Reductio absurdium? Yeah, I'm sure I've got that wrong, but you get the idea. If you're sitting at a desk, banging away on a keyboard, only some absurd set of circumstances can possibly enable you to injure or kill someone with your crummy typing.
Even if you ARE a super geek, and even if you can multitask better than Windows, Linux, and OS X combined, you have a RESPONSIBILITY to put all your silly shit aside, and pay attention to your driving, so that you DO NOT injure or kill someone.
Phrased in a much more direct manner, Pull your head out of your ass, and get your priorities straight!
I've read the title of the summary, and dismissed it as an especially smelly load of swine shit. Every browser has it's own issues, and the user should be familiar with them. Yeah, all the browsers tend to keep records that are unnecessary. All the browsers tend to report data that is unnecessary, to websites, to developers, to the authors, if left on default settings.
But, for MICROSOFT to point fingers is just preposterous.
Maybe they can try again in 10 years, after they've created a clearly superior browser. I mean, CLEARLY superior to anything else on the market. When those of us who really dislike and/or hate microsoft HAVE to admit that their browser is at least as good as any of the competition, THEN MS can find fault with the competition.
Wait - did I say "10 years"? Hmmmmmm. More than likely, browsers will be obsolete before Microsoft makes the browser that is clearly superior to any competition that can be found.
The article he is responding to is clearly a load of pig shit. Some bunch of fucking weinies started out with an agenda, and tried to prove that they are elite. Some fools will believe that shit.
EVERYONE "gets away with" talking, texting, shaving, applying make up, or whatever the hell - until the one time that they don't get away with it. At which time, they, or their victims, become another set of statistics.
Well, I'll calmly emphasize everything you were just told. I couldn't see anything in what he said that I disagree with.
If I can offer one little bit of wisdom that your driver's ed instructor probably FAILED to offer, it would be to maintain a safe following distance. 3 seconds. Don't worry that the other idiot insists that he can fit into that 3 second hole that you left. Back off again. I cannot count the accidents that I've witnessed due to morons following to closely. Believe it or not, six new acquaintances all died in the same night, in the same accident, because even a 5 second following distance is not always enough. 5 big trucks and one camper all burned to the ground, because the laws of physics are unforgiving. I knew three of the male drivers, and their co-driver wives. The people in the other two trucks and the camper I never met, but their deaths weren't any less painful or agonizing.
That following distance will help to ensure that you are HERE in 20 or 30 years to bitch about the morons on the road.
You are exactly right. We hear this same stupid shit about "guns kill", "speed kills", "speed kills" (the OTHER kind of speed, lol), "knives kill", etc ad nauseum. In this case, it is "torrents kill" corrupt business models.
Phhht. Once again, the vast bulk of all my torrented material has been LEGAL STUFF. Yeah, of course I grab something that is pirated from time to time, but not much. Most of the pirated stuff isn't worth anything, which is why I won't buy it!
Wrong. The law may have shut down ONE method of file sharing - though that is still up in the air. It ain't over til the fat lady sings - and today, no one listens to phat broads!
Heh. I don't mind going off topic. The whole charade about where Teflon Bill stuck his peter was entirely off topic. Instead, they should have investigated why he was selling military tech to China, and why NAFTA and China's "most favored trading partner" status were "good" for us. I see Bill as a traitor. The rest of the world saw Bill as a philanderer. Which view has any pertinence to governing?
Yeah, Bill should have been impeached, but not for liking nookie.
Software, reduced to it's most basic level, is nothing more than a series of zeros and ones. Numbers. Manipulating those numbers is what makes software work.
Now, what, exactly, is an algorithm? From the wikipedia: While there is no generally accepted formal definition of "algorithm," an informal definition could be "a process that performs some sequence of operations." For some people, a program is only an algorithm if it stops eventually. For others, a program is only an algorithm if it stops before a given number of calculation steps.
So - manipulating numbers, in some predefined sequence.
A child learning his multiplication tables is working with an algorithm - he is manipulating numbers in a predetermined, easily defined way, to get expected results. Nothing special about an algorithm, at all.
Again - parsing words in an attempt to profit off of the ignorant is a despicable act. Algorithms should NEVER have been considered for patenting. Create a machine which does algorithms in some new, unique, faster way, and you'll have a patentable product. Wihtout the physical machine to do the manipulations, you have nothing.
Yeah, the last time I was in Hollywood, I saw actors, producers, and various support people panhandling on the corners, because their revenues were drying up. Damned pirates, don't care if actors can afford another Jacuzzi in their back yards or not! Make 'em walk the plank!
May I recommend a tour of duty with the USMC, or the Army, or even the Navy? When you've spent a few months doing the drudgery of military life, and graduated to interminable periods of boredom, punctuated by moments of pure terror, you will understand better that what Kipling wrote is just as applicable today, as it was yesterday.
Seriously, few people can understand it, until they've been there.
How do you explain color to a blind person? How do you explain the motion of the oceans to a landlubber who has never seen the water? How do you explain combat to people who have never heard or seen a cannon?
Color hasn't changed in millenia, nor have the blind men and women. The oceans of 1492 are the same oceans we sail today. And, combat hasn't changed all that much, despite the advances in technology. "We the unwilling, led by the unknowing, have done so much, with so little, for so long, that we are now qualified to do the impossible with nothing."
Soldiers of all ages will understand, no matter whether they were Roman Legionnaires, French Legionnaires, or United States Marines.
"also by making the battle so one-sided that our opponents are unwilling to fight."
Pretty good post, mostly. But, you sort of lose it with that statement. All of our power, all of our technology, still hasn't broken the will of that band of ragtag religious zealots. Al Queda and similarly minded people located around the world still fight, and still challenge us.
We don't have a Sun Tzu with the wisdom to break the will of the enemy.
Well - my whole point in my original post was, if we don't understand WHY something happened, then we have little chance of either causing it to happen again when we want, or of preventing it happening again, if we want to avoid it.
There was a whole long chain of cause and effect that led first to WW1, and then to WW2. None of it was simple, and the Allies were never the Goody-Two-Shoes that most of us assume them to be. In the first war, the Germans were NOT evil, and in the second war, we helped to empower the evil.
Did we, or did we not, choose to fight WW2?
I say that our actions and our greed helped to ensure that SOMEONE was going to rise up and lead the Germans in another war. It was the world's greatest misfortune that the "someone" turned out to be Adolph Hitler. Germany had a number of people who might have risen to power, and could have led Germany down a different path, militarily and otherwise.
Personally, I think it's a shame that the Desert Fox couldn't have taken Hitler's place in History. Everyone knows that he was a military genius, but almost no one knows anything else about him. Rommel's daring probably would have given him the same early successes that Hitler enjoyed, but his wisdom would have kept him from biting off more than he could chew. More, Rommel's rational mind, and lack of hatred, would have kept him from invading Russia. More, Rommel would have, could have, never launched that infernal campaign to eradicate the Jews.
You might deduce here that I have read some of the German's biographies, and that I find Rommel to be an admirable man. Go ahead, read, research, learn about the people from that era. You'll find that the propaganda that we were raised on isn't nearly as accurate as you might wish.
We did not choose it? You might want to do a little studying about the "peace" conditions imposed on Germany after World War 1.
No, I'm not EVEN going to try to justify Hitler, and the Nazi party, but raping Germany of her coal and other mining capabilities certainly didn't endear the French to the Germans. There was a lot of stuff the allies imposed on Germany that only tended to feed German nationalism. Remember, the entire world was experiencing the Great Depression, and German workers endured more than a lot of other workers because of those oppressive peace conditions.
No, maybe we didn't "choose" to have World War 2 - but we certainly contributed to German greviances against us.
The alternative to Heinlein might be that English guy - Kipling. Reading him gives a lot of insight into military life, and incidentally a little insight into politics. Of course, it helps to actually LIVE what he writes about, to fully appreciate it.
Yes, human life is tragic. We have all the resources available to make life on earth a near paradise, but we prefer to shit on each other, and ruin everything.
Ahh well. On subject. The morality of these unmanned killing machine? They don't appeal to me very much. Somehow, it seems a bit cowardly. Osama bin Laden told his troops that digging into the earth in the Tora Bora mountains would save them, because the Americans have no stomach to come into the trenches, and fight hand to hand. We seem to have proved him right in those mountains, and we continue to prove him right with our little toys.
Yeah, it may be considerably less cowardly to target a high value individual with a missile, than to target 3000 civilians with human missiles. Still - it's not the sort of thing the military has done traditionally. No more 'Charge of the Light Brigade' for us.
Actually, the Energizer Bunny commercials are some of the greatest commercials ever produced. They rank right up there with the Pace Picante Sauce commercials. "Get a rope!"
And, this from a guy who watches little television, and absolutely HATES marketing of any kind. Both were truly amusing series of commercials, that lasted for years, and must have actually affected shopping habits, or they wouldn't have lasted so long.
I was a professional truck driver. In the early days, when I was a "regional" driver, I put in 300 to 500 miles per day, and often only got 3 to 5 days off in a month's time. Later, when I drove nationwide, I often drove 1200 miles per day. NOT LEGALLY, but I did it. On one trip, I unloaded a truck in San Diego, called in to report that I was unloaded, went to Yuma to load groceries for stores in Toronto, Ontario, and was empty again in Toronto - 72 hours after calling in from San Diego. Later that same month, I called in empty in Los Angeles, they sent me right back to Yuma, and I unloaded in New Jersey, 76 hours after calling in from Los Angeles. One son was with me on the first trip, another son on the second, and both still talk about Dad cutting a path from one side of the country to the other.
It takes ~3 1/2 years to legally log a million miles, I drove for a total of 13 years.
And, I still don't have as many miles on the road as some of the trucks the REAL old timers are driving. I met an old old black guy in New Jersey one day, who was going to hang his keys up when his old Freightliner reached 7 million miles. I never met him to verify that he reached his goal, but the truck most definitely had 6 million on it when I met him.
More recently, I met a white guy in Texas who was going to end HIS career when his Peterbilt reached 5 million. Again, I saw the odometer with not quite 4 million on it, and I can only hope that he reached HIS goal, just like I hope the old black guy did.
Me? The doctors won't allow me to drive commercially anymore. Sometimes, life sucks, you know? I loved the road long before I fell in love with computers.
Yes, I have literally driven millions of miles, without counting any motorcycle, airline, shipboard, or automobile miles.;^)
Hey, I came into this life kicking and screaming, and I did NOT sign a contract promising to be a bundle of joy. In fact, I found my life's calling in the Navy. SOMEONE'S GOT TO BE AN ASSHOLE, so why not me? It sure beats being the bundle of joy, 'cause the outlaw and the assholes are always getting laid. Women LIKE the bad guys, and nice guys finish last in most races.
"Wow, what a load of crap. I mean, really - that's an impressive stack of feces. How exactly is that a protest? Do you stand on the steps of Microsoft HQ with a bullhorn and announce you're pirating their product?"
No, sir, but I HAVE reported myself to the *IAA's "Be a snitch" sites. Haven't done it in awhile, because the fun wore off, but I found a few of those sites that ask you to report piracy. I made a full report on myself, for having cracked and/or finding a crack that enabled me to test their software, or to listen to their song, or watch their movie. I also explained that their DRM was inept, inefficient, and wasteful, and that I had zero respect for their efforts. Then, to add insult to insult, I told them that their software or whatever was such shitty quality, that I was SORRY that I bothered to crack it!!
Oddly, I've never heard one word in reply to my reports. Sad, in a way. No one even took notice of me, no one cared enough to send an email, or to send a representative to interrogate me, NOTHING!
I think you err. The last time I pirated a copy of Windows, the WGA site offered me a discounted copy of Windows, if I turned in whoever supplied it. I'm not sure, but maybe they did replace pirated copies for free a few years back, but I can't remember.
And, MS also goes after the small-time nobody who pirates their software, in that Windows update is disabled, making the OS even more vulnerable to malware.
Giving credit where credit is due, Microsoft isn't nearly as bad as RIAA. They don't take homeowners with a pirated copy of Windows to court, trying to shake them down for thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of dollars. Disabling updates and disabling certain features is less than a slap on the fingers, compared to RIAA's tactics.
You see a problem, where I see none. Just tell your passengers that cell phone calls have to wait until the car is stopped again. Geeeez, I'd be happy if they just put a faraday cage into every passenger vehicle in the world. NOTHING is so damned important that it can't wait for you to leave the vehicle. Now, you'll come up with yet another imaginary scenario, in which you are trapped in a burning vehicle or something. I have news for you - I've pulled two people from burning vehicles in my day, and watched three other vehicles burn to the ground. The telephone didn't save ANY OF THEM! People passing by saved all of those people from burning to death.
In YOUR scenario, just open the door, and get out of the way of the train. Failure to do is justification for a Darwin award.
Apparently you believe strongly in women's lib. Did it never occur to you that "liberation" carries with it responsibilities? If the GP is suggesting that an arm reach out and grab a man by the balls for being stupid, then it's only reasonable that women are treated to similar reminders.
Where does the stove fit into this picture?
Go grasp at straws elsewhere, alright? Or, perhaps living in your mom's basement, you hadn't yet become aware that women don't have testicles? If that is the case, well, at least I've furthered your education with this post. Go check out "female anatomy" on Google!
You're high, right? At the least, you have little idea how to live with an impairment. I've met truck drivers with one arm, who drove trucks with TWO shift levers. Many people with two arms can't make that claim. Don't presume to judge who is able to do what - some one armed man may whip your ass for being presumptious. Hell, a little old lady with one arm may whip your ass!
Slashdot Mirror
Reductio absurdium? Yeah, I'm sure I've got that wrong, but you get the idea. If you're sitting at a desk, banging away on a keyboard, only some absurd set of circumstances can possibly enable you to injure or kill someone with your crummy typing.
Even if you ARE a super geek, and even if you can multitask better than Windows, Linux, and OS X combined, you have a RESPONSIBILITY to put all your silly shit aside, and pay attention to your driving, so that you DO NOT injure or kill someone.
Phrased in a much more direct manner, Pull your head out of your ass, and get your priorities straight!
I've read the title of the summary, and dismissed it as an especially smelly load of swine shit. Every browser has it's own issues, and the user should be familiar with them. Yeah, all the browsers tend to keep records that are unnecessary. All the browsers tend to report data that is unnecessary, to websites, to developers, to the authors, if left on default settings.
But, for MICROSOFT to point fingers is just preposterous.
Maybe they can try again in 10 years, after they've created a clearly superior browser. I mean, CLEARLY superior to anything else on the market. When those of us who really dislike and/or hate microsoft HAVE to admit that their browser is at least as good as any of the competition, THEN MS can find fault with the competition.
Wait - did I say "10 years"? Hmmmmmm. More than likely, browsers will be obsolete before Microsoft makes the browser that is clearly superior to any competition that can be found.
The article he is responding to is clearly a load of pig shit. Some bunch of fucking weinies started out with an agenda, and tried to prove that they are elite. Some fools will believe that shit.
EVERYONE "gets away with" talking, texting, shaving, applying make up, or whatever the hell - until the one time that they don't get away with it. At which time, they, or their victims, become another set of statistics.
Well, I'll calmly emphasize everything you were just told. I couldn't see anything in what he said that I disagree with.
If I can offer one little bit of wisdom that your driver's ed instructor probably FAILED to offer, it would be to maintain a safe following distance. 3 seconds. Don't worry that the other idiot insists that he can fit into that 3 second hole that you left. Back off again. I cannot count the accidents that I've witnessed due to morons following to closely. Believe it or not, six new acquaintances all died in the same night, in the same accident, because even a 5 second following distance is not always enough. 5 big trucks and one camper all burned to the ground, because the laws of physics are unforgiving. I knew three of the male drivers, and their co-driver wives. The people in the other two trucks and the camper I never met, but their deaths weren't any less painful or agonizing.
That following distance will help to ensure that you are HERE in 20 or 30 years to bitch about the morons on the road.
You are exactly right. We hear this same stupid shit about "guns kill", "speed kills", "speed kills" (the OTHER kind of speed, lol), "knives kill", etc ad nauseum. In this case, it is "torrents kill" corrupt business models.
Phhht. Once again, the vast bulk of all my torrented material has been LEGAL STUFF. Yeah, of course I grab something that is pirated from time to time, but not much. Most of the pirated stuff isn't worth anything, which is why I won't buy it!
Wrong. The law may have shut down ONE method of file sharing - though that is still up in the air. It ain't over til the fat lady sings - and today, no one listens to phat broads!
Heh. I don't mind going off topic. The whole charade about where Teflon Bill stuck his peter was entirely off topic. Instead, they should have investigated why he was selling military tech to China, and why NAFTA and China's "most favored trading partner" status were "good" for us. I see Bill as a traitor. The rest of the world saw Bill as a philanderer. Which view has any pertinence to governing?
Yeah, Bill should have been impeached, but not for liking nookie.
Software, reduced to it's most basic level, is nothing more than a series of zeros and ones. Numbers. Manipulating those numbers is what makes software work.
Now, what, exactly, is an algorithm? From the wikipedia: While there is no generally accepted formal definition of "algorithm," an informal definition could be "a process that performs some sequence of operations." For some people, a program is only an algorithm if it stops eventually. For others, a program is only an algorithm if it stops before a given number of calculation steps.
So - manipulating numbers, in some predefined sequence.
A child learning his multiplication tables is working with an algorithm - he is manipulating numbers in a predetermined, easily defined way, to get expected results. Nothing special about an algorithm, at all.
Again - parsing words in an attempt to profit off of the ignorant is a despicable act. Algorithms should NEVER have been considered for patenting. Create a machine which does algorithms in some new, unique, faster way, and you'll have a patentable product. Wihtout the physical machine to do the manipulations, you have nothing.
Yeah, the last time I was in Hollywood, I saw actors, producers, and various support people panhandling on the corners, because their revenues were drying up. Damned pirates, don't care if actors can afford another Jacuzzi in their back yards or not! Make 'em walk the plank!
Absolutely NOT. Software is copyrightable, not patentable.
Are you related to Bill Clinton, and learned to parse words to death?
May I recommend a tour of duty with the USMC, or the Army, or even the Navy? When you've spent a few months doing the drudgery of military life, and graduated to interminable periods of boredom, punctuated by moments of pure terror, you will understand better that what Kipling wrote is just as applicable today, as it was yesterday.
Seriously, few people can understand it, until they've been there.
How do you explain color to a blind person? How do you explain the motion of the oceans to a landlubber who has never seen the water? How do you explain combat to people who have never heard or seen a cannon?
Color hasn't changed in millenia, nor have the blind men and women. The oceans of 1492 are the same oceans we sail today. And, combat hasn't changed all that much, despite the advances in technology. "We the unwilling, led by the unknowing, have done so much, with so little, for so long, that we are now qualified to do the impossible with nothing."
Soldiers of all ages will understand, no matter whether they were Roman Legionnaires, French Legionnaires, or United States Marines.
Warriors may not understand, but soldiers will.
Good link. Your thoughts?
"also by making the battle so one-sided that our opponents are unwilling to fight."
Pretty good post, mostly. But, you sort of lose it with that statement. All of our power, all of our technology, still hasn't broken the will of that band of ragtag religious zealots. Al Queda and similarly minded people located around the world still fight, and still challenge us.
We don't have a Sun Tzu with the wisdom to break the will of the enemy.
"So what?"
Well - my whole point in my original post was, if we don't understand WHY something happened, then we have little chance of either causing it to happen again when we want, or of preventing it happening again, if we want to avoid it.
There was a whole long chain of cause and effect that led first to WW1, and then to WW2. None of it was simple, and the Allies were never the Goody-Two-Shoes that most of us assume them to be. In the first war, the Germans were NOT evil, and in the second war, we helped to empower the evil.
Did we, or did we not, choose to fight WW2?
I say that our actions and our greed helped to ensure that SOMEONE was going to rise up and lead the Germans in another war. It was the world's greatest misfortune that the "someone" turned out to be Adolph Hitler. Germany had a number of people who might have risen to power, and could have led Germany down a different path, militarily and otherwise.
Personally, I think it's a shame that the Desert Fox couldn't have taken Hitler's place in History. Everyone knows that he was a military genius, but almost no one knows anything else about him. Rommel's daring probably would have given him the same early successes that Hitler enjoyed, but his wisdom would have kept him from biting off more than he could chew. More, Rommel's rational mind, and lack of hatred, would have kept him from invading Russia. More, Rommel would have, could have, never launched that infernal campaign to eradicate the Jews.
You might deduce here that I have read some of the German's biographies, and that I find Rommel to be an admirable man. Go ahead, read, research, learn about the people from that era. You'll find that the propaganda that we were raised on isn't nearly as accurate as you might wish.
We did not choose it? You might want to do a little studying about the "peace" conditions imposed on Germany after World War 1.
No, I'm not EVEN going to try to justify Hitler, and the Nazi party, but raping Germany of her coal and other mining capabilities certainly didn't endear the French to the Germans. There was a lot of stuff the allies imposed on Germany that only tended to feed German nationalism. Remember, the entire world was experiencing the Great Depression, and German workers endured more than a lot of other workers because of those oppressive peace conditions.
No, maybe we didn't "choose" to have World War 2 - but we certainly contributed to German greviances against us.
The alternative to Heinlein might be that English guy - Kipling. Reading him gives a lot of insight into military life, and incidentally a little insight into politics. Of course, it helps to actually LIVE what he writes about, to fully appreciate it.
Yes, human life is tragic. We have all the resources available to make life on earth a near paradise, but we prefer to shit on each other, and ruin everything.
Ahh well. On subject. The morality of these unmanned killing machine? They don't appeal to me very much. Somehow, it seems a bit cowardly. Osama bin Laden told his troops that digging into the earth in the Tora Bora mountains would save them, because the Americans have no stomach to come into the trenches, and fight hand to hand. We seem to have proved him right in those mountains, and we continue to prove him right with our little toys.
Yeah, it may be considerably less cowardly to target a high value individual with a missile, than to target 3000 civilians with human missiles. Still - it's not the sort of thing the military has done traditionally. No more 'Charge of the Light Brigade' for us.
Actually, the Energizer Bunny commercials are some of the greatest commercials ever produced. They rank right up there with the Pace Picante Sauce commercials. "Get a rope!"
And, this from a guy who watches little television, and absolutely HATES marketing of any kind. Both were truly amusing series of commercials, that lasted for years, and must have actually affected shopping habits, or they wouldn't have lasted so long.
I was a professional truck driver. In the early days, when I was a "regional" driver, I put in 300 to 500 miles per day, and often only got 3 to 5 days off in a month's time. Later, when I drove nationwide, I often drove 1200 miles per day. NOT LEGALLY, but I did it. On one trip, I unloaded a truck in San Diego, called in to report that I was unloaded, went to Yuma to load groceries for stores in Toronto, Ontario, and was empty again in Toronto - 72 hours after calling in from San Diego. Later that same month, I called in empty in Los Angeles, they sent me right back to Yuma, and I unloaded in New Jersey, 76 hours after calling in from Los Angeles. One son was with me on the first trip, another son on the second, and both still talk about Dad cutting a path from one side of the country to the other.
It takes ~3 1/2 years to legally log a million miles, I drove for a total of 13 years.
And, I still don't have as many miles on the road as some of the trucks the REAL old timers are driving. I met an old old black guy in New Jersey one day, who was going to hang his keys up when his old Freightliner reached 7 million miles. I never met him to verify that he reached his goal, but the truck most definitely had 6 million on it when I met him.
More recently, I met a white guy in Texas who was going to end HIS career when his Peterbilt reached 5 million. Again, I saw the odometer with not quite 4 million on it, and I can only hope that he reached HIS goal, just like I hope the old black guy did.
Me? The doctors won't allow me to drive commercially anymore. Sometimes, life sucks, you know? I loved the road long before I fell in love with computers.
Yes, I have literally driven millions of miles, without counting any motorcycle, airline, shipboard, or automobile miles. ;^)
Come on, people! Mod Shotgun up! That's funnier than hell, and the next post should be an even funnier one posted by his wife!!
Hey, I came into this life kicking and screaming, and I did NOT sign a contract promising to be a bundle of joy. In fact, I found my life's calling in the Navy. SOMEONE'S GOT TO BE AN ASSHOLE, so why not me? It sure beats being the bundle of joy, 'cause the outlaw and the assholes are always getting laid. Women LIKE the bad guys, and nice guys finish last in most races.
"Wow, what a load of crap. I mean, really - that's an impressive stack of feces. How exactly is that a protest? Do you stand on the steps of Microsoft HQ with a bullhorn and announce you're pirating their product?"
No, sir, but I HAVE reported myself to the *IAA's "Be a snitch" sites. Haven't done it in awhile, because the fun wore off, but I found a few of those sites that ask you to report piracy. I made a full report on myself, for having cracked and/or finding a crack that enabled me to test their software, or to listen to their song, or watch their movie. I also explained that their DRM was inept, inefficient, and wasteful, and that I had zero respect for their efforts. Then, to add insult to insult, I told them that their software or whatever was such shitty quality, that I was SORRY that I bothered to crack it!!
Oddly, I've never heard one word in reply to my reports. Sad, in a way. No one even took notice of me, no one cared enough to send an email, or to send a representative to interrogate me, NOTHING!
I think you err. The last time I pirated a copy of Windows, the WGA site offered me a discounted copy of Windows, if I turned in whoever supplied it. I'm not sure, but maybe they did replace pirated copies for free a few years back, but I can't remember.
And, MS also goes after the small-time nobody who pirates their software, in that Windows update is disabled, making the OS even more vulnerable to malware.
Giving credit where credit is due, Microsoft isn't nearly as bad as RIAA. They don't take homeowners with a pirated copy of Windows to court, trying to shake them down for thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of dollars. Disabling updates and disabling certain features is less than a slap on the fingers, compared to RIAA's tactics.
You see a problem, where I see none. Just tell your passengers that cell phone calls have to wait until the car is stopped again. Geeeez, I'd be happy if they just put a faraday cage into every passenger vehicle in the world. NOTHING is so damned important that it can't wait for you to leave the vehicle. Now, you'll come up with yet another imaginary scenario, in which you are trapped in a burning vehicle or something. I have news for you - I've pulled two people from burning vehicles in my day, and watched three other vehicles burn to the ground. The telephone didn't save ANY OF THEM! People passing by saved all of those people from burning to death.
In YOUR scenario, just open the door, and get out of the way of the train. Failure to do is justification for a Darwin award.
Whoa, dude. Or, lady. Or, whatever the hell.
Apparently you believe strongly in women's lib. Did it never occur to you that "liberation" carries with it responsibilities? If the GP is suggesting that an arm reach out and grab a man by the balls for being stupid, then it's only reasonable that women are treated to similar reminders.
Where does the stove fit into this picture?
Go grasp at straws elsewhere, alright? Or, perhaps living in your mom's basement, you hadn't yet become aware that women don't have testicles? If that is the case, well, at least I've furthered your education with this post. Go check out "female anatomy" on Google!
You're high, right? At the least, you have little idea how to live with an impairment. I've met truck drivers with one arm, who drove trucks with TWO shift levers. Many people with two arms can't make that claim. Don't presume to judge who is able to do what - some one armed man may whip your ass for being presumptious. Hell, a little old lady with one arm may whip your ass!