"The system isn't working perfectly. Mozilla is taking Microsoft's word that these plugins, which install in their software without notice, don't have any vulnerabilities and are working just fine. Microsoft's plugins should be required to behave as every other responsible plugin. It shouldn't install with stealth, there should be a way to easily disable, and there should be a way to easily uninstall."
That, plus you have to remember that this plugin was being installed without user's knowledge in the first place. Where I come from, anything which installs something on your machine without the knowledge or consent of either the owner or the admin is generally considered a Bad Thing (tm). It would have been nice for Microsoft to have been upfront about installing the plug-in in the first place, and the security hole was a glaring example of why.
Something I've never understood about online advertising: a marketer puts up ads on a website, and people go out of their way to avoid/block those ads because they find them "annoying" and "always getting in the way". So what does the marketing department do? That's right; they find ways to make the ads even more obtrusive and annoying! I guess I could never understand how getting in the faces of unwilling viewers (who are actively trying to avoid you) is supposed to bring in more sales. There seems to be some ass-backward logic at work here.
Instead of working on "targeting" ads, maybe they should work on forms of advertising which don't somehow annoy the hell out of the majority of people who are likely to see those ads. Maybe something like "opt-in" advertising? I'm no expert so I don't know. All I know is that the present way of advertising seems rather self-defeating IMHO.
I have another theory why devs sometimes don't "drop everything" for an interview; if developers are anything like electronic engineering technicians (my specialty) then, when they're in the middle of an issue, they are on this creative and/or logical train of thought. I can tell you from personal experience that the last thing a tech wants is to have that train of thought disturbed; I tend to become rather curt if I'm disturbed in the middle of, say, dealing with some inverse Fourier transform or (especially!!!) troubleshooting a critical system. It's almost like bugging a brain surgeon in the middle of an operation; sometimes you'll stand a good chance of throwing him off track, even if only temporarily. It's not that I'm naturally rude (I usually end up feeling like a real jackass for being rude and wind up apologizing anyway); it's just that the interruption can be annoying if you're in the middle of an intensive task.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not justifying the lack of communication. I'm simply stating what I believe (in my experience) to be part of the reason for that lack of communication.
"If an emergency happens, that what what a cell phone is for : VoIP isn't meant to be your only phone, it's a significantly cheaper supplement to a cell phone."
If an emergency happens to knock out those cell towers upon which those phones rely, your cell phones won't be worth a plug nickel (unless we're talking about sat phones, which are pretty cost-prohibitive for the average Joe). In my state (which is coastal and lies in the typical Atlantic hurricane path) no one in his right mind would depend on cell phones to do the job when it comes to emergency communications.
There's always VHF, UHF, and (in limited markets) 800Mhz networks; but those rely upon repeaters, as well as antennas mounted (usually) on towers hundreds of feet in height. The repeaters at each tower site usually have backup generators but what happens when the antennas (or even the towers themselves) are severely damaged by the disaster (it's happened before)?
At this point your only other means of reliable communications are those crusty old ham operators and their backup power-enabled, shortwave sets. Maybe that's why the Hospital Commission and the Disaster Preparedness division in our state both hired our company to install low band communications equipment in various areas around the SC Lowcountry.
"And the disconnect between those doing the hiring and those who have the ability do evaluate your technical skills? Let's just say HR can put on their job requirements "Five years Windows Vista" and will not look at your resume (for being honest), while some joker will get the job because he's willing to taylor his resume to whatever lies HR is looking for. "
Can we have an "AMEN!" from the audience?
I've already said this in an earlier post in this thread but it's a point which bears repeating. The keyword-laden resume and the certs just seem (IMHO) to be the bare minimum to get past the HR gatekeepers who will turn down an otherwise talented applicant simply because his bullet points didn't give them a warm, fuzzy feeling. I often wonder how many potential stars have had the proverbial rug pulled from beneath them simply because some nitpicking secretarial type saw the resume without actually READING it (and wouldn't even know what the hell they were looking at if they did)?
"I've seen plenty of incompetent people lie their way through HR, so it definitely works."
I blame a lot of this on companies who rely too much on HR to screen the resumes. When you submit a resume in hopes of scoring an interview, the first person to see it is the "Gatekeeper" in HR. Oftentimes that HR drone doesn't know the first damned thing about the industry for which the company is hiring, so they'll often read a resume a little differently from the hiring manager (who would at least have a clue). HR just scans the resumes and relies on bullet points and keywords; as a result a lot of talent can be completely overlooked because someone who otherwise might just have the chops didn't use the right words or format. Many people have found that careers can be affected by some nitpicking secretary so some will "pad" their resumes just to get by the clueless gatekeeper. In fact, I've even heard the argument that a lot of folks aren't necessarily getting their certs for the job itself; instead, they're getting them just to get past HR.
You know there is a lot of truth to that remark. I'm a very tech savvy person and my family, friends, wife's friends, hell random people in stores I visit ask me for advice about computer parts. When they do I generally try to steer them towards products that have either open or at least very compatible drivers. So while I may only be one person I influence many people in their buying decisions. What's really interesting is that I've actually started to convert my wife's group of stay at home moms to linux, they see her little EEE and love it(I installed ubuntu on it for her). They then ask what it is and promptly want to try it out. Somewhere around 50% of them will actually stay using it once I give them a brief little class of how to use it and where to find all the free software.
And this is the only Linux "evangelism" which seems to really work. Instead of insulting Windows users and telling them how inferior their choice of OS happens to be, just show them what your platform can do. Even people who gave Linux a shot once before are usually amazed since their failed experimentation with FOSS was usually a few years ago (and they usually have no idea of just how much Linux has changed since then). Actually showing these potential converts the money (instead of just talking trash) usually goes a long way toward erasing a lot of the Redmond-generated FUD about Linux (or, at least, it'll make them question all the myths and misconceptions they have).
Well, I really hope that isn't the case, given the respective market share. Sorry to inform you of this, but this really is the case; otherwise there wouldn't be a need for a "Geek Squad". In my experience a lot of the users who deride linux for its "lack of usability" are the very same folks I see constantly tripping over themselves in a Windows enviroment (it's also amusing to see how they totally miss the irony). This just tells me, for example, that one could hypothetically create a 100% "Plug and Play" OS, everything working out of the box, no need for dropping into a CLI (like DOS or a *Nix shell), and users will still have the same complaints only because "it's not like Windows". Window's marketshare has nothing to do with any sort of superiority; it's just that people feel more comfortable sticking with the devil they know.
Now that I think of it, you really do make a good point; we've all seen what happens when a corporation gets so damned big that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is up to (think Sony, Motorola). But that doesn't take away from the fact that, whether this was a mere oversight or not, the trap is still there. That steaming pile of dung has still been left on the sidewalk just waiting for someone to step in it. Maybe you're correct in saying this was a mistake, but it's still the type of legal risk to which I'm no longer willing to knowingly expose myself.
I'm starting to wonder if "someone at Adobe" really thought this was a bad policy? Or, is this a case where Adobe tried to sneak one past the public and got busted (because someone did the unthinkable and actually read the EULA)? You'll have to excuse my cynicism: dealing with the EULA-based trickery of another particular software company (whose name I won't bother mentioning) is precisely what drove my ass to FOSS in the first place. Sure it's free as in beer, but the "free as in speech" part is more important than people will ever give credit for, and situations like TFA are a perfect illustration of this.
Yeah, I said it. I'm actually praying for IE8 to be standards compliant as much as possible, and this is coming from a Linux junkie.
Why? Simple; we still can't deny the fact that better than 9/10 of the unwashed masses out there are still paying homage to the Microsoft/Internet Explorer gods. They always have and this, in turn, has always meant that 98% of the browsers visiting a website are going to be IE; this also means that all the authors of these sites are always going to code to specifications that work with IE. If IE is broken in how it renders websites and requires a bunch of HTML and CSS hacks to get things looking right then that same 98% of websites won't render properly in other, more standards-compliant browsers (Opera, Firefox, anything using WebKit, et al).
But, if IE8 defaults to a standards-compliant mode then those same 98% of IE users will eventually force the devs to start coding their sites to standards. This is a case where everybody wins; just like IE's massive user base helped "break" the web, this is a case where that same massive user base can actually force authors to fix their crap (just like we alternative browser users wanted them to do all along).
Package management (insofar as I understand what the duties of a package manager are) is provided with Add/Remove programs... Wrong. Yes, one can use "Add/Remove" to install/uninstall in Windows; but the difference is that you still have to have the software disk. OTOH, with Synaptic and other package managers, the application you're installing comes from an online repository.
Example: Let's say I want to install a certain driver. In Windows I would have to either (a) visit the vendor's website , download the driver, then install it or (b) already have the driver on a CD or thumbdrive; if you don't have the installation program the you can use "Add/Remove" all you want but Windows can't install something that isn't already there.
In linux all I have to do is fire up Synaptic, find the driver from the list, and click install. No hunting down manufacturer's websites, no OEM rescue disks - nothing. Just click the box beside whatever you're wanting to install and press "Ok". That's it.
"Add/Remove Programs" couldn't touch that with a ten-foot pole, but that may be an unfair assessment; "Add/Remove" and package managers aren't even the same thing.
The problem is not that Linux is in any way "unusable", but that many people are scared of learning to use new tools. I have genuinely come across a lot of people who think they will "break" their computer if they do anything beyond what Windows easily allows. Downloading codecs for MP3s or using the command line to move or rename a file would be terrifying for them because they fear the kind of hissy fits that Windows tends to throw if you tinker with it. We need to encourage people to understand that customising your OS, playing with it, trying things out, should be the norm - and that you really have to be quite clever to "break" a computer!
If I had any mod points left you would have a couple headed in your direction right now, for ou have touched upon one of the biggest roadblocks in the adaptation of linux and other alternative OS's. Before we went to 100% FOSS in our office I had to convince our president that linux wasn't some sort of "virus" or "hacker's tool". Not that I could blame her though; between the copious amounts of FUD coming out of Redmond, and the natural human aversion toward anything not in our "comfort zone", it's no wonder that people have been hesitant to even so much as give another OS a fair shot.
On the other hand, another problem I've run into in trying to convince even my more computer-literate associates to switch is that most of these guys have cut their collective teeth on Windows OS's. They know every nut, bolt, registry and DLL hack of that system, and they kind of like their view from the top. They'll never admit it but their perception is that trying on an unfamiliar OS would force them to swallow some pride and put them back at the bottom of the learning curve. I guess some people's egos just can't bear to take that kind of hit.
You say changing vacuum tubes is an obsolete skill? I guess someone forgot to tell most of your favorite musicians; their thousand-dollar guitar amplifiers are built with the darned things, even in this day and age (yes, I know about solid-state amplifiers but a lot of guitarists seem to prefer the warmness of the older-style technology, and the manufacturers are doing a booming business still building them).
Heh, Ultima II pretty much rocked my world in high school (yes, I know I'm dating myself). I wasted nearly an entire summer glued to a green monitor while hacking away in some far-off dungeon. Loderunner also consumed a lot of time I could have been using for stuff like homework. I even missed BASIC programming; it may have been a relatively slow, high-level language but it was so easy to understand that even an idiot could pick up the basics (no pun intended) in a relatively short time.
One issue I can see coming from this: let's take the Spanish language as an example. I can tell you from personal experience that the Spanish you're likely to hear on the street will, at times, not resemble anything you've ever heard back in high school Spanish (thanks to slang and other factors). Not only that, but Spanish isn't going to be the same everywhere; there are many different dialects on this common language (hell, even East L.A. has it's own dialect, no joke); I'm not just talking about slang, I'm actually talking about slights forks in the language. If this cyber-translator is geared more toward Castellan Spanish, for example, and your subject grew up in Cuba or South Texas then the phrase "lost in translation" is going to take on a life of its own. If we're running into this issue on just one language then imagine trying to translate various common dialects of several different languages...
At first blush I wondered how Burton could get away with such absolutely ridiculous claims (OOo costs more than MS Word?!?! WTF??!!). But then I realized: the target of this report isn't going to be Slashdot readers, experienced sysadmins, or anyone similar - our collective knowledge can see the BS from a mile away, and some Slashdotters I know actually know enough of what they're talking about to debunk the report all by themselves.
No, the intended audience is going to be those folks who may lack the IT knowledge but still control the purse strings (CEO, COO, CFO, et al). They don't know any better so it's going to be easy to fill their heads with FUD and have them take it as gospel. The data may be incorrect but, by the time anyone else find that out, the damage will have already been done.
"Intel is a business" has absolutely nothing to do with this. If I were to volunteer my time and services to a church program to help feed the homeless, but then actively stole food from the program then I would not be surprised to find a group of angry people at my doorstep brandishing torches and pitchforks. Intel has just done the same thing and I see some folks here actually defending these fools! I used to think there was a special place in Hell reserved just for Microsoft thanks to the usually less-than-ethical business tactics they love to employ; but now it looks as if Intel wants a piece of that eternal real estate for themselves as well.
I only know of a few companies that will send free CDs of their software (Canonical/Shipit and Sun come to mind). However if I am mistaken about Opera software providing free mailed copies of the Opera web browser feel free to link the source and I will stand corrected. Here you go: http://www.opera.com/download/
Opera's not free? Are you sure about that? When was the last time you even bothered to check? BTW, Opera's been free of charge for at least two years now...
Maybe you misunderstood: it isn't the cop who's doing the escalating. It's the person being dealt with who determine what level of force (if any) is to be used.
Kimberly Tunahill? That name sound familiar. Which division did she work from (I was in Western division 1993-1995, and in the Southeast division from '95 to '97)?
As someone who used to work in law enforcement (San Diego 1993-1997) I think I may be able to shed a little light on the subject. You see, in the academy you're taught a concept called "escalation of force" (some instructors may also call it "the force ladder"). What this means is that there exists different levels of force, starting with Vocal (basically shouting "Police! Stop what you are doing, NOW!") and ending with deadly force (your firearm). Between those extremes you have varying and increasing levels of force (baton/PR-24/Asp; pepper spay or mace; etc). Usually you want to step into a situation using a level of force sufficient enough to stop whatever situation you're facing, and in many (but not all) cases this usually means going one level above the force being used against you or the person you're protecting (I know what some of you are going to say about that but remember - it's not the officer's job to have a fair fight, it's his job to STOP the fight in its tracks).
One of the issues is that not all agencies arm their officers with all the less-than-lethal options available to them. This can be a real problem because, for example, you can easily have an encounter where you come in using the lowest level of force but the situation escalates (thereby requiring the officer to also increase the level of force he's using). You can already see where this is headed - the fewer less-than-lethal alternatives an officer has at his disposal, the more quickly he ends up pointing a gun at someone. If anything, someone should tell the UN that actually BANNING tasers would be inhumane.
Also, as some other posters have already pointed out, it's not that tasers themselves are that bad; the real problem is that now we have officers badly misusing tasers. I believe if academies did more to emphasize APPROPIATE usage of tasers (much like they do with firearms) then their usage wouldn't be so controversial.
Slashdot Mirror
"The system isn't working perfectly. Mozilla is taking Microsoft's word that these plugins, which install in their software without notice, don't have any vulnerabilities and are working just fine. Microsoft's plugins should be required to behave as every other responsible plugin. It shouldn't install with stealth, there should be a way to easily disable, and there should be a way to easily uninstall."
That, plus you have to remember that this plugin was being installed without user's knowledge in the first place. Where I come from, anything which installs something on your machine without the knowledge or consent of either the owner or the admin is generally considered a Bad Thing (tm). It would have been nice for Microsoft to have been upfront about installing the plug-in in the first place, and the security hole was a glaring example of why.
Something I've never understood about online advertising: a marketer puts up ads on a website, and people go out of their way to avoid/block those ads because they find them "annoying" and "always getting in the way". So what does the marketing department do? That's right; they find ways to make the ads even more obtrusive and annoying! I guess I could never understand how getting in the faces of unwilling viewers (who are actively trying to avoid you) is supposed to bring in more sales. There seems to be some ass-backward logic at work here.
Instead of working on "targeting" ads, maybe they should work on forms of advertising which don't somehow annoy the hell out of the majority of people who are likely to see those ads. Maybe something like "opt-in" advertising? I'm no expert so I don't know. All I know is that the present way of advertising seems rather self-defeating IMHO.
I have another theory why devs sometimes don't "drop everything" for an interview; if developers are anything like electronic engineering technicians (my specialty) then, when they're in the middle of an issue, they are on this creative and/or logical train of thought. I can tell you from personal experience that the last thing a tech wants is to have that train of thought disturbed; I tend to become rather curt if I'm disturbed in the middle of, say, dealing with some inverse Fourier transform or (especially!!!) troubleshooting a critical system. It's almost like bugging a brain surgeon in the middle of an operation; sometimes you'll stand a good chance of throwing him off track, even if only temporarily. It's not that I'm naturally rude (I usually end up feeling like a real jackass for being rude and wind up apologizing anyway); it's just that the interruption can be annoying if you're in the middle of an intensive task. Don't get me wrong, I'm not justifying the lack of communication. I'm simply stating what I believe (in my experience) to be part of the reason for that lack of communication.
"If an emergency happens, that what what a cell phone is for : VoIP isn't meant to be your only phone, it's a significantly cheaper supplement to a cell phone." If an emergency happens to knock out those cell towers upon which those phones rely, your cell phones won't be worth a plug nickel (unless we're talking about sat phones, which are pretty cost-prohibitive for the average Joe). In my state (which is coastal and lies in the typical Atlantic hurricane path) no one in his right mind would depend on cell phones to do the job when it comes to emergency communications. There's always VHF, UHF, and (in limited markets) 800Mhz networks; but those rely upon repeaters, as well as antennas mounted (usually) on towers hundreds of feet in height. The repeaters at each tower site usually have backup generators but what happens when the antennas (or even the towers themselves) are severely damaged by the disaster (it's happened before)? At this point your only other means of reliable communications are those crusty old ham operators and their backup power-enabled, shortwave sets. Maybe that's why the Hospital Commission and the Disaster Preparedness division in our state both hired our company to install low band communications equipment in various areas around the SC Lowcountry.
"And the disconnect between those doing the hiring and those who have the ability do evaluate your technical skills? Let's just say HR can put on their job requirements "Five years Windows Vista" and will not look at your resume (for being honest), while some joker will get the job because he's willing to taylor his resume to whatever lies HR is looking for. "
Can we have an "AMEN!" from the audience? I've already said this in an earlier post in this thread but it's a point which bears repeating. The keyword-laden resume and the certs just seem (IMHO) to be the bare minimum to get past the HR gatekeepers who will turn down an otherwise talented applicant simply because his bullet points didn't give them a warm, fuzzy feeling. I often wonder how many potential stars have had the proverbial rug pulled from beneath them simply because some nitpicking secretarial type saw the resume without actually READING it (and wouldn't even know what the hell they were looking at if they did)?
"I've seen plenty of incompetent people lie their way through HR, so it definitely works."
I blame a lot of this on companies who rely too much on HR to screen the resumes. When you submit a resume in hopes of scoring an interview, the first person to see it is the "Gatekeeper" in HR. Oftentimes that HR drone doesn't know the first damned thing about the industry for which the company is hiring, so they'll often read a resume a little differently from the hiring manager (who would at least have a clue). HR just scans the resumes and relies on bullet points and keywords; as a result a lot of talent can be completely overlooked because someone who otherwise might just have the chops didn't use the right words or format. Many people have found that careers can be affected by some nitpicking secretary so some will "pad" their resumes just to get by the clueless gatekeeper. In fact, I've even heard the argument that a lot of folks aren't necessarily getting their certs for the job itself; instead, they're getting them just to get past HR.
And this is the only Linux "evangelism" which seems to really work. Instead of insulting Windows users and telling them how inferior their choice of OS happens to be, just show them what your platform can do. Even people who gave Linux a shot once before are usually amazed since their failed experimentation with FOSS was usually a few years ago (and they usually have no idea of just how much Linux has changed since then). Actually showing these potential converts the money (instead of just talking trash) usually goes a long way toward erasing a lot of the Redmond-generated FUD about Linux (or, at least, it'll make them question all the myths and misconceptions they have).
Now that I think of it, you really do make a good point; we've all seen what happens when a corporation gets so damned big that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is up to (think Sony, Motorola). But that doesn't take away from the fact that, whether this was a mere oversight or not, the trap is still there. That steaming pile of dung has still been left on the sidewalk just waiting for someone to step in it. Maybe you're correct in saying this was a mistake, but it's still the type of legal risk to which I'm no longer willing to knowingly expose myself.
I'm starting to wonder if "someone at Adobe" really thought this was a bad policy? Or, is this a case where Adobe tried to sneak one past the public and got busted (because someone did the unthinkable and actually read the EULA)? You'll have to excuse my cynicism: dealing with the EULA-based trickery of another particular software company (whose name I won't bother mentioning) is precisely what drove my ass to FOSS in the first place. Sure it's free as in beer, but the "free as in speech" part is more important than people will ever give credit for, and situations like TFA are a perfect illustration of this.
Yeah, I said it. I'm actually praying for IE8 to be standards compliant as much as possible, and this is coming from a Linux junkie.
Why? Simple; we still can't deny the fact that better than 9/10 of the unwashed masses out there are still paying homage to the Microsoft/Internet Explorer gods. They always have and this, in turn, has always meant that 98% of the browsers visiting a website are going to be IE; this also means that all the authors of these sites are always going to code to specifications that work with IE. If IE is broken in how it renders websites and requires a bunch of HTML and CSS hacks to get things looking right then that same 98% of websites won't render properly in other, more standards-compliant browsers (Opera, Firefox, anything using WebKit, et al).
But, if IE8 defaults to a standards-compliant mode then those same 98% of IE users will eventually force the devs to start coding their sites to standards. This is a case where everybody wins; just like IE's massive user base helped "break" the web, this is a case where that same massive user base can actually force authors to fix their crap (just like we alternative browser users wanted them to do all along).If I had any mod points left you would have a couple headed in your direction right now, for ou have touched upon one of the biggest roadblocks in the adaptation of linux and other alternative OS's. Before we went to 100% FOSS in our office I had to convince our president that linux wasn't some sort of "virus" or "hacker's tool". Not that I could blame her though; between the copious amounts of FUD coming out of Redmond, and the natural human aversion toward anything not in our "comfort zone", it's no wonder that people have been hesitant to even so much as give another OS a fair shot.
On the other hand, another problem I've run into in trying to convince even my more computer-literate associates to switch is that most of these guys have cut their collective teeth on Windows OS's. They know every nut, bolt, registry and DLL hack of that system, and they kind of like their view from the top. They'll never admit it but their perception is that trying on an unfamiliar OS would force them to swallow some pride and put them back at the bottom of the learning curve. I guess some people's egos just can't bear to take that kind of hit.
You say changing vacuum tubes is an obsolete skill? I guess someone forgot to tell most of your favorite musicians; their thousand-dollar guitar amplifiers are built with the darned things, even in this day and age (yes, I know about solid-state amplifiers but a lot of guitarists seem to prefer the warmness of the older-style technology, and the manufacturers are doing a booming business still building them).
Heh, Ultima II pretty much rocked my world in high school (yes, I know I'm dating myself). I wasted nearly an entire summer glued to a green monitor while hacking away in some far-off dungeon. Loderunner also consumed a lot of time I could have been using for stuff like homework. I even missed BASIC programming; it may have been a relatively slow, high-level language but it was so easy to understand that even an idiot could pick up the basics (no pun intended) in a relatively short time.
One issue I can see coming from this: let's take the Spanish language as an example. I can tell you from personal experience that the Spanish you're likely to hear on the street will, at times, not resemble anything you've ever heard back in high school Spanish (thanks to slang and other factors). Not only that, but Spanish isn't going to be the same everywhere; there are many different dialects on this common language (hell, even East L.A. has it's own dialect, no joke); I'm not just talking about slang, I'm actually talking about slights forks in the language. If this cyber-translator is geared more toward Castellan Spanish, for example, and your subject grew up in Cuba or South Texas then the phrase "lost in translation" is going to take on a life of its own. If we're running into this issue on just one language then imagine trying to translate various common dialects of several different languages...
At first blush I wondered how Burton could get away with such absolutely ridiculous claims (OOo costs more than MS Word?!?! WTF??!!). But then I realized: the target of this report isn't going to be Slashdot readers, experienced sysadmins, or anyone similar - our collective knowledge can see the BS from a mile away, and some Slashdotters I know actually know enough of what they're talking about to debunk the report all by themselves. No, the intended audience is going to be those folks who may lack the IT knowledge but still control the purse strings (CEO, COO, CFO, et al). They don't know any better so it's going to be easy to fill their heads with FUD and have them take it as gospel. The data may be incorrect but, by the time anyone else find that out, the damage will have already been done.
"Intel is a business" has absolutely nothing to do with this. If I were to volunteer my time and services to a church program to help feed the homeless, but then actively stole food from the program then I would not be surprised to find a group of angry people at my doorstep brandishing torches and pitchforks. Intel has just done the same thing and I see some folks here actually defending these fools! I used to think there was a special place in Hell reserved just for Microsoft thanks to the usually less-than-ethical business tactics they love to employ; but now it looks as if Intel wants a piece of that eternal real estate for themselves as well.
Even better, you can use a Flash-blocking CSS stylesheet to do the job: http://my.opera.com/shoust/blog/show.dml/98313
There, consider yourself corrected.
Opera's not free? Are you sure about that? When was the last time you even bothered to check? BTW, Opera's been free of charge for at least two years now...
Maybe you misunderstood: it isn't the cop who's doing the escalating. It's the person being dealt with who determine what level of force (if any) is to be used.
Kimberly Tunahill? That name sound familiar. Which division did she work from (I was in Western division 1993-1995, and in the Southeast division from '95 to '97)?
As someone who used to work in law enforcement (San Diego 1993-1997) I think I may be able to shed a little light on the subject. You see, in the academy you're taught a concept called "escalation of force" (some instructors may also call it "the force ladder"). What this means is that there exists different levels of force, starting with Vocal (basically shouting "Police! Stop what you are doing, NOW!") and ending with deadly force (your firearm). Between those extremes you have varying and increasing levels of force (baton/PR-24/Asp; pepper spay or mace; etc). Usually you want to step into a situation using a level of force sufficient enough to stop whatever situation you're facing, and in many (but not all) cases this usually means going one level above the force being used against you or the person you're protecting (I know what some of you are going to say about that but remember - it's not the officer's job to have a fair fight, it's his job to STOP the fight in its tracks). One of the issues is that not all agencies arm their officers with all the less-than-lethal options available to them. This can be a real problem because, for example, you can easily have an encounter where you come in using the lowest level of force but the situation escalates (thereby requiring the officer to also increase the level of force he's using). You can already see where this is headed - the fewer less-than-lethal alternatives an officer has at his disposal, the more quickly he ends up pointing a gun at someone. If anything, someone should tell the UN that actually BANNING tasers would be inhumane. Also, as some other posters have already pointed out, it's not that tasers themselves are that bad; the real problem is that now we have officers badly misusing tasers. I believe if academies did more to emphasize APPROPIATE usage of tasers (much like they do with firearms) then their usage wouldn't be so controversial.
http://www.crn.com/white-box/163101045/
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Centrino_Duo_Whitebook_A_DoItYourself_Laptop1/
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/264/1/