I don't love iTunes either - it is bloated to shit. But compared to 6 years ago, the WIndows product sucks much less, and at least speaking for a sample size of 1 (me), I have never had a crash, lockup, or lost anything off of any iDevice.
Everyone just likes ragging on Apple here, because it is a closed ecosystem. But in reality, Apple has carved out a fortune for its shareholders by making stuff that, well, "just works".
The average dumb schmuck doesn't give a shit about iTunes, or the walled garden, or closed nature, etc. While it does matter to geeks like us, for the average user things like tweaking and rooting and jailbreaking is just another avenue for them to fuck up their devices & need a repair. Quite frankly, for the average loser, having something so outrageously simple as an iDevice is to their advantage as there is much less opprotunity for them to fuck up their shit.
And that's the big thing right there, and what the average geek seems to be unable to comprehend...geeks hate Apple products because you can't do whatever you want with them...but in the Real World of stupidity and moronicy...not being able to do whatever you want with a device is an advantage. They want simplicity.
You know, I've been using iTunes for probably 8 years or so at home on a windows box.
I agree 100% that iTunes is bloated to fuck.
Beyond that, I have literally NEVER had one single problem with iTunes. Not one GPF, not one crash, not one corrupted backup or fucked up playlist or anything. Other than the fact that it sucks down resources faster than a vietnamese hooker for an american dollar, iTunes has worked on Windows properly for a LONG time now.
You pulled a bill from a year ago, that has been effectively tabled by the fact that we just had an election? And where no current bill of the same authority is under consideration?
There is no bill, hence no discussion anymore, hence NO FUCKING STORY. Way to factcheck.
Now, I don't know UK law as well as that of Canada, so my comment may not fit the law of the land...
But what about the right of due process?
Again, I am not against RIM providing information to law enforcement, providing that said law enforcement follows due process in legally attaining the information.
I feel for all the people who have been fucked hard by these few assholes.
I'm not saying remotely that these assholes don't deserve to be locked up. They absolutely do.
If I had information personally that could lead to one of these jerkoff's arrest, I'd hand it over to authorities in a heartbeat.
But this isn't a private individual with first-hand knowledge of the incident going to police...this is a private company we trust to keep our information and communications secure doing exactly the opposite. This isn't some loser posting how he just broke a window & looted on twitter, or a pic of him coming out of a store with a TV posted to Facebook (which are both PUBLIC mediums). RIM prides itself on security...and running to the police with everyone's shit because of a riot defeats their sales pitch towards secure communications, especially in a market where RIM is already taking the long cock up the short ass.
You are still routing every single byte of every single message through THEIR equipment. THEY have physical access to the equipment. They have the keys...and even if they actually don't have the keys (bullshit), they have physical access to the servers.
You know, even though I long ago forsook my BB, I understood why business & government wanted them.
Secure reliable communications.
Today....reliability? Sure, if you pull the battery once a day (yes, I know you can reset it without yanking the battery. Still stupid as fuck you have to reboot them constantly) Secure? RTFA.
RIM is toast...and fuck it, let them die already.
And I even get it...they're trying to put "bad people" away. BUT THAT ISN'T THEIR FUCKING PLACE IN THE WORLD. It would be one thing to answer a suponea. It is another entirely to hand over records voluntarily.
Take risks...yeah...I would love to drop the 9-5 wage slaving & start my own business. But guess what? I have fucking obligations...I have kids that are soon off to college, and I scrimped and saved for the last 20 fucking years so that they won't have to worry about the cost of their education. I have kids that need to eat fucking healthier shit than fucking ramen noodles for 2 fucking years. Risk...please...some arrogant fuck with $0 to his name with no job, family, or hope can take risks...the rest of us have to actually be fucking responsible for the well being of other people. Must be nice to have nobody to worry about but yourself.
I don't want or need a fucking handout from fucking anyone. Everything I have in my life I have fucking worked my balls off for, and I would call myself "successful" - but I'm hardly wealthy by any definition.
What, you think the rich got that money fuckin' handed to them? You think it was just luck?
For far too many of the rich...you're fucking right they got that money handed to them and/or luck. Yes, there are exceptions...of course. My corporate overlords here? Handed millions from wealthy lineages...now granted, they've grown that wealth to astronomical levels...but they had a fucking starting point...they didn't have to work up form $0, and for most of the truely rich...either they had some seed, or some insane natural (read: genetic) talent that allowed them to come up with something that the majority of us mere mortals would be incapable of.
Shit, I look at my parents...they have money, but I would hardly call them rich either. Dad worked his fucking ass off for years...but on the same token, Dad had a start given to him in the form of a section of farmland. That starting point has lead him to be successful and "wealthy" if not rich...but not so rich that I could get the same massive starting block that he had.
Congratulations (sincerely) on being one of the VERY few success stories out there...believe me, I understand the work and sacrifice you put in to get there. But for every story like yours, there are the stories of thousands of bankrupt and destitute people who took the chances and fucking fell flat on their face.
For a majority of people, the American Dream of success and wealth is a fucking lie that will NEVER be achieved.
I'm not even talking about taxation here anymore, or handouts, or anyone paying their share...I'm talking about the fact that a majority of people will start their lives in poverty, subserviant to the corporate machine...and will fucking end their lives in the same depressing shithole. So yeah...the "rich" start to be fucking demonized for being self-serving fucks with no care to anything but growing their bank accounts. Seriously, do you give two fucks about your staff & their own financial success? Or are they just people to increase the size of your bank account? If the second...fuck you, you're part of the fucking problem. If the first...then you are one of the few success stories where you haven't become a flaming asshole only out for himself. Granted, by your fucked up little hissy fit, I guess you're just a fucking asshole that only cares about his bank balance.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake...you are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else.
Actually, it isn't fascism when two private businesses agree to do something incredibly unfriendly to the consumer.
But the joy of it all - you ARE still the consumer...YOU hold the power. Vote with your wallet - join an ISP that doesn't bend over & take it up the ass from the **AA's.
There is one huge economy of scale factor that matters in cloud computing...scalability.
If you have an e-commerce site (for example) and normally need very little horsepower, but have major peaks (like Black Friday), the cloud can provide an economy of scale that you just can't do in your home server farm as a small/medium business...and even as a large business. All that infrastructure sitting idle 99% of the time to handle the 2 days a year you get peak traffic.
Outside of that...I still say (for now) fuck the cloud.
I'm in the SMB market...I've discovered that the "Cloud" services that my business would require would cost 3-4x what it costs me to provide that service myself to my organization. The "breakeven" point was 8 users.
There are things that the cloud is good for - anti-spam being one of them (and one where economy of scale actually worked for us). But unless things change drastically, I will not put mission-critical data & applications in the cloud - the cost is too high, and the industry too immature still for me to truly rely upon them.
That will probably change in the next 5-10, but for right now, today....fuck the cloud.
Every single major Tea Party candidate was blown out in the last election, with exception to Rand Paul (and I question how Tea Party Rand is).
While I agree entirely that the teabaggers have the right idea, and their opinions are (often) something we should be striving for...quite frankly, the people they put up are fucking un-electable morons most of the time.
Historic Blowout. LOL, really. Noting historic about it - it was a standard midterm election where there were enough problems in the country/world that there was a "get rid of the incumbant bastards!" push. But to call it a Historic Blowout would also assume that those elected were shomehow different from those they replaced. They were not. Just another group of corporate shills replacing the old batch of corporate shills.
The fact you seem to believe that something actually changed in Washington shows your nieveity. Come back when you're all grown up & can see the truth.
One side has delusions and invisible friends, we think they're dangerous, insane maniacs.
With all due respect, opinions like that are what make the religious fucking infuriated by athiests.
Look, there are fuckheads in religion too, don't get me wrong...they're the assholes on TV demanding your money to "spread the word!" or in government making it illegal to use a fucking dildo (Hi Texas!)
But MOST religious folks are pretty normal people...just like most athiests are pretty normal people. Don't believe in god, believe in god...really, I don't give a flying fuck what you believe till you try to push your beliefs (or lack thereov) on the rest of society. Then you're an asshole, regardless of what side you're on.
Seriously...mr athiest, why in the fuck do you care of some quiet guy on your block prays every night to his imaginary friend? How in the fuck does that mess with your life?
And a simple statement...freedom OF religion does not imply freedom FROM religion. Live your life, make your choices, even try to convert the other side to your side...but stop being inconsiderate fucking assholes to everyone you meet who disagrees with you.
Seriously, all of you, regardless of what "side" you are on...stop being aufking assholes to those that disagree with you. Sheesh.
Of course. In reality (and seemingly confirmed by this study), this is no different than Religion vs Atheism.
Atheism is a "religion" as much as religions are religions...groups of fanatics vehemently spouting off their opinion of the nature of the universe, and not accepting the opinion of the other side.
Sorry, but the Teabaggers will never be more than a giant joke. Don't get me wrong, their message is right, but they've made themselves out to be such a spastic clusterfuck of stupidity that nobody besides the teabaggers take them seriously.
And Libertarians? We are Legion? ROFLMAO.
We have the power, that is true. We can pick the incumbant guy with the funding and ties from big business and special interests groups, or we can vote for the new guy that was funded by big business and special interest groups. Or you could vote for the independant candidate that has been funded by big business and special interest groups. We could vote for the teabagger republican who has been funded by big business and special interest groups. We could vote for the "Yes We Can" democrat who is funded by big business and special interest groups.
See the trend here? It doesn't matter who goes in...they're all the same. Party & candidate choice is an illusion. We're a totalarian regime with a once every 4 years choice of what specific brand of totalarian regime we prefer. Of course, the brand is a choice between Heintz Ketchup, Heintz Ketchup in a Hunts bottle, and Heintz Ketchup in a store-brand bottle. Sure, the labels are different, but the contents are identical.
Simple. They have the money to buy politicians. We don't.
And lets face it, in a 2-party system, there is no way in hell activists like us are going to get big 2 party nominations without taking the money from the lobbyists that we would thereby be bound to serve their corporate overlord interests.
Look, we all know, "copyright infringement is bad". But this is NOT a criminal matter, and in no way should the government/police/Federal Agencies be responsible for dealing with matters of civil law.
(And yes, if this passes, it does become criminal law...which is fucking retarded and a waste of public money.)
Well no, of course Windows is loaded with potential exploits.
The problem is...so is OSX and Linux.
But Windows does take the majority of exploits out there. Two reasons really: Market Share Technical Savvy of Users
The average Windoes user is, well....stupid. And no, I'm not saying that to all you admins and shit out there...but Windows is the bastion of the average masses...they buy a PC from xxxxx that has Windows pre-installed and they just keep using it. They don't understand fuck all about computers, and they (or their 15 year old son) go surfing for porno, and they go to a dodgy site & get infected. They probably don't even know it, which leaves an infected/botted PC out there just waiting to accept commands from the almighty bot masters.
The average Linux user is, well, socially inept (sorry, I had to) but understands technology. If there were virii out there to infect its 1% (desktop) market share, it would have to be a damn good one, because the average Linux user wouldn't click some random file in an email that says it is a screensaver. We, the users of Linux, just fucking know better.
Even if Linux somehow magically became the dominant OS of the smartphone market (for example) and loaded with a pile of "Oh look! Shiny!" dumbass users that bought the phones because they wanted an "iPhone-like" device without paying out the ass for it, then you can be sure that there WILL be malware, and lots of it.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't hate iTunes.
I don't love iTunes either - it is bloated to shit. But compared to 6 years ago, the WIndows product sucks much less, and at least speaking for a sample size of 1 (me), I have never had a crash, lockup, or lost anything off of any iDevice.
Everyone just likes ragging on Apple here, because it is a closed ecosystem. But in reality, Apple has carved out a fortune for its shareholders by making stuff that, well, "just works".
The average dumb schmuck doesn't give a shit about iTunes, or the walled garden, or closed nature, etc. While it does matter to geeks like us, for the average user things like tweaking and rooting and jailbreaking is just another avenue for them to fuck up their devices & need a repair. Quite frankly, for the average loser, having something so outrageously simple as an iDevice is to their advantage as there is much less opprotunity for them to fuck up their shit.
And that's the big thing right there, and what the average geek seems to be unable to comprehend...geeks hate Apple products because you can't do whatever you want with them...but in the Real World of stupidity and moronicy...not being able to do whatever you want with a device is an advantage. They want simplicity.
You know, I've been using iTunes for probably 8 years or so at home on a windows box.
I agree 100% that iTunes is bloated to fuck.
Beyond that, I have literally NEVER had one single problem with iTunes. Not one GPF, not one crash, not one corrupted backup or fucked up playlist or anything. Other than the fact that it sucks down resources faster than a vietnamese hooker for an american dollar, iTunes has worked on Windows properly for a LONG time now.
You pulled a bill from a year ago, that has been effectively tabled by the fact that we just had an election? And where no current bill of the same authority is under consideration?
There is no bill, hence no discussion anymore, hence NO FUCKING STORY. Way to factcheck.
Entirely true. "World PvP" on the PvP servers is an exercise in fuitility....all the bored 80's running around STV ganking everyone in sight.
I played that game for far too long...when my guild dropped the LK first time in Wrath, I quit WoW forever.
And you're obviously clueless of what an individual can do when given physical access to the equipment.
Maybe RIM's encryption is as solid as possible. Maybe it isn't. Quite honestly, we don't know shit from fuck, except what RIM decides to tell us.
Tell me, how many of us have lost our shit over Microsoft saying one thing and nobody trusting it? Or Apple? Or Google? How about Diebald?
Security through "Trust us, it is secure" is a fucking lie.
Let's respect their legal rights
Now, I don't know UK law as well as that of Canada, so my comment may not fit the law of the land...
But what about the right of due process?
Again, I am not against RIM providing information to law enforcement, providing that said law enforcement follows due process in legally attaining the information.
I feel for all the people who have been fucked hard by these few assholes.
But even those scumbag assholes have rights.
Agreed....if Law Enforcement gets a proper suponea for the data, I have NO issue whatsoever with RIM complying.
But TFA suggests no warrant/suponea...this is RIM going "Hey, some BB users were there...we have the logs of the chats. Here ya go!"
THAT is fucking bullshit.
I'm not saying remotely that these assholes don't deserve to be locked up. They absolutely do.
If I had information personally that could lead to one of these jerkoff's arrest, I'd hand it over to authorities in a heartbeat.
But this isn't a private individual with first-hand knowledge of the incident going to police...this is a private company we trust to keep our information and communications secure doing exactly the opposite. This isn't some loser posting how he just broke a window & looted on twitter, or a pic of him coming out of a store with a TV posted to Facebook (which are both PUBLIC mediums). RIM prides itself on security...and running to the police with everyone's shit because of a riot defeats their sales pitch towards secure communications, especially in a market where RIM is already taking the long cock up the short ass.
Fuck RIM
Use BES? That somehow brings the magic?
Bullshit.
You are still routing every single byte of every single message through THEIR equipment. THEY have physical access to the equipment. They have the keys...and even if they actually don't have the keys (bullshit), they have physical access to the servers.
Secure my ass.
You know, even though I long ago forsook my BB, I understood why business & government wanted them.
Secure reliable communications.
Today....reliability? Sure, if you pull the battery once a day (yes, I know you can reset it without yanking the battery. Still stupid as fuck you have to reboot them constantly) Secure? RTFA.
RIM is toast...and fuck it, let them die already.
And I even get it...they're trying to put "bad people" away. BUT THAT ISN'T THEIR FUCKING PLACE IN THE WORLD. It would be one thing to answer a suponea. It is another entirely to hand over records voluntarily.
Fuck RIM. Fuck them right in the ear.
Why do Canadians do it doggy style? A: So they can both watch the hockey game
Unless you give me a good way to watch the game upside down and still enjoy it, I cannot see the problem.
You've never had sex, let alone doggie style, have you?
C:\OFFLAWN.COM
Oh please. Fucking suck it cunt.
Take risks...yeah...I would love to drop the 9-5 wage slaving & start my own business. But guess what? I have fucking obligations...I have kids that are soon off to college, and I scrimped and saved for the last 20 fucking years so that they won't have to worry about the cost of their education. I have kids that need to eat fucking healthier shit than fucking ramen noodles for 2 fucking years. Risk...please...some arrogant fuck with $0 to his name with no job, family, or hope can take risks...the rest of us have to actually be fucking responsible for the well being of other people. Must be nice to have nobody to worry about but yourself.
I don't want or need a fucking handout from fucking anyone. Everything I have in my life I have fucking worked my balls off for, and I would call myself "successful" - but I'm hardly wealthy by any definition.
What, you think the rich got that money fuckin' handed to them? You think it was just luck?
For far too many of the rich...you're fucking right they got that money handed to them and/or luck. Yes, there are exceptions...of course. My corporate overlords here? Handed millions from wealthy lineages...now granted, they've grown that wealth to astronomical levels...but they had a fucking starting point...they didn't have to work up form $0, and for most of the truely rich...either they had some seed, or some insane natural (read: genetic) talent that allowed them to come up with something that the majority of us mere mortals would be incapable of.
Shit, I look at my parents...they have money, but I would hardly call them rich either. Dad worked his fucking ass off for years...but on the same token, Dad had a start given to him in the form of a section of farmland. That starting point has lead him to be successful and "wealthy" if not rich...but not so rich that I could get the same massive starting block that he had.
Congratulations (sincerely) on being one of the VERY few success stories out there...believe me, I understand the work and sacrifice you put in to get there. But for every story like yours, there are the stories of thousands of bankrupt and destitute people who took the chances and fucking fell flat on their face.
For a majority of people, the American Dream of success and wealth is a fucking lie that will NEVER be achieved.
I'm not even talking about taxation here anymore, or handouts, or anyone paying their share...I'm talking about the fact that a majority of people will start their lives in poverty, subserviant to the corporate machine...and will fucking end their lives in the same depressing shithole. So yeah...the "rich" start to be fucking demonized for being self-serving fucks with no care to anything but growing their bank accounts. Seriously, do you give two fucks about your staff & their own financial success? Or are they just people to increase the size of your bank account? If the second...fuck you, you're part of the fucking problem. If the first...then you are one of the few success stories where you haven't become a flaming asshole only out for himself. Granted, by your fucked up little hissy fit, I guess you're just a fucking asshole that only cares about his bank balance.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake...you are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else.
Actually, it isn't fascism when two private businesses agree to do something incredibly unfriendly to the consumer.
But the joy of it all - you ARE still the consumer...YOU hold the power. Vote with your wallet - join an ISP that doesn't bend over & take it up the ass from the **AA's.
Sorry...I wanted to add to this...
There is one huge economy of scale factor that matters in cloud computing...scalability.
If you have an e-commerce site (for example) and normally need very little horsepower, but have major peaks (like Black Friday), the cloud can provide an economy of scale that you just can't do in your home server farm as a small/medium business...and even as a large business. All that infrastructure sitting idle 99% of the time to handle the 2 days a year you get peak traffic.
Outside of that...I still say (for now) fuck the cloud.
Economy of scale?
ROFL...not that I've seen.
I'm in the SMB market...I've discovered that the "Cloud" services that my business would require would cost 3-4x what it costs me to provide that service myself to my organization. The "breakeven" point was 8 users.
There are things that the cloud is good for - anti-spam being one of them (and one where economy of scale actually worked for us). But unless things change drastically, I will not put mission-critical data & applications in the cloud - the cost is too high, and the industry too immature still for me to truly rely upon them.
That will probably change in the next 5-10, but for right now, today....fuck the cloud.
Every single major Tea Party candidate was blown out in the last election, with exception to Rand Paul (and I question how Tea Party Rand is).
While I agree entirely that the teabaggers have the right idea, and their opinions are (often) something we should be striving for...quite frankly, the people they put up are fucking un-electable morons most of the time.
Historic Blowout. LOL, really. Noting historic about it - it was a standard midterm election where there were enough problems in the country/world that there was a "get rid of the incumbant bastards!" push. But to call it a Historic Blowout would also assume that those elected were shomehow different from those they replaced. They were not. Just another group of corporate shills replacing the old batch of corporate shills.
The fact you seem to believe that something actually changed in Washington shows your nieveity. Come back when you're all grown up & can see the truth.
One side has delusions and invisible friends, we think they're dangerous, insane maniacs.
With all due respect, opinions like that are what make the religious fucking infuriated by athiests.
Look, there are fuckheads in religion too, don't get me wrong...they're the assholes on TV demanding your money to "spread the word!" or in government making it illegal to use a fucking dildo (Hi Texas!)
But MOST religious folks are pretty normal people...just like most athiests are pretty normal people. Don't believe in god, believe in god...really, I don't give a flying fuck what you believe till you try to push your beliefs (or lack thereov) on the rest of society. Then you're an asshole, regardless of what side you're on.
Seriously...mr athiest, why in the fuck do you care of some quiet guy on your block prays every night to his imaginary friend? How in the fuck does that mess with your life?
And a simple statement...freedom OF religion does not imply freedom FROM religion. Live your life, make your choices, even try to convert the other side to your side...but stop being inconsiderate fucking assholes to everyone you meet who disagrees with you.
Seriously, all of you, regardless of what "side" you are on...stop being aufking assholes to those that disagree with you. Sheesh.
Actually, Agnosticism is the belief.opinion that knowing whether or not god exists is unknown and unknowable.
Agnostics don't (necessarly) claim there is no god, they claim that it is impossible to know whether or not there is a god.
But hey, most people fuck up the use of Agnostic too :P
Of course. In reality (and seemingly confirmed by this study), this is no different than Religion vs Atheism.
Atheism is a "religion" as much as religions are religions...groups of fanatics vehemently spouting off their opinion of the nature of the universe, and not accepting the opinion of the other side.
Sorry, but the Teabaggers will never be more than a giant joke. Don't get me wrong, their message is right, but they've made themselves out to be such a spastic clusterfuck of stupidity that nobody besides the teabaggers take them seriously.
And Libertarians? We are Legion? ROFLMAO.
We have the power, that is true. We can pick the incumbant guy with the funding and ties from big business and special interests groups, or we can vote for the new guy that was funded by big business and special interest groups. Or you could vote for the independant candidate that has been funded by big business and special interest groups. We could vote for the teabagger republican who has been funded by big business and special interest groups. We could vote for the "Yes We Can" democrat who is funded by big business and special interest groups.
See the trend here? It doesn't matter who goes in...they're all the same. Party & candidate choice is an illusion. We're a totalarian regime with a once every 4 years choice of what specific brand of totalarian regime we prefer. Of course, the brand is a choice between Heintz Ketchup, Heintz Ketchup in a Hunts bottle, and Heintz Ketchup in a store-brand bottle. Sure, the labels are different, but the contents are identical.
Simple. They have the money to buy politicians. We don't.
And lets face it, in a 2-party system, there is no way in hell activists like us are going to get big 2 party nominations without taking the money from the lobbyists that we would thereby be bound to serve their corporate overlord interests.
In Soviet Russia, Streams imprison you!
Look, we all know, "copyright infringement is bad". But this is NOT a criminal matter, and in no way should the government/police/Federal Agencies be responsible for dealing with matters of civil law.
(And yes, if this passes, it does become criminal law...which is fucking retarded and a waste of public money.)
Well no, of course Windows is loaded with potential exploits.
The problem is...so is OSX and Linux.
But Windows does take the majority of exploits out there. Two reasons really:
Market Share
Technical Savvy of Users
The average Windoes user is, well....stupid. And no, I'm not saying that to all you admins and shit out there...but Windows is the bastion of the average masses...they buy a PC from xxxxx that has Windows pre-installed and they just keep using it. They don't understand fuck all about computers, and they (or their 15 year old son) go surfing for porno, and they go to a dodgy site & get infected. They probably don't even know it, which leaves an infected/botted PC out there just waiting to accept commands from the almighty bot masters.
The average Linux user is, well, socially inept (sorry, I had to) but understands technology. If there were virii out there to infect its 1% (desktop) market share, it would have to be a damn good one, because the average Linux user wouldn't click some random file in an email that says it is a screensaver. We, the users of Linux, just fucking know better.
Even if Linux somehow magically became the dominant OS of the smartphone market (for example) and loaded with a pile of "Oh look! Shiny!" dumbass users that bought the phones because they wanted an "iPhone-like" device without paying out the ass for it, then you can be sure that there WILL be malware, and lots of it.
It is the constant battle between the Fandroids and the iCult.
God forbid anyone speaks truth about your platform of choice.