I could point you to a speech of mine on the subject, or to Google which probably yields about 10 mio. hits if you put "UAC" together with any deragatory term of your choice into it. If that doesn't tell you what's wrong with it, I don't know where to start explaining. If door locks were universally hated, would people use them?
And since when is "recorded" an important attribute?
Science was well alive during times where we have no surviving records. But we see its consequences and results. The math of ancient egypt, for example, was well beyond that of the early middle ages. It was certainly not written down on stone tables during the starvation fever of a meditating priest.
Since most of the politicians who think they absolutely must regulate that lawless space, the Intartubes know next to nothing about it - what do you think the chances are that they'd even notice ?
Heck, what's the chances they even have a net connection at home?
Yeah, too bad our modern democracies haven't implemented an idea that's almost 2500 years old. The ancient greek Graphe Paranomon. In short: The penalty for repeatedly introducing unconstitutional laws would be the end of your political career.
That sounds great, especially to those of us who have to deal with the Great Unwashed Masses PC problems, but most users are doing good to find the power switch.
So?
Most drivers are doing good remembering which of the controls does what. Nevertheless, cars in general are pretty safe (airbags, ABS, seat belts, etc.) and safe driving is one of the things that you get hammered in at every opportunity. It also has some laws and controls (speed limits, etc.) that many of us hate at times, but we generally agree that they're a solid idea and things would be much worse without.
Enforcing some security in home computers might make it more likely that people spend a few more bucks on a more secure PC, which in turn will give manufacturers some incentive to do something about it.
Security researchers and various crackers have been saying for a few years now that OS X hasn't implemented a lot of security features that even Windows has.
I largely tend to think of it as "security buzzwords that even windos has".
There's a lot of them in the newer releases. But the overall questions we have to ask is whether or not it makes the system more secure. When your machine gets owned, you couldn't care less for the checklist of buzzwordy "security" features that just got bypassed. Your security was compromised, end of story.
OS X has less of them. Check. OS X also doesn't have many of what I'd call necessary things (MAC, RBAC to name just a few. MLS if done right can also add a whole ton of privacy to your security).
All around, however, I still trust this OS X more than the windos machine next to it. That's because while it lacks some of the bells'n whisles, it does do the basics right that windos still hasn't done right, or has done horribly wrong (UAC, I'm looking at you).
Yeah, every sect picks a slightly different set of truths, but the GPs point is still valid.
So it's not creationism in your sect. But it probably is "Jesus is the son of god" or "Mary was a virgin" or maybe "all our sins are forgiven because some guy was nailed to a cross 2000 years ago".
Yep, and there shouldn't be one. Science and faith aren't incompatible, some great men of science were also men of faith.
Yes, all during times where not being a "man of faith" would get you into very serious trouble very quickly.
If you look into the literature, you'll find a lot of them weren't. It was difficult to be an atheist when your entire world is religious and not believing was never offered as an option, but most of the "great men of science" were as close as you could get without crossing people you didn't want to cross.
And yes, science and faith are utterly incompatible. The #1 question of science is the one question religion can not answer. You can phrase it as "show me the evidence" or "let's try to duplicate those results" or "I wonder if we can prove this". It doesn't matter. Anyone saying that religion is not a deadly enemy of science is merely trying to protect religion from its rightly deserved fate.
1. - it already does, at least where I live. But not everyone is born a sales person, and shouldn't have to. We need more people able to "translate". 2. - yes, but this requires a lot more changes than you think. The problem is that curiosity comes with knowledge. The ignorant aren't curious, just ignorant. 3. - forget it. Everyone with half a brain has slowly and patiently explained this batshit for decades. As long as we don't root it out in primary school with some very basic "science" education (e.g. "ask for evidence", etc.), and as long as we teach our children to believe in unscientific nonsense before we teach them to read, you've got no chance in this regard. And yes, I'm talking about religion there. 4. - yes, and scientists have been working on that for years. Then again, few outside university really read and understand those journals. This is where the loop closes to #1 - we need more "translators". Unfortunately, that's where the media comes in. Many years ago, there were science shows on TV, and scientific magazines for the masses. The later still exist, but AFAIK they've suffered from loss of readership and quality suffered along with budget.
We know what viruses do and don't do. Arguing about whether they're "alive" or not is purely semantics and is not a scientific question at all.
But it's important! See, this 4th level AD&D spell affects, according to its definition "all living things within 5 feet of the target position". I must know whether it'll wipe out a virus! The fate of the world depends upon it!
ok, seriously - they had me intrigued, and then I see that the trailer is for the xbox version.
Every. Single. One. game concept that originated on PCs and was moved to consoles was dumbed down. Yes, Oblivion, I'm looking at you. Yes, Halo, I still hate you.
So, from what I could see, this isn't going to be an "MMO revolution". It's going to be counterstrike with better graphics and a persistent world, set in an alternate reality setting. An MMFPS. With console controls. I'm shivering, but it's not the anticipation.
> To be fair, do any phones offer anti-phishing on the device? > > Do users of any other phone need it?
Only the part that constantly brags about how their smartphone of choice has this one important feature that the iPhone doesn't, and therefore it is superior in every way.
Instead of putting all this effort into anti-phishing technology, we should make people less stupid.
Rational analysis tells me that's the wrong approach. Inventing a 100% reliable anti-phishing technology is considerably easier than making people less stupid.
Sorry, but human visual processing time does not figure into the equation. The brain compensates for that, which is why our experience of the world appears to be immediate despite the processing time required.
Lag is also something you can train for, unfortunately. If you are playing a lot of low-latency FPS games, you become more aware of it, because you're training your brain for fast reaction times. Like everything else in the human body and mind, how well you perform depends on how much you train/use it.
133ms seems like a lot to me, and I'm by no means a hardcore gamer. But I do notice lag in old online FPS (newer ones often do extrapolation) when it goes above ca. 50 ms.
It also depends a lot on the game, of course. In an FPS, lag really hurts. In most MMORPGs with their auto-combat, well you could probably play them from the moon and be ok.
It depends a lot on what exactly you say and do, and what exactly the position and the test are, and how much of all that you explain to your customers.
I know that test situations don't really say much about real-life performance. So if you'd tell me there's a mandatory test where I have to demonstrate how good I am, I'd also say "thanks" and walk, knowing that you're about to hire not the best coder, but the guy with the best "handle test situations" skill.
If it's about verifying that I can do what I claim to do, and you explain to me why and that it's nothing personal, I might point to my references and ask if that's not enough. But I might be willing to do a simple test, one that's obviously only there to weed out the cheaters. Heck, I fill out CAPTCHAs, too.
But a lot depends on how you present it, because it can quickly turn into a "if you don't believe me, what kind of basis for a work relationship is that?" situation.
Once you get past the hype, the benefit of cloud computing is that it should be possible to leverage technical expertise and management across a much larger user base.
And that's also your main problem.
When the mail server of the company that employs you goes down, you get on it an fix it, and usually you care (among other things, it's your job, it's your company, it's your server and it's probably your email that's also down).
If the mail server of one of your 2000 customers goes down, no matter how professional you are, it just isn't the same thing.
You never outsource the stuff that the company depends on. So the "scaling effects" argument only goes so far.
Look, people don't throw parties when a new version of a car, household appliance or other "nothing-special" tool comes to market. Windos hasn't been anything special for 10 years. And it was your company that made it so, by making sure that it is in EVERY PC ever sold. People just don't see the stuff in any different light from the power switch, the harddrive or the network adapter.
Please, after 20 years, can you stop trying to copy Apple in everything but the important parts?
It's a minor error. The average american knows very well that there's "stuff" outside the USA. It's just that the stuff doesn't matter, so it occasionally gets forgotten.
Let's fix the house first! Don't spend anything on long-term fancy stuff like sports or education! The leaking shower needs the money, desperately. And the floor should be repaired, the roof done, and while we're at it we need a new couch. Who needs to go outside anyways? That car is way too expensive, let's concentrate on the basement. You spend more time there than in the car or outside world anyways, so spend the money where it matters instead of wasting it in a time where the weather is too hot to make going out a positive experience.
That kind of leaves the question: What the f*&$ do you talk about when you meet your friends? I mean, they already know every detail of your live from Twitter, and then there's weather.com...
Talk to someone who works at an ad agency about how much advertising works. Or someone who works at the marketing department of a major corporation.
Why? That'd be like talking to a bank manager about whether or not subprime credits and derivatives are a good investment.
When a new advertising campaign is launched, its typically tested in a few markets first. They compare the sales in these markets to the sales in markets receiving no advertising or a different campaign.
That is for major campaigns only. A large part of the advertisement market does not consist of multi-million dollar campaigns.
Because its the ad agencies and their clients doing this research, your uninformed ass doesn't get to hear about the results.
Funny, but false assumption. Marketing was part of my university education, thank you. I don't pull those numbers out of my ass, you know? They might be a few years outdated, but I don't think the world changes that fast.
Yes, I know that incredible amounts of money go into research. I also know some of the results, and some of the surprises. The most famous one being New Coke, which had extensive research and market tests before it was launched, and still became the textbook failure.
I've been waiting for years for this whole advertisement business to collapse in on its own.
Fact is, nobody can really say how much it works, or doesn't. What science is there in marketing knows that 50-90% of all advertisement is simply burnt money. The problem is that they can't say which ones.
So, the business has expanded and expanded and expanded, until you can't go anywhere without being bombarded by ads. When things go badly, do more of the same. Sad how humans always work that way, no matter if its war, politics, banking, business...
It'll be a big bust one day, and after that we're finally free of that terror(*). Well, one can hope.
(*) no, advertisement won't go away. But this constant, permanent, noisy and interruptive stuff will.
If it means more money for the people who produce the games I like, so they can hire more coders, more artists, more level designers, etc., then great!
Yeah, as if that is going to happen.
The games industry is going down (in both senses) the same route that the movie, and music industries have. Who do you think will profit from this, the producers and artists, or the distributors? My bet's not on the developers.
Slashdot Mirror
I could point you to a speech of mine on the subject, or to Google which probably yields about 10 mio. hits if you put "UAC" together with any deragatory term of your choice into it. If that doesn't tell you what's wrong with it, I don't know where to start explaining. If door locks were universally hated, would people use them?
And since when is "recorded" an important attribute?
Science was well alive during times where we have no surviving records. But we see its consequences and results. The math of ancient egypt, for example, was well beyond that of the early middle ages. It was certainly not written down on stone tables during the starvation fever of a meditating priest.
Since most of the politicians who think they absolutely must regulate that lawless space, the Intartubes know next to nothing about it - what do you think the chances are that they'd even notice ?
Heck, what's the chances they even have a net connection at home?
Yeah, too bad our modern democracies haven't implemented an idea that's almost 2500 years old. The ancient greek Graphe Paranomon. In short: The penalty for repeatedly introducing unconstitutional laws would be the end of your political career.
Three strikes sounds about right in that context.
That sounds great, especially to those of us who have to deal with the Great Unwashed Masses PC problems, but most users are doing good to find the power switch.
So?
Most drivers are doing good remembering which of the controls does what. Nevertheless, cars in general are pretty safe (airbags, ABS, seat belts, etc.) and safe driving is one of the things that you get hammered in at every opportunity. It also has some laws and controls (speed limits, etc.) that many of us hate at times, but we generally agree that they're a solid idea and things would be much worse without.
Enforcing some security in home computers might make it more likely that people spend a few more bucks on a more secure PC, which in turn will give manufacturers some incentive to do something about it.
Might work, might not. I think it's worth a try.
Security researchers and various crackers have been saying for a few years now that OS X hasn't implemented a lot of security features that even Windows has.
I largely tend to think of it as "security buzzwords that even windos has".
There's a lot of them in the newer releases. But the overall questions we have to ask is whether or not it makes the system more secure. When your machine gets owned, you couldn't care less for the checklist of buzzwordy "security" features that just got bypassed. Your security was compromised, end of story.
OS X has less of them. Check.
OS X also doesn't have many of what I'd call necessary things (MAC, RBAC to name just a few. MLS if done right can also add a whole ton of privacy to your security).
All around, however, I still trust this OS X more than the windos machine next to it. That's because while it lacks some of the bells'n whisles, it does do the basics right that windos still hasn't done right, or has done horribly wrong (UAC, I'm looking at you).
Yeah, every sect picks a slightly different set of truths, but the GPs point is still valid.
So it's not creationism in your sect. But it probably is "Jesus is the son of god" or "Mary was a virgin" or maybe "all our sins are forgiven because some guy was nailed to a cross 2000 years ago".
Yep, and there shouldn't be one. Science and faith aren't incompatible, some great men of science were also men of faith.
Yes, all during times where not being a "man of faith" would get you into very serious trouble very quickly.
If you look into the literature, you'll find a lot of them weren't. It was difficult to be an atheist when your entire world is religious and not believing was never offered as an option, but most of the "great men of science" were as close as you could get without crossing people you didn't want to cross.
And yes, science and faith are utterly incompatible. The #1 question of science is the one question religion can not answer. You can phrase it as "show me the evidence" or "let's try to duplicate those results" or "I wonder if we can prove this". It doesn't matter. Anyone saying that religion is not a deadly enemy of science is merely trying to protect religion from its rightly deserved fate.
1. - it already does, at least where I live. But not everyone is born a sales person, and shouldn't have to. We need more people able to "translate".
2. - yes, but this requires a lot more changes than you think. The problem is that curiosity comes with knowledge. The ignorant aren't curious, just ignorant.
3. - forget it. Everyone with half a brain has slowly and patiently explained this batshit for decades. As long as we don't root it out in primary school with some very basic "science" education (e.g. "ask for evidence", etc.), and as long as we teach our children to believe in unscientific nonsense before we teach them to read, you've got no chance in this regard. And yes, I'm talking about religion there.
4. - yes, and scientists have been working on that for years. Then again, few outside university really read and understand those journals. This is where the loop closes to #1 - we need more "translators". Unfortunately, that's where the media comes in. Many years ago, there were science shows on TV, and scientific magazines for the masses. The later still exist, but AFAIK they've suffered from loss of readership and quality suffered along with budget.
We know what viruses do and don't do. Arguing about whether they're "alive" or not is purely semantics and is not a scientific question at all.
But it's important! See, this 4th level AD&D spell affects, according to its definition "all living things within 5 feet of the target position". I must know whether it'll wipe out a virus! The fate of the world depends upon it!
ok, seriously - they had me intrigued, and then I see that the trailer is for the xbox version.
Every. Single. One. game concept that originated on PCs and was moved to consoles was dumbed down. Yes, Oblivion, I'm looking at you. Yes, Halo, I still hate you.
So, from what I could see, this isn't going to be an "MMO revolution". It's going to be counterstrike with better graphics and a persistent world, set in an alternate reality setting. An MMFPS. With console controls. I'm shivering, but it's not the anticipation.
> To be fair, do any phones offer anti-phishing on the device?
>
> Do users of any other phone need it?
Only the part that constantly brags about how their smartphone of choice has this one important feature that the iPhone doesn't, and therefore it is superior in every way.
Instead of putting all this effort into anti-phishing technology, we should make people less stupid.
Rational analysis tells me that's the wrong approach. Inventing a 100% reliable anti-phishing technology is considerably easier than making people less stupid.
If you'd RTFA, you'd see that the whole point of the challenge was to "vanish" while staying active online.
So, the answer is to make things worse? Yeah, I'm sure that's gonna fly.
Sorry, but human visual processing time does not figure into the equation. The brain compensates for that, which is why our experience of the world appears to be immediate despite the processing time required.
Lag is also something you can train for, unfortunately. If you are playing a lot of low-latency FPS games, you become more aware of it, because you're training your brain for fast reaction times. Like everything else in the human body and mind, how well you perform depends on how much you train/use it.
133ms seems like a lot to me, and I'm by no means a hardcore gamer. But I do notice lag in old online FPS (newer ones often do extrapolation) when it goes above ca. 50 ms.
It also depends a lot on the game, of course. In an FPS, lag really hurts. In most MMORPGs with their auto-combat, well you could probably play them from the moon and be ok.
It depends a lot on what exactly you say and do, and what exactly the position and the test are, and how much of all that you explain to your customers.
I know that test situations don't really say much about real-life performance. So if you'd tell me there's a mandatory test where I have to demonstrate how good I am, I'd also say "thanks" and walk, knowing that you're about to hire not the best coder, but the guy with the best "handle test situations" skill.
If it's about verifying that I can do what I claim to do, and you explain to me why and that it's nothing personal, I might point to my references and ask if that's not enough. But I might be willing to do a simple test, one that's obviously only there to weed out the cheaters. Heck, I fill out CAPTCHAs, too.
But a lot depends on how you present it, because it can quickly turn into a "if you don't believe me, what kind of basis for a work relationship is that?" situation.
Once you get past the hype, the benefit of cloud computing is that it should be possible to leverage technical expertise and management across a much larger user base.
And that's also your main problem.
When the mail server of the company that employs you goes down, you get on it an fix it, and usually you care (among other things, it's your job, it's your company, it's your server and it's probably your email that's also down).
If the mail server of one of your 2000 customers goes down, no matter how professional you are, it just isn't the same thing.
You never outsource the stuff that the company depends on. So the "scaling effects" argument only goes so far.
Whatever he's smoking, it can't be legal.
Look, people don't throw parties when a new version of a car, household appliance or other "nothing-special" tool comes to market. Windos hasn't been anything special for 10 years. And it was your company that made it so, by making sure that it is in EVERY PC ever sold. People just don't see the stuff in any different light from the power switch, the harddrive or the network adapter.
Please, after 20 years, can you stop trying to copy Apple in everything but the important parts?
It's a minor error. The average american knows very well that there's "stuff" outside the USA. It's just that the stuff doesn't matter, so it occasionally gets forgotten.
Oh, you are so right!
Let's fix the house first! Don't spend anything on long-term fancy stuff like sports or education! The leaking shower needs the money, desperately. And the floor should be repaired, the roof done, and while we're at it we need a new couch. Who needs to go outside anyways? That car is way too expensive, let's concentrate on the basement. You spend more time there than in the car or outside world anyways, so spend the money where it matters instead of wasting it in a time where the weather is too hot to make going out a positive experience.
Let's fix the bathtub!
That kind of leaves the question: What the f*&$ do you talk about when you meet your friends? I mean, they already know every detail of your live from Twitter, and then there's weather.com...
Talk to someone who works at an ad agency about how much advertising works. Or someone who works at the marketing department of a major corporation.
Why? That'd be like talking to a bank manager about whether or not subprime credits and derivatives are a good investment.
When a new advertising campaign is launched, its typically tested in a few markets first. They compare the sales in these markets to the sales in markets receiving no advertising or a different campaign.
That is for major campaigns only. A large part of the advertisement market does not consist of multi-million dollar campaigns.
Because its the ad agencies and their clients doing this research, your uninformed ass doesn't get to hear about the results.
Funny, but false assumption. Marketing was part of my university education, thank you. I don't pull those numbers out of my ass, you know? They might be a few years outdated, but I don't think the world changes that fast.
Yes, I know that incredible amounts of money go into research. I also know some of the results, and some of the surprises. The most famous one being New Coke, which had extensive research and market tests before it was launched, and still became the textbook failure.
I've been waiting for years for this whole advertisement business to collapse in on its own.
Fact is, nobody can really say how much it works, or doesn't. What science is there in marketing knows that 50-90% of all advertisement is simply burnt money. The problem is that they can't say which ones.
So, the business has expanded and expanded and expanded, until you can't go anywhere without being bombarded by ads. When things go badly, do more of the same. Sad how humans always work that way, no matter if its war, politics, banking, business...
It'll be a big bust one day, and after that we're finally free of that terror(*). Well, one can hope.
(*) no, advertisement won't go away. But this constant, permanent, noisy and interruptive stuff will.
If it means more money for the people who produce the games I like, so they can hire more coders, more artists, more level designers, etc., then great!
Yeah, as if that is going to happen.
The games industry is going down (in both senses) the same route that the movie, and music industries have. Who do you think will profit from this, the producers and artists, or the distributors? My bet's not on the developers.