This means that arguments against intelligient design will now have to show how the "certainty" about evolution is any different from the "certainty" about global warming. Similar issues will come up in arguments for vaccination and other issues where real deaths could follow. Arguments will come up about funding levels at universities and research institutes. Arguments will come up against new initiatives for reducing pollution.
Let's stop roping evolution into it, okay? Evolutionary theory has nothing to do with global warming. There are entire branches of science that function off of evolutionary theory, in these fields, evolution is something that no longer has to be "proved", it is simply used. Evolution happens. It's been proven time and time again. Scientists can watch micro-evolution happen in front of their eyes. We need to stop promoting anti-science as a movement. Maybe science could get it wrong, that's possible. Maybe most scientists could agree that global warming is caused by man and later be proven to be wrong, but that doesn't mean you throw away all the useful information you've learned through scientific theory and start acting like they got it all wrong. The scientific community isn't a unified religious organization, despite religious peoples' attempts to promote it as such.
On the other hand, do I even really care? Am I even on topic anymore? hrmmm...
How about this for an on the other hand? On the other hand, I don't get to decide any issues anyway, and if I were to become a politician the only way I could raise enough money to conceivably have a chance of getting elected would to become one of the pandering retards we elect already who will probably elect Bush to high chauncellor just because the name of the bill is the "national freedom act" and they don't want to be painted in the next election as being tough on "national"s, or "freedom"s and they didn't even bother to read the bill. Everyone who wants to change the world gets elected to the position by becoming someone who will change nothing. And the world rotates.
Instead of asking yourself how do I feel about national IDs, maybe think about something more pleasant, like how great it's going to be when the national government knows everything about your purchasing habits due to their new national ID/Wachovia debit/voting card w/ electrolites (tm), and they can just sell their product lines to you directly through governmentally mailed product notices.
Now they have put out IE7 which is a "me too" solution and will still not keep up with Firefox, but it will be "good enough' so that most people won't be so annoyed that they will go out of their way to educate themselves on their options and find something else.
Not to be nitpicky, but I find that to be quite the opposite. The way the update was pushed through, a lot of people have IE7 that didn't want it because they were used to IE6 (even if it was a piece of crap). One lady in my office started inquiring about different browser choices because she had upgraded to IE7 and hated it. The interface is clunky and it looks completely out of place in Windows XP. People are irritated by the lack of file, edit, etc. menus and confused by the strange look and feel. She asked me what I use, and I told her firefox, she said she'd look into that.
I think you are correct, they do just have to be "good enough". But I think that MS might've outdone itself on some of the new products because they are unlike their past applications enough to be irritating for new users, and power users, who admittedly are probably already looking past Windows, are further put off by its shinier piece of crap feel. End users are very likely to be irritated by the entire screen going to black every time they want to install a new AOL client or something. Maybe this release isn't quite irritating enough for them to go "what else can I do?", but it's getting close. At this rate I'm not so sure MS can survive another Windows release. Maybe it's better they give their users a 7 year adjustment period between releases.
Sadly I fear OS's of the future will be much like OS's of today, at least for the common man. MS still has no incentive to really make OS's better for consumers instead of better for MS and a lot of incentive to make their Windows OS's more and more restrictive. They know their model is slowly being undermined, but they plan to use.Net to effectively create the internet equivalent and lock everyone into one online platform instead. Other companies still have little motivation to invest in the desktop OS market and decreasing motivation to invest in the Server OS market.
You might be right about Microsoft OS's, indeed so. I, for one, tried Vista, even with all of the controversy around it here and in other circles. Vista is essentially a shinier piece of crap. Microsoft has pretty much ceased innovating. I can remember a time when the new version of Windows actually felt like something was going to improve, but nowadays it just feels like they cleaned up the UI and fixed a couple security problems in order to make a flashier, shinier piece of crap to sell you.
The good news is that if this is the case, if the code has become so difficult to maintain that the only thing they can put out is a shinier, more secure piece of crap then the market will eventually eat them alive. People hate IE7 and some started switching to Firefox due to IE6's poor maintenance. If you continue to market products that are uninspiring and have no real useful features that weren't present in the last release, your reputation will fall and people will stop wanting your crap. Everyone seems to think that Microsoft can never fail. Big players lose big all the time when they make mistakes, and Microsoft can fall just like any other company. Vista isn't really bad, it's boring. It's so boring that I wouldn't want to buy a new computer to have it, or upgrade to it. It's so boring that it makes upgrading to it from XP look unnecessary and gaudy. So boring, in fact, that the power users won't use it and the non-power users will be confused by its strange layout and lack of familiar options. It's just different enough to piss the grandfather sect off, and just boring enough to make it seem unworthy of upgrading your computer. Everything may be Vista in a few years because people will buy new computers with it on there, but I suspect at least somewhat of a backlash.
Big players come and go. Yes, MS might be able to run dry for a few years, but if they keep releasing seriously disappointing OS's, people will eventually catch on and go to Mac or something.
I don't want access to proprietary software and codecs. I run Linux to use free software. I want open codecs, and GPL'd DVD player software et. al.
That's great, but unfortunately attempting to overthrow Microsoft in the market, if that's the goal for an OS maker or distro company (like it is for Ubuntu) involves actually getting some work done. People aren't going to settle for not being able to play DVDs and MP3s on their newly purchased computer with Linux, they expect things to work. If Linux has any chance of overtaking MS ever (which some could argue that it doesn't) the best strategy is to get these things working now, and perhaps transition people into open formats in years to come. Having people on a proprietary OS does nothing to help the cause of open source software, and demanding what you will never receive when you have no market share is not an effective strategy. If we want to change the game, we have to at least get on the court and compromise to some of their rules for the time being. After we've been playing maybe then we can demand changes.
Think about it, a minor player with.5% of the market comes in and tells you "you have to give me this that and that" all of which will potentially cost you a lot of money. As a businessman do you:
A) Agree with their requirements to appease.5% of the market and potentially lose 10% (just a random number) of your company's revenue in a market.
B) Tell them to screw off.
I'm betting you'd choose B if you are a good businessman. And that's the problem. You can't tell everyone you'll take your ball and go home if they don't play how you like when you don't own the ball. End users don't care about OSS or proprietary, they care that they can't watch their DVD of season 1 of oww my balls on their new computer, while Billy with the Windows PC next door can. Defeat those problems and maybe you have a chance with pre-installs.
I can really see why they feel slighted - after all, collection of samples for the WHO is not a process without its costs and hazards. It's not like they're collecting bread mold or something.
What are you talking about? Collecting samples for the Who is a bargain, the best they've ever had!
Some people say that teaching Linux in schools is a bad thing as the commerical world is all Microsoft on the desktop. That's total rubbish too, people should not be taught 'Word' they should be taught general word processing skills and preferably be exposed to a few alternative apps so they don't think there's only one way to do it. Versions of Microsoft applications change the UI between versions so even if they do end up working at a Microsoft shop they'll adapt better to the changing UI's between versions. Also a better all round education will open up alternatives to businesses, if the staff are better trained then switching to alternatives will be easier, it can save the economy a fortune in the future.
I honestly think this is a very good point. The fact of the matter is that the way we instruct computers now is fundamentally flawed. Instead of teaching conceptually how to perform operations with a computer, teachers often instruct students to double-click there and click there, hit F3 and whatever. Computer education should be about education of concept. The ability to adapt from one interface to another is the important ability, not the ability to go through a set of instructions. I had often been worried that if I didn't run Windows I would fall behind in the interface and not be of much use in tech support. The opposite is really true. The more you learn different ways to use different interfaces the more commonality you ultimately see, the better you understand the concepts and the better able you are to diagnose and solve problems of any nature, on any OS.
It's probably harder to teach concepts than it is to teach point here and click that, but I believe it's essential for computer education. Kids nowadays are already getting interface education free of charge, as most cell phones have different interfaces from one another and portable devices tend to differ in interface as well. The fact that not everyone owns one type of portable and one type of cell phone or camera gives them a chance to explore doing the same tasks with different "menu options" meaning the same thing. The older folks who aren't used to using interfaces are quickly finding themselves behind the ball.
Fortunately, I'm young enough to keep up. If you have a general idea how certain devices *should* work and options they *should* have, you can often diagnose problems with the more sophisticated printing equipment, applications, just about any OS or portable device. People need to learn the concepts of how things work instead of just finding a windows keyboard shortcut to launch the control panel.
Re:The Quantity of the Eyes Isn't Always The Issue
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Security — Open Vs. Closed
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Now, those highly trained eyes may be looking at the open source code, or they may not. All I'm saying is that the quote "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" is not particularly accurate.
I think, however, the "open source is more secure" argument tends to follow the idea that behind the scenes, the code under closed source applications tends to be generally faulty, or, at least, Windows code in particular. There could very well be many exploits that, given the code for MS Vista, amateur programmers could easily pick out, simply because the code base is so vast and the amount of people who have full access to it so few.
It's just like if I write my own little closed source app, at first it may appear to be flawless to me because I am the only one seeing the code. But I might code in an inherently buggy way that would be easily picked up by another set of eyes. Then, as little problems flood in from end users, instead of fixing my coding methodology, I make little fixes to the code that are basically workarounds around perhaps solving a bigger problem that would require more time (something more fundamental to the way the program is structured). As an effect, the "patches" become more and more around fixing faults than providing the functionality intended in the first place. Whereas with open source, someone might've already just forked my project and coded the idea using different data structures or in a largely more efficient way.
It's not to say that I couldn't be flawless, but, the odds decrease when nobody can see the results. Using closed source software is like running a car without access to the engine. You see things going wrong, but as far as why and how they are happening, if they are huge problems or only small ones, you can't determine without diving into the actual car's components directly. Closed source doesn't allow this. It's not just the fact that there are multiple eyes, then, it's the fact that those eyes are outside the original coder, potentially, sometimes even being the people having the problems themselves. It takes the "how do we recreate the bug?" discussion out, and oftentimes a sufficient end user can not only support his/herself, but improve the codebase.
Honestly, seems like a better approach. The hard thing is you can't know which is more secure really. But in practice, let's be honest, Linux and OSS get fixed more quickly if they are a widely used project in the OSS community than MS products and "patch tuesday" where they schedule patch releases and recommend strange workarounds for existing security breaches.
You don't need to open a door when a sledgehammer will get you through pretty much any wall. With a 10lb sledge with a 3+ foot handle, you can go through pretty much any siding including fake rock, wood planks, plywood siding, you name it.
Please save the details of your stalking habits for the arraignment.
In an astonishing move, Mr. Gates has rejected the proposal!
I don't find that very astonishing as I have a very dim view of MS as an organization, especially when it comes to piracy. God knows nothing is worse than pirating a bit of software, even if you aren't aware that you were doing it. But check this out:
"Mr. Ponosov's case is a criminal case and as such was initiated and investigated by the public prosecutor's office in Russia," said Microsoft, whose European operations are based in Paris. "We are sure that the Russian courts will make a fair decision."
The company added: "We do respect the Russian government's position on the importance of protecting intellectual property rights."
That I find a little bit more shocking. They respect the position of throwing a man in jail for running something he probably didn't even know was pirated. Look for MS to back any talk of intellectual property "infringement" being declared a criminal offense based on this stance. Only a matter of time before they will be throwing people in jail for listening to the new Britney Spears without an Apple Itunes or Microsoft Zune (tm) license.
Things like this make me happy that I'm going to soon be completely on the right side of openness. After I rescue my data to an external drive I'm going to turn from a former Windows "pirate" to a full-fledged Linux user, who knows that software piracy isn't stealing, especially when you CAN get it for free. HD-DVDs or not, I'm Linux from here on out.
When I think of Sun, I think of reliable, mission critical, just like the article says...Sun has this big business image that "if you want it to run, you should be using Sun", but it also comes with a steeper learning curve. Whereas Linux's image is building and linux has an attitude like "anything you can do, i can do better, and if i can't yet, i will soon" and also comes with less of a learning curve...however still a lot more of a curve than your run of the mill windows server guy would like, I've met so many bleeding heart MS guys that would use/try Linux if they didn't have a misconception that it is infinatley harder than windows...
I think there's a stigma attached to Linux within Windows users aware of it. In all honest truth, I think it might be the MS FUD, but either way, when you are running Windows you get the impression from all angles that Linux is going to be infinitely hard to learn, is only for the most hardcore of hackers and that it doesn't support anything in the hardware department. All things obviously false.
Everyone seems to be complaining about the company involved, but I see this as a revolutionary development. The problem I've always had with tiny devices is tiny screens. It's great to have the ability to surf the web on your phone, but why bother when you got a 1"x1" little screen and have to squint the whole time. Watching movies on a 1.5"LCD just isn't really that attractive. With something like this applied more in the industry you could fold out your display when you are sitting about, fold it up when you need to move and never miss a step. Could be a great development for lots of mobile uses. Even if this model and company don't pan out, as long as the product makes it to market and wows a couple of people, it could indicate a trend that could expand into further possibilities, which is always a good thing.
but why on earth didn't you just image your system - especially before installing a Beta OS over everything?
100gb is a lot to image when you only have the one drive. I figured it would be okay because it was partitioned. And it would've been, had I had the necessary options to configure the computer the way I wanted.
I'm gonna run all of this data externally from now on and I'm migrating to linux. Lesson learned.
That's not enough, man. If you respect yourself, you have to stop using Windows. Do it right now. Dual boot Kubuntu or whatever, move all your files across, convert them to OpenOffice.org, give up those games you play which only run on Windows, and start using Linux.
You can setup a virtual Windows machine for any program you absolutely can't stop using at this stage. Run Wine or Cedega for games. Other things in the virtual environment.
Actually, as of last night that is what I decided to do. My computer was a media center running as a DVR for my TV as well, and I'm not sure I'll be able to replace this functionality without purchasing other hardware, but I think it's worth it to migrate to linux anyway. I'm done with Windows. That's the last time I almost have data loss due to software vendor issues, and the last time I'm told what I can do with my computer versus the other way around. I'm recovering my data and moving it all to linux.
but do you think such a project would work here as well? If so, what software would you want to see loaded up? A free Windows Vista would be cool! *Ahem*
Maybe that would be cool if you wanted to slow down your computer and have the whole screen flash back because the system has an important message to tell you: limewire would like access to the internet.
Vista takes your 2007 computer and turns it into the slowrunning 1998 one it was before you spent 2000 on it. Windows Vista: The Oww is Now. Downgrade today!
(I'd just like to say I know all of this from personal experience, and my ass still kind of hurts from the attempt.)
Vista is stealing the next generation of hardware from us.
Doubtful, I for one, in my experience testing Vista, was not inspired. I was so not inspired, in fact, that I tried to go back to windows XP only to find OEMs no longer include working system reinstall disks, and that essentially if I want to get my system back to the way it was I have to pay the Gateway mafia their payola or download an illegal version of Windows and put my legal key in. My response is that I'm sick of paying for dinner and being served cowshit, while they give the bums eating out of the garbage my meal. If I was running pirated Windows to begin with, I would've never had a problem. My problem, essentially, is attempting to buy a Windows PC with Windows installed and think I actually have the ability to run the OS and recover it should I have any errors or difficulties.
I'm going to make sure what I buy from now on is Linux compatible. I've had enough of this "you don't really own anything" culture. DRM will lose out once customers finally realize how much they are being screwed by the big houses. And it won't take that long for that to happen, because as the DRM gets more complicated, the amount of technical difficulties with it will increase, and people will begin to wonder why HD-DVD doesn't work any better than DVD and won't work on anything, while their DVDs will. Resulting in nobody buying into it.
Computing has been free for far too long and there are too many clever hackers involved for this crap to go down now. We've become too smart, and now we'll just move around instead. I don't give a shit if I can't watch HD-DVDs. I won't. I'd rather have freedom than a hi-def version of Speed II: Bladder Control.
This is awesome, it looks like the 'inventor' of the electric slide is actually serious but no matter ; we need something this ridiculous for the courts to go, "oh wait, maybe that was retarded of us to pass that ridiculous legislation in the first place".
Except the courts didn't pass it. Stop before you start Shrug in on a rant about "activist judges."
I met some really interesting people by introducing them to my friends like, "hey everybody, this is my old friend Veronica, she once punched a homeless guy who said her shoes were ugly." If the random girl I'm referring to as "Veronica" is an interesting person, she'll almost always run with it and I met someone fun. If not, she runs for the door or her boyfriend and I haven't wasted 5 minutes repeating the same boring conversation about music.
Ah, a man after my own. I wanna start up a surrealist greeting card company where nobody knows what the hell the jokes are about.
outside: "You know what the best part about getting older is?"
I hate shit like this. Question: Do you want to know how to make friends, or do you want to make friends? Because when you start to look for the secret procedure behind friendship, you start looking at people as if they were abstract personalities, with some quanitifiable set of properties, and you stop looking at them as human beings. And this attitude can prevent you from actually connecting with them. It's completely absurd. Not everything is meant to be turned into cold science.
Great point. I've noticed that the best way to meet people and get to know them is to just be a human being yourself and stop analyzing the situation or worrying about what the right thing to say is. If you often say "the wrong thing" to a person you are trying to be friends with naturally after you've had the "hey what type of music do you like" banter, you are less likely to really want to continue a relationship with them anyway. Best thing to do is say what you like most of the time. Works for most non-serial murderers. Unless you are thinking about very strange things all day, most people will be able to relate to what you want to talk about. Sometimes if even if you talk about strange things people will dig it because it's different. Instead of being a drone everywhere you go, if you just genuinely interact with your environment and the people around you, you will make more friends and have more conversations than you know how to deal with.
there's no evil there. plenty of stupidity,but no evil
That stupidity is enough reason. That's my argument. Every layer of bureaucratic bullshit you go through subjects you to more and more of this stupidity. Federal ID cards are going to be worse than state ID cards, and once companies and services start requiring them you'll be forced to undergo the anal cavity search they require for you to get one. Kind of like passports. Yet, somehow, the terrorists will still be able to make fake ones just fine, and no crime really prevented. Just another day at the office.
The ability does exist there for better checking. The idea that someone might make you scan a card that could be of 50 inconsistent types for travel between states is a little far-fetched. Federalize IDs, install RFs in them and suddenly this can happen whenever they need without even having to interrupt your progress, or have you notice.
They installed surveillance cameras in downtown Philadelphia to "catch criminals", people that live in NYC are caught on camera several times a day, networks get more centralized and privacy will eventually cease to exist. Whether or not people will eventually have access to this information isn't I guess the real concern, because that's more of a when then a will they or won't they thing. I guess that the real concern is when they do get this information, do you want them to have the rights to go with it? Do you want them to be legally allowed to snoop on your movements, and trust in their motives? That they are only doing it to protect against terrorism?
Every step taken to fight against the federalization of this country and the compilation of its databases into something that could be utilized to severely curtail our liberties is a good one, even if it only results in some delay of these actions.
In the end of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams, a possible question to get the answer "forty-two" is presented: "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?" Of course, the answer is deliberately wrong, creating a humorous effect - if the calculation is carried out in base 10. People who were trying to find a deeper meaning in the passage soon noticed that in base 13, 6 × 9 is actually 42 (as 4 × 13 + 2 = 54). When confronted with this, the author stated that it was a mere coincidence, and that "Nobody writes jokes in base 13 [...] I may be a pretty sad person, but I don't make jokes in base 13." See also The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Not really that ironic. It's actually ironic that a population smart enough to know about different base systems of numerics would waste time figuring this out and making the backward implication of intention. Who the hell uses base 13 anyway?
of course maine is fighting the model: it undermines their entrenched authority. furthermore, fighting the national id from maine's point of view then has nothing to do with championing privacy rights for individuals, its all about championing the state of maine and its concerns. why does anyone think that what maine is fighting for has anything to do with the fight for privacy? its all about states versus nation, not individuals versus government
Which is exactly the point. There's a reason why this country isn't formally named "America" you know, it's named "the United States of America," want to know what that reason is? Because it's a federation of states, not one large country with nationwide laws and legislation for everything. States rights used to be more important, before federal laws seemed to get all the press and everyone gathered around to support the President's new education bill, even though the fact remains that states are what provide the majority of the funding for schools.
The idea is simple really, each state is its own ruling area as far as laws go for the most part. Having a national ID or especially having a national drivers license provides the ability for the federal government to not only snoop on, but also regulate intrastate commerce. This is exactly what the federal government shouldn't be handling.
Everyone seems to be pushing this new federalism, and they see no need for locality of measures, but the truth is that this country is huge and varied. Different laws are needed for different places in the land, and different measures must be taken in different states because they are more likely to know what to do in their own neck of the woods. Federal law should be less important than state law, which should be less important than local law, because when it comes right down to it, each level of abstraction provides a new level of bureaucracy and bullshit. Go ahead, give them the national id, make it mandatory. But you can blame yourself when your neighbor gets pulled over for carrying "illegal fireworks" because he traveled down south and they scanned his id as he passed state borders, and found the fireworks on a "random" search. Just one more step toward a police state...all 50 states.
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Let's stop roping evolution into it, okay? Evolutionary theory has nothing to do with global warming. There are entire branches of science that function off of evolutionary theory, in these fields, evolution is something that no longer has to be "proved", it is simply used. Evolution happens. It's been proven time and time again. Scientists can watch micro-evolution happen in front of their eyes. We need to stop promoting anti-science as a movement. Maybe science could get it wrong, that's possible. Maybe most scientists could agree that global warming is caused by man and later be proven to be wrong, but that doesn't mean you throw away all the useful information you've learned through scientific theory and start acting like they got it all wrong. The scientific community isn't a unified religious organization, despite religious peoples' attempts to promote it as such.
How about this for an on the other hand? On the other hand, I don't get to decide any issues anyway, and if I were to become a politician the only way I could raise enough money to conceivably have a chance of getting elected would to become one of the pandering retards we elect already who will probably elect Bush to high chauncellor just because the name of the bill is the "national freedom act" and they don't want to be painted in the next election as being tough on "national"s, or "freedom"s and they didn't even bother to read the bill. Everyone who wants to change the world gets elected to the position by becoming someone who will change nothing. And the world rotates.
Instead of asking yourself how do I feel about national IDs, maybe think about something more pleasant, like how great it's going to be when the national government knows everything about your purchasing habits due to their new national ID/Wachovia debit/voting card w/ electrolites (tm), and they can just sell their product lines to you directly through governmentally mailed product notices.
Not to be nitpicky, but I find that to be quite the opposite. The way the update was pushed through, a lot of people have IE7 that didn't want it because they were used to IE6 (even if it was a piece of crap). One lady in my office started inquiring about different browser choices because she had upgraded to IE7 and hated it. The interface is clunky and it looks completely out of place in Windows XP. People are irritated by the lack of file, edit, etc. menus and confused by the strange look and feel. She asked me what I use, and I told her firefox, she said she'd look into that.
I think you are correct, they do just have to be "good enough". But I think that MS might've outdone itself on some of the new products because they are unlike their past applications enough to be irritating for new users, and power users, who admittedly are probably already looking past Windows, are further put off by its shinier piece of crap feel. End users are very likely to be irritated by the entire screen going to black every time they want to install a new AOL client or something. Maybe this release isn't quite irritating enough for them to go "what else can I do?", but it's getting close. At this rate I'm not so sure MS can survive another Windows release. Maybe it's better they give their users a 7 year adjustment period between releases.
You might be right about Microsoft OS's, indeed so. I, for one, tried Vista, even with all of the controversy around it here and in other circles. Vista is essentially a shinier piece of crap. Microsoft has pretty much ceased innovating. I can remember a time when the new version of Windows actually felt like something was going to improve, but nowadays it just feels like they cleaned up the UI and fixed a couple security problems in order to make a flashier, shinier piece of crap to sell you.
The good news is that if this is the case, if the code has become so difficult to maintain that the only thing they can put out is a shinier, more secure piece of crap then the market will eventually eat them alive. People hate IE7 and some started switching to Firefox due to IE6's poor maintenance. If you continue to market products that are uninspiring and have no real useful features that weren't present in the last release, your reputation will fall and people will stop wanting your crap. Everyone seems to think that Microsoft can never fail. Big players lose big all the time when they make mistakes, and Microsoft can fall just like any other company. Vista isn't really bad, it's boring. It's so boring that I wouldn't want to buy a new computer to have it, or upgrade to it. It's so boring that it makes upgrading to it from XP look unnecessary and gaudy. So boring, in fact, that the power users won't use it and the non-power users will be confused by its strange layout and lack of familiar options. It's just different enough to piss the grandfather sect off, and just boring enough to make it seem unworthy of upgrading your computer. Everything may be Vista in a few years because people will buy new computers with it on there, but I suspect at least somewhat of a backlash.
Big players come and go. Yes, MS might be able to run dry for a few years, but if they keep releasing seriously disappointing OS's, people will eventually catch on and go to Mac or something.
That's great, but unfortunately attempting to overthrow Microsoft in the market, if that's the goal for an OS maker or distro company (like it is for Ubuntu) involves actually getting some work done. People aren't going to settle for not being able to play DVDs and MP3s on their newly purchased computer with Linux, they expect things to work. If Linux has any chance of overtaking MS ever (which some could argue that it doesn't) the best strategy is to get these things working now, and perhaps transition people into open formats in years to come. Having people on a proprietary OS does nothing to help the cause of open source software, and demanding what you will never receive when you have no market share is not an effective strategy. If we want to change the game, we have to at least get on the court and compromise to some of their rules for the time being. After we've been playing maybe then we can demand changes.
Think about it, a minor player with .5% of the market comes in and tells you "you have to give me this that and that" all of which will potentially cost you a lot of money. As a businessman do you:
I'm betting you'd choose B if you are a good businessman. And that's the problem. You can't tell everyone you'll take your ball and go home if they don't play how you like when you don't own the ball. End users don't care about OSS or proprietary, they care that they can't watch their DVD of season 1 of oww my balls on their new computer, while Billy with the Windows PC next door can. Defeat those problems and maybe you have a chance with pre-installs.
What are you talking about? Collecting samples for the Who is a bargain, the best they've ever had!
I honestly think this is a very good point. The fact of the matter is that the way we instruct computers now is fundamentally flawed. Instead of teaching conceptually how to perform operations with a computer, teachers often instruct students to double-click there and click there, hit F3 and whatever. Computer education should be about education of concept. The ability to adapt from one interface to another is the important ability, not the ability to go through a set of instructions. I had often been worried that if I didn't run Windows I would fall behind in the interface and not be of much use in tech support. The opposite is really true. The more you learn different ways to use different interfaces the more commonality you ultimately see, the better you understand the concepts and the better able you are to diagnose and solve problems of any nature, on any OS.
It's probably harder to teach concepts than it is to teach point here and click that, but I believe it's essential for computer education. Kids nowadays are already getting interface education free of charge, as most cell phones have different interfaces from one another and portable devices tend to differ in interface as well. The fact that not everyone owns one type of portable and one type of cell phone or camera gives them a chance to explore doing the same tasks with different "menu options" meaning the same thing. The older folks who aren't used to using interfaces are quickly finding themselves behind the ball.
Fortunately, I'm young enough to keep up. If you have a general idea how certain devices *should* work and options they *should* have, you can often diagnose problems with the more sophisticated printing equipment, applications, just about any OS or portable device. People need to learn the concepts of how things work instead of just finding a windows keyboard shortcut to launch the control panel.
I think, however, the "open source is more secure" argument tends to follow the idea that behind the scenes, the code under closed source applications tends to be generally faulty, or, at least, Windows code in particular. There could very well be many exploits that, given the code for MS Vista, amateur programmers could easily pick out, simply because the code base is so vast and the amount of people who have full access to it so few.
It's just like if I write my own little closed source app, at first it may appear to be flawless to me because I am the only one seeing the code. But I might code in an inherently buggy way that would be easily picked up by another set of eyes. Then, as little problems flood in from end users, instead of fixing my coding methodology, I make little fixes to the code that are basically workarounds around perhaps solving a bigger problem that would require more time (something more fundamental to the way the program is structured). As an effect, the "patches" become more and more around fixing faults than providing the functionality intended in the first place. Whereas with open source, someone might've already just forked my project and coded the idea using different data structures or in a largely more efficient way.
It's not to say that I couldn't be flawless, but, the odds decrease when nobody can see the results. Using closed source software is like running a car without access to the engine. You see things going wrong, but as far as why and how they are happening, if they are huge problems or only small ones, you can't determine without diving into the actual car's components directly. Closed source doesn't allow this. It's not just the fact that there are multiple eyes, then, it's the fact that those eyes are outside the original coder, potentially, sometimes even being the people having the problems themselves. It takes the "how do we recreate the bug?" discussion out, and oftentimes a sufficient end user can not only support his/herself, but improve the codebase.
Honestly, seems like a better approach. The hard thing is you can't know which is more secure really. But in practice, let's be honest, Linux and OSS get fixed more quickly if they are a widely used project in the OSS community than MS products and "patch tuesday" where they schedule patch releases and recommend strange workarounds for existing security breaches.
Oh come on, that's the only place you need privacy. Or else the terrorists win, right?
Yep, plenty of room to build a moat.
Please save the details of your stalking habits for the arraignment.
I don't find that very astonishing as I have a very dim view of MS as an organization, especially when it comes to piracy. God knows nothing is worse than pirating a bit of software, even if you aren't aware that you were doing it. But check this out:
That I find a little bit more shocking. They respect the position of throwing a man in jail for running something he probably didn't even know was pirated. Look for MS to back any talk of intellectual property "infringement" being declared a criminal offense based on this stance. Only a matter of time before they will be throwing people in jail for listening to the new Britney Spears without an Apple Itunes or Microsoft Zune (tm) license.
Things like this make me happy that I'm going to soon be completely on the right side of openness. After I rescue my data to an external drive I'm going to turn from a former Windows "pirate" to a full-fledged Linux user, who knows that software piracy isn't stealing, especially when you CAN get it for free. HD-DVDs or not, I'm Linux from here on out.
I think there's a stigma attached to Linux within Windows users aware of it. In all honest truth, I think it might be the MS FUD, but either way, when you are running Windows you get the impression from all angles that Linux is going to be infinitely hard to learn, is only for the most hardcore of hackers and that it doesn't support anything in the hardware department. All things obviously false.
Everyone seems to be complaining about the company involved, but I see this as a revolutionary development. The problem I've always had with tiny devices is tiny screens. It's great to have the ability to surf the web on your phone, but why bother when you got a 1"x1" little screen and have to squint the whole time. Watching movies on a 1.5"LCD just isn't really that attractive. With something like this applied more in the industry you could fold out your display when you are sitting about, fold it up when you need to move and never miss a step. Could be a great development for lots of mobile uses. Even if this model and company don't pan out, as long as the product makes it to market and wows a couple of people, it could indicate a trend that could expand into further possibilities, which is always a good thing.
100gb is a lot to image when you only have the one drive. I figured it would be okay because it was partitioned. And it would've been, had I had the necessary options to configure the computer the way I wanted.
I'm gonna run all of this data externally from now on and I'm migrating to linux. Lesson learned.
Actually, as of last night that is what I decided to do. My computer was a media center running as a DVR for my TV as well, and I'm not sure I'll be able to replace this functionality without purchasing other hardware, but I think it's worth it to migrate to linux anyway. I'm done with Windows. That's the last time I almost have data loss due to software vendor issues, and the last time I'm told what I can do with my computer versus the other way around. I'm recovering my data and moving it all to linux.
Maybe that would be cool if you wanted to slow down your computer and have the whole screen flash back because the system has an important message to tell you: limewire would like access to the internet.
Vista takes your 2007 computer and turns it into the slowrunning 1998 one it was before you spent 2000 on it. Windows Vista: The Oww is Now. Downgrade today!
(I'd just like to say I know all of this from personal experience, and my ass still kind of hurts from the attempt.)
Yep, the expression "jump the shark" jumped the couch when Tom Cruise jumped the couch. Now we say jump the couch!
Doubtful, I for one, in my experience testing Vista, was not inspired. I was so not inspired, in fact, that I tried to go back to windows XP only to find OEMs no longer include working system reinstall disks, and that essentially if I want to get my system back to the way it was I have to pay the Gateway mafia their payola or download an illegal version of Windows and put my legal key in. My response is that I'm sick of paying for dinner and being served cowshit, while they give the bums eating out of the garbage my meal. If I was running pirated Windows to begin with, I would've never had a problem. My problem, essentially, is attempting to buy a Windows PC with Windows installed and think I actually have the ability to run the OS and recover it should I have any errors or difficulties.
I'm going to make sure what I buy from now on is Linux compatible. I've had enough of this "you don't really own anything" culture. DRM will lose out once customers finally realize how much they are being screwed by the big houses. And it won't take that long for that to happen, because as the DRM gets more complicated, the amount of technical difficulties with it will increase, and people will begin to wonder why HD-DVD doesn't work any better than DVD and won't work on anything, while their DVDs will. Resulting in nobody buying into it.
Computing has been free for far too long and there are too many clever hackers involved for this crap to go down now. We've become too smart, and now we'll just move around instead. I don't give a shit if I can't watch HD-DVDs. I won't. I'd rather have freedom than a hi-def version of Speed II: Bladder Control.
Except the courts didn't pass it. Stop before you start Shrug in on a rant about "activist judges."
Ah, a man after my own. I wanna start up a surrealist greeting card company where nobody knows what the hell the jokes are about.
outside: "You know what the best part about getting older is?"
inside: "Crackers...Happy birthday!"
Great point. I've noticed that the best way to meet people and get to know them is to just be a human being yourself and stop analyzing the situation or worrying about what the right thing to say is. If you often say "the wrong thing" to a person you are trying to be friends with naturally after you've had the "hey what type of music do you like" banter, you are less likely to really want to continue a relationship with them anyway. Best thing to do is say what you like most of the time. Works for most non-serial murderers. Unless you are thinking about very strange things all day, most people will be able to relate to what you want to talk about. Sometimes if even if you talk about strange things people will dig it because it's different. Instead of being a drone everywhere you go, if you just genuinely interact with your environment and the people around you, you will make more friends and have more conversations than you know how to deal with.
That stupidity is enough reason. That's my argument. Every layer of bureaucratic bullshit you go through subjects you to more and more of this stupidity. Federal ID cards are going to be worse than state ID cards, and once companies and services start requiring them you'll be forced to undergo the anal cavity search they require for you to get one. Kind of like passports. Yet, somehow, the terrorists will still be able to make fake ones just fine, and no crime really prevented. Just another day at the office.
The ability does exist there for better checking. The idea that someone might make you scan a card that could be of 50 inconsistent types for travel between states is a little far-fetched. Federalize IDs, install RFs in them and suddenly this can happen whenever they need without even having to interrupt your progress, or have you notice.
They installed surveillance cameras in downtown Philadelphia to "catch criminals", people that live in NYC are caught on camera several times a day, networks get more centralized and privacy will eventually cease to exist. Whether or not people will eventually have access to this information isn't I guess the real concern, because that's more of a when then a will they or won't they thing. I guess that the real concern is when they do get this information, do you want them to have the rights to go with it? Do you want them to be legally allowed to snoop on your movements, and trust in their motives? That they are only doing it to protect against terrorism?
Every step taken to fight against the federalization of this country and the compilation of its databases into something that could be utilized to severely curtail our liberties is a good one, even if it only results in some delay of these actions.
Not really that ironic. It's actually ironic that a population smart enough to know about different base systems of numerics would waste time figuring this out and making the backward implication of intention. Who the hell uses base 13 anyway?
Which is exactly the point. There's a reason why this country isn't formally named "America" you know, it's named "the United States of America," want to know what that reason is? Because it's a federation of states, not one large country with nationwide laws and legislation for everything. States rights used to be more important, before federal laws seemed to get all the press and everyone gathered around to support the President's new education bill, even though the fact remains that states are what provide the majority of the funding for schools.
The idea is simple really, each state is its own ruling area as far as laws go for the most part. Having a national ID or especially having a national drivers license provides the ability for the federal government to not only snoop on, but also regulate intrastate commerce. This is exactly what the federal government shouldn't be handling.
Everyone seems to be pushing this new federalism, and they see no need for locality of measures, but the truth is that this country is huge and varied. Different laws are needed for different places in the land, and different measures must be taken in different states because they are more likely to know what to do in their own neck of the woods. Federal law should be less important than state law, which should be less important than local law, because when it comes right down to it, each level of abstraction provides a new level of bureaucracy and bullshit. Go ahead, give them the national id, make it mandatory. But you can blame yourself when your neighbor gets pulled over for carrying "illegal fireworks" because he traveled down south and they scanned his id as he passed state borders, and found the fireworks on a "random" search. Just one more step toward a police state...all 50 states.