Some of us enjoy having a simple, uncluttered, low color, high contrast GUI.
You are aware the the Mac offers a special high-contrast version of the GUI? You can even toggle it with a hotkey combo, just in case you're only shortsighted sometimes.
We don't encrypt the entire disk because it's total utter nonsense (except if you try to sell a product).
Most of the data on most machines is neither secret nor special - it's the OS and applications binaries, libraries, graphics, etc.
Encrypting/home (or/Users for us Mac-heads) is sufficient for most machines. So look into system settings and Security and you'll find File Vault. Activate, done. No need to buy some snakeoil some idiot is trying to sell (*).
(*) and he's conveniently not telling you that encryption isn't the end-all solution. There are plenty of ways of breaking even the best crypto without actually breaking it. Getting the key is often easy because people write it down or treat it carelessly.
The fee is, in fact, not only the same as the one of 2004, it is also the same as the standard radio fee.
Which means that anyone who already owns a radio won't pay anything in addition.
The fee affects two groups of people:
a) Those who have neither radio nor television, but a PC or mobile. b) companies, which usually fall into group a) if you want to be nitpicking.
Since I fall in group a) I will be engaging in civil disobedience next year. Many others will, too. It'll be interesting to see how that goes, because despite their advertisement, the GEZ (the company that collects the fees) does not, in fact, have any powers to actually do their job. They can send you nasty letters and that's about it. They can't enter your house if you don't let them in, for example. They can't return with police to force their way in, even if they claim they can.
Back in the days I actually installed this on my webserver. It was only after I had it running for a while that the number of exploited windos servers attacking me dropped. I'm very sure that there is a kind of ground layer of infected PCs and servers that will never be cleaned up by their admins.
In fact, I think there's a much larger percentage where something-bad-and-visible-happening-to-the-machine is the most reliable way to get its clueless idiot users to reinstall, activate the firewall and/or run a damn virus scanner.
Remember: 10 years ago, the script kiddies taking over your machine wanted to shut it down, just to show you who's boss. Today, the organized criminals taking over yourr machine want it to stay up, so they can push as much spam out as possible.
The current GUI in XP is more than valid and works well doing everything you would expect it to do.
Could you send me a copy of that "XP" thing? I mean, I have one with the same name, but the GUI is anything but valid, and it by far doesn't do everything I'd expect it to. For example, it has this "Start" menu thing which has a shutdown option more prominent than anything that's really related to starting stuff, and there's this total mess of a programs menu that it completely unusable once you have more than 10 programs installed. Plus it's sorted by company name not program name. I fear I have the "commercial" in the sense of "advertisement" version of XP, because why else should the damn operating system rub in my face who made the software? Not as if I cared.
So whatever version of XP you're using, if it has a GUI that "works well", then it's not the same as the one I have at home and not the same as the one I use at work.
Anyone who writes or talks about the vista GUI should use a Mac for a few weeks before doing so. I'm serious. I switched to OSX a few months ago. By now I don't understand why I ever put up with the abomination that is windos. If you think the windos UI is "fairly good", then you've never used a Mac, end of story. Consistency and functional beauty (instead of useless eye-candy) is what makes or breaks a UI. Or more specifically: What breaks windos and makes OSX.
Well, that might be a bit much, even they can't pay that (that's the nature of monopoly rent - it's a net loss for the economy because the monopolists gain is smaller than everyone elses loss).
So, how about just going away and stopping to do more damage? That'd do for me.
I'm a big fan of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game (i.e. the pen&paper RPG). One thing I love about it is that it's nice to the casual gamers - you don't have to study page upon page of tables and memorize 2547 rules about combat, it is simple and fun and you can concentrate on playing it.
How will Warhammer Online convince me as a casual online player to join? Will it take those of us whose game in life isn't to reach Lvl 60 into account at all? What about pricing? One thing that puts me off most online games is that at times I can't play at all for a month, or only very rarely - it's maybe 2-3 out of 12 months a year where I'd get a $20 worth out of it. Any thought about offering more than one payment mode? Any thoughts about making sure I can play the game and have fun if I can spend 2-5 hours a week (not a day) on it?
* All incoming e-mail is reformatted. Attachments are converted to.odf or.png, as appropriate. Stuff that can't be converted is dropped. HTML is parsed, checked for syntax, and Javascript dropped.
* All web browsing to non-secure sites is proxied. Javascript is removed. Flash is removed. Java is removed. All binary data is removed. Images are reformatted to.png format and the HTML adjusted to match. No more "Web 2.0"; those sites just stop working.
Someone will find a buffer overflow in the parser...
* Web browsing to secure sites via SSL is only permitted if the site has a SSL cert that is a high-grade "we really know who this is" cert.
* TCP port 80 is all you get outgoing. Incoming, forget it. UDP, forget it. If you want to message, use the phone.
* You have a machine or two around that are outside the firewall for when you desperately need to do something else. Those machines have a canned read-only disk image that's refreshed on each reboot or logout, like Internet cafe machines.
People won't use it, because it's inconvenient. Besides, once it's port 80 only, all botnets will talk over port 80, so what? Also, SSL or only port 80? Make up your mind.:-)
Read-only system partition. Yes, that sounds like something. Only problem being: If there is a way to mount it read-write (and there's gotta be, for patches) then someone will find a way to exploit it.
No, none of the quick-fire solutions will work. Our security technology has hit its limits. There is no way to secure a home PC using known methods, it's all hacks and patches and buckets to get the water out of the sinking ship. We need a new approach, and it's gotta start with the #1 vulnerability: The user. I'm not talking about educating him or making him powerless. We tried both of those, they've failed.
One of the reasons it doesn't work is that many exploit-scripts already plug the hole they used to get in - not to be nice, more in order to make sure the machine isn't re-taken by someone else.
This isn't a battle for/against botnets. They're just the symptoms. What this really means is that the battle to have secure home PCs is lost. I won't even get into the Windos vs. Real OS discussion. The point is deeper still: Our homes are safe from burglars because those with the great skills and expert tools don't break into homes, they break into banks. Not so on the Internet. Due to automation you can play the numbers game, and taking over 100,000 machines is feasable, less risky yet possibly just as profitable as breaking into one bank.
The best non-computer equivalent I can think of is the plague. Welcome to the crowded cities of the middle ages. Even if you, personally, are safe, you're still affected. Think about it.
Last time I checked, banning political parties, banning freedom of speech, press, assembly and religion were pretty absolutist.
That is true.
But just because one dictator has found a less crude way to achive the same goal doesn't mean he isn't.
Bush isn't banning political parties - but then again he doesn't have to as there aren't any real choices left anyways. He doesn't ban freedom of speech and the press, but he's made the first inconsequencial (and introduced limits) and the second is so corrupted that it's more useful than a silenced press could ever be. Assembly will come whenever it starts to be a threat to his power, just wait. Religion is a touchy one. True, there are no limits yet. However, one religion is clearly favoured and is getting his support wherever possible. Just look at the whole Creationism debate, or the stem cell debacle. He is very clearly religiously motivated in lots and lots of the things he does.
Now when it comes to Libya, check up some sources and you'll be surprised. Yes, it's not a western country, but there is more freedom there (especially regarding religion) than in most other african or middle eastern countries.
So what it boils down to is comparing one of the worst examples of the 1st world with one of the best examples in the 3rd. And what we see is that they aren't that much apart.
It's much easier to get a Netflix DVD in the mail than to deal with bittorrents and other such effort-required type things
My experience is very dissimilar. I know people who didn't even own a computer until 2 years ago, who are actively using BitTorrent. I know lots of people who aren't geeks by any measure, who do. Look at the numbers on your favourite tracker: The stuff with the highest number of seeders isn't the geek stuff, it's the mainstream movies.
So did I when I started moving to Apple, but from Linux in my case. Tell me what you are missing and maybe I can help out. I found that a surprising amount of stuff does exist if you just know where to find it. The only thing I miss is a really good text editor. I found a few good ones, but I'm almost married to FTE, and that's a bit of a problem.
These anti-industry posts are all nice and logical and stuff, but the problem is that most of the world doesn't have the sense to think this way
They don't have to. A lot of BitTorrent clients are very useable even by average users. Come on, do you really think the *AA would be making such an amount of noise if it were only a few geeks trading music and movies out there? There's a ton of people who do it. Many of them probably don't know what that "BitTorrent" thing is, they just know that there are these sites they've bookmarked where you can download stuff, and if you click on the links the "download program" opens.
I've not made many polls, but there is a good number of adults playing. In fact, I have examples of teachers playing alongside some of their students. I'm fairly sure the average age of BattleMaster is considerably above that of whatever FPS is currently "in".
In fact, I'm quite proud that the game appeals to people in an age bracket at least from 9 to the 50s (the youngest and oldest players, respectively, that I know of).
If you had bothered to look it up before assuming that you know the definition, you would've been surprised:
Dictator was the title of a magistrate in ancient Rome appointed by the Senate to rule the state in times of emergency. In modern usage, it refers to an absolutist or autocratic ruler who assumes sole power over the state
Let's assume we can dump the old roman definition (though it is very interesting), you will notice that the modern definition says nothing about lack of elections or term limits (as the other poster claimed as being the defining difference).
Does Bush rule absolutist? I believe most parts of the free world would agree on that. Why, he's even made sure that none of his war crimes can be prosecuted after he's gone, by retroactively legalizing them. He's not yet claiming that he's above the law, but he's one step short of that by simply changing the law so that de facto, he is. Does he assume sole power over the state? That's where he might not (yet) qualify. However, remember that he has, essentially, declared a permanent state of war, and is claiming war powers for the president, even extending them wherever possible.
Quite frankly, if you look at actual politics, I dare to say that Bush is more of an absolutist than Ghaddafi.
I am about as sure as regular use makes me. I own a MacBook Pro and this is moving windows between the notebook screen and the external (DVI) cinema display. It might be a feature unique to that combination, but a friend of mine has noticed the same thing on his PowerBook.
Here's the reason MPAA will give you: You have no choice.
Here is the answer I give them: As you could see if you weren't blinded by greed, I do in fact have a choice. You call it criminal, I call it civil disobedience to an extortion scheme (the music industry has already been convicted of illegal price-fixing. Evidence for the same happening with DVDs is very strong).
The highest (or 2nd highest, depending on which sources you trust) standard of living in Africa
The highest Human Development Index in Africa, ahead of Russia, Saudia Arabia, Turkey and others like those.
One of the highest GDPs in Africa, more than Malaysia, Mexico or Bulgaria
Market-oriented reforms and a business boom, currently ongoing
Free education for all citizens, resulting in the highest literacy rate in North Africa
Judge by facts, not because your own dictator says "evil man over there".
Yes, human rights are still a problem. But a country that just legalised imprisoning people without charge, trial, access to lawyer and for as long as you like is not really the party that should speak accusingly of other parties on this matter.
Get rid of your own dictator first before you tell others to do so.
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So if I have 12 tabs open, then Ctrl+8 will bring me to the 8th tab, but Ctrl+9 will bring me to the 12th?
This is a serious question. I can't believe even the MS UI-designers can be this stupid.
Some of us enjoy having a simple, uncluttered, low color, high contrast GUI.
You are aware the the Mac offers a special high-contrast version of the GUI? You can even toggle it with a hotkey combo, just in case you're only shortsighted sometimes.
And a terminal.
Google for iTerm.
Yes, I still consider the fact that on Linux I can choose my window manager to be among it's main advantages.
On the other hand, the Mac way has one big advantage: Consistency. Everything works the same way, and reliably so. I have come to treasure that fact.
Yes, they do today. My comment was specifically about Code Red II and that one didn't.
We don't encrypt the entire disk because it's total utter nonsense (except if you try to sell a product).
/home (or /Users for us Mac-heads) is sufficient for most machines. So look into system settings and Security and you'll find File Vault. Activate, done. No need to buy some snakeoil some idiot is trying to sell (*).
Most of the data on most machines is neither secret nor special - it's the OS and applications binaries, libraries, graphics, etc.
Encrypting
(*) and he's conveniently not telling you that encryption isn't the end-all solution. There are plenty of ways of breaking even the best crypto without actually breaking it. Getting the key is often easy because people write it down or treat it carelessly.
The fee is, in fact, not only the same as the one of 2004, it is also the same as the standard radio fee.
Which means that anyone who already owns a radio won't pay anything in addition.
The fee affects two groups of people:
a) Those who have neither radio nor television, but a PC or mobile.
b) companies, which usually fall into group a) if you want to be nitpicking.
Since I fall in group a) I will be engaging in civil disobedience next year. Many others will, too. It'll be interesting to see how that goes, because despite their advertisement, the GEZ (the company that collects the fees) does not, in fact, have any powers to actually do their job. They can send you nasty letters and that's about it. They can't enter your house if you don't let them in, for example. They can't return with police to force their way in, even if they claim they can.
Back in the days I actually installed this on my webserver. It was only after I had it running for a while that the number of exploited windos servers attacking me dropped. I'm very sure that there is a kind of ground layer of infected PCs and servers that will never be cleaned up by their admins.
e is the most reliable way to get its clueless idiot users to reinstall, activate the firewall and/or run a damn virus scanner.
In fact, I think there's a much larger percentage where something-bad-and-visible-happening-to-the-machin
Remember: 10 years ago, the script kiddies taking over your machine wanted to shut it down, just to show you who's boss. Today, the organized criminals taking over yourr machine want it to stay up, so they can push as much spam out as possible.
Funny how there's a war fought over who has control of a windos PC - by multiple parties, none of which is the owner of said PC.
So they've been working on this new windos version for what? 5 years? And all they have to show for it is a shiney, flash-like GUI?
The only sad thing about it is that due to the OEM lock-ins and general stupidity of people it'll still sell.
The current GUI in XP is more than valid and works well doing everything you would expect it to do.
Could you send me a copy of that "XP" thing? I mean, I have one with the same name, but the GUI is anything but valid, and it by far doesn't do everything I'd expect it to. For example, it has this "Start" menu thing which has a shutdown option more prominent than anything that's really related to starting stuff, and there's this total mess of a programs menu that it completely unusable once you have more than 10 programs installed. Plus it's sorted by company name not program name. I fear I have the "commercial" in the sense of "advertisement" version of XP, because why else should the damn operating system rub in my face who made the software? Not as if I cared.
So whatever version of XP you're using, if it has a GUI that "works well", then it's not the same as the one I have at home and not the same as the one I use at work.
Anyone who writes or talks about the vista GUI should use a Mac for a few weeks before doing so. I'm serious. I switched to OSX a few months ago. By now I don't understand why I ever put up with the abomination that is windos. If you think the windos UI is "fairly good", then you've never used a Mac, end of story. Consistency and functional beauty (instead of useless eye-candy) is what makes or breaks a UI. Or more specifically: What breaks windos and makes OSX.
What would MS have to do to please all of you?
Undo the damage they've done.
Well, that might be a bit much, even they can't pay that (that's the nature of monopoly rent - it's a net loss for the economy because the monopolists gain is smaller than everyone elses loss).
So, how about just going away and stopping to do more damage? That'd do for me.
I'm a big fan of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game (i.e. the pen&paper RPG). One thing I love about it is that it's nice to the casual gamers - you don't have to study page upon page of tables and memorize 2547 rules about combat, it is simple and fun and you can concentrate on playing it.
How will Warhammer Online convince me as a casual online player to join? Will it take those of us whose game in life isn't to reach Lvl 60 into account at all? What about pricing? One thing that puts me off most online games is that at times I can't play at all for a month, or only very rarely - it's maybe 2-3 out of 12 months a year where I'd get a $20 worth out of it. Any thought about offering more than one payment mode? Any thoughts about making sure I can play the game and have fun if I can spend 2-5 hours a week (not a day) on it?
Someone will find a buffer overflow in the parser...
People won't use it, because it's inconvenient. Besides, once it's port 80 only, all botnets will talk over port 80, so what? Also, SSL or only port 80? Make up your mind.
Read-only system partition. Yes, that sounds like something. Only problem being: If there is a way to mount it read-write (and there's gotta be, for patches) then someone will find a way to exploit it.
No, none of the quick-fire solutions will work. Our security technology has hit its limits. There is no way to secure a home PC using known methods, it's all hacks and patches and buckets to get the water out of the sinking ship. We need a new approach, and it's gotta start with the #1 vulnerability: The user.
I'm not talking about educating him or making him powerless. We tried both of those, they've failed.
This was discussed and dropped many times.
One of the reasons it doesn't work is that many exploit-scripts already plug the hole they used to get in - not to be nice, more in order to make sure the machine isn't re-taken by someone else.
This isn't a battle for/against botnets. They're just the symptoms. What this really means is that the battle to have secure home PCs is lost. I won't even get into the Windos vs. Real OS discussion. The point is deeper still: Our homes are safe from burglars because those with the great skills and expert tools don't break into homes, they break into banks.
Not so on the Internet. Due to automation you can play the numbers game, and taking over 100,000 machines is feasable, less risky yet possibly just as profitable as breaking into one bank.
The best non-computer equivalent I can think of is the plague. Welcome to the crowded cities of the middle ages. Even if you, personally, are safe, you're still affected. Think about it.
Last time I checked, banning political parties, banning freedom of speech, press, assembly and religion were pretty absolutist.
That is true.
But just because one dictator has found a less crude way to achive the same goal doesn't mean he isn't.
Bush isn't banning political parties - but then again he doesn't have to as there aren't any real choices left anyways.
He doesn't ban freedom of speech and the press, but he's made the first inconsequencial (and introduced limits) and the second is so corrupted that it's more useful than a silenced press could ever be.
Assembly will come whenever it starts to be a threat to his power, just wait.
Religion is a touchy one. True, there are no limits yet. However, one religion is clearly favoured and is getting his support wherever possible. Just look at the whole Creationism debate, or the stem cell debacle. He is very clearly religiously motivated in lots and lots of the things he does.
Now when it comes to Libya, check up some sources and you'll be surprised. Yes, it's not a western country, but there is more freedom there (especially regarding religion) than in most other african or middle eastern countries.
So what it boils down to is comparing one of the worst examples of the 1st world with one of the best examples in the 3rd. And what we see is that they aren't that much apart.
It's much easier to get a Netflix DVD in the mail than to deal with bittorrents and other such effort-required type things
My experience is very dissimilar. I know people who didn't even own a computer until 2 years ago, who are actively using BitTorrent. I know lots of people who aren't geeks by any measure, who do. Look at the numbers on your favourite tracker: The stuff with the highest number of seeders isn't the geek stuff, it's the mainstream movies.
I miss certain Windows software,
So did I when I started moving to Apple, but from Linux in my case. Tell me what you are missing and maybe I can help out. I found that a surprising amount of stuff does exist if you just know where to find it. The only thing I miss is a really good text editor. I found a few good ones, but I'm almost married to FTE, and that's a bit of a problem.
These anti-industry posts are all nice and logical and stuff, but the problem is that most of the world doesn't have the sense to think this way
They don't have to. A lot of BitTorrent clients are very useable even by average users. Come on, do you really think the *AA would be making such an amount of noise if it were only a few geeks trading music and movies out there? There's a ton of people who do it. Many of them probably don't know what that "BitTorrent" thing is, they just know that there are these sites they've bookmarked where you can download stuff, and if you click on the links the "download program" opens.
I've not made many polls, but there is a good number of adults playing. In fact, I have examples of teachers playing alongside some of their students. I'm fairly sure the average age of BattleMaster is considerably above that of whatever FPS is currently "in".
In fact, I'm quite proud that the game appeals to people in an age bracket at least from 9 to the 50s (the youngest and oldest players, respectively, that I know of).
If you had bothered to look it up before assuming that you know the definition, you would've been surprised:
Let's assume we can dump the old roman definition (though it is very interesting), you will notice that the modern definition says nothing about lack of elections or term limits (as the other poster claimed as being the defining difference).
Does Bush rule absolutist? I believe most parts of the free world would agree on that. Why, he's even made sure that none of his war crimes can be prosecuted after he's gone, by retroactively legalizing them. He's not yet claiming that he's above the law, but he's one step short of that by simply changing the law so that de facto, he is.
Does he assume sole power over the state? That's where he might not (yet) qualify. However, remember that he has, essentially, declared a permanent state of war, and is claiming war powers for the president, even extending them wherever possible.
Quite frankly, if you look at actual politics, I dare to say that Bush is more of an absolutist than Ghaddafi.
I am about as sure as regular use makes me. I own a MacBook Pro and this is moving windows between the notebook screen and the external (DVI) cinema display. It might be a feature unique to that combination, but a friend of mine has noticed the same thing on his PowerBook.
Here's the reason MPAA will give you: You have no choice.
Here is the answer I give them: As you could see if you weren't blinded by greed, I do in fact have a choice. You call it criminal, I call it civil disobedience to an extortion scheme (the music industry has already been convicted of illegal price-fixing. Evidence for the same happening with DVDs is very strong).
Judge by facts, not because your own dictator says "evil man over there".
Yes, human rights are still a problem. But a country that just legalised imprisoning people without charge, trial, access to lawyer and for as long as you like is not really the party that should speak accusingly of other parties on this matter.
Get rid of your own dictator first before you tell others to do so.