To be fair to the guy 'guilty until proven innocent' is now official US policy. I'm thinking, of course, of Guantanamo Bay. The difference is that at least Michael is told what he's accused of, and is given a chance to defend himself.
Considering the current state of Human Rights abuses by the US (detention without trial, or without even being told the charges against the individual, condoning - even encouragement - of torture by foreign powers, murder of prisoners in Afghanistan, etc.) I find this a very worrying possibility. All the more worrying because our Government will just roll over and accept it.
Yeah, but let's face it every book can be looked upon as some sort of propganda. If an author doesn't set out to manipulate you in some way, even if it's just to manipulate your emotions, then his work probably isn't worth reading.
Are "Animal Farm" or "1984" any less valid because they are anti-communist propaganda (no my US friends, that isn't meant as flame bait!)?
Of course the problem with viruses that did something really nasty was that they weren't very good at spreading. Once a virus has completely screwed up your PC, or has even just made you "sit up and take notice", there's not so much that it can do to infect others. It's the stealth factor that makes modern viruses so dangerous - most people don't even realize that they have them. And thanks to e-mail and "clever" web pages they can now spread in an instant.
In the old days all that you had to do was to keep up-to-date with your virus definition files. Nowadays I see viruses trying to hit us that were discovered, at most, a few hours ago. I've even seen some that our virus software vendors don't yet know about. Without our policy of blocking certain file extensions (as a result of being caught out that way a few years back) we would be forever having to fight viruses on our users' PCs.
As someone who is responsible for 600+ computers I have to take strong exception to your attitude. And I can't agree with the implication that Windows update doesn't work. The only time I've ever had problems with it is on XP64 beta - and I don't really expect it to work on beta software.
The whole point is that Windows is "broke" (indeed I'd challenge you to find any OS that isn't broke in some way). But if you keep it up-to-date with the latest patches it is at least a little less broke than before.
When you've had to chase round hundreds of PCs because a laptop user has managed to bypass all of your firewalls and e-mail checks and thus introduce a virus into your community you quickly appreciate the usefulness of Windows update. That was enough to make us install a Windows SUS server to make sure that all of our users were patched, whether they wanted to be or not.
I'm not a MicroSoft fan - I just have to work with their software. And all of the smug Mac and Linux users (I have 3 flavours of Linux at home as well as FreeBSD, so I'm not an apologist for MicroSoft, just a realist) will discover that they can also be vulnerable once they get popular enough for the script kiddies to turn their attention to them. Log on to Linux as root, which is in effect what most people do with Windows, and you - or something that you run - can do just as much damage.
It really is time to stop being complacent and think that you are safe with unpatched Windows systems or that the Mac or Linux OSes are appreciably safer. (One thing that I will say in favour of the Mac is that it doesn't set you up as an Administrator by default - it's actually quite hard to get full root access in OS X.) You should keep any OS patched, particularly with security fixes. It's a war and those little bastards are out to get us all!
I think that it's all a matter of expectations. One has such fixed ideas from reading the books and seeing the TV series that anything different can seem a let down.
For example, I've heard lots of people say that they don't like Marvin in the movies. Sure he's not the Marvin from the TV series, but he's just as good in his own right. And I loved the fact that the original Marvin had a walk-on part in one scene. I'm sure that the movie is full of little in-jokes like that; perhaps I need to see it a few times to get them all.
It's like instant coffee - as long as you don't compare it too closely with the original it's fine. On the whole I loved the movie.
At the risk of taking this further OT - Hutton Report! That's just a joke to most of us in the UK. Subsequent events have quite clearly shown how much truth there was in the assertion that our government "sexed-up" a dossier on WMD. I'd stand by my argument that the BBC is unbiased. Both the major political parties here complain about BBC bias, a pretty good indicator that it's doing a good job.
The BBC is a well-respected source of unbiased news. (Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell disagree with that, but events have proved how wrong they are.)
To have other sites using their news feed will enhance the reputation of the Corporation further and can only be a good thing as far as they are concerned. Because they strongly depend upon their reputation when it comes to gettting funding it's a win-win situation.
I'm not sure that we need another variant of the 64-bit x86 instruction set. Different processor designs (e.g. Sparc, Alpha, PowerPC, etc.) allow for diversity, innovation, etc., although survival of the fittest - or most popular - still applies, but forking the x86 instruction set would surely be counterproductive.
(I take it that you're not referring to the Itanium. MS did produce a version of XP for that and nobody bought it - market forces will out.)
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To be fair to the guy 'guilty until proven innocent' is now official US policy. I'm thinking, of course, of Guantanamo Bay. The difference is that at least Michael is told what he's accused of, and is given a chance to defend himself.
.yesyesyes is a bit long, but what about .ooo?
Just tatoo a big "T" on everyone's forehead. Makes the screening even easier, and just about as effective.
Considering the current state of Human Rights abuses by the US (detention without trial, or without even being told the charges against the individual, condoning - even encouragement - of torture by foreign powers, murder of prisoners in Afghanistan, etc.) I find this a very worrying possibility. All the more worrying because our Government will just roll over and accept it.
Microsoft might disappear in five years time.
So we won't be buying that at the Apple stores!
Not many of us even get a chance to pleasure the world's finest lady.
Yeah, but let's face it every book can be looked upon as some sort of propganda. If an author doesn't set out to manipulate you in some way, even if it's just to manipulate your emotions, then his work probably isn't worth reading.
Are "Animal Farm" or "1984" any less valid because they are anti-communist propaganda (no my US friends, that isn't meant as flame bait!)?
Of course the problem with viruses that did something really nasty was that they weren't very good at spreading. Once a virus has completely screwed up your PC, or has even just made you "sit up and take notice", there's not so much that it can do to infect others. It's the stealth factor that makes modern viruses so dangerous - most people don't even realize that they have them. And thanks to e-mail and "clever" web pages they can now spread in an instant.
In the old days all that you had to do was to keep up-to-date with your virus definition files. Nowadays I see viruses trying to hit us that were discovered, at most, a few hours ago. I've even seen some that our virus software vendors don't yet know about. Without our policy of blocking certain file extensions (as a result of being caught out that way a few years back) we would be forever having to fight viruses on our users' PCs.
As someone who is responsible for 600+ computers I have to take strong exception to your attitude. And I can't agree with the implication that Windows update doesn't work. The only time I've ever had problems with it is on XP64 beta - and I don't really expect it to work on beta software.
The whole point is that Windows is "broke" (indeed I'd challenge you to find any OS that isn't broke in some way). But if you keep it up-to-date with the latest patches it is at least a little less broke than before.
When you've had to chase round hundreds of PCs because a laptop user has managed to bypass all of your firewalls and e-mail checks and thus introduce a virus into your community you quickly appreciate the usefulness of Windows update. That was enough to make us install a Windows SUS server to make sure that all of our users were patched, whether they wanted to be or not.
I'm not a MicroSoft fan - I just have to work with their software. And all of the smug Mac and Linux users (I have 3 flavours of Linux at home as well as FreeBSD, so I'm not an apologist for MicroSoft, just a realist) will discover that they can also be vulnerable once they get popular enough for the script kiddies to turn their attention to them. Log on to Linux as root, which is in effect what most people do with Windows, and you - or something that you run - can do just as much damage.
It really is time to stop being complacent and think that you are safe with unpatched Windows systems or that the Mac or Linux OSes are appreciably safer. (One thing that I will say in favour of the Mac is that it doesn't set you up as an Administrator by default - it's actually quite hard to get full root access in OS X.) You should keep any OS patched, particularly with security fixes. It's a war and those little bastards are out to get us all!
It's good to see (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05 /02/1921257&tid=142&tid=137) that the latest generation of AMD processors are reversing the trend towards higher power consumption.
Now if we can just get a bit of sense into the world of graphics processors...
"Best game on the Mac". Are there others?
I think that it's all a matter of expectations. One has such fixed ideas from reading the books and seeing the TV series that anything different can seem a let down.
For example, I've heard lots of people say that they don't like Marvin in the movies. Sure he's not the Marvin from the TV series, but he's just as good in his own right. And I loved the fact that the original Marvin had a walk-on part in one scene. I'm sure that the movie is full of little in-jokes like that; perhaps I need to see it a few times to get them all.
It's like instant coffee - as long as you don't compare it too closely with the original it's fine. On the whole I loved the movie.
At the risk of taking this further OT - Hutton Report! That's just a joke to most of us in the UK. Subsequent events have quite clearly shown how much truth there was in the assertion that our government "sexed-up" a dossier on WMD. I'd stand by my argument that the BBC is unbiased. Both the major political parties here complain about BBC bias, a pretty good indicator that it's doing a good job.
May seem strange but I guess the British Broadcasting Corporation cares what "the average Briton thinks"!
The BBC is a well-respected source of unbiased news. (Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell disagree with that, but events have proved how wrong they are.)
To have other sites using their news feed will enhance the reputation of the Corporation further and can only be a good thing as far as they are concerned. Because they strongly depend upon their reputation when it comes to gettting funding it's a win-win situation.
That's a very good reason for the decision.
I'm not sure that we need another variant of the 64-bit x86 instruction set. Different processor designs (e.g. Sparc, Alpha, PowerPC, etc.) allow for diversity, innovation, etc., although survival of the fittest - or most popular - still applies, but forking the x86 instruction set would surely be counterproductive. (I take it that you're not referring to the Itanium. MS did produce a version of XP for that and nobody bought it - market forces will out.)
Just proves that even the Evil Empire isn't all bad!
Yeah - nice to see Intel having to play catch-up with AMD for a change.