I occassionally help some cow-orkers and friends out with their personal computers as well. Usually the problem isn't the pre-installed trialware or hardware faults. It's virus and toolbars, etc. Sometimes I'll take the time to clean it up, and sometimes I tell them just to copy off their data and then restore it with the recovery CD or partition (assuming it has one). When they ask my advice on what to buy, I usually steer towards a decent brand and if possible to buy a few steps up from the bottom of the consumer line. For example buying from the Dell small-business site usually avoids most of the crapware. I also steer them away from low-end inkjet printers by educating them on the high cost/page which makes more sense to them than the quality of the drivers. Spending $50 more on the printer will save $100 on ink over it's lifetime, etc.
So don't install the whole HP printer suite. Go download just the print driver and be done with it. Best best is to get a printer with an ethernet port that support tcpip printing which doesn't force you to have usb-only drivers. Uninstall all the crapware they install, or better yet nuke and reinstall from known good sources so you don't even have to worry if it came pre-rooted.
Personally, bragging that you are elitist about what brands of computers you'll help your family makes you seem like an ass. Sure you can recommend what you think might be less troublesome (for both them and you), but even then it's hard to predict which particular models will end up having short lifespans.
You think that not conforming to your ideal quiet life style is not about freedom?
It's like saying, yeah, all motorcycles are about freedom except those over there that won't do what we expect of them. Let's make fun of them and say it's because they have small peckers or need attention.
I put loud exhausts on my cars and trucks because I want to. They sound good and I like the heart thumping sound of raw power. It isn't because I want anyone's approval or attention, it's because I want to do what I want to do and have something that sounds like I like it to sound. If that isn't about freedom in your book, you need to search for a better definition.
At least you are somewhat honest about the reason most people put loud pipes on their bikes. Most try to justify it by claiming it makes them safer. Many also think others like the sound and like the added attention. Just try to understand that not everyone likes the loud noise. Next time you're in the theater and some asshat is talking during the movie and being distracting, consider maybe that he like the sound of his own voice and what others think really doesn't matter.
Fuck you, I ride harley's and I made them louder to prevent idiot drivers from cutting me off because they failed to look before changing lanes. The only time when my bikes are excessivly loud is under extreme acceleration. It is the driver of the bike that causes them to be loud, not the bike itself.
You've obviously missed out on the studies that show Harley riders are more likely to be involved in accidents, despite being generally louder. Although those studies cited the root causes as poor riding skills and a high propensity for riding while under the influence. As for the noise, MCN did a study that showed the bulk of the added noise from straight pipes or louder mufflers was direct behind the motorcycle. It also showed little or no added benefit for people in front of the motorcycle noticing them sooner. The best was to be noticed is to wear bright colors and ride proactively. In my experience though, Harley riders like the image and usually wear a dark leather jacket and tend to be inexperienced weekend riders.
The #1 accident for motorcyles is having someone turn left in front of you. You can avoid getting cutoff by trying not to be i peoples blind spots. Loud pipes just piss off everyone else, while the rider thinks they sound cool. Just like the twats with loud thumps radios.
I won't even get into how IPv6 makes it much easier to track you.
Because that's nonsense? (Almost) Everybody implements the privacy extensions, so your world-visible address is random and changes every 10-ish minutes.
I am aware of the privacy extensions. They are a hack, last minute bandaid that usually causes just as many problems as the glaring privacy issue they try to fix. It's akin to periodically changing your mac address. It's as fucked up as using NAT.
I know IPv6 is needed, and it'll be great having disposable addresses to throw at any device. I'll be certainly happy to get rid of NAT in many circumstances, but OTOH, IPv6 is going to suck. I have tens of IPs in my head, which I access daily by memory. IPv4 addresses are easy to remember, easy to pass over the phone, easy to type, and easy to operate (i.e, calculate things such as masks in your head, etc). IPv6 is going to make it way harder, and that's not taking into account he migration process...
Appropriate use of DNS makes memorizing IPs less painful. The transition is painful indeed. Lets start with XP and 2003 not properly supporting IPv6. Their dual stack implementation sucks as you can't even tell it to prefer IPv4 over IPv6 when DNS gives you both a v4 and v6 address. I won't even get into how IPv6 makes it much easier to track you.
I'd much rather see that money diverted towards something with a larger social impact, like curing a disease or producing a vaccine for something like Norovirus which accounts for half of all food-borne illness and affects 20-million people each year. Depending on your wage estimates and taking the person of of action for 1-2 days, that's easily 500-billion in lost wages.
You know, we're already spending a metric shitload of money on various and sundry illnesses and diseases. A tiny bit towards physics, astronomy and assorted engineering subjects bothers me not a one bit. If you killed NASA completely and gave all that money to the NIH I would argue that very litte (if anything at all) would change.
Cut back on the DOD more than a little bit, then we're talking.
NIH and grant driven research has it's own flaws, mostly due to politics.
I wouldn't advocate cutting back on the DOD budget, so much as stop getting involved in costly military actions. I have no problem with the cost of maintaining a standing Army, Navy, Air Force and the ongoing cost of maintaining our technological edge. We need that capability to ensure our security. It's crap like spending a trillion dollars intervening in conflicts in the middle east that we really can't afford. Bin Laden was right that he would kill the US with a thousand little cuts. Our govt was more than eager to start spending billions chasing a bunch of low tech thugs and then occupying Iraq.
Nasa is the spearhead of innovation, if it wasn't for them, we'd not have a lot of the materials today that we make our innovations even more innovative with. Nasa isn't just all about space exploration, but what we can do with materials in near zero gravity, search for alternative energy sources that can literally save our lives, nanotechnology and beyond.
To see such an innovative organization being stripped down like that, rips my heart apart.
NASA WAS a spear head of innovation in the 60's and 70's. Not so much today as they are using primarily off-the-shelf components. Other industries, including DOD and the personal electronics market are driving innovation much faster. Shooting probes to Mars is fun and all, but it's just providing a very myopic archaeological perspective of the planet. Imagine an alien race visiting 4 places on earth and looking at maybe a few square miles. It's just delusional to think that's representative of anything at all.
I'd much rather see that money diverted towards something with a larger social impact, like curing a disease or producing a vaccine for something like Norovirus which accounts for half of all food-borne illness and affects 20-million people each year. Depending on your wage estimates and taking the person of of action for 1-2 days, that's easily 500-billion in lost wages.
Oh the AF/Navy have their own launch vehicles and launch facilities now? I guess I wasn't keeping up.
You are correct - you're not keeping up. Airforce launched them. DOD paid for them. In fact the bloc I GPS sats were launched using Atlas rockets, aka repurposed ICBMs.
Interesting. Sounds like a half-handed measure. People should blame government then and not Apple.
Also, I'm certain there will be iPhone 5 adapters to fit on the older docking connectors. It's not going "junk" all previous accessories.
I can see some adapters being made, but consider the Apple one is at least 3/4" long and you start to wonder if it will physically stay in the dock. Also, their adapter does not bring analog audio out which is used by a large number of accesories like iHome clocks. No analog video either.
Still, I can understand why Apple chose not to go backwards with a USB 2.0 connection as the only connector and adding an additional connection works against their goal of lighter and thinner.
But can you put 10W over a micro-USB cable? If you charge an iPad over a normal USB plug it takes forever. The iPad power plug goes way over normal USB spec. Using their own connector means they can do crazy stuff like that without worrying about frying other devices it might plug into.
I totally agree they overcharge though.
Technically you should not put 10W over a micro-usb connector as that's outside of the spec. USB 2.0 spec is 2.5watts and USB 3.0 is 4.5watts. I found most USB ports on new computers will deliver up to 1amp though.
The joke is that even with using miniUSB, most chargers from other phones I have don't have the "handshake" or lately the power wattage requirements for modern phones. Unless you are buying iPad compatible 10W chargers most smartphones are pushing past most chargers you already have.
I've noticed this on the cheap Chinese made chargers that cost about a buck on eBay. They also tend to be overrated on amperage, as none of the 1amp ones I tested put out more than 600ma. One even melted down drawing 500ma. Get a decent brand or at least get one that claims to be iPad compatible.
From the agreement at http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise Undertaking 4.2.1 states that “if a manufacturer makes available an Adaptor from the Micro-USB connector of a Common EPS to a specific non-Micro-USB socket in the Mobile Phone, it shall constitute compliance”. Annex II futher states that “An EPS provided with a detachable cable shall be equipped with a USB Standard-A receptacle. Above requirement also applies to detachable cables used as adaptor i.e. where the Micro-B is replaced by a proprietary plug”
Switching to just a micro-USB would have been stupid as you can't get analog audio or HD video through USB 2.0. Still I feel for all the people who've invested in accessories that use the standar Apple 30-pin. Expensive accessories like docks, iHome clocks, etc.
In a sense, yes, they are fixing problems that weren't their fault. 3rd-party add-ons have been the cause of the most significant FF memory problems for many users, and FF 15 contains changes which should keep even badly written add-ons from leaking anywhere near as much memory as they used to.
Meaning Firefox now does proper garbage collection when add-ons depart, eh? Seems like a poor design that an add-on could even be a memory and cpu hog.
Language: G2 Intended use: Application, inference, expert system Paradigms: common graphical development and runtime environment, event-driven, imperative, object-oriented
Plus the search on G2 shows there is a G2++. So what does obsolete mean to those calling it obsolete?
btw, I'm an RPG programmer and I've been writing tons of new business software every day for the last 23 years, the whole time the language has been declared obsolete.
Now get off my lawn.
So basically similar to LabView? I'd be inclined to re-write this all in LabView rather than try to rewrite this all in traditional software programming.
well, in Cisco, I can tell you, any static passwords (like root accounts with anything not set by customer), it is simply, not allowed, and if done by developer, it is fixed, and public is notified as soon as possible. (there are controls, that by mistake my fail to detect, so yes, there are examples of this)
adding a backdoor would get the product under BIG heat from PSIRT
There is a major supply chain problem though. Sure that router or PC left the manufacturer without backdoors, but you have no guarantee that someone in the supply chain didn't tamper with it. At the very least, you wipe the OS and reinstall from know good sources. There are plenty of examples of PCs arriving pre-infected with malware (not counting the standard crap that Dell and HP add on) and there have been instances of Cisco gear showing up with a tampered IOS.
It is to show that version numbers don't really matter, only to developers and such people. Everyone should be running the latest stable or latest extended support release/long time support version.
Actually it matters a lot in the corp environment, amongst the bean counters and security guys who regulate what versions of software are installed. Mozilla's notion of stable seems a bit warped too, considering that they are changing the look and occasionally things that affect compatibility without bumping the major rev number. It doesn't seem like the version numbers coincide with anything but a scheduled timetable meant to catch up with Chrome.
IE still dominates the corp environment because it's stable both feature and compatibility wise, and has an update scheme that fits in nicely with WSUS. Mozilla sucks in a corp environment because every client wants to constantly hit the internet to update, and it's not trivial to centrally manage the settings. The alternative is micromanaging it and manually pushing updates on what seems to be a weekly basis.
Lower memory usage, faster, and less prone to a problematic plugin causing a browser crash? Yea, I suppose those are things you might not notice as "features", but they do make a huge impact on how satisfied users are. Just because new features are not obvious does not mean that there have been no improvements.
None of which really qualifies for a major version upgrade. So why bump the major rev number? It's silly that they have a calendar schedule for each rev number upgrade regardless of where the product really changes.
The problem is not rapid release unless Mozilla is forcing upgrades upon users.
Well if you want security patches, then yes Mozilla is forcing you to upgrade to the latest rev number. Why they're updating the major rev number for trivial changes and bug fixes is still somewhat questionable. Chrome actually has a better model in my opinion, even if they do install an updater service that's always running in the background (shades of the piece of sh*t called iTunes).
Because taking away legal firearm ownership clearly reduces the chances of getting shot... (That was sarcasm for the slow among us)
Here are the stats on gun deaths for the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., from Wikipedia:
United States: 10.27 per 100,000 people
Canada: 4.78 per 100,000 people
England:.46 per 10,0000 people.
The United States, obviously, has the least gun control. Canada has more regulation. Rifles are limited to 5 round magazines, pistols to 10 rounds; licenses required for pistols. The U.K. has effectively outlawed semiautomatic weapons and pistols. Overall homicide rates follow these patterns, so it's not the case that people will just find other ways to commit murder. Making guns more available and making rapid-fire weapons more available makes murder easier, and therefore more common. I've shot assault rifles and.50 caliber sniper rifles, and yeah, they're pretty awesome. But personally, I'd be willing to have stricter licensing requirements, gun registration, background checks, and limits on clip size to save tens of thousands of lives a year.
Those stats seem in line with the respective country's overall violent crime rates, and don't really have anything to do with what type of guns are permitted. You're also assuming these gun deaths were committed by legally owned guns. They typically are not.
MS Word and Excel do very weird undocumented things when interacting with the filesystem.
Ah yes, I remember having to explain to users constantly why the file permissions on their doc files kept reverting to the permissions assigned to the folder. Saving an existing file, Office would write to a temp file, flush the cache, delete the original and then rename the temp file to the original name.
Slashdot Mirror
I occassionally help some cow-orkers and friends out with their personal computers as well. Usually the problem isn't the pre-installed trialware or hardware faults. It's virus and toolbars, etc. Sometimes I'll take the time to clean it up, and sometimes I tell them just to copy off their data and then restore it with the recovery CD or partition (assuming it has one). When they ask my advice on what to buy, I usually steer towards a decent brand and if possible to buy a few steps up from the bottom of the consumer line. For example buying from the Dell small-business site usually avoids most of the crapware. I also steer them away from low-end inkjet printers by educating them on the high cost/page which makes more sense to them than the quality of the drivers. Spending $50 more on the printer will save $100 on ink over it's lifetime, etc.
So don't install the whole HP printer suite. Go download just the print driver and be done with it. Best best is to get a printer with an ethernet port that support tcpip printing which doesn't force you to have usb-only drivers. Uninstall all the crapware they install, or better yet nuke and reinstall from known good sources so you don't even have to worry if it came pre-rooted.
Personally, bragging that you are elitist about what brands of computers you'll help your family makes you seem like an ass. Sure you can recommend what you think might be less troublesome (for both them and you), but even then it's hard to predict which particular models will end up having short lifespans.
You think that not conforming to your ideal quiet life style is not about freedom?
It's like saying, yeah, all motorcycles are about freedom except those over there that won't do what we expect of them. Let's make fun of them and say it's because they have small peckers or need attention.
I put loud exhausts on my cars and trucks because I want to. They sound good and I like the heart thumping sound of raw power. It isn't because I want anyone's approval or attention, it's because I want to do what I want to do and have something that sounds like I like it to sound. If that isn't about freedom in your book, you need to search for a better definition.
At least you are somewhat honest about the reason most people put loud pipes on their bikes. Most try to justify it by claiming it makes them safer. Many also think others like the sound and like the added attention. Just try to understand that not everyone likes the loud noise. Next time you're in the theater and some asshat is talking during the movie and being distracting, consider maybe that he like the sound of his own voice and what others think really doesn't matter.
Fuck you, I ride harley's and I made them louder to prevent idiot drivers from cutting me off because they failed to look before changing lanes. The only time when my bikes are excessivly loud is under extreme acceleration. It is the driver of the bike that causes them to be loud, not the bike itself.
You've obviously missed out on the studies that show Harley riders are more likely to be involved in accidents, despite being generally louder. Although those studies cited the root causes as poor riding skills and a high propensity for riding while under the influence. As for the noise, MCN did a study that showed the bulk of the added noise from straight pipes or louder mufflers was direct behind the motorcycle. It also showed little or no added benefit for people in front of the motorcycle noticing them sooner. The best was to be noticed is to wear bright colors and ride proactively. In my experience though, Harley riders like the image and usually wear a dark leather jacket and tend to be inexperienced weekend riders.
The #1 accident for motorcyles is having someone turn left in front of you. You can avoid getting cutoff by trying not to be i peoples blind spots. Loud pipes just piss off everyone else, while the rider thinks they sound cool. Just like the twats with loud thumps radios.
I won't even get into how IPv6 makes it much easier to track you.
Because that's nonsense? (Almost) Everybody implements the privacy extensions, so your world-visible address is random and changes every 10-ish minutes.
I am aware of the privacy extensions. They are a hack, last minute bandaid that usually causes just as many problems as the glaring privacy issue they try to fix. It's akin to periodically changing your mac address. It's as fucked up as using NAT.
I know IPv6 is needed, and it'll be great having disposable addresses to throw at any device. I'll be certainly happy to get rid of NAT in many circumstances, but OTOH, IPv6 is going to suck. I have tens of IPs in my head, which I access daily by memory. IPv4 addresses are easy to remember, easy to pass over the phone, easy to type, and easy to operate (i.e, calculate things such as masks in your head, etc). IPv6 is going to make it way harder, and that's not taking into account he migration process ...
Appropriate use of DNS makes memorizing IPs less painful. The transition is painful indeed. Lets start with XP and 2003 not properly supporting IPv6. Their dual stack implementation sucks as you can't even tell it to prefer IPv4 over IPv6 when DNS gives you both a v4 and v6 address. I won't even get into how IPv6 makes it much easier to track you.
I'd much rather see that money diverted towards something with a larger social impact, like curing a disease or producing a vaccine for something like Norovirus which accounts for half of all food-borne illness and affects 20-million people each year. Depending on your wage estimates and taking the person of of action for 1-2 days, that's easily 500-billion in lost wages.
You know, we're already spending a metric shitload of money on various and sundry illnesses and diseases. A tiny bit towards physics, astronomy and assorted engineering subjects bothers me not a one bit. If you killed NASA completely and gave all that money to the NIH I would argue that very litte (if anything at all) would change.
Cut back on the DOD more than a little bit, then we're talking.
NIH and grant driven research has it's own flaws, mostly due to politics.
I wouldn't advocate cutting back on the DOD budget, so much as stop getting involved in costly military actions. I have no problem with the cost of maintaining a standing Army, Navy, Air Force and the ongoing cost of maintaining our technological edge. We need that capability to ensure our security. It's crap like spending a trillion dollars intervening in conflicts in the middle east that we really can't afford. Bin Laden was right that he would kill the US with a thousand little cuts. Our govt was more than eager to start spending billions chasing a bunch of low tech thugs and then occupying Iraq.
Nasa is the spearhead of innovation, if it wasn't for them, we'd not have a lot of the materials today that we make our innovations even more innovative with. Nasa isn't just all about space exploration, but what we can do with materials in near zero gravity, search for alternative energy sources that can literally save our lives, nanotechnology and beyond.
To see such an innovative organization being stripped down like that, rips my heart apart.
NASA WAS a spear head of innovation in the 60's and 70's. Not so much today as they are using primarily off-the-shelf components. Other industries, including DOD and the personal electronics market are driving innovation much faster. Shooting probes to Mars is fun and all, but it's just providing a very myopic archaeological perspective of the planet. Imagine an alien race visiting 4 places on earth and looking at maybe a few square miles. It's just delusional to think that's representative of anything at all.
I'd much rather see that money diverted towards something with a larger social impact, like curing a disease or producing a vaccine for something like Norovirus which accounts for half of all food-borne illness and affects 20-million people each year. Depending on your wage estimates and taking the person of of action for 1-2 days, that's easily 500-billion in lost wages.
Oh the AF/Navy have their own launch vehicles and launch facilities now? I guess I wasn't keeping up.
You are correct - you're not keeping up. Airforce launched them. DOD paid for them. In fact the bloc I GPS sats were launched using Atlas rockets, aka repurposed ICBMs.
Interesting. Sounds like a half-handed measure. People should blame government then and not Apple.
Also, I'm certain there will be iPhone 5 adapters to fit on the older docking connectors. It's not going "junk" all previous accessories.
I can see some adapters being made, but consider the Apple one is at least 3/4" long and you start to wonder if it will physically stay in the dock. Also, their adapter does not bring analog audio out which is used by a large number of accesories like iHome clocks. No analog video either.
Still, I can understand why Apple chose not to go backwards with a USB 2.0 connection as the only connector and adding an additional connection works against their goal of lighter and thinner.
But can you put 10W over a micro-USB cable? If you charge an iPad over a normal USB plug it takes forever. The iPad power plug goes way over normal USB spec. Using their own connector means they can do crazy stuff like that without worrying about frying other devices it might plug into.
I totally agree they overcharge though.
Technically you should not put 10W over a micro-usb connector as that's outside of the spec. USB 2.0 spec is 2.5watts and USB 3.0 is 4.5watts. I found most USB ports on new computers will deliver up to 1amp though.
The joke is that even with using miniUSB, most chargers from other phones I have don't have the "handshake" or lately the power wattage requirements for modern phones. Unless you are buying iPad compatible 10W chargers most smartphones are pushing past most chargers you already have.
I've noticed this on the cheap Chinese made chargers that cost about a buck on eBay. They also tend to be overrated on amperage, as none of the 1amp ones I tested put out more than 600ma. One even melted down drawing 500ma. Get a decent brand or at least get one that claims to be iPad compatible.
Technically, Apple IS compliant.
From the agreement at http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise
Undertaking 4.2.1 states that “if a manufacturer makes available an Adaptor from the Micro-USB connector of a Common EPS to a specific non-Micro-USB socket in the Mobile Phone, it shall constitute compliance”. Annex II futher states that “An EPS provided with a detachable cable shall be equipped with a USB Standard-A receptacle. Above requirement also applies to detachable cables used as adaptor i.e. where the Micro-B is replaced by a proprietary plug”
Switching to just a micro-USB would have been stupid as you can't get analog audio or HD video through USB 2.0. Still I feel for all the people who've invested in accessories that use the standar Apple 30-pin. Expensive accessories like docks, iHome clocks, etc.
In a sense, yes, they are fixing problems that weren't their fault. 3rd-party add-ons have been the cause of the most significant FF memory problems for many users, and FF 15 contains changes which should keep even badly written add-ons from leaking anywhere near as much memory as they used to.
Meaning Firefox now does proper garbage collection when add-ons depart, eh? Seems like a poor design that an add-on could even be a memory and cpu hog.
Even funnier is that the hospitals and pediatricians generally charge more than $313 to perform the procedure.
G2 is being called virtually obsolete. I looked up G2 in Wilipedia comparison of programming languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages and it is listed as:
Language: G2
Intended use: Application, inference, expert system
Paradigms: common graphical development and runtime environment, event-driven, imperative, object-oriented
Plus the search on G2 shows there is a G2++. So what does obsolete mean to those calling it obsolete?
btw, I'm an RPG programmer and I've been writing tons of new business software every day for the last 23 years, the whole time the language has been declared obsolete.
Now get off my lawn.
So basically similar to LabView? I'd be inclined to re-write this all in LabView rather than try to rewrite this all in traditional software programming.
well, in Cisco, I can tell you, any static passwords (like root accounts with anything not set by customer), it is simply, not allowed, and if done by developer, it is fixed, and public is notified as soon as possible. (there are controls, that by mistake my fail to detect, so yes, there are examples of this)
adding a backdoor would get the product under BIG heat from PSIRT
There is a major supply chain problem though. Sure that router or PC left the manufacturer without backdoors, but you have no guarantee that someone in the supply chain didn't tamper with it. At the very least, you wipe the OS and reinstall from know good sources. There are plenty of examples of PCs arriving pre-infected with malware (not counting the standard crap that Dell and HP add on) and there have been instances of Cisco gear showing up with a tampered IOS.
"So why bump the major rev number?"
It is to show that version numbers don't really matter, only to developers and such people. Everyone should be running the latest stable or latest extended support release/long time support version.
Actually it matters a lot in the corp environment, amongst the bean counters and security guys who regulate what versions of software are installed. Mozilla's notion of stable seems a bit warped too, considering that they are changing the look and occasionally things that affect compatibility without bumping the major rev number. It doesn't seem like the version numbers coincide with anything but a scheduled timetable meant to catch up with Chrome.
IE still dominates the corp environment because it's stable both feature and compatibility wise, and has an update scheme that fits in nicely with WSUS. Mozilla sucks in a corp environment because every client wants to constantly hit the internet to update, and it's not trivial to centrally manage the settings. The alternative is micromanaging it and manually pushing updates on what seems to be a weekly basis.
Lower memory usage, faster, and less prone to a problematic plugin causing a browser crash? Yea, I suppose those are things you might not notice as "features", but they do make a huge impact on how satisfied users are. Just because new features are not obvious does not mean that there have been no improvements.
None of which really qualifies for a major version upgrade. So why bump the major rev number? It's silly that they have a calendar schedule for each rev number upgrade regardless of where the product really changes.
It wasn't fixed when I left for Chrome about 6 months ago. I guess I'm not sure how long "ages" is for you.
6 months ago we still had Firefox 9. Now we're up to 14 with 15 almost ready to come out.
The problem is not rapid release unless Mozilla is forcing upgrades upon users.
Well if you want security patches, then yes Mozilla is forcing you to upgrade to the latest rev number. Why they're updating the major rev number for trivial changes and bug fixes is still somewhat questionable. Chrome actually has a better model in my opinion, even if they do install an updater service that's always running in the background (shades of the piece of sh*t called iTunes).
Because taking away legal firearm ownership clearly reduces the chances of getting shot... (That was sarcasm for the slow among us)
Here are the stats on gun deaths for the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., from Wikipedia:
The United States, obviously, has the least gun control. Canada has more regulation. Rifles are limited to 5 round magazines, pistols to 10 rounds; licenses required for pistols. The U.K. has effectively outlawed semiautomatic weapons and pistols. Overall homicide rates follow these patterns, so it's not the case that people will just find other ways to commit murder. Making guns more available and making rapid-fire weapons more available makes murder easier, and therefore more common. I've shot assault rifles and .50 caliber sniper rifles, and yeah, they're pretty awesome. But personally, I'd be willing to have stricter licensing requirements, gun registration, background checks, and limits on clip size to save tens of thousands of lives a year.
Those stats seem in line with the respective country's overall violent crime rates, and don't really have anything to do with what type of guns are permitted. You're also assuming these gun deaths were committed by legally owned guns. They typically are not.
and hopefully they don't repeat the recent mistakes that allowed malicious software to be signed by a MS certificate. MS doesn't do PKI very well.
The air they are pumping in will probably be hot air.
...and the air they get back will be cold air, hence energy loss.
MS Word and Excel do very weird undocumented things when interacting with the filesystem.
Ah yes, I remember having to explain to users constantly why the file permissions on their doc files kept reverting to the permissions assigned to the folder. Saving an existing file, Office would write to a temp file, flush the cache, delete the original and then rename the temp file to the original name.