***This is pure FUD. The entire reason Microsoft is the most successful business in the world is that they stay compatible with more stuff for longer than anyone else.***
I think maybe you are trying to say that Microsoft generally supports their old formats. Which is true with a few exceptions -- e.g. newer Windows versions don't support NBF (NETBIOS) message traffic unless it is wrapped in TCP/IP.
What you actually said is not correct. Microsoft tends to have fairly limited support from Microsoft for anything MS did not invent. Take file systems for example. Windows XP supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS. It might or might not support the two Windows 9 era compressed file systems (DRVSPACE). I'd guess that it does, but since I have as little to do with NT based windows as possible, I'm not sure. Linux, OTOH supports all of those (albeit NTFS is a bit shakey). It also supports umsdos (fat32 with Linux permissions), ext2, ext3, netware, Reiser, probably minix and a bunch of other stuff.
More important, I think it would be a mistake to take historic MS as a model.
Two reasons:
First, Microsoft Itself has changed with time. Few folks remember, but MS's selling point in the early 1980s was OK products at reasonable prices without copy protection. They still have OK products, but the prices have escalated and copy protection has reared its very ugly head.
Second, Microsoft today is not the Microsoft of say 1993. MS 2009 or MS 2012 or whenever will be yet another company. The MS cart is no longer the only stall in the marketplace to acquire software that does the basic stuff business and home users need. I personally don't think Linux is quite up to even Windows 98. But it's close, and I could live with it if I had to. (In fact, I am, by chance, posting this on Firefox under KDE on Slackware 10.2 although I usually use an old Pentium with Windows 9). Emulation and WINE are eroding the absolute need to have an MS OS. Extrapolate those trends. What you will see is an MS that is no longer able to lock in users through improved products (or at least the illusion of improved products). What's the next logical step? My bet is that they will lock in users by means of proprietary data formats that hold the user's data hostage. What other choice will they have?
Full NTFS compatibility in Linux is a good thing. There are a gazillion scenarios where it is necessary for users to get at Windows files from Linux or vice versa without moving stuff over a network.
But, keep in mind that NTFS remains proprietary and Microsoft can break it for newly written files any time it suits their business purposes to do so. All it takes is one update.
No one but me seems to care about this, but I think that the proprietary and undocumented nature of NTFS is an important reason why System Administrators need to have a workable exit strategy for Windows. They don't need to exit now. But in three or five or ten years if (when) Microsoft decides to lock in its user base, users should want to make sure that they have the option of being outside the door that Microsoft is slamming shut.
***It is a figure that I fell across somewhere that in Mass. 98% were literate. After they introduced a public school system, that dropped to 92%, never to return.***
In as much the Massachusetts Bay Colony introduced public schools in 1647 and made them free long before the American Revolution, this is really pretty damn improbable. Given that during the 18th and 19th Centuries a substantial percentage of the population of Massachusetts consisted of recent immigrants -- often from countries that were largely illiteriate, it's not very likely that literacy rates approached 98% prior to the end of mass immigration early in the 20th Cnetury.
I spent a morning a few years ago straightening out an acquaintance's Windows 98 machine that was infected with something or other that had replaced hundreds of files with executables that had the original name with.EXE tacked on the end. Explorer showed only the first extension. So did most of the other things I tried. DIR from a DOS box shows the full name -- which is how I found the problem in the first place. And Find showed the full name.
Just ran a quick test. AUTOEXEC.BAT.EXE shows up as AUTOEXEC.BAT... in the default large icon view, on this Windows 95 machine but the three dots are virtually invisible.
I expect that it depends on the exact Windows version, which of the four views is chosen, and how things are configured.
***That, and the removal of potentially massive ammounts of manure from our agricultural system doesn't sound like a sound investment in a sustainable agriculture either. But that's a consideration further down the path of long-term sustainability, and a fairly minor one in the current scope.***
The manure isn't removed from the agricultural system. The stuff is piled -- mostly over the Winter because the cows spend most of their time in the fields when the weather isn't too awful. It is spread on the fields in Spring. The stored manure generates methane whether the methane is burned for electrical generation or not.
Nothing wrong with this idea, but if you ask me, what Vermont really needs to stabilize rates and reduce carbon emissions is two more nuclear power plants. The chances of 'environmentalists' embracing relatively non-polluting nuclear power appear to be close to zero. The panacea d'jour seems to be gargantuan windmills in someone else's backyard.
***Winows 9x and above though do enforce rules on extensions***
Not exactly. What they do is recognize extensions and optionally (in some senses) process files according to the extension, You can turn off or alter the handling by tinkering with the Registry although most people don't. I suspect that handling of a few of the extensions (e.g..exe) can not be changed in the registry.
***but worst of all, hide some, or all, of them by default. Thus Anna-Kournikova.jpg.exe.***
Roger on that. It's clear that Microsoft was shooting for Macintosh like handling, but you'd think that 24 hours into Beta testing, it would have been apparent that this wasn't going to work. It's especially fun when several files have the same name and different extensions. The only way to distinguish them is by the icon. Try explaining that to your Aunt Matilda.
Oh yeah and Anna-Kournikova.jpg.exe causes trouble even if extensions are made visible because much (not all) DOS/Windows software only displays the first extension. But file handling is based on the LAST extension. Oooopsie.
***The old Mac OS had it right, the filetype flags were not user-created or normally visible, though you could get tools to hack them if you wanted.***
That's clearly what Windows was shooting for. As you point out in the previous sentance, that doesn't work in Windows. I have trouble believing that it worked all that well on the Mac, but not being very Mac-compatible I wouldn't know for sure.
Actually, I agree. ***BUT*** Elementary and Middle School students and staff don't need Excel. Virtually any spreadsheet that doesn't produce incorrect answers will satisfy 99.98% of their needs -- which are minimal because few people will actually use a spreadsheet to do even simple tasks... even if they have been trained in how to use them. The School District CFO may need a copy of Excel as may the school clerks since there seems to be no way to keep people from trying to use Excel as a data collection tool. There may even be the odd teacher and student who can benefit from Excel. By all means give it to those who need it. But for the most part, any freeware spreadsheet will do everything that normal people need.
BTW, are you aware that clipboard in Excel works differently than other Windows programs? That's because Microsoft ported Excel and its programmers from the Macintosh, and these folks (who for some unknowable reason are very proud of their user interface) never bothered to bring the clipboard into compliance with the IBM CUA conventions that are used in other Windows software. I expect that the reason that this has never become an issue is not that the Excel user interface is brilliantly designed. It's because very few people actually use the thing.
In five years in a school, I only ever saw Excel actually used by the CFO; the school clerk (for some data collection efforts); in a short unit to teach grade 7-8 students what a spreadsheet is (It reduced students to tears, appallingly often); The staff in a (largely unsuccesful) attempt to automate supply purchasing (Excel really wasn't the right tool); and by the gym teacher who had kids enter their race times after they finished running. Only the first and last efforts really seemed viable. Oh yeah, and I used it occasionally to straighten out data bases and generate specialized reports because it may be a lousy data base manager, but it looks a lot better when your other alternative is Access.
***Educational software isn't written for linux. Too true, but most educational software I have seen is crap anyway***
It really doesn't matter if you (or I) think a given application is crap. It's what the teacher or other user thinks that matters. These are mostly competent people with jobs to do. In my experience, there isn't one IT guy in ten that remotely understands what teachers and school staff do or what tools they actually need. It's their house. You should play by their rules if you can. There are a few exceptions -- for example HTML eMail -- where the security risks to the school network may need to override the user's preferences, but mostly it should be their call.
BTW, if you think that Windows educational software is crap (and in many cases I wouldn't argue with you), is it realistic to propose Web based stuff as an alternative? In my experience, most of it doesn't run anywhere near as well as the Windows based stuff you dislike. IMHO HTML with or without help from CSS,Java, Flash, et al is a long, long way from working even as well as Windows 3. It's OK for simple data presentation applications. Pretty much a disaster beyond that. But that's changing? Sure. In a decade, maybe two, it may well be ready for prime time.
As a retired US school IT guy let me say that there are several issues here: One is operating system. Another is other products -- mostly office suite. A third is standardized reports.
The OS is fairly clear cut. A school in the US simply has to be able to run MSDOS and Windows software. There are 20 years plus of legacy 'stuff' out there that are important to the school -- attendance, grades, stupid bureacratic reports, standardized test scoring, Mario Teaches Typing, etc. They often run only on MS operating systems (and it is often a struggle to get them to run there). There may come a time in the not too distant future when Macs and Linux will run this stuff routinely via emulation or WINE. Great -- but that's not today. In addition, in many countries a copy of Windows must purchased with the machine notwithstanding that is a clear violation of the most basic antitrust principles.
Office Suite products are a different issue. Power Point a pretty good product. Schools need it or something like it. Count it as a plus for Microsoft. Word and Excel OTOH are far too damn complicated for most educational uses. (If you ask me, they are far too damn complicated for most non-educational uses also). Can I use them? Sure. Do I use them? Hardly ever. I Don't do chainsaws either for much the same reason. Should a school have a couple of copies of MSOFFICE or a decent clone around? Absolutely. Should every student and staff member have a copy? That's nuts -- but in more school districts than not, they probably do.
A third issue is the unending reports demanded by the educational bureacracy. Attendance information. Number of reduced price lunches served -- by day. Number of playground swine and wild animal attacks broken down by grade. You name it, there's a report. Most of these come in the form of computer programs that attempt to make life easier for the reporter. Their distinguishing characteristics -- be they Excel Spreadsheets, Access, Web forms or whatever -- are that they all demand the latest technologies, they never (I repeat, never) actually work right without tweaking, and their support people are often quite clueless. For whatever reason, school IT people (who are pretty smart, but are often terrible at strategic decisionmaking) are unwilling to tackle this mess although it could probably be resolved without all that much difficulty. Until it is, schools need at least a few up to date Microsoft systems to accomodate the lunatics who think -- against all evidence to the contrary -- that Access or Excel -- are satisfactory tools for data collection.
***Now, if only someone will come up with a decent window-manager and GUI toolkit to run on top of it.***
About the best I'm aware of would be WFWG3.11 (pirated) and IBM's Workplace Shell for Windows (freeware).... if they will run on FreeDOS. But there doesn't seem to be much 16 bit Windows applications software that is conveniently usable.
Not missing anything on the basis of what you've been told. What no one got around to mentioning to you is that the 0.x FreeDOS releases are quite usable. I have a couple of very old notebook computers around here that boot through Freedos and it works fine.
IMO, the major reason that FreeDOS hasn't achieved more recognition is that Microsoft apparently doesn't much care if you pirate MSDOS. I've always wondered why MS doesn't sell no-support, Bring Your Own Media, licenses for MSDOS and old Windows versions for a few bucks. They don't, so people just make (illegal) copies and get on with their lives.
MSDOS/FreeDOS/et al remain the only real OSes that will conveniently fit onto a standard 1.44mb floppy and do real work. (It's possible to get Linux into 1.44mb -- Google LRP -- but it's painful). Admitedly, MSDOS/FreeDOS won't do a lot. But sometimes, you don't need to do a lot. They are very robust. In my last job, I had a stack of about six MSDOS floppies that had the software to partition and format disks, run a GHOST client, run a Netware client, do some basic diagnostics, and access balky CDROM drives. Used em all the time.
***Giving all groups equal say in the future of the internet would be a disaster for free expression. Backwards theocracies like Saudi Arabia would push restrictions on pornography***
And what 'backwards theocracy' was it that blocked the.XXX domain? Hint -- it wasn't Saudi Arabia. There may be valid reasons to keep status quo, but a need to protect the Internet naming process from dubious decisions by the world's unwashed masses probably is not one of them.
***Two people who are obviously very high up on the pecking order around there say, "No-go," and and yet it's still decided the shuttle is going to launch. Is it just me, or are we asking for another disaster?***
We signed on for a series of disasters when the Shuttle Program was started in 1970 more or less. See Richard Feynman-Personal Observations On The Reliability Of The Space Shuttle, The damn thing has never come close to meeting its cost, usability, and reliability goals and has no meaningful mission other than completion of the more or less worthless International Space Station. When last I looked, the Hubble service mission was still cancelled. It's the only thing on Shuttle agenda that seems to me to justify any risk at all to human life and what remains of space program support.
We either ought to admit that both the Shuttle and the ISS were mistakes and scrap both programs right now (my vote). Or accept the risk of launching a vehicle that will never be especially safe and get on with it. Odds are actually pretty good that it will make it back safely, and there seems to be next to nothing other than the obvious things like not launching during thunder storms that can be done to materially improve those odds.
***Someone must explain something to me. I am a European (Netherlands) so possibly it's to do with consumer laws or something.***
It has to do with Americans prefering cheap goods that don't always work to more expensive products that don't always work. For the most part, we don't actually have the option of buying quality products backed by reliable manufacturers. Competent customer service was eradicated by a mysterious plauge apparently inadvertantly imported from Communist Eastern Europe in the early 1980s. Or maybe it was home grown. Opinions vary. Anyway, we are big on fixing things ourselves. It's not like we have another choice.
If you still have decent customer service in the Nederlands, I would advise you to examine all American (and probably British) imports carefully to ensure that they are not infected with RTBS (Race To The Bottom Syndrome).
If Google voluntarily makes themselves responsible in some way to an external regulator, or otherwise arranges their business such that users have legal recourse to resolve disputes, then you'll know they are less shady than Pay Pal. Pay Pal is an unregulated bank. As far as I can see, anyone who has significant business dealings with an unregulated bank is in serious need of psychiatric help.
Digg's article selection is excellent. Really. Better than Slashdot I think.
The level of discussion, however... Digg makes Slashdot look like the folks here are adults. That's no small accomplishment. Not necessarily the sort of accomplishment you'd want your mother to find out about, but an accomplishment none the less.
***f your income is in the $50K range you're already paying around 20% of it to Uncle Sugar in income tax alone.***
Like the ad says. "Next time do a little research". First, take your illustrative income $50000 and subtract $8200 -- exemption and standard deduction. That makes the AGI $41800. For a single person, the tax on $41800 is $7121 = 14.25%. For a married couple it's more like 9.25% And BTW neither is high enough to cover the foolish expenditures of George the Clueless and the collection of incompetent sociopaths he has brought to Washington.
Why not quit doing what Americans do best -- feeling sorry for yourself -- and start learning a bit about the world around you? I project that were you to do so you would quickly find plenty of real problems to become enraged about.
I've been looking through this thread hoping that somewhere, somehow, there was actually someone who understands that, the name notwithstanding, WinFS is NOT a file system.
I've been intrigued by the idea of accessing files based on content and metadata rather than heiarchy ever since I first encountered it. But I'm dubious that it is really a viable alternative most of the time for most users. I think that's what has killed it. It's probably not that you can't implement WinFS. It's probably not that you can't debug WinFS. It's very likely that you simply can't make WinFS a tool that users will actually use no matter how cleverly you implement it.
***Make no mistake, this is a huge change, at least as big as the change from Windows 3.1 to 95. It's more than 6 years in the making. Are you really that blinded by hatred of Microsoft that you think 6 years and thousands of programmers have accomplished nothing? ***
Actually, I'd kind of like to see Microsoft deliver another really major OS change on the order of Windows 95. But I have to tell you, I don't think Vista is it.
Looks to me like '6 years and thousands of programmers' have labored mightily and produced... not very much.
I suspect that when folks in 2050 look back at the dark days of the first decade of the 21st Century, they are going to laugh at the problems that our naive ideas of computer security, usability and OS architecture were causing for us. Unfortunately, I don't have the slightest idea how to solve any of those problems. Neither, it seems to me, does Microsoft.
***Oh also that fund that is supposed to "subsidize" rural areas is such a waste. My parents have lived in a rural area for years without DSL and it wasn't made available until a couple years ago. And then, it's 128kbps and it wasn't funded by this stupid fund, but by the local telephone co-op. I'd rather the tax go away.***
The Universal Service Fund actually does subsidize rural phone users -- poor ones more than richer ones, but a lot of the subsidy goes to the service provider rather than the customer. It's a pretty good chance that without the Universal Service tax, your parents wouldn't have a phone, much less DSL. Or they would be on a party line with 16 other subscribers.
Same thing with schools. A lot fewer elementary or high schools in the US would have Internet connections if it weren't for Universal Service.
Now, I personally, happen to think that getting phone service (and DSL) to rural customers is important. On the other hand I think putting the Internet into schools so that the school can then spend a tidy sum to try to keep viruses and pornography out is kind of dumb. But for some reason they overlooked my name when looking for a candidate to replace Michael Powell (and we should all thank God that he is gone) at the FCC.
Anyway, the US has been subsidizing rural phone users for so long that most of us have forgotten that it happens and we are taxed to support it. We don't have a tax to support DSL to rural areas and as a result, most rural areas don't have broadband. If you believe that subsidizing rural users is important, then taxing calls made via VOIP is perfectly reasonable. (Whether the tax rate is reasonable is a different issue -- and one on which I don't have an opinion.)
As for the article. My impression is that it is not very well written. I don't know enough about XSS to be sure, but for the most part I don't think it is a very accurate assessment. It appears to me that XSS attacks most certainly are a security issue and are by no means limited to Javascript.
***If we wait for everything to be 100% iron-clad safe, we'll never leave this rock.***
On the contrary, if we keep on wasting shuttles and crews on silly, pointless missions, I expect that humanity won't get off this rock for centuries.
If, on the other hand, we focus on getting as much information about the universe as possible as cheaply as possible. We'll probably find in maybe five decades, that space technology has progressed enough that we can actually afford a manned space program.
Personally after three and a half decades of shuttle and space station whackiness, I no longer much care about humans in space. IMO, we're wasting money, and time, not learning as much as we could for each dollar spent, and are most likely going nowhere.
1st Amendment Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...
Given Section 5 of the Washington State Constitution, I'll betcha this never makes it to the US Supreme Court.
Just about everyone. You have a better metric? Get cracking on your book -- the articles -- the speach to the ACM.... and don't forget the patent. Fortune awaits you.
No one much likes LOC or ever has. But nobody in the past 45 years has come up with a better metric despite no small amount of effort trying.
***Err... the first public release of Java was on 23 May 1995. There might have been some code for it in 1990, but it sure wasn't ready for release.***
Hmmm. There was a publically released formal spec for Java unlike the other languages. I agree that a formal spec is not the same as a working release. But neither is it a fragmentary prototype or something like that. You can actually start teaching yourself the language if you have a spec and think it is reasonably firm.
I don't know exactly when the spec became available, but I know I reviewed it intensively in 1992 or 1993 before deciding that the proposed data structure for the IL was going to be an ungodly mess -- bad enough that I'd pass on devoting a year or two preparing for a Java wave that might never materialize. I was told later that the data structure laid out in that spec was not, in fact, the way that data actually ended up being represented. I'm not sure where I got that 1990 date from, but I did look it up and the sources looked credible. Trying again, I find a lot of dates, for the beginning of Java mostly around 1991.
I'll plead guilty to comparing oranges to tangerines.
Slashdot Mirror
I think maybe you are trying to say that Microsoft generally supports their old formats. Which is true with a few exceptions -- e.g. newer Windows versions don't support NBF (NETBIOS) message traffic unless it is wrapped in TCP/IP.
What you actually said is not correct. Microsoft tends to have fairly limited support from Microsoft for anything MS did not invent. Take file systems for example. Windows XP supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS. It might or might not support the two Windows 9 era compressed file systems (DRVSPACE). I'd guess that it does, but since I have as little to do with NT based windows as possible, I'm not sure. Linux, OTOH supports all of those (albeit NTFS is a bit shakey). It also supports umsdos (fat32 with Linux permissions), ext2, ext3, netware, Reiser, probably minix and a bunch of other stuff.
More important, I think it would be a mistake to take historic MS as a model.
Two reasons:
First, Microsoft Itself has changed with time. Few folks remember, but MS's selling point in the early 1980s was OK products at reasonable prices without copy protection. They still have OK products, but the prices have escalated and copy protection has reared its very ugly head.
Second, Microsoft today is not the Microsoft of say 1993. MS 2009 or MS 2012 or whenever will be yet another company. The MS cart is no longer the only stall in the marketplace to acquire software that does the basic stuff business and home users need. I personally don't think Linux is quite up to even Windows 98. But it's close, and I could live with it if I had to. (In fact, I am, by chance, posting this on Firefox under KDE on Slackware 10.2 although I usually use an old Pentium with Windows 9). Emulation and WINE are eroding the absolute need to have an MS OS. Extrapolate those trends. What you will see is an MS that is no longer able to lock in users through improved products (or at least the illusion of improved products). What's the next logical step? My bet is that they will lock in users by means of proprietary data formats that hold the user's data hostage. What other choice will they have?
But, keep in mind that NTFS remains proprietary and Microsoft can break it for newly written files any time it suits their business purposes to do so. All it takes is one update.
No one but me seems to care about this, but I think that the proprietary and undocumented nature of NTFS is an important reason why System Administrators need to have a workable exit strategy for Windows. They don't need to exit now. But in three or five or ten years if (when) Microsoft decides to lock in its user base, users should want to make sure that they have the option of being outside the door that Microsoft is slamming shut.
In as much the Massachusetts Bay Colony introduced public schools in 1647 and made them free long before the American Revolution, this is really pretty damn improbable. Given that during the 18th and 19th Centuries a substantial percentage of the population of Massachusetts consisted of recent immigrants -- often from countries that were largely illiteriate, it's not very likely that literacy rates approached 98% prior to the end of mass immigration early in the 20th Cnetury.
I spent a morning a few years ago straightening out an acquaintance's Windows 98 machine that was infected with something or other that had replaced hundreds of files with executables that had the original name with .EXE tacked on the end. Explorer showed only the first extension. So did most of the other things I tried. DIR from a DOS box shows the full name -- which is how I found the problem in the first place. And Find showed the full name.
Just ran a quick test. AUTOEXEC.BAT.EXE shows up as AUTOEXEC.BAT... in the default large icon view, on this Windows 95 machine but the three dots are virtually invisible.
I expect that it depends on the exact Windows version, which of the four views is chosen, and how things are configured.
The manure isn't removed from the agricultural system. The stuff is piled -- mostly over the Winter because the cows spend most of their time in the fields when the weather isn't too awful. It is spread on the fields in Spring. The stored manure generates methane whether the methane is burned for electrical generation or not.
Nothing wrong with this idea, but if you ask me, what Vermont really needs to stabilize rates and reduce carbon emissions is two more nuclear power plants. The chances of 'environmentalists' embracing relatively non-polluting nuclear power appear to be close to zero. The panacea d'jour seems to be gargantuan windmills in someone else's backyard.
Not exactly. What they do is recognize extensions and optionally (in some senses) process files according to the extension, You can turn off or alter the handling by tinkering with the Registry although most people don't. I suspect that handling of a few of the extensions (e.g. .exe) can not be changed in the registry.
***but worst of all, hide some, or all, of them by default. Thus Anna-Kournikova.jpg.exe.***
Roger on that. It's clear that Microsoft was shooting for Macintosh like handling, but you'd think that 24 hours into Beta testing, it would have been apparent that this wasn't going to work. It's especially fun when several files have the same name and different extensions. The only way to distinguish them is by the icon. Try explaining that to your Aunt Matilda.
Oh yeah and Anna-Kournikova.jpg.exe causes trouble even if extensions are made visible because much (not all) DOS/Windows software only displays the first extension. But file handling is based on the LAST extension. Oooopsie.
***The old Mac OS had it right, the filetype flags were not user-created or normally visible, though you could get tools to hack them if you wanted.***
That's clearly what Windows was shooting for. As you point out in the previous sentance, that doesn't work in Windows. I have trouble believing that it worked all that well on the Mac, but not being very Mac-compatible I wouldn't know for sure.
BTW, are you aware that clipboard in Excel works differently than other Windows programs? That's because Microsoft ported Excel and its programmers from the Macintosh, and these folks (who for some unknowable reason are very proud of their user interface) never bothered to bring the clipboard into compliance with the IBM CUA conventions that are used in other Windows software. I expect that the reason that this has never become an issue is not that the Excel user interface is brilliantly designed. It's because very few people actually use the thing.
In five years in a school, I only ever saw Excel actually used by the CFO; the school clerk (for some data collection efforts); in a short unit to teach grade 7-8 students what a spreadsheet is (It reduced students to tears, appallingly often); The staff in a (largely unsuccesful) attempt to automate supply purchasing (Excel really wasn't the right tool); and by the gym teacher who had kids enter their race times after they finished running. Only the first and last efforts really seemed viable. Oh yeah, and I used it occasionally to straighten out data bases and generate specialized reports because it may be a lousy data base manager, but it looks a lot better when your other alternative is Access.
It really doesn't matter if you (or I) think a given application is crap. It's what the teacher or other user thinks that matters. These are mostly competent people with jobs to do. In my experience, there isn't one IT guy in ten that remotely understands what teachers and school staff do or what tools they actually need. It's their house. You should play by their rules if you can. There are a few exceptions -- for example HTML eMail -- where the security risks to the school network may need to override the user's preferences, but mostly it should be their call.
BTW, if you think that Windows educational software is crap (and in many cases I wouldn't argue with you), is it realistic to propose Web based stuff as an alternative? In my experience, most of it doesn't run anywhere near as well as the Windows based stuff you dislike. IMHO HTML with or without help from CSS,Java, Flash, et al is a long, long way from working even as well as Windows 3. It's OK for simple data presentation applications. Pretty much a disaster beyond that. But that's changing? Sure. In a decade, maybe two, it may well be ready for prime time.
The OS is fairly clear cut. A school in the US simply has to be able to run MSDOS and Windows software. There are 20 years plus of legacy 'stuff' out there that are important to the school -- attendance, grades, stupid bureacratic reports, standardized test scoring, Mario Teaches Typing, etc. They often run only on MS operating systems (and it is often a struggle to get them to run there). There may come a time in the not too distant future when Macs and Linux will run this stuff routinely via emulation or WINE. Great -- but that's not today. In addition, in many countries a copy of Windows must purchased with the machine notwithstanding that is a clear violation of the most basic antitrust principles.
Office Suite products are a different issue. Power Point a pretty good product. Schools need it or something like it. Count it as a plus for Microsoft. Word and Excel OTOH are far too damn complicated for most educational uses. (If you ask me, they are far too damn complicated for most non-educational uses also). Can I use them? Sure. Do I use them? Hardly ever. I Don't do chainsaws either for much the same reason. Should a school have a couple of copies of MSOFFICE or a decent clone around? Absolutely. Should every student and staff member have a copy? That's nuts -- but in more school districts than not, they probably do.
A third issue is the unending reports demanded by the educational bureacracy. Attendance information. Number of reduced price lunches served -- by day. Number of playground swine and wild animal attacks broken down by grade. You name it, there's a report. Most of these come in the form of computer programs that attempt to make life easier for the reporter. Their distinguishing characteristics -- be they Excel Spreadsheets, Access, Web forms or whatever -- are that they all demand the latest technologies, they never (I repeat, never) actually work right without tweaking, and their support people are often quite clueless. For whatever reason, school IT people (who are pretty smart, but are often terrible at strategic decisionmaking) are unwilling to tackle this mess although it could probably be resolved without all that much difficulty. Until it is, schools need at least a few up to date Microsoft systems to accomodate the lunatics who think -- against all evidence to the contrary -- that Access or Excel -- are satisfactory tools for data collection.
About the best I'm aware of would be WFWG3.11 (pirated) and IBM's Workplace Shell for Windows (freeware). ... if they will run on FreeDOS. But there doesn't seem to be much 16 bit Windows applications software that is conveniently usable.
IMO, the major reason that FreeDOS hasn't achieved more recognition is that Microsoft apparently doesn't much care if you pirate MSDOS. I've always wondered why MS doesn't sell no-support, Bring Your Own Media, licenses for MSDOS and old Windows versions for a few bucks. They don't, so people just make (illegal) copies and get on with their lives.
MSDOS/FreeDOS/et al remain the only real OSes that will conveniently fit onto a standard 1.44mb floppy and do real work. (It's possible to get Linux into 1.44mb -- Google LRP -- but it's painful). Admitedly, MSDOS/FreeDOS won't do a lot. But sometimes, you don't need to do a lot. They are very robust. In my last job, I had a stack of about six MSDOS floppies that had the software to partition and format disks, run a GHOST client, run a Netware client, do some basic diagnostics, and access balky CDROM drives. Used em all the time.
And what 'backwards theocracy' was it that blocked the .XXX domain? Hint -- it wasn't Saudi Arabia. There may be valid reasons to keep status quo, but a need to protect the Internet naming process from dubious decisions by the world's unwashed masses probably is not one of them.
We signed on for a series of disasters when the Shuttle Program was started in 1970 more or less. See Richard Feynman-Personal Observations On The Reliability Of The Space Shuttle, The damn thing has never come close to meeting its cost, usability, and reliability goals and has no meaningful mission other than completion of the more or less worthless International Space Station. When last I looked, the Hubble service mission was still cancelled. It's the only thing on Shuttle agenda that seems to me to justify any risk at all to human life and what remains of space program support.
We either ought to admit that both the Shuttle and the ISS were mistakes and scrap both programs right now (my vote). Or accept the risk of launching a vehicle that will never be especially safe and get on with it. Odds are actually pretty good that it will make it back safely, and there seems to be next to nothing other than the obvious things like not launching during thunder storms that can be done to materially improve those odds.
It has to do with Americans prefering cheap goods that don't always work to more expensive products that don't always work. For the most part, we don't actually have the option of buying quality products backed by reliable manufacturers. Competent customer service was eradicated by a mysterious plauge apparently inadvertantly imported from Communist Eastern Europe in the early 1980s. Or maybe it was home grown. Opinions vary. Anyway, we are big on fixing things ourselves. It's not like we have another choice.
If you still have decent customer service in the Nederlands, I would advise you to examine all American (and probably British) imports carefully to ensure that they are not infected with RTBS (Race To The Bottom Syndrome).
If Google voluntarily makes themselves responsible in some way to an external regulator, or otherwise arranges their business such that users have legal recourse to resolve disputes, then you'll know they are less shady than Pay Pal. Pay Pal is an unregulated bank. As far as I can see, anyone who has significant business dealings with an unregulated bank is in serious need of psychiatric help.
The level of discussion, however... Digg makes Slashdot look like the folks here are adults. That's no small accomplishment. Not necessarily the sort of accomplishment you'd want your mother to find out about, but an accomplishment none the less.
Like the ad says. "Next time do a little research". First, take your illustrative income $50000 and subtract $8200 -- exemption and standard deduction. That makes the AGI $41800. For a single person, the tax on $41800 is $7121 = 14.25%. For a married couple it's more like 9.25% And BTW neither is high enough to cover the foolish expenditures of George the Clueless and the collection of incompetent sociopaths he has brought to Washington.
Why not quit doing what Americans do best -- feeling sorry for yourself -- and start learning a bit about the world around you? I project that were you to do so you would quickly find plenty of real problems to become enraged about.
I've been looking through this thread hoping that somewhere, somehow, there was actually someone who understands that, the name notwithstanding, WinFS is NOT a file system.
I've been intrigued by the idea of accessing files based on content and metadata rather than heiarchy ever since I first encountered it. But I'm dubious that it is really a viable alternative most of the time for most users. I think that's what has killed it. It's probably not that you can't implement WinFS. It's probably not that you can't debug WinFS. It's very likely that you simply can't make WinFS a tool that users will actually use no matter how cleverly you implement it.
Actually, I'd kind of like to see Microsoft deliver another really major OS change on the order of Windows 95. But I have to tell you, I don't think Vista is it.
Looks to me like '6 years and thousands of programmers' have labored mightily and produced ... not very much.
I suspect that when folks in 2050 look back at the dark days of the first decade of the 21st Century, they are going to laugh at the problems that our naive ideas of computer security, usability and OS architecture were causing for us. Unfortunately, I don't have the slightest idea how to solve any of those problems. Neither, it seems to me, does Microsoft.
The Universal Service Fund actually does subsidize rural phone users -- poor ones more than richer ones, but a lot of the subsidy goes to the service provider rather than the customer. It's a pretty good chance that without the Universal Service tax, your parents wouldn't have a phone, much less DSL. Or they would be on a party line with 16 other subscribers.
Same thing with schools. A lot fewer elementary or high schools in the US would have Internet connections if it weren't for Universal Service.
Now, I personally, happen to think that getting phone service (and DSL) to rural customers is important. On the other hand I think putting the Internet into schools so that the school can then spend a tidy sum to try to keep viruses and pornography out is kind of dumb. But for some reason they overlooked my name when looking for a candidate to replace Michael Powell (and we should all thank God that he is gone) at the FCC.
Anyway, the US has been subsidizing rural phone users for so long that most of us have forgotten that it happens and we are taxed to support it. We don't have a tax to support DSL to rural areas and as a result, most rural areas don't have broadband. If you believe that subsidizing rural users is important, then taxing calls made via VOIP is perfectly reasonable. (Whether the tax rate is reasonable is a different issue -- and one on which I don't have an opinion.)
After reading the linked article, you probably don't know what XSS is unless you knew going in. Here's a link to a FAQ on XSS. http://www.cgisecurity.com/articles/xss-faq.shtml.
As for the article. My impression is that it is not very well written. I don't know enough about XSS to be sure, but for the most part I don't think it is a very accurate assessment. It appears to me that XSS attacks most certainly are a security issue and are by no means limited to Javascript.
On the contrary, if we keep on wasting shuttles and crews on silly, pointless missions, I expect that humanity won't get off this rock for centuries.
If, on the other hand, we focus on getting as much information about the universe as possible as cheaply as possible. We'll probably find in maybe five decades, that space technology has progressed enough that we can actually afford a manned space program.
Personally after three and a half decades of shuttle and space station whackiness, I no longer much care about humans in space. IMO, we're wasting money, and time, not learning as much as we could for each dollar spent, and are most likely going nowhere.
SECTION 2 SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND. The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land
SECTION 5 FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Every person may freely speak, write and publish on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right.
US Constitution: (The supreme law of the land per the Washington State Constitution) http://www.superkids.com/aweb/pages/features/netpo rn/amndmnts.htm
1st Amendment Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ...
Given Section 5 of the Washington State Constitution, I'll betcha this never makes it to the US Supreme Court.
Just about everyone. You have a better metric? Get cracking on your book -- the articles -- the speach to the ACM. ... and don't forget the patent. Fortune awaits you.
No one much likes LOC or ever has. But nobody in the past 45 years has come up with a better metric despite no small amount of effort trying.
Hmmm. There was a publically released formal spec for Java unlike the other languages. I agree that a formal spec is not the same as a working release. But neither is it a fragmentary prototype or something like that. You can actually start teaching yourself the language if you have a spec and think it is reasonably firm.
I don't know exactly when the spec became available, but I know I reviewed it intensively in 1992 or 1993 before deciding that the proposed data structure for the IL was going to be an ungodly mess -- bad enough that I'd pass on devoting a year or two preparing for a Java wave that might never materialize. I was told later that the data structure laid out in that spec was not, in fact, the way that data actually ended up being represented. I'm not sure where I got that 1990 date from, but I did look it up and the sources looked credible. Trying again, I find a lot of dates, for the beginning of Java mostly around 1991.
I'll plead guilty to comparing oranges to tangerines.