Weird. A friend gave me an Atheros card that was supposed to be a lot more powerful than the one my machine had built in. I plugged it into the pcmcia slot and it came up no problem. I didn't have to do anything.
On 7.04 I did have to manually apt-get the ati xorg drivers, but that only took a minute. That's on a machine I don't use much anymore, though, so I haven't put 8.04 on it. I will say that once I did that, things worked beautifully including Beryl (which is what it was at the time).
So I disagree. I think most people would gladly say 'Keep Windows and give me the $$$, I'll install something free that's just as good' if it was as easy as you claim.
Obviously, I can speak only for myself, but I have installed various versions of Debian and Ubuntu on about a dozen different machines (I keep recycling the same ones over and over for test installs) and haven't had any major issues beyond what I've described -- having to get the ati xorg stuff, and the Broadcom crap which isn't an issue anymore. Regardless of your experience, though, the argument doesn't make a lot of sense -- people don't keep Windows because it's "easy". The truth is, "Your mom" has no idea what to do if her wireless driver isn't installed in Windows, so it's not like Windows is easier for her than Linux. She's going to call you either way.
All I know is, I have had very few issues with drivers or hardware detection under Linux in general and Ubuntu specifically. At the very least my ethernet gets loaded so I can go figure out the problem -- Windows can't make that claim, ever, unless you have a recovery CD, but then you may as well say you already have the ndiswrapper stuff saved for Linux, if you're going to have to resort to external media.
I'm not saying Ubuntu is perfect -- I am saying that for the average user installing it, it will get them to a usable point far, far faster and with much, much less effort than Windows. And I haven't even gotten into the part where I compare how annoying Windows versus Linux is once it's properly installed and set up. In Windows, everything is always installing and connecting and updating and out-of-date and scanning and it has to tell you all of this RIGHT NOW. Linux leaves you the hell alone. With Windows I spend more time closing asinine balloon tips than I do getting anything useful done. Everyone knows this, but everyone's also been trained to think this is "normal" and sort of dismiss it. It takes a monumental effort to turn all that stuff off and keep it turned off.
One of these days, I am going to bring a blanked laptop to my mother's house, and have her install and use Ubuntu for everyday tasks, just to see how well it goes. I think it'd be an interesting experiment, but I just don't want to listen to her nagging.:P
While Windows (XP) will not have drivers for everything with the base install, it has never failed to install on whatever machine I've tried. It also BOOTS.
The same has been my experience with Ubuntu and Debian. Not so with XP. I've repeatedly had XP installs just fail after loading all the drivers with some totally meaningless error message about "Setup could not continue." I realise it's anecdotal, but so is your statement. To be fair I've not yet had that problem with Vista but I haven't done very many Vista installs.
Furthermore, if you don't have a second computer, then it doesn't much matter if the thing installs and boots or not if there aren't any drivers, unless all you want to do with your shiny new XP install is use Wordpad at 800x600. Every time I've installed XP in the past two years -- every time, and I say this without exaggeration or hyperbole -- I've had to use my Ubuntu laptop to go find drivers from various manufacturer's websites. Maybe this one's from Dell, maybe that one's from Intel. Device Manager sure ain't gonna tell you, either -- I've had to look up the specs on the machine to even get that far.
Yeah, yeah, "recovery CDs" from the OEM. That's great if you bothered keeping it around, but most people don't have any idea where they put that thing, even in a corporate environment. And even then you're going to face another hour while that loads, then another hour of cleanup. Though I grant that in a corporate environment you're probably loading disc images and not installing it from CDs, the same would be true of a Linux distro.
And finally,
This is exactly the sort of thing that gives most people the screaming heebie jeebies.
"Most people" are no more able to fix Windows problems than Linux problems, so it doesn't matter. Personally I think Linux should do better than Windows here, and I stand behind a firm belief that it does -- I'd feel much more comfortable giving my mother an Ubuntu CD than an XP CD. But even if you don't agree with me that Linux handles this much better than Windows, it's absurd to use the "most people" argument, because XP does have a multitude of problems, especially with drivers, as you've admitted above -- and the average yob has no idea what to do to fix it, so why would that scare them off? It's like saying they won't switch from Ford to Chevy because they don't know how to deal with Chevy engines...not that they have any idea how to work on engines at all.
Frankly it's just pathetic that Windows can't deal with drivers. Linux at least has the excuse that manufacturers won't open the source and APIs, and half the stuff has to be reverse-engineered. Windows? Every manufacturer in the world writes Windows drivers, and they are easily accessible but Windows just doesn't load them.
I take it seriously. I just think that "they" have legitimate gripes with us. Their methods of causing change are all wrong, of course, but the truth is America has been an oppressive bully since the cold war. We've repeatedly waged proxy wars, armed both sides in conflicts, propped up dictators quietly or outright installed our own, all over the globe. We'll fund whoever makes promises to us, regardless of whatever else they're doing (or don't you recall all the money WE gave to the Taliban? Who trained Osama and his buddies to piss off the Soviets in the first place?).
The rest of the world has plenty of reason to dislike America. Religious fervor may be a factor, but you'll notice they attacked the United States. They didn't attack the Hindus in India, or the Buddhists in China, or the Christians in Canada, all of whom are equally "deviant". There's a reason they went after America and not anyone else.
Well, it sucks that you had that experience. Next time, try the live CD and make sure things are working -- if it works there, you know it can work with the full install.
As for your commentary, let me point out two things.
1- Lack of standard, reducing support available and compatibility consensus.
I'd argue there's far more standards and compatability in Gnome and Ubuntu than for Windows. From a user perspective, Windows allows any executable installer to basically vomit anywhere it wants -- sure, go ahead and muck with the registry, install three systray icons, a quicklaunch shortcut, a desktop shortcut, and two start menu entries. Which might be named after the manufacturer, or maybe the product, or maybe the parent company. Who knows? There's no standard way of doing it -- it's just that users have been trained to accept it. In Gnome, basically everything gets filed so it's never more than one click away, and it's always under a sane, general heading. "Internet", "Games", "Graphics", "Office", whatever.
Same with installation of new stuff. Want a CD burner for Windows? Google "cd burner software" or similar, tromp through eight or nine results looking for one that doesn't look sketchy, isn't crippled trialware, and that you're reasonable sure won't install some spyware or other. Download it, run the installer, agree to weird EULAs and maybe it'll work. Maybe not -- maybe it was XP only and you have Vista, or vice versa. And unless you really know what you're doing, you can't be sure it didn't stealthily install some crapware alongside it. Finally, clean up the mess it left behind when installing (extraneous icons, shortcuts, start menu entries, etc).
Ubuntu? Open Synaptic and click whatever you want. Then ignore it. It'll download, configure, and install without any further interaction, and there's accountability for who made it and where it is coming from. You're done.
2- Linux Geeks expecting average joe to spend time (which he doesn't have) browsing at forums for his answers, often "on his 2nd computer" (which he doesn't have either).
No one expects this. And honestly I have never, ever had trouble with drivers on any machine, on any distro -- including random ones like DSL, Puppy, or other ones I just want to use for experiments. The sole exception has been wireless Broadcom stuff...and that headache stopped over a year ago with the Restricted Drivers manager.
Compare this to Windows, where I've never gotten an install to work the first time. A clean install of Windows will not have drivers for your wireless or ethernet, sound card, video card, and probably a few other things. You either have to have some sort of recovery CD, which Joe User doesn't have lying around, or you have to have...a second computer, so you can go to dell.com or whatever, and download the drivers. Then install them one at a time, by hand. And clean up the mess they leave behind, again.:)
I guess my point is that Linux in general and Ubuntu does a much, much better job at hardware detection and driver handling. Windows is essentially incapable of it, and either way, if you're Joe User, you don't know how to fix Windows problems any more effectively than Linux problems, so it's kind of a null point.
No, I think the real reason Ubuntu doesn't have a solid base of home users is because the overwhelming majority of users just buy a computer that has Windows already on it, and stop thinking about it right then. They see no reason to switch because to most people, "Windows" IS a computer, and the only other option is to buy a Mac. So they put up with Windows' endless annoyances and nagging because it's what they're used to, and are blissful in their ignorance.
Considering the regression from 7.10 with the wireless lights (it used to be a light would flash when transmitting data, now the light never even shows (known bug)), maybe they should have a long look at their wireless system.
Heh, I didn't know about that. When I switched to 7.04, the blinking light drove me crazy but I learned to deal with it. Now on 8.04 the light isn't on at all, as you said, but I just said "Whatever" and moved along. The wireless light on my laptop is this godawful bright blue LED positioned to shine right in my face anyway, so I'm not crying about its loss, but it's nice to know it's not just my hardware.
Q2: THEN WHAT THE FUCK DID WE DO TO PISS THEM OFF SO MUCH THEY FELT COMPELLED TO FLY PLANES INTO FOUR MAJOR BUILDINGS?
Well, according to the sound bites, they have absolutely no good reason -- they just "hate us for our freedom." Y'see, it musta gone something like this. Abdul and Osama and Aziz were sitting around one day, chatting about this and that, as they'd done every day for the past twenty years. The conversation dwindled for a moment, as conversations tend to do, and in the silence, Osama sighed.
"What is wrong, my friend?" asked Aziz.
"It's just.. it's those Americans," said Osama.
"The Americans?" said Aziz. "I don't understand. What's your problem with them?"
"Yes," offered Abdul, "what is the problem with them? They mind their own business and never interfere with us or our Muslim brothers in other lands."
"I suppose that's true," Osama conceded. "Still, there is something about them."
"My friend," said Aziz, "I can hear the anger in your voice but I don't see why you begrudge Americans. They have been nothing but considerate and peaceful participants in world affairs."
"You're correct," said Osama. "They have never invaded, waged proxy wars, propped up dictators, or ousted legitimate governments in any country. Yet I hate them anyway."
"But why?" asked Abdul.
"Well," said Osama, volume increasing as he got to his feet to make the point, "they're just.. they're just so FREE! I can't STAND that!"
Abdul and Aziz exchanged glances, and felt shame, for they knew Osama was right. Americans were free, and they needed no further motivation for their hatred. They would teach those cursed, free Americans how wrong they were to be free. Oh, yes, America's time of reckoning was drawing nigh, and the trio fired their AK-47s into the air in triumph.
So you see, there is really nothing we did to cause such hatred, nor anything we could have done to prevent it. We are completely innocent and are guilty only of being so free.
you still need to say "the limit is X", or the whole legal system is a farce made out of "fuzzy rules we're kind of supposed to follow".
Seems to me that's the whole point of having a judge -- a human element who can decide whether the punishment really fits the crime, or if a crime was even committed. Your assertion about "good faith" is fine and I mostly agree, but unfortunately there are too many types who just want to throw the book at anyone who violates any infraction -- whether it's having a picture of some girl a day before her eighteenth birthday, or going one mile an hour over the speed limit.
That's precisely why we need judges -- good ones -- to make these kinds of calls. If you base everything on hard limits and either/or statements, we might as well just scrap it all and replace the judge with a database that spits out a punishment based on the charge if the defendant is found guilty, and save ourselves the tax-funded salaries of these guys. (The fact that far too many judges STILL act this way is incidental to my utopian view.)
As for the specific issue at hand, I think the entire thing needs to be revisited and rethought. In most states I believe the age of consent is 16. There's something pretty dumb about a system that says it's okay for you to have sex with a 16 year old, but the minute you break out the camera, suddenly you're an evil, evil pervert and you're corrupting her innocence. I'm not saying the age of being able to be in pornography should be lowered, nor am I saying the age of sexual consent should be raised -- I'm just observing the contradictory views the law establishes for this, and many other things.
Depends on how paranoid you are. For maximum protection I'd use a live CD like Ubuntu or something, and a secondhand PCMCIA wireless card (I have several laying around from who-knows-where, as do many people). Connect to a public AP at a coffee shop or something, and then use Tor or at the very least a web proxy to send email to the proper authorties from one of these services, making sure to verify your reported IP at ipchicken.com or similar beforehand. With all of this you would essentially be impossible to track down. Provide only the details about the flaw you think you found, and add nothing else, including how you found it or when (don't give them a chance to narrow it down and check security camera footage or anything).
If someone is so brain-damaged that they can't remember where they just saved a file a few seconds ago, or is so stubborn or incompetent that they won't expand their skillset just a little bit to include things like "save your files in clear, labelled directories", no amount of OS or filesystem jiggery is going to help them. It's like blaming the file cabinet for a dumb secretary's technique of "shove all folders into this metal box and hope to sort it out later." You can blame the file cabinet all day long, or you can fire the secretary and get someone who has half a clue.
Computers have been part of the workplace for at least fifteen years or so, and are only getting more and more important. Fifteen years is enough time for anyone to ramp up on a few basic skills, and "save your files in logical places and then remember them" isn't exactly asking them to perform an amazingly technical feat. This really isn't rocket surgery, and it's time to stop blaming the machines for the incompetence of the users.
Yeah, I'm exclusing the granny who just got her first computer two months ago and has never used one before, because she's the minority. The other 99% of computer users have no excuse for this kind of thing anymore, and haven't for over a decade.
Your entire tirade makes no sense anyway -- the parent poster didn't even mention Linux. In fact he was talking about stuff like "My Documents". That being said, this isn't even an OS issue -- in Linux you generally save stuff the same way you would in Windows. Click the little Save icon, pick a location, give it a name. Then maybe remember that name for the ten seconds it takes to email the file to soemone or whatever. If you can't manage this, you've got bigger problems than your choice of OS.
Or pay attention to where the hell you're saving stuff, have a few sensible directories, and name things in a sane, descriptive way. I guess that's asking too much of most users whose file management techniques consist of chucking everything into "My Documents" or on the desktop, with names like "Shortcut to Copy of Copy of New Sales Proposal (1) (2) (3) (4).doc.doc".
the average user should be able to accomplish everything they need to do using a 700-800 MHz low-power processor with 256 MB of RAM.
The average user already can, but since their computer gets "slow" after a while (because they load it up with crapware, never clean it or otherwise maintain it, etc), they just chuck it and get a newer one. At my office the salespeople all have 1.6ghz dual core machines with a gig of RAM, yet not one of them needs to do more than run Word, Excel, Outlook, IE, and maybe a remote desktop program for demonstrations once in a while. This is all possbile on a fairly low-end machine as long as it's installed properly and maintained, but god forbid eh? Instead they all sit around complaining how slow their fancy dual-core machines are.
Until about three years ago my only laptop was an ancient Toshiba at 266mhz with something like 300 megs of RAM, running Windows 2000 (though I occasionally pressed it into service for Debian or similar). It got the job done for the most part -- I could run Photoshop on it, Open Office, watch videos, listen to music, check email, chat on IRC and AIM. No problem.
I'm not saying everyone should go back to Pentium II chips here, but it seems that every time a better, faster, cheaper architecture comes along, users don't notice the difference because it just means they can load it with more crap and slow it down to the point where it's indistinguishable from whatever they had before.
Because the majority of people aren't like you. Most of them have no idea what suspend or hibernate even means, nevermind how to use it or why it might be better. Vista make take about a minute to boot for you, but I'm guessing you didn't install all kinds of extra garbage on it.
Any time I have to deal with some salesperson's laptop at work, it takes bloody ages to boot, and it's always because they have fifty thousand unnecessary things loading when Windows starts -- they neither know nor care that there's a better way. And, like the majority of people, they have to reboot their computers on a daily basis or more, either because the thing strangles itself on all the stuff they're running on it without knowing, or because their other, equally irresponsible habits cause some important application (Outlook or whatever) to completely freeze or lock up the OS.
That's how the majority of people operate, and that's why boot times matter to them.
Vista takes about a minute on my desktop at home, which is a pretty nice machine, but I only got it that way by killing off all the unneeded services, and being fanatic about what is allowed to start at boot and what isn't. On my Linux machines I just kill all graphical splash stuff and login screens; I actually find it gets to a prompt faster and that's often all I need, though typing "startx" is usually faster than waiting for gdm to load anyway.
All I ever heard from Windows users, particularly at work, is how they couldn't figure out how to do anything through the "ribbon" or whatever they're calling it these days. Even though OO's menu isn't exactly like Office's, the fact that it has a menu makes it more attractive to people, I think; since every other application they've used in the past ten years has a menu, they know they can find what they're looking for there. The "ribbon" confounds even a veteran like me, though I admit I've only used it a handful of times because I use OO exclusively on all my machines.
What "functionality and features" are you referring to that MS Office has and OO doesn't? The majority of users just want to write a letter, pretty it up a bit, and send it off. Or make a spreadsheet, add some columns, multiply some others, and be done with it. OO handles all of this and anything else Joe User would ever want to do, as far as I can tell. If you've got counterexamples let's hear 'em, but my guess is you're going to have to dig pretty deep for some obscure stuff that hardly anyone ever needs or wants.
And, as mentioned above, "ease of use" is pretty subjective. I find Office 2007 to be a horrendous UI disaster, and have heard others voice the same opinion. Other people like it fine, or -- as is usually the case -- just don't care one way or the other.
As far as users are concerned it IS almost identical software -- it lets them make spreadhseets, type up reports, and make their stupid presentations no one will remember after the meeting is over. 99% of the rest of the "features" are just bloat added in, occasionally used by a few people from time to time, and ignored by everyone else. And odds are OO does most of those "features" just fine.
Ubuntu literally is "click install, select your partition, name, timezone, and password, and wander away for twenty minutes." When it comes up everything works out of the box. Customize your wallpaper and other visuals if you must, but your hardware and software works fine. Ooh, you might have to click "Enable Drivers" to get your Broadcom wireless working -- what a pain. And it comes with damn near everything an average user would care about. Want more software? Click on it. Hell, click fifty of 'em, and install them all simultaneously with almost zero interaction from you once you've kicked off the process.
Updates install all at once and never require a reboot except in the case of a kernel update, and even then, you can tell it to sod off until you're ready.
If you've previously used Ubuntu (or any other distro, really), unpack your home directory tarball and hey -- all your customizations and application settings just how they were before.
XP and Vista require you to hold their hands throughout the entire install process.
CLICK HERE TO ACTIVATE WINDOWS
RUN DESKTOP ICON CLEANUP WIZARD?
When they're done installing half the devices have no drivers -- hope you have that recovery disk, or enjoy tromping through endless vendor websites,
WARNING YOUR COMPUTER MAY BE AT RISK CLICK HERE
downloading the driver installers,
THIS DRIVER WAS NOT DIGITALLY SIGNED AND MAY RAPE YOUR GRANDMOTHER
and installing them one at a time (agreeing to god-knows-what EULA in the process).
30 DAYS LEFT FOR ACTIVATION
Got your hardware running now? Good, go install Windows updates and reboot five or six times.
ONE OR MORE WIRELESS NETWORKS DETECTED, CLICK HERE TO JOIN A WIRELESS NETWORK
YOUR COMPUTER MAY BE AT RISK, NO ANTI-VIRUS DISCOVERED, CLICK HERE TO OPEN WINDOWS SECURITY CENTER
Done with that? Great! Now write a letter to your boss. Oops, you can't. Go find/steal/crack Office/OpenOffice and have fun installing that.
WINDOWS NEEDS YOUR PERMISSION TO CONTINUE, CANCEL OR ALLOW?
HEY! HEY! CLICK HERE TO SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE!
HEY! TAKE A TOUR OF WINDOWS XP!
Niiiiice, you wrote a letter to your boss. What's next? How about a little web-surfing? Oh, you're not seriously going to use IE, are you? Go get Firefox and install that.
WINDOWS IS CONFIGURING UPDATES... WINDOWS WILL NOW REBOOT...
Well, that's done. Why don't you make a CD for your girlfriend? Oh, gee, you can't, unless you think WMP is going to do it, which it won't. Go google for decent CD burning software and hope it's not trialware, crippleware, or installs some BS spyware alongside. Install it.
May as well chat with your friends, see what they're up to. What? No IRC or AIM client? Bugger, better go find those, install them, customize them the way you're used to.
See, this is easy and fast! Windows: Ready for the Desktop!
While many academic experts [who?] have argued that Wikipedia's articles can't be trusted because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted [citation needed], studies [which?] have found that the articles are remarkably accurate. 'But wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience,' says Garfinkel. [citation needed]
No, a Miranda reading simply confirms that you understand your rights -- it doesn't ask you to waive them.
The clause of the Fifth states "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". The key word is "compelled" and that's what led to the Miranda ruling. It was decided that if you were unaware of your right to avoid self-incrimination, you might feel compelled to answer police questions, thinking you had no choice.
Once you're aware that you don't have to tell the police anything, if you still decide to talk to them, that's your problem, since no one forced you into it. But you cannot "waive" that right, either -- at any time, you can simply shut up, or answer all questions with gibberish, or otherwise refuse to tell anyone anything, and the police cannot force you to keep talking based on the fact that you were talking before. You always retain your right to silence.
Likewise, even if you begin speaking to police without an attorney, you may, at any time, simply say "I don't wish to say anything else without a lawyer present," or similar.
This study commissioned by the US DOT says otherwise, as do thousands of engineers across the country. I personally find this an interesting if dry read, because it's pretty damning evidence that speed limits are set artificially low for revenue generation purposes, since it can be demonstrated that posted limits have a negligable effect on how fast people actually go. Anyway, some things of note:
Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent.
Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent.
The logic is that the majority of people are going to drive at a certain speed on any given road regardless (the "85th percentile" rule) and the one doofus going significantly slower than this becomes a very unexpected, slow-moving obstacle which requires people to either hit the anchors suddenly, or attempt to swerve around, both of which are clearly unsafe behaviors.
While most cops won't care about this excuse because they want to maintain a ticket quota, many judges will, assuming no other violation and a good attitude, accept the "I was just keeping up with traffic" line as grounds for dismissal or reduction of a citation. There's a reason for this.
I grant you that this study, and some others like it, mention only accidents and do not discuss or even mention fatalities, but the reduction of total accidents when everyone drives at the 85th percentile is a pretty clear fact. If everyone drove slower this probably wouldn't be the case, but since we aren't going to change the rset of humanity's driving patterns, telling people to drive slower than they should is dubious advice.
She clearly knows how to use email, how to type, how to send them. It just doesn't surprise me that she didn't think far enough and deep enough to make super-complicated security questions for the account.
Fine, but most people can "use" a car even if they've never been behind the wheel of one; if you gave them the keys, such people could, within a few minutes, manage to make the car lurch from point A to point B. Hell, I could do this when I was ten.
But just knowing how to get the machine to do that wouldn't qualify anyone to get a driver's license. "Everyone knows" that there's far, far more to driving than just pressing the accelerator and brakes, and turning the wheel at certain times, even though that process will, eventually, get you to the destination.
Yet when it comes to computers, as long as the person can manage to double-click the Outlook icon, type a message, and hit "Send", people think that's good enough. It's not, and the proliferation of viruses, malware, or just people complaining how "my computer is slow" is a good enough demonstration.
I get your point about the relative time computers and cars have been around, but computers have been around long enough at this point that there really is no excuse for not knowing a few basics, especially when you rely on them for your job, which means you presumably use this machine for at least a few hours a day, every day. Of the "middle-aged" crowd and up, most of their first experiences with computers came around the time of Windows 95, and the importance of computers has been increasing ever since. It's been eighteen years, people. There's no excuse to say you haven't learned it by now.
Plus, Palin is, what, 45 or so? Which widespread desktop computer use, and the "rise of the internet", started when she was roughly 32 or 33. She doesn't get to play the "too old to care" card on this one.
And, of course, if someone like Palin is unwilling or unable to think ahead or employ decent security measures, that says quite a bit about her. If her excuse is that she "didn't know better", why the hell not? Is she that unwilling to expand her skill set just a little bit in the interest of safety? Is this someone you want administrating the federal government?
It's "like" sudo only in the sense that you're required to authorize an action. The underlying security behind it isn't anything like sudo, to my understanding (though please note I am not a developer or programmer). Even if I'm wrong about that, clicking "Allow" is different, from a user's perspective, than typing a password. Typing a password requires you to at least think a little bit about what you're doing; clicking "OK" to everything just turns into a Pavlovian reaction.
Vista's UAC is obnoxious for two other reasons:
1. It comes up all the damn time. Seriously, it pulled that nonsense when I was adjusting the clock in the system tray, an action which affects precisely nothing. Sudo passwords are only required when making system-wide changes to what is designed from the ground up as a multi-user system, where things you do to the system could affect other users, or processes running as users. Changing my clock affects nothing on Windows that I can think of, and Windows, for all its bluster to the contrary, is not a multi-user OS.
2. I can move the sudo window to the side or ignore it for a moment if I'm in the middle of something else. No problem. UAC doesn't allow this -- it completely darkens the screen and stops accepting any input whatsoever, to anything, until you type in the stupid password. This is obnoxious enough when you're sitting right in front of the machine, but have you ever tried using remote software to admin a Vista box? The prompt is not visible to any remote desktop application -- it just stops responding, and you have to call someone on site to wander over there and type the password. If they know it. And if someone's around. Admittedly I have not tried doing this with Vista's RDP but that's only because I don't feel like walking my sister/mother/friend/whatever through enabling that.
UAC really does suck and I'm not surprised everyone hates it. Sudo passwords come up rarely, only when they make sense, require some level of "should I really do this?" pausing, and can be ignored until you're ready to address it. Sudo is nothing like UAC.
But there are enough stories of some border guard getting into a huff if he even thinks you're hiding something from him, and confiscating the machine for later analysis. Encrypting is a good measure that they won't find anything when they do that, but you're out a laptop. Better to not give them a reason to even care.
Dual-booting is one option and, in my opinion, the best. Set up a small partition, put a clean install of XP on it, and set your BIOS to boot from that by default. Change the background and put a few totally innocent-looking, common icons on the desktop so it doesn't look so obviously fresh. Once you're through customs you put the BIOS back, lose the partition, and you're back to normal. They're not going to know about the partition where your real stuff is, and this method should work regardless of what OS you normally run.
Hell, you could even deliberately break your new XP install so when they boot it up, all it does is hang / blue-screen / throw some error and reboot again. Then you grumble and say you dropped it while on vacation and it's been doing that ever since. They're not going to give you the third degree about it, cause everyone's gone through it.
If you're really paranoid, pick up a little 10 gig 2.5" drive somewhere (they're practically giving 'em away these days) and put it in your laptop in place of your real drive. Throw XP on it, use it while you're out of the country. As for your data (e.g., pictures), either upload them or burn them to CD or DVD. Jam the DVD into your car CD player. It obviously won't play but they're not going to inspect your car stereo, especially if it's off.:P Either keep the drive in the machine for the trip back so they can see a relatively clean XP install, or ditch the drive somewhere and do the grumble-gee-it-broke routine when they try to boot and it complains about no system disk.
I didn't use the word "better" to describe this, I don't think. Long *or* short term doesn't matter much here, but I am aware of the time frames involved in natural evolution.
My point is that we, unlike any other living organism before us, do not wait for random mutation and selection. We adapt far more quickly by dint of technology. So, again, barring some catastrophic collapse of society, we will, now and always, both as individuals and as a species, survive through adapting the environment to suit us, not letting the environment pressure us into changing.
Evolution means, "those who reproduce more will reproduce more." This usually ends up producing organisms fit to survive in their environment.
Not with an industrial society. As a somewhat intelligent and capable chap, I am really not any more or less likely to survive and reproduce than an 90-point IQ moron. Both of us will probably find someone willing to put up with us at some point, and I'm not competing with him for territory, food, water, or my ability to hunt while avoiding being prey. An industrial society levels the playing field fairly well for all, at least in terms of "will you survive?"
Now, of course those who will reproduce more will reproduce more, but there is no environmental or genetic reason that affects that in an industrial society. What you're talking about comes down to trends and whims of culture, which is also compensated for with technology far, far faster than any genetic aberrations will manifest themselves, and likely changes too fast for any particular gene to assert itself on that basis anyway.
You're right that evolution drives towards a "good enough for now" balance. But that is precisely why evolution has essentially stopped for humanity.
Consider:
1. Natural selection only works when there are pressures which can eliminate an organism before it can pass on its genes, or when a genetic advantage means something to the organism's ability to survive. This is no longer the case for modern society -- we have no predators, we do not directly compete for finite food or water supplies, we do not need to adapt to climate or environment because we make buildings and clothing. I can think of very, very few medical problems that would prevent someone from living long enough to reproduce, and the vast majority of people, from the most brilliant and good-looking to the most moronic and ugly, tend to find someone willing to breed with them.
2. We no longer operate in small, isolated colonies. In a group of a hundred people, isolated from others, with environmental pressures and competition, a tiny genetic advantage can propegate. In a group of a thousand people, it will take much longer, but it'll happen sooner or later. Now we live in cities with millions of other busy breeders, and our boundaries are not constrained by who we can meet within walking distance. Any mutation is just a drop in the ocean and no longer makes any difference to our species as a whole.
Even if you pulled a Star Trek and selectively bred the best, brightest, and strongest people into a line of a few dozen genetic superpeople, that would not change humanity, who would outnumber the "advantageous" gene carriers a billion to one.
In the above hypothetical scenario, maybe you could pull it off well enough that you'd have a seperate offshoot species, genetically distinct and reproductively incompatable with "normal" humans. But that's not going to happen naturally -- it would have to be directed, and while that is technically a form of evolution, it's not what we usually mean by the term. And even then, by the time anyone did it, technological advancements in body modification, computer interfaces, and genetics would likely bring everyone to the same level playing field.
Humanity is "good enough" for where it is and that is where evolution stops. And we're "good enough" because we can adapt our surroundings to our needs instead of vice versa. Barring some monumental climate change or rampant epidemic or population-decimating disaster, humanity has stopped evolving through natural means.
The executive branch asked for and received legislation that allows wiretaps without FISA approval,
Doesn't matter who asked for what, or who granted what to whom. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.
Do you see anything in there along the lines of "unless you ask really nicely" or "unless you really want to" or "if someone else says you can"? I don't.
Even if you want to massage the "probable cause" clause to meet the demands of "omg catch the terrorists", then ask yourself why, if their evidence is so compelling, they have a problem bringing it to a judge and saying "We'd like to keep an eye on this guy."
here's the key, when communications are taking place with foreign nationals
I don't care if they're talking to Papa Smurf or bug-eyed monsters from Saturn. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say "unless the suspect is doing something you don't like" or "unless they're talking to someone not a citizen of the States". It's pretty clear.
They did this because terrorist communications are very sporadic, and the time to get these warrants was lengthy.
If you know anything about law enforcement, warrants are not hard to get -- a cop basically just has to ask and it'll almost always be given. If you have evidence that someone is a terrorist, get your warrant and keep tabs on them. When their next "sporadic" communication occurs you'll be able to Constitutionally eavesdrop, instead of all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense and pretending the Fourth doesn't exist. And, of course, I have to ask -- if Joe Sympathizer's communiques with his terrorist counterparts in foreign lands are sooo sporadic and nearly impossible to catch, then exactly how did you (the surveillence team) determine he was communicating with "terrorists" in the first place, hmmm? Either you're making a wild guess, or just spying on everyone and sorting it out later... or it's not quite as sporadic and unpredictable as you'd like everyone to think.
Then of course you drag out Barack Obama, who has nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion. Nobody even mentioned him. Get a grip.
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Weird. A friend gave me an Atheros card that was supposed to be a lot more powerful than the one my machine had built in. I plugged it into the pcmcia slot and it came up no problem. I didn't have to do anything.
:P
On 7.04 I did have to manually apt-get the ati xorg drivers, but that only took a minute. That's on a machine I don't use much anymore, though, so I haven't put 8.04 on it. I will say that once I did that, things worked beautifully including Beryl (which is what it was at the time).
So I disagree. I think most people would gladly say 'Keep Windows and give me the $$$, I'll install something free that's just as good' if it was as easy as you claim.
Obviously, I can speak only for myself, but I have installed various versions of Debian and Ubuntu on about a dozen different machines (I keep recycling the same ones over and over for test installs) and haven't had any major issues beyond what I've described -- having to get the ati xorg stuff, and the Broadcom crap which isn't an issue anymore. Regardless of your experience, though, the argument doesn't make a lot of sense -- people don't keep Windows because it's "easy". The truth is, "Your mom" has no idea what to do if her wireless driver isn't installed in Windows, so it's not like Windows is easier for her than Linux. She's going to call you either way.
All I know is, I have had very few issues with drivers or hardware detection under Linux in general and Ubuntu specifically. At the very least my ethernet gets loaded so I can go figure out the problem -- Windows can't make that claim, ever, unless you have a recovery CD, but then you may as well say you already have the ndiswrapper stuff saved for Linux, if you're going to have to resort to external media.
I'm not saying Ubuntu is perfect -- I am saying that for the average user installing it, it will get them to a usable point far, far faster and with much, much less effort than Windows. And I haven't even gotten into the part where I compare how annoying Windows versus Linux is once it's properly installed and set up. In Windows, everything is always installing and connecting and updating and out-of-date and scanning and it has to tell you all of this RIGHT NOW. Linux leaves you the hell alone. With Windows I spend more time closing asinine balloon tips than I do getting anything useful done. Everyone knows this, but everyone's also been trained to think this is "normal" and sort of dismiss it. It takes a monumental effort to turn all that stuff off and keep it turned off.
One of these days, I am going to bring a blanked laptop to my mother's house, and have her install and use Ubuntu for everyday tasks, just to see how well it goes. I think it'd be an interesting experiment, but I just don't want to listen to her nagging.
The same has been my experience with Ubuntu and Debian. Not so with XP. I've repeatedly had XP installs just fail after loading all the drivers with some totally meaningless error message about "Setup could not continue." I realise it's anecdotal, but so is your statement. To be fair I've not yet had that problem with Vista but I haven't done very many Vista installs.
Furthermore, if you don't have a second computer, then it doesn't much matter if the thing installs and boots or not if there aren't any drivers, unless all you want to do with your shiny new XP install is use Wordpad at 800x600. Every time I've installed XP in the past two years -- every time, and I say this without exaggeration or hyperbole -- I've had to use my Ubuntu laptop to go find drivers from various manufacturer's websites. Maybe this one's from Dell, maybe that one's from Intel. Device Manager sure ain't gonna tell you, either -- I've had to look up the specs on the machine to even get that far.
Yeah, yeah, "recovery CDs" from the OEM. That's great if you bothered keeping it around, but most people don't have any idea where they put that thing, even in a corporate environment. And even then you're going to face another hour while that loads, then another hour of cleanup. Though I grant that in a corporate environment you're probably loading disc images and not installing it from CDs, the same would be true of a Linux distro.
And finally,
"Most people" are no more able to fix Windows problems than Linux problems, so it doesn't matter. Personally I think Linux should do better than Windows here, and I stand behind a firm belief that it does -- I'd feel much more comfortable giving my mother an Ubuntu CD than an XP CD. But even if you don't agree with me that Linux handles this much better than Windows, it's absurd to use the "most people" argument, because XP does have a multitude of problems, especially with drivers, as you've admitted above -- and the average yob has no idea what to do to fix it, so why would that scare them off? It's like saying they won't switch from Ford to Chevy because they don't know how to deal with Chevy engines...not that they have any idea how to work on engines at all.
Frankly it's just pathetic that Windows can't deal with drivers. Linux at least has the excuse that manufacturers won't open the source and APIs, and half the stuff has to be reverse-engineered. Windows? Every manufacturer in the world writes Windows drivers, and they are easily accessible but Windows just doesn't load them.
I take it seriously. I just think that "they" have legitimate gripes with us. Their methods of causing change are all wrong, of course, but the truth is America has been an oppressive bully since the cold war. We've repeatedly waged proxy wars, armed both sides in conflicts, propped up dictators quietly or outright installed our own, all over the globe. We'll fund whoever makes promises to us, regardless of whatever else they're doing (or don't you recall all the money WE gave to the Taliban? Who trained Osama and his buddies to piss off the Soviets in the first place?).
The rest of the world has plenty of reason to dislike America. Religious fervor may be a factor, but you'll notice they attacked the United States. They didn't attack the Hindus in India, or the Buddhists in China, or the Christians in Canada, all of whom are equally "deviant". There's a reason they went after America and not anyone else.
Well, it sucks that you had that experience. Next time, try the live CD and make sure things are working -- if it works there, you know it can work with the full install.
:)
As for your commentary, let me point out two things.
1- Lack of standard, reducing support available and compatibility consensus.
I'd argue there's far more standards and compatability in Gnome and Ubuntu than for Windows. From a user perspective, Windows allows any executable installer to basically vomit anywhere it wants -- sure, go ahead and muck with the registry, install three systray icons, a quicklaunch shortcut, a desktop shortcut, and two start menu entries. Which might be named after the manufacturer, or maybe the product, or maybe the parent company. Who knows? There's no standard way of doing it -- it's just that users have been trained to accept it. In Gnome, basically everything gets filed so it's never more than one click away, and it's always under a sane, general heading. "Internet", "Games", "Graphics", "Office", whatever.
Same with installation of new stuff. Want a CD burner for Windows? Google "cd burner software" or similar, tromp through eight or nine results looking for one that doesn't look sketchy, isn't crippled trialware, and that you're reasonable sure won't install some spyware or other. Download it, run the installer, agree to weird EULAs and maybe it'll work. Maybe not -- maybe it was XP only and you have Vista, or vice versa. And unless you really know what you're doing, you can't be sure it didn't stealthily install some crapware alongside it. Finally, clean up the mess it left behind when installing (extraneous icons, shortcuts, start menu entries, etc).
Ubuntu? Open Synaptic and click whatever you want. Then ignore it. It'll download, configure, and install without any further interaction, and there's accountability for who made it and where it is coming from. You're done.
2- Linux Geeks expecting average joe to spend time (which he doesn't have) browsing at forums for his answers, often "on his 2nd computer" (which he doesn't have either).
No one expects this. And honestly I have never, ever had trouble with drivers on any machine, on any distro -- including random ones like DSL, Puppy, or other ones I just want to use for experiments. The sole exception has been wireless Broadcom stuff...and that headache stopped over a year ago with the Restricted Drivers manager.
Compare this to Windows, where I've never gotten an install to work the first time. A clean install of Windows will not have drivers for your wireless or ethernet, sound card, video card, and probably a few other things. You either have to have some sort of recovery CD, which Joe User doesn't have lying around, or you have to have...a second computer, so you can go to dell.com or whatever, and download the drivers. Then install them one at a time, by hand. And clean up the mess they leave behind, again.
I guess my point is that Linux in general and Ubuntu does a much, much better job at hardware detection and driver handling. Windows is essentially incapable of it, and either way, if you're Joe User, you don't know how to fix Windows problems any more effectively than Linux problems, so it's kind of a null point.
No, I think the real reason Ubuntu doesn't have a solid base of home users is because the overwhelming majority of users just buy a computer that has Windows already on it, and stop thinking about it right then. They see no reason to switch because to most people, "Windows" IS a computer, and the only other option is to buy a Mac. So they put up with Windows' endless annoyances and nagging because it's what they're used to, and are blissful in their ignorance.
Considering the regression from 7.10 with the wireless lights (it used to be a light would flash when transmitting data, now the light never even shows (known bug)), maybe they should have a long look at their wireless system.
Heh, I didn't know about that. When I switched to 7.04, the blinking light drove me crazy but I learned to deal with it. Now on 8.04 the light isn't on at all, as you said, but I just said "Whatever" and moved along. The wireless light on my laptop is this godawful bright blue LED positioned to shine right in my face anyway, so I'm not crying about its loss, but it's nice to know it's not just my hardware.
Q2: THEN WHAT THE FUCK DID WE DO TO PISS THEM OFF SO MUCH THEY FELT COMPELLED TO FLY PLANES INTO FOUR MAJOR BUILDINGS?
Well, according to the sound bites, they have absolutely no good reason -- they just "hate us for our freedom." Y'see, it musta gone something like this. Abdul and Osama and Aziz were sitting around one day, chatting about this and that, as they'd done every day for the past twenty years. The conversation dwindled for a moment, as conversations tend to do, and in the silence, Osama sighed.
"What is wrong, my friend?" asked Aziz.
"It's just.. it's those Americans," said Osama.
"The Americans?" said Aziz. "I don't understand. What's your problem with them?"
"Yes," offered Abdul, "what is the problem with them? They mind their own business and never interfere with us or our Muslim brothers in other lands."
"I suppose that's true," Osama conceded. "Still, there is something about them."
"My friend," said Aziz, "I can hear the anger in your voice but I don't see why you begrudge Americans. They have been nothing but considerate and peaceful participants in world affairs."
"You're correct," said Osama. "They have never invaded, waged proxy wars, propped up dictators, or ousted legitimate governments in any country. Yet I hate them anyway."
"But why?" asked Abdul.
"Well," said Osama, volume increasing as he got to his feet to make the point, "they're just.. they're just so FREE! I can't STAND that!"
Abdul and Aziz exchanged glances, and felt shame, for they knew Osama was right. Americans were free, and they needed no further motivation for their hatred. They would teach those cursed, free Americans how wrong they were to be free. Oh, yes, America's time of reckoning was drawing nigh, and the trio fired their AK-47s into the air in triumph.
So you see, there is really nothing we did to cause such hatred, nor anything we could have done to prevent it. We are completely innocent and are guilty only of being so free.
you still need to say "the limit is X", or the whole legal system is a farce made out of "fuzzy rules we're kind of supposed to follow".
Seems to me that's the whole point of having a judge -- a human element who can decide whether the punishment really fits the crime, or if a crime was even committed. Your assertion about "good faith" is fine and I mostly agree, but unfortunately there are too many types who just want to throw the book at anyone who violates any infraction -- whether it's having a picture of some girl a day before her eighteenth birthday, or going one mile an hour over the speed limit.
That's precisely why we need judges -- good ones -- to make these kinds of calls. If you base everything on hard limits and either/or statements, we might as well just scrap it all and replace the judge with a database that spits out a punishment based on the charge if the defendant is found guilty, and save ourselves the tax-funded salaries of these guys. (The fact that far too many judges STILL act this way is incidental to my utopian view.)
As for the specific issue at hand, I think the entire thing needs to be revisited and rethought. In most states I believe the age of consent is 16. There's something pretty dumb about a system that says it's okay for you to have sex with a 16 year old, but the minute you break out the camera, suddenly you're an evil, evil pervert and you're corrupting her innocence. I'm not saying the age of being able to be in pornography should be lowered, nor am I saying the age of sexual consent should be raised -- I'm just observing the contradictory views the law establishes for this, and many other things.
Depends on how paranoid you are. For maximum protection I'd use a live CD like Ubuntu or something, and a secondhand PCMCIA wireless card (I have several laying around from who-knows-where, as do many people). Connect to a public AP at a coffee shop or something, and then use Tor or at the very least a web proxy to send email to the proper authorties from one of these services, making sure to verify your reported IP at ipchicken.com or similar beforehand. With all of this you would essentially be impossible to track down. Provide only the details about the flaw you think you found, and add nothing else, including how you found it or when (don't give them a chance to narrow it down and check security camera footage or anything).
If someone is so brain-damaged that they can't remember where they just saved a file a few seconds ago, or is so stubborn or incompetent that they won't expand their skillset just a little bit to include things like "save your files in clear, labelled directories", no amount of OS or filesystem jiggery is going to help them. It's like blaming the file cabinet for a dumb secretary's technique of "shove all folders into this metal box and hope to sort it out later." You can blame the file cabinet all day long, or you can fire the secretary and get someone who has half a clue.
Computers have been part of the workplace for at least fifteen years or so, and are only getting more and more important. Fifteen years is enough time for anyone to ramp up on a few basic skills, and "save your files in logical places and then remember them" isn't exactly asking them to perform an amazingly technical feat. This really isn't rocket surgery, and it's time to stop blaming the machines for the incompetence of the users.
Yeah, I'm exclusing the granny who just got her first computer two months ago and has never used one before, because she's the minority. The other 99% of computer users have no excuse for this kind of thing anymore, and haven't for over a decade.
Your entire tirade makes no sense anyway -- the parent poster didn't even mention Linux. In fact he was talking about stuff like "My Documents". That being said, this isn't even an OS issue -- in Linux you generally save stuff the same way you would in Windows. Click the little Save icon, pick a location, give it a name. Then maybe remember that name for the ten seconds it takes to email the file to soemone or whatever. If you can't manage this, you've got bigger problems than your choice of OS.
Or pay attention to where the hell you're saving stuff, have a few sensible directories, and name things in a sane, descriptive way. I guess that's asking too much of most users whose file management techniques consist of chucking everything into "My Documents" or on the desktop, with names like "Shortcut to Copy of Copy of New Sales Proposal (1) (2) (3) (4).doc.doc".
the average user should be able to accomplish everything they need to do using a 700-800 MHz low-power processor with 256 MB of RAM.
The average user already can, but since their computer gets "slow" after a while (because they load it up with crapware, never clean it or otherwise maintain it, etc), they just chuck it and get a newer one. At my office the salespeople all have 1.6ghz dual core machines with a gig of RAM, yet not one of them needs to do more than run Word, Excel, Outlook, IE, and maybe a remote desktop program for demonstrations once in a while. This is all possbile on a fairly low-end machine as long as it's installed properly and maintained, but god forbid eh? Instead they all sit around complaining how slow their fancy dual-core machines are.
Until about three years ago my only laptop was an ancient Toshiba at 266mhz with something like 300 megs of RAM, running Windows 2000 (though I occasionally pressed it into service for Debian or similar). It got the job done for the most part -- I could run Photoshop on it, Open Office, watch videos, listen to music, check email, chat on IRC and AIM. No problem.
I'm not saying everyone should go back to Pentium II chips here, but it seems that every time a better, faster, cheaper architecture comes along, users don't notice the difference because it just means they can load it with more crap and slow it down to the point where it's indistinguishable from whatever they had before.
Because the majority of people aren't like you. Most of them have no idea what suspend or hibernate even means, nevermind how to use it or why it might be better. Vista make take about a minute to boot for you, but I'm guessing you didn't install all kinds of extra garbage on it.
Any time I have to deal with some salesperson's laptop at work, it takes bloody ages to boot, and it's always because they have fifty thousand unnecessary things loading when Windows starts -- they neither know nor care that there's a better way. And, like the majority of people, they have to reboot their computers on a daily basis or more, either because the thing strangles itself on all the stuff they're running on it without knowing, or because their other, equally irresponsible habits cause some important application (Outlook or whatever) to completely freeze or lock up the OS.
That's how the majority of people operate, and that's why boot times matter to them.
Vista takes about a minute on my desktop at home, which is a pretty nice machine, but I only got it that way by killing off all the unneeded services, and being fanatic about what is allowed to start at boot and what isn't. On my Linux machines I just kill all graphical splash stuff and login screens; I actually find it gets to a prompt faster and that's often all I need, though typing "startx" is usually faster than waiting for gdm to load anyway.
All I ever heard from Windows users, particularly at work, is how they couldn't figure out how to do anything through the "ribbon" or whatever they're calling it these days. Even though OO's menu isn't exactly like Office's, the fact that it has a menu makes it more attractive to people, I think; since every other application they've used in the past ten years has a menu, they know they can find what they're looking for there. The "ribbon" confounds even a veteran like me, though I admit I've only used it a handful of times because I use OO exclusively on all my machines.
What "functionality and features" are you referring to that MS Office has and OO doesn't? The majority of users just want to write a letter, pretty it up a bit, and send it off. Or make a spreadsheet, add some columns, multiply some others, and be done with it. OO handles all of this and anything else Joe User would ever want to do, as far as I can tell. If you've got counterexamples let's hear 'em, but my guess is you're going to have to dig pretty deep for some obscure stuff that hardly anyone ever needs or wants.
And, as mentioned above, "ease of use" is pretty subjective. I find Office 2007 to be a horrendous UI disaster, and have heard others voice the same opinion. Other people like it fine, or -- as is usually the case -- just don't care one way or the other.
As far as users are concerned it IS almost identical software -- it lets them make spreadhseets, type up reports, and make their stupid presentations no one will remember after the meeting is over. 99% of the rest of the "features" are just bloat added in, occasionally used by a few people from time to time, and ignored by everyone else. And odds are OO does most of those "features" just fine.
Then here's a more detailed version for you -- three OS installs on identical hardware.
Ubuntu literally is "click install, select your partition, name, timezone, and password, and wander away for twenty minutes." When it comes up everything works out of the box. Customize your wallpaper and other visuals if you must, but your hardware and software works fine. Ooh, you might have to click "Enable Drivers" to get your Broadcom wireless working -- what a pain. And it comes with damn near everything an average user would care about. Want more software? Click on it. Hell, click fifty of 'em, and install them all simultaneously with almost zero interaction from you once you've kicked off the process.
Updates install all at once and never require a reboot except in the case of a kernel update, and even then, you can tell it to sod off until you're ready.
If you've previously used Ubuntu (or any other distro, really), unpack your home directory tarball and hey -- all your customizations and application settings just how they were before.
XP and Vista require you to hold their hands throughout the entire install process.
CLICK HERE TO ACTIVATE WINDOWS
RUN DESKTOP ICON CLEANUP WIZARD?
When they're done installing half the devices have no drivers -- hope you have that recovery disk, or enjoy tromping through endless vendor websites,
WARNING YOUR COMPUTER MAY BE AT RISK CLICK HERE
downloading the driver installers,
THIS DRIVER WAS NOT DIGITALLY SIGNED AND MAY RAPE YOUR GRANDMOTHER
and installing them one at a time (agreeing to god-knows-what EULA in the process).
30 DAYS LEFT FOR ACTIVATION
Got your hardware running now? Good, go install Windows updates and reboot five or six times.
ONE OR MORE WIRELESS NETWORKS DETECTED, CLICK HERE TO JOIN A WIRELESS NETWORK
YOUR COMPUTER MAY BE AT RISK, NO ANTI-VIRUS DISCOVERED, CLICK HERE TO OPEN WINDOWS SECURITY CENTER
Done with that? Great! Now write a letter to your boss. Oops, you can't. Go find/steal/crack Office/OpenOffice and have fun installing that.
WINDOWS NEEDS YOUR PERMISSION TO CONTINUE, CANCEL OR ALLOW?
HEY! HEY! CLICK HERE TO SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE!
HEY! TAKE A TOUR OF WINDOWS XP!
Niiiiice, you wrote a letter to your boss. What's next? How about a little web-surfing? Oh, you're not seriously going to use IE, are you? Go get Firefox and install that.
WINDOWS IS CONFIGURING UPDATES... WINDOWS WILL NOW REBOOT...
Well, that's done. Why don't you make a CD for your girlfriend? Oh, gee, you can't, unless you think WMP is going to do it, which it won't. Go google for decent CD burning software and hope it's not trialware, crippleware, or installs some BS spyware alongside. Install it.
May as well chat with your friends, see what they're up to. What? No IRC or AIM client? Bugger, better go find those, install them, customize them the way you're used to.
See, this is easy and fast! Windows: Ready for the Desktop!
If no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-TEAM.
While many academic experts [who?] have argued that Wikipedia's articles can't be trusted because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted [citation needed], studies [which?] have found that the articles are remarkably accurate. 'But wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience,' says Garfinkel. [citation needed]
No, a Miranda reading simply confirms that you understand your rights -- it doesn't ask you to waive them.
The clause of the Fifth states "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". The key word is "compelled" and that's what led to the Miranda ruling. It was decided that if you were unaware of your right to avoid self-incrimination, you might feel compelled to answer police questions, thinking you had no choice.
Once you're aware that you don't have to tell the police anything, if you still decide to talk to them, that's your problem, since no one forced you into it. But you cannot "waive" that right, either -- at any time, you can simply shut up, or answer all questions with gibberish, or otherwise refuse to tell anyone anything, and the police cannot force you to keep talking based on the fact that you were talking before. You always retain your right to silence.
Likewise, even if you begin speaking to police without an attorney, you may, at any time, simply say "I don't wish to say anything else without a lawyer present," or similar.
The logic is that the majority of people are going to drive at a certain speed on any given road regardless (the "85th percentile" rule) and the one doofus going significantly slower than this becomes a very unexpected, slow-moving obstacle which requires people to either hit the anchors suddenly, or attempt to swerve around, both of which are clearly unsafe behaviors.
While most cops won't care about this excuse because they want to maintain a ticket quota, many judges will, assuming no other violation and a good attitude, accept the "I was just keeping up with traffic" line as grounds for dismissal or reduction of a citation. There's a reason for this.
I grant you that this study, and some others like it, mention only accidents and do not discuss or even mention fatalities, but the reduction of total accidents when everyone drives at the 85th percentile is a pretty clear fact. If everyone drove slower this probably wouldn't be the case, but since we aren't going to change the rset of humanity's driving patterns, telling people to drive slower than they should is dubious advice.
She clearly knows how to use email, how to type, how to send them. It just doesn't surprise me that she didn't think far enough and deep enough to make super-complicated security questions for the account.
Fine, but most people can "use" a car even if they've never been behind the wheel of one; if you gave them the keys, such people could, within a few minutes, manage to make the car lurch from point A to point B. Hell, I could do this when I was ten.
But just knowing how to get the machine to do that wouldn't qualify anyone to get a driver's license. "Everyone knows" that there's far, far more to driving than just pressing the accelerator and brakes, and turning the wheel at certain times, even though that process will, eventually, get you to the destination.
Yet when it comes to computers, as long as the person can manage to double-click the Outlook icon, type a message, and hit "Send", people think that's good enough. It's not, and the proliferation of viruses, malware, or just people complaining how "my computer is slow" is a good enough demonstration.
I get your point about the relative time computers and cars have been around, but computers have been around long enough at this point that there really is no excuse for not knowing a few basics, especially when you rely on them for your job, which means you presumably use this machine for at least a few hours a day, every day. Of the "middle-aged" crowd and up, most of their first experiences with computers came around the time of Windows 95, and the importance of computers has been increasing ever since. It's been eighteen years, people. There's no excuse to say you haven't learned it by now.
Plus, Palin is, what, 45 or so? Which widespread desktop computer use, and the "rise of the internet", started when she was roughly 32 or 33. She doesn't get to play the "too old to care" card on this one.
And, of course, if someone like Palin is unwilling or unable to think ahead or employ decent security measures, that says quite a bit about her. If her excuse is that she "didn't know better", why the hell not? Is she that unwilling to expand her skill set just a little bit in the interest of safety? Is this someone you want administrating the federal government?
It's "like" sudo only in the sense that you're required to authorize an action. The underlying security behind it isn't anything like sudo, to my understanding (though please note I am not a developer or programmer). Even if I'm wrong about that, clicking "Allow" is different, from a user's perspective, than typing a password. Typing a password requires you to at least think a little bit about what you're doing; clicking "OK" to everything just turns into a Pavlovian reaction.
Vista's UAC is obnoxious for two other reasons:
1. It comes up all the damn time. Seriously, it pulled that nonsense when I was adjusting the clock in the system tray, an action which affects precisely nothing. Sudo passwords are only required when making system-wide changes to what is designed from the ground up as a multi-user system, where things you do to the system could affect other users, or processes running as users. Changing my clock affects nothing on Windows that I can think of, and Windows, for all its bluster to the contrary, is not a multi-user OS.
2. I can move the sudo window to the side or ignore it for a moment if I'm in the middle of something else. No problem. UAC doesn't allow this -- it completely darkens the screen and stops accepting any input whatsoever, to anything, until you type in the stupid password. This is obnoxious enough when you're sitting right in front of the machine, but have you ever tried using remote software to admin a Vista box? The prompt is not visible to any remote desktop application -- it just stops responding, and you have to call someone on site to wander over there and type the password. If they know it. And if someone's around. Admittedly I have not tried doing this with Vista's RDP but that's only because I don't feel like walking my sister/mother/friend/whatever through enabling that.
UAC really does suck and I'm not surprised everyone hates it. Sudo passwords come up rarely, only when they make sense, require some level of "should I really do this?" pausing, and can be ignored until you're ready to address it. Sudo is nothing like UAC.
But there are enough stories of some border guard getting into a huff if he even thinks you're hiding something from him, and confiscating the machine for later analysis. Encrypting is a good measure that they won't find anything when they do that, but you're out a laptop. Better to not give them a reason to even care.
:P Either keep the drive in the machine for the trip back so they can see a relatively clean XP install, or ditch the drive somewhere and do the grumble-gee-it-broke routine when they try to boot and it complains about no system disk.
Dual-booting is one option and, in my opinion, the best. Set up a small partition, put a clean install of XP on it, and set your BIOS to boot from that by default. Change the background and put a few totally innocent-looking, common icons on the desktop so it doesn't look so obviously fresh. Once you're through customs you put the BIOS back, lose the partition, and you're back to normal. They're not going to know about the partition where your real stuff is, and this method should work regardless of what OS you normally run.
Hell, you could even deliberately break your new XP install so when they boot it up, all it does is hang / blue-screen / throw some error and reboot again. Then you grumble and say you dropped it while on vacation and it's been doing that ever since. They're not going to give you the third degree about it, cause everyone's gone through it.
If you're really paranoid, pick up a little 10 gig 2.5" drive somewhere (they're practically giving 'em away these days) and put it in your laptop in place of your real drive. Throw XP on it, use it while you're out of the country. As for your data (e.g., pictures), either upload them or burn them to CD or DVD. Jam the DVD into your car CD player. It obviously won't play but they're not going to inspect your car stereo, especially if it's off.
I didn't use the word "better" to describe this, I don't think. Long *or* short term doesn't matter much here, but I am aware of the time frames involved in natural evolution.
My point is that we, unlike any other living organism before us, do not wait for random mutation and selection. We adapt far more quickly by dint of technology. So, again, barring some catastrophic collapse of society, we will, now and always, both as individuals and as a species, survive through adapting the environment to suit us, not letting the environment pressure us into changing.
Evolution means, "those who reproduce more will reproduce more." This usually ends up producing organisms fit to survive in their environment.
Not with an industrial society. As a somewhat intelligent and capable chap, I am really not any more or less likely to survive and reproduce than an 90-point IQ moron. Both of us will probably find someone willing to put up with us at some point, and I'm not competing with him for territory, food, water, or my ability to hunt while avoiding being prey. An industrial society levels the playing field fairly well for all, at least in terms of "will you survive?"
Now, of course those who will reproduce more will reproduce more, but there is no environmental or genetic reason that affects that in an industrial society. What you're talking about comes down to trends and whims of culture, which is also compensated for with technology far, far faster than any genetic aberrations will manifest themselves, and likely changes too fast for any particular gene to assert itself on that basis anyway.
You're right that evolution drives towards a "good enough for now" balance. But that is precisely why evolution has essentially stopped for humanity.
Consider:
1. Natural selection only works when there are pressures which can eliminate an organism before it can pass on its genes, or when a genetic advantage means something to the organism's ability to survive. This is no longer the case for modern society -- we have no predators, we do not directly compete for finite food or water supplies, we do not need to adapt to climate or environment because we make buildings and clothing. I can think of very, very few medical problems that would prevent someone from living long enough to reproduce, and the vast majority of people, from the most brilliant and good-looking to the most moronic and ugly, tend to find someone willing to breed with them.
2. We no longer operate in small, isolated colonies. In a group of a hundred people, isolated from others, with environmental pressures and competition, a tiny genetic advantage can propegate. In a group of a thousand people, it will take much longer, but it'll happen sooner or later. Now we live in cities with millions of other busy breeders, and our boundaries are not constrained by who we can meet within walking distance. Any mutation is just a drop in the ocean and no longer makes any difference to our species as a whole.
Even if you pulled a Star Trek and selectively bred the best, brightest, and strongest people into a line of a few dozen genetic superpeople, that would not change humanity, who would outnumber the "advantageous" gene carriers a billion to one.
In the above hypothetical scenario, maybe you could pull it off well enough that you'd have a seperate offshoot species, genetically distinct and reproductively incompatable with "normal" humans. But that's not going to happen naturally -- it would have to be directed, and while that is technically a form of evolution, it's not what we usually mean by the term. And even then, by the time anyone did it, technological advancements in body modification, computer interfaces, and genetics would likely bring everyone to the same level playing field.
Humanity is "good enough" for where it is and that is where evolution stops. And we're "good enough" because we can adapt our surroundings to our needs instead of vice versa. Barring some monumental climate change or rampant epidemic or population-decimating disaster, humanity has stopped evolving through natural means.
The executive branch asked for and received legislation that allows wiretaps without FISA approval,
Doesn't matter who asked for what, or who granted what to whom. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.
Do you see anything in there along the lines of "unless you ask really nicely" or "unless you really want to" or "if someone else says you can"? I don't.
Even if you want to massage the "probable cause" clause to meet the demands of "omg catch the terrorists", then ask yourself why, if their evidence is so compelling, they have a problem bringing it to a judge and saying "We'd like to keep an eye on this guy."
here's the key, when communications are taking place with foreign nationals
I don't care if they're talking to Papa Smurf or bug-eyed monsters from Saturn. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say "unless the suspect is doing something you don't like" or "unless they're talking to someone not a citizen of the States". It's pretty clear.
They did this because terrorist communications are very sporadic, and the time to get these warrants was lengthy.
If you know anything about law enforcement, warrants are not hard to get -- a cop basically just has to ask and it'll almost always be given. If you have evidence that someone is a terrorist, get your warrant and keep tabs on them. When their next "sporadic" communication occurs you'll be able to Constitutionally eavesdrop, instead of all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense and pretending the Fourth doesn't exist. And, of course, I have to ask -- if Joe Sympathizer's communiques with his terrorist counterparts in foreign lands are sooo sporadic and nearly impossible to catch, then exactly how did you (the surveillence team) determine he was communicating with "terrorists" in the first place, hmmm? Either you're making a wild guess, or just spying on everyone and sorting it out later... or it's not quite as sporadic and unpredictable as you'd like everyone to think.
Then of course you drag out Barack Obama, who has nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion. Nobody even mentioned him. Get a grip.
When law enforcement stops playing by the rules, why shouldn't the citizenry?