I think I'm in your same boat. In any case, I haven't gotten mod points to use in probably 2-3 years at this point; I'm pretty sure it's because I frequently get modded "Troll" or "Flamebait". (Sometimes correctly, most of the time incorrectly.) The system is pretty opaque, though, so I really have no clue if that's it or not.
From my experience, most of the funny up-mods are from people who have no sense of humor-- they just want to see the same cliche jokes over again. "In Soviet Russia," "Am I the only one who read the title as...?," etc. Or they mod up the same Futurama or Simpsons quote we've seen a hundred time before.
Would be nice if genuinely funny comments could somehow be "better" than funny comments that are just old stale jokes.
Interesting. I wonder if moderators who mod down what they do not agree with check back later. I always kind of look away when I have to mod down, like it's some solemn difficult duty.
What's really funny (funny-weird, not funny-haha) is that after posting that criticism of the moderation, the moderations totally reversed themselves.
Now my posts are no longer "trolls", but the parent post I was replying to, asking me for details about the bugs I submitted, is marked as a troll. For the record, it's not a troll either-- although it is a little insulting that he assumed and insinuated it was my fault my bugs were being ignored.
Oh well. I don't give a crap about karma scores, I just want my posts to be read by as many people as possible. Thanks.
They edited a submission of mine, making no changes except moving the link to a passage of text that didn't describe the link. So people commenting on it were making comments like "that's not the study itself, that's a newspaper article about the study!" and I wanted to scream out, "I submitted it with 'article about' underlined! It's not my fault!"
In short, they edited a submission of mine to make it misleading. At least they didn't add any grammar or spelling errors.
Wow, I could see my first post as being trollish, maybe, but this one? As long as you're modding me troll for being me instead of reading my posts, you should go back a few stories, I still have a moderate-able comments in other threads that aren't marked as troll yet.
Click the link, they're all listed. Mostly usability bugs, some extremely obvious visual bugs.
Keep in mind big projects get alot of bug sumissions.
Slashdot doesn't; maybe 5-8 on a busy day. Today it'll get a ton, but I've been watching their Sourceforge tracker for awhile.
Did you do the research and see if it's a dupe?
Yes. I used to work in QA, I do know what I'm doing.
Is it a security bug, they'll probably get looked @ first. Then they'll look if it's cosmetic or functioning.
My experience shows that they will not.
You're the one that attacked OSS
I'm not attacking OSS; I'm attacking projects that ask for contributions and then ignore the contributions. It just so happens these projects are usually open source projects.
Commercial products generally don't ask for contributions, and yet I've had much better luck getting bugs fixed in them. I've pointed out bugs to Apple, Blizzard, Microsoft, Adobe, MySQL (on one of their closed-source utilities) all with positive responses. Many of these bugs have been fixed, or will be fixed when the next product revision comes out.
Do you use a Mac? Do you play World of Warcraft? Do you use windowed mode? Did you notice about a year ago that windowed mode started remembering its position on the screen between runs? I submitted that bug, and it was fixed in the next Mac-specific client release. (Sadly, the Windows developers haven't yet implemented the same thing. I should pop off another email.) Blizzard doesn't ask for user contributions; in fact they make it pretty hard to even find what email address to use.
so I figured you're a MS fan boy.
Damn those shades of grey! I only see in black and white, and that's the way I like it, daggummit!
Most open source programs, except for big ones like DEs and distros or office programs, etc, most developers aren't getting paid to make and are writing them in their spare time.
Ok; that's fine. But if they don't have time to look at or fix bug submissions, they shouldn't ask people to submit them. They're just wasting our time and effort.
I don't know what your profession is or what bugs you actually submitted or to what projects, but when submitting a bug, evaluate how important it is, to everyone, not just you, and set your expectations.
I think it's a reasonable expectation that every bug, no matter how trivial, at the very least be assigned to somebody. Over 50% of the bugs I submitted were literally never read. Probably closer to 75%.
If you can code, then submit a patch.
I can code. But I don't have the free time to learn the coding style, build instructions, layout, possibly new programming language required to make the patch. Definitely not enough to make the patch when there's a good chance the patch will be rejected anyway.
The best use of my talent to the open source community is to use my extremely low tolerance of bugs and ability to notice tiny annoyances for QA purposes. Turns out most open source projects don't actually want that.
And yet, Open Suse has fixed, as of July 6, almost 3000 bugs from opensuse 10.3 to 11.0. Mostly typos. KDE has been making great strides in updgrades causing less crashes by updating bugs.
Ok; so there's one open source project that addresses bugs. I've submitted probably 3 dozen or more bugs to various open source projects, and I think I can safely say less than 5 of them have even been commented on, much less fixed. Now maybe I have the misfortune of "only" picking crappy open source projects to submit bugs to, but my experience is my experience and your one example isn't doing a lot to counter it.
I actually wrote that page to send a message to the open source projects that ask for people to contribute any way they can, but then completely ignore the contributions.
Frankly, yes, I've had a MUCH better track record getting bugs fixed in closed-source programs.
What has Microsoft done about their bugs? Oh, yea, they get hard coded into production releases.
I was talking about submitting bugs to open source-esque projects, not Microsoft. But I guess it's easy to bash Microsoft when you have no actual argument, huh?
We'll just have to agree to disagree. I think the only reason Linux is more "secure" is because it has geekier uses on average. Software-wise, I believe the two OSes are at least equivalent, with perhaps Windows having a slight edge due to more precise permissions.
I also think you're screwing up Vista's weird Superuser permissions with User permissions; the two are not the same. For example:
(critical drivers and programs can't be killed with user permissions, unlike Windows).
That simply isn't true.
In any case, far and away the most important security problem for Windows is users who hit "allow" to everything. No technological solution can address that.
Nobody's done jack about any of them. In addition, the one bug that *was* resolved was only confirmed and resolved for the "D2" discussion system, even though I filed it for the original discussion system. (I have no idea if the fix worked for both; the example thread I have in the bug report seems not to work.)
Anyway, like open source projects, Slashdot isn't actually interested in reading or fixing bugs. Don't bother.
Programs in windows can launch as threads... a linux user is much more likely to know how to do that.
That makes more sense, you should have said that in the first place. I still don't see it as that big a deal, considering 99% of people wouldn't look at the Task Manager anyway. It's a case of Linux being better-- for Linux users, but it don't see if impacting the average user at all.
In linux, an application does run with the permissions of the user, but an application can be set so that it can only be run by an admin. Doing so in Windows requires knowledge of group policy or the implementation of 3rd party security measures.
What knowledge does it require on Linux? Again, you can't compare apples to orange; you can't say it's "better" in Linux if it requires the exact same level of geekiness to accomplish that it does on Windows.
Windows UAC does this on some level, but was a poor implementation of such a system since it's generic responses are easy to ignore, and a user can override those permissions with as little as a click (no passwords).
Well, blame the shitty buggy software that's been released over the last few years that Windows has the misfortune to have to be compatible with. I don't blame Microsoft that it took IBM 4+ years to figure out how to make Lotus Notes multi-user aware; IBM's full of retards. The same applies to every other app that doesn't currently run as a normal user without UAC prompts. Microsoft has a big problem, which is that they have to be backwards-compatible with applications written by retards.
run-as is not the same thing, but can restrict what an application can do in Vista if it's simply run by a user, but even a user simply needs to select "run as administrator" and is not prompted for said password to run an application.
Wow, I can barely read that sentence... WTF?
In what way isn't "Run As..." the same thing? You need to give me a specific example here. Whether or not the user is able to select "Run as Administrator" depends on their current access level; normal users (not superusers) can't currently do that.
installers only ask for a password if they're actually using the installer package.
Uh... duh? That's what installers DO.
A script copying files does not require such access, and can run without the user knowing. they might get an innocuous UAC notice, but that's easy to ignore.
Goes back to the shitty app writers. Once Vista's been out for a few years, and we get to the point where third party apps aren't as shitty, I'm sure Microsoft will set the default access to "User".
If you want more proof, look at how easy it is to detect an active virus in Linux vs Windows.
Uh, I know nothing about that.
I would assume the only real difference is that Linux users are more geeky. But you forgot to actually put the example in here.
You can't skirt the permission system without a password, you can't escalate permission without a password. Windows does not have this protection.
Windows does too have that protection. You don't like how it's implemented; fine, I get that. But you can't argue with a straight face that it doesn't exist.
Microsoft's model of basic permissions is much the same, but applications have the ability to hide their actions from a user, and even from the system itself. In Unix, this is MUCH more difficult to accomplish.
In what way?
Whole programs can launch in Windows, but if they're not coded to have a taskbar notification, and don't show up in Applications, the user, unless they dive into advanced tools, is completely unaware.
Linux is the same way; or are you going to tell me that there's no such thing as a Linux app with no GUI? If you consider the Task Manager in Windows (or Activity Monitor in OS X for that matter) an "advanced tool" you have to assign the same status to the Linux CLI's "ps" command.
So it sounds like what you're really saying is that it's harder for a Linux app to hide itself because Linux users are more likely to view a process list more frequently. Unless I'm completely mistaken, or misunderstanding. But that has nothing to do with the technology itself.
Oh, and it's ridiculous to say that applications can hide actions "from the system itself." Rootkits can, but the same applies in Unix.
Also, in Windows, applications launch with the permissions of the user launching them, in unix, applications can have more restrictive permissions, or require escalated user permissions to run at all (aka, must be run by root, etc)
That's not true; again, you can't bring the SUDO command in Linux into play unless you also bring the Windows "Run As..." service into play. I'm no expert in Unix, but I'm 95% sure that applications run, by default, with the permissions of the user who runs them, just like in Windows.
And while you can use SUDO to restrict an application's permissions as you run it, you can do the same in Windows using "Run As...". And as Unix applications can require Admin permissions to run, so can Windows apps. For example, most Windows installers ask you for an administrative password if they don't have permissions to complete their task. UAC provides this same feature for "ignorant" applications that blindly try to write to restricted areas without bothering to check permissions.
In short, while you may not be wrong, I need at least a couple of specific examples. Right now, you haven't described any difference between Unix and Windows technically.
Don't worry, I don't like Josh Whedon, or particularly care for any of his works. That includes Buffy (which I've watched one episode of, didn't like it) and Firefly (two episodes, one movie, didn't like any of it much. The movie was ok; not nearly as great as the Whedonites say.)
While we're at it, I can't stand Tartakovsky's Star Wars character designs and animation. Also, I think most of the new Dr. Who episodes are very poorly-written and virtually all of them rely on "deus ex machina." The director's cut of The Abyss is worse than the theatrical... hm... what else...
They really should have the next version of Windows driven by market demand. A big chunk of their market wants openness and transparency. They want formats that can be moved to other platforms, and protocols that can talk with anyone.
A big enough chunk to justify the down-sides (to Microsoft, strategically) of doing that? I doubt it; if it was, they'd do it. Microsoft isn't stupid.
In any case, you're just guessing what Microsoft's customers want based on what you want and probably some comments on Slashdot; what makes you think Microsoft didn't ask their customers? And maybe their customers described Vista perfectly? (That doesn't necessarily make Vista a good product, but you're assuming an awful lot here.)
Microsoft can innovate, the Xbox has shown that. And the new Office UI. And their various non-Xbox hardware products.
Of course, I'm now going to get attacked by 20 Slashdotters telling me that nothing in the Xbox was innovative (oh yeah, Live was just an extension of-- whatever Dreamcast had! And the integrated storage? Who needs it!), and everybody will point out that the Zune hasn't sold a ton of copies ignoring the fact that this is due to network effect and has nothing to do with innovation. And that Office 2007 requires all kinds of mythical "retraining" cost. But, oh well.
But what do I know, I switched to Vista from being a long-time Macintosh user. I got pissed off at Apple's constant habit of removing features and creating shitty UIs (including never fixing the horrible Finder UI. Explorer kind of stinks, but at least it stinks consistently without constantly switching "modes" between opening folders.)
99% of people don't need to back up Vista itself. They just need a registry dump from it, and possible the All Users account files, and they're done. Vista itself you can reinstall from DVD any time you please. Thus, for normal people, the fact that there's 6 gigs of uninstall info doesn't have anything to do with backing up their system.
That's controlled by the application, not the OS. Good applications will open the dialog on the same monitor their main window is on, and position it at least remotely close to the main window. Bad applications will just open it on the default monitor regardless. Really bad applications (I'm looking at you, SQL Server Management Studio*!) will just blindly and stupidly open windows on monitors that aren't even plugged-in or enabled.
In any case, sorry to say you can't blame the OS for this one.
Unix has been using a security model similar to this for 20 years.... microsoft should get on board.
In what way is Microsoft's security model different than Unix?
It's been the exact same since NT4 with only one difference: Microsoft, for backwards-compatibility reasons, chose to make the default user Administrator (root) instead of restricted. Shitty third-party software developers began thinking that would last forever, or, more likely, not thinking at all, and kept releasing programs that require Admin privileges even for Windows XP. Vista is just Microsoft saying, "No, bad developer, your program is broken and we're going to make it look broken."
The weird thing is, the US doesn't have much of anything that matters anyway. It's the most dysfunctional culture I've seen anywhere,
Seriously?
This "dysfunctional" culture has very little crime, relatively little corruption in government (anti-US wags on Slashdot aside), fields one of the most advanced armies ever, created dozens of industries high-tech and low, etc etc.
How do you define "dysfunctional?" Do you believe that, say, Zimbabwe has a more "functional" culture than the US? Or is this just a "hate America first" post of the type so common this board?
I forget the statistic, but studies shown on newspaper readers show that something like 70% of them read nothing more of the story than the headline. And very few of the remaining 30% read more than the first few sentences.
Those who don't know how to communicate are doomed to failure at communication.
But my Microsoft MN-700 router goes months between restarts, easily. I think I can safely say I've manually had to restart it twice ever, and other than that it's only restarted when the power goes out. (Remember, Microsoft hasn't sold these in something like 4 years, and I had it months before they stopped making them, so that's a pretty damned good uptime. Sad they cancelled the home networking line of products, they're all excellent.)
#1 means troubleshooting a lot of equipment, usually not the CPE. The cellphone in this case IS the CPE.
What's a CPE!? Stop making shit up and type English, this is really pissing me off. I think you're doing it on purpose. Or you're an alien from Venus.
#3 do your own research. Bogus moisture detectors aid carriers ability to needlessly void warranties, IMHO
YHO isn't good enough if you're going to make a "bill of rights." If you're incapable of justifying this point, or even explaining it, why would anybody listen to you?
#14 1. treble damages? Why don't you ask a real source? TRIPLE
Ok, let's say normal human beings say the word "treble" to mean "triple." Even though they don't, but I'll throw you a bone since you're obviously from Venus or somewhere. That still doesn't explain what the hell "carrier slamming" is. Again, if you can't even explain what you mean, why the hell should I bother to seriously consider it?
I speak plain English.
Venusian English, maybe.
I'm not trying to sell my points to those incapable of understanding the subject matter, yet insist on arguing its points, lacking the context.
I own a cellphone. What more context should I need when discussing a "cellphone bill of rights?" If you can't explain a cellphone bill of rights to people who belong in the class "own a cellphone," just give up right now and join the YMCA or something.
We are all kinds, and no offense to you, but I'll bet you're having trouble understanding all of this because you aren't a follower of tech subjects, at least in this area.
So stop being an asshole, making up bullshit acronyms every sentence, and EXPLAIN IT TO ME. You know, like a person who speaks plan English.
Ugh, your clarifications aren't any better than the original.
As regards #2, they have to be held to the fire, otherwise they'll let inventory drops and other lame excuses cause lots of pain for people that really need their phones as they have no landlines
Then their required turn-around should be the same as with faulty lineline phones, which, I can guarantee you, is not currently same-day or overnight. Not unless you're an emergency room or disaster shelter.
As regards #3, there are bogus moisture detectors on phones. Google it.
Ok, assume there are... so what? What makes them "bogus?" Do you mean phone companies install fake moisture detectors? What would a fake moisture even be, just a sticker reading "LOOK THIS IS A MOISTURE DETECTOR!" on the casing somewhere? What would the point of a phone company doing that be?
Why are fake moisture detectors an issue? Would real ones be better? In short, what exactly is point number 3, again?
As regards #10, locking and bricking are the same things. Remote locks are important to prevent bogus use charges and the black market for hot phones.
No they aren't; bricking would permanently destroy the data on the phone. Bricking would be writing garbage into the phone's Flash/storage to make it completely unusable. If you mean locking, say locking-- don't say "bricking".
(Locking would simply be encrypting all the data on the phone, making it inaccessible to anybody except the original owner. The difference is that a bricked phone couldn't be re-sold, as it would just be a useless chunk of plastic, while a locked phone could potentially be wiped and re-sold by the thief.)
As regards #14, treble means triple damages for carrier slamming and other inter-carrier FUs.
1) No it doesn't: http://www.answers.com/treble&r=67 2) Now I don't know what an FU is. It doesn't help to "explain" a term by giving an even more confusing term. 3) While we're at it, I have no clue what "carrier slamming" is.
Predatory conversions of phones ought to additionally entail jail time for the CEO.
What is "predatory conversion of phones?"
You'd do a much better job of convincing people if you showed some capacity for speaking plain English. You can't sell your points when you can't even *explain* your points clearly.
2. Provide overnight replacement of defective phones, and have remote diagnostics to prove it
Overnight is excessive, I don't think they should be held to that. You can go a day without a phone, you won't die.
3. Bogus charges of moisture sensors should be grounds for no-fault contract termination
Huh?
10. User password-controlled kill switches to brick stolen phones
Customer support nightmare, even with the password. You can ask for a universal locking feature, so you can remotely lock the phone and the thief can't get access to the data, but bricking it is asking for trouble.
14. Allow treble damages for carrier slamming
Huh?
Ok, I agree with most of your points, except the two I don't understand (treble damages? Are you just making shit up?) and the ones that are simply excessive burdens on the phone company. I'm not holding my breath, though...
Slashdot Mirror
I think I'm in your same boat. In any case, I haven't gotten mod points to use in probably 2-3 years at this point; I'm pretty sure it's because I frequently get modded "Troll" or "Flamebait". (Sometimes correctly, most of the time incorrectly.) The system is pretty opaque, though, so I really have no clue if that's it or not.
From my experience, most of the funny up-mods are from people who have no sense of humor-- they just want to see the same cliche jokes over again. "In Soviet Russia," "Am I the only one who read the title as...?," etc. Or they mod up the same Futurama or Simpsons quote we've seen a hundred time before.
Would be nice if genuinely funny comments could somehow be "better" than funny comments that are just old stale jokes.
Interesting. I wonder if moderators who mod down what they do not agree with check back later. I always kind of look away when I have to mod down, like it's some solemn difficult duty.
What's really funny (funny-weird, not funny-haha) is that after posting that criticism of the moderation, the moderations totally reversed themselves.
Now my posts are no longer "trolls", but the parent post I was replying to, asking me for details about the bugs I submitted, is marked as a troll. For the record, it's not a troll either-- although it is a little insulting that he assumed and insinuated it was my fault my bugs were being ignored.
Oh well. I don't give a crap about karma scores, I just want my posts to be read by as many people as possible. Thanks.
They edited a submission of mine, making no changes except moving the link to a passage of text that didn't describe the link. So people commenting on it were making comments like "that's not the study itself, that's a newspaper article about the study!" and I wanted to scream out, "I submitted it with 'article about' underlined! It's not my fault!"
In short, they edited a submission of mine to make it misleading. At least they didn't add any grammar or spelling errors.
Wow, I could see my first post as being trollish, maybe, but this one? As long as you're modding me troll for being me instead of reading my posts, you should go back a few stories, I still have a moderate-able comments in other threads that aren't marked as troll yet.
And what kind of bugs are you submitting?
Click the link, they're all listed. Mostly usability bugs, some extremely obvious visual bugs.
Keep in mind big projects get alot of bug sumissions.
Slashdot doesn't; maybe 5-8 on a busy day. Today it'll get a ton, but I've been watching their Sourceforge tracker for awhile.
Did you do the research and see if it's a dupe?
Yes. I used to work in QA, I do know what I'm doing.
Is it a security bug, they'll probably get looked @ first. Then they'll look if it's cosmetic or functioning.
My experience shows that they will not.
You're the one that attacked OSS
I'm not attacking OSS; I'm attacking projects that ask for contributions and then ignore the contributions. It just so happens these projects are usually open source projects.
Commercial products generally don't ask for contributions, and yet I've had much better luck getting bugs fixed in them. I've pointed out bugs to Apple, Blizzard, Microsoft, Adobe, MySQL (on one of their closed-source utilities) all with positive responses. Many of these bugs have been fixed, or will be fixed when the next product revision comes out.
Do you use a Mac? Do you play World of Warcraft? Do you use windowed mode? Did you notice about a year ago that windowed mode started remembering its position on the screen between runs? I submitted that bug, and it was fixed in the next Mac-specific client release. (Sadly, the Windows developers haven't yet implemented the same thing. I should pop off another email.) Blizzard doesn't ask for user contributions; in fact they make it pretty hard to even find what email address to use.
so I figured you're a MS fan boy.
Damn those shades of grey! I only see in black and white, and that's the way I like it, daggummit!
Most open source programs, except for big ones like DEs and distros or office programs, etc, most developers aren't getting paid to make and are writing them in their spare time.
Ok; that's fine. But if they don't have time to look at or fix bug submissions, they shouldn't ask people to submit them. They're just wasting our time and effort.
I don't know what your profession is or what bugs you actually submitted or to what projects, but when submitting a bug, evaluate how important it is, to everyone, not just you, and set your expectations.
I think it's a reasonable expectation that every bug, no matter how trivial, at the very least be assigned to somebody. Over 50% of the bugs I submitted were literally never read. Probably closer to 75%.
If you can code, then submit a patch.
I can code. But I don't have the free time to learn the coding style, build instructions, layout, possibly new programming language required to make the patch. Definitely not enough to make the patch when there's a good chance the patch will be rejected anyway.
The best use of my talent to the open source community is to use my extremely low tolerance of bugs and ability to notice tiny annoyances for QA purposes. Turns out most open source projects don't actually want that.
And yet, Open Suse has fixed, as of July 6, almost 3000 bugs from opensuse 10.3 to 11.0. Mostly typos. KDE has been making great strides in updgrades causing less crashes by updating bugs.
Ok; so there's one open source project that addresses bugs. I've submitted probably 3 dozen or more bugs to various open source projects, and I think I can safely say less than 5 of them have even been commented on, much less fixed. Now maybe I have the misfortune of "only" picking crappy open source projects to submit bugs to, but my experience is my experience and your one example isn't doing a lot to counter it.
I actually wrote that page to send a message to the open source projects that ask for people to contribute any way they can, but then completely ignore the contributions.
Frankly, yes, I've had a MUCH better track record getting bugs fixed in closed-source programs.
What has Microsoft done about their bugs? Oh, yea, they get hard coded into production releases.
I was talking about submitting bugs to open source-esque projects, not Microsoft. But I guess it's easy to bash Microsoft when you have no actual argument, huh?
We'll just have to agree to disagree. I think the only reason Linux is more "secure" is because it has geekier uses on average. Software-wise, I believe the two OSes are at least equivalent, with perhaps Windows having a slight edge due to more precise permissions.
I also think you're screwing up Vista's weird Superuser permissions with User permissions; the two are not the same. For example:
(critical drivers and programs can't be killed with user permissions, unlike Windows).
That simply isn't true.
In any case, far and away the most important security problem for Windows is users who hit "allow" to everything. No technological solution can address that.
Over 1000 viruses are found DAILY for Windows,
Bullshit.
I posted a whole bunch of display bugs to Slashdot's tracker:
http://blakeyrat.com/bugs/
Nobody's done jack about any of them. In addition, the one bug that *was* resolved was only confirmed and resolved for the "D2" discussion system, even though I filed it for the original discussion system. (I have no idea if the fix worked for both; the example thread I have in the bug report seems not to work.)
Anyway, like open source projects, Slashdot isn't actually interested in reading or fixing bugs. Don't bother.
Programs in windows can launch as threads ... a linux user is much more likely to know how to do that.
That makes more sense, you should have said that in the first place. I still don't see it as that big a deal, considering 99% of people wouldn't look at the Task Manager anyway. It's a case of Linux being better-- for Linux users, but it don't see if impacting the average user at all.
In linux, an application does run with the permissions of the user, but an application can be set so that it can only be run by an admin. Doing so in Windows requires knowledge of group policy or the implementation of 3rd party security measures.
What knowledge does it require on Linux? Again, you can't compare apples to orange; you can't say it's "better" in Linux if it requires the exact same level of geekiness to accomplish that it does on Windows.
Windows UAC does this on some level, but was a poor implementation of such a system since it's generic responses are easy to ignore, and a user can override those permissions with as little as a click (no passwords).
Well, blame the shitty buggy software that's been released over the last few years that Windows has the misfortune to have to be compatible with. I don't blame Microsoft that it took IBM 4+ years to figure out how to make Lotus Notes multi-user aware; IBM's full of retards. The same applies to every other app that doesn't currently run as a normal user without UAC prompts. Microsoft has a big problem, which is that they have to be backwards-compatible with applications written by retards.
run-as is not the same thing, but can restrict what an application can do in Vista if it's simply run by a user, but even a user simply needs to select "run as administrator" and is not prompted for said password to run an application.
Wow, I can barely read that sentence... WTF?
In what way isn't "Run As..." the same thing? You need to give me a specific example here. Whether or not the user is able to select "Run as Administrator" depends on their current access level; normal users (not superusers) can't currently do that.
installers only ask for a password if they're actually using the installer package.
Uh... duh? That's what installers DO.
A script copying files does not require such access, and can run without the user knowing. they might get an innocuous UAC notice, but that's easy to ignore.
Goes back to the shitty app writers. Once Vista's been out for a few years, and we get to the point where third party apps aren't as shitty, I'm sure Microsoft will set the default access to "User".
If you want more proof, look at how easy it is to detect an active virus in Linux vs Windows.
Uh, I know nothing about that.
I would assume the only real difference is that Linux users are more geeky. But you forgot to actually put the example in here.
You can't skirt the permission system without a password, you can't escalate permission without a password. Windows does not have this protection.
Windows does too have that protection. You don't like how it's implemented; fine, I get that. But you can't argue with a straight face that it doesn't exist.
Microsoft's model of basic permissions is much the same, but applications have the ability to hide their actions from a user, and even from the system itself. In Unix, this is MUCH more difficult to accomplish.
In what way?
Whole programs can launch in Windows, but if they're not coded to have a taskbar notification, and don't show up in Applications, the user, unless they dive into advanced tools, is completely unaware.
Linux is the same way; or are you going to tell me that there's no such thing as a Linux app with no GUI? If you consider the Task Manager in Windows (or Activity Monitor in OS X for that matter) an "advanced tool" you have to assign the same status to the Linux CLI's "ps" command.
So it sounds like what you're really saying is that it's harder for a Linux app to hide itself because Linux users are more likely to view a process list more frequently. Unless I'm completely mistaken, or misunderstanding. But that has nothing to do with the technology itself.
Oh, and it's ridiculous to say that applications can hide actions "from the system itself." Rootkits can, but the same applies in Unix.
Also, in Windows, applications launch with the permissions of the user launching them, in unix, applications can have more restrictive permissions, or require escalated user permissions to run at all (aka, must be run by root, etc)
That's not true; again, you can't bring the SUDO command in Linux into play unless you also bring the Windows "Run As..." service into play. I'm no expert in Unix, but I'm 95% sure that applications run, by default, with the permissions of the user who runs them, just like in Windows.
And while you can use SUDO to restrict an application's permissions as you run it, you can do the same in Windows using "Run As...". And as Unix applications can require Admin permissions to run, so can Windows apps. For example, most Windows installers ask you for an administrative password if they don't have permissions to complete their task. UAC provides this same feature for "ignorant" applications that blindly try to write to restricted areas without bothering to check permissions.
In short, while you may not be wrong, I need at least a couple of specific examples. Right now, you haven't described any difference between Unix and Windows technically.
Don't worry, I don't like Josh Whedon, or particularly care for any of his works. That includes Buffy (which I've watched one episode of, didn't like it) and Firefly (two episodes, one movie, didn't like any of it much. The movie was ok; not nearly as great as the Whedonites say.)
While we're at it, I can't stand Tartakovsky's Star Wars character designs and animation. Also, I think most of the new Dr. Who episodes are very poorly-written and virtually all of them rely on "deus ex machina." The director's cut of The Abyss is worse than the theatrical... hm... what else...
They really should have the next version of Windows driven by market demand. A big chunk of their market wants openness and transparency. They want formats that can be moved to other platforms, and protocols that can talk with anyone.
A big enough chunk to justify the down-sides (to Microsoft, strategically) of doing that? I doubt it; if it was, they'd do it. Microsoft isn't stupid.
In any case, you're just guessing what Microsoft's customers want based on what you want and probably some comments on Slashdot; what makes you think Microsoft didn't ask their customers? And maybe their customers described Vista perfectly? (That doesn't necessarily make Vista a good product, but you're assuming an awful lot here.)
Two things:
Microsoft can innovate, the Xbox has shown that. And the new Office UI. And their various non-Xbox hardware products.
Of course, I'm now going to get attacked by 20 Slashdotters telling me that nothing in the Xbox was innovative (oh yeah, Live was just an extension of-- whatever Dreamcast had! And the integrated storage? Who needs it!), and everybody will point out that the Zune hasn't sold a ton of copies ignoring the fact that this is due to network effect and has nothing to do with innovation. And that Office 2007 requires all kinds of mythical "retraining" cost. But, oh well.
But what do I know, I switched to Vista from being a long-time Macintosh user. I got pissed off at Apple's constant habit of removing features and creating shitty UIs (including never fixing the horrible Finder UI. Explorer kind of stinks, but at least it stinks consistently without constantly switching "modes" between opening folders.)
99% of people don't need to back up Vista itself. They just need a registry dump from it, and possible the All Users account files, and they're done. Vista itself you can reinstall from DVD any time you please. Thus, for normal people, the fact that there's 6 gigs of uninstall info doesn't have anything to do with backing up their system.
That's controlled by the application, not the OS. Good applications will open the dialog on the same monitor their main window is on, and position it at least remotely close to the main window. Bad applications will just open it on the default monitor regardless. Really bad applications (I'm looking at you, SQL Server Management Studio*!) will just blindly and stupidly open windows on monitors that aren't even plugged-in or enabled.
In any case, sorry to say you can't blame the OS for this one.
* See: http://forums.microsoft.com/forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3313109&SiteID=1
Unix has been using a security model similar to this for 20 years.... microsoft should get on board.
In what way is Microsoft's security model different than Unix?
It's been the exact same since NT4 with only one difference: Microsoft, for backwards-compatibility reasons, chose to make the default user Administrator (root) instead of restricted. Shitty third-party software developers began thinking that would last forever, or, more likely, not thinking at all, and kept releasing programs that require Admin privileges even for Windows XP. Vista is just Microsoft saying, "No, bad developer, your program is broken and we're going to make it look broken."
The weird thing is, the US doesn't have much of anything that matters anyway. It's the most dysfunctional culture I've seen anywhere,
Seriously?
This "dysfunctional" culture has very little crime, relatively little corruption in government (anti-US wags on Slashdot aside), fields one of the most advanced armies ever, created dozens of industries high-tech and low, etc etc.
How do you define "dysfunctional?" Do you believe that, say, Zimbabwe has a more "functional" culture than the US? Or is this just a "hate America first" post of the type so common this board?
I forget the statistic, but studies shown on newspaper readers show that something like 70% of them read nothing more of the story than the headline. And very few of the remaining 30% read more than the first few sentences.
Those who don't know how to communicate are doomed to failure at communication.
RMS plays Bioshock!?
Prepare to make fun of my non-1337ness...
But my Microsoft MN-700 router goes months between restarts, easily. I think I can safely say I've manually had to restart it twice ever, and other than that it's only restarted when the power goes out. (Remember, Microsoft hasn't sold these in something like 4 years, and I had it months before they stopped making them, so that's a pretty damned good uptime. Sad they cancelled the home networking line of products, they're all excellent.)
#1 means troubleshooting a lot of equipment, usually not the CPE. The cellphone in this case IS the CPE.
What's a CPE!? Stop making shit up and type English, this is really pissing me off. I think you're doing it on purpose. Or you're an alien from Venus.
#3 do your own research. Bogus moisture detectors aid carriers ability to needlessly void warranties, IMHO
YHO isn't good enough if you're going to make a "bill of rights." If you're incapable of justifying this point, or even explaining it, why would anybody listen to you?
#14 1. treble damages? Why don't you ask a real source? TRIPLE
Ok, let's say normal human beings say the word "treble" to mean "triple." Even though they don't, but I'll throw you a bone since you're obviously from Venus or somewhere. That still doesn't explain what the hell "carrier slamming" is. Again, if you can't even explain what you mean, why the hell should I bother to seriously consider it?
I speak plain English.
Venusian English, maybe.
I'm not trying to sell my points to those incapable of understanding the subject matter, yet insist on arguing its points, lacking the context.
I own a cellphone. What more context should I need when discussing a "cellphone bill of rights?" If you can't explain a cellphone bill of rights to people who belong in the class "own a cellphone," just give up right now and join the YMCA or something.
We are all kinds, and no offense to you, but I'll bet you're having trouble understanding all of this because you aren't a follower of tech subjects, at least in this area.
So stop being an asshole, making up bullshit acronyms every sentence, and EXPLAIN IT TO ME. You know, like a person who speaks plan English.
Ugh, your clarifications aren't any better than the original.
As regards #2, they have to be held to the fire, otherwise they'll let inventory drops and other lame excuses cause lots of pain for people that really need their phones as they have no landlines
Then their required turn-around should be the same as with faulty lineline phones, which, I can guarantee you, is not currently same-day or overnight. Not unless you're an emergency room or disaster shelter.
As regards #3, there are bogus moisture detectors on phones. Google it.
Ok, assume there are... so what? What makes them "bogus?" Do you mean phone companies install fake moisture detectors? What would a fake moisture even be, just a sticker reading "LOOK THIS IS A MOISTURE DETECTOR!" on the casing somewhere? What would the point of a phone company doing that be?
Why are fake moisture detectors an issue? Would real ones be better? In short, what exactly is point number 3, again?
As regards #10, locking and bricking are the same things. Remote locks are important to prevent bogus use charges and the black market for hot phones.
No they aren't; bricking would permanently destroy the data on the phone. Bricking would be writing garbage into the phone's Flash/storage to make it completely unusable. If you mean locking, say locking-- don't say "bricking".
(Locking would simply be encrypting all the data on the phone, making it inaccessible to anybody except the original owner. The difference is that a bricked phone couldn't be re-sold, as it would just be a useless chunk of plastic, while a locked phone could potentially be wiped and re-sold by the thief.)
As regards #14, treble means triple damages for carrier slamming and other inter-carrier FUs.
1) No it doesn't: http://www.answers.com/treble&r=67
2) Now I don't know what an FU is. It doesn't help to "explain" a term by giving an even more confusing term.
3) While we're at it, I have no clue what "carrier slamming" is.
Predatory conversions of phones ought to additionally entail jail time for the CEO.
What is "predatory conversion of phones?"
You'd do a much better job of convincing people if you showed some capacity for speaking plain English. You can't sell your points when you can't even *explain* your points clearly.
2. Provide overnight replacement of defective phones, and have remote diagnostics to prove it
Overnight is excessive, I don't think they should be held to that. You can go a day without a phone, you won't die.
3. Bogus charges of moisture sensors should be grounds for no-fault contract termination
Huh?
10. User password-controlled kill switches to brick stolen phones
Customer support nightmare, even with the password. You can ask for a universal locking feature, so you can remotely lock the phone and the thief can't get access to the data, but bricking it is asking for trouble.
14. Allow treble damages for carrier slamming
Huh?
Ok, I agree with most of your points, except the two I don't understand (treble damages? Are you just making shit up?) and the ones that are simply excessive burdens on the phone company. I'm not holding my breath, though...
Drivers are hardware. It's part of the hardware package; you buy the bluetooth dongle or PCI card, and you get the driver with it.