
@Next time...
You sir are a genius.
I laughed so much I think a little bit of wee came out.
23 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Sep 2007
God, I hate to defend MS, as I have been a penguaphile for best part of a decade, but please stop bitching about Office 2007's UI.
Once you get used to it you start to wonder what the hell was going on with earlier versions of Office... 2007 has a far more intuitive interface and is much prettier (for what that's worth).
<shudder> I really need to take a shower now....
Listen, I applaud your ideology, but give me the solution...
Either everyone can have thermonuclear devices and Intercontinental delivery systems - I think we can all agree that's not a good idea! or nobody can (which in reality means we unilaterally disarm, and wake up one morning to find other, less well-intentioned nations threatening us with said weapons, with no way to counter). You can maybe open the argument about how well-intentioned any nation is when protecting its own national interests, but the western powers (and to a certain extent China and Russia) have less of a fervant agenda of change as the last of the real commies and an Islamic Republic that I can mention!
That's why the pragmatists tend to support the nuclear deterrant no matter how much we would like to live in a world where they do not exist.
Just my 2p worth...
Duncan - Windows 7 will probably be out by then, and MS wants XP off machines ASAP
AC - Ubuntu 8.04 is supported for 3 years in its desktop guise as opposed to 18 months for non-LTS releases. Also, nobody appears to be complaining that it is shipping with an 8 YEAR OLD Microsoft distro...
OK - disclaimer first - I make my living as a Windows Sys Admin, I also administer a dozen Linux servers, and I use a Mac as my primary desktop, so I like to think I am fairly unpartisan.
<rant>
Sweet Jesus, Mary Mother of God and all the baby orphans... Where do all these 'tards come from??
Hint - don't post something that is wrong at worst, and out of date at best....
1. Double click installs. Debian based OSes are capable of this (through gdebi). 3rd party providers (such as Skype, Adobe, VMware etc) provide .debs and .rpms that are as easy to install as an .exe (although why people think this is a good thing is beyond me!)
2. My "insert name of hardware here" doesn't work in linux, but it does in Windows.... Bullshit. It works because you are provided with a piece of shit modular driver that is often bundled with shit software that you don't want (Camera & WiFi manufacturers I am looking at you...) The plethora of cheap netbooks, smart phones (where the hell is Android anyway) and soon sub $150 desktops running linux is forcing chip manufacturers to provide specs/code to the kernel team - or face being ruled out of a valuable market.
3. Linux is all about the CLI - Wrong. Almost anything can be done through a GUI now, the things that can't are often problems like driver issues - see point 2^ . To the Windows Sys Admins out there (I am one of them :) Boy are you in trouble if the only way you can administer a server is through a GUI... Powershell and Exchange 2007 anyone? ;)
4. Application X is not available on Linux... OK fair point :) I don't buy that Wine is a truly appropriate solution, but why do the manufacturers only release their software for the big 2 platforms?? MARKET SHARE. If the Netbook phenomenom continues I GUARANTEE there will be a version of iTunes and a version of Photoshop for Linux out within 2 years.
5. Linux distros don't support DVD, mp3, divx out the box. True... but then neither does Windows XP if you install it yourself does it? Buy your lovely Ubuntu laptop from Dell and the lovely people there will enable all of that for you, in the same way they enable this for OEM Windows.
</rant>
Oh and just for some extra flaming, Vista isn't that bad on the right hardware - why won't the freetards give it a break?
Axe the licence and not only will the Beeb's content slide down the quality scale, but that of their competitors too (why bother producing drama at all if there's no beeb - reality TV and game shows are far cheaper).
Having watched US and European TV quite a bit, I think the current licence fee is a bargain.
STOP TRYING TO APPLY COMMON SENSE TO THE LAW.
Some firearms laws were introduced before the introduction of hand-held automatic weapons - does that make them invalid to offences commited with hand-held automatic weapons? No dumbass. The law was kept deliberately loose when drafted to account for these technological innovations.
Want to argue? Think you can still connect to a network because they didn't secure it? Think that a car parked on the street with the keys in is fair game? Talk to policemen and lawyers who were involved with drafting it and try defending an individual charged with it (CMA Sect. 1 and CMA Sect. 2) - I have.
Oh - by the way, be carefull picking up soap in the shower....
Unauthorised access of a wireless network *IS* illegal, I've argued this with a Prosecutor as well as a copper working in this field.
Computer Misuse Act, Section 1
"Unauthorised access to computer material
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if—
(a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer;
(b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and
(c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case.
(2) The intent a person has to have to commit an offence under this section need not be directed at—
(a) any particular program or data;
(b) a program or data of any particular kind; or
(c) a program or data held in any particular computer.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to both. "
Why should we give a sh1t? - How would you feel if the bobbies knocked on your door to arrest you for distributing kiddie porn?....
Is anyone else sick of the my OS is better than your OS arguments? I use Windows and Linux (and would like to try OSX, but don't want to pony up).
I get the feeling that the Windows fan boys are afraid of something they don't know and understand, and the Linux fan boys are elitist toss-pots that are often out of touch with more modern Windows versions (I mean seriously - how often have you received a BSOD with XP SP2?, oh yeah - about the same as you see kernel panics in Gentoo).
Why not agree to disagree - different horses for different courses.....
Granted, RSA is not the only show in town when it comes to public key cryptography, however if you read my previous post you would see that all public key cryptography, bar eliptic curve stuff, is based on either the difficulty of factorising large numbers, or the discrete logarithm problem - both of which are supposedly computationally feasible with quantum computing.
Top of my head statistic (TM) states that at least 95% (any mathmaticians care to elucidate whether elliptic curve crypto is susceptible to quantum computing attacks? my money is on yes, which pokes that 95% up to 100%) of assymetric crypto goes out the window in the event that cheap effective quantum crypto becomes a reality.
.....speechless
The belief that number factorisation is computationally hard and the discrete logarithm being difficult to overcome forms the basis of most of our current asymmetric cryptography (think RSA, El Gamal, Diffie-Hellman Key exchange). That only leaves elliptic curve crypto (such as ECDSA), but I’d put money on it that quantum computing “solves” this as well.
Hmm - A digital world with no secure asymmetric crypto.
There’s always quantum crypto I guess, and at worst we could all start using one-time pads!