These three are irrelevant, because a picture of the driver is included with the ticket in the mail. If you don't look like the picture, then it's pretty easy to contest it.
I don't know about where you live, but this is not the case in Atlanta. My beloved Volvo recently died so my stepfather was nice enough to loan me his car for a week while I shopped around. I apparently ran* a red light in his car, and the ticket ended up going to him. The picture was only of the car, from the rear, without any way to see who was driving it. He had to get a notarized letter saying he was not the driver, and go through a bunch of idiotic paperwork, to get the ticket transferred to me. Of course, we're friendly, reasonable sorts, so this was not an issue, but what if I turned around and claimed that no, I was not the driver either? The camera itself has no way of determining who is telling the truth, but the state sure as hell isn't going to just drop the matter.
Furthermore, the issue of "you have no accuser to face in court" is absolutely correct. Many judges agree. You can't just say "Well, it's on camera," because all I see in the picture is the back of a car, which may or may not be driven by me, and in some of these pictures, depending on camera placement, you can't even tell where the picture was taken.
Even if my face is clearly identifiable in the picture, it's still not taking into account mitigating circumstances which a cop might notice but the camera won't. Maybe I saw some lunatic approaching from the rear at 50mph and wasn't slowing down, and decided that getting out of his way would be a really great idea. Or, less dramatically, maybe it's four in the morning, with visibility for miles and nobody around, and I've been stuck at the same red light for six minutes for no reason. I've done that, got pulled over, and the cop let me go because he realised it was absurd. I've seen judges in traffic court let infractions like that slide with similar excuses. A camera would not have been so forgiving.
4. Because rear-end collisions increase at intersections with red-light cameras?
Your requested citation, sir. It seems rather obvious anyway -- if you instill into people the fear that they are going to get ticketed, they're going to be a lot more stompy on that brake pedal if there is even the slightest chance they won't clear the intersection. And like it or not, people follow too closely, and do not expect the guy in front of them to suddenly hit the anchors. Maybe the accident will be the fault of the guy in back, but that doesn't chance the fact that an accident occured. The cameras and laws just ignore the mechanical realities of the situation.
In general drivers are not suicidal and will not deliberately run red lights. If there's a problem at a certain intersection with many drivers blowing through the light at the last second, maybe the answer is to adjust the damn timing, not try to profit from it.
* I had pulled out into the intersection to make a left turn, the light changed, so I went. Apparently the state would rather I just sit there in the intersection like a jackass.:P
I dunno, dude. My sister lives in Israel and her laptop recently broke, so I offered to send her a new one as they are insanely expensive there and I had an old HP nx7400 lying around. What I did not have was a Windows disc of any kind, so I put Ubuntu on it for her. It installed in forty minutes with all the drivers working properly, including video, ethernet, wireless, and sound -- four things I've never seen work properly out of the box on any Windows install.
In Windows I always have to fuck around for an hour hunting down drivers, with a secondary computer, and looking up the specs on the computer to find out what hardware it has cause Windows sure ain't gonna tell me ("Unknown Device" isn't helpful, guys).
To be nice I loaded her computer up with some mp3s. I did this by using a free USB drive I got as a promotional item from the Camel girls that come round to clubs and bars hawking cigarettes. It's a cheap little half-gig piece of junk, and worked fine.
She's using this machine on a daily basis now, and having no problems. Her random-ass Brother printer worked when she plugged it in. I don't have to get calls from her every week about how her computer is "running slow" because of all the crapware she's downloaded. I don't have to deal with making sure her virus scanner is updated, and whether or not it even works (cause we all know they really don't). And once I showed her where Synaptic was she was fine with using that to get new programs -- and *I* don't have to worry about her downloading random, untrusted executables from god-knows-where on the web.
I don't know about TV tuners so I can't comment. What I do know is that my sister knows absolutely nothing about computers and is having zero problems using Ubuntu as her day-to-day OS, on a completely random computer I had lying around, with whatever completely random hardware she has lying around (her printers and USB sticks).
That's great, but it wasn't there when I first tried Chrome. They had one chance to make a good first impression, and they completely blew it.
This is not the time to list all my other complaints with how awful Chrome was, but I have a lengthly list. I'm glad they finally took care of this -- which appears to be hidden in places no "user" would ever think to check -- but it's a drop in the in their ocean of craptackiness.
As it happens I loathe Chrome and that is, indeed, one of the reasons. *I* will decide why I opened a new tab, thankyouverymuch. I do *not* need some horrible algorithm wasting time trying (and failing) to figure out what I wanted to do. With Chrome, I also do not need that stuff displayed to any fool who happens to walk by at that moment. I find nothing useful about that "feature".
Indeed, they're not hard to find, because every time you open a tab, IE is up in your face about how you can use ACCELERATORS and WEB SLICES and whatever else. But I still have absolutely zero idea, whatsoever, what they are or what they are supposed to do.
As we see every year when they tie Linux as the most secure system in pwn2own, they've got nothing to be upset about on the technical side of things.
Uhm, last year Vista SP1 fell. Ubuntu got out of the contest unscathed.
You're talking about an OS which allows the machine to be compromised, not through idiot users or social engineering, but by reading an email or looking at a website in many cases, and where the normal, expected means of installing new applications is to download and run untrusted executables from wherever. They have plenty to worry about on the technical side of things.
After two decades of exploit after exploit after exploit, it's amazing to me that anyone seriously tries to defend Windows security anymore.
I hear ICQ is still amazingly popular in some places, like Brasil, and large portions of Eastern Europe. Actually, I used to work with a girl from Bulgaria, and she used ICQ exclusively, because that's all her friends ever used. When I asked her about it she was somewhat surprised to hear that it was no longer popular in the US.
You may jest, but consider how much money some people have made by making careers of removing that crap from people's Windows computers. Bonzi Buddy and his malware ilk have helped many freelancers and consultants earn a tidy sum. Even today, if I need a little extra cash, I might take a quick twenty minute, 100 dollar job purging crapware from some Windows machine.
Actually, it's more like Thomas Edison, who, as we all know, invented the light bulb. But what if instead of a light bulb, it had been a small child? And what if instead of "inventing" it, he set it on fire and slung it from a catapult? Would you then consider Thomas Edison to be a menace?
You're right, Sonicwalls can cause issues with SIP (e.g., Vonage) but so will any firewall you drop between IP telephony devices and the internet. I can't think of a single device that will work out of the box with that, including Netscreens. Not that I'm a big fan of Sonicwall either, but usually you have to fiddle with their stupid ALGs and NAT features to get SIP to work properly -- and once you do, it works pretty well. At least as far as SIP-based VoIP is concerned.
I realise that's of little use to you since you already switched but maybe it'll be good for someone else to know.
That's all very impressive that it takes a village to raise a child and stuff, makes me wonder how my wife makes a home movie of my kid eating birthday cake without a home mortgage loan of expenses, and its all very impossible for a mere mortal individual to make a movie
The guy wasn't pulling that list of equipment out of nowhere. To make a film of any appreciable quality, all of that stuff, and more, is required. Your wife's home movie may be cute, but I'm pretty sure, without even seeing it, that it has terrible cinematography, atrocious lighting, horrible sound quality, and so on. Are you actually trying to say that your wife holding a camcorder can more or less produce results as good as a professional cinematographer with a Steadicam and experienced grips setting up lights?
Sound alone is a huge thing in film, requiring ungodly expensive microphones, booms, lavs, filters, and people who know how to set up and use all of that, and then proper post-production mixing. In, I might add, very expensive-to-rent sound studios. Of course, that's if you want it to be done right and produce a film that people will actually watch. If you think you can get away with anything less, you end up with stuff that is barely above home-movie quality.
how come, relative to the electric car movie, "The BBS Documentary" by Jason Scott is better, longer, more interesting, better packaged, had more "actors" and better graphics, better sound, better DVD mastering
Probably because he shelled out for the right equipment to get the job done. But why are you trying to compare any of this to your wife pointing a 200 dollar camcorder at someone?
Now, I'm not saying that movies "deserve" to bring in large amounts of cash because of all this, but you can't dismiss the amount of money it takes to make a film of even mediocre production value.
Bear in mind you're also discussing what are essentially documentaries, which don't even need great lighting (though people will riot if the sound is poor), or any particularly masterful direction, or even cinematography. You could scrape by with the bare minimum for a documentary, though you still need the essentials. Now think about what happens to costs for a normal storytelling movie, especially if elaborate sets, opticals, special effects, location shoots, props, makeup, wardrobe, and so forth need to be involved.
Distribution may be getting cheaper, but production certainly isn't.
The "market share" excuse is tired and lame. My Linux servers get attacked all day, every day, and so do everyone else's. They're on twenty four hours a day, facing the world, with insanely fast connections. Sounds like a pretty tempting target for some idiot trying to set up a spam box or something. Yet somehow these millions of Linux servers just don't seem to have the same problems as Windows does.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but when you consider how many Linux servers are out there, and how many Windows servers, and which one gets broken more, the "market share" excuse sounds hollow. The attackers are going after the low-hanging fruit, which is Windows.
Do a search for "context", "gimp", or "opera" on Google and tell me how far you need to look before you find home pages for a text editor, image tool, or browser.
Those assume I know the name of the program that'll do the job for me. If I'm searching for a program it's probably because I don't already know what's out there. The real point was that you get all these results, half of which are invalid because they're trial, crippleware, malware, or require payment. You have to sift through all this nonsense to finally find a free program that'll actually do whatever it is you're trying to do.
Nice assumption that all Windows programs require money. This step can be left out.
Many do. Half the ones that don't are trials or have crippled functionality until you pay, as noted above. It's an unnecessary pain in the butt compared to the repository where it's all one-click, completely free.
Yeah, I guess the offerings on firefox.com or opera.com are untrusted, but somehow I trust those people to avoid making a bad name for themselves more than I trust an anonymous repository.
Good for you. I thought that about Chrome too -- I mean, it's Google, right, I can trust them? Then I found out it silently installed a little updater thing which was sending god-knows-what data to god-knows-where, and would not uninstall.
You're also assuming all your software comes from a nice vendor like Opera or Firefox. Try getting a program that'll let you make animated gifs or something. It's a bunch of never-heard-of-em sites. This is real stuff that real people actually want to do.
Do you trust all those sites?
Why do you think the repositories are "anonymous", by the way? The ones included with the distro are all you need 99.9% of the time, and are maintained by corporations in some cases (Canonical, Red Hat, Suse, et al), or people with real reputations on the line, information about whom you can look up easily. These same repositories are used daily by millions upon millions of die-hard geeks who love nothing more than crying foul at the slightest hint of wrongdoing. You bet your ass this stuff gets checked, double checked, and reviewed ad infinitum.
But if you feel better about visiting random websites and downloading random mumbly-Joe's freeware, that's your own lookout, I guess.
Unless you're only downloading source code, and always go through all of it line-by-line before compiling and running it, I don't see how this has anything to do with OS.
I can verify the hash, or check the source if I want. Personally, I don't -- but the point is that the option is there. This isn't the case with Windows binaries. You have no choice but to take someone's word for it.
By default nearly every Windows program released in the past decade puts its main files in Program Files. Shared libraries go in Program Files/Common Files (difficult to remember, I know). User settings are stored under the user's home directory inside the Application Data folder.
I think you must be kidding at this point. Yeah, that's where stuff is "supposed" to go but most programs will happily unzip into the root of C: for installer files, then stuff up Program Files with their own directories, store user and application settings in the registry or some random directory, on and on. Can you say with a straight face that you're unaware of this?
Maybe you enjoy doing that after the install, but most people fill that out when prompted during the install, or choose to not have it create an entry at all.
"Most people" go with the defaults, but anyway, assume you want it to have an entry. The fact is, you have to either manually move it around or tell it not to use the insane defaults at all. This is stupid compared to the clean, categorized menus offered by, say, Gnome. My office a
As one example, to install software, I can go on the web, find the primary site for it, make sure it passes malware tests, and install it.
Let's be a little more clear on this process, because you're simplifying it way too much.
You want some new program for Windows?
1. Search the web. Come up with page after page of results.
2. Find a bunch that are either crippled trial versions, or you have to pay for them.
3. Finally find one that looks like it'll do the job, and is free.
4. Download an untrusted executable.
5. "Scan it" for "malware". I'm not really sure what this means. Your antivirus programs will try to check the closed binary for matches, but they aren't all that good at it. The fact is you have no idea if this thing has a virus, and you certainly don't know who it's going to talk to after it's installed.
6. Install it. Agree to a EULA you won't read. Click Next a bunch of times until it's done. Files are now all over your filesystem because there's no useful standards about where things go.
7. You may have to reboot the machine a this point for some reason.
8. The program insisted on making its own incomprehensible entry in the start menu, based on arbitrary criteria. Maybe it's the vendor's name, maybe it's the program's name. Move this to a sane location.
9. Clean up the systray helpers, desktop shortcuts, and other party favors.
10. Disable this thing from starting automatically when Windows starts.
OPTIONAL STEPS
11. Find it doesn't work because you need some obscure dll or codec or something.
12. Go find those, following the steps from above.
13. Dismiss constant badgering from the program about how it wants to update using its own little update method.
14. Undo the file association hijacking it may have (e.g., probably) done.
There. Easy, wasn't it? Now you have a program. You still don't have any idea if it's malicious, even if it's from a trusted source. A recent example is Google Chrome, which I installed and later discovered a stupid little updater it silently installed alongside, sending god-knows-what information to god-knows-who, and would not uninstall in any normal way (I had to remove the entire directory).
Now let's compare this with the modern apt repository-based system in Linux systems. You want a new program. I use the commandline but let's make it easy on the newbs.
1. Run Synaptic. Type a keyword or two into the search menu.
2. A variety of suggestions come up. Pick one and put a checkbox next to it.
3. Click "Install."
4. It installs. It also fetches all dependencies for you so you're not pulling step 11 from above.
5. It puts a single shortcut into a sane, logical place in your Applications menu.
6. It's been vetted and verified by the repository maintaner, which is not just some guy, but a large group of people who have checked this program.
7. It's also been reviewed by dozens, hundreds, or thousands of others who have worked on the program, used it, debugged it, modified it, and so on. There are no secrets.
8. You were done in step 3. The rest was just gravy.
I've been using Debian and Ubuntu as my primary systems for over three years at this point and I cannot imagine how I ever thought the Windows way was sane or safe. You're downloading random, untrusted executables from who-knows-where, allowing them to do anything they want on your system with no way of telling what they'll do beforehand and no useful means of undoing any of it, then cleaning up after them, and your antivirus nonsense does little to protect you in any meaningful way. How is this easier?
Honestly, the only reason anyone ought to care what a politician thinks about creationism is if they decide what's taught in public schools. This is almost always a state matter. Your U.S. Congressman has bunk to do with it.
I dunno. If someone is so far deluded that they're unable to accept modern science, listen to experts, or even look at the facts themselves and get educated, and choose instead to believe whatever half-baked nonsense is cooked up by interest groups because it aligns with their pre-conceived ideas... is that really someone you want in a position to make decisions in government?
Maybe creationism itself doesn't affect anything at the federal level but someone who honestly believes it is saying something about their intellectual integrity and honesty.
I'd argue that you do need to know stuff like RAM and drive space, at least, to use the computer properly. Knowing these things means knowing what your computer can and can't do. You have low RAM? You can't have twenty programs open at once and wonder why it's slow. Understanding just a little about the equipment you have lets you use it properly.
And to argue your analogy, the distinction between RAM and hard drives is not like knowing if you have a turbo. It's like not being able to identify the difference between the wheels and the engine. Asking if you have a turbo is like asking what type of processor you have -- to the end user that IS pretty obscure and there's little reason for them to know. But just being able to roughly identify major components is not a brain-taxing exercise.
Why is it that everyone thinks that the most fuel efficient is also the least polluting? There are basically three ways to tune a car.
The engine, maybe. They could also make the car lighter, or more aerodynamic, or have a more efficient transmission, or employ some sort of brake system that turns otherwise wasted braking energy into useful energy, or go the hybrid route. There are lots of ways to increase fuel efficiency that won't impact the actual emissions of the engine.
You don't NEED or WANT to know anything about flywheels, transmissions, cam-shafts, fuel injector nozzles or other car crap.
I sure do. Especially if it's something simple like knowing how to check my oil level so I can add more when necessary. I can replace brake pads and rotors myself on many cars, which saves me a ton of money and time. I can fix a few minor engine problems too, with a bit of research, again saving time and money.
I'm no mechanic, that's for sure, but I rely on my car so I think it's just good sense to know a LITTLE about it so that:
I can fix minor things or do routine maintainance myself, instead of paying to have it done and being out of a car for a day and rearranging my life around drop-off and pick-up and "can you give me a ride man?" phone calls.
When I need to have a professional look at it I can save him (and myself) time by describing the problem more or less accurately.
I can also tell if someone's trying to pull a fast one on me at the garage. No 700 dollar "johnson rod replacements" for example.:P
Now, do you really think someone doesn't, as you put it, "need" to know about their computer? Sure, I guess in the strictest sense of the word "need" the answer is no, they don't need that. But office workers rely on their computers every bit as much as I rely on my car. And wouldn't they benefit from being able to fix minor stuff themselves, instead of waiting an hour for some IT flunky to show up and retype the password correctly this time?
Man, I've amassed quite a collection on that one. Let's see. Linksees, Linksky (must be a Russian knockoff), Linksystems, Links, Linkis, Link-sigh, and Linux. Probably a few more I can't recall now.
The Linux one was always great. I was the only one around who knew Linux, so users would get sent to me when they declared that they had a "Linux router". Of course nine out of ten times it was a run-of-the-mill Linksys, but no one bothered to check, just took them at their word.
Heh, I don't think that's the fun part. I'm frequently called upon to deal with customer issues above and beyond the normal phone jocks.
Say it's some issue with a Cisco router that some "IT Guy" installed for the customer ages ago and is now interfering with their VoIP service. Well, the end user is of course clueless, so invariably they go "Oh, hang on, let me put you on the phone with my 'computer guy'..." who always ends up being exactly what you described -- someone who knew just a liiiiiiiittle more than the boss (who knows nothing) when it comes to computers. Now he's the All Knowing Guru at that office, and you just try explaining NAT traversal issues to someone like that.
Of course, when he's unable to assist with whatever the situation is, the customer blames YOU, because you're just some voice on a telephone, and his loyal "computer guy" is right there feeding him who-knows-what horsebull.
On the other hand, if someone comes into the mechanic's shop and says "My car is broken," the mechanic might ask for clarification. The car won't start, the brakes are dodgy, the windows won't roll down, it won't shift into gear, what? If the person replies "I don't know about cars, it's just broken!" and can't provide any more information you can bet that person will be billed for a 700 dollar "johnson rod replacement"...
Honestly, no one is asking users to have a high understanding of the internal workings of their computers, but especially in a corporate environment where you're being paid to use one eight hours a day, five days a week, to be 100% ignorant of them to the point where you can't even describe the problem coherently is pretty bad.
The user doesn't need to know what TCP/IP is or how to recompile a kernel any more than I need to know how to replace a fuel pump or ignition coil in order to drive. But I'd expect a mechanic to look at me sideways if I couldn't identify the steering wheel, you know?
Let me add one more thing: For business types, I think it makes sense to learn a little bit about computers. Many have the notion that they don't need to know, because if it breaks, they can just call IT and someone will show up and fix it. But that can take a while -- hours, at some companies -- and time is money, isn't it? Often, the problem is something utterly simple that the user could have dealt with himself if he wanted to learn just a little bit -- saving himself a lot of time in the process so he can get back to business.
Or even worse, the doofus who clearly has no idea what he's talking about, but argues with you when you tell him what's wrong. Those customers were always my, uh, favorite.
Another type is the one for whom you have to perform the same repair or procedure over and over and over, because they just never learn. No one's asking users to recompile their kernels, but to need help with the same form on the same website day in and day out, or something equally simplistic? Yeesh.
And finally, the jokers for whom "It's broken" is their way of saying "I don't know how to do it." You know -- the ones who are forever blaming "the system", or maybe even you directly, for things being broken, when really nothing is broken, they just have no idea how to use the computer. This set frequently intersects the second set.
Thankfully, most users are of the "Err, I don't know, it's broken" type, and they're fine. They show you the problem, you fix it, they're done, and on to the next project. Big, big bonus if they're willing to learn a little something so the problem won't happen again, or so they can more accurately describe the problem next time it occurs.
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These three are irrelevant, because a picture of the driver is included with the ticket in the mail. If you don't look like the picture, then it's pretty easy to contest it.
:P
I don't know about where you live, but this is not the case in Atlanta. My beloved Volvo recently died so my stepfather was nice enough to loan me his car for a week while I shopped around. I apparently ran* a red light in his car, and the ticket ended up going to him. The picture was only of the car, from the rear, without any way to see who was driving it. He had to get a notarized letter saying he was not the driver, and go through a bunch of idiotic paperwork, to get the ticket transferred to me. Of course, we're friendly, reasonable sorts, so this was not an issue, but what if I turned around and claimed that no, I was not the driver either? The camera itself has no way of determining who is telling the truth, but the state sure as hell isn't going to just drop the matter.
Furthermore, the issue of "you have no accuser to face in court" is absolutely correct. Many judges agree. You can't just say "Well, it's on camera," because all I see in the picture is the back of a car, which may or may not be driven by me, and in some of these pictures, depending on camera placement, you can't even tell where the picture was taken.
Even if my face is clearly identifiable in the picture, it's still not taking into account mitigating circumstances which a cop might notice but the camera won't. Maybe I saw some lunatic approaching from the rear at 50mph and wasn't slowing down, and decided that getting out of his way would be a really great idea. Or, less dramatically, maybe it's four in the morning, with visibility for miles and nobody around, and I've been stuck at the same red light for six minutes for no reason. I've done that, got pulled over, and the cop let me go because he realised it was absurd. I've seen judges in traffic court let infractions like that slide with similar excuses. A camera would not have been so forgiving.
4. Because rear-end collisions increase at intersections with red-light cameras?
Your requested citation, sir. It seems rather obvious anyway -- if you instill into people the fear that they are going to get ticketed, they're going to be a lot more stompy on that brake pedal if there is even the slightest chance they won't clear the intersection. And like it or not, people follow too closely, and do not expect the guy in front of them to suddenly hit the anchors. Maybe the accident will be the fault of the guy in back, but that doesn't chance the fact that an accident occured. The cameras and laws just ignore the mechanical realities of the situation.
In general drivers are not suicidal and will not deliberately run red lights. If there's a problem at a certain intersection with many drivers blowing through the light at the last second, maybe the answer is to adjust the damn timing, not try to profit from it.
* I had pulled out into the intersection to make a left turn, the light changed, so I went. Apparently the state would rather I just sit there in the intersection like a jackass.
I dunno, dude. My sister lives in Israel and her laptop recently broke, so I offered to send her a new one as they are insanely expensive there and I had an old HP nx7400 lying around. What I did not have was a Windows disc of any kind, so I put Ubuntu on it for her. It installed in forty minutes with all the drivers working properly, including video, ethernet, wireless, and sound -- four things I've never seen work properly out of the box on any Windows install.
In Windows I always have to fuck around for an hour hunting down drivers, with a secondary computer, and looking up the specs on the computer to find out what hardware it has cause Windows sure ain't gonna tell me ("Unknown Device" isn't helpful, guys).
To be nice I loaded her computer up with some mp3s. I did this by using a free USB drive I got as a promotional item from the Camel girls that come round to clubs and bars hawking cigarettes. It's a cheap little half-gig piece of junk, and worked fine.
She's using this machine on a daily basis now, and having no problems. Her random-ass Brother printer worked when she plugged it in. I don't have to get calls from her every week about how her computer is "running slow" because of all the crapware she's downloaded. I don't have to deal with making sure her virus scanner is updated, and whether or not it even works (cause we all know they really don't). And once I showed her where Synaptic was she was fine with using that to get new programs -- and *I* don't have to worry about her downloading random, untrusted executables from god-knows-where on the web.
I don't know about TV tuners so I can't comment. What I do know is that my sister knows absolutely nothing about computers and is having zero problems using Ubuntu as her day-to-day OS, on a completely random computer I had lying around, with whatever completely random hardware she has lying around (her printers and USB sticks).
That's great, but it wasn't there when I first tried Chrome. They had one chance to make a good first impression, and they completely blew it.
This is not the time to list all my other complaints with how awful Chrome was, but I have a lengthly list. I'm glad they finally took care of this -- which appears to be hidden in places no "user" would ever think to check -- but it's a drop in the in their ocean of craptackiness.
As it happens I loathe Chrome and that is, indeed, one of the reasons. *I* will decide why I opened a new tab, thankyouverymuch. I do *not* need some horrible algorithm wasting time trying (and failing) to figure out what I wanted to do. With Chrome, I also do not need that stuff displayed to any fool who happens to walk by at that moment. I find nothing useful about that "feature".
Indeed, they're not hard to find, because every time you open a tab, IE is up in your face about how you can use ACCELERATORS and WEB SLICES and whatever else. But I still have absolutely zero idea, whatsoever, what they are or what they are supposed to do.
(Yes, to damp is a verb too. Heavily underused. As is "dampers")
:P
Thanks professor. Here on slashdot nobody watches Star Trek so that would have been lost on them without your explanation.
As we see every year when they tie Linux as the most secure system in pwn2own, they've got nothing to be upset about on the technical side of things.
Uhm, last year Vista SP1 fell. Ubuntu got out of the contest unscathed.
You're talking about an OS which allows the machine to be compromised, not through idiot users or social engineering, but by reading an email or looking at a website in many cases, and where the normal, expected means of installing new applications is to download and run untrusted executables from wherever. They have plenty to worry about on the technical side of things.
After two decades of exploit after exploit after exploit, it's amazing to me that anyone seriously tries to defend Windows security anymore.
"TwenCen"? Are you serious? I sure hope "Brangelina" and "Tomkat" don't find out about this.
I want to icepick someone now.
I hear ICQ is still amazingly popular in some places, like Brasil, and large portions of Eastern Europe. Actually, I used to work with a girl from Bulgaria, and she used ICQ exclusively, because that's all her friends ever used. When I asked her about it she was somewhat surprised to hear that it was no longer popular in the US.
You may jest, but consider how much money some people have made by making careers of removing that crap from people's Windows computers. Bonzi Buddy and his malware ilk have helped many freelancers and consultants earn a tidy sum. Even today, if I need a little extra cash, I might take a quick twenty minute, 100 dollar job purging crapware from some Windows machine.
Actually, it's more like Thomas Edison, who, as we all know, invented the light bulb. But what if instead of a light bulb, it had been a small child? And what if instead of "inventing" it, he set it on fire and slung it from a catapult? Would you then consider Thomas Edison to be a menace?
You're right, Sonicwalls can cause issues with SIP (e.g., Vonage) but so will any firewall you drop between IP telephony devices and the internet. I can't think of a single device that will work out of the box with that, including Netscreens. Not that I'm a big fan of Sonicwall either, but usually you have to fiddle with their stupid ALGs and NAT features to get SIP to work properly -- and once you do, it works pretty well. At least as far as SIP-based VoIP is concerned.
I realise that's of little use to you since you already switched but maybe it'll be good for someone else to know.
That's all very impressive that it takes a village to raise a child and stuff, makes me wonder how my wife makes a home movie of my kid eating birthday cake without a home mortgage loan of expenses, and its all very impossible for a mere mortal individual to make a movie
The guy wasn't pulling that list of equipment out of nowhere. To make a film of any appreciable quality, all of that stuff, and more, is required. Your wife's home movie may be cute, but I'm pretty sure, without even seeing it, that it has terrible cinematography, atrocious lighting, horrible sound quality, and so on. Are you actually trying to say that your wife holding a camcorder can more or less produce results as good as a professional cinematographer with a Steadicam and experienced grips setting up lights?
Sound alone is a huge thing in film, requiring ungodly expensive microphones, booms, lavs, filters, and people who know how to set up and use all of that, and then proper post-production mixing. In, I might add, very expensive-to-rent sound studios. Of course, that's if you want it to be done right and produce a film that people will actually watch. If you think you can get away with anything less, you end up with stuff that is barely above home-movie quality.
how come, relative to the electric car movie, "The BBS Documentary" by Jason Scott is better, longer, more interesting, better packaged, had more "actors" and better graphics, better sound, better DVD mastering
Probably because he shelled out for the right equipment to get the job done. But why are you trying to compare any of this to your wife pointing a 200 dollar camcorder at someone?
Now, I'm not saying that movies "deserve" to bring in large amounts of cash because of all this, but you can't dismiss the amount of money it takes to make a film of even mediocre production value.
Bear in mind you're also discussing what are essentially documentaries, which don't even need great lighting (though people will riot if the sound is poor), or any particularly masterful direction, or even cinematography. You could scrape by with the bare minimum for a documentary, though you still need the essentials. Now think about what happens to costs for a normal storytelling movie, especially if elaborate sets, opticals, special effects, location shoots, props, makeup, wardrobe, and so forth need to be involved.
Distribution may be getting cheaper, but production certainly isn't.
The "market share" excuse is tired and lame. My Linux servers get attacked all day, every day, and so do everyone else's. They're on twenty four hours a day, facing the world, with insanely fast connections. Sounds like a pretty tempting target for some idiot trying to set up a spam box or something. Yet somehow these millions of Linux servers just don't seem to have the same problems as Windows does.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but when you consider how many Linux servers are out there, and how many Windows servers, and which one gets broken more, the "market share" excuse sounds hollow. The attackers are going after the low-hanging fruit, which is Windows.
Do a search for "context", "gimp", or "opera" on Google and tell me how far you need to look before you find home pages for a text editor, image tool, or browser.
Those assume I know the name of the program that'll do the job for me. If I'm searching for a program it's probably because I don't already know what's out there. The real point was that you get all these results, half of which are invalid because they're trial, crippleware, malware, or require payment. You have to sift through all this nonsense to finally find a free program that'll actually do whatever it is you're trying to do.
Nice assumption that all Windows programs require money. This step can be left out.
Many do. Half the ones that don't are trials or have crippled functionality until you pay, as noted above. It's an unnecessary pain in the butt compared to the repository where it's all one-click, completely free.
Yeah, I guess the offerings on firefox.com or opera.com are untrusted, but somehow I trust those people to avoid making a bad name for themselves more than I trust an anonymous repository.
Good for you. I thought that about Chrome too -- I mean, it's Google, right, I can trust them? Then I found out it silently installed a little updater thing which was sending god-knows-what data to god-knows-where, and would not uninstall.
You're also assuming all your software comes from a nice vendor like Opera or Firefox. Try getting a program that'll let you make animated gifs or something. It's a bunch of never-heard-of-em sites. This is real stuff that real people actually want to do.
Do you trust all those sites?
Why do you think the repositories are "anonymous", by the way? The ones included with the distro are all you need 99.9% of the time, and are maintained by corporations in some cases (Canonical, Red Hat, Suse, et al), or people with real reputations on the line, information about whom you can look up easily. These same repositories are used daily by millions upon millions of die-hard geeks who love nothing more than crying foul at the slightest hint of wrongdoing. You bet your ass this stuff gets checked, double checked, and reviewed ad infinitum.
But if you feel better about visiting random websites and downloading random mumbly-Joe's freeware, that's your own lookout, I guess.
Unless you're only downloading source code, and always go through all of it line-by-line before compiling and running it, I don't see how this has anything to do with OS.
I can verify the hash, or check the source if I want. Personally, I don't -- but the point is that the option is there. This isn't the case with Windows binaries. You have no choice but to take someone's word for it.
By default nearly every Windows program released in the past decade puts its main files in Program Files. Shared libraries go in Program Files/Common Files (difficult to remember, I know). User settings are stored under the user's home directory inside the Application Data folder.
I think you must be kidding at this point. Yeah, that's where stuff is "supposed" to go but most programs will happily unzip into the root of C: for installer files, then stuff up Program Files with their own directories, store user and application settings in the registry or some random directory, on and on. Can you say with a straight face that you're unaware of this?
Maybe you enjoy doing that after the install, but most people fill that out when prompted during the install, or choose to not have it create an entry at all.
"Most people" go with the defaults, but anyway, assume you want it to have an entry. The fact is, you have to either manually move it around or tell it not to use the insane defaults at all. This is stupid compared to the clean, categorized menus offered by, say, Gnome. My office a
As one example, to install software, I can go on the web, find the primary site for it, make sure it passes malware tests, and install it.
Let's be a little more clear on this process, because you're simplifying it way too much.
You want some new program for Windows?
1. Search the web. Come up with page after page of results.
2. Find a bunch that are either crippled trial versions, or you have to pay for them.
3. Finally find one that looks like it'll do the job, and is free.
4. Download an untrusted executable.
5. "Scan it" for "malware". I'm not really sure what this means. Your antivirus programs will try to check the closed binary for matches, but they aren't all that good at it. The fact is you have no idea if this thing has a virus, and you certainly don't know who it's going to talk to after it's installed.
6. Install it. Agree to a EULA you won't read. Click Next a bunch of times until it's done. Files are now all over your filesystem because there's no useful standards about where things go.
7. You may have to reboot the machine a this point for some reason.
8. The program insisted on making its own incomprehensible entry in the start menu, based on arbitrary criteria. Maybe it's the vendor's name, maybe it's the program's name. Move this to a sane location.
9. Clean up the systray helpers, desktop shortcuts, and other party favors.
10. Disable this thing from starting automatically when Windows starts.
OPTIONAL STEPS
11. Find it doesn't work because you need some obscure dll or codec or something.
12. Go find those, following the steps from above.
13. Dismiss constant badgering from the program about how it wants to update using its own little update method. 14. Undo the file association hijacking it may have (e.g., probably) done.
There. Easy, wasn't it? Now you have a program. You still don't have any idea if it's malicious, even if it's from a trusted source. A recent example is Google Chrome, which I installed and later discovered a stupid little updater it silently installed alongside, sending god-knows-what information to god-knows-who, and would not uninstall in any normal way (I had to remove the entire directory).
Now let's compare this with the modern apt repository-based system in Linux systems. You want a new program. I use the commandline but let's make it easy on the newbs.
1. Run Synaptic. Type a keyword or two into the search menu.
2. A variety of suggestions come up. Pick one and put a checkbox next to it.
3. Click "Install."
4. It installs. It also fetches all dependencies for you so you're not pulling step 11 from above.
5. It puts a single shortcut into a sane, logical place in your Applications menu.
6. It's been vetted and verified by the repository maintaner, which is not just some guy, but a large group of people who have checked this program.
7. It's also been reviewed by dozens, hundreds, or thousands of others who have worked on the program, used it, debugged it, modified it, and so on. There are no secrets. 8. You were done in step 3. The rest was just gravy.
I've been using Debian and Ubuntu as my primary systems for over three years at this point and I cannot imagine how I ever thought the Windows way was sane or safe. You're downloading random, untrusted executables from who-knows-where, allowing them to do anything they want on your system with no way of telling what they'll do beforehand and no useful means of undoing any of it, then cleaning up after them, and your antivirus nonsense does little to protect you in any meaningful way. How is this easier?
Honestly, the only reason anyone ought to care what a politician thinks about creationism is if they decide what's taught in public schools. This is almost always a state matter. Your U.S. Congressman has bunk to do with it.
I dunno. If someone is so far deluded that they're unable to accept modern science, listen to experts, or even look at the facts themselves and get educated, and choose instead to believe whatever half-baked nonsense is cooked up by interest groups because it aligns with their pre-conceived ideas... is that really someone you want in a position to make decisions in government?
Maybe creationism itself doesn't affect anything at the federal level but someone who honestly believes it is saying something about their intellectual integrity and honesty.
I'd argue that you do need to know stuff like RAM and drive space, at least, to use the computer properly. Knowing these things means knowing what your computer can and can't do. You have low RAM? You can't have twenty programs open at once and wonder why it's slow. Understanding just a little about the equipment you have lets you use it properly.
And to argue your analogy, the distinction between RAM and hard drives is not like knowing if you have a turbo. It's like not being able to identify the difference between the wheels and the engine. Asking if you have a turbo is like asking what type of processor you have -- to the end user that IS pretty obscure and there's little reason for them to know. But just being able to roughly identify major components is not a brain-taxing exercise.
Why is it that everyone thinks that the most fuel efficient is also the least polluting? There are basically three ways to tune a car.
The engine, maybe. They could also make the car lighter, or more aerodynamic, or have a more efficient transmission, or employ some sort of brake system that turns otherwise wasted braking energy into useful energy, or go the hybrid route. There are lots of ways to increase fuel efficiency that won't impact the actual emissions of the engine.
I sure do. Especially if it's something simple like knowing how to check my oil level so I can add more when necessary. I can replace brake pads and rotors myself on many cars, which saves me a ton of money and time. I can fix a few minor engine problems too, with a bit of research, again saving time and money.
I'm no mechanic, that's for sure, but I rely on my car so I think it's just good sense to know a LITTLE about it so that:
Now, do you really think someone doesn't, as you put it, "need" to know about their computer? Sure, I guess in the strictest sense of the word "need" the answer is no, they don't need that. But office workers rely on their computers every bit as much as I rely on my car. And wouldn't they benefit from being able to fix minor stuff themselves, instead of waiting an hour for some IT flunky to show up and retype the password correctly this time?
Man, I've amassed quite a collection on that one. Let's see. Linksees, Linksky (must be a Russian knockoff), Linksystems, Links, Linkis, Link-sigh, and Linux. Probably a few more I can't recall now.
The Linux one was always great. I was the only one around who knew Linux, so users would get sent to me when they declared that they had a "Linux router". Of course nine out of ten times it was a run-of-the-mill Linksys, but no one bothered to check, just took them at their word.
Heh, I don't think that's the fun part. I'm frequently called upon to deal with customer issues above and beyond the normal phone jocks.
Say it's some issue with a Cisco router that some "IT Guy" installed for the customer ages ago and is now interfering with their VoIP service. Well, the end user is of course clueless, so invariably they go "Oh, hang on, let me put you on the phone with my 'computer guy'..." who always ends up being exactly what you described -- someone who knew just a liiiiiiiittle more than the boss (who knows nothing) when it comes to computers. Now he's the All Knowing Guru at that office, and you just try explaining NAT traversal issues to someone like that.
Of course, when he's unable to assist with whatever the situation is, the customer blames YOU, because you're just some voice on a telephone, and his loyal "computer guy" is right there feeding him who-knows-what horsebull.
Ah. It's the life, innit?
On the other hand, if someone comes into the mechanic's shop and says "My car is broken," the mechanic might ask for clarification. The car won't start, the brakes are dodgy, the windows won't roll down, it won't shift into gear, what? If the person replies "I don't know about cars, it's just broken!" and can't provide any more information you can bet that person will be billed for a 700 dollar "johnson rod replacement"...
Honestly, no one is asking users to have a high understanding of the internal workings of their computers, but especially in a corporate environment where you're being paid to use one eight hours a day, five days a week, to be 100% ignorant of them to the point where you can't even describe the problem coherently is pretty bad.
The user doesn't need to know what TCP/IP is or how to recompile a kernel any more than I need to know how to replace a fuel pump or ignition coil in order to drive. But I'd expect a mechanic to look at me sideways if I couldn't identify the steering wheel, you know?
Let me add one more thing: For business types, I think it makes sense to learn a little bit about computers. Many have the notion that they don't need to know, because if it breaks, they can just call IT and someone will show up and fix it. But that can take a while -- hours, at some companies -- and time is money, isn't it? Often, the problem is something utterly simple that the user could have dealt with himself if he wanted to learn just a little bit -- saving himself a lot of time in the process so he can get back to business.
Or even worse, the doofus who clearly has no idea what he's talking about, but argues with you when you tell him what's wrong. Those customers were always my, uh, favorite.
Another type is the one for whom you have to perform the same repair or procedure over and over and over, because they just never learn. No one's asking users to recompile their kernels, but to need help with the same form on the same website day in and day out, or something equally simplistic? Yeesh.
And finally, the jokers for whom "It's broken" is their way of saying "I don't know how to do it." You know -- the ones who are forever blaming "the system", or maybe even you directly, for things being broken, when really nothing is broken, they just have no idea how to use the computer. This set frequently intersects the second set.
Thankfully, most users are of the "Err, I don't know, it's broken" type, and they're fine. They show you the problem, you fix it, they're done, and on to the next project. Big, big bonus if they're willing to learn a little something so the problem won't happen again, or so they can more accurately describe the problem next time it occurs.
I hope it comes with a bedpan too.