There is a slight difference between a 30 minute or even one hour train ride and a twenty hour intercontinental flight. If you are trying hard to get at least a little bit of sleep but can't because the people surrounding you are all yabbering on top of eachother, you are more than willing to commit murder. I'd rather have 3 screaming babies around me. They can't help screaming and will eventually stop. The guys on their phones can help it but don't care and they won't stop.
I'd much rather have reasonably fast internet on a plane than mobile phone access (with access to skype and co blocked of course). One can communicate this way and it doesn't annoy others who are not the least interested in your conversations.
So far, planes are the only safe heaven one can get, when it comes to mobile phone terror. Now they want to take that away from us? I have horrible visions of me sitting in a plane, with 400 different ringtones, 400 people trying to shout over eachother. Just immagine you are on a 20 hour flight and your neighbour is telling his entire family, one by one, every detail of his holiday. That's enough to bludgeon somebody to death with their phone. I expect the number of violent attacks against fellow passengers to dramatically increase.
I hope at least they make the calls so bloody expensive that only those people, who currently use the onboard phones, will actually use their mobile. I'm thinking somewhere in the line of $5+/minute. That'll deter most people. They'd also try to limit the available "lines" to something like 10 or 20 to keep things down.
Sorry but people who can't be without a phone for 20 hours, should either use the onboard phones and pay the price or consult a psychologist.
I love my mobile and make good use of it but planes, restaurants and cinemas should be phone free zones.
As I said, you can think of the Taliban whatever you like but they are not terrorists and that's what it's all about. I'm not here to defend the Taliban. On the contrary, I think pretty much the same way about them as you do.
As for Hicks, I have no idea what possessed him to "join" the Taliban (there are some sources who say he had nothing to do with them at all...I don't know, I wasn't there), but he is no terrorist and neither the US nor anybody else had the right to hold him 5 years in a prison with no rights whatsoever without charging, let alone trying him.
My comments were simply based on the OPs statement that everybody in Guantanamo had been teaching in a terror camp and shot at Americans. Not everybody who ended up in Guantanamo had something to do with Al Quaida and its terror camps and I'd say the Taliban had every right to fight back when they were attacked. I would have done it, you would have done it and everybody else would have done it as well. I'm not sad to see them gone but did the west have the right to invade the country just because their ways greatly differ from our values? While I enjoy our western ways and values, what makes us think they're the beesnees? who gives us the right to tell others how to do things? If we were to attack every country whose ways we dislike and disrespect, we'd have a lot to. But some are too powerful to be attacked, others have powerful friends and again others, we're doing great business with. Do we have a right to attack a country because they don't hand over somebody we want to get our hands on? If so, there are several CIA agents who are sought in Germany for kidnapping a German citizen and taking him to several secret CIA prisons in "torture friendly" countries and the US refuse to hand them over to German authorities. Does that mean Germany has the right to attack the US?
Afganistan has fallen into the same chaos as it was in after the Soviet invasion, the poppy production is the highest in decades, just crossing the road is an adventure and the number of civilian casualties is skyhigh. Osama is still at large and the whole thing just played into the hands of radical islamists. Since Afganistan and Iraq, the number of those willing to participate in terrorist activities has skyrocketed and Al Quaida is now stronger than they have been in a long time. Are you surprised?
As much as people dislike the thought but ultimately, the US are responsible for the rise of the Taliban, Osama and Al Quaida...all out of fear of Afganistan becoming a communist country, which in the long run would have been the lesser evil.
Sorry, I certainly didn't mean to say the people in Guantanamo are all innocent. But they aren't all terrorists either. What happened is that ALL people fighting in Afganistan were thrown into one big pot, regardless of who they were and what they were doing.
One may think of the Taliban what they like but they are NOT Al Quaida. People who were fighting with the Taliban to defend their country were sent to Guantanamo as "enemy combatants" and "very dangerous people". Why? Because Al Quaida fighters have been fighting with the Taliban and the US government hast deemed all of the Taliban fighters as "fighting with Al Quaida and by doing so supporting terrorists".
This has been repeated over and over again until Taliban and Al Quaida have become almost interchangeable. This is simply not true.
If the US government claims that everybody in Guantanamo is a terrorist, they are simply lying. They know that it is a lie but they also know that repeating a lie often enough sooner or later makes it the "truth". I wouldn't even go as far as calling all Al Quaida fighters terrorists. Many, if not most of them undoubtedly are but just because they were trained to be terrorists doesn't mean they will actually become any. Not everybody who knows how to hotwire a car is a car thief.
Take David Hicks for example. He was fighting for the Taliban in Afganistan, was captured and sent to Guantanamo. After five years he was released after he had admitted to "supporting a terrorist organisation"...because there were also some Al Quaida fighters fighting with the Taliban. His admission was a win/win situation. For him it was a win, because he got out of Guantanamo and could go home to Australia and the US government suddenly had justification to hold him in Guantanamo to start with. Is this how it should be? I don't think so.
So no, not everybody in Guantanamo is innocent but not everybody is guilty either unless you see defending your country against a foreign aggressor as something to be guilty of. And the ones who really are guilty of some wrong doings, still deserve a proper trial infront of a proper court. But why are they not tried yet? Because they first have to find something they can try them for?
No, the people in Guantanamo are those who dared to shoot at Americans after they invaded their country...and some more who were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. The really big fish aren't there and your government isn't even interested in getting the really big fish. If Osama (who was trained by the CIA I may add) was gone, who would your government use as a boogeyman to justify taking away more and more of your freedom? Samuel Goldstein?
I must say, I am really disappointed. I always though that people who post on/. are the ones who haven't been completely brainwashed by the media. I thought people here know how to use their brains and look at the facts to form their own oppinion. Obviously I was mistaken. There are just as many mindless zombies, who believe everything the media throws at them, in here as in any other internet forum.
Agreed. Another Vista or XBOX desaster will cost them dearly. No matter how hard they try to talk the Vista numbers good, they aren't. But most people don't really see that Vista isn't selling anywhere near as good as they claim. All you read in the news is: "More copies of Vista sold than of any other Windows". Yes, the numbers of Vista look better than those of XP but if you see that the market has more than doubled since 2001, the numbers suddenly don't look that good anymore and in terms of market share, XP sold better than Vista.
The XBOX is another "problem child". Up to 2006, the XBOX (and 360) has caused a loss of about $4 billion. Add another billion they put aside for the 360 problems and the extended warranty, and you see that the XBOX is actually a big problem. Even MS can't afford to write off billion after billion without getting the shareholders to ask questions. I was always a "defender" of MS branded hardware. I've been using MS Keyboards for years and their mice were pretty good too. Though I never had one myself, their game controllers are supposed to pre pretty good pieces of hardware. But with the XBOX, they destroy their reputation in the hardware sector too and that will wake up the last "MS-Warriors".
Let's just wait and see and in the meantime, I'm looking forward to a few more flying chairs and other temper tantrums of Stevie B...
I fully agree with you. MS is far from dead and with what 60? 70? billion dollars in their pockets, they have a lot to throw at us. No, MS is a force that has to be reckoned with for quite some time to come. Sure, history has shown that every empire comes to an end sooner or later but in case of MS I'm afraid it will be later than sooner.
I wouldn't want MS to disappear completely anyway. A Mac or Linux monopoly would be just as bad as the MS monopoly is. My "dream" is a market in which MS holds no more than 50%. This is enough incentive for software companies to write their apps multi plattform and hardware manufactures to offer drivers for all major plattforms and not just Windows.
In regards to your last sentence, I ask myself if MS will be just as blunt as they were during the Win/OS2-war, when they threatened OEMs who dared to offer OS2 as an alternative to not sell them OEM-Versions of Windows at all. They've done it before and got away with it. So why not now? All they will get is a slap on the wrist and a fine that doesn't deserve to be called that. To really hurt MS, fines mus be in the 10 billion plus range. Everything else is peanuts.
Well, we'll see what will happen. In the meantime, I'm happy to see Dell's experiment be a success.
But if you push your car, you are not paying fuel tax either, so you will be fined. Without knowing the exact letter of the law, it sounds rather ridiculous. Why pay tax on not taxable fuel? What about electric cars? They don't pay tax. How about one of these experimental hydrogen powered cars? It seems pretty ludicrous to me.
Maybe they want to protect the cops to avoid another "Rodney King scandal". If it's illegal to tape the cops, your video footage of certain incidents is illegal and can't be used against them in court.
But if they are so keen to apply that law in this case, it's looking grim in others. The law says: "...bars the intentional interception or recording of anyone's oral conversation...". So if I stand on a bus stop and next to me there are two people having a conversation and I listen in, I'm technically intercepting their conversation and hence can be charged for wiretapping. Even if I bloody lip read what they're saying, I'm intercepting their convo. It may be a good idea to use ear muffs and a blindfold when you are in PA...
Sorry but I don't go out and buy music, so somebody else has food on the table. If I buy something then I do that with my own interest in mind and nobody elses (unless it is charitable). If the music industry wants me to buy their stuff, then they should stop selling CDs with root kits, CDs that don't work in half the players, music files that will only run on one platform and they should stop telling me that I am a potential criminal because I am asking for these things. Until they do, they won't see a cent from me and I used to spend a grand or more a year on CDs. If me not buying music means that somebody will starve, then so be it.
Sorry that may sound harsh but that's how it is. If my employer goes bust because nobody wants our services anymore, then I lose my job. Do you think there's people out there who say: "Let's go to these guys, cos their employees starve"? Not buying their products is the only way we can fight back and stand up for our rights.
This guy is way beyond paranoid. Over 10 years ago, he had a traumatic experience, when an assassination attempt put him into a wheel chair. But as it looks, he either didn't seek professional help or it didn't work.
He seems to see terrorists behind every tree and around every corner. He wants permanent video and audio surveillance for all public places, he supports ideas of scanning and storing cars number plates, he supports a nation wide "anti-terror database", which not only police and customs but also secret services have acces to, he wants access to all biometric data stored in passports for all law enforcement agencies, he's in support for more biometric data to be collected (and used of course), as mentioned above, he publicaly announced that innocent until proven guilty is the wrong way, he supports secrert services hacking into ALL computer systems to snoop for terrorists, he's in support of the long term storage of all communication data and so on. To top it all off, he's more than happy to give the US access to all the data collected. Well, considering the huge amount of terror attacks Germany has suffered, since the RAF (no, not the Royal Air Force) declared itself disbanded in the 90s, he's probably right.
This guy is not only paranoid. He's a danger to the German constitution, the people and the the democracy. He's paranoid beyond reason and people in a state of mind he's in should be deemed unfit for public office. But hey, maybe they'd have use for him in the UK. Their politicians love to spy on their own people too.
And what happens to the pharmaceutical industry, if nobody buys the stuff? What happens to the entire US economy, if people stop buying products from US companies? What happens to the US economy, if China would stop to produce cheap? What would US cars use for petrol if they couldn't import any more oil?
Sorry guys but you really need to do a reality check here. The US are the largest importer of goods world wide. Why do you think that is? Because the US are so nice and want to give everybody else a few crumbs or maybe because the products are needed? Why import if it isn't necessary?
Well, this is kind of how the system was intended isn't it?
Instead of complaining that foreigners take American jobs, you (not you personally but "you" as in the US) got to ask yourself, where the US would be today, if it wasn't for the immigrants. Not every foreigner is an idiot, just like not every American is the best choice for a certain job. Some immigrants will fail miserably and others will succeed and maybe even start their own, successful business and create new, American jobs. Those who fail will be replaced, be it by Americans or new immigrants.
Btw. US companies exploit workers from other countries as well and take jobs from others. I don't want to know how many companies have been bought by US based businesses and then closed down, since the only interest the US companies had, were the product portfolios and the customer base. So why should Indian companies care about US jobs, if the US couldn't care less about other peoples jobs?
What the US must never forget is that they need the rest of the world just as much as the rest of the world needs the US.
It is disgusting. When my daughter died last year, the funeral director wanted to talk us into a $5000 coffin, even though she was to be cremated. Where's the point in paying craploads of money for a casket which will be burned? We ended up with a $1500 coffin...still pretty steep for "fire wood".
When it's my time, I'll be cremated and my ashes scattered at the same place as my girl's...hopefully by then, it is possible to cremate people without putting them into an expensive box first.
Funeral directors are business people and as such they are interested in making money...the more the better. Their advantage is that they can use people's grief to make even more money. Grieving peole are easy targets as they are very emotional and much easier to talk into something. As you said: Who would say 2nd class?
There's only one thing to do: Let's get rid of Johnny Rotten!
Not too sure that the alternatives would bring the slightest change. The Yanks say jump and our pollies ask how high. That's ridiculous. How can a country extradite one of their own citizens to a foreign nation for a crime that hasn't even been committed over there. Hey, let's send all our under 18-21yo to the Seppos to be trialled for underage drinking...
You forgot that the nice Indian lady named "Susan" indirectly accuses you of committing the capital crime of installing XP on a second computer. Only after you rigorously denied that, will she give you the activation code. But the question is: Can she say no? What if she does? Then you're buggered.
I used to avoid these activation orgies by simply installing a corp version on my PCs until MS stopped that with their WGA notification tool. I know it wasn't really 100% legal but hey, I had an XP licence for every machine in the house, so it's not that I didn't pay for XP. Now I have an interesting situation at home: 2 of my XP licences are OEMs, the other two are systembuilder versions. While the systembuilder version doesn't seem to give a toss how much hardware I replace and never asks for a new activation, the OEM Version on one of the machines already asked for reactivation after installing a BIOS upgrade. Of course it wouldn't activate because "it's already been activated on another machine" and I had to ring Mickysoft. The systembuilder version doesn't even care how many times it has been activated. It simply does it without hassles...no phonecalls required.
You're right, people said the same thing back then and in regards to W2K, there really wasn't a massive improvement. This also shows in the version numbers: W2K=NT 5 and XP=NT 5.1.
For 9x/ME users, XP was a huge improvement, even if it came with higher hardware requirements. The added stability and security compared to the DOS based Windows versions alone were worth the upgrade and most PCs back then already fulfilled the requirements of XP. (most new PCs I've seen back in 2001 already came with 64 or 128MB RAM, enough to run XP. Note: I said run, not use). And as for the Teletubby look of Luna: I still can't stand it. It's the 1st thing I switch off when I sit down at a XP machine.
Comparing Vista and XP, I can't really say I'm very impressed. One thing I really must admit is, that Aero is a huge improvement over Luna and actually doesn't cause eye cancer. I haven't seen the 3D extentions yet though. Apart from that, I do prefer XP over Vista. I bought a new laptop a couple of months back which shipped with Vista. Sure, the machine isn't "top notch" (1GB RAM, Core duo T2250) but the performance under Vista (Home Basic) is appalling and I had some issues with two of my main apps, so I d/l all necessary XP drivers and slapped XP Pro onto the machine. Under XP the machine performs so much better, it's hard to believe it's the same machine.
I've tried Vista for about 4 weeks and came to the conclusion that at this point in time, XP is more than sufficient. I really don't see a reason to use Vista.
MS has proudly announced that Vista has shipped 20 million copies in the 1st 2 months. While this is more than XP shipped back in 2001 (12 mio IIRC), considering the circumstances, it's actually a worse result than with XP. Why? Well, firstly, these 20 mio Vistas also include the upgrade vouchers that have been handed out with new machines since October last year, so it actually wasn't 2 months but 5 months and secondly, in 2006 the PC market had almost doubled since 2001, which means MS would have had to ship 24 mio units of Vista in order to perform the same as in 2001 (based on marketshare, not on sold units). What would be interesting to compare are the numbers of retail units of XP and Vista shipped in the 1st 2-4 months. This would give a much better insight on how the products really perform, as it would cut out the OEM versions shipped with new computers. The OEMs are registered as shipped units, regardless if people keep using XP or not. Only the retail versions show how many people willingly purchased Vista (and XP back in 2001).
It's got nothing to do with a "Microsoft sucks" attitude. It is a fact that this problem is solely based on Microsofts refusal to not only acknowledge standards but also comply with them. But why should they? They have the power to dictate their own pseudo standards and that's exactly what they are doing. Webdesigners have been coding around standards for years in order to enable IE to work properly. Unfortunately, this causes problems with other browsers and users of these browsers are the ones shot in the foot.
But then again, if we'd all do what MS wants us to do (buy Windows and use IE), then there wouldn't be a problem. Considering this, it is actually not the fault of MS but those of us, who don't use Windows and IE.
Why code for a certain browser in the first place? What good are standards, if nobody sticks to them? If ALL pages were conforming to standards, there wouldn't be an issue...stop, there would be one: IE wouldn't work properly.
Monopolies are something cool. You can do whatever you want and the whole effing world jumps through hoops to adapt to your dodgy software. The IE is "broken by design", so web developers have to "break" the WWW to make IE work.
If all developers would stick to standards, MS would be forced to comply with standards. The only other option they'd have would be to roll out MS-WWW
It isn't just because the music industry is going after a 10 year old child. Just look at all these lawsuits the content industry has filed in recent years. It's all the everyday blokes, who dared to get a handful of songs of the net, they're after. Where are the lawsuits against those who sell unlicenced music in bulk? where's the lawsuits against the producers and distributors of counterfeit CDs? Ohhh they're all in China are they? They're out of our reach are they? We want to do big business in China and lawsuits would be bad for it right? So we go after the little fish so we don't look as if we don't care about unlicenced music.
If we don't want to become slaves of the content industry and the politicians they bought...ermmm...lobbied into supporting them, then it is time to show them that they need us more than we need them. We can survive without EMI and Co but can they survive without us? Show them it is our way or the high way. The sooner they realise that, the better.
Stop buying music and movies. But don't get it via P2P either as this will only gove them amunition for even tougher laws. Just show them we don't need and more importantly want their stuff. Only then will this bullsh*t end and the quality of the content improve again. We the people have the power to bring their empires down. We just have to want it.
Don't get me wrong. I used to spend a lot of money on music and movies. But I am sick and tired of the methods of the content industry. I am sick and tired of copyprotected CDs which are "defective by design". I am sick of being locked in when I buy music online. I am sick of being criminalised because I make backups of my legally purchased DVDs to protect my investments. I am sick of being forced to watch "piracy, it's a crime" clips on DVDs i legally purchased. I am sick of movie trailers I can't skip. I'm sick of online shops whose "goods" are locked into one single platform. I want to be able to buy and play content whereever I am and whatever platform I am using. It must be my choice where, when and what with I want to consume content. Unless things change, these guys wil not see another cent of my hard earned money.
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There is a slight difference between a 30 minute or even one hour train ride and a twenty hour intercontinental flight. If you are trying hard to get at least a little bit of sleep but can't because the people surrounding you are all yabbering on top of eachother, you are more than willing to commit murder. I'd rather have 3 screaming babies around me. They can't help screaming and will eventually stop. The guys on their phones can help it but don't care and they won't stop.
I'd much rather have reasonably fast internet on a plane than mobile phone access (with access to skype and co blocked of course). One can communicate this way and it doesn't annoy others who are not the least interested in your conversations.
So far, planes are the only safe heaven one can get, when it comes to mobile phone terror. Now they want to take that away from us? I have horrible visions of me sitting in a plane, with 400 different ringtones, 400 people trying to shout over eachother. Just immagine you are on a 20 hour flight and your neighbour is telling his entire family, one by one, every detail of his holiday. That's enough to bludgeon somebody to death with their phone. I expect the number of violent attacks against fellow passengers to dramatically increase.
I hope at least they make the calls so bloody expensive that only those people, who currently use the onboard phones, will actually use their mobile. I'm thinking somewhere in the line of $5+/minute. That'll deter most people. They'd also try to limit the available "lines" to something like 10 or 20 to keep things down.
Sorry but people who can't be without a phone for 20 hours, should either use the onboard phones and pay the price or consult a psychologist.
I love my mobile and make good use of it but planes, restaurants and cinemas should be phone free zones.
Not a problem, as long as the sun shines out of your arse *fg*
As I said, you can think of the Taliban whatever you like but they are not terrorists and that's what it's all about. I'm not here to defend the Taliban. On the contrary, I think pretty much the same way about them as you do.
As for Hicks, I have no idea what possessed him to "join" the Taliban (there are some sources who say he had nothing to do with them at all...I don't know, I wasn't there), but he is no terrorist and neither the US nor anybody else had the right to hold him 5 years in a prison with no rights whatsoever without charging, let alone trying him.
My comments were simply based on the OPs statement that everybody in Guantanamo had been teaching in a terror camp and shot at Americans. Not everybody who ended up in Guantanamo had something to do with Al Quaida and its terror camps and I'd say the Taliban had every right to fight back when they were attacked. I would have done it, you would have done it and everybody else would have done it as well. I'm not sad to see them gone but did the west have the right to invade the country just because their ways greatly differ from our values? While I enjoy our western ways and values, what makes us think they're the beesnees? who gives us the right to tell others how to do things? If we were to attack every country whose ways we dislike and disrespect, we'd have a lot to. But some are too powerful to be attacked, others have powerful friends and again others, we're doing great business with. Do we have a right to attack a country because they don't hand over somebody we want to get our hands on? If so, there are several CIA agents who are sought in Germany for kidnapping a German citizen and taking him to several secret CIA prisons in "torture friendly" countries and the US refuse to hand them over to German authorities. Does that mean Germany has the right to attack the US?
Afganistan has fallen into the same chaos as it was in after the Soviet invasion, the poppy production is the highest in decades, just crossing the road is an adventure and the number of civilian casualties is skyhigh. Osama is still at large and the whole thing just played into the hands of radical islamists. Since Afganistan and Iraq, the number of those willing to participate in terrorist activities has skyrocketed and Al Quaida is now stronger than they have been in a long time. Are you surprised?
As much as people dislike the thought but ultimately, the US are responsible for the rise of the Taliban, Osama and Al Quaida...all out of fear of Afganistan becoming a communist country, which in the long run would have been the lesser evil.
Sorry, I certainly didn't mean to say the people in Guantanamo are all innocent. But they aren't all terrorists either. What happened is that ALL people fighting in Afganistan were thrown into one big pot, regardless of who they were and what they were doing.
One may think of the Taliban what they like but they are NOT Al Quaida. People who were fighting with the Taliban to defend their country were sent to Guantanamo as "enemy combatants" and "very dangerous people". Why? Because Al Quaida fighters have been fighting with the Taliban and the US government hast deemed all of the Taliban fighters as "fighting with Al Quaida and by doing so supporting terrorists".
This has been repeated over and over again until Taliban and Al Quaida have become almost interchangeable. This is simply not true.
If the US government claims that everybody in Guantanamo is a terrorist, they are simply lying. They know that it is a lie but they also know that repeating a lie often enough sooner or later makes it the "truth". I wouldn't even go as far as calling all Al Quaida fighters terrorists. Many, if not most of them undoubtedly are but just because they were trained to be terrorists doesn't mean they will actually become any. Not everybody who knows how to hotwire a car is a car thief.
Take David Hicks for example. He was fighting for the Taliban in Afganistan, was captured and sent to Guantanamo. After five years he was released after he had admitted to "supporting a terrorist organisation"...because there were also some Al Quaida fighters fighting with the Taliban. His admission was a win/win situation. For him it was a win, because he got out of Guantanamo and could go home to Australia and the US government suddenly had justification to hold him in Guantanamo to start with. Is this how it should be? I don't think so.
So no, not everybody in Guantanamo is innocent but not everybody is guilty either unless you see defending your country against a foreign aggressor as something to be guilty of. And the ones who really are guilty of some wrong doings, still deserve a proper trial infront of a proper court. But why are they not tried yet? Because they first have to find something they can try them for?
No, the people in Guantanamo are those who dared to shoot at Americans after they invaded their country...and some more who were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. The really big fish aren't there and your government isn't even interested in getting the really big fish. If Osama (who was trained by the CIA I may add) was gone, who would your government use as a boogeyman to justify taking away more and more of your freedom? Samuel Goldstein?
/. are the ones who haven't been completely brainwashed by the media. I thought people here know how to use their brains and look at the facts to form their own oppinion. Obviously I was mistaken. There are just as many mindless zombies, who believe everything the media throws at them, in here as in any other internet forum.
I must say, I am really disappointed. I always though that people who post on
Agreed. Another Vista or XBOX desaster will cost them dearly. No matter how hard they try to talk the Vista numbers good, they aren't. But most people don't really see that Vista isn't selling anywhere near as good as they claim. All you read in the news is: "More copies of Vista sold than of any other Windows". Yes, the numbers of Vista look better than those of XP but if you see that the market has more than doubled since 2001, the numbers suddenly don't look that good anymore and in terms of market share, XP sold better than Vista.
The XBOX is another "problem child". Up to 2006, the XBOX (and 360) has caused a loss of about $4 billion. Add another billion they put aside for the 360 problems and the extended warranty, and you see that the XBOX is actually a big problem. Even MS can't afford to write off billion after billion without getting the shareholders to ask questions. I was always a "defender" of MS branded hardware. I've been using MS Keyboards for years and their mice were pretty good too. Though I never had one myself, their game controllers are supposed to pre pretty good pieces of hardware. But with the XBOX, they destroy their reputation in the hardware sector too and that will wake up the last "MS-Warriors".
Let's just wait and see and in the meantime, I'm looking forward to a few more flying chairs and other temper tantrums of Stevie B...
I fully agree with you. MS is far from dead and with what 60? 70? billion dollars in their pockets, they have a lot to throw at us. No, MS is a force that has to be reckoned with for quite some time to come. Sure, history has shown that every empire comes to an end sooner or later but in case of MS I'm afraid it will be later than sooner.
I wouldn't want MS to disappear completely anyway. A Mac or Linux monopoly would be just as bad as the MS monopoly is. My "dream" is a market in which MS holds no more than 50%. This is enough incentive for software companies to write their apps multi plattform and hardware manufactures to offer drivers for all major plattforms and not just Windows.
In regards to your last sentence, I ask myself if MS will be just as blunt as they were during the Win/OS2-war, when they threatened OEMs who dared to offer OS2 as an alternative to not sell them OEM-Versions of Windows at all. They've done it before and got away with it. So why not now? All they will get is a slap on the wrist and a fine that doesn't deserve to be called that. To really hurt MS, fines mus be in the 10 billion plus range. Everything else is peanuts.
Well, we'll see what will happen. In the meantime, I'm happy to see Dell's experiment be a success.
But if you push your car, you are not paying fuel tax either, so you will be fined. Without knowing the exact letter of the law, it sounds rather ridiculous. Why pay tax on not taxable fuel? What about electric cars? They don't pay tax. How about one of these experimental hydrogen powered cars? It seems pretty ludicrous to me.
Maybe they want to protect the cops to avoid another "Rodney King scandal". If it's illegal to tape the cops, your video footage of certain incidents is illegal and can't be used against them in court.
But if they are so keen to apply that law in this case, it's looking grim in others. The law says: "...bars the intentional interception or recording of anyone's oral conversation...". So if I stand on a bus stop and next to me there are two people having a conversation and I listen in, I'm technically intercepting their conversation and hence can be charged for wiretapping. Even if I bloody lip read what they're saying, I'm intercepting their convo. It may be a good idea to use ear muffs and a blindfold when you are in PA...
...I can imagine it to be a "fun guy" to be with...
Sorry but I don't go out and buy music, so somebody else has food on the table. If I buy something then I do that with my own interest in mind and nobody elses (unless it is charitable). If the music industry wants me to buy their stuff, then they should stop selling CDs with root kits, CDs that don't work in half the players, music files that will only run on one platform and they should stop telling me that I am a potential criminal because I am asking for these things. Until they do, they won't see a cent from me and I used to spend a grand or more a year on CDs. If me not buying music means that somebody will starve, then so be it.
Sorry that may sound harsh but that's how it is. If my employer goes bust because nobody wants our services anymore, then I lose my job. Do you think there's people out there who say: "Let's go to these guys, cos their employees starve"? Not buying their products is the only way we can fight back and stand up for our rights.
This guy is way beyond paranoid. Over 10 years ago, he had a traumatic experience, when an assassination attempt put him into a wheel chair. But as it looks, he either didn't seek professional help or it didn't work.
He seems to see terrorists behind every tree and around every corner. He wants permanent video and audio surveillance for all public places, he supports ideas of scanning and storing cars number plates, he supports a nation wide "anti-terror database", which not only police and customs but also secret services have acces to, he wants access to all biometric data stored in passports for all law enforcement agencies, he's in support for more biometric data to be collected (and used of course), as mentioned above, he publicaly announced that innocent until proven guilty is the wrong way, he supports secrert services hacking into ALL computer systems to snoop for terrorists, he's in support of the long term storage of all communication data and so on. To top it all off, he's more than happy to give the US access to all the data collected. Well, considering the huge amount of terror attacks Germany has suffered, since the RAF (no, not the Royal Air Force) declared itself disbanded in the 90s, he's probably right.
This guy is not only paranoid. He's a danger to the German constitution, the people and the the democracy. He's paranoid beyond reason and people in a state of mind he's in should be deemed unfit for public office. But hey, maybe they'd have use for him in the UK. Their politicians love to spy on their own people too.
The question should be: Which politician ever noticed it when people decided to boycot anything they do, say or attend?
Another question is: Which politician ever gave a toss about things being boycotted because of them?
And what happens to the pharmaceutical industry, if nobody buys the stuff? What happens to the entire US economy, if people stop buying products from US companies? What happens to the US economy, if China would stop to produce cheap? What would US cars use for petrol if they couldn't import any more oil?
Sorry guys but you really need to do a reality check here. The US are the largest importer of goods world wide. Why do you think that is? Because the US are so nice and want to give everybody else a few crumbs or maybe because the products are needed? Why import if it isn't necessary?
Well, this is kind of how the system was intended isn't it?
Instead of complaining that foreigners take American jobs, you (not you personally but "you" as in the US) got to ask yourself, where the US would be today, if it wasn't for the immigrants. Not every foreigner is an idiot, just like not every American is the best choice for a certain job. Some immigrants will fail miserably and others will succeed and maybe even start their own, successful business and create new, American jobs. Those who fail will be replaced, be it by Americans or new immigrants.
Btw. US companies exploit workers from other countries as well and take jobs from others. I don't want to know how many companies have been bought by US based businesses and then closed down, since the only interest the US companies had, were the product portfolios and the customer base. So why should Indian companies care about US jobs, if the US couldn't care less about other peoples jobs?
What the US must never forget is that they need the rest of the world just as much as the rest of the world needs the US.
It is disgusting. When my daughter died last year, the funeral director wanted to talk us into a $5000 coffin, even though she was to be cremated. Where's the point in paying craploads of money for a casket which will be burned? We ended up with a $1500 coffin...still pretty steep for "fire wood".
When it's my time, I'll be cremated and my ashes scattered at the same place as my girl's...hopefully by then, it is possible to cremate people without putting them into an expensive box first.
Funeral directors are business people and as such they are interested in making money...the more the better. Their advantage is that they can use people's grief to make even more money. Grieving peole are easy targets as they are very emotional and much easier to talk into something. As you said: Who would say 2nd class?
There's only one thing to do: Let's get rid of Johnny Rotten!
Not too sure that the alternatives would bring the slightest change. The Yanks say jump and our pollies ask how high. That's ridiculous. How can a country extradite one of their own citizens to a foreign nation for a crime that hasn't even been committed over there. Hey, let's send all our under 18-21yo to the Seppos to be trialled for underage drinking...
Mate, we're talking Queenslanders here. A Queenslander would NEVER waste alcohol. Believe me, if they call it waste, it is waste :)
You forgot that the nice Indian lady named "Susan" indirectly accuses you of committing the capital crime of installing XP on a second computer. Only after you rigorously denied that, will she give you the activation code. But the question is: Can she say no? What if she does? Then you're buggered.
I used to avoid these activation orgies by simply installing a corp version on my PCs until MS stopped that with their WGA notification tool. I know it wasn't really 100% legal but hey, I had an XP licence for every machine in the house, so it's not that I didn't pay for XP. Now I have an interesting situation at home: 2 of my XP licences are OEMs, the other two are systembuilder versions. While the systembuilder version doesn't seem to give a toss how much hardware I replace and never asks for a new activation, the OEM Version on one of the machines already asked for reactivation after installing a BIOS upgrade. Of course it wouldn't activate because "it's already been activated on another machine" and I had to ring Mickysoft. The systembuilder version doesn't even care how many times it has been activated. It simply does it without hassles...no phonecalls required.
You're right, people said the same thing back then and in regards to W2K, there really wasn't a massive improvement. This also shows in the version numbers: W2K=NT 5 and XP=NT 5.1.
For 9x/ME users, XP was a huge improvement, even if it came with higher hardware requirements. The added stability and security compared to the DOS based Windows versions alone were worth the upgrade and most PCs back then already fulfilled the requirements of XP. (most new PCs I've seen back in 2001 already came with 64 or 128MB RAM, enough to run XP. Note: I said run, not use). And as for the Teletubby look of Luna: I still can't stand it. It's the 1st thing I switch off when I sit down at a XP machine.
Comparing Vista and XP, I can't really say I'm very impressed. One thing I really must admit is, that Aero is a huge improvement over Luna and actually doesn't cause eye cancer. I haven't seen the 3D extentions yet though. Apart from that, I do prefer XP over Vista. I bought a new laptop a couple of months back which shipped with Vista. Sure, the machine isn't "top notch" (1GB RAM, Core duo T2250) but the performance under Vista (Home Basic) is appalling and I had some issues with two of my main apps, so I d/l all necessary XP drivers and slapped XP Pro onto the machine. Under XP the machine performs so much better, it's hard to believe it's the same machine.
I've tried Vista for about 4 weeks and came to the conclusion that at this point in time, XP is more than sufficient. I really don't see a reason to use Vista.
MS has proudly announced that Vista has shipped 20 million copies in the 1st 2 months. While this is more than XP shipped back in 2001 (12 mio IIRC), considering the circumstances, it's actually a worse result than with XP. Why? Well, firstly, these 20 mio Vistas also include the upgrade vouchers that have been handed out with new machines since October last year, so it actually wasn't 2 months but 5 months and secondly, in 2006 the PC market had almost doubled since 2001, which means MS would have had to ship 24 mio units of Vista in order to perform the same as in 2001 (based on marketshare, not on sold units). What would be interesting to compare are the numbers of retail units of XP and Vista shipped in the 1st 2-4 months. This would give a much better insight on how the products really perform, as it would cut out the OEM versions shipped with new computers. The OEMs are registered as shipped units, regardless if people keep using XP or not. Only the retail versions show how many people willingly purchased Vista (and XP back in 2001).
Looks like I forgot some irony tags :)
It's got nothing to do with a "Microsoft sucks" attitude. It is a fact that this problem is solely based on Microsofts refusal to not only acknowledge standards but also comply with them. But why should they? They have the power to dictate their own pseudo standards and that's exactly what they are doing. Webdesigners have been coding around standards for years in order to enable IE to work properly. Unfortunately, this causes problems with other browsers and users of these browsers are the ones shot in the foot.
But then again, if we'd all do what MS wants us to do (buy Windows and use IE), then there wouldn't be a problem. Considering this, it is actually not the fault of MS but those of us, who don't use Windows and IE.
Why code for a certain browser in the first place? What good are standards, if nobody sticks to them? If ALL pages were conforming to standards, there wouldn't be an issue...stop, there would be one: IE wouldn't work properly. Monopolies are something cool. You can do whatever you want and the whole effing world jumps through hoops to adapt to your dodgy software. The IE is "broken by design", so web developers have to "break" the WWW to make IE work. If all developers would stick to standards, MS would be forced to comply with standards. The only other option they'd have would be to roll out MS-WWW
It isn't just because the music industry is going after a 10 year old child. Just look at all these lawsuits the content industry has filed in recent years. It's all the everyday blokes, who dared to get a handful of songs of the net, they're after. Where are the lawsuits against those who sell unlicenced music in bulk? where's the lawsuits against the producers and distributors of counterfeit CDs? Ohhh they're all in China are they? They're out of our reach are they? We want to do big business in China and lawsuits would be bad for it right? So we go after the little fish so we don't look as if we don't care about unlicenced music.
If we don't want to become slaves of the content industry and the politicians they bought...ermmm...lobbied into supporting them, then it is time to show them that they need us more than we need them. We can survive without EMI and Co but can they survive without us? Show them it is our way or the high way. The sooner they realise that, the better.
Stop buying music and movies. But don't get it via P2P either as this will only gove them amunition for even tougher laws. Just show them we don't need and more importantly want their stuff. Only then will this bullsh*t end and the quality of the content improve again. We the people have the power to bring their empires down. We just have to want it.
Don't get me wrong. I used to spend a lot of money on music and movies. But I am sick and tired of the methods of the content industry. I am sick and tired of copyprotected CDs which are "defective by design". I am sick of being locked in when I buy music online. I am sick of being criminalised because I make backups of my legally purchased DVDs to protect my investments. I am sick of being forced to watch "piracy, it's a crime" clips on DVDs i legally purchased. I am sick of movie trailers I can't skip. I'm sick of online shops whose "goods" are locked into one single platform. I want to be able to buy and play content whereever I am and whatever platform I am using. It must be my choice where, when and what with I want to consume content. Unless things change, these guys wil not see another cent of my hard earned money.