I definitely agree with you. It's a systemic problem, though... Lotus Notes took until version 6.5 to install correctly on multi-user systems. (And their first version was designed for NT3!)
World of Warcraft, the most popular video game, not only doesn't work correctly in a multi-user setup, they've done half-assed "fixes" to make it kind of work in Vista. (Instead of storing the Plug-Ins folder in a sensible location, they've actually moved *the entire WOW install* to the Users folder. It's ridiculous!)
So you have a big problem with the second-biggest corporate email system and the biggest video game simply do not get it.
That doesn't work. What if the program in question lets you download and execute programs? So I give Live Messenger a UAC confirmation *once* and from then on it's free to infect my computer with however many downloaded trojans it comes across?
Seriously. That solution might work for some applications, but it needs to work for *all* applications.
It looks like you're suggesting sandboxing applications, like Vista and Windows 7 already do with IE. The problem is that sandboxed applications are terrible for backwards-compatibility, there are hundreds or thousands of applications that expect to be able to do things outside their "sandbox." It's potentially possible for Microsoft to create custom sandbox parameters for every piece of software on Windows, but again, that's not a realistic solution.
And anybody who's used the sandboxed IE will tell you that the user experience suffers. Even simple tasks like dragging an image file from a webpage to the desktop require you to give permission for IE to break outside the sandbox. Imagine how hard it would be to drag an image from one sandboxed application to another, and that's a basic tasks that millions of people do every day.
(I'm assuming your time-based solution is just an example, since 99.99% of applications on Windows are interactive and a time limit would make no sense.)
So UAC is either institution incompetence, or malice (they just want to shift blame to the users, or they don't actually want increased security).
Yes, it's impossible that the problem is more complex than you've thought about. It must just mean incompetency, eh? Or maybe a paranoid conspiracy!!! (This is why I hate having these discussions on Slashdot.)
Yes, Microsoft has smart people. But this is a HUGE problem, probably a uniquely huge problem in the industry. It's not like "smartness" is some superpower that instantly solves the problem, it takes years of work, research, etc.
It was an analogy. You don't have to respond to the analogy whether or not you've heard of it. Respond instead to the *point* of the post. You're missing the forest for the trees: this topic isn't about locking keys in the car, it's about UAC in Windows 7. (For what it's worth, my Mitsubishi Cordia-L had that "feature.")
That's fine, I hear a lot of valid criticisms of UAC.
What bothers me is nobody seems to answer the question: "What *should* they be doing?" in a reasonable manner.
If you ask that on Slashdot, you get either "switch to Linux hur hur" or "they should write a new OS from scratch and run NT in a VM." Neither of those is a realistic option. The second is (slightly) more realistic, but it would be a decade of work even assuming MS started this minute.
To make things worse, when Microsoft makes UAC comprehensive (like in Vista) people whine that it's too annoying. When they make it looser (like in Windows 7) people whine that the protection on rundll isn't sufficient. I almost feel sorry for Microsoft, because there's literally no way they could make everybody happy.
And I suppose the fact that Gmail works with *every other website on earth* means that all those millions of websites are broken when Linux.org is the only correct website? Or do you live on some weird parallel planet where this is not true?
In any case, at the moment it's a usability nightmare. The error message at the very least could say something useful in plain English. Of course, this just goes to show that nobody in open source gives a shit about usability, so when you think about it maybe it's a good introduction to the site.
and we have an inherent fear of diesel, thanks to the loud, smoky GM diesels of the 1980s.
Hey, don't blame just GM.
My sister had a diesel Volkswagen Rabbit, and that thing was frightening far beyond what it's tiny size would imply. Also it took like 2-3 minutes to warm up before you could drive the damned thing.
Almost everything the UN does is "made in the USA" since it's located in New York.:)
But the reason the US doesn't sign documents like that isn't necessarily because we don't agree with the freedom of expression section, it's because there's also tons of other sections that contain things we may or may not agree with. We're in a unique position where: 1) We're already following the *spirit* of the declaration, if not the exact text. It's not like we're Iran or China, which actively suppress freedom of expression. Therefore, it's a low priority even if we do agree with all of it. 2) We're big enough that nobody else is going to force us into signing something we don't necessarily agree entirely with.
Well, ok. Maybe I'm "too American" or something, but I don't see what's wrong or undesirable about the number of flags in the US. I think it's rather nice.
Well, in my area there isn't much of that either. I typoed it but I was trying to say maybe one car in a thousand has a flag. Yellow ribbons were more popular a few years ago, but those have fallen by the wayside. The US is a big place also, the number of flags in one state/region says nothing about the others. Washington State culture is as different from New York culture as Australia is from New Zealand, or maybe even the UK.
I honestly think it's a perception thing: you simply notice flags more when travelling.
Well, fine, but that's not how the article is phrased. You're talking about an entirely different subject, one that *wasn't* covered by this particular sensationalist piece of reporting.
I agree that this whole thing reeks of "not news."
I think the US a wonderful country with some of the friendliest people you will find anywhere. But the first time I visited I could not BELIEVE the awful, tacky, in-your-face patriotism. Flags from every freaking house (here, flags are pretty much just for government buildings etc). HUGE flags on the side of highways and stuff for no apparent reason (why? seriously, why?).
Why not? I think it's really nice, actually.
Of course, I don't know *where* you visited... here in Washington State, flags are basically on government buildings and shopping centers and nowhere else. One in a thousand cards, maybe, has a flag on it. Other states might have many more flags; I don't know, admittedly I'm not widely traveled within the US.
We also have national holidays during which the majority of people fly a flag, it's possible you were noticing this. President's Day, Veteran's Day, or the Fourth of July. But that's only a couple days a year.
In a way, the US displays its national symbol so much and so often that it loses it's importance and meaning I think. Here, we treat our flag with a great deal of respect and use it only for official occasions. And I think it is more symbolic and meaningful because of that.
That's a difference of opinion, not some kind of evidence that the US is doing something horribly wrong.
I mean, you might have a valid point (although I'm not certain what it would be), but I don't the number of flags has anything to do with anything at all.
In fact, I'd wager that if you came to the US with a camera, and took a thousand random pictures of a thousand random locations, you'd see the exact same number of US flags as you would Aussie flags if you did the same in Australia. I think what you *really* noticed is how perceptive one is of flags when they aren't their own flags, and how unnoticed their own flag goes. (Note: I haven't actually done this experiment, but I'd love to if I had the time.)
In most countries, people come to love their country gradually and deeply, because they genuinely think it's a wonderful place. In the US though it does seem as if patriotism is more... indoctrinated into people.
To play devil's advocate: are the two mutually-exclusive? Isn't it possible for somebody "indoctrinated" (to use your word) to come to the gradual and deep belief that they live in a wonderful place?
Or it could just be a made-up story on a slow news day, which is usually what these "brain drain" stories are. They take 6 months worth of statistics, and extend it out 50 years from now to come up with these "scary" conclusions.
In any case, I doubt the hyperbole is called for, eh? It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
People only turn Javascript off so that they can then complain that the web isn't usable with Javascript off. It's some kind of pathetic attention-getting exercise. The best strategy is to ignore them, since they come in two varieties: those that are super privacy-geeks who have ads blocked and won't buy from you anyway, or those who whine but they'll just turn on JS when push comes to shove.
I'd like to see Javascript elsewhere. In the browser, it's limited by that turd known as DOM... imagine what Javascript could do if it had libraries that weren't utter shite. It could easily take over all the tasks done by Lua now, and possibly most of Python and Ruby as well.
The problem is people get into web development, find out that DOM is crap, then they assume the problem is Javascript and not DOM. JS is fine; DOM would be just as crap if you were working with it in Python.
For comprehensive information about Linux please visit our proper site, www.linux.org.
Please update your bookmarks and any links you may have to this old site.
What it should read is something along the lines of:
Duuuh
Despite Linux's popularity, this site is run by people who aren't smart enough to point linux.org and www.linux.org to the same page. (It apparently worked in the past, but we broke it.)
Please update your bookmarks and any links you may have to this old site, because we pointlessly and broke all our own links when we broke our own site and probably slaughtered our own pagerank in the process.
I agree wholeheartedly with the parent. It's amazing that a site like this still exists in 2009... heck I'd much rather see http://linux.org/ just 404 or time-out then give you this crap. "Proper site!" Unbelievable.
People who know the hardware in their computer, the specific distro they run, and what the problem is related to don't need the help. Well, they do, but they might already be serviced by Google.
You need to give the help to the people who ask, "hey, last week the doohickey worked with the internets thing, but now the button doesn't go anywhere and the doohickey disappeared!" That's a substantially harder problem, and if you could solve it you'd have one-up on Microsoft and Apple.
Slashdot Mirror
I definitely agree with you. It's a systemic problem, though... Lotus Notes took until version 6.5 to install correctly on multi-user systems. (And their first version was designed for NT3!)
World of Warcraft, the most popular video game, not only doesn't work correctly in a multi-user setup, they've done half-assed "fixes" to make it kind of work in Vista. (Instead of storing the Plug-Ins folder in a sensible location, they've actually moved *the entire WOW install* to the Users folder. It's ridiculous!)
So you have a big problem with the second-biggest corporate email system and the biggest video game simply do not get it.
That doesn't work. What if the program in question lets you download and execute programs? So I give Live Messenger a UAC confirmation *once* and from then on it's free to infect my computer with however many downloaded trojans it comes across?
Seriously. That solution might work for some applications, but it needs to work for *all* applications.
It looks like you're suggesting sandboxing applications, like Vista and Windows 7 already do with IE. The problem is that sandboxed applications are terrible for backwards-compatibility, there are hundreds or thousands of applications that expect to be able to do things outside their "sandbox." It's potentially possible for Microsoft to create custom sandbox parameters for every piece of software on Windows, but again, that's not a realistic solution.
And anybody who's used the sandboxed IE will tell you that the user experience suffers. Even simple tasks like dragging an image file from a webpage to the desktop require you to give permission for IE to break outside the sandbox. Imagine how hard it would be to drag an image from one sandboxed application to another, and that's a basic tasks that millions of people do every day.
(I'm assuming your time-based solution is just an example, since 99.99% of applications on Windows are interactive and a time limit would make no sense.)
So UAC is either institution incompetence, or malice (they just want to shift blame to the users, or they don't actually want increased security).
Yes, it's impossible that the problem is more complex than you've thought about. It must just mean incompetency, eh? Or maybe a paranoid conspiracy!!! (This is why I hate having these discussions on Slashdot.)
Yes, Microsoft has smart people. But this is a HUGE problem, probably a uniquely huge problem in the industry. It's not like "smartness" is some superpower that instantly solves the problem, it takes years of work, research, etc.
It was an analogy. You don't have to respond to the analogy whether or not you've heard of it. Respond instead to the *point* of the post. You're missing the forest for the trees: this topic isn't about locking keys in the car, it's about UAC in Windows 7. (For what it's worth, my Mitsubishi Cordia-L had that "feature.")
Now someone mod this off-topic.
That's fine, I hear a lot of valid criticisms of UAC.
What bothers me is nobody seems to answer the question: "What *should* they be doing?" in a reasonable manner.
If you ask that on Slashdot, you get either "switch to Linux hur hur" or "they should write a new OS from scratch and run NT in a VM." Neither of those is a realistic option. The second is (slightly) more realistic, but it would be a decade of work even assuming MS started this minute.
To make things worse, when Microsoft makes UAC comprehensive (like in Vista) people whine that it's too annoying. When they make it looser (like in Windows 7) people whine that the protection on rundll isn't sufficient. I almost feel sorry for Microsoft, because there's literally no way they could make everybody happy.
So what should Microsoft be doing?
And I suppose the fact that Gmail works with *every other website on earth* means that all those millions of websites are broken when Linux.org is the only correct website? Or do you live on some weird parallel planet where this is not true?
In any case, at the moment it's a usability nightmare. The error message at the very least could say something useful in plain English. Of course, this just goes to show that nobody in open source gives a shit about usability, so when you think about it maybe it's a good introduction to the site.
That still counts as "broken." The reason why it's broken isn't relevant to the status of "broken".
and we have an inherent fear of diesel, thanks to the loud, smoky GM diesels of the 1980s.
Hey, don't blame just GM.
My sister had a diesel Volkswagen Rabbit, and that thing was frightening far beyond what it's tiny size would imply. Also it took like 2-3 minutes to warm up before you could drive the damned thing.
Almost everything the UN does is "made in the USA" since it's located in New York. :)
But the reason the US doesn't sign documents like that isn't necessarily because we don't agree with the freedom of expression section, it's because there's also tons of other sections that contain things we may or may not agree with. We're in a unique position where:
1) We're already following the *spirit* of the declaration, if not the exact text. It's not like we're Iran or China, which actively suppress freedom of expression. Therefore, it's a low priority even if we do agree with all of it.
2) We're big enough that nobody else is going to force us into signing something we don't necessarily agree entirely with.
Uh, our OWN constitution guarantees freedom of expression. Who cares what the UN says?
For all we know, there's been a piece of malware in a Firefox add-in or something and their concern is valid. Benefit of the doubt.
Well, ok. Maybe I'm "too American" or something, but I don't see what's wrong or undesirable about the number of flags in the US. I think it's rather nice.
Well, in my area there isn't much of that either. I typoed it but I was trying to say maybe one car in a thousand has a flag. Yellow ribbons were more popular a few years ago, but those have fallen by the wayside. The US is a big place also, the number of flags in one state/region says nothing about the others. Washington State culture is as different from New York culture as Australia is from New Zealand, or maybe even the UK.
I honestly think it's a perception thing: you simply notice flags more when travelling.
Well, fine, but that's not how the article is phrased. You're talking about an entirely different subject, one that *wasn't* covered by this particular sensationalist piece of reporting.
I agree that this whole thing reeks of "not news."
I think the US a wonderful country with some of the friendliest people you will find anywhere. But the first time I visited I could not BELIEVE the awful, tacky, in-your-face patriotism. Flags from every freaking house (here, flags are pretty much just for government buildings etc). HUGE flags on the side of highways and stuff for no apparent reason (why? seriously, why?).
Why not? I think it's really nice, actually.
Of course, I don't know *where* you visited... here in Washington State, flags are basically on government buildings and shopping centers and nowhere else. One in a thousand cards, maybe, has a flag on it. Other states might have many more flags; I don't know, admittedly I'm not widely traveled within the US.
We also have national holidays during which the majority of people fly a flag, it's possible you were noticing this. President's Day, Veteran's Day, or the Fourth of July. But that's only a couple days a year.
In a way, the US displays its national symbol so much and so often that it loses it's importance and meaning I think. Here, we treat our flag with a great deal of respect and use it only for official occasions. And I think it is more symbolic and meaningful because of that.
That's a difference of opinion, not some kind of evidence that the US is doing something horribly wrong.
I mean, you might have a valid point (although I'm not certain what it would be), but I don't the number of flags has anything to do with anything at all.
In fact, I'd wager that if you came to the US with a camera, and took a thousand random pictures of a thousand random locations, you'd see the exact same number of US flags as you would Aussie flags if you did the same in Australia. I think what you *really* noticed is how perceptive one is of flags when they aren't their own flags, and how unnoticed their own flag goes. (Note: I haven't actually done this experiment, but I'd love to if I had the time.)
In most countries, people come to love their country gradually and deeply, because they genuinely think it's a wonderful place. In the US though it does seem as if patriotism is more ... indoctrinated into people.
To play devil's advocate: are the two mutually-exclusive? Isn't it possible for somebody "indoctrinated" (to use your word) to come to the gradual and deep belief that they live in a wonderful place?
Or it could just be a made-up story on a slow news day, which is usually what these "brain drain" stories are. They take 6 months worth of statistics, and extend it out 50 years from now to come up with these "scary" conclusions.
In any case, I doubt the hyperbole is called for, eh? It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
Are you arguing that that's friendly and polite?
The third paragraph of the Smart Questions How-To calls its readers idiots. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more unfriendly article.
People only turn Javascript off so that they can then complain that the web isn't usable with Javascript off. It's some kind of pathetic attention-getting exercise. The best strategy is to ignore them, since they come in two varieties: those that are super privacy-geeks who have ads blocked and won't buy from you anyway, or those who whine but they'll just turn on JS when push comes to shove.
See also: cookies.
I'd like to see Javascript elsewhere. In the browser, it's limited by that turd known as DOM... imagine what Javascript could do if it had libraries that weren't utter shite. It could easily take over all the tasks done by Lua now, and possibly most of Python and Ruby as well.
The problem is people get into web development, find out that DOM is crap, then they assume the problem is Javascript and not DOM. JS is fine; DOM would be just as crap if you were working with it in Python.
Oh my CHRIST! You're right, I didn't even believe it.
The text, when you visit http://linux.org/ reads:
Incorrect Site
For comprehensive information about Linux please visit our proper site, www.linux.org.
Please update your bookmarks and any links you may have to this old site.
What it should read is something along the lines of:
Duuuh
Despite Linux's popularity, this site is run by people who aren't smart enough to point linux.org and www.linux.org to the same page. (It apparently worked in the past, but we broke it.)
Please update your bookmarks and any links you may have to this old site, because we pointlessly and broke all our own links when we broke our own site and probably slaughtered our own pagerank in the process.
I agree wholeheartedly with the parent. It's amazing that a site like this still exists in 2009... heck I'd much rather see http://linux.org/ just 404 or time-out then give you this crap. "Proper site!" Unbelievable.
People who know the hardware in their computer, the specific distro they run, and what the problem is related to don't need the help. Well, they do, but they might already be serviced by Google.
You need to give the help to the people who ask, "hey, last week the doohickey worked with the internets thing, but now the button doesn't go anywhere and the doohickey disappeared!" That's a substantially harder problem, and if you could solve it you'd have one-up on Microsoft and Apple.
Seems to me if you were aLinux company you could just buy a $300 eeepc to make bids with quicker and cheaper than throwing a fit about Silverlight.
Because the article specifically says WEB browser?
Hypercard has got to be one of the first ever implementations of the "hypertext" concept, though. Not applicable to this article, alas.
I'm more shocked to learn that the -gate postfix is used outside of the US! Or, indeed, even English-speaking countries!