If these companies can see profit in doing it they will , or they don't they will lose business
The point at which it is appropriate for a government to step in is when all the companies can happily tell the unhappy people to go fuck themselves because there's no alternative.
Try buying a laptop without paying Microsoft. How will the companies "lose business" when going to a competitor doesn't solve the problem? There's no alternative because the laptop market is so dominated by the big firms that niche markets like Linux laptops aren't worthwhile to big firms, and small firms can't cater to that niche because the big firms get volume discount that makes it cheaper to buy from the big firm and throw away Windows even though you paid for it.
Essentially, the market has fallen into a situation where any alternative to the mainstream is excluded from competing, and this is when government intervention is necessary.
I have spoken to managers who spout to me a bunch of computer jargon they have no idea the meaning of , explaining to me how a sales man had told them that their office computers will need 3Ghz processors with 1GB of ram for simple office work. Same for many of the normal folks i speak to , They have walked into some PC shop and been advised that their 1Ghz pentium 3 is far too slow for modern e-mail browsing and using an office program.
But this isn't about tripling the processor speed to get faster apps. This is about adding one extra processor to get more responsive apps. I don't care about being able to encode a CD 10% faster. I care about my system being laggy when I do it at the same time as playing a game - something you've already described as typical home user tasks.
Sure many people have multiple tasks running in the background , my first job would be to advise them what they really need
What's more relevant here - what you think home users really need, or whether or not these chips are worthwhile for what home users actually do?
There's a difference between software packages and software processes too. Install Windows and an anti-virus package, and you'll have a couple of dozen background processes, not just two. Add in typical spyware, their email app, their IM app, MS Office background stuff, the usual applets installed from driver CDs and... oh yeah whatever it is they happen to want to do, and that's a lot of processes all contending for the same CPU.
This is most noticable in applications that need to run in realtime - playing DVDs, playing games, etc, but it makes the whole system feel laggy because the UI is competing with a hell of a lot of other stuff just in order to run. This is why the dual core processors are such a boost, even though they clock at a much lower rate than normal processors.
Gaining unauthorised access to a computer is an offence covered by the Computer Misuse Act.
It is. But what about this is unauthorised? He didn't break any encryption or crack any passwords, did he?
If the issue is that he wasn't explicitly granted access, then surely visiting websites makes you just as guilty - you initiate the connection, not the server, and no special privileges are granted beforehand.
Yeah, maybe there's implied permission by running an unsecured web server on a standard port. But if that's the case, then surely there's an implied permission by running an unsecured hotspot on standard frequencies.
The vast majority of people don't know what's under the hood of their browser and won't care by default.
Just because they don't know about it, it doesn't mean it's not relevant to them or that they don't care about the things that they are missing out on.
I'm not totally informed about the causes behind mass poverty in third world countries. Doesn't mean I don't care that it happens. Likewise, a web surfer might not be informed about why websites are unreliable or lack features they want. Doesn't mean they don't care.
My answer for web developers is that if they are so hot to trot for new features, then the company should hire more developers.
Great. And where does the extra money to hire these developers come from? The cost is passed on to the customers. I'm sure the customers care about extra costs.
Hint: there is more hardware in a computer than just the CPU.
Intel certainly doesn't have ~70% of the market share for northbridge, southbridge, usb, sound, ethernet, wireless, firewire, etc.
It doesn't matter if the CPU is compatible, you need more than the CPU to get a functional OS X installation. That requires drivers. Drivers that Apple will only be writing for the specific hardware they ship with.
How did you think they were going to prevent OS X from running on non-Apple Macs? Magic? Voodoo? Asking nicely?
By not writing drivers for 99% of the hardware out there?
Apple doesn't have to do a thing to prevent people from running OS X on non-Apple Macs. They don't have to - it'll be extremely inconvenient to do so already, because drivers don't magically appear out of nowhere just because the chip is manufactured by Intel.
don't say Linux - I don't have enough time to learn it well enough to use it as a desktop machine on a daily basis.
What's with the "learn it well enough"? You point using the mouse, you click on icons, you type using the keyboard. All the usual GUI notions are in place - scrollbars, toolbars, windows, menus, etc. It's not some esoteric interface only the specially-trained can use. Stick a live CD in the drive and give it a spin for a few hours.
A website "How to strike an European city" is not a means of two-way communication which could be observed.
Of course it is. Their browsers ask for a particular resource, the website sends it to them. That's the way HTTP works. During this transaction, you can observe many things - IP address, which you can use to track down the computer they used to view the website, the time of day, giving clues as to whether they have a full-time job or not, their default language, which tells you their ethnic background, and so on.
That particular website is an example of a website that can be subverted. Alter the bomb-making instructions so that the recipe blows up in their faces. Voila, you don't even have to go to the bother of hunting them down and sending them through the justice system. Or put a few trojans on the website, gaining access to their computers.
Observing those websites won't give any new information to British intelligence, since they already know how one could plant a bomb in the Metro.
You really think a terrorist can't figure that out for himself?
Or, the designers of the website also know it is publicly available and could be observed, and won't include any information which should not fall into Western intelligence officers' ears.
What kind of information would be harmful if terrorists could communicate it, but shouldn't fall into Western intelligence officers' ears?
Protesting against that in the name of free speech is plain absurd
I never said anything about free speech. I think it's a bad idea because it's counter-productive, not because it's an infringement upon their rights.
most of the little girls playing baseball in the states could probably kick you ass.
Not being a little girl, I don't play rounders, so yes, they probably could.
I wonder how it feels knowing little girls can play a game better then you?
It feels fine. I'm no good at playing hopscotch, plaiting hair, or arousing Gary Glitter either. The fact that little girls are better than me at something I've never put any effort into and don't value in the slightest, unsurprisingly, is not important to me in the slightest. On the other hand, the fact that you've made a national sport out of a game for little girls is quite amusing to me:).
No, the web-site didn't kill anyone, but they used it for planning and organizing.
Let's not be naive here. How useful would such planning and organising be to terrorists if the government was observing their communication?
I think it's reasonable to assume that if terrorists want to plan and organise, they can find methods of communicating with one another very easily.
Under that assumption, shutting down an observable communication point does one thing and one thing only: it removes your ability to observe the terrorists's communications. It doesn't stop them communicating. It stops you listening.
American football? We call that "rugby" over here in the UK, except we don't wear padding and stop for a rest every couple of minutes like some kind of nancy boys:)
It's irrelevant for the usage stats anyway. HTTP logs are a completely unreliable way of measuring browser usage.
Example: if they change their browser to violate the HTTP protocol when hitting the back button, so that it does the same thing as Internet Explorer does, then they will show up in logs a lot more. Now how does that equate to higher usage? It doesn't. But the stupid people who think you can measure browser usage by looking at logs will think that a load of people have suddenly switched to Opera.
Observing HTTP traffic is so unreliable, you might as well make up market share statistics. Ignore people who think they can tell you how popular a browser is without conducting a proper survey.
The Christian faith (who's political wing is the Republican party) for some reason believe that sex is bad and that pornography is somehow immoral. I don't know how they reached that conclusion, after all, one need only look as far as Job's daughters antics in the book of Genesis to see that the Bible is no authority on sexual morality.
One of the best ways to stop somebody stupid asking for something stupid is to let them have literally what they are asking for.
Want to tax smut? That'll be 25% extra added to every bible sold then.
They don't look ugly to me at all. On the other hand, when I boot up Windows to test a website in Internet Explorer, I think the fonts are supremely crappy.
The GNOME project continued their efforts because they didn't like the fact that the Qt toolkit was GPLed because those nasty, proprietary... er, I mean nice, friendly corporations couldn't use it to build non-Free software without paying for a special license. Apparently, the LGPL is a much better license for libraries, according to the GNOME guys. Even though Stallman says otherwise, and it was his philosophy that led them to starting the project in the first place.
</flamebait>
Okay, so it's flamebait, but isn't that essentially the problem? The GNOME guys insisted Qt wasn't good enough because it was non-Free, then Qt was released exactly how Stallman recommends, and now Qt isn't good enough because it's too Free?
Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time...
on
IE7 Bugs and Reviews
·
· Score: 1
If Microsoft suddenly gets CSS religion, it may pass the acid test when it exits beta.
I've seen a lot of comments asking if we will pass the Acid2 browser test published by the Web Standards Project when IE7 ships. I'll go ahead and relieve the suspense by saying we will not pass this test when IE7 ships.
It'll break most of the hacks, possibly all of them. Right now, Chris Wilson is asking whether the "* html" hack should be kept, so if you want some way to target Internet Explorer 7 with CSS hacks, better post a comment telling him you want it left it.
Will it ignore the IE6 Hacks, and render properly?
Internet Explorer 7 will fix CSS selectors, so the hacks won't work. But that doesn't magically make the pages render properly - unless the accompanying properties and values are implemented (which is unlikely at this stage), taking away the hacks will *break* stuff rather than fix it. Option #3 is not the best.
Slashdot Mirror
Normal people don't get up in the morning and wonder how they can steal or trick someone.
I agree. It would definitely be an odd person that got up in the morning and wondered "Hmm... how can I steal someone today?"
If these companies can see profit in doing it they will , or they don't they will lose business
The point at which it is appropriate for a government to step in is when all the companies can happily tell the unhappy people to go fuck themselves because there's no alternative.
Try buying a laptop without paying Microsoft. How will the companies "lose business" when going to a competitor doesn't solve the problem? There's no alternative because the laptop market is so dominated by the big firms that niche markets like Linux laptops aren't worthwhile to big firms, and small firms can't cater to that niche because the big firms get volume discount that makes it cheaper to buy from the big firm and throw away Windows even though you paid for it.
Essentially, the market has fallen into a situation where any alternative to the mainstream is excluded from competing, and this is when government intervention is necessary.
I have spoken to managers who spout to me a bunch of computer jargon they have no idea the meaning of , explaining to me how a sales man had told them that their office computers will need 3Ghz processors with 1GB of ram for simple office work. Same for many of the normal folks i speak to , They have walked into some PC shop and been advised that their 1Ghz pentium 3 is far too slow for modern e-mail browsing and using an office program.
But this isn't about tripling the processor speed to get faster apps. This is about adding one extra processor to get more responsive apps. I don't care about being able to encode a CD 10% faster. I care about my system being laggy when I do it at the same time as playing a game - something you've already described as typical home user tasks.
Sure many people have multiple tasks running in the background , my first job would be to advise them what they really need
What's more relevant here - what you think home users really need, or whether or not these chips are worthwhile for what home users actually do?
There's a difference between software packages and software processes too. Install Windows and an anti-virus package, and you'll have a couple of dozen background processes, not just two. Add in typical spyware, their email app, their IM app, MS Office background stuff, the usual applets installed from driver CDs and... oh yeah whatever it is they happen to want to do, and that's a lot of processes all contending for the same CPU.
This is most noticable in applications that need to run in realtime - playing DVDs, playing games, etc, but it makes the whole system feel laggy because the UI is competing with a hell of a lot of other stuff just in order to run. This is why the dual core processors are such a boost, even though they clock at a much lower rate than normal processors.
Gaining unauthorised access to a computer is an offence covered by the Computer Misuse Act.
It is. But what about this is unauthorised? He didn't break any encryption or crack any passwords, did he?
If the issue is that he wasn't explicitly granted access, then surely visiting websites makes you just as guilty - you initiate the connection, not the server, and no special privileges are granted beforehand.
Yeah, maybe there's implied permission by running an unsecured web server on a standard port. But if that's the case, then surely there's an implied permission by running an unsecured hotspot on standard frequencies.
The vast majority of people don't know what's under the hood of their browser and won't care by default.
Just because they don't know about it, it doesn't mean it's not relevant to them or that they don't care about the things that they are missing out on.
I'm not totally informed about the causes behind mass poverty in third world countries. Doesn't mean I don't care that it happens. Likewise, a web surfer might not be informed about why websites are unreliable or lack features they want. Doesn't mean they don't care.
My answer for web developers is that if they are so hot to trot for new features, then the company should hire more developers.
Great. And where does the extra money to hire these developers come from? The cost is passed on to the customers. I'm sure the customers care about extra costs.
You can be killed if a cricket ball hits you. A rock-hard ball that can travel in excess of 100mph? We're hard bastards, not stupid bastards.
Hint: there is more hardware in a computer than just the CPU.
Intel certainly doesn't have ~70% of the market share for northbridge, southbridge, usb, sound, ethernet, wireless, firewire, etc.
It doesn't matter if the CPU is compatible, you need more than the CPU to get a functional OS X installation. That requires drivers. Drivers that Apple will only be writing for the specific hardware they ship with.
Start scripts with:
It'll do the right thing whenever python is in $PATH.
How did you think they were going to prevent OS X from running on non-Apple Macs? Magic? Voodoo? Asking nicely?
By not writing drivers for 99% of the hardware out there?
Apple doesn't have to do a thing to prevent people from running OS X on non-Apple Macs. They don't have to - it'll be extremely inconvenient to do so already, because drivers don't magically appear out of nowhere just because the chip is manufactured by Intel.
don't say Linux - I don't have enough time to learn it well enough to use it as a desktop machine on a daily basis.
What's with the "learn it well enough"? You point using the mouse, you click on icons, you type using the keyboard. All the usual GUI notions are in place - scrollbars, toolbars, windows, menus, etc. It's not some esoteric interface only the specially-trained can use. Stick a live CD in the drive and give it a spin for a few hours.
A website "How to strike an European city" is not a means of two-way communication which could be observed.
Of course it is. Their browsers ask for a particular resource, the website sends it to them. That's the way HTTP works. During this transaction, you can observe many things - IP address, which you can use to track down the computer they used to view the website, the time of day, giving clues as to whether they have a full-time job or not, their default language, which tells you their ethnic background, and so on.
That particular website is an example of a website that can be subverted. Alter the bomb-making instructions so that the recipe blows up in their faces. Voila, you don't even have to go to the bother of hunting them down and sending them through the justice system. Or put a few trojans on the website, gaining access to their computers.
Observing those websites won't give any new information to British intelligence, since they already know how one could plant a bomb in the Metro.
You really think a terrorist can't figure that out for himself?
Or, the designers of the website also know it is publicly available and could be observed, and won't include any information which should not fall into Western intelligence officers' ears.
What kind of information would be harmful if terrorists could communicate it, but shouldn't fall into Western intelligence officers' ears?
Protesting against that in the name of free speech is plain absurd
I never said anything about free speech. I think it's a bad idea because it's counter-productive, not because it's an infringement upon their rights.
most of the little girls playing baseball in the states could probably kick you ass.
Not being a little girl, I don't play rounders, so yes, they probably could.
I wonder how it feels knowing little girls can play a game better then you?
It feels fine. I'm no good at playing hopscotch, plaiting hair, or arousing Gary Glitter either. The fact that little girls are better than me at something I've never put any effort into and don't value in the slightest, unsurprisingly, is not important to me in the slightest. On the other hand, the fact that you've made a national sport out of a game for little girls is quite amusing to me :).
No, the web-site didn't kill anyone, but they used it for planning and organizing.
Let's not be naive here. How useful would such planning and organising be to terrorists if the government was observing their communication?
I think it's reasonable to assume that if terrorists want to plan and organise, they can find methods of communicating with one another very easily.
Under that assumption, shutting down an observable communication point does one thing and one thing only: it removes your ability to observe the terrorists's communications. It doesn't stop them communicating. It stops you listening.
American football? We call that "rugby" over here in the UK, except we don't wear padding and stop for a rest every couple of minutes like some kind of nancy boys :)
Baseball? Oh, yeah. We call that "rounders" over here in the UK, and it's a game only little girls play :)
It's irrelevant for the usage stats anyway. HTTP logs are a completely unreliable way of measuring browser usage.
Example: if they change their browser to violate the HTTP protocol when hitting the back button, so that it does the same thing as Internet Explorer does, then they will show up in logs a lot more. Now how does that equate to higher usage? It doesn't. But the stupid people who think you can measure browser usage by looking at logs will think that a load of people have suddenly switched to Opera.
Observing HTTP traffic is so unreliable, you might as well make up market share statistics. Ignore people who think they can tell you how popular a browser is without conducting a proper survey.
How on earth can someone reliably "verify" the age of a person of the web?
That's easy. Just ask them: a/s/l?
Who's going to oppose taxing online porn?
Larry Flynt?
He's just playing Politician Bingo.
The Christian faith (who's political wing is the Republican party) for some reason believe that sex is bad and that pornography is somehow immoral. I don't know how they reached that conclusion, after all, one need only look as far as Job's daughters antics in the book of Genesis to see that the Bible is no authority on sexual morality.
One of the best ways to stop somebody stupid asking for something stupid is to let them have literally what they are asking for.
Want to tax smut? That'll be 25% extra added to every bible sold then.
Yes the font in every screenshot is still ugly
They don't look ugly to me at all. On the other hand, when I boot up Windows to test a website in Internet Explorer, I think the fonts are supremely crappy.
Does KDE and Gnome have the same goals, or are they very different?
<flamebait>
KDE's goal was to build a robust, high-quality, open-source desktop environment for UNIX workstations.
Stallman didn't like the fact that they were using a non-Free library (the Qt toolkit), so a competing desktop environment was started.
Qt changed its license to the GPL (according to Stallman, much better than the LGPL for libraries).
The GNOME project continued their efforts because they didn't like the fact that the Qt toolkit was GPLed because those nasty, proprietary... er, I mean nice, friendly corporations couldn't use it to build non-Free software without paying for a special license. Apparently, the LGPL is a much better license for libraries, according to the GNOME guys. Even though Stallman says otherwise, and it was his philosophy that led them to starting the project in the first place.
</flamebait>
Okay, so it's flamebait, but isn't that essentially the problem? The GNOME guys insisted Qt wasn't good enough because it was non-Free, then Qt was released exactly how Stallman recommends, and now Qt isn't good enough because it's too Free?
If Microsoft suddenly gets CSS religion, it may pass the acid test when it exits beta.
Not gonna happen:
How long ago did microsoft release IE6
It'll be four years next month.
It'll break most of the hacks, possibly all of them. Right now, Chris Wilson is asking whether the "* html" hack should be kept, so if you want some way to target Internet Explorer 7 with CSS hacks, better post a comment telling him you want it left it.
Will it ignore the IE6 Hacks, and render properly?
Internet Explorer 7 will fix CSS selectors, so the hacks won't work. But that doesn't magically make the pages render properly - unless the accompanying properties and values are implemented (which is unlikely at this stage), taking away the hacks will *break* stuff rather than fix it. Option #3 is not the best.