For me, real life is filled with people who come up behind me, and then *don't do anything*. They sit down on the bus, or stand in line at the cinema, or whatever. The lack of sudden, lethal attacks is (for me) one of those things that distinguishes real life from the game world.
Good luck against those ninjas though. I hear they're pretty bad this time of year.
People are sold these things as easy to use tools that do all sorts of great stuff. It's not their fault that they actually expect the claims to be true.
The culture of many in the IT industry is that the users must skill up to the computers, when I believe that it should the reverse - computers should allow for inexperienced users. Some learning is required, but security is a complex subject and cannot be learned as a first step. Until users are ready, the 'blame the user' culture forces them to run non-secure boxes.
Microsoft is a case in point. Previous OS releases were sold as leaps forward in security, incredibly easy to use, etc etc etc. They also relied utterly on the user to secure the box.
We see the result all around us. Zombie PCs, open ports in every direction and a malignant industry of malware.
The alternative is to assume the user cannot secure the box themselves, and let them open what they need, when they need it. It's reasonable to assume that users will learn how to open ports when they install something new, or the software installation instructions could specifically step through the process for them.
The result of the second model is what we see in Linux, Unix and OS X (and lately, thankfully, in WindowsXP). Few (if any) viruses, almost no working malware and users that can trust the security of their machine.
Blaming the users is a great cop-out for developers, but it's utterly wrong. The developers fail to secure software, never the users.
If it's not reasonably secure out of the box, it's a failure by the developers.
Hmm... Subtle damage could indeed be more crippling than overt damage.
Deleting a file will cause staff to notice, and after the virus is removed, the file will be restored.
Changing a few random values in a spreadsheet will likely not be noticed as quickly, and when it is, there may not be any way to work out which daily backup to restore from.
Then there's the effect.
Deleting a file causes irritation, but has no lasting effect.
Altering the file subtly will potentially damage a forecast, change the meaning of data or cause an employee to be held in lower regard.
I've sometimes wondered why virus writers seem little more than children, preferring to see their name writ large than actually do anything malicious. I've come to think it's human nature not to cause damage just for the hell of it.
I've been waiting for really damaging viruses to appear. This one won't herald the start of them - people will just purge the virus and then restore from backups.
So... you want a high-powered machine in a miniscule form factor at a really low cost.
From Apple?
You're just not the demographic targeted by the Mini. It's not right for you.
The Mini is aimed at people whose needs are limited to productivity apps (Office, iWork), iLife apps and maybe some less demanding games. Or hobbyists with some spare cash and an interest in other platforms.
It's not aimed to replace 3+ GHz PCs, and as soon as you compare it with a tower, you highlight again that you're not the target market.
I see this sort of thing on forums, but I just don't know how your machine performs less well with Spotlight, than my machine.
I've only got an iBook. Your dual 2GHz G5 should wipe the floor with it.
I get results as I type, instantly, and have yet to see the beachball either in the little Spotlight menu bar thingy (command-space) or the search window.
Maybe there's some sort of weird optimisation going on that hurts G5 performance, or maybe there's something unique to your machine. I don't see this from a lot of people.
I thought about that after posting, but I still think that the interface is something to be moved out of the way while you use the X-Box.
You don't want the interface while watching a DVD or using the machine for some video function. There's probably a remote for that, and that's a better interface than any on-screen one. You don't want it while playing games, although connecting to game servers will require it. You don't want it while listening to music, as it's good, but not *that* pretty - there'll be a visualiser, no doubt.
But yes, while you're selecting something you do need an interface. It's just that you want to get in, find what you want and get out with the minimum of fuss. While a good design will help, every application or game will have its own, unique interface that users will spend far more time in.
I guess I'm saying, in my incredibly long-winded and overly verbose manner, that the graphical interface is not that critical to actual usage on the X-Box - it's just something you pass through when you're going somewhere more interesting, like a door into a room. It's a very different world to general purpose computers.
In related news, the entire music industry has dropped support for Apple's iTunes Music Store and is suing Apple for breach of contract, loss of revenue and numerous copyright violations.
Consumers wishing refunds on their now almost useless iPods were advised by Apple store and helpline staff "Shit no! We need every cent for the court battles now! If we win, you'll get you music back, but until then we need to push this case through and put the business on the line because it's a principle dear to a few hundred geeks on Slashdot!"
The popular Slashdot website commented cryptically today "Less space than a Nomad. No FM. Lame." A few posters on the website criticised Apple for not going far enough.
One poster commented: "They should storm the citadel of the star-star-AA. Maybe with leet swords of righteousness plus seventeen, you know, for EverQuest, or maybe with those cool guns you get on Halo-2, but not the original Halo because that was just crap. The ending was better though, so YMMV. That'd be so cool, and then they'd be teh godz. I still wouldn't buy their shit though. It's not free enough for me."
Business Analysts changed the rating of Apple's stock from "buy" to "get the hell out of there! Just run and don't look back for the love of God!" This move is expected to cause Apple stock to suffer.
Darl McBride, CEO of the foundering SCO corporation has offered to step in to Apple's CEO role and bring the company back to health. "I believe that Apple can still make a case that Microsoft stole their UI, and by charging every Windows owner on Earth a simple, one-off $299 fee, we'll recoup those losses."
Noted software tycoon Bill Gates was unavailable for comment, as he was admitted to hospital suffering convulsions caused by fits of continuous hysterical laughter.
Watch out! You're in grave danger of bringing rationality into this topic.
You'd better post a few lines on how Apple must do this, and bring back cloning, if they're going to survive (because we all know that Microsoft do quite handily in the software market).
I'm sure one of my old Macs had an Intel chip for I/O or a memory controller or something. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I feel sure of this.
He was very vocal about this sort of thing, and now he's gone very quiet. Almost as if he was an Apple employee who was given The Warning (tm) or... (obligatory Star Wars reference being used in shameless Karma whoring)... as if a million of his posts were made, and then suddenly silenced. Hmm...
When I get some time, I'll read the article (thus breaking a long-running streak for me) and compare to ASoT's statements.
It's a nice interface, clean lines and all that, but the thing I notice most about interfaces in video game consoles is that you want to spend as little time as possible in them.
After posting that, it might be nice to elaborate.
I've heard others say that it cripples their machines, even the new iMacs. I've got a iBook that's just had its first year, and I don't see the problems. I don't get any slowdowns or have to wait ages for results from my 60GB drive (of which around 55GB is used). I've got around 300,000 files at the moment.
Apparently someone chained 23 Firewire drives together, and then complained about the performance of Spotlight. Not the most realistic example (who would need that set-up but wouldn't have invested in either fewer, larger drives or a server?).
How does Spotlight go on OS X Server, running on a real server box? I don't know that one, but I'd be curious to find out.
I've heard about problems in searching for word fragments inside other words.
If I type "ding" (knowing full well I have a Word document titled 'building my PC.doc'), Spotlight fails to find it. If I type "buil" it comes up straight away. Could that be a problem? Well, in this example no - but that's mainly because I'd never search for the second syllable like that.
Does a search for "PC" turn the file up? Yes it does. So... this seems to indicate that I can't search for the middle of words, just the beginning of them. Not really an issue for me, but I can see that someone with filenames like "BuildingPC" might have trouble.
Actually... not at all!
I just made a duplicate of the file "Building My PC.doc" and renamed the copy to "BuildingMyPC.doc". When I went to Spotlight to search for it, my last search for "PC" turned this file up without me having to type anything in at all!
What about the file search box (Command-F in the Finder)? Acts just the same. No lock-ups on my machine, no problems outside of those reported in the Ars Technica review last month.
I see a lot more happiness with Spotlight users than unhappiness. I guess that's what they mean when they say "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'."
Macs are *designed* in California, but they're manufactured in Taiwan these days, I believe. Apple haven't had a plant in the US (that I'm aware of) for quite some time.
You mean "apart from the main selling point of the Mini, what is the main selling point?"
The form factor is pretty much it. It's also very quiet, and a low power device.
If you want computing power and don't need to keep it tiny, get something else. Of course, to get a really powerful machine, you need to pay more than a Mini (I'm thinking x86-64 here, but it certainly applies to the iMacs and PowerMacs).
So, you advocate *reducing* functionality when there are a few hundred million plain html pages out there.
It'd be a brave developer who tried to sell a product with the tag "Now with 30% LESS functionality!" or "Old pages appear like crap!"
The old tags, while largely redundant in the new world of CSS + DHTML should still be rendered correctly until there is a reason to believe that no old-style pages are being viewed. Browsers *should* support both legacy and new pages, as that maximises choice for consumers, and should render every tag correctly if possible.... of course, when we all shift to Microsoft's Internet II to escape the viruses and trojans of the current Internet (which will implode under the irony of the situation), we'll remember to dump the old HTML pages and use cool new CSS ones instead.
If you define "THE PEOPLE" in such a limited manner as just the few percentage of the planet's populace born in the USA, then yes, this research wasn't paid for by "THE PEOPLE."
As an Australian, I consider that it was paid for by the people, and the benefits flow back to the people. If someone from another country doesn't like it, they can develop a different technology and use that instead. If however, they want to use this technology, then why shouldn't they pay for it?
Patents aren't just about getting money into the US. Money should flow both ways, unless the whole capitalist thing really is a sham after all (heaven forfend!)
Of course, the patent office claim that it'd be an invalid patent, but the point is they wouldn't know about the invalidity until a third party actually made a case in court.
How many dollars would be wasted in legal fees before sanity prevailed? Who knows?
So we have IT giants patenting stuff that's obvious or stuff that has existed in other products for several years before the patent was filed. Maybe some of these are invalid patents as well (and yes, I know that the Australian patent laws are different to the US ones, but the point remains).
So... I'm off to the patent office here in Australia to patent a system of storing a microscopic circuit's state using a simple but elegant set of logic gates that allow two states to be stored one at a time (but not both together).
And then I'll take every RAM manufacturer on Earth to court.
Slashdot Mirror
In *real life* people attack you like that?
Wow. You must be on edge all the time.
For me, real life is filled with people who come up behind me, and then *don't do anything*. They sit down on the bus, or stand in line at the cinema, or whatever. The lack of sudden, lethal attacks is (for me) one of those things that distinguishes real life from the game world.
Good luck against those ninjas though. I hear they're pretty bad this time of year.
Blaming the user is no excuse either.
People are sold these things as easy to use tools that do all sorts of great stuff. It's not their fault that they actually expect the claims to be true.
The culture of many in the IT industry is that the users must skill up to the computers, when I believe that it should the reverse - computers should allow for inexperienced users. Some learning is required, but security is a complex subject and cannot be learned as a first step. Until users are ready, the 'blame the user' culture forces them to run non-secure boxes.
Microsoft is a case in point. Previous OS releases were sold as leaps forward in security, incredibly easy to use, etc etc etc. They also relied utterly on the user to secure the box.
We see the result all around us. Zombie PCs, open ports in every direction and a malignant industry of malware.
The alternative is to assume the user cannot secure the box themselves, and let them open what they need, when they need it. It's reasonable to assume that users will learn how to open ports when they install something new, or the software installation instructions could specifically step through the process for them.
The result of the second model is what we see in Linux, Unix and OS X (and lately, thankfully, in WindowsXP). Few (if any) viruses, almost no working malware and users that can trust the security of their machine.
Blaming the users is a great cop-out for developers, but it's utterly wrong. The developers fail to secure software, never the users.
If it's not reasonably secure out of the box, it's a failure by the developers.
First story in a game?
Someone better tell Bungie to recall all sold copies of Pathways into Darkness and Marathon I and II then.
Hmm... Subtle damage could indeed be more crippling than overt damage.
Deleting a file will cause staff to notice, and after the virus is removed, the file will be restored.
Changing a few random values in a spreadsheet will likely not be noticed as quickly, and when it is, there may not be any way to work out which daily backup to restore from.
Then there's the effect.
Deleting a file causes irritation, but has no lasting effect.
Altering the file subtly will potentially damage a forecast, change the meaning of data or cause an employee to be held in lower regard.
I've sometimes wondered why virus writers seem little more than children, preferring to see their name writ large than actually do anything malicious. I've come to think it's human nature not to cause damage just for the hell of it.
I've been waiting for really damaging viruses to appear. This one won't herald the start of them - people will just purge the virus and then restore from backups.
So... you want a high-powered machine in a miniscule form factor at a really low cost.
From Apple?
You're just not the demographic targeted by the Mini. It's not right for you.
The Mini is aimed at people whose needs are limited to productivity apps (Office, iWork), iLife apps and maybe some less demanding games. Or hobbyists with some spare cash and an interest in other platforms.
It's not aimed to replace 3+ GHz PCs, and as soon as you compare it with a tower, you highlight again that you're not the target market.
Cool bananas. You've been quiet lately, so I wondered...
I see this sort of thing on forums, but I just don't know how your machine performs less well with Spotlight, than my machine.
I've only got an iBook. Your dual 2GHz G5 should wipe the floor with it.
I get results as I type, instantly, and have yet to see the beachball either in the little Spotlight menu bar thingy (command-space) or the search window.
Maybe there's some sort of weird optimisation going on that hurts G5 performance, or maybe there's something unique to your machine. I don't see this from a lot of people.
I thought about that after posting, but I still think that the interface is something to be moved out of the way while you use the X-Box.
You don't want the interface while watching a DVD or using the machine for some video function. There's probably a remote for that, and that's a better interface than any on-screen one. You don't want it while playing games, although connecting to game servers will require it. You don't want it while listening to music, as it's good, but not *that* pretty - there'll be a visualiser, no doubt.
But yes, while you're selecting something you do need an interface. It's just that you want to get in, find what you want and get out with the minimum of fuss. While a good design will help, every application or game will have its own, unique interface that users will spend far more time in.
I guess I'm saying, in my incredibly long-winded and overly verbose manner, that the graphical interface is not that critical to actual usage on the X-Box - it's just something you pass through when you're going somewhere more interesting, like a door into a room. It's a very different world to general purpose computers.
Wayne's World, eh?
So, the iPod will 'suck' music from your computer, and now it can 'blow' music out to other users?
Just like the 'Suck Cut' (patent very pending), the iPod will soon be able to truly suck and blow.
"iTunes to Drop DRM"
In related news, the entire music industry has dropped support for Apple's iTunes Music Store and is suing Apple for breach of contract, loss of revenue and numerous copyright violations.
Consumers wishing refunds on their now almost useless iPods were advised by Apple store and helpline staff "Shit no! We need every cent for the court battles now! If we win, you'll get you music back, but until then we need to push this case through and put the business on the line because it's a principle dear to a few hundred geeks on Slashdot!"
The popular Slashdot website commented cryptically today "Less space than a Nomad. No FM. Lame." A few posters on the website criticised Apple for not going far enough.
One poster commented: "They should storm the citadel of the star-star-AA. Maybe with leet swords of righteousness plus seventeen, you know, for EverQuest, or maybe with those cool guns you get on Halo-2, but not the original Halo because that was just crap. The ending was better though, so YMMV. That'd be so cool, and then they'd be teh godz. I still wouldn't buy their shit though. It's not free enough for me."
Business Analysts changed the rating of Apple's stock from "buy" to "get the hell out of there! Just run and don't look back for the love of God!" This move is expected to cause Apple stock to suffer.
Darl McBride, CEO of the foundering SCO corporation has offered to step in to Apple's CEO role and bring the company back to health. "I believe that Apple can still make a case that Microsoft stole their UI, and by charging every Windows owner on Earth a simple, one-off $299 fee, we'll recoup those losses."
Noted software tycoon Bill Gates was unavailable for comment, as he was admitted to hospital suffering convulsions caused by fits of continuous hysterical laughter.
Ogg Vorbis support for the three people on the planet who use it.
You sicko!
Why do you want to tape a duck? Is that some sick animal bondage fetish you have? Some sort of Beatty-esque perversion, but with less hamsters?
Or... did you mean *duct* tape?
No... the animal bondage thing seems a simpler and more believable explanation.
Watch out! You're in grave danger of bringing rationality into this topic.
You'd better post a few lines on how Apple must do this, and bring back cloning, if they're going to survive (because we all know that Microsoft do quite handily in the software market).
I'm sure one of my old Macs had an Intel chip for I/O or a memory controller or something. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I feel sure of this.
... when you need him?
... as if a million of his posts were made, and then suddenly silenced. Hmm...
He was very vocal about this sort of thing, and now he's gone very quiet. Almost as if he was an Apple employee who was given The Warning (tm) or... (obligatory Star Wars reference being used in shameless Karma whoring)
When I get some time, I'll read the article (thus breaking a long-running streak for me) and compare to ASoT's statements.
They also know not to compete with Microsoft on their own monopoly board.
Apple compete in an area Microsoft cannot - hardware that runs OS X.
... when they could be playing the games?
It's a nice interface, clean lines and all that, but the thing I notice most about interfaces in video game consoles is that you want to spend as little time as possible in them.
You want to get to the game, after all.
After posting that, it might be nice to elaborate.
I've heard others say that it cripples their machines, even the new iMacs. I've got a iBook that's just had its first year, and I don't see the problems. I don't get any slowdowns or have to wait ages for results from my 60GB drive (of which around 55GB is used). I've got around 300,000 files at the moment.
Apparently someone chained 23 Firewire drives together, and then complained about the performance of Spotlight. Not the most realistic example (who would need that set-up but wouldn't have invested in either fewer, larger drives or a server?).
How does Spotlight go on OS X Server, running on a real server box? I don't know that one, but I'd be curious to find out.
I've heard about problems in searching for word fragments inside other words.
If I type "ding" (knowing full well I have a Word document titled 'building my PC.doc'), Spotlight fails to find it. If I type "buil" it comes up straight away. Could that be a problem? Well, in this example no - but that's mainly because I'd never search for the second syllable like that.
Does a search for "PC" turn the file up? Yes it does. So... this seems to indicate that I can't search for the middle of words, just the beginning of them. Not really an issue for me, but I can see that someone with filenames like "BuildingPC" might have trouble.
Actually... not at all!
I just made a duplicate of the file "Building My PC.doc" and renamed the copy to "BuildingMyPC.doc". When I went to Spotlight to search for it, my last search for "PC" turned this file up without me having to type anything in at all!
What about the file search box (Command-F in the Finder)? Acts just the same. No lock-ups on my machine, no problems outside of those reported in the Ars Technica review last month.
I see a lot more happiness with Spotlight users than unhappiness. I guess that's what they mean when they say "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'."
I find it to be very fast, and haven't encountered some of the problems that others claim is crippling them.
Of course, I wouldn't mind that manual on creating advanced queries...
Macs are *designed* in California, but they're manufactured in Taiwan these days, I believe. Apple haven't had a plant in the US (that I'm aware of) for quite some time.
You mean "apart from the main selling point of the Mini, what is the main selling point?"
The form factor is pretty much it. It's also very quiet, and a low power device.
If you want computing power and don't need to keep it tiny, get something else. Of course, to get a really powerful machine, you need to pay more than a Mini (I'm thinking x86-64 here, but it certainly applies to the iMacs and PowerMacs).
Isn't it more like buying a Ferrari and then fiddling around with the engine yourself just to get a little extra performance?
So, you advocate *reducing* functionality when there are a few hundred million plain html pages out there.
... of course, when we all shift to Microsoft's Internet II to escape the viruses and trojans of the current Internet (which will implode under the irony of the situation), we'll remember to dump the old HTML pages and use cool new CSS ones instead.
It'd be a brave developer who tried to sell a product with the tag "Now with 30% LESS functionality!" or "Old pages appear like crap!"
The old tags, while largely redundant in the new world of CSS + DHTML should still be rendered correctly until there is a reason to believe that no old-style pages are being viewed. Browsers *should* support both legacy and new pages, as that maximises choice for consumers, and should render every tag correctly if possible.
What?
If you define "THE PEOPLE" in such a limited manner as just the few percentage of the planet's populace born in the USA, then yes, this research wasn't paid for by "THE PEOPLE."
As an Australian, I consider that it was paid for by the people, and the benefits flow back to the people. If someone from another country doesn't like it, they can develop a different technology and use that instead. If however, they want to use this technology, then why shouldn't they pay for it?
Patents aren't just about getting money into the US. Money should flow both ways, unless the whole capitalist thing really is a sham after all (heaven forfend!)
... except that in Australia, a lawyer did just this to highlight the stupidity of the patent system.
8 165.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/141
Of course, the patent office claim that it'd be an invalid patent, but the point is they wouldn't know about the invalidity until a third party actually made a case in court.
How many dollars would be wasted in legal fees before sanity prevailed? Who knows?
So we have IT giants patenting stuff that's obvious or stuff that has existed in other products for several years before the patent was filed. Maybe some of these are invalid patents as well (and yes, I know that the Australian patent laws are different to the US ones, but the point remains).
So... I'm off to the patent office here in Australia to patent a system of storing a microscopic circuit's state using a simple but elegant set of logic gates that allow two states to be stored one at a time (but not both together).
And then I'll take every RAM manufacturer on Earth to court.
Hey - I'm uploading from my local ...uh... drive to the remote server. Something's got to travel from here to there.