Oh we have a concept of "God" alright - because we invented the damn thing.
One of my linguistics professors in college said - and I wholeheartedly agree - that of course there is a God.
And elves. And gnomes. And dwarves. And magic. And little furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
OK, so he didn't mention the furries, but never mind.
They all exist as language entities - otherwise we wouldn't know what the hell we're talking about.
They exist - in language. Everything else... well, you'll have to prove it to me.
Forgot to mention... how many of Edison's inventions were really his own, and how many (should have) actually belonged to some lab worker/assistant in his labs?
If OS vendors make their products easy to clean, there's less profit, and therefore less motive.
Not exactly.
As in medicine, a bit of prevention is worth more than a... megabyte of repair.
If OS vendors make their products more difficult to infect, now there we may see some improvement... for users, it seems, are not getting educated any better.
The point is, however, that malware mostly (ab)uses perfectly legal system instructions.
Therefore, whatever it is that will be running in people's backgrounds, it will have to have a heuristic algorithm and monitor every single system activity.
To abuse the good old car analogy, it's as if more and more safety measures were introduced in cars instead of teaching people to drive safely.
Wait, where was I going with that one?
Anyway, I do not want (at the times when I'm using Windows) another program which will protect me some of the time and hog resources all of the time.
But to discuss one of your points:
If you minimise the number of places where programs can start at boot time and make any auto-starting program clearly visible and easily removable, for example, you will have made it easier for users to block or remove an infection and have reduced the motive for crackers to write the malware in the first place.
Now, that I can't really agree with.
People mostly do not write malware as a programming exercise or 'because they can'.
The romantic days of great hackers seem to be long past.
The reason people do write malware is, as/. meme goes, 4) Profit!!!1one
You may make it more difficult, but as long as the motive is plain and simple profit, the motive will remain.
From where I stand, companies seem to want to control every single aspect of their employers' lives - so if you do not conform to the company standards in all aspects of your life, you are not really wanted here, thank you.
I mean, how else can one explain the fact that your personal life can influence your getting a/the job?
Maybe you'll have to fight for improvements in anti-discrimination laws...
I, for one, hide nothing.
It's not that I have nothing to hide; in normal life I hide quite a lot of things.
However, in every job interview so far I've presented myself as even worse than I really am; some jobs I never got (and was later glad for it), while the others I did get - and got along quite well.
However, these 'young idealists' have the know-how, have the technical means and only need some free time.
Basically, what businesses are dealing with is guerilla.
Be it software or music or movie piracy, on one hand you have juggernaut businesses who intend to milk the market for every single penny, and on the other you have people who are intelligent, educated and informed enough not to allow to be milked.
They can have all the business experience they want; it does not apply. People who pirate movies aren't customers; businesses don't get money from them.
They can hunt them down, one by one, but they can't catch them (in a way, us) all.
Acually, the only way the businesses can win is to start pricing things reasonably.
The current practice of trying to enforce stricter mechanisms of control is really counter-productive; ask any upturned oppressive political regime.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm... Windows Titanic.
Vista + Titanic == Vistanic.
Or Titsta.
If they're not paying you for it, don't.
If you're supposed to pay for the OS, they're supposed to pay for the bug reports. Plain and simple.
One of my linguistics professors in college said - and I wholeheartedly agree - that of course there is a God.
And elves. And gnomes. And dwarves. And magic. And little furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
OK, so he didn't mention the furries, but never mind.
They all exist as language entities - otherwise we wouldn't know what the hell we're talking about.
They exist - in language. Everything else... well, you'll have to prove it to me.
Bah!
He already got rid of Superman, a.k.a. Clark Kent, alias Cristopher Reeve.
He threw a quantum singularity at him.
If Superman couldn't fight him, how will the Inquisition?
Will they say "Kneel before Zo^H^HPope!", thus confounding him by letting him wonder how the hell could a guy in a wheelchair bow?
Even in parody, it is at least good manners crediting the authors of the original.
I wouldn't know the (not so) fine points of the law, especially since it seems parody is not protected by anything where I live...
I really wouldn't know whether the writers of the original music get any money from it...
Maybe this entry from Google's Word of the Day can help clear some things up:
You mistyped "infinite future".
Or should I say forever?
+++ Melon Melon Melon +++
What if he licensed it under the BSD?
Then Weird Al couldn't have any legal problems, could he?
Almost wrote GPL first, but I'm not certain OpenSourcing the rest of the song wouldn't be a problem for Weird Al...
If I'm incoherent, it's the lack of sleep.
Just e-mail it to Weird Al.
No worries: I'm not American. I'm Slovenian/Croatian.
And I'm not talking about WW2... well, not exclusively.
We all know what you get if you decide you're feeling lucky typing 'French military victories' in Google...
Besides, it was a joke.
You know, something we know isn't true, but is a stereotype and is funny. So please, stop moralising.
Wait... is RIAA French?
/me ducks
Were it not for this 'calling for a truce', I might see it like that as well.
However, we all know MS wouldn't give up like that.
If they're calling for a truce, it's because they need more time to prepare the big guns.
Forgot to mention... how many of Edison's inventions were really his own, and how many (should have) actually belonged to some lab worker/assistant in his labs?
On the other hand, even today, in a team of scientists discovering something new, the head of the project gets most (or all) of the credit...
In any company, managers take credit for the work done by others, but blame them if anything goes wrong.
I wouldn't say things have changed that much.
Ah, jolly good.
Good to see I'm not the only one.
Primarily because they'd be wanting paychecks as well.
Not exactly.
As in medicine, a bit of prevention is worth more than a... megabyte of repair.
If OS vendors make their products more difficult to infect, now there we may see some improvement... for users, it seems, are not getting educated any better.
Well, I'd always thought of professional interactions as formally social; I don't mind you as long as you make me money.
What I'm talking about is more like new forms of slavery.
The point is, however, that malware mostly (ab)uses perfectly legal system instructions.
Therefore, whatever it is that will be running in people's backgrounds, it will have to have a heuristic algorithm and monitor every single system activity.
To abuse the good old car analogy, it's as if more and more safety measures were introduced in cars instead of teaching people to drive safely.
Wait, where was I going with that one?
Anyway, I do not want (at the times when I'm using Windows) another program which will protect me some of the time and hog resources all of the time.
But to discuss one of your points:
Now, that I can't really agree with.People mostly do not write malware as a programming exercise or 'because they can'. /. meme goes, 4) Profit!!!1one
The romantic days of great hackers seem to be long past.
The reason people do write malware is, as
You may make it more difficult, but as long as the motive is plain and simple profit, the motive will remain.
So, basically, we'll have another anti-virus-like program monitoring our systems.
Yay for the multi-core CPUs!
I couldn't agree more.
From where I stand, companies seem to want to control every single aspect of their employers' lives - so if you do not conform to the company standards in all aspects of your life, you are not really wanted here, thank you.
I mean, how else can one explain the fact that your personal life can influence your getting a/the job?
Maybe you'll have to fight for improvements in anti-discrimination laws...
I, for one, hide nothing.
It's not that I have nothing to hide; in normal life I hide quite a lot of things.
However, in every job interview so far I've presented myself as even worse than I really am; some jobs I never got (and was later glad for it), while the others I did get - and got along quite well.
Normally, I would agree...
However, these 'young idealists' have the know-how, have the technical means and only need some free time.
Basically, what businesses are dealing with is guerilla.
Be it software or music or movie piracy, on one hand you have juggernaut businesses who intend to milk the market for every single penny, and on the other you have people who are intelligent, educated and informed enough not to allow to be milked.
They can have all the business experience they want; it does not apply. People who pirate movies aren't customers; businesses don't get money from them.
They can hunt them down, one by one, but they can't catch them (in a way, us) all.
Acually, the only way the businesses can win is to start pricing things reasonably.
The current practice of trying to enforce stricter mechanisms of control is really counter-productive; ask any upturned oppressive political regime.
Yes, that's nice. However, there is a whole world outside the borders of the few countries that are supported.
And I'm in it.
So, you're saying Ballmer is a tosser?
/me ducks