly. The number of bugs found in such a small time, is a meaningful metric and of interest to people here. It indicates to many of us, that the final version is still unlikely to properly implement the spec and that whatever new security practices MS is employing are probably not working to stop vulnerabilities. (Gee, big surprise.) The number of incompatibilities with current banking and other Websites is a useful indication to how much work the Web designers among us are likely to have ahead of us.
Second, because of the design of Windows and IE you can either install this beta for testing, or you can install the current IE, but not both. This means a number of people will install the beta, but end up also using it as an everyday browser, since they don't want to be constantly installing and uninstalling it for testing. Thus, security concerns with this beta may actually be a real concern. Those among us working to secure networks may want to account for this by restricting use of this browser for the time being.
Finally, the number of bug reports is a useful metric for gauging interest in the product, which is also of concern to people here.
Yeah, right, I'd like to see the demographic overlap there and I'll kiss your ass if it's below 90%.
You must be unfamiliar with the legal concept of "guilty until proven innocent."
I'm not so confident you've correctly assessed a court's opinion, unless you've got some directly relevant case law to share.
It's already covered in earlier posts in this thread, if you had bothered to read them. You can't fire government employees for their political affiliations or activism and you can't assume all members of some organization are guilty of a crime without proof, or all NRA members would be fired from the police for the aforementioned assault weapons legislation issue. So if you don't have anything of consequence to say, I'm going to stop responding to your uninformed blathering now.
I agree, it is not an ignorant position. It is a well crafted and very wrong position designed to give Bush a talking point that the uneducated or uninterested will not strongly oppose, while people who have a clue about science will be very angry and vocal about. This gives Bush a way to frame a debate he does not care about at all in such a way that his opponents waste a lot of time fighting an uphill battle educating people and to stop him from stopping scientific progress.
A ban on the "buying, selling or patenting human embryos" should be fairly universally acceptable, especially the bit about no patenting here amongst the slashdot hordes.
You can't patent an embryo now. Bans on buying and selling embryos serve what purpose again other than as a talking point and a way to interfere with capitalism and make research less effective?
A ban on "creating human-animal hybrids" is more debatable but we damn sure better get a line drawn somewhere and we better do it fast or science is going to race out ahead of ethics and make one hell of a mess for someone to clean up.
Issues of "debatable" ethics should be left to individuals to decide. hybrid human-animals are very, very important to a lot of research, from producing insulin, to models for curing basically every genetic component to every human disease in existence, whether it is cancer, MS, autism, or a huge range of other ailments. If you can't put human genes in mice and then do a lot of testing, there is just not really a lot of workable alternatives in many cases.
And that leaves his call for a ban on "human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments" which is where most of slashdot parts company.
Or we could wait until there is at least one documented, unethical practice that this is purporting to stop, and otherwise just let people do what they need to.
But I don't really like the thought of creating and killing millions/billions of things that are/maybe/might be/could have been/sorta/etc humans to get there.
Ok, then, what makes life valuable? Is it our genes or is it our personalities, intellects, and other actual human traits? A embryo, or hybrid that is useful for science has less in common with me than a lab rat and in my estimation is less valuable than a lab rat until it gains those traits.
So you feel uncomfortable or unsure about the ethics of this. That is just fine. If you have doubts, don't make any hybrids. Simple huh. Just don't try to force your views upon other people who feel differently. Every person must be responsible for themselves and needs to make their own choices. Arbitrary laws made to sway the uneducated, with 30-second sound bites, designed to get votes is not the way to do this. Passing laws is completely unneeded and counterproductive. The only reason this argument exists is as political fodder. Its easy take a topic that is hard to understand, then think up some questionable use and try to use that to propose over-broad legislation that will seriously stop the progress of science. Wait for your opponents to kill themselves trying to educate the public on how this means no more insulin, while occasionally feeding disinformation. It has worked for Bush up until now and it is still working.
You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means.
slashbots trash corporations for creating genetically modified foods yet they see absolutely no problem creating genetically modified people. Either genetic modification is OK or it isn't...
slashbots trash drunk drivers for driving cars over children yet they see absolutely no problem driving cars to work. Either driving is OK or it isn't...
I swear you must be the stupidest person I've ever seen post here. Please don't breed.
I think anyone with common sense would come to the conclusion that a dope-smoking DEA agent would make a poor agent indeed, and I'd bet that any court with the same would find as much.
Being a member of a political group that wants to legalize marijuana is not the same thing as illegally possessing or using marijuana, as I'm sure every court in the US would find. Nor would being a member be probable cause for believing that a person uses or possesses marijuana. Give it up already.
Except in this case 1) this isn't simply for political beliefs unrelated to the job, and 2) holding and *exercising* those beliefs makes the employee unable to effectively perform the job that is completely antithetical to their beliefs.
How do you figure that? How is performing one's job as a law officer in conflict with being a member of a political organization that wants to change one of those laws?
No, it's one step away from firing Republican campaign workers who are members of the Democratic party. See how stupid that would be? Same thing here.
Republicans and Democrats are competing against one another. DEA agents are not competing against NORML. One is a law enforcement bureau and one is a political activism group that is trying to get a particular law passed. By your logic no police officers should be able to be members of any political organizations that want to change laws, since that would be a conflict of interest. No police officers can join the NRA any more since they are supposed to arrest people with "assault weapons" even though the NRA wants that legislation overturned.
To fire someone whose actions and opinions are completely antithetical to your business and embarassing in front of clients? Think not.
Business? This thread is about a theoretical DEA agent. That is not a business. It is a government job that is supposed to be enforcing the will of the people. Perhaps you should read the preceding comments before posting.
In what sense, that you should be able to say and do whatever you want and your employer has to take it? That's not democracy, that's insanity.
You should be able to espouse a political opinion and engage in any activities that do not interfere with your duties without fear of retaliation from your employers (the government).
Hell it is. What law?
The constitution itself as the courts have ruled. The earliest I know of is Rutan v. Republican Party (1872). Basically you can't hire or dismiss government employees based upon their political party or opinions.
It's more of an IE being integrated with Windows problem, as many windows apps are more self-contained.
The majority of Windows programs, in my experience, fail to install multiple versions of the same program, because they scatter files in many locations, including the registry. This means a new version wants to put often incompatible files in the same location as an older version. Additionally, programs often only work if files are installed in a particular location. Programs are rarely self contained and usually have a folder with an executable and a number of other files in it, as well as a registry entry and often other files in other locations.
Now my brief excursion into a forced month of "Native American Studies" (tought by a real live injun activist!) would lead me to believe that Indians never killed humans until white man brought the notion of violence to them.
Drop out now. Seriously, if you have such disreputable teachers that require you to "learn" obvious historical inaccuracies you're better off finding a new place of education. Many native American tribes were plenty violent long before the Europeans invaded. Mind you, two wrongs don't make a right, and killing people for their land is not justified by the fact that they were already warlike. I would like to note, however, that the commonly presented practice of scalping historically seems to originate with Europeans who paid bounties for dead natives, with scalps as proof of a kill.
It's fine if some people don't want to buy the game because of it's content but trying to get the company to change the game IS censorship.
No, it is not. It is exercising the free market to influence corporations the only way they can be influenced, using money, or the lack thereof. If some company wants to print lies and racist propaganda, well that is their right. But it is a citizens right to refuse to buy them and to tell others not to buy anything from them too. That is what free speech is all about. The game company can make anything they want, but protesters can ask others to do what they want too. It works both ways.
They are in effect trying to tell me that I can't buy this game if I want to do so because they are trying to force the game to be changed and games with similar content not to be made.
They aren't telling you anything, except they'd rather you did not do business with someone they find unethical. They are trying to influence a company using free speech and their own actions. If you don't like the results, tough. It is part of being a free country.
To me, that is much more scary and is what really angers me.
You're angered and scared by people exercising free speech to tell everyone what someone else is saying is unethical?
I should have the right to say whatever i want...
You have that right.
You have that right too, but you don't have the right to dictate what some company makes more-so than anyone else. If you want the game, and others like it, fine buy it. If, however, enough people refuse to do business with this company because of their actions and you can no longer buy that game, well that is just people exercising their free market rights. You're not entitled to any games you're not willing to fund.
So how do you hit a moving tank with one, if you can't steer to follow the tank?
You keep the crosshairs on the tank. The missile does not stay in the crosshairs. Aiming is one thing. Steering a missile without knowing how it is going to move, however, is going to make you miss. It is unlikely that you can make the missile avoid an incoming anything and still hit your target.
The more energy you pour into it, the more sheilding they have to put around their computers, and the less range their ICGMs will have.
Adding more shielding is relatively easy compared to generating significantly more powerful microwaves. In fact, nuclear devices could detonate without any sort of computer if they can get within range. A purely mechanical detonation system, timed as the missile launches, is a practical solution. Your idea is not a very good one, IMHO.
But, the question needs to be asked, why would anyone know you are a Democrat? This isn't the sort of thing that they put on job applications.
Because they looked at the list of registered members of the democratic party. (At least in some of the more famous historical cases.)
Or, maybe it was getting your picture in the newspaper holding up signs at a political rally?
So you think it is acceptable to fire someone from a government job because they were attending a political rally? Yeah, that won't undermine the democratic process or anything.
See, sometimes political views creep over into the job. And when they do, it becomes a problem. Being a Democrat isn't the problem. Being an obnoxious Democrat is.
It is fine to fire government workers for doing something that interferes with their job. It is not fine to fire someone for supporting a different political party or organization. If you can't see why, then you don't understand what the election process is supposed to be doing.
TOW/Dragon missles are human controled to hit the target- the Russian ICBMs and Tomohawks are computer controld to hit a much further away target.
If you bothered to read the operating instructions for the TOW you'd see it says to keep the crosshairs on the target and DON'T try to steer the missile manually since it will miss when the missile swerves at the end.
As our Tow, Dragon, and Tomohawk systems use to avoid being shot down on their way to the target. And they're right- there ain't no defense against it YET.
What?!?
What!?!
Antitank missiles do swerve in flight, but only at the end and only so that they can hit the tank on the top, where it has less armor than the side. I don't think it would be practical to make a wire guided missile evade being shot down even if there was something to shoot it down. These are ground to ground weapons you're talking about.
I can think up a possible defense, but it'd be rather nasty on the environment- large microwave generators at a high enough power broadcasting a cone that cooks the electronics of any missile within range, thus making evasive missiles purely ballistic.
Ummm, yeah that sounds practical. You should work for the government on some of these stupid pork projects. Another way to do it is to attache a homing beacon to all of our enemies missiles, just like we had to do for the tests of our anti-missile shield, last time I checked the status. Railguns are the solution and everyone knows it, or something.
Put another way - Let's say Activision made this exact same game, but let the player pick between playing an "enlightened indigenous person" or a "evil caucasian male imperialist oppressor scum". Still a racist game?
Yes, because it presupposes that race is the defining characteristic as to whether or not someone is enlightened or evil. Giving a choice of behavior and/or race would be the way to go. If you're going to railroad the player, however, into one plot and one character, you should make sure that character is not a racist stereotype.
How does that compare to the trend in sci-fi and fantasy games to let the player take the role of someone other than the Gallant Knights in White Tights
Letting players choose is just fine, so long as they are not given the choices of racist stereotypes.
Playing the "bad guy" doesn't realy break any new ground in the entertainment realm.
Except this game does not portray this character as a "bad guy."
But if you want to feign some degree of historical accuracy, you can't rewrite core parts of that time period.
Yes, because historically all people were racist and hated natives and all natives were violent and evil. Portraying historically accurate racism is fine, so long as you do not build the game around a plot that furthers racism in and of itself. If you do so, be prepared to offend a lot of people and be prepared to suffer bad PR and possibly a boycott by those who disagree with what you are doing.
This guy's case is different, as he's paid to be an advocate for people and companies which are opposed to the values of an organization he leads.
This "guy" (I thought it was a woman) is once thing. The examples other people gave of people being fired from government jobs because they supported some political action is another thing.
This is not like the examples you give. Being a cop is not at odds with being a democrat.
That was a historical example. Police officers have been fired for being democrats, and likely still are in many places. Doing so is illegal (as established by the courts) so now people take care not to openly fire officers for that reason.
You'll note, I never argued that the original firing in this article was unlawful or even unethical. What I did object to was the ridiculous examples proposed by several posters, that would be not only unethical but illegal. I further objected to their foolish acceptance of such injustices as both normal and so acceptable that they would use them as examples of obviously "correct" behavior.