Posts by h4rm0ny 4560 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jul 2008
Okay, seriously - whoever is following me from story to story and downvoting everything I post, have you any idea how sad that is? I mean look at you - you're disagreeing with a post saying that comparing different database types is hard. Why should that offend you? Because it certainly isn't wrong.
I honestly could not say if MS SQL Server performance is better or worse than its competitors, but I feel confident in saying that the differences are not so great that any could be said to be "wiping the floor" with the other. For a start, fair comparisons between different databases are pretty hard to set up.
I think Robert Haas who is chief architect for Postgres put it best in a blog post response to someone asking him about SQL Server vs. Postgres performance. I've dug it out for you. (Caveat: I am a major postgres fan).
http://blogs.enterprisedb.com/2010/12/20/postgresql-performance-vs-microsoft-sql-server/
It's only short and worth reading (imo), but for those who can't be bothered here is a paragraph from the end:
I think the important thing to realize here is that both PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server are complex, robust products with many features and generally good performance. People can and do use both products to manage large amounts of data in critical production environments. It would be a serious mistake to believe any categorical statement about which system is faster and by how much. There are going to be cases – in either system – where things just don’t perform well.
He is a very, very smart person.
>>"Ok, I'm curious - is the lack of religious belief in educated people confined to those in areas which traditionally conflict with religion?"
That is a VERY GOOD QUESTION. It is good because it is one tool we can use to help tease apart correlation and causation in the subject of religion and lack of / inaccurate knowledge.
I would say anecdotally that it often is the case, but I wouldn't want any weight attributed to that. I'd be very interested to know the answer to your question.
>>"I recently read he was rabbiting on about the good of Christianity and how we should be proud of being a Christian country."
Oh good grief. Maybe I should get into politics myself. I mean I prefer to do something useful and productive like engineering, but at least there would then be one person I could vote for.
Many of us on the Right were heavily opposed to the invasion of Iraq and very vocal on the subject. Also against the bombing and regime change in Libya more recently. You'll find that the Tea Party members were / are very often against America getting involved in outside affairs, being quite isolationist in their mindset. And it was Tony Blair (may he die in shame) who dragged us into that debacle over here.
Right Wing != In Favour of War.
It also attempts to put on an equal footing the mindsets of two different approaches to belief. A Creationist is likely to say that have no doubt at all that the world was made in six days some millennia ago. Someone like myself may well think the Earth could have been formed 4bn years ago, but we're not likely to claim certainty. We're likely to think in terms of "the current evidence we have available suggests this to be the most likely". Ergo, you can't look at the midpoint of the bellcurve of a confidence scale and draw simple conclusions about the portioning of beliefs.
Real scientists are going to tend toward the middle more than non-scientist because the opposite of "I'm certain X is true" is not "I'm certain X is not true", but rather "I'm not certain".
I find it amusing (and positive) that we are having a furious argument about state religion and ethnic exclusivity on another story, but I agree with everything you write above so much. Voted you up for all the difference it will make in the shower of downvotes. ;)
>>"Wow Matt I didn't know you don't understand the basics of the field of statistics and sampling. 1012 samples will give you a fairly small margin of error even for a population of 300+ million if done correctly. Many political polls that determine where millions should be spent on ads have less samples. The key of course as always with people is getting samples that are not biased in anyway with each other."
You can certainly extrapolate from small samples when the data is not Complex. But the demographics of the USA are very much a complex data set. Trying to extrapolate from a dataset which has fewer members than factors you have to control for, is extremely difficult.
I don't think anyone is saying that the principles of extrapolation are not well-founded. It's a comment that the degree to which they're being taken here is pushing it. I'm not even saying the results are wrong, just that the margin of error here is way too wide to accept this as something other than just being suggestive.
>>"Do you believe that global warming is real? Sure. We have evidence going back millions of years that there is a cycle. Do you believe that global warming is man made?"
Yep, another one here - I certainly believe the climate is changing. The degree to which human activity is a primary factor, I do not know. Similarly I put down low confidence on the Earth being 4.5bn years old. It sounds like it could be right, but I have to be honest and say it's a long time since I learned about the history of the planet and for all I know it could be 6bn or 3bn. No doubt that would be read as my being a Creationist but actually it's just scientific honesty in that I don't remember. A good survey should have trick questions like this on there for control. It reads quite a bit like they know what they want to find out. Also, although I'm fine with extrapolation as a principle, approx. 1000 people surveyed for this sounds far too low for a population in the hundreds of millions.
Or is there simply a coincidence of social factors. Note also, "stupid" is not a good term in this instance. "Ignorant" is a better term. I know at least one gifted programmer who has some stunning blind-spots when it comes to science (they reject Evolution) and despite the flaws in their starting axioms, will build some staggeringly tall and complex logical arguments to justify their belief. Enough that it takes a pretty skilled and intelligent person to cut through their crap. That's why I favour the term ignorant over stupid. It's far more accurate to what we're talking about.
So that caveat in, does religion lead one to ignorance or being ignorant lead one to religion? I could see a case for either or both: if you believe you have the answers, or do not wish to contradict an authority, then you do not accept new facts (Evolution contradicts what I've been told so I'll ignore it). Ergo, it can lead to wilful ignorance. If you are already ignorant, you may seek answers and get the wrong ones. Ergo, ignorance can lead to religion (I don't know what causes Thunder so maybe it's Thor's chariot).
But it's also worth noting that there's a third factor which is common societal factors pushing multiple demographics in the same direction. There have been times historically where particular religions have correlated with the less ignorant sections of society. Power shifts and with it education and opportunity. Being religious does not mean one is stupid OR ignorant necessarily.
>> You basically called me a liar.
>I didn't. I said you don't know as much as you think you do. That you take such exception to this is indicative in itself...
I said I was familiar with both GNU/Linux and Windows, you replied saying I was not, short as that. That's calling me a liar. And no, it's not indicative of anything. Someone who knows a lot about something is perfectly entitled to take exception to being told they aren't familiar with it. Indicative of nothing.
>>> "I also asked for an apology.
>>"Which you're not going to get. You claimed a status you do not deserve, and I told you exactly that"
All I said was that I was familiar with security models under both GNU/Linux and Windows and you said that wasn't true (without ever having met me so far as I'm aware).
Here is my response: Link.
Those are my own words, no cut and paste you wont find any of it dragged from anywhere else. Does that sound like someone unfamiliar with the security models of the two OS's?
You've read my response. You know damn well that you were wrong. An apology and a retraction is in order.
>>Regardless, I backed up what I said
>>"You didn't. You backed up as much as you seem to know about the situation. That you omitted Linux's support for exactly the same set of ACLs as you deem superior "
I explicitly went into ACLs on GNU/Linux and also covered to a sufficient degree why they are NOT "exactly the same". Now we move from you setting yourself up as judge on other people to you betraying flaws in your own understanding. If you say that ACLs on GNU/Linux are "exactly the same" as on Windows, then you don't know what you're talking about.
>>"Of course I'm not going to concede that. Your knowledge is lackiing. I pointed that out, and now you've got the hump. I'm not sufficiently interested to argue with you, but you don't seem to want to let it drop. I would much rather hear no more about it."
If you don't like replies like this then don't write insulting posts that declare what OS's someone you've never met is or is not familiar with. I've got "the hump", have I? Well yes, being insulted does make me angry. That's kind of why you insult someone - to upset them. Silly for you to complain afterwards.
You wrote a very patronizing and ad hominem post. I wrote a very factual reply. Now you're falling back on argument by assertion and doing your best to provide reasons why you'd "rather hear no more about it". Well, of course not. I provided facts, you provide statements such as "your knowledge is lacking".
I don't pretend to know everything, but anyone reading this can click on my reply to you above and see for themselves that your attempts to dismiss what I say by pretending superior knowledge don't really wash.
Now, if you've had enough, then by all means don't reply. But don't be stunned if your doing so perpetuates this conversation that you you're supposedly "not sufficiently interested in".
>>"No, it doesn't. I could have written an even longer rebuttal, but as I see you've been a bit handy with the downvote button, I just couldn't be bothered"
You basically called me a liar. I responded more than proving that I was familiar with what I was talking about and supporting my case. I also asked for an apology.
I don't know what you're referencing with "handy with the downvote button" but looking at your posts on that thread you've got more than one downvote so if I am one of them (I downvoted a few of your posts which were wrong or insulting, others I did not), then obviously other people also considered them wrong or insulting, too. I don't see voting one way or another as a requirement before you deign to reply.
Regardless, I backed up what I said and if you don't have the graciousness to concede that, that's more your problem than mine.
"Possible source of downvote: the OP asked for a bootable USB distro that is easy to learn and you pointed him/her to Debian/Gentoo?"
Well I said Gentoo if they had technical background and wanted something "interesting" that would show them a lot of the low-level stuff. For someone who is interested in GNU/Linux for purpose of learning as the OP said, I actually think Gentoo is an excellent system. And I did begin my post by saying that some flavour of Ubuntu would undoubtedly be easiest. But as they're on a technical forum and expressed interest in knowing how it all works, I actually do favour Debian over Ubuntu. The latter increasingly wraps everything up in thick layers of GUI and you don't get as much of an understanding from it than you do Debian. IMO, anyway.
I may be coloured in my views by the fact I've used Debian for about a decade so I don't notice the rough edges as much anymore. But anyway, I did explain my reasoning for each option and it was a sincere attempt to help.
Wow. I assume that's one of fans reflexively down-voting my attempt to be help someone. Well, to the downvoters, consider that you're protesting against someone trying to help another choose a GNU/Linux distro that is right for them, and then think about what that says about you.
>>I'm old-school, so can probably be laughed at by the younger generations, but I have tried to write my own parsers in shell and awk (still my tools of choice, because I absolutely know that they will be there on all but the most restricted UNIX-like system), and I just can't seem to do it. I know I'm not as sharp as I used to be, but it appears a non-trivial problem, even though XML is a well-defined language.
It's not you, don't worry. Guido Van Rossum said that making human beings write XML is sadistic; and if he thinks that then it shows what a PITA it really is. I also started writing something to edit some XML once, two hours later realized what a hassle that was and cobbled together a PHP script to use SimpleXML. One of my clients uses Puppet as Vic mentions. They're always having problems with it, though.
Btw, @Vic, I can see you're reading this forum and posting. I replied to your somewhat insulting calling me out on the article about Windows vs. GNU/Linux security models here: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/2166427 . Fairly thoroughly answers your post, I feel.
Some flavour of Ubuntu is undoubtedly the easiest, but you'll learn some bad habits and not become as familiar with the underlying way everything works as you would with something more traditional. I would personally recommend Debian as it is package based (i.e. you don't have to compile everything), stable and you can put on a desktop environment of your choice. It's what I use for my work environment and it is one of my two favourite distros. You could also consider Kubuntu or Xubuntu which are Ubuntu derivatives that don't use Unity. The latter is particularly simple and light to run so would better suit a USB stick install.
If you want something a little more fun and which will get you closer to the metal in interesting ways, then I strongly recommend Gentoo. On this distro, you'll be compiling your own software but it has an interesting way of streamlining it and it is perhaps the best distro for learning who GNU/Linux works without running into a Learning Cliff.
So I personally recommend Debian, or Gentoo if you fancy something weird and really fun and where you can get right into its intestines.
I should also mention CentOS. A lot of enterprise environments are RedHat / CentOS based, so if you're interested in this professionally, you might want to consider looking at CentOS as you're more likely to run into it in the world of work. But I wouldn't go this route personally. I find Debian-based systems easier to work with and learn. Also not sure about installing and running this from a USB stick. Probably can, but I don't know how easy it would be and it's not common. The others you definitely can.
I hope that helps.
The thing is, however lovely Slackware is, Ubuntu is far more friendly to those people who are not tech-focused. If GNU/Linux is ever to claim a substantial share of the Desktop and laptop markets, it needs this. Ubuntu is, like it or not as a technical person, GNU/Linux's best hope of casual user success.
>>"Which way would you lot lean?"
To the latest. I kind of enjoy seeing the flurry of updates and fixes come flooding down the wire in the heady first few weeks of a release. It's satisfying in some weird way. :)
Plus if you wait until 14.10 your OS will be, what, not the latest version for nearly half a year? I don't think I can stand not being on the latest version of anything for more than a couple of months. Though that may be my OCD speaking. ;)
Sometimes small differences mount up enough to make the difference though.
I use Xubuntu on one of my VMs so some of this passed me by, but I did try Unity. I didn't like it but that was mainly because there were too many inconsistencies, annoying oddities and it generally felt unpleasant. It was sort of in an Uncanny Valley between a polished modern touch-style interface such as iOS and an old school GNU/Linux DE such as KDE or Gnome. Based on the above, I'm willing to give it a try again. (Though I'll be disabling the Amazon-snooping, obviously).
>>"That WinXP still has such a large user-base would indicate that there are millions of other people who regard an O/S in the same way: unless there is a new killer app or feature, why change?"
Well the XP user base is obviously made up of those for whom their PC is not a primary focus and / or tech not a core interest. Those of us Windows users who are focused on IT are long since moved on from XP. I never even used XP at home. I went Linux->Windows 7. XP simply wasn't suitable for a tech-savvy person, imo. The point is, GNU/Linux users are not the same audience as current XP users. They are people who are willing to rip out an OS and put a new one in and have significant technical expertise (compared to the average user, anyway). With an audience like that, it's well worth making a pile of refinements like this even if there aren't any wild new features.
Anyway, pint for the Ubuntu teams (including the documentors and translators). I'm sure they've been busy and earned it.
LOL. Genuine chuckles at that. And I don't disagree with it. The willy waving wasn't what I intended it to be (and I don't have a willy for all the relevance that has anyway so I'd have to wave someone else's) and I was quite explicit in stating that I wasn't saying one OS or the other was more secure. (A badly maintained one of either is worse than one with someone who knows what they were doing). But I called on it and pretty much declared a liar by Vic, so I felt inclined to show the ways in which Windows has a more capable security model.
Anyway, I don't disagree with anything you wrote, I'll just observe that most of your post was talking about how inferior Windows security used to be, and that's what I'm really getting at. I become tired of all these people who haven't updated their knowledge in nearly a decade spouting dangerous nonsense such as GNU/Linux being inherently more secure than Windows. The fact that Windows has a far more capable permissions system isn't meant to be a dig at GNU/Linux, more a wake-up call to the ignorant.
Oh, and btw:
>>"Oh yes, it is only NTFS..."
*cough* ReFS. *cough* ;)
>>"And if you'd bothered to follow the threading, you'll see I was not responding to your post, just refuting an unsubstantiated claim from someone else."
"Refuting" is where you prove someone wrong. All you did was make an ad hominem post claiming I didn't know what I was talking about and threw in some snide remarks about me "parroting" things. That's not refuting, that's just stating I'm wrong because you say so. Anyway, I've seen your post now and responded, so consider that "claim" substantiated.
>> I'm familiar with both.
>I don't think you are...
Well then I'll demonstrate otherwise. I'm more familiar with GNU/Linux as that is what my development career has always been based on, but I'm familiar enough with Windows to make informed comparisons. Anyway, I'm always happy to back up what I say and so:
This is what I wrote: "Windows does have a more sophisticated security model than GNU/Linux from Vista onwards. I'm familiar with both. That's not to say that Windows is overall more secure than GNU/Linux, but it's model is more capable"
The core of the security model on GNU/Linux is the user/group/world permissions system. It defines read, write and execute permissions with a few later refinements such as the setuid bit. It's a security model that paints with extremely large strokes and results in lots of work arounds. Want to make a group a member of another group? Enter the workarounds (and occasional sed scripts to update multiple groups). I can't count the number of times I've had to call a sysadmin because they have forgotten the list of groups a particular developer needs access to and missed something. If you have something you want all the members of a group to read, but only two of the members of that group to write to, enter the bolt-ons and work arounds.
Lets review the ACL system in Windows Firstly, they're actual lists that are not exclusive. Objects can have multiple owners, be in multiple groups, all with the same or different access privileges. ACEs (Access Control Entries) are actually sophisticated structures containing a host of privilege types. On Linux's you have 'read, write, execute' (I'm kind of rolling setuid under execute as it's really a fudge to deal with shortcomings in the model elsewhere). On Windows, as well as 'write', you get 'append', 'delete'. You get whether attributes can be altered, read, whether extended attributes can be read or altered, whether ownership of the file can be taken... As I wrote: a lot more capable. And they're all really simple to use - which is an important point. It's no more difficult to set a file to be appendable than it is to make it writeable. On Windows, you tend to use what is appropriate, not what is easy. And this is all available by default. You can even manage it through the GUI without any real training if you want to. Just click on a file, properties and the advanced permissions and you'll see a list of checkboxes for these privileges.
So we already have two major ways in which the Windows security model is more capable (my exact words in my OP) than GNU/Linux. These are the non-exclusive nature of access - as many owners and groups as you wish; and the far more sophisticated privileges available. Some process is writing to a log file or adding data? Give it append, not write. Want to give someone write access to a directory, but not delete from there? No problem.
Let's continue, because there's quite a lot more. (Though I consider both my point and the fact that I'm familiar with Windows models demonstrated).
Windows ACLs tie into both local users (by which I include services, etc) and directly into Active Directory. These are hierarchical. If you want to make one group a member of another group, just add it. This is a major advantage when it comes to administrating permissions on a system or network. If all members of the Printers group should be members of the Hardware group, or all members of the Secretaries group be members of the HR group, just add them. Then any amendments you make to the sub-group membership trickle up. Any changes to the parent group permissions, trickle down (unless you tell them not to, which you can do). It's all very intuitive to anyone with a programming background.
Just an addendum on the tying into Active Directory, you can even distinguish between login type.Are they on the local box or did they come in over the network? You can make use of this if you want. For example the AD set-up can handle VPN access and you can tie ACLs to accounts in AD.
What else? Well, you can apply everything I've listed so far not only to files and directories, but to any object with a security descriptor such as named pipes, processes, registry keys. It's nice and it introduces consistency in approach across a wide range of Windows functionality, which is good for developers and admins alike.
Hmmmm, ACLs are inheritable. I wont go into that as I'm not a Windows admin, but obviously when you've developed sophisticated security controls, it's nice to be able to have them trickle down automatically. All this is a long way from creating something in a directory on GNU/Linux and having it copy on create the rwx/rwx/rwx settings from its parent.
The ACLs in Windows also have in-built auditing. If you want to set a log of access granted or access denied on a securable object (pipe, file, directory, whatever) you can just build that right into the ACE. Doesn't matter what user or process tries to access that object, it will log it if you so wish. Want to record any denied access to a given directory or process? Easily done. Auditing is a inherent part of the Windows security model.
So I feel I've long since demonstrated good reason to state that the security model in Windows is more capable than that of GNU/Linux. Note, I'll re-emphasize what I wrote in my original post which you replied to - this is not to say that either Windows or Linux are necessarily more secure than the other, but simply that Windows has the more capable model.
Now let me anticipate a couple of possible attempts at shooting this down if you are the sort of person that does not like to be called out on their false accusations (making an ad hominem argument of my not being familiar with these systems when you don't even know me). Firstly, how important is the permissions system to discussing "security models". Well obviously pretty core. The core, really. Any attempt to dismiss the advantage Windows has with its ACLs over GNU/Linux's default permissions system as not being relevant to which security model is most capable, is absurd. This is a fundamental aspect. THE fundamental aspect when comparing models, in fact.
Secondly, what about SELinux and ACLs on GNU/Linux. Well first off, hardly anyone uses these. I think more people use SELinux than ACLs, but anyway, the former doesn't really make GNU/Linux more capable (which is what I said), it helps lock it down. It's good, but it's not equivalent. ACLs on Linux are used even less (I have clients that use SELinux that have never even considered using ACLs on GNU/Linux), they're optional, their implementation between different distros and file system types are fragmentary and inconsistent. (Are you using ACLs on ZFS? Great - that's different to on Ext3) and above all else they are rudimentary. You can add access to files and directories to non-owning users not in the owning group, you can add a couple of basic additional permission types such as list content and append data. Its limited in scope, it has next to no enterprise support or real management tools, it's all but impenetrable and downright painful to work with.
This is how you copy an entire ACE (access control entry) from one securable object (which I remind you on Windows can be anything from a registry entry to a directory) using Powershell:
C:\ Get-Acl C:\LogFileA.txt | Set-Acl -Path C:\LogFileB.txt
Aside from the ugly Windows standard of using slashes that lean the wrong way, that's beautiful. Any Linux developer here ought to be able to read that and understand it right now. Can you say the reverse would be true?
So there you have it. Windows has a more capable security model than GNU/Linux.
Now as to your rather insulting and ad hominem reply to me: "and parrot the same Internet memes we keep hearing from those that aren't as familiar as they think they are."
I'm not familiar with any "Internet memes" about how Windows has a more capable security model than Linux. Indeed, what I hear repeatedly on these forums is people parroting that Linux is inherently more secure than Windows. Something that has not been true since Windows. Now perhaps you would like to apologize for your accusatory and belittling post? I would like you to do so.
>>"Fact is Germany now owns Czechoslovakia with troops, its theirs now"
Not a good enough equivalent. As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), most people in Western Czechoslovakia did not want to be part of Germany. Whilst I dislike the way Russia has behaved (lies, annexation, disregard for international law) and I think the people in Crimea are making a terrible mistake and have been manipulated as well, they do overwhelmingly want to be governed by Russia rather than the Ukraine, I believe.
Well it's not unprecedented for Google. A few years ago they renamed the Persian Gulf the Arabic Gulf for residents in Saudi Arabia (and a few other countries with nasty regimes, I think). Note: this isn't simply a language thing. It's been called the Persian Gulf for over a thousand years including in the Arabic language.
These sorts of things are worrying because when a power wants to extend its grasp, it very often takes the initial step of renaming an area. Germans only popularly began calling Sudetenland (western parts of Czechoslovakia) that in the early 20th Century which was followed by invasion. Japan and China bicker over the name of the Sekaku / Diaoyu islands. Many pro-Israeli people will insist there was no such country as "Palestine" despite there being plenty of pre-Israel maps with a large region marked exactly as such (queue incoming justifications why it doesn't count).
In short, when you see a power renaming a region, or as in this case Google renaming it to please Russia, you worry.
As to Crimea itself? Well if the people want to be part of Russia they should have that right - I believe in self-determination. But it's not what I would choose if I were them!
Really interesting and impressive. One thing I noticed is that there was little patience on the chimpanzee's part. She went directly for the power pills and immediate ghost catching. That's the same way a young child plays. An adult is more patient, often saving the power pills a little while until there are multiple ghosts within reach.
>>"I see that it upsets you that there should be one (and only one) Jewish state in the World. Do you complain at all about the 57 Islamic states where followers of all other religions are second-class citizens? I bet not."
You are very fond of making up positions for people you disagree with. First I'm a "leftie" (I'm not, I'm quite Right Wing). Now apparently I'm pro-Islam somehow. I'm not. I dislike the religion - it's intrinsically linked to misogyny, enshrines homophobia as a religious ideal and practices unnecessary and probably harmful surgical operations on infants who cannot give consent. I despise the religion for these reasons. You're way off the mark, habitually so. Whenever you can't find a good avenue of attack on someone, I've noticed you immediately jump to characterising your opponent. Apparently you have a head full of stereotypes and the moment someone says something that matches something in one of them you think you know everything about everyone.
>>" I see that it upsets you that there should be one (and only one) Jewish state in the World"
It bothers me when any country sets ethnic or religious criteria for its citizens / immigrants. Israel was founded on such a policy making it unique in the modern world as far as I'm aware. If there are Islamic states that have the same history of entrance criteria then I feel toward them exactly the same. Which are they, btw? I am curious. But that's not what I was objecting to as you are well aware - I was objecting to the way the Israeli lobby try to conflate Jewish and Israeli as a deliberate attempt to deflect criticism or garner support. Which is undeniable by anyone with half a brain. You didn't even try to address that point which was the only thing in my post. You just attacked for some supposed double-standard you just made up.
>>"....If your logic is along the lines of "USSR failed, therefore Communisim invariably fails", you're committing grave errors of logic." It always amuses me that Lefties are so dead set on not admitting the USSR was a complete failure"
First off, I'm mostly fairly Right Wing. Secondly, you've plainly misunderstood what I wrote which was not at all "USSR did not fail", but pointing the flawed logic in arguments such as "USSR failed, therefore communism must fail". It's just an inverse of the rock that protects you from crocodiles, principle. Got bitten by a crocodile? Must have been the rock you were carrying.
>>"Please do supply an example of a single Communist regime that has survived and prospered without adopting capitalistic trappings."
This question follows from your misunderstanding of my post. Though by declaring yourself as representative for the Right and making flawed arguments, you bizarrely put me in the position of opposing a viewpoint I would normally side with. So let me ask you for examples of a purely capitalistic society that has no Left-Wing / socialist trappings? Silly question, isn't it?
>>"It's also disingenious. That there are also other causes people kill each other over doesn't mean that they're not killing each other over religion."
It's not meant to show that. The point was that it shows religion can be a post-fact justification / excuse for killing. And that has often been the case. Far, far more so than otherwise. You'd have to be mad to think the Crusades were actually about one group engaging in a massive continent-wide war effort because some other people followed a slight variant on the same religious beliefs, rather than being about land and plunder which is what really drove them.
>>"The thing with religion is that it's completely subjective, there is no objective right or wrong in spiritual beliefs. This means that you have only two options when it comes to convincing other people that your invisible friend is the One True Invisible Friend: propaganda and force."
Or the omitted possibility in the above - not convincing them. Also, persuasion is legitimate. It is force that is the problem.
>>"This is somewhat unique among causes people kill for. Even e.g. communism and libertarianism can be shown to be inferior ideologies by the fact that they invariably fail when applied to reality "
Please do show the proof that either of these "invariably fail." My point is not that they don't, but that there is no "proof" of such. No more that there is proof that the USA's republic will invariably last. Or any other variation. If your logic is along the lines of "USSR failed, therefore Communisim invariably fails", you're committing grave errors of logic.
>>"You may want to tell that to the Israeli government and legislature who like to conflate the two, forcefully if need be."
Oh we do, believe me. The nastiest bit of PR the Israeli government and its supporters pull (and there have been some nasty ones) is the endless attempts to conflate Jewish with Israeli. They do it for two reasons - firstly, to deflect criticism by casting it as anti-Semitism. Secondly, to pressure Jewish people into supporting them by trying to make Jewish people feel like traitors or letting the side down for not supporting Zionism.
There are plenty of Jews who are fiercely critical of Israel's foreign policy, practicing Jews and non-practicing. But the Zionist lobby is extremely loud and likes to pretend that they speak for all Jewish people.
>>"Darned right. Which is why I went to the disorganised church today. First off, half the congregation were facing the wrong way, then the priest started off fnordreading his dry cleaning list before the PA system broke down, people were bumping into each other on roller skates, somebody was throwing confetti for some reason and then a big bag of flour fell onto--"
Ah, I see you are another Discordian. Hail Eris!
>>"Personally, I believe the future is in a merging of these approaches - Graphics on the Command Line, if you will, but only as needed, and without all the crap clutter of modern windowing systems."
Oddly enough MS are moving toward this. Server 2012 can be run without a GUI - you can manage it entirely by running PowerShell commandlets remotely at which point you can deconfigure the GUI to save install space and RAM. But here is the thing, if you do the install the GUI for it, pretty much everything in the interface is a wrapper for those same commandlets. They're designing it so every aspect of the GUI is just a front for Powershell scripting so that they're interchangeable. It took them over a decade, but they're finally moving toward a more GNU/Linux paradigm.
In theory, yes. But in practice, it should be fine. The screen on the Surface RT / Surface 2 is bonded. I dropped that once onto a tarmacked road and although the very edge chipped slightly, it landed face down and didn't even scratch. Gorilla Glass is tough and I would assume that the new iPad is similarly equipped. Especially if it's bonded to the screen like the Surface.
>>"So far we have established that exactly none of AC's issues with MS are based on fact."
Well one of them was, it was just that saying Office 2007 didn't fully support ODF isn't really that relevant today as a counter to someone saying Office supports open standards. Oh, and the EU competition case from 1993 is technically based on fact as well. It's just that over twenty years later, some of us have moved on.
But some people love their hate, however irrational. I got two downvotes for a post that just corrected someone who had claimed you lost your files when you stopped an Office 365 subscription (WTF?). A few people will even vote down simple facts if it challenges their world view.
>>"I absolutely refuse to embrace this "rental" ransomware business model Microsoft are engendering. I say ransomware because, if you don't keep your payments up, your license expires and all your work, saved in their format or even in their cloud, is lost."
You're spreading FUD. You're work isn't lost anymore than if you uninstall Photoshop the images you made with it are lost. Save your files where you like and in what format you like. Office 365 is just the pricing model. The software is the same. If you're talking about renting online storage, then yeah, obviously you have to copy your documents off there at some point if you give up the subscription, but it's not like you miss a payment and they suddenly vanish. And in any case, that's not Office 365. Office 365 is just paying by subscription for the same software rather than paying the one-time purchase fee.
>>"I believe I have misunderstood the purpose of Secure Boot then, if its primary purpose is to make it harder to pirate Windows"
That's not its primary purpose. It's not even a Microsoft Technology. It's from the UEFI Consortium which is a collection of primarily hardware manufacturers such as Lenovo and Samsung and HP (though MS does have representation on there, they're one of about 13 members).
Secure Boot is to verify that only signed code can be booted. It can be turned off, but whilst on, it can check that nothing has interfered with the boot loader or other parts of the OS that start before anti-malware code begins. It's a valuable security feature, but it's not really about preventing pirated Windows. After all, MS requires that users should be able to turn it off if they want for a start!
>>"Notice how MS *never* go after Google who write Android. Curious that and a typical patent-troll tactic."
That's because Google are clever buggers and don't sell Android directly themselves, but give it away and make their money from other people using it. It would not be worthwhile for MS to sue Google because it is other parties making the money from selling devices with Android on it. Were it easy to work around the patents, Google would surely have done so. Ergo, it is not.
>>Only a deliberately broken implementation. Cite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_software#Microsoft_Office_2007_SP2_
You deliberately linked to the page for MS Office 2007 and their first iteration of support for ODF about six years ago. What in today's MS Office do you find lacking in their ODF support. Please be specific.
>>"Not it isn't. Without MS we wouldn't be saddled with SecureBoot and MS have ensured that it is *very* hard for an end user to add new keys. Add to that that non-MS OS vendors have to go an *PAY MS* for the privilege of having a key. Cite: "
Secure Boot isn't an MS technology. MS did nothing to make the obtaining of keys hard - you approach the OEMs for keys, not MS. RedHat and other distros do not have to pay MS for the privilege of having a key. RedHat chose to pay MS to use theirs because it was cheaper and easier than managing the process themselves: http://www.redhat.com/about/news/archive/2012/6/uefi-secure-boot
Additionally, as I proved elsewhere, MS actually require users to be able to turn off Secure Boot, which is as trivial as swapping your boot device. So these other distros don't even have to have keys if they don't want. If you want to have a go at someone for locking down x86 devices, pick on Google who actually have locked down some of their Chromebooks meaning, for example, if I want to put Debian on a Pixel, I have to manually put it into developer mode on every boot.
You're flat out wrong about Secure Boot. Additionally, it's a valuable security feature.
>>"Wrong. Please cite me the part of the UEFI standard where it says this must be so. Clue: It doesn't."
It's not in the UEFI standard as you well know, it's a requirement from MS to have WIndows 8 certification. And the link for that I posted earlier in my other reply to you. You may refer to Windows 8 certification as "a pretty badge" but without that requirement, OEMs would be free to lock down hardware so I couldn't install GNU/Linux on it.
>>"MS could change this at any time.
So it's pre-crime now, is it?
>>"Secure Boot (MS made sure the implementation was fecked and that they control the keys)"
Utter bullshit which has been corrected over and over again. Firstly, Secure Boot is part of the UEFI spec which was developed by a large consortium of primarily hardware manufacturers. Secondly, it's MS's requirements for Windows 8 that actually require OEMs to NOT lock the hardware so that it can be turned off. Thirdly, anyone can purchase keys. RedHat actually chose to pay MS to licence keys because it was cheaper and easier than managing the whole process themselves!
Here is the source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh748188.aspx
And the relevant part from it:
18. Mandatory. Enable/Disable Secure Boot. On non-ARM systems, it is required to implement the ability to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup. A physically present user must be allowed to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup without possession of PKpriv."
>>And that's without trying.
Apparently so.
>>Indeed, so why did MS settle with Barnes and Noble?
Presumably because B&N gave them about a sixth of their eBook business and agreed to continue paying royalties on Android to MS. We don't know how much those royalties were, and guess what, we don't know how much they are with anyone else, either.
It's weird that some people keep touting B&N about as an example of how MS patents are weak when it doesn't actually show this at all. It's doubly weird when you realize people must be simultaneously thinking B&N are scaring MS away from actually going to court whilst at the same time acknowledging that the mobile phone industry (incl. companies such as Samsung) haven't even challenged MS.
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