As in: Windows XP has menubars. Mac OS X has a menubar. Linux distros has menubars. Windows 3.1 had menubars. Mac OS 9 had a menubar. BeOS HAD FRAKKING MENUBARS. In fact, every Gods-damned GUI OS since the Lisa and the Xerox Parc have had menubars!
But then some idiot at Microsoft comes along and shits on 25 years of user interface wisdom by saying: "Hey, you know what? People don't need a menubar. Sure, it only takes up a fraction of screen real-estate, but let's just take it away and not even give them the OPTION of putting it back. Let's replace it with something bulky and clunky where the system of command organization is cryptic and foreign."
So call me a whiner if you like, but when someone takes the steering wheel off the dashboard of your new Taurus because they're "trying something different with the user interface", don't expect any sympathy because its difficult to use.
This is a totally unsurprising situation to find at many small businesses. When a business consists of just a handful of people, it is cost prohibitive to actually BUY software.
There is a point, however, that a business has to bite the bullet and "go legit". At certain sizes, businesses show up on Microsoft's anti-piracy radar, and your business can find itself on the receiving end of a software audit. At that point, the business will be liable for not only the costs of any software installed but also fines.
This is a good way to present the situation to your bosses: It's a matter of cost-benefit analysis.
I'm very fond of the Server Admin and Workgroup Manager apps that enable clean, easy, GUI-based, remote admin. Also, it's an operating system I'm very familiar with, mostly in terms of directory structure (where everything is) and the way users work.
In theory, I was also hoping that Software Update would streamline the update process, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Strike one.
Sometimes it's a pain to get the./configure right on a build, but it can't possibly be more painful than dealing with the fact that dports and fink have a steep learning curve and don't PUT stuff in the RIGHT PLACES. Meaning I have to reconfigure my other programs to tell them where to find supporting libraries and programs.
If the build-savvy Apple community wanted to help distribute ports, they should just build a whole bunch of.pkg's. Until then, I'll stick with gcc-compiling from source.
I use OS X server because I am a Mac-booster and because my associates and I are familiar with *nix conventions and the open-source services that generally run on them. I'd much rather deal with this than run a Windows Server platform.
And for the love of the Gods, don't try to sell me on fink and darwinports. Some people seem to think that dports putting everything it installs in a separate directory is a good thing. It's just confusing and messy.
I've tried fink and dports several times and they've never worked correctly for various reasons. If I can download and gcc compile a project's source in a reasonable amount of time, why would I bother wrestling with fink and dports?
As an XServe administrator, Apple's cryptic security updates are really starting to get on my nerves.
You would expect that, since it is based on multiple open-source projects that are freely available, Apple would push compiled updates through Software Update to its OS X Server users. Instead, they wait so long to patch things (like Amavis or the BIND patch for Dan Kaminsky's DNS bug) that I just get frustrated and apply the patch myself. Then, when a Apple Software Update does come down the pipe, I have to consider if installing it will break my configuration and land me in hot water with my boss when he can't get his e-mail anymore.
Apple needs to decide if they're going to regularly and consistently update the open-source software that their Server OS runs. If not, leave it alone and let the users apply and configure updates. This wishy-washy, middle-ground, Jobsy-come-lately approach is just an annoyance and an inconvenience.
How irksome that judges, juries and lawyers should have to learn how technology works in order to do their jobs properly.
Yes, people do have to use an ounce of cation online. Installing virus-checkers and securing your Wi-Fi are very important security measures.
However, if we are entering an era where the justice system simply can't be bothered learning anything about the most basic computer technology, we're entering an era of wrongful convictions.
I remind everyone of the schoolteacher who was fired over spyware popups. It's time for the justice system to educate itself, not bury its head in ancient jurisprudence.
Why so many "In Soviet Russia" jokes? You can bet it has something to do with the country's political climate.
Slashdotters aren't just beating a meme by a third-rate comic to death, there's a definite and unsubtle political jab at a country who seems to have made very little headway in civil liberties and openness since the Soviet Union collapsed those 18 years ago and Russia supposedly became a democracy.
Be it about the fact Vladimir Putin is clearly still running the country after "stepping down" as president, or imperialistic meddlings in satellite countries like the Ukraine or Georgia, or clandestine assassinations of former KGB agents, Russia still acts like the Soviet Union.
Slashdotters by in large are very concerned with their civil liberties. And their memes. So, you can expect the jokes to continue for now.
Given that Cisco is the company that provided China with most of its network solutions for the so-called "Great Firewall", I should hope that tips the scales slightly in Kundra's favor.
Our organization has been using a Terastation for a few years now. While its generally a solid product for basic usage, it becomes difficult to work with when attempting any particularly complex configuration. And don't ask the Buffalo support staff for help, they don't know anything about the backend of their product.
If you're looking for flexibility, I'd recommend ditching the NAS idea entirely and going for a basic file server.
"...body temperature, heart rate and respiration â€" signals a terrorist unwittingly emits before he plans to commit an attack..."
<p>Or signals a former sexual abuse victim might unwittingly emit for the mortal fear of possibly undergoing a cavity search?</p> <p>Fear is a crime. Guilt is a crime. Your emotions are a crime. Time for your Prozium.</p>
I'm certain that Apple sped things up for the commercial. Big whoop. But I would have been a lot more sympathetic if PC Pro had done anywhere near a realistic comparison.
The ad starts with the phone unlocked, and the user opening Safari to a pre-loaded page. The fumbling PC Pro fingers slowly unlock the phone and go to Google to find the page, rather than even entering the URL or opening a bookmark!
How about a realistic comparison? I'd like to see how fast the iPhone can work, not how slow your damn sausage-fingers are at molesting it.
WARNING: iPhone 3G browsing speeds may be impeded if you're an idiot.
As a Canadian, I've been cautiously supportive of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai has pleaded, in person, with the Canadian Parliament to keep troops in Afghanistan for as long as we can afford to, citing that a swift withdrawal by Western nations would undoubtedly result in the country being torn apart by warlords and extremists. This is a sentiment that I can agree with and support in principle.
Then I hear about these ridiculous trumped-up charges based on Islamic law. Yes, Middle-Eastern culture is fundamentally different than ours. No, we don't have a right to tell other nations how to run themselves socially.
But the question we have to ask ourselves is do we want to be in bed with a nation, irregardless of that nation's values, that oppresses its own people?
This is the kind of situation that calls for passive condemnation. If our troops are in a country to help them rebuild their society in the name of democracy, how can we reconcile that with the way the new regime oppresses its citizens? It becomes a "lesser of the evils" argument.
If this is the society we are helping to build, then perhaps we shouldn't be helping at all.
This is the most common argument used by people who say that legislation can not combat spam.
To that I would say that governments also need to use diplomacy as part of their efforts. If spammers move to [generic African nation], then western governments simply use a carrot or stick approach to ensure that country's co-operation in fighting spam.
No, you can't lock up every spammer. But you can prosecute enough of them that most potential spammers will think twice about what they do, and thus reduce the overall amount of spam to an acceptable level.
Yes, but what about when I go through MY mail server's logs and find that our servers never even communicated with the senders' server(s)? What do you suggest the problem is then?
I think you presume too much competence on the part of our customers. Often *ahem* SENDERS which exhibit the problem I have just described also send e-mail which has been marked as "Junk" or "Spam" by the SENDING server. That means that their mail servers' filters are scanning incoming AND outgoing e-mails.
Why? Perhaps laziness in ensuring security on a workstation-level. Perhaps their ISP is their outgoing MTA. Beats me.
"...The technical arms race will continue unless politicians and law enforcement join the battle with effective measures that work across national borders.
This observation has led me to conclude that the spammers aren't destroying the email infrastructure, it's the well-meaning people with their countermeasures."
Yes! Yes! Yes!
As a system administrator, I can't tell you how many times a failure to receive a customer's e-mail was due to a poorly-configured junk scanner on the customer's network.
And fighting spam is indeed a two-pronged approach. Sysadmins AND politicians need to be proactive about fighting spam. Spam is an issue that affects communications, especially business communications, with unacceptable severity. It's time for politicians to do their fair share.
Slashdot Mirror
In America, you claim your electrical grid was hacked. Because from Soviet China, grid hacks you!
"Used to the old interface".
As in: Windows XP has menubars. Mac OS X has a menubar. Linux distros has menubars. Windows 3.1 had menubars. Mac OS 9 had a menubar. BeOS HAD FRAKKING MENUBARS. In fact, every Gods-damned GUI OS since the Lisa and the Xerox Parc have had menubars!
But then some idiot at Microsoft comes along and shits on 25 years of user interface wisdom by saying: "Hey, you know what? People don't need a menubar. Sure, it only takes up a fraction of screen real-estate, but let's just take it away and not even give them the OPTION of putting it back. Let's replace it with something bulky and clunky where the system of command organization is cryptic and foreign."
So call me a whiner if you like, but when someone takes the steering wheel off the dashboard of your new Taurus because they're "trying something different with the user interface", don't expect any sympathy because its difficult to use.
Yup.
And for Office 2007?
Ohh.... you can't.
Not to mention the fact that you'll never work in IT again.
This is a totally unsurprising situation to find at many small businesses. When a business consists of just a handful of people, it is cost prohibitive to actually BUY software.
There is a point, however, that a business has to bite the bullet and "go legit". At certain sizes, businesses show up on Microsoft's anti-piracy radar, and your business can find itself on the receiving end of a software audit. At that point, the business will be liable for not only the costs of any software installed but also fines.
This is a good way to present the situation to your bosses: It's a matter of cost-benefit analysis.
Are they ditching the ribbon and bringing back the god-damned menu bar? If not, I could care less.
In the West, you make jokes about Canada.
In Soviet space, no one can hear you scream!
I'm very fond of the Server Admin and Workgroup Manager apps that enable clean, easy, GUI-based, remote admin. Also, it's an operating system I'm very familiar with, mostly in terms of directory structure (where everything is) and the way users work.
In theory, I was also hoping that Software Update would streamline the update process, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Strike one.
Hear, hear.
Sometimes it's a pain to get the ./configure right on a build, but it can't possibly be more painful than dealing with the fact that dports and fink have a steep learning curve and don't PUT stuff in the RIGHT PLACES. Meaning I have to reconfigure my other programs to tell them where to find supporting libraries and programs.
If the build-savvy Apple community wanted to help distribute ports, they should just build a whole bunch of .pkg's. Until then, I'll stick with gcc-compiling from source.
I use OS X server because I am a Mac-booster and because my associates and I are familiar with *nix conventions and the open-source services that generally run on them. I'd much rather deal with this than run a Windows Server platform.
And for the love of the Gods, don't try to sell me on fink and darwinports. Some people seem to think that dports putting everything it installs in a separate directory is a good thing. It's just confusing and messy.
I've tried fink and dports several times and they've never worked correctly for various reasons. If I can download and gcc compile a project's source in a reasonable amount of time, why would I bother wrestling with fink and dports?
As an XServe administrator, Apple's cryptic security updates are really starting to get on my nerves.
You would expect that, since it is based on multiple open-source projects that are freely available, Apple would push compiled updates through Software Update to its OS X Server users. Instead, they wait so long to patch things (like Amavis or the BIND patch for Dan Kaminsky's DNS bug) that I just get frustrated and apply the patch myself. Then, when a Apple Software Update does come down the pipe, I have to consider if installing it will break my configuration and land me in hot water with my boss when he can't get his e-mail anymore.
Apple needs to decide if they're going to regularly and consistently update the open-source software that their Server OS runs. If not, leave it alone and let the users apply and configure updates. This wishy-washy, middle-ground, Jobsy-come-lately approach is just an annoyance and an inconvenience.
How irksome that judges, juries and lawyers should have to learn how technology works in order to do their jobs properly.
Yes, people do have to use an ounce of cation online. Installing virus-checkers and securing your Wi-Fi are very important security measures.
However, if we are entering an era where the justice system simply can't be bothered learning anything about the most basic computer technology, we're entering an era of wrongful convictions.
I remind everyone of the schoolteacher who was fired over spyware popups. It's time for the justice system to educate itself, not bury its head in ancient jurisprudence.
Why so many "In Soviet Russia" jokes? You can bet it has something to do with the country's political climate.
Slashdotters aren't just beating a meme by a third-rate comic to death, there's a definite and unsubtle political jab at a country who seems to have made very little headway in civil liberties and openness since the Soviet Union collapsed those 18 years ago and Russia supposedly became a democracy.
Be it about the fact Vladimir Putin is clearly still running the country after "stepping down" as president, or imperialistic meddlings in satellite countries like the Ukraine or Georgia, or clandestine assassinations of former KGB agents, Russia still acts like the Soviet Union.
Slashdotters by in large are very concerned with their civil liberties. And their memes. So, you can expect the jokes to continue for now.
In the West, you use operating systems. In Soviet Russia, system operates you!
I'm so very glad I got our company to use Avast.
Given that Cisco is the company that provided China with most of its network solutions for the so-called "Great Firewall", I should hope that tips the scales slightly in Kundra's favor.
His wife's in a coma...
I second regarding Buffalo's half-assedess.
Our organization has been using a Terastation for a few years now. While its generally a solid product for basic usage, it becomes difficult to work with when attempting any particularly complex configuration. And don't ask the Buffalo support staff for help, they don't know anything about the backend of their product.
If you're looking for flexibility, I'd recommend ditching the NAS idea entirely and going for a basic file server.
"...body temperature, heart rate and respiration â€" signals a terrorist unwittingly emits before he plans to commit an attack..."
<p>Or signals a former sexual abuse victim might unwittingly emit for the mortal fear of possibly undergoing a cavity search?</p>
<p>Fear is a crime. Guilt is a crime. Your emotions are a crime. Time for your Prozium.</p>
Okay, that was BS.
I'm certain that Apple sped things up for the commercial. Big whoop. But I would have been a lot more sympathetic if PC Pro had done anywhere near a realistic comparison.
The ad starts with the phone unlocked, and the user opening Safari to a pre-loaded page. The fumbling PC Pro fingers slowly unlock the phone and go to Google to find the page, rather than even entering the URL or opening a bookmark!
How about a realistic comparison? I'd like to see how fast the iPhone can work, not how slow your damn sausage-fingers are at molesting it.
WARNING: iPhone 3G browsing speeds may be impeded if you're an idiot.
As a Canadian, I've been cautiously supportive of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai has pleaded, in person, with the Canadian Parliament to keep troops in Afghanistan for as long as we can afford to, citing that a swift withdrawal by Western nations would undoubtedly result in the country being torn apart by warlords and extremists. This is a sentiment that I can agree with and support in principle.
Then I hear about these ridiculous trumped-up charges based on Islamic law. Yes, Middle-Eastern culture is fundamentally different than ours. No, we don't have a right to tell other nations how to run themselves socially.
But the question we have to ask ourselves is do we want to be in bed with a nation, irregardless of that nation's values, that oppresses its own people?
This is the kind of situation that calls for passive condemnation. If our troops are in a country to help them rebuild their society in the name of democracy, how can we reconcile that with the way the new regime oppresses its citizens? It becomes a "lesser of the evils" argument.
If this is the society we are helping to build, then perhaps we shouldn't be helping at all.
This is the most common argument used by people who say that legislation can not combat spam.
To that I would say that governments also need to use diplomacy as part of their efforts. If spammers move to [generic African nation], then western governments simply use a carrot or stick approach to ensure that country's co-operation in fighting spam.
No, you can't lock up every spammer. But you can prosecute enough of them that most potential spammers will think twice about what they do, and thus reduce the overall amount of spam to an acceptable level.
Yes, but what about when I go through MY mail server's logs and find that our servers never even communicated with the senders' server(s)? What do you suggest the problem is then?
I think you presume too much competence on the part of our customers. Often *ahem* SENDERS which exhibit the problem I have just described also send e-mail which has been marked as "Junk" or "Spam" by the SENDING server. That means that their mail servers' filters are scanning incoming AND outgoing e-mails.
Why? Perhaps laziness in ensuring security on a workstation-level. Perhaps their ISP is their outgoing MTA. Beats me.
This man is a God-Damned genius:
"...The technical arms race will continue unless politicians and law enforcement join the battle with effective measures that work across national borders.
This observation has led me to conclude that the spammers aren't destroying the email infrastructure, it's the well-meaning people with their countermeasures."
Yes! Yes! Yes!
As a system administrator, I can't tell you how many times a failure to receive a customer's e-mail was due to a poorly-configured junk scanner on the customer's network.
And fighting spam is indeed a two-pronged approach. Sysadmins AND politicians need to be proactive about fighting spam. Spam is an issue that affects communications, especially business communications, with unacceptable severity. It's time for politicians to do their fair share.