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Rule #1.

NEVER plug a laser printer into a UPS. The power that the fuser draws is WAY too much.

Look at some of the cheap office units, they show little pictures on them, notice the printer icon is on the surge side, NOT battery/surge side.

If the power goes out, you should NOT be trying to print.

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6085460.html See #6

http://arstechnica.com/guides/other/ups.ars/3

http://www.jetcafe.org/npc/doc/ups-faq.html#0405 see 04.05

Would you put a space heater on a UPS? Shredder? Vacuum? Table Saw? If you put a laser printer on it, you may as well.

More details of the patents in question can be fond at this Ars Technica article from couple of years ago.
Note that at least one of the patents in question was sent back to USPTO for reexamination, and likely to be overturned (once the various lawyers have exhausted their revenue stream on making comments either way).

The #1 indication that this is a patent troll is seen by it being filed in the Eastern Texas District -- Anascape appears to be nothing but a straw company for allowing Brad Armstrong and his lawyers to file in Eastern Texas, which has by far the highest rate of finding for the accuser in patent lawsuits. To the point that it's become a rubberstamping farce, and I can't see how higher courts let this go on as it does -- judges like Mr. Clark would, in any more civilized society be disbarred (I almost wrote defrocked, which wouldn't be far from the truth in Texas), and put in a pillory for good measure.

Please. APPLE doesn't even know you've jailbroken the phone

Oh, that's excellent logic. "Break the law! It's okay, because you won't get caught."

Plus, there's this problem with your whole argument:

I don't know how they could say it any clearer. It isn't like this is legalese, it's a layman's explanation from the Register of Copyrights.

Persons making noninfringing uses of the following six classes of works will not be subject to the prohibition against circumventing access controls

5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.

Seriously, you're defending jailbreaking because it isn't unlocking??? If it were unlocking, that'd be just fine, perfectly legal. You're circumventing access controls to do something other than unlock the phone. Are you unable to read the quote above? ARSTechnica not only concurs with what I'm saying, they also add...

What else did the government reject? Proposals against space-shifting, playing DVDs on Linux, bypassing region coding on DVDs, bypassing copy protection on legally purchased computer software

You're telling people to break the law. It's right there in black and white. You're blatantly inciting lawlessness and criminal activity.

Windows application and/or driver installation requires the application/package and a double-click. You then choose a typical install which does literally everything for you or a customizable one. Done.

Here's a better simplification of the process:
1. Open web browser
2. Search (modern browsers, the search bar, older browsers, navigate to google.com) for "calendar program"
3. Find program web site.
4. Find download link and download.
5. Double click EXE
6. Click Next, Next, Next, I Agree, Next
7. Choose "Simple" or "Advanced" install. Assume Simple install for the rest:
8. Click Next, Next, Next, Next, Reboot prompt.
9. Wait for reboot.
10. Configure program.

No Linux distro I have tried has EVER followed as simple an installation process. Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu, DSL- Each had its own quirks, almost all of which required shell commands. (In fact, I believe all required it.)

Obviously you've never used any of the distributions you listed. Here's an Ubuntu example:
1. Click System, Administration, Synaptic Package Manager
2. Type password
3. Search for "calendar"
4. Install sunbird (or other desired program)
5. Open program in the Applications menu and use.

If Linux developers could all agree on an install process that was 100% GUI compliant

You mean like this? Most average people would probably see AT MOST two different UI styles, if they happen to install both KDE/Qt and GNOME/Gtk programs, and they're not even dramatically different paradigms by default. If you even look more closely, the linked screenshot consists only of Microsoft applications; way to go, demonstrating there's no such thing as consistency in Windows (ironically, the most "standard" Win32 UI in that screenshot happens to be Notepad).

Just a question for any software developers out there - does your pay go down when people use the software you develop without paying for it? Are your developer friends forced out of work? Do the companies you work for go out of business? Can you say for certain that the people "stealing" your software would have bought it anyway? If you answered NO to these four questions, then where is the problem? You get paid, your company does, everyone stays in work, and many people who couldn't afford the software (and sometimes it is well out of the price range of people who earn $200-$300 a week - ableton live for instance costs about $650)get to try it out. As those people get richer, they are 0.25% more likely to buy the software for every 1% increase in wealth, so by letting people - who would normally just overlook the software as a luxury - use it, you have more probability they will buy yours in the future. oh... and a study has found no correlation between music piracy and a drop in sales. This is one of several to do so. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8813.html

I mean, who is still buying Ipods?

Are you serious?

According to the numbers available here, Apple sold 32,764,000 iPods in their last 2 fiscal quarters for which the info is available. To put that into perspective, in a six-month period Apple sold one iPod for every ten people in the U.S. (based on the population number here).

Who is still buying iPods, indeed.

Here is brief descriptions of the cpu (PDF). It's chinese-developed 64-bit MIPS, has 2 FPUs, 2 ALUs, 64K/64K L1, 512K L2. And consumes 4W@900MHz. It has a builtin ddr2-667 memory controller, PCI-X bus and no builtin video/USB/etc.

Nice processor, but IMO Nvidia Tegra is more suitable for a netbook; Ars Technica writes: "Tegra ... dissipates less than 300mW during HD playback." And has all peripherials integrated on the chip.

Main problem with this netbook is only 4 hours autonomous work, while 7-9 is much more suitable: I can take it to work without charder, etc.

I agree the June sales are due to MGS4, but the PS3 has been outselling the Xbox 360 in North America in 2008, except for a month where they were neck to neck.

Do you have a link to these numbers? Not disputing them, just very curious.

I'm not the original poster, but NPD Group keeps track of US console sales every month and Ars Technica reports on it almost every month. Here's the 2008 monthly numbers I culled from Ars's articles (I'm not immune to typos and calculating erros):

PS3

• Jan: 269,000
  Feb: 281,000
  Mar: 257,000
  Apr: 187,100
  May: 208,700
  Jun: 405,500
  Approx Total: 1,608,300

XBox 360

• Jan: 230,000
  Feb: 255,000
  Mar: 262,000
  Apr: 188,000
  May: 187,600
  Jun: 219,800
  Approx Total: 1,342,400

Links to the Ars articles:

• January-March sales: Gaming appearing recession proof as Wii, DS dominate sales
• Nintendo Wii outsells 360, PS3, PS2, PSP combined in April
• May sales: GTA IV #1 with a bullet; Nintendo rules the rest
• June sales: NPD: Nintendo Wii the top-selling, current-gen console

BTW, Microsoft killed Sony in December 2007 and for the entire year 2007:

• PS3: 796,700 in December and 2.56 million in 2007
• Xbox 360: 1.26 million in December and 4.62 million in 2007

I agree the June sales are due to MGS4, but the PS3 has been outselling the Xbox 360 in North America in 2008, except for a month where they were neck to neck.

Do you have a link to these numbers? Not disputing them, just very curious.

I'm not the original poster, but NPD Group keeps track of US console sales every month and Ars Technica reports on it almost every month. Here's the 2008 monthly numbers I culled from Ars's articles (I'm not immune to typos and calculating erros):

PS3

• Jan: 269,000
  Feb: 281,000
  Mar: 257,000
  Apr: 187,100
  May: 208,700
  Jun: 405,500
  Approx Total: 1,608,300

XBox 360

• Jan: 230,000
  Feb: 255,000
  Mar: 262,000
  Apr: 188,000
  May: 187,600
  Jun: 219,800
  Approx Total: 1,342,400

Links to the Ars articles:

• January-March sales: Gaming appearing recession proof as Wii, DS dominate sales
• Nintendo Wii outsells 360, PS3, PS2, PSP combined in April
• May sales: GTA IV #1 with a bullet; Nintendo rules the rest
• June sales: NPD: Nintendo Wii the top-selling, current-gen console

BTW, Microsoft killed Sony in December 2007 and for the entire year 2007:

• PS3: 796,700 in December and 2.56 million in 2007
• Xbox 360: 1.26 million in December and 4.62 million in 2007

I agree the June sales are due to MGS4, but the PS3 has been outselling the Xbox 360 in North America in 2008, except for a month where they were neck to neck.

Do you have a link to these numbers? Not disputing them, just very curious.

I'm not the original poster, but NPD Group keeps track of US console sales every month and Ars Technica reports on it almost every month. Here's the 2008 monthly numbers I culled from Ars's articles (I'm not immune to typos and calculating erros):

PS3

• Jan: 269,000
  Feb: 281,000
  Mar: 257,000
  Apr: 187,100
  May: 208,700
  Jun: 405,500
  Approx Total: 1,608,300

XBox 360

• Jan: 230,000
  Feb: 255,000
  Mar: 262,000
  Apr: 188,000
  May: 187,600
  Jun: 219,800
  Approx Total: 1,342,400

Links to the Ars articles:

• January-March sales: Gaming appearing recession proof as Wii, DS dominate sales
• Nintendo Wii outsells 360, PS3, PS2, PSP combined in April
• May sales: GTA IV #1 with a bullet; Nintendo rules the rest
• June sales: NPD: Nintendo Wii the top-selling, current-gen console

BTW, Microsoft killed Sony in December 2007 and for the entire year 2007:

• PS3: 796,700 in December and 2.56 million in 2007
• Xbox 360: 1.26 million in December and 4.62 million in 2007

I agree the June sales are due to MGS4, but the PS3 has been outselling the Xbox 360 in North America in 2008, except for a month where they were neck to neck.

Do you have a link to these numbers? Not disputing them, just very curious.

I'm not the original poster, but NPD Group keeps track of US console sales every month and Ars Technica reports on it almost every month. Here's the 2008 monthly numbers I culled from Ars's articles (I'm not immune to typos and calculating erros):

PS3

• Jan: 269,000
  Feb: 281,000
  Mar: 257,000
  Apr: 187,100
  May: 208,700
  Jun: 405,500
  Approx Total: 1,608,300

XBox 360

• Jan: 230,000
  Feb: 255,000
  Mar: 262,000
  Apr: 188,000
  May: 187,600
  Jun: 219,800
  Approx Total: 1,342,400

Links to the Ars articles:

• January-March sales: Gaming appearing recession proof as Wii, DS dominate sales
• Nintendo Wii outsells 360, PS3, PS2, PSP combined in April
• May sales: GTA IV #1 with a bullet; Nintendo rules the rest
• June sales: NPD: Nintendo Wii the top-selling, current-gen console

BTW, Microsoft killed Sony in December 2007 and for the entire year 2007:

• PS3: 796,700 in December and 2.56 million in 2007
• Xbox 360: 1.26 million in December and 4.62 million in 2007

I agree the June sales are due to MGS4, but the PS3 has been outselling the Xbox 360 in North America in 2008, except for a month where they were neck to neck.

Do you have a link to these numbers? Not disputing them, just very curious.

I'm not the original poster, but NPD Group keeps track of US console sales every month and Ars Technica reports on it almost every month. Here's the 2008 monthly numbers I culled from Ars's articles (I'm not immune to typos and calculating erros):

PS3

• Jan: 269,000
  Feb: 281,000
  Mar: 257,000
  Apr: 187,100
  May: 208,700
  Jun: 405,500
  Approx Total: 1,608,300

XBox 360

• Jan: 230,000
  Feb: 255,000
  Mar: 262,000
  Apr: 188,000
  May: 187,600
  Jun: 219,800
  Approx Total: 1,342,400

Links to the Ars articles:

• January-March sales: Gaming appearing recession proof as Wii, DS dominate sales
• Nintendo Wii outsells 360, PS3, PS2, PSP combined in April
• May sales: GTA IV #1 with a bullet; Nintendo rules the rest
• June sales: NPD: Nintendo Wii the top-selling, current-gen console

BTW, Microsoft killed Sony in December 2007 and for the entire year 2007:

• PS3: 796,700 in December and 2.56 million in 2007
• Xbox 360: 1.26 million in December and 4.62 million in 2007

I don't know if you'd accept this as evidence, but Time Warner/RoadRunner recently stopped carrying ANY Usenet content. They claimed this was due to "low subscriber usage," but it came out almost immediately after Cuomo's armtwisting.

Hmmm, perhaps just a coincidence but the EU has just expanded it's anti-trust investigation into Intel.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080716-report-eu-to-expand-intel-antitrust-investigation.html

And the following fines have been automatically removed from your back account:

Rolling though a stop sign 5th and Main at 9:21am: $120

Parking meter expired for 3minutes 18 seconds at 11:57am: $50

Speeding 38mph in a 35mph zone at 5:58pm: $80

Failure to use turn signal while making a lane change at 7:09pm: $35

and your oil is over due for a change by 51 miles: Manufacture warranty now VOID

Due to these violations you vehicle will no longer be allowed to operate , sorry for the inconvenience of leaving you stranded on the highway in the middle of nowhere at 3:47 am. But it's your own fault for not doing what your told.

Yes you can. Open a finder window, set it to the view type you want to set as default. I use List View (Cmd+2). Press Cmd+J to show the View Options pane. Notice how this pane changes as you cycle through the different view modes (Cmd+1-4). Once you adjust the settings to your liking, simply click "Use as Defaults" on the bottom of the View Options pane.

Are you sure that's not just a Leopard option?

Here's an article that describes how frustrating the finder view stuff is in 10.4, I'd try your technique if only I brought in my laptop today.

In the Keyboard & Mouse section of System Preferences, under "Trackpad" you can check an option labeled "Tap trackpad using two fingers for secondary click." I use it all the time.

I will try that, but my point was that when finder crashes, these software based right click methods don't work. So I can't right click on finder and force it to restart.

You are right...Ars Technica has an article about it.

The download will start, get x% finished and then just freeze. It'll look like it's still downloading but it's not, it just sits there until you cancel the download. I've emailed my ISP about it several times and they've never answered me...

If you're in the US, call their sales department. Get a name and email addy for the rep, and forward an article to 'em like this:

Set for a read receipt, and follow up with that rep. See if they change their minds...

Your link is a sad, funny rant. Hopefully, you won't reward child-like behavior from adults by linking to their pablum again.

Hmm, wouldn't an OEM copy of Windows be cheaper?

Define cheaper. Cheaper how? If money, then yes, it's cheaper.

1. You paid too much for your copy of Windows when you bought your computer. You also paid much more for your laptop than you would Microsoft did not control the operating system market. Did you pay $100 extra? Yes, at least. Can you buy an HP printer for $100 or less? Yes.

Don't argue the costs mentioned until you fully grasp what a price maker is and the effect monopolies have on the quantity of products sold.

2. If that's too complicated for you, how much is that anti-virus/firewall/Office app/other nasty hacks required to use Windows? Freerider? Well, then you still paid too much when you bought the computer.

Finally, please do not shift your argument, or abuse other arguments.

Windows costs OEMs $50
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070525-windows-tax-is-50-according-to-dell-linux-pc-pricing.html

Looking at some of the White House email gaffes, it appears those skills have grossly waned over time.

I found this article (actually it is a book review) on Ars Technica to be much better. It is longer, explains some of the problems in detail, and includes an interview with the authors of the book which prompted the Wall Street Jurnal to run the story.

Dont know what happened to the Ars link and my Anchor tag. Here is the full URL: http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/book-review-7-08.ars

- Jesper

I found this article (actually it is a book review) on Ars Technica to be much better. It is longer, explains some of the problems in detail, and includes an interview with the authors of the book which prompted the Wall Street Jurnal to run the story.

Dont know what happened to the Ars link and my Anchor tag. Here is the full URL: http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/book-review-7-08.ars

- Jesper

Which doesn't explain why all of Microsoft's driver certification programmes seem to have done little to enhance the stability of Windows.

Do you have a study that proves this?

This is slashdot, we don't do studies. But out of interest, putting buggy,vista and drivers into google returns half a million hits. This is an interesting one - http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080325-vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.html

Actually, I can't remember the last time I've had a hardware driver crash Windows. Have bugs, yes, but not destabilize the O/S. I don't know if you can chalk that up to driver certification or not.

So you don't classify buggy drivers leading to reduced or unreliable functionality as problematic as long as they don't destabilise Windows itself? How buggy does a driver have to be before your system becomes unusable.

But setting that aside, if there are bugs in Windows drivers and there aren't in OS X drivers because there are fewer of them and the combinations are easier to test, doesn't that just prove the point?

In that same article apparently given what you provided has absolutely nothing to do with data sharing, it's an article about when Google started implementing government required blocks on search terms on their China based domain.

On the other hand since my post refering to Viacom was about their track record as a company as a whole, we have the fact that Viacom is a member of the MPAA, the movie industry's version of the RIAA, and just a year ago were caught submitting false DMCA takedown notices, multiple times.

Want to try again?

Hi, Dedazo, willyhill, or whatever M$FT account you really are.

Do you have anything new to add to this conversation? The GP already mentioned that "more is better" and not even you can believe what you "had" to write what you did. Someone who knew something could point out technical details of Wii's GPU and how that translates into something less than what you might expect from the average PC game or PS3. Even a link to a review would be cool. Everyone already knows you have an obssesive hatred of twitter but no one ever cared.

Is Windows really the target you want to shoot for when it comes to UI consistency?

Consistent UI appearance - It's true that Qt, GTK etc. based applications look different. But so do OS X applications where you have the white style, this brushed metal style and another one which escapes me right now.

That's true.

I wouldn't play the durability card against the iPhone. If we want to go anecdotes, mine fell down a flight of stairs (full drop, no bouncing) screen first and you can't tell. No scratches.

However, if you would like something a little more formal: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/iphone-review.ars/13

Nicely done, but to elaborate further, the following excerpt from a better article on Ars Technica should help.

But the precedent this could set has ramifications far beyond the narrow matter of Comcast's particular throttling scheme. Should the order go through, it would send a strong signal that the "four freedoms" outlined in the policy statement have teeth behind them, that these are more than "suggestions," and that the principles of openness and consumer choice will guide the FCC's approach to broadband. In case you're one of the few who don't have the principles committed verbatim to memory, here's a recap (emphasis added):

• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers

I know you said RIAA, not MPAA; but the joke is on you.

The 500+ figure includes each e-book as a separate "app", but still there's a pretty good showing with much more to come. A lot of it is free or very cheap.

It also includes the doubling up of the free apps -- poking around, it looks like almost half of them are "free" demos, and there's a second premium app you have to buy.

It also includes some pretty crappy apps that surprisingly made the launch day cut: "seven tip calculators, three flashlight applications, nine Bible-related entries, two Zen garden applications, five blackjack games, and almost 10 percent of the entries are ebooks. There is an application to simulate the playing of a tiny violin to console your friends, a Light Saber emulator, an application that gives you a cartoon eye, and two applications that simulate the look of a beer mug."

A $0.99 "flashlight" app that does nothing but turn the screen white seems like a dubious inclusion in the "500+" claim. Others include a $2.99 app called "Looky" that provides Google Suggest capability, which Google provides for free. My favorite is "Hold On!", which records how long you can hold your finger on an on-screen button (with "records").

As for the "doubling up of the free apps," I see more free "ad-supported" versions than "demos." Double-counting "demos" would be really obnoxious, but fully-functional ad-supported versions are less so, IMO. One nice-looking example for Flickr users: Exposure (free ad-supported, $9.99 w/o ads), a Flickr browser that has a "Near Me" feature which uses the iPhone's location capabilities (including 1st-gen iPhones) to browse photos near you.

With the way Aaron is running the show, every one will have to wait for 4.5 for it to be as good as 3.5.

Call be naive, but I and everyone else I know expect feature completeness at a .0 replease, not API completeness. And KDE 4.0 was not even API complete. Plasma continues to be re-worked.

Aaron is a hell of a developer, but he is no project manager. He can't see the forest through the trees. Anyone who is in charge of a project like he is should not be coding. He should be focusing on user experience (regression testing, and making sure the platform is feature complete) and not libraries. It's a typical developer-turned-manager mistake.

Aaron, I do respect you and wish you the best. But you really bumbled 4.0 and it looks like 4.1 is going the same way.

Obama didn't cave on FISA. He just looked at the core issues.

Take a look at http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051220-5808.html

If we assume that article has correctly identified what was happening, the core issue becomes how to get massive, automated wiretapping under judicial control. The article states that there aren't enough judges to process all the warrants needed under the old FISA law using the new technology. So instead of fixing the law, the administration ignored it. Bush and Cheney should be impeached over this, but that isn't going to happen.

A major purpose of the telecom lawsuits was to get discovery going and find out what was happening. The investigation ordered by the new law is also supposed to do that. However, if the article is right we know what was happening. Enough was said publicly about a variety of matters for the author of the article to figure out the underlying technology.

Let's give Obama credit for focusing on the core issues and working to get them fixed. If he gave on the immunity sideshow, that's just part of the imperfection that he said was there in the compromise.

Apparently you haven't seen this write up on Ars. It's about a study over a series of years, at the end of which a novel mutation developed that was beneficial to an E. coli population that started out from a single inoculum.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2008/06/04/tracking-adaptation-as-bacteria-evolve

Over the course of 44,000 generations, they evolved the ability to metabolize citrate. They'd been incubated with citrate since 1988 and recently started using it as a substrate for metabolism. This study satisfies all 3 of the criteria you just indicated

why the Supreme Court of the United States listens to arguments about constitutional issues.

One of the people who was being wiretapped "accidentally" got a copy of their transcript in the mail.

The government proceeded to seize it.

They went to court with the copy they kept.

The government seized that copy too, and the judge ordered them not to keep any more copies or bring it up in court again.

The judge then ruled that without evidence that they had been tapped, they have 30 days to prove they were tapped without referring to these copies.

Well, we'll see if the courts blow their last chance.

Lively is merely an SL copycat. I thought google was an innovative company...

second earth rumors
Whatever "My World" ends up being, we think that Google will go much further than just competing with Second Life - if the company makes it functionally useful and ties it in with services that people already use, it may have a chance of succeeding at getting average Internet users to participate.

Twinverse - Our Planet is a Virtual World

We already heard about this:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/25/1437249

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070924-google-testing-my-world-for-launch-later-this-year.html
To us, it seems that a virtual world is natural progression of Google Earth and its 3D representations of... well, the Earth. Users could create avatars, like those in Second Life. The "street view" feature of Google Maps could be incorporated, as well as Google SketchUp, with avatars being able to walk around on actual streets and enter real buildings to check out what's inside and socialize with other avatars.

Twinverse - Our Planet is a Virtual World

http://twinverse.com/

Thanks for being that guy who brings up the "don't be evil" motto in every Google-related story. Ars Technica mentions that Mac and Linux versions are on the way. Or are you insinuating that supporting Windows at all makes one evil?

Ars Technica has posted a hands on: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080708-hands-on-googles-lively-social-3d-world-is-20-percent-done.html

You appear to be ignorant of the principle of implied consent

It is not "Stealing" nor "Theft of services" nor "Unauthorized use of a computer" nor "Computer trespass" according to New York Law, for one example.

Perhaps you'd like a scholarly article on why we should not make your assumptions (and get indignant about it, I might add) from George Washington University - Law School

In fact, I had already given you examples of use which are not stealing, and you are choosing to ignore them so you can't redundantly say stealing is stealing. On the off chance that you blacked out, the examples were anonymous FTP and a web server sharing files. P2P is another situation where you could be sharing files by mistake, but it's reasonable to assume that it is not by mistake - and downloaders use more of your computer resources than someone sending data through your router.

It takes all of one minute to turn on security. You do *not* have to be a hacker - what a canard that is. I won't claim that there isn't anyone who wouldn't be able to do it, but society cannot always limit itself to what the least of us can do. There is no victim in this scenario, just someone who has shared their network, so deserve has nothing to do with it. I was merely suggesting that being lazy and ignorant usually means you are to blame when you do something you did not intend.

Enough of your feeble attempts to claim I will take other people's physical property if it's not bolted down. You are obviously having trouble recognizing the difference between a car parked in your garage and a service that you are broadcasting onto my property which advertises itself as non-private and explicitly authorizes me to join the network.

Is it possible that reasonable people can reach this conclusion? Or am I the only asocial moron with a toddler's mentality?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060227-6272.html
http://www.dispatch.com/live/contentbe/dispatch/2006/02/26/20060226-H2-03.html
http://blogs.computerworld.com/why_its_ok_to_steal_wi_fi
http://zovirl.com/2006/07/27/you-cant-steal-wifi/
http://www.volokh.com/posts/1179938755.shtml

You may not agree, but you should not continue to pretend that all people who hold this view think it's OK to steal. Try to learn that much.

That has been attempted and a court in California rejected the dropping of it yet the government still refuses to allow the information to be used. Here is something on it, although slanted a little, it provides a good picture of the case.

Of course I am also one of those guys still waiting for the media-less age where our infrastructure is strong enough that Terabytes can be pushed across the wire in a trivial way.

Oh, really?

The Seattle PI reports: "However, there's a catch- this generous helping of everything from taekwondo to equestrian is exclusively available to Windows Vista users."

Now read my post again. Is some part of it not in agreement with the facts?

I think you're deliberately misunderstanding me in order to muddy the issue.

The NBC "Olympics On The Go" service will only be broadcast to users of Windows Vista . You can have the Olympics in "up to HD" but only if you take Vista too. I can only presume they are afraid their servers couldn't handle the load of allowing it to the broad audience of popular operating systems and handheld devices, even though users of that equipment are a much bigger market for their advertisers.

Yes: NVIDIA drivers responsible for nearly 30% of Vista crashes in 2007.

And most of these happened during what phase of the drivers? And how many were hardware specific errors? Additionally, how many of these were from NVidia XPDM drivers being run on Vista, which a lot of gamers 'thought' was a better idea out of pure ignorance?

Also your link proves my point. Out of over 100 million installations, there were 1.5 million crashes in Vista. So a 99% non-fail rate is bad? Hardware itself has a higher fail rate. Hell even Apple hardware has a higher fail rate.

Performance can be measured. I've seen such measurements, none of them show Vista appreciably outperforming XP. If it's so much better, demonstrate it, don't just call me an idiot, cite something.

(Keep in mind that even when Vista was peforming behind XP it was like 2-4fps in games running 60fps.)

OK, so you missed most of the Vista reviews, here are some links I have in my history. I'll let you actually google and read more for yourself:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2302499,00.asp

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/2070

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_aero_glass_performance/page3.asp

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/1/2/6453

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/pretty-vista.ars/3

Yes, Vista has some very impressive aspects, it's very advanced in some areas, but I'll buy it when it actually provides a reasonable amount of benefit to me, thanks, not before.

Use it for a couple of days and you would be surprised how painful going back to XP can be from a 'usability' standpoint especially, let alone watching everything from games to photoshop launch 10x or more faster on Vista than they do on XP.

I do have the feeling though that no matter what I throw out here, you are going to just hate Vista, and that is fine, just don't state your beliefs are based on fact...

Yes: NVIDIA drivers responsible for nearly 30% of Vista crashes in 2007.

And most of these happened during what phase of the drivers? And how many were hardware specific errors? Additionally, how many of these were from NVidia XPDM drivers being run on Vista, which a lot of gamers 'thought' was a better idea out of pure ignorance?

Also your link proves my point. Out of over 100 million installations, there were 1.5 million crashes in Vista. So a 99% non-fail rate is bad? Hardware itself has a higher fail rate. Hell even Apple hardware has a higher fail rate.

Performance can be measured. I've seen such measurements, none of them show Vista appreciably outperforming XP. If it's so much better, demonstrate it, don't just call me an idiot, cite something.

(Keep in mind that even when Vista was peforming behind XP it was like 2-4fps in games running 60fps.)

OK, so you missed most of the Vista reviews, here are some links I have in my history. I'll let you actually google and read more for yourself:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2302499,00.asp

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/2070

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_aero_glass_performance/page3.asp

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/1/2/6453

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/pretty-vista.ars/3

Yes, Vista has some very impressive aspects, it's very advanced in some areas, but I'll buy it when it actually provides a reasonable amount of benefit to me, thanks, not before.

Use it for a couple of days and you would be surprised how painful going back to XP can be from a 'usability' standpoint especially, let alone watching everything from games to photoshop launch 10x or more faster on Vista than they do on XP.

I do have the feeling though that no matter what I throw out here, you are going to just hate Vista, and that is fine, just don't state your beliefs are based on fact...

More stable, unless you're running certain very common drivers.

Really? Vista suppports 99.9% of the XP drivers, in addition to Vista drivers. And you think Vista is more unstable than XP or has driver issues? -Note: You should actually use Vista, enough the friend of a friend stories. Heck even post any mildly major driver issues with Vista like you describe?

This also sounds like you are forgetting hardware specifically designed for Vista. Are you really going to argue a new system designed for Vista has driver issues?

Why not? I'm not "upgrading" for one game, especially when it's not doing anything it couldn't do in DX9.

Ok, so you admit by proxy you know nothing about DX10. Fine, we will leave this here. (Before you post in the future, you might want to actually read about DX10. Heck even the increased texture sizes alone are a major thing that CAN'T be done with DX9.) Also you don't realize that game developers working on XBox 360 games are using more advanced (DX10) technologies that they can't even use on DX9 or XP.

Here is a quick link to get you started:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/2/14/7060

Sure, some of it looks rather nice, and it sounds good on paper, but from a user standpoint most of that's irrelevent even if it did translate into real world improvements (much of it, seemingly, does not). About the biggest thing most people will notice is slightly smoother window handling

Ok, again you admit you know nothing about the API sets of Vista. Especially if you think they are to 'look nicer' and don't help developers. The Vista APIs are more about developers and development than the 'pretty'. Just like Vista itself, the Flip3D is crap in comparison to the technology actually setting underneath that makes it happen. It isn't just doing an Expose' OS X type of trick, this is a vector composer actually using the 3D GPU functions to speed up drawing operations within the application, not just drawing bitmaps images to surfaces like OS X or even KDE is doing.

the need for more memory and, oh, look, another video driver crash.

Again you are proving you don't use Vista or know much about it either. More memory, ya it does like 1GB to outperform XP and 2GB is even better. (You know, just like Leopard to outperform Tiger.)

Video driver crash? Really? This is the 'least' common crash on Vista. Do you know why?

If the user is using an XP driver or XPDM mode driver, Vista isn't any better than XP at Video stability (kernel level and all).

However, running Vista WDDM drivers (which every card made since the Geforce 5200 years ago has), not only runs mainly in User Mode, but Vista has several layers of video Crash recovery that you can't even get in another OS at this time.

In Vista, you can literally rip the running Video card out of the system (while running a 3D game), and put it back and Vista will fully recover and the game will even recover if it is DirectX based...

Even if the Video driver does manage to crash (which is a trick to happen), Vista recovers with nothing more than a tool tip saying the Video has recovered, in a blink of an eye.

Try this with XP, OS X, Linux or your pick. Rip out a Video card while the OS is running and tell me you get the desktop back just as it was left, and even games are just where they were left. (At best you are going to drop X Windows on *NIX and see a command prompt, but no recovery of the desktop.)

(Vista also supports hotswap RAM and hotswap CPUs, and Microsoft wanted to ensure Video could NOT down a system, hence the level of recovery that works even by killing or removing a video card.)

So don't let me interrupt you, go on and on about how Vista Video crashes, prove how little you know about Vista and are trolling at best.

Applications don't have the same Level of UI consistance as Windows. Sure Windows has a few oddballs iTunes, Windows Media Player, and Office 2007 come to mind, but most have pretty good level of consistency.

Yup, Windows is just the model of visual consistency. Note that every application in that screenshot is a Microsoft application, so we're not even talking about third parties making a mess here.

KDE 4.0 and 4.1 are not meant to be perfect in every way. They are meant to establish a new scheme of APIs and a new design dynamic. It is a big overhaul that is in its beginnings. Nobody is claiming KDE 4.x is feature comparable to 3.x right now. This is just one person's view, and this is another view with excellent counterpoints. It is a failure where people are expecting too much of it in its current state.

Vista is supposed to be a workstation solution ready for every day production use right now. People are considering that to be a failure in its current state as well, and you are right, these two alleged failures are similar. But one product that is at an early start (4.0 & 4.1 beta, the more mature 3.5+ still seeing a lot of active development and use due to its maturity) and the other has the promise to be mature enough to use right now. You are not forced to upgrade to KDE 4.x, but Vista is required for some of today's games and applications because they don't run in earlier versions. This is the difference.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080702-the-critics-are-wrong-kde-4-doesnt-need-a-fork.html

KDE4 will get better. There's a lot of promise in plasma. Until then, 3.5 is totally usable (I'm using it now). KDE has often put forward a lot of wacky ideas just to see what sticks to the wall. Good on 'em, I say.

Look about the full KDE3 installation, you can find all sorts of ideas that never really made it. Drag and drop stuff, little file servers, and so on. Some of these things are probably in use by someone now. It's all part of KDE's great flexibility.

Windows keeps "calling home", prevents you to copy a legitimately purchased DVD or CD thanks to all that DRM stuff.

Really? Care to explain how I manage to have over 1200 MP3s on my PC that I've ripped from my CDs and can use to create my own compilation CDs even using WMP to burn said CDs?

That's because the music industry hasn't found a workable solution to prevent people from doing that. But I'm pretty sure you remember the SHIFT KEY scandal, which allowed you to rip the MP3's from certain music CD's protected with some autorunnable software. By the way, the guy who published that shift key secret was sued by them, on the basis of the DMCA: Circumvention of a copy protection device. Yes, all because of a Shift Key.

But don't feel so safe just because you can *RIGHT NOW* rip CD's and DVD's... maybe in the future you WON'T be able to rip them *at all*, if the US laws plug the analog hole. Or do you think HDMI cables are just to obtain high definition?

So as long as you depend on proprietary software for doing your stuff, you're at the mercy of the decisions made by the rich and powerful.

Free Software gets rid of that and offers you TRUE FREEDOM. But go ahead, don't believe me, laugh what you want - just don't come complaining if suddenly the only people being able to produce multimedia have to spend thousands of dollars and get a government permission to do it.

And as for Windows calling home, so do all the major Linux distros.

Without telling you about it?