Anybody here have anything to say in the defense of frames?
Frames have their uses. Most browsers generally have better accessibility for frames than for scrollable divs. Most clearly: Open a frames-based page and press Page Down. The primary frame will page down. Open a scrollable-divs-based page and press Page Down. Nothing will happen. Panning (scrolling using the middle mouse button) is also rather hit-or-miss with scrollable divs.
Frames are also a way to hack back/forward button functionality into an Ajax app, and to handle other browser features like file uploads, or remembering usernames/passwords that weren't designed with Ajax in mind.
(An astute observer may mention that asynchronous file uploads without iframes are possible with HTML5, but considering that Chrome, Safari, Opera, and IE haven't implemented HTML5 file upload yet, frames are still necessary. HTML5 file upload is also ridiculously complex; iframe uploads are far simpler.)
Someone above also mentioned that frames allows Google Image Search to get around hotlinking restrictions.
Personally, I think the best solution that would allow all the use-cases I mentioned (most of which are hacks to get around flaws in browsers' Ajax implementations) would be to allow only pages that have been specifically declared to be frame-able to be put in frames.
What you're missing as your knee jerks (oh noes we're being prejudiced against the chinese! won't someone think of the chinese babies?) is that the US doesn't claim otherwise.
I certainly don't see the US on the list of worst governments for enforcing copyright law.
China claims that our statements about copyright infringement are overblown, while everybody knows that the majority of professionally-pressed pirate media (i.e. piracy for profit) comes out of China
You answer that question in the next verb clause of your sentence. Maybe the fact that more pirated media is made in China has to do with the fact that everything is made in China? The majority of copyright infringement happens on Windows, too; clearly that means it's Microsoft's fault.
Then what exactly is made during the third or "ghost" shift in China, not at the request of any outside company? Another thing of note, explain all the pirated movies and software that gets sold in that country (or is that always "Not from our family" or from someone out of favor?).
The only thing that's groundless is China's posturing.
Yeah, and what exactly are Americans downloading from The Pirate Bay or LimeWire? Linux ISOs? Maybe the US should be on that list, too. Oh, and all the Americans dealing drugs? Clearly the US is doing nothing to stop them.
Fun fact: People break laws. It's hardly something to blame either government for (and whether or not the laws are just is a whole different question entirely).
... If it's posted to "friends only" it's still public. Honestly, if you have a secret and tell it to your 100-200 or so "friends", is it reasonable to expect that no one else will hear it? No, there are only two levels: "private" (don't post) and public...
Actually, that's not true. I can make lists of friends, and have a list of friends whom I trust not to share my information, make nearly anything - posts, photos, profile information - visible only to people in that list.
You can get that same menu to appear for each individual thing you post - so one of your photos or status messages can be visible to everyone ("Hey, guys, come buy my stuff!") while another is only visible to a friend ("Oh, fuck, I just realized my stuff is infected with a horrible disease!")
All the people complaining about privacy seem to be complaining solely about default settings, and they should just realize that when most people sign up for a site like Facebook, they want other people to see what they write. If they aren't the settings you want, just click on the settings menu and change them!
Take, for instance, TFA.
"Facebook sets the default for those messages to be published to the entire internet through direct funnels to the net’s top search engines. You can use a dropdown field to restrict your publishing, but it’s seemingly too hard for Facebook to actually remember that’s what you do."
If I send one message only visible to a group, I don't want all my future messages to all be only visible to that group, unless I remember to change it back. If he wants to change the default, there's an option here: http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/6425/screenshot20100509at245.png
"This includes your music preferences, employment information, reading preferences, schools, etc. All the things that make up your profile. They all must be public"
"Now, you might not know it, but there is a Facebook page for “My Crazy Boss” and because your post had all the right words, your post now shows up on that page."
This is a ridiculous claim. I just made a status message saying 'Warzone 2100 is an awesome game' and it didn't appear on the Warzone 2100 page. I think he's referring to the "@" feature, where if I had typed "@Warzone 2100" it would've asked me if I wanted to tag the page (and if I ignored the prompt and kept typing, it would not have done so), but to call a secret code that you have to explicitly agree to 'all the right words' is ridiculously misleading.
Then there’s the new Facebook “Like” button littering the internet. It’s a great idea, in theory — but it’s completely tied to your Facebook account, and you have no control over how it is used. (No, you can’t like something and not have it be totally public.)
You Slashdotters haven't been very nice when talking about my country recently.:( But I'll forgive you. Here's a translation:
woman: "[incoherent] Wi-Fi key cracking kits are an extremely important threat to the safety of the Internet"
woman: "Here, we simply follow these instructions, and then use the CD drive [sic] to access the password cracking software, and five seconds later, it indeed shows us five Wi-Fi access points. Clicking one, the computer starts to automatically crack the password, and after a while, it displays a string of numbers."
man: "[incoherent] Looking at this, does this say that it's done yet?"
other man: "Yeah, it says it's successful; it's connected to the Internet now."
man: "So you can go and browse the web now?"
other man: "Yep, you can, using its [the key cracker's] connection."
other man: "Here, you can see four wireless signals, and the connections are pretty nice, at a speed of [incoherent]."
woman: "Continuing our explanation, these key cracking kits are a type of external Wi-Fi card, but their ability to search for access points is stronger. What's scarier is that it comes with black-hat hacking software, that can let you hack into others' router administration panels. If this kind of tool falls into the wrong hands, it could have serious consequences, such as disruption of service."
other man: "This software is very powerful. This one can crack passwords, and see here, I'm copying this guy's files - copying them to my own computer."
woman: "[some organization I didn't catch the name of] says that Internet hacking incidents are steadily increasing. In actuality, securing a computer is not difficult, and modern OSes have mechanisms to limit how many people can connect, and who has permission to connect."
other man: "Here, they've disabled DHCP and I'm connected, but I can't browse the Web since I don't have an IP address."
woman: "To clarify, Wi-Fi cracking happens overseas as well. Several countries have already enacted laws preventing it; [incoherent] and Singapore, for instance, have made Wi-Fi cracking crimes. England has not only made it illegal, but are actively hunting infringers. However, China still hasn't passed laws regarding it."
caller: "There are two sides to every issue. One one hand, it's password cracking, which is clearly wrong. But on the other hand, it's accessing the Internet for free, which should really be controlled by the owner of the access point and definitely [interrupted]"
Korin wasn't talking about Blizzard, and neither was I. Blizzard's games' Wine compatibility may be caused by their use of open standards, but I was speculating that most [other] Win+Mac games' Wine compatibility could stem from their usage of Transgaming's Cider engine.
I've found that for pretty much any program with a Mac version, the Windows version works perfectly in Wine. I'm guessing it's a side effect of not being able to make Windows-specific assumptions.
Keep in mind that many Mac games are simply the Windows version bundled with a Wine fork, so it may be less a matter of making Windows-specific assumptions and more a matter of intentionally coding for Wine support.
Re:It should read 'stoopid people hath spoken'
on
Terry Childs Found Guilty
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Right. I saw it happening a lot here after Hans Reiser killed his wife. It was pretty damn obvious he did it, but he sure had a lot of otherwise intelligent slashdotters refusing to face facts.
To be exact, you saw a lot of people hoping he didn't really do it without precluding the possibility that he did, after Hans Reiser was accused of killing his wife. Fortunately, in the United States, we have a legal concept summarized "innocent until proven guilty", hence why many Slashdotters believed it was possible that he was innocent before he was convicted. Furthermore, when the case was first publicized, there wasn't that much evidence against him - it was only later that enough facts of the case were made public that it seemed likely that he was guilty.
On the other hand, the Terry Childs case is different - while in the Reiser case the disagreement was about what really happened, in the Childs case the disagreement is about whether or not what happened was legal.
If my understanding of the case is correct, he refused to disclose a password to some people who were not his supervisors (but maybe could qualify as "former supervisors"). I see nothing wrong with this legally, since the state's security policy specified that he was not allowed to disclose the password to his superiors (and security policies trump immediate supervisors), and because they were no longer his supervisors in the first place because they had fired him. I also see nothing wrong with this morally, because disclosing the passwords could have compromised the security of the system (after all, that's why it's forbidden by the security policy in the first place).
Now, it's possible that I have misunderstood the facts of the case (I mean, either I or the jury have, and it's a fair assumption that the jury is better informed than I, a random Slashdotter), but I've seen a few previous Slashdot stories on Terry Childs, and I haven't seen any comment refuting this particular viewpoint.
Confucianism is a very "do what you're told" philosophy. People who have positions of authority are told to be fair, and their followers are told to follow them mostly unquestioningly.
In a modern perspective, this seems a bit strange. You point out one flaw: It obviously only works if everyone follows it (i.e. that leaders are actually fair). But this is true of many cultural mores: The Golden Rule (do unto others as you wish others would do unto yourself), for instance, clearly fails when you're interacting with someone who doesn't follow it, and "call the police" is useless advice if the police are as interested in screwing you over as your robbers are.
A greater problem with Confucianism in a modern perspective is that between freedom and stability, it leans heavily against freedom. To someone who lives in a stable society with no wars or similar conflicts near home, with a low crime rate where most of the people in jail are in there for victimless crimes involving drugs, with a powerful government trying to exert greater and greater control over its citizens, where the largest source of problems come from abuses of power, it seems obvious that society should move towards greater freedom, because it's true.
However, Confucius lived a long time ago. We're talking before China was unified, back when the word "tyrant" was a compliment referring to someone who had power and used it wisely, back before the Chinese had invented bureaucracy. The largest source of problems wasn't oppression, since no one had that much power in the first place. The largest source of problems really was people simply not listening to others.
It's hard to imagine that kind of time... even in high school, my greatest problems stemmed from school administrators out of touch with reality, excessively restrictive and inflexible school policies, and the like. But imagine a school in which fights occurred regularly, where unpopular kids were bullied without consequences, where students outright disregarded teachers and did whatever they wanted and never learned anything. No one would suggest more freedom as a solution. Confucius's philosophies in that context were basically a great big "Hey, guys, what if we all just behaved? Maybe if we work together instead of against each other, we can accomplish something great!" And to that end, it worked fairly well.
Perhaps it's true that Confucianism isn't the right solution for a modern China. But abuses of power in modern China still don't occupy as large a percentage of social problems as they do in America. When I lived in China, the problems I had to deal with were mostly along the lines of companies trying to save money by putting dangerous substances in food, companies subjecting employees to bad working conditions, people spitting and littering everywhere, extremely skilled pickpockets, people trying to scam me out of money - are these really problems that can be solved by less government control? On the other hand, Chinese police are usually rather friendly, while in America the last time I talked to the police was when they told me "it's late, you shouldn't be here, go home" (I was 12 and walking to the library along a public road).
The only negative consequences of government control most people in China see is that a few websites are blocked. So even if it's true that China needs more freedom and human rights (which I agree they do), it's difficult to convince the average citizen of that, it isn't as clear-cut that that's the most important thing they should be worrying about at the moment.
My exact words were "PowerShell was not introduced until Windows Vista." Vista was released in 2007, PowerShell was released in 2009.
If you are "pretty sure", why don't you find out what it is and let us know? Mac Troll Fails.
I already did. I said HFS+ was more fragmentation-resistant, i.e. it does not require defragmenting anywhere near as often as NTFS.
Built in PDF reading is NOT an OS level feature. There are hundreds of free PDF readers available for use, its not like downloading your favorite one is difficult. Also, downloading one of the many free PDF printers is not difficult and takes all of 10 seconds with the help of Google. Mac Troll Fails.
As mentioned in another post:
"Freely available" software 1. aren't made by the OS vendor, 2. aren't supported by the OS vendor, 3. often have ads, 4. aren't nearly as well integrated as a vendor-supplied feature, 5. have to be found and vetted by the user, a process which takes time, and 6. by the time you actually install enough software to match all of OS X's built-in features, Windows will be even more bloated and slow.
It was nigh impossible to buy a computer with XP on it that didn't come with some sort of DVD playback software. Microsoft didn't need to implement it earlier in their OS because they didn't have to. They were able to make other more important improvements instead! Mac Troll Fails.
Have you ever tried building a computer? Yeah, for some reason DVD drives don't come with DVD player codecs.
Or have you tried [re]installing XP on a computer? Unless you use the vendor-supported restore disk (and restore all the crapware that came with the computer) (and only works if the computer came with XP, and the version of XP you wanted, at that), you won't get a DVD player.
But it does run on that hardware, it really does. Its not uber fast, but its usable. Mac Troll Fails.
I'm pretty sure Aero doesn't run on that hardware.
That's what I mean by "Vista Capable" debacle. Can it really be considered "running" if the most-advertised features don't work at all?
Furthermore, judging by the massive backlash to Vista, it seems it was not fast enough to be usable. And technically being able to run, but not fast enough to be usable is really not enough to count. It's like suggesting walking as a method of getting from China to Europe - it may be technically usable, but practically, it really isn't.
Have you used Windows since Win95? Its trivial to get the bootloader to support another OS. Hell I'm running Windows XP and Linux on this machine using the Windows bootloader. Its easy pie if you aren't incompetent. Of course if you need it to be as easy as opening a gui screen and mashing buttons while hoping for a positive result, well then I suppose a Mac is the right choice for you.
The OS, when installed using default settings, will make you unable to access any non-MS operating systems. Sure is "easy as pie", that.
Well, look at that, it seems like every single statement you wrote preceding the sentence "Mac troll fails" has turned out to be false! Perhaps you should stop saying it - I think it's bad luck.;)
Every operating system has their problems, be it Windows, Mac, or Linux. In seriousness so long as you are using an operating system that you enjoy using and helps you do whatever it is you do (be it pr0n, surfing, or perhaps pr0n) then its all good:)
Agreed. I still think it's silly to claim that OS X in 10.3-era was still "catching up" to Windows 2000, though.
Matter of taste. Powershell is available if you want it.
PowerShell is/was not available in Windows 2000.
[Safari] Is irrelevant to anyone that isn't a WWW nerd.
I think not having IE6, the only browser that commonly infected people just by visiting websites, is quite relevant to anyone.
Flashy eyecandy (that's really just an improved tile/untile) of little practical value over the Taskbar and Alt+TAB. I was wowed by Expose when it first arrived, but after using it for a while decided it was little more than another example of form over function.
Having used Expose a far bit, I find it far easier to use than the taskbar or Alt+Tab. Being able to see a window's contents makes it far easier to find a specific window. That's why Windows Vista/7 have taskbar window previews now. Now imagine if you could see them all at once, instead of just one at a time. That's Expose.
Windows NT had [a journaled filesystem] way back in 1993. Not to mention other neat features that have arrived since like per-file compression and encryption, and transactional operations.
Hmm, perhaps "journaled" wasn't the right word. How's about "fragmentation-resistant"? I'm sure HFS+ has something over NTFS.
Not in any meaningful sense. OS X is slow on anything less than a multicore CPU with 2GB RAM and a dog on anything less than a G5 with 1GB - and that's the _current_ versions (for each architecture, respectively), which are faster than their predecessors. OS X is _not_ a platform you want to be using as an example of good performance and low system requirements. People sneer at Vista because you couldn't run it on a bottom of the barrel $500 PC (though $200 on a decent video card and more RAM was all it took to remedy that) back in 2007, but it took several *years* after OS X was released before you could buy _any_ system that ran it remotely well.
Well, Windows isn't exactly resource-light, either. I've had OS X work quite well on far slower computers than the ones you describe, so I guess it's a "YMMV" thing.
Windows 2000 had the search indexing service (albeit not enabled by default).
Okay, let me rephrase. Realtime indexed search. That's what I was talking about that Windows didn't have until Vista, and OS X had several years earler.
XP had IPv6 support (though it needed to be explicitly enabled). As did Windows Server 2003.
Meh, this is what I get for skimming Wikipedia's article on IPv6. Okay, fine, you can have that one.
[All programs run as admin is] a configuration semantic (and one applicable only to certain configurations, at that) is not a "feature". Windows NT was multiuser from day 1, back in 1993.
"Certain configurations" i.e. "the default configuration, and every single configuration out there", especially since lots of Windows software would refuse to run outside of Administrator mode. Not to mention that my entire point is that the system would practically force you into this insecure configuration. It's like saying that gas chambers aren't a big deal, since it's possible to not breathe - sure, you'll still die, but you won't die from the poison gas.
You can boot multiple OSes from the Windows bootloader.
It's possible, but it's extremely difficult to set up, and nowhere near as easy as Boot Camp.
For pretty much anything low level (scheduling, multithreading, locking, memory management, etc), OS X has been playing catchup. Even today, it doesn't have anything equivalent to ReadyBoost or SuperFetch.
Do you have a source for that?
I won't say I don't believe you, but this is the first time I've heard anyone say that Windows is superior to a Unixlike, so I'd like to hear more about the subject.
Apple may be able to pull off a lot of things, but even they have to use CPU cycles and memory to index your hard-drive. Their bloat is simply already included in the sum of what is OS X. And there are relatively efficient indexing tools for Windows. So no, this is not a valid point.
What I meant to say was that third-party indexing software usually add more bloat than OS-native indexing software would have. Sure, some may be "relatively efficient". But as efficient as Windows 7's or Mac OS X's native indexer?
I believe everyone here can agree that Windows as shipped by Microsoft lacks many features that other OSs like OS X or modern Linux distros have bundled into themselves. But you cannot have it both ways by saying that adding those features to Windows is bloat.
OS vendors usually manage to add features to an OS with far less bloat than third parties. Sure, there are rare exceptions, but overall, if you're going to add as many features as possible to Windows, it's rather difficult to argue that it would end up substantially slower than Mac OS X or Linux.
It's the same reason why Opera is so fast and memory-efficient, while Firefox plus enough addons to duplicate all of Opera's features is ridiculously slow and bloated.
PowerShell wasn't introduced until Windows Vista, and Windows's cmd.exe is far inferior.
Perhaps "journaled" wasn't exactly the right word. Maybe "fragmentation-resistant"? Either way, I'm pretty sure HFS+ has something on NTFS.
Windows 2000 came with IE5, which was an okay browser for its time (not great, like IE6 was when it was released). Neither has anything on a modern browser like Safari. You may not like Safari for whatever reasons, but there is something seriously wrong with you if you think it's worse than IE. IE6 was singlehandedly responsible for the prevalence of malware in the first half of this decade, not to mention making web developers go insane.
Built-in PDF reading is an OS feature, especially since it's not Adobe Reader. Built-in PDF writing is an OS feature, too, since it can be used on any printed document, not just Office documents. Not to mention MS Office isn't free, and OpenOffice isn't a MS product.
I guess I was wrong about DVD playback, but it still wasn't introduced until Vista, which is around 4 years later than OS X, and 7 years later than Windows 2000.
Statements like "Windows 7 runs on a Pentium 4 with 512 MB RAM and Intel graphics" is what caused the "Vista Ready" debacle.
Windows's doesn't support other OSes by default, though - installing Windows will wipe out any other OS - getting the bootloader to support other OSes is a fairly difficult procedure. There's certainly nothing as simple to use as Boot Camp, which is what I was referring to.
I didn't know XP got those things. Well, it still got those far later than OS X did, and I believe it still doesn't have a Spotlight-equivalent, nor does it have search boxes in Explorer (something OS X did since like 10.2)
Which "first list" are you talking about? I can't think of any list in either of our posts in which the majority were present in Windows 2000.
I'll give you the menu bar problem on multiple desktops. I've never been a fan of OS X's "menu bar on top". Nor the lack of really maximizing windows. Nor the difficulty in making anything fullscreen.
What do you mean by "incorrect"? All I said was that some sort of evidence for the statement that OS X was inferior to Windows 2000 was needed. Do you seriously believe "Windows 2000 is better than OS X 10.3" should go without a citation?
Cygwin 1. isn't supplied/supported by the OS vendor, 2. can't be used to administrate the OS, and 3. I hear it has pretty horrible performance.
That Safari isn't the most popular browser in the world doesn't invalidate that it's far better than the horror that is Internet Explorer.
Alt+Tab and Flip 3D are far worse interfaces than Expose - neither allows you to see full window previews of every window at the same time. Not to mention Flip 3D was introduced far later than either Expose or Windows 2000.
I never said OS X was perfect. All I'm saying is, I still don't see how Windows 2000 is better than OS X (and you've done nothing to convince me otherwise).
"Freely available" doesn't mean much in this context, since they 1. aren't made by the OS vendor, 2. aren't supported by the OS vendor, 3. often have ads, 4. aren't nearly as well integrated as a vendor-supplied feature, 5. have to be found and vetted by the user, a process which takes time, and 6. by the time you actually install enough software to match all of OS X's built-in features, Windows will be even more bloated and slow.
Even if we do accept "freely available", let's go through the list of features I first mentioned: I don't know of any software that can let Windows rearrange taskbar icons by drag/drop. Any "freely available" DVD players for Windows XP and earlier are illegal, and therefore don't count. Any indexed search system adds a substantial amount of bloat to Windows. I'm pretty sure IPv6 support isn't available for Windows 2000 at all, free or otherwise. I'm pretty sure there's no software to make Windows support larger icon sizes. And I hear most multiple-desktop implementations for Windows are quite buggy.
So a significant proportion of the features I mention are not "freely available" for Windows.
PowerShell was introduced in 2009, 9 years after Windows 2000 and 8 years after OS X.
The web browser is bundled with the operating system, which is really close enough.
I am talking about operating system support, since the point is to compare the relative merits of the operating systems. "Free alternatives" doesn't mean much in this context, since they 1. aren't made by the OS vendor, 2. aren't supported by the OS vendor, 3. often have ads, and 4. have to be found and vetted by the user, a process which takes time.
OS X's Dock is the equivalent of the Windows taskbar (and it can be rearranged).
By "indexed search" I mean the realtime search in Windows Vista and OS X's Spotlight.
Exactly, running as a limited user "wasn't the default", and was in fact practically impossible to do in Windows's software climate.
I don't think any of the things I've mentioned were available as a free download from Microsoft at the time of Windows 2000's release. And as for availability right now, all I can think of is the virtual desktops PowerToy for XP (an extremely buggy implementation).
My examples chosen are valid examples, and you've only tried to disprove a few of them (and I've refuted practically all of your tries), and you admit Windows's inferiority in several places ("Microsoft has chosen to make this very complicated", "you must save in a different format").
So sure, Windows has "enterprise features" on OS X. But what about stability? Ease of use? Appearance? Virus resistance? You know how whenever Slashdot runs an article talking about whatever new Windows Vista feature, there were always those Linux users who joked "Welcome to 2001"? In general, OS X had those features well before Windows, as well.
The only feature it's been playing "catchup" at is the display system. For pretty much everything else, OS X only hit parity with Windows *2000* at about 10.4/10.5.
[citation needed]
A bash command line (and Unixlike filesystem structure), a web browser that's actually standards-compliant (and was the first to pass Acid2), Exposé, a journaled filesystem, built-in support for reading and saving PDFs, built-in support for playing DVDs, and lower system requirements are all things OS X has had since before 10.4, and Windows 7 still doesn't have.
Windows didn't get the ability to rearrange taskbar icons until Windows 7 (8 years after OS X). Windows didn't get built-in indexed search until Windows Vista (4 years after OS X). Windows didn't get IPv6 support until Windows Vista (4 years after OS X). Windows ran everything as root by default until Windows Vista (6 years after OS X). Windows didn't get icons larger than 48x48 until Windows Vista (6 years after OS X).
Examples of features introduced since 10.4 that Windows still doesn't have include multiple desktops, and a bootloader that supports operating systems from more than one vendor.
Mac OS X also has the ability to edit.doc files, which Windows 7 can no longer do with the software that comes with the OS.
And then there's all the little things, like Grapher.
I'll admit the earlier versions of Mac OS X were somewhat flawed, but "worse than Windows 2000" is a pretty serious accusation, and one that requires evidence.
If you're suggesting that Google should stay in China and fight the government for you -- and risk having their in-China management end up in labor camps -- then I'm not the only one asking others to sacrifice for my conscience, or whatever it is of which you're accusing me.
This is the kind of quote that belongs in some sort of history textbook, with the caption "THIS IS WHAT AMERICANS SERIOUSLY BELIEVE".
I mean, if it is. Because I hope this is a joke. If Google management were in any serious danger, I don't think they'd take this long to withdraw from China.
Seriously, "China will send Google management into labor camps" is the stuff of conspiracy theorists. Google's been allowed to do exactly what they're currently doing with no problem, and if they want to, I'm sure the Chinese government will allow them to continue to do so.
If you're asking Google to stay and acquiesce to the Chinese government's demands just so you can have a nicer search engine for a few weeks or months until it becomes worse than useless -- and risk sanctions and perhaps even prosecution from the US government -- then what's Google's incentive, ethically or financially? So that they can do you a very brief favor?
What do you mean by "until it becomes worse than useless"? Other than the censorship (which I note the US, Germany, France, the UK, and many other countries also force Google to do), China's put no additional demands on Google in the last four years. Once they actually do, sure, but let's not withdraw from a country from the "possibility" that they might make demands.
And how do they risk sanctions from the US government? Was that a typo?
(And if you're referring to the hacking attempt, that's neither a demand, nor has there been any substantial evidence that it was caused by the Chinese government, other than the fact that they targeted human rights activists, which might as well be someone trying to frame the Commies.)
That seems to be the part that you're not getting.
Google cannot win (i.e. help people more than Google has in the past). Google cannot stay even (i.e. help people the same amount as Google has in the past). Google can only capitulate to evil (i.e. help no one but the Chinese government) or leave (i.e. help the Chinese government).
Google is boxed into helping the Chinese government either way, but one way requires compliance with evil and the other does not.
Man, if only that were true, then it'd be great that Google is pulling out! Too bad it isn't.
Google cannot bring True Democracy (tm) and Complete Freedom (tm) to China. They also can't give everyone a pony. Does that mean they should just take their ball and go home?
Tell me, why can't Google "win"? Why can't Google "stay even"? And how, exactly, is staying in China "capitulating to evil" and "helping no one but the Chinese government"?
The way the situation currently is, Google has two choices.
1. Leave China. This, as you've noted, helps no one but the Chinese government. 2. Stay in China. This gives Chinese citizens a choice, which is never a bad thing (inapplicable exceptions notwithstanding).
Google tells citizens when their search results are censored, which no other search engine does. This is the only situation I know of in which the sentence, "The Chinese government is forcing us to censor this" appears written in Chinese on the internet, without euphemisms. And you think that should go away?
Google also protects the privacy of its data. No one really knows what goes on between the Chinese government and the other search engines, but I'm sure they'll give up server logs and other data without question. Google, on the other hand, is usually quite good about fighting government orders to turn over their data, and they generally make it known when they are being forced to hand over their data.
Google is also a damn good search engine, and if they leave, I'll have to use Bing or Baidu or something.
And you want to give all that up, just so you can feel a bit more self-righteous?
Correction: You don't give up anything. You want other people to give all that up, just so you can feel a bit more self-righteous?
You parrot the old Google party line about why they stayed in China for so long pretty well.
But Google seems to be changing its line, albeit somewhat grudgingly. One might conclude that they were rationalizing the decision to stay where the money was even though they had to knowingly act against their stated values to do it; later found that you get burned when you shake the devil's hand; and now are trying to reconcile that with the fact that really they do still want access to all that money.
One might otherwise conclude that they were doing much good by staying, but the PR problems of the West unexpectedly and hypocritically blaming them were just too much for them to handle.
You seem to be implying that I'm some sort of Google apologist. I'm not. I'm just someone who wants to use Google, but soon won't be able to, since people like you seem to think your right to feel self-righteous outweighs my right to use a quality search engine that tells me when it censors results, and fights the Chinese government to keep as much of its data private as possible.
What an ignorant attitude. Of course human rights abuses are not "A-OK". The first moral responsibility on the matter, though, is to make sure you yourself aren't committing them. Doing what you can to make the world as a whole better - e.g. by opposing those violations you aren't involved with - is important but secondary.
Later in your post you brought up an analogy to a doctor who can't save everyone. In your context, it was a twisted stretch of an analogy; but here it's actually pretty apt, as doctors swear an oath to "first do no harm".
Google staying in China is not like a doctor who can't save everyone; it's like a guy who profits by killing some patients justifying it by pointing to the few he also saves.
Google pulling out of China is like a doctor. He says "first I will do no harm - I will not help China with its censorship efforts even if that means China won't let me operate in its borders"; and then perhaps he tries to save as many as he can. But as you say, he can't save everyone, and we do not hold him morally accountable for the misdeeds of others once he commits to do no harm himself.
See, it doesn't work like that.
Google staying in China is more like a doctor trying a treatment with side effects (aka practically every treatment in existence). "First do no harm" is better rendered as "first do no net harm." If you're helping people more than you're hurting them, it's difficult to argue that you're hurting them in the first place. Google pulling out of China is a doctor saying, "I refuse to give you this life-saving treatment because it might give you a cold."
This is why Good Samaritan laws exist, since you Americans otherwise don't seem to understand that it's impossible to help someone without hurting them in some minor way.
I notice that you still haven't answered my question. Does anyone other than the Chinese government benefit from Google pulling out? You haven't answered it because the answer is "no", and no matter how much hand-waving you do about being "complicit" or whatever, the answer will still be "no".
Is it really worth causing harm to Chinese citizens, just so you can say "I'm not the one doing it"? Google pulling out of China is harming Chinese people, but all you care about is that Google isn't "complicit" in some irrelevant philosophical sense.
Because it's the only realistic alternative to being complicit in human rights abuse. Or were you looking for a non-obvious reason?
And I suppose you're not complicit in human rights abuse at all, because you never buy anything made in China?
Even if you don't, I suppose human rights abuses are A-OK as long as you're not involved?
This is the kind of simplistic black-and-white moral thinking that I am talking about. Are doctors evil, because they fail to save some people, and are thus complicit in their deaths? Then how is Google staying in China evil, simply because they fail to grant complete freedom to Chinese citizens? They grant Chinese citizens better access to information, and inform them when censorship does happen, which I've pointed out earlier is much better than what other search engines do.
It's not unlike tough love. A parent sees his kid's life falling apart because of substance abuse. Then the kid comes to him and asks for money because he is out of a job and can't pay his ellectric bill. In the short term the parent can say, well, I certainly don't want him to die/live on the street/endure whatever immediate hardship, so I'll pay the bill to get him by. But this can easily be a short sighted act that only makes the real problem worse, that is it is enabling. Sometimes we have to crack down and make it clear that we will let the bad effects of a person's acts catch up with him, in the hope that it gets him to reevaluate his choices.
Perhaps that philosophy may work in terms of parenting, but in terms of foreign policy... how is doing something that benefits the Chinese government going to motivate them to "reevaluate [their] choices"?
I'm sick of people writing off all the crappy stuff the Chinese government is doing, just because they are drooling over the money to be made in the Chinese market. Sure google pulling out, by itself, may not cause the government a great deal of difficulty (but make no mistake, it is going to hurt the government, perhaps indirectly: google is a very valuable tool), but if a few more heavy-hitters make a similar choice it might just get the top brass thinking, when they are faced with the choice of being ostracized by the first world and being a little more sensitive to human rights.
Make no mistake, I'm not one of those people. I agree that the Chinese government has done many terrible things (as has many other governments, but let's not get into that). I just don't see how Google's withdrawal will fix anything.
Google is a "very valuable tool" for citizens discontent with the government. For the government, I doubt it serves any useful purpose that no other search engine serves. Again, something the government would celebrate.
The only remotely valid point I see here is that "if a few more heavy-hitters make a similar choice", it would cause problems for the Chinese government. But I don't see how some hypothetical-and-probably-not-happening possibility outweighs all the harm the move is causing directly. Maybe I'm biased because I am a Chinese citizen, and I don't want to lose access to my Gmail account, but I just don't see any good coming out of it.
Okay. I'll bite. Why? How does Google pulling out of China help anyone?
Sitting here, I can't help but notice that most of the people who are supporting Google pulling out of China are people who won't be affected by the move at all.
Tell me, what does depriving Chinese citizens of Google solve? Are you trying to hurt the Chinese government? Google's withdrawal just means more marketshare for Baidu, a domestic search engine that the Chinese government can more easily control - a net win for their government. And Chinese citizens will have less choice in their search engines - at least Google gives a "some search results were removed to comply with local law" message, so users know when their searches are censored. As far as I know, no other search engine does that.
So that's what ends up happening. Google's withdrawal is helping China's government and hurting China's citizens, but since Google's not the one doing it, there's no problem at all. It's flawed thinking like that, that's forcing Google to pull out of the PR disaster that is China. The Americans who support the decision - virtually all of whom are completely unaffected by the change - are patting their backs right now on this supposed triumph of free speech, despite the whole thing being a net loss for democracy and free speech.
What if the situation were reversed? What if Google decided to pull out of the USA unless they stopped censoring their search results? I'm sure if you were faced with a choice between "Google" and "No Google", most of you would choose Google.
Every time the "Google pulling out of China" story comes up, all I see are people who laud the move as a good thing (well, that, and a few sex jokes). Just once, I'd like to hear someone explain why you think it's a good thing.
I've long felt that lawyers should be subject to the same outcome as their client. Don't want to get electrocuted, don't represent a murder. Don't want to end up a million dollars in the hole? Don't represent a doctor who's clearly guilty of malpractice.
I've heard lots of ideas for improving the legal system... some of them have been really good, and some of them have been really bad. Of all those, this is the worst idea I've ever.
Even if all it does is prevent a lawyer from simply defending people who are "clearly" guilty (which it doesn't - and which in and of itself is a ridiculous idea - it is impossible by the laws of physics for there to be no doubt whatsoever that someone is guilty), it would still be an extremely bad idea.
The purpose of a lawyer varies depending on legal jurisdiction, but in general, a defense lawyer exists to ensure that someone who is accused of a crime doesn't get screwed over. A lawyer is there to help innocent people convince courts of their innocence, and to make sure a guilty person doesn't get a worse punishment than they deserve. Your proposal undermines both of these.
(This is why the US Constitution guarantees a lawyer wherever necessary, and why public defenders will be provided to people who can't afford their own lawyers.)
Consider the case of someone who is obviously innocent, but accused of a murder. Why should we force someone to risk their life to represent him?
Or even in a hypothetical dreamworld where the legal system is never wrong and no one innocent ever gets convicted: Consider someone who is obviously guilty of a lesser crime, let's say shoplifting, but has been accused of murder. Why should a lawyer have to take jailtime to help make sure that person doesn't get executed?
Slashdot Mirror
Anybody here have anything to say in the defense of frames?
Frames have their uses. Most browsers generally have better accessibility for frames than for scrollable divs. Most clearly: Open a frames-based page and press Page Down. The primary frame will page down. Open a scrollable-divs-based page and press Page Down. Nothing will happen. Panning (scrolling using the middle mouse button) is also rather hit-or-miss with scrollable divs.
Frames are also a way to hack back/forward button functionality into an Ajax app, and to handle other browser features like file uploads, or remembering usernames/passwords that weren't designed with Ajax in mind.
(An astute observer may mention that asynchronous file uploads without iframes are possible with HTML5, but considering that Chrome, Safari, Opera, and IE haven't implemented HTML5 file upload yet, frames are still necessary. HTML5 file upload is also ridiculously complex; iframe uploads are far simpler.)
Someone above also mentioned that frames allows Google Image Search to get around hotlinking restrictions.
Personally, I think the best solution that would allow all the use-cases I mentioned (most of which are hacks to get around flaws in browsers' Ajax implementations) would be to allow only pages that have been specifically declared to be frame-able to be put in frames.
What you're missing as your knee jerks (oh noes we're being prejudiced against the chinese! won't someone think of the chinese babies?) is that the US doesn't claim otherwise.
I certainly don't see the US on the list of worst governments for enforcing copyright law.
China claims that our statements about copyright infringement are overblown, while everybody knows that the majority of professionally-pressed pirate media (i.e. piracy for profit) comes out of China
You answer that question in the next verb clause of your sentence. Maybe the fact that more pirated media is made in China has to do with the fact that everything is made in China? The majority of copyright infringement happens on Windows, too; clearly that means it's Microsoft's fault.
Then what exactly is made during the third or "ghost" shift in China, not at the request of any outside company?
Another thing of note, explain all the pirated movies and software that gets sold in that country (or is that always "Not from our family" or from someone out of favor?).
The only thing that's groundless is China's posturing.
Yeah, and what exactly are Americans downloading from The Pirate Bay or LimeWire? Linux ISOs? Maybe the US should be on that list, too. Oh, and all the Americans dealing drugs? Clearly the US is doing nothing to stop them.
Fun fact: People break laws. It's hardly something to blame either government for (and whether or not the laws are just is a whole different question entirely).
... If it's posted to "friends only" it's still public. Honestly, if you have a secret and tell it to your 100-200 or so "friends", is it reasonable to expect that no one else will hear it? No, there are only two levels: "private" (don't post) and public...
Actually, that's not true. I can make lists of friends, and have a list of friends whom I trust not to share my information, make nearly anything - posts, photos, profile information - visible only to people in that list.
Here's a screenshot of Facebook's privacy page, allowing me to control who sees anything in there: http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/5305/screenshot20100509at229.png
You can get that same menu to appear for each individual thing you post - so one of your photos or status messages can be visible to everyone ("Hey, guys, come buy my stuff!") while another is only visible to a friend ("Oh, fuck, I just realized my stuff is infected with a horrible disease!")
All the people complaining about privacy seem to be complaining solely about default settings, and they should just realize that when most people sign up for a site like Facebook, they want other people to see what they write. If they aren't the settings you want, just click on the settings menu and change them!
Take, for instance, TFA.
"Facebook sets the default for those messages to be published to the entire internet through direct funnels to the net’s top search engines. You can use a dropdown field to restrict your publishing, but it’s seemingly too hard for Facebook to actually remember that’s what you do."
If I send one message only visible to a group, I don't want all my future messages to all be only visible to that group, unless I remember to change it back. If he wants to change the default, there's an option here: http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/6425/screenshot20100509at245.png
"This includes your music preferences, employment information, reading preferences, schools, etc. All the things that make up your profile. They all must be public"
Actually, there are privacy settings here: http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/6425/screenshot20100509at245.png
"Now, you might not know it, but there is a Facebook page for “My Crazy Boss” and because your post had all the right words, your post now shows up on that page."
This is a ridiculous claim. I just made a status message saying 'Warzone 2100 is an awesome game' and it didn't appear on the Warzone 2100 page. I think he's referring to the "@" feature, where if I had typed "@Warzone 2100" it would've asked me if I wanted to tag the page (and if I ignored the prompt and kept typing, it would not have done so), but to call a secret code that you have to explicitly agree to 'all the right words' is ridiculously misleading.
Then there’s the new Facebook “Like” button littering the internet. It’s a great idea, in theory — but it’s completely tied to your Facebook account, and you have no control over how it is used. (No, you can’t like something and not have it be totally public.)
Yes, you can: http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/7281/screenshot20100509at254.png
I’d like to make my friend list private. Cannot.
Here's how: http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/2963/screenshot20100509at257.png
I’d like to have my profile visible only to my friends
You mean like happened with their acquisition of Writely? ;)
(In case the reference is unclear; Writely is what became Google Docs Writer.)
You Slashdotters haven't been very nice when talking about my country recently. :( But I'll forgive you. Here's a translation:
woman: "[incoherent] Wi-Fi key cracking kits are an extremely important threat to the safety of the Internet"
woman: "Here, we simply follow these instructions, and then use the CD drive [sic] to access the password cracking software, and five seconds later, it indeed shows us five Wi-Fi access points. Clicking one, the computer starts to automatically crack the password, and after a while, it displays a string of numbers."
man: "[incoherent] Looking at this, does this say that it's done yet?"
other man: "Yeah, it says it's successful; it's connected to the Internet now."
man: "So you can go and browse the web now?"
other man: "Yep, you can, using its [the key cracker's] connection."
other man: "Here, you can see four wireless signals, and the connections are pretty nice, at a speed of [incoherent]."
woman: "Continuing our explanation, these key cracking kits are a type of external Wi-Fi card, but their ability to search for access points is stronger. What's scarier is that it comes with black-hat hacking software, that can let you hack into others' router administration panels. If this kind of tool falls into the wrong hands, it could have serious consequences, such as disruption of service."
other man: "This software is very powerful. This one can crack passwords, and see here, I'm copying this guy's files - copying them to my own computer."
woman: "[some organization I didn't catch the name of] says that Internet hacking incidents are steadily increasing. In actuality, securing a computer is not difficult, and modern OSes have mechanisms to limit how many people can connect, and who has permission to connect."
other man: "Here, they've disabled DHCP and I'm connected, but I can't browse the Web since I don't have an IP address."
woman: "To clarify, Wi-Fi cracking happens overseas as well. Several countries have already enacted laws preventing it; [incoherent] and Singapore, for instance, have made Wi-Fi cracking crimes. England has not only made it illegal, but are actively hunting infringers. However, China still hasn't passed laws regarding it."
caller: "There are two sides to every issue. One one hand, it's password cracking, which is clearly wrong. But on the other hand, it's accessing the Internet for free, which should really be controlled by the owner of the access point and definitely [interrupted]"
Korin wasn't talking about Blizzard, and neither was I. Blizzard's games' Wine compatibility may be caused by their use of open standards, but I was speculating that most [other] Win+Mac games' Wine compatibility could stem from their usage of Transgaming's Cider engine.
I've found that for pretty much any program with a Mac version, the Windows version works perfectly in Wine. I'm guessing it's a side effect of not being able to make Windows-specific assumptions.
Keep in mind that many Mac games are simply the Windows version bundled with a Wine fork, so it may be less a matter of making Windows-specific assumptions and more a matter of intentionally coding for Wine support.
Right. I saw it happening a lot here after Hans Reiser killed his wife. It was pretty damn obvious he did it, but he sure had a lot of otherwise intelligent slashdotters refusing to face facts.
To be exact, you saw a lot of people hoping he didn't really do it without precluding the possibility that he did, after Hans Reiser was accused of killing his wife. Fortunately, in the United States, we have a legal concept summarized "innocent until proven guilty", hence why many Slashdotters believed it was possible that he was innocent before he was convicted. Furthermore, when the case was first publicized, there wasn't that much evidence against him - it was only later that enough facts of the case were made public that it seemed likely that he was guilty.
On the other hand, the Terry Childs case is different - while in the Reiser case the disagreement was about what really happened, in the Childs case the disagreement is about whether or not what happened was legal.
If my understanding of the case is correct, he refused to disclose a password to some people who were not his supervisors (but maybe could qualify as "former supervisors"). I see nothing wrong with this legally, since the state's security policy specified that he was not allowed to disclose the password to his superiors (and security policies trump immediate supervisors), and because they were no longer his supervisors in the first place because they had fired him. I also see nothing wrong with this morally, because disclosing the passwords could have compromised the security of the system (after all, that's why it's forbidden by the security policy in the first place).
Now, it's possible that I have misunderstood the facts of the case (I mean, either I or the jury have, and it's a fair assumption that the jury is better informed than I, a random Slashdotter), but I've seen a few previous Slashdot stories on Terry Childs, and I haven't seen any comment refuting this particular viewpoint.
Confucianism is a very "do what you're told" philosophy. People who have positions of authority are told to be fair, and their followers are told to follow them mostly unquestioningly.
In a modern perspective, this seems a bit strange. You point out one flaw: It obviously only works if everyone follows it (i.e. that leaders are actually fair). But this is true of many cultural mores: The Golden Rule (do unto others as you wish others would do unto yourself), for instance, clearly fails when you're interacting with someone who doesn't follow it, and "call the police" is useless advice if the police are as interested in screwing you over as your robbers are.
A greater problem with Confucianism in a modern perspective is that between freedom and stability, it leans heavily against freedom. To someone who lives in a stable society with no wars or similar conflicts near home, with a low crime rate where most of the people in jail are in there for victimless crimes involving drugs, with a powerful government trying to exert greater and greater control over its citizens, where the largest source of problems come from abuses of power, it seems obvious that society should move towards greater freedom, because it's true.
However, Confucius lived a long time ago. We're talking before China was unified, back when the word "tyrant" was a compliment referring to someone who had power and used it wisely, back before the Chinese had invented bureaucracy. The largest source of problems wasn't oppression, since no one had that much power in the first place. The largest source of problems really was people simply not listening to others.
It's hard to imagine that kind of time... even in high school, my greatest problems stemmed from school administrators out of touch with reality, excessively restrictive and inflexible school policies, and the like. But imagine a school in which fights occurred regularly, where unpopular kids were bullied without consequences, where students outright disregarded teachers and did whatever they wanted and never learned anything. No one would suggest more freedom as a solution. Confucius's philosophies in that context were basically a great big "Hey, guys, what if we all just behaved? Maybe if we work together instead of against each other, we can accomplish something great!" And to that end, it worked fairly well.
Perhaps it's true that Confucianism isn't the right solution for a modern China. But abuses of power in modern China still don't occupy as large a percentage of social problems as they do in America. When I lived in China, the problems I had to deal with were mostly along the lines of companies trying to save money by putting dangerous substances in food, companies subjecting employees to bad working conditions, people spitting and littering everywhere, extremely skilled pickpockets, people trying to scam me out of money - are these really problems that can be solved by less government control? On the other hand, Chinese police are usually rather friendly, while in America the last time I talked to the police was when they told me "it's late, you shouldn't be here, go home" (I was 12 and walking to the library along a public road).
The only negative consequences of government control most people in China see is that a few websites are blocked. So even if it's true that China needs more freedom and human rights (which I agree they do), it's difficult to convince the average citizen of that, it isn't as clear-cut that that's the most important thing they should be worrying about at the moment.
Mozilla has announced the availability of an experimental new add-on
Emphasis on "add-on". That's the whole point of Firefox - it's not an all-in-one approach, and users who don't want it simply won't install it.
Powershell is available in XP. Mac Troll Fails.
My exact words were "PowerShell was not introduced until Windows Vista." Vista was released in 2007, PowerShell was released in 2009.
If you are "pretty sure", why don't you find out what it is and let us know? Mac Troll Fails.
I already did. I said HFS+ was more fragmentation-resistant, i.e. it does not require defragmenting anywhere near as often as NTFS.
Built in PDF reading is NOT an OS level feature. There are hundreds of free PDF readers available for use, its not like downloading your favorite one is difficult. Also, downloading one of the many free PDF printers is not difficult and takes all of 10 seconds with the help of Google. Mac Troll Fails.
As mentioned in another post:
"Freely available" software 1. aren't made by the OS vendor, 2. aren't supported by the OS vendor, 3. often have ads, 4. aren't nearly as well integrated as a vendor-supplied feature, 5. have to be found and vetted by the user, a process which takes time, and 6. by the time you actually install enough software to match all of OS X's built-in features, Windows will be even more bloated and slow.
It was nigh impossible to buy a computer with XP on it that didn't come with some sort of DVD playback software. Microsoft didn't need to implement it earlier in their OS because they didn't have to. They were able to make other more important improvements instead! Mac Troll Fails.
Have you ever tried building a computer? Yeah, for some reason DVD drives don't come with DVD player codecs.
Or have you tried [re]installing XP on a computer? Unless you use the vendor-supported restore disk (and restore all the crapware that came with the computer) (and only works if the computer came with XP, and the version of XP you wanted, at that), you won't get a DVD player.
But it does run on that hardware, it really does. Its not uber fast, but its usable. Mac Troll Fails.
I'm pretty sure Aero doesn't run on that hardware.
That's what I mean by "Vista Capable" debacle. Can it really be considered "running" if the most-advertised features don't work at all?
Furthermore, judging by the massive backlash to Vista, it seems it was not fast enough to be usable. And technically being able to run, but not fast enough to be usable is really not enough to count. It's like suggesting walking as a method of getting from China to Europe - it may be technically usable, but practically, it really isn't.
Have you used Windows since Win95? Its trivial to get the bootloader to support another OS. Hell I'm running Windows XP and Linux on this machine using the Windows bootloader. Its easy pie if you aren't incompetent. Of course if you need it to be as easy as opening a gui screen and mashing buttons while hoping for a positive result, well then I suppose a Mac is the right choice for you.
The OS, when installed using default settings, will make you unable to access any non-MS operating systems. Sure is "easy as pie", that.
Well, look at that, it seems like every single statement you wrote preceding the sentence "Mac troll fails" has turned out to be false! Perhaps you should stop saying it - I think it's bad luck. ;)
Every operating system has their problems, be it Windows, Mac, or Linux. In seriousness so long as you are using an operating system that you enjoy using and helps you do whatever it is you do (be it pr0n, surfing, or perhaps pr0n) then its all good :)
Agreed. I still think it's silly to claim that OS X in 10.3-era was still "catching up" to Windows 2000, though.
Matter of taste. Powershell is available if you want it.
PowerShell is/was not available in Windows 2000.
[Safari] Is irrelevant to anyone that isn't a WWW nerd.
I think not having IE6, the only browser that commonly infected people just by visiting websites, is quite relevant to anyone.
Flashy eyecandy (that's really just an improved tile/untile) of little practical value over the Taskbar and Alt+TAB. I was wowed by Expose when it first arrived, but after using it for a while decided it was little more than another example of form over function.
Having used Expose a far bit, I find it far easier to use than the taskbar or Alt+Tab. Being able to see a window's contents makes it far easier to find a specific window. That's why Windows Vista/7 have taskbar window previews now. Now imagine if you could see them all at once, instead of just one at a time. That's Expose.
Windows NT had [a journaled filesystem] way back in 1993. Not to mention other neat features that have arrived since like per-file compression and encryption, and transactional operations.
Hmm, perhaps "journaled" wasn't the right word. How's about "fragmentation-resistant"? I'm sure HFS+ has something over NTFS.
Not in any meaningful sense. OS X is slow on anything less than a multicore CPU with 2GB RAM and a dog on anything less than a G5 with 1GB - and that's the _current_ versions (for each architecture, respectively), which are faster than their predecessors. OS X is _not_ a platform you want to be using as an example of good performance and low system requirements. People sneer at Vista because you couldn't run it on a bottom of the barrel $500 PC (though $200 on a decent video card and more RAM was all it took to remedy that) back in 2007, but it took several *years* after OS X was released before you could buy _any_ system that ran it remotely well.
Well, Windows isn't exactly resource-light, either. I've had OS X work quite well on far slower computers than the ones you describe, so I guess it's a "YMMV" thing.
Windows 2000 had the search indexing service (albeit not enabled by default).
Okay, let me rephrase. Realtime indexed search. That's what I was talking about that Windows didn't have until Vista, and OS X had several years earler.
XP had IPv6 support (though it needed to be explicitly enabled). As did Windows Server 2003.
Meh, this is what I get for skimming Wikipedia's article on IPv6. Okay, fine, you can have that one.
[All programs run as admin is] a configuration semantic (and one applicable only to certain configurations, at that) is not a "feature". Windows NT was multiuser from day 1, back in 1993.
"Certain configurations" i.e. "the default configuration, and every single configuration out there", especially since lots of Windows software would refuse to run outside of Administrator mode. Not to mention that my entire point is that the system would practically force you into this insecure configuration. It's like saying that gas chambers aren't a big deal, since it's possible to not breathe - sure, you'll still die, but you won't die from the poison gas.
You can boot multiple OSes from the Windows bootloader.
It's possible, but it's extremely difficult to set up, and nowhere near as easy as Boot Camp.
For pretty much anything low level (scheduling, multithreading, locking, memory management, etc), OS X has been playing catchup. Even today, it doesn't have anything equivalent to ReadyBoost or SuperFetch.
Do you have a source for that?
I won't say I don't believe you, but this is the first time I've heard anyone say that Windows is superior to a Unixlike, so I'd like to hear more about the subject.
Apple may be able to pull off a lot of things, but even they have to use CPU cycles and memory to index your hard-drive. Their bloat is simply already included in the sum of what is OS X. And there are relatively efficient indexing tools for Windows. So no, this is not a valid point.
What I meant to say was that third-party indexing software usually add more bloat than OS-native indexing software would have. Sure, some may be "relatively efficient". But as efficient as Windows 7's or Mac OS X's native indexer?
I believe everyone here can agree that Windows as shipped by Microsoft lacks many features that other OSs like OS X or modern Linux distros have bundled into themselves. But you cannot have it both ways by saying that adding those features to Windows is bloat.
OS vendors usually manage to add features to an OS with far less bloat than third parties. Sure, there are rare exceptions, but overall, if you're going to add as many features as possible to Windows, it's rather difficult to argue that it would end up substantially slower than Mac OS X or Linux.
It's the same reason why Opera is so fast and memory-efficient, while Firefox plus enough addons to duplicate all of Opera's features is ridiculously slow and bloated.
Which "first list" are you talking about? I can't think of any list in either of our posts in which the majority were present in Windows 2000.
I'll give you the menu bar problem on multiple desktops. I've never been a fan of OS X's "menu bar on top". Nor the lack of really maximizing windows. Nor the difficulty in making anything fullscreen.
I never said OS X was perfect. All I'm saying is, I still don't see how Windows 2000 is better than OS X (and you've done nothing to convince me otherwise).
"Freely available" doesn't mean much in this context, since they 1. aren't made by the OS vendor, 2. aren't supported by the OS vendor, 3. often have ads, 4. aren't nearly as well integrated as a vendor-supplied feature, 5. have to be found and vetted by the user, a process which takes time, and 6. by the time you actually install enough software to match all of OS X's built-in features, Windows will be even more bloated and slow.
Even if we do accept "freely available", let's go through the list of features I first mentioned: I don't know of any software that can let Windows rearrange taskbar icons by drag/drop. Any "freely available" DVD players for Windows XP and earlier are illegal, and therefore don't count. Any indexed search system adds a substantial amount of bloat to Windows. I'm pretty sure IPv6 support isn't available for Windows 2000 at all, free or otherwise. I'm pretty sure there's no software to make Windows support larger icon sizes. And I hear most multiple-desktop implementations for Windows are quite buggy.
So a significant proportion of the features I mention are not "freely available" for Windows.
My examples chosen are valid examples, and you've only tried to disprove a few of them (and I've refuted practically all of your tries), and you admit Windows's inferiority in several places ("Microsoft has chosen to make this very complicated", "you must save in a different format").
So sure, Windows has "enterprise features" on OS X. But what about stability? Ease of use? Appearance? Virus resistance? You know how whenever Slashdot runs an article talking about whatever new Windows Vista feature, there were always those Linux users who joked "Welcome to 2001"? In general, OS X had those features well before Windows, as well.
The only feature it's been playing "catchup" at is the display system. For pretty much everything else, OS X only hit parity with Windows *2000* at about 10.4/10.5.
[citation needed]
A bash command line (and Unixlike filesystem structure), a web browser that's actually standards-compliant (and was the first to pass Acid2), Exposé, a journaled filesystem, built-in support for reading and saving PDFs, built-in support for playing DVDs, and lower system requirements are all things OS X has had since before 10.4, and Windows 7 still doesn't have.
Windows didn't get the ability to rearrange taskbar icons until Windows 7 (8 years after OS X). Windows didn't get built-in indexed search until Windows Vista (4 years after OS X). Windows didn't get IPv6 support until Windows Vista (4 years after OS X). Windows ran everything as root by default until Windows Vista (6 years after OS X). Windows didn't get icons larger than 48x48 until Windows Vista (6 years after OS X).
Examples of features introduced since 10.4 that Windows still doesn't have include multiple desktops, and a bootloader that supports operating systems from more than one vendor.
Mac OS X also has the ability to edit .doc files, which Windows 7 can no longer do with the software that comes with the OS.
And then there's all the little things, like Grapher.
I'll admit the earlier versions of Mac OS X were somewhat flawed, but "worse than Windows 2000" is a pretty serious accusation, and one that requires evidence.
If you're suggesting that Google should stay in China and fight the government for you -- and risk having their in-China management end up in labor camps -- then I'm not the only one asking others to sacrifice for my conscience, or whatever it is of which you're accusing me.
This is the kind of quote that belongs in some sort of history textbook, with the caption "THIS IS WHAT AMERICANS SERIOUSLY BELIEVE".
I mean, if it is. Because I hope this is a joke. If Google management were in any serious danger, I don't think they'd take this long to withdraw from China.
Seriously, "China will send Google management into labor camps" is the stuff of conspiracy theorists. Google's been allowed to do exactly what they're currently doing with no problem, and if they want to, I'm sure the Chinese government will allow them to continue to do so.
If you're asking Google to stay and acquiesce to the Chinese government's demands just so you can have a nicer search engine for a few weeks or months until it becomes worse than useless -- and risk sanctions and perhaps even prosecution from the US government -- then what's Google's incentive, ethically or financially? So that they can do you a very brief favor?
What do you mean by "until it becomes worse than useless"? Other than the censorship (which I note the US, Germany, France, the UK, and many other countries also force Google to do), China's put no additional demands on Google in the last four years. Once they actually do, sure, but let's not withdraw from a country from the "possibility" that they might make demands.
And how do they risk sanctions from the US government? Was that a typo?
(And if you're referring to the hacking attempt, that's neither a demand, nor has there been any substantial evidence that it was caused by the Chinese government, other than the fact that they targeted human rights activists, which might as well be someone trying to frame the Commies.)
That seems to be the part that you're not getting.
Google cannot win (i.e. help people more than Google has in the past).
Google cannot stay even (i.e. help people the same amount as Google has in the past).
Google can only capitulate to evil (i.e. help no one but the Chinese government) or leave (i.e. help the Chinese government).
Google is boxed into helping the Chinese government either way, but one way requires compliance with evil and the other does not.
Man, if only that were true, then it'd be great that Google is pulling out! Too bad it isn't.
Google cannot bring True Democracy (tm) and Complete Freedom (tm) to China. They also can't give everyone a pony. Does that mean they should just take their ball and go home?
Tell me, why can't Google "win"? Why can't Google "stay even"? And how, exactly, is staying in China "capitulating to evil" and "helping no one but the Chinese government"?
The way the situation currently is, Google has two choices.
1. Leave China. This, as you've noted, helps no one but the Chinese government.
2. Stay in China. This gives Chinese citizens a choice, which is never a bad thing (inapplicable exceptions notwithstanding).
Google tells citizens when their search results are censored, which no other search engine does. This is the only situation I know of in which the sentence, "The Chinese government is forcing us to censor this" appears written in Chinese on the internet, without euphemisms. And you think that should go away?
Google also protects the privacy of its data. No one really knows what goes on between the Chinese government and the other search engines, but I'm sure they'll give up server logs and other data without question. Google, on the other hand, is usually quite good about fighting government orders to turn over their data, and they generally make it known when they are being forced to hand over their data.
Google is also a damn good search engine, and if they leave, I'll have to use Bing or Baidu or something.
And you want to give all that up, just so you can feel a bit more self-righteous?
Correction: You don't give up anything. You want other people to give all that up, just so you can feel a bit more self-righteous?
You parrot the old Google party line about why they stayed in China for so long pretty well.
But Google seems to be changing its line, albeit somewhat grudgingly. One might conclude that they were rationalizing the decision to stay where the money was even though they had to knowingly act against their stated values to do it; later found that you get burned when you shake the devil's hand; and now are trying to reconcile that with the fact that really they do still want access to all that money.
One might otherwise conclude that they were doing much good by staying, but the PR problems of the West unexpectedly and hypocritically blaming them were just too much for them to handle.
You seem to be implying that I'm some sort of Google apologist. I'm not. I'm just someone who wants to use Google, but soon won't be able to, since people like you seem to think your right to feel self-righteous outweighs my right to use a quality search engine that tells me when it censors results, and fights the Chinese government to keep as much of its data private as possible.
What an ignorant attitude. Of course human rights abuses are not "A-OK". The first moral responsibility on the matter, though, is to make sure you yourself aren't committing them. Doing what you can to make the world as a whole better - e.g. by opposing those violations you aren't involved with - is important but secondary.
Later in your post you brought up an analogy to a doctor who can't save everyone. In your context, it was a twisted stretch of an analogy; but here it's actually pretty apt, as doctors swear an oath to "first do no harm".
Google staying in China is not like a doctor who can't save everyone; it's like a guy who profits by killing some patients justifying it by pointing to the few he also saves.
Google pulling out of China is like a doctor. He says "first I will do no harm - I will not help China with its censorship efforts even if that means China won't let me operate in its borders"; and then perhaps he tries to save as many as he can. But as you say, he can't save everyone, and we do not hold him morally accountable for the misdeeds of others once he commits to do no harm himself.
See, it doesn't work like that.
Google staying in China is more like a doctor trying a treatment with side effects (aka practically every treatment in existence). "First do no harm" is better rendered as "first do no net harm." If you're helping people more than you're hurting them, it's difficult to argue that you're hurting them in the first place. Google pulling out of China is a doctor saying, "I refuse to give you this life-saving treatment because it might give you a cold."
This is why Good Samaritan laws exist, since you Americans otherwise don't seem to understand that it's impossible to help someone without hurting them in some minor way.
I notice that you still haven't answered my question. Does anyone other than the Chinese government benefit from Google pulling out? You haven't answered it because the answer is "no", and no matter how much hand-waving you do about being "complicit" or whatever, the answer will still be "no".
Is it really worth causing harm to Chinese citizens, just so you can say "I'm not the one doing it"? Google pulling out of China is harming Chinese people, but all you care about is that Google isn't "complicit" in some irrelevant philosophical sense.
Because it's the only realistic alternative to being complicit in human rights abuse. Or were you looking for a non-obvious reason?
And I suppose you're not complicit in human rights abuse at all, because you never buy anything made in China?
Even if you don't, I suppose human rights abuses are A-OK as long as you're not involved?
This is the kind of simplistic black-and-white moral thinking that I am talking about. Are doctors evil, because they fail to save some people, and are thus complicit in their deaths? Then how is Google staying in China evil, simply because they fail to grant complete freedom to Chinese citizens? They grant Chinese citizens better access to information, and inform them when censorship does happen, which I've pointed out earlier is much better than what other search engines do.
It's not unlike tough love. A parent sees his kid's life falling apart because of substance abuse. Then the kid comes to him and asks for money because he is out of a job and can't pay his ellectric bill. In the short term the parent can say, well, I certainly don't want him to die/live on the street/endure whatever immediate hardship, so I'll pay the bill to get him by. But this can easily be a short sighted act that only makes the real problem worse, that is it is enabling. Sometimes we have to crack down and make it clear that we will let the bad effects of a person's acts catch up with him, in the hope that it gets him to reevaluate his choices.
Perhaps that philosophy may work in terms of parenting, but in terms of foreign policy... how is doing something that benefits the Chinese government going to motivate them to "reevaluate [their] choices"?
I'm sick of people writing off all the crappy stuff the Chinese government is doing, just because they are drooling over the money to be made in the Chinese market. Sure google pulling out, by itself, may not cause the government a great deal of difficulty (but make no mistake, it is going to hurt the government, perhaps indirectly: google is a very valuable tool), but if a few more heavy-hitters make a similar choice it might just get the top brass thinking, when they are faced with the choice of being ostracized by the first world and being a little more sensitive to human rights.
Make no mistake, I'm not one of those people. I agree that the Chinese government has done many terrible things (as has many other governments, but let's not get into that). I just don't see how Google's withdrawal will fix anything.
Google is a "very valuable tool" for citizens discontent with the government. For the government, I doubt it serves any useful purpose that no other search engine serves. Again, something the government would celebrate.
The only remotely valid point I see here is that "if a few more heavy-hitters make a similar choice", it would cause problems for the Chinese government. But I don't see how some hypothetical-and-probably-not-happening possibility outweighs all the harm the move is causing directly. Maybe I'm biased because I am a Chinese citizen, and I don't want to lose access to my Gmail account, but I just don't see any good coming out of it.
Okay. I'll bite. Why? How does Google pulling out of China help anyone?
Sitting here, I can't help but notice that most of the people who are supporting Google pulling out of China are people who won't be affected by the move at all.
Tell me, what does depriving Chinese citizens of Google solve? Are you trying to hurt the Chinese government? Google's withdrawal just means more marketshare for Baidu, a domestic search engine that the Chinese government can more easily control - a net win for their government. And Chinese citizens will have less choice in their search engines - at least Google gives a "some search results were removed to comply with local law" message, so users know when their searches are censored. As far as I know, no other search engine does that.
So that's what ends up happening. Google's withdrawal is helping China's government and hurting China's citizens, but since Google's not the one doing it, there's no problem at all. It's flawed thinking like that, that's forcing Google to pull out of the PR disaster that is China. The Americans who support the decision - virtually all of whom are completely unaffected by the change - are patting their backs right now on this supposed triumph of free speech, despite the whole thing being a net loss for democracy and free speech.
What if the situation were reversed? What if Google decided to pull out of the USA unless they stopped censoring their search results? I'm sure if you were faced with a choice between "Google" and "No Google", most of you would choose Google.
Every time the "Google pulling out of China" story comes up, all I see are people who laud the move as a good thing (well, that, and a few sex jokes). Just once, I'd like to hear someone explain why you think it's a good thing.
His exact words were this:
I've long felt that lawyers should be subject to the same outcome as their client. Don't want to get electrocuted, don't represent a murder. Don't want to end up a million dollars in the hole? Don't represent a doctor who's clearly guilty of malpractice.
I've heard lots of ideas for improving the legal system... some of them have been really good, and some of them have been really bad. Of all those, this is the worst idea I've ever.
Even if all it does is prevent a lawyer from simply defending people who are "clearly" guilty (which it doesn't - and which in and of itself is a ridiculous idea - it is impossible by the laws of physics for there to be no doubt whatsoever that someone is guilty), it would still be an extremely bad idea.
The purpose of a lawyer varies depending on legal jurisdiction, but in general, a defense lawyer exists to ensure that someone who is accused of a crime doesn't get screwed over. A lawyer is there to help innocent people convince courts of their innocence, and to make sure a guilty person doesn't get a worse punishment than they deserve. Your proposal undermines both of these.
(This is why the US Constitution guarantees a lawyer wherever necessary, and why public defenders will be provided to people who can't afford their own lawyers.)
Consider the case of someone who is obviously innocent, but accused of a murder. Why should we force someone to risk their life to represent him?
Or even in a hypothetical dreamworld where the legal system is never wrong and no one innocent ever gets convicted: Consider someone who is obviously guilty of a lesser crime, let's say shoplifting, but has been accused of murder. Why should a lawyer have to take jailtime to help make sure that person doesn't get executed?