I suspect some configuration problem on your end, to be honest. I'm running FF3.5 on XP SP3 inside of VirtualBox. I do not see that behaviour. Using snaplinks, I just opened six tabs, and the current tab remained responsive while they loaded in the background.
Whether the configuration problem is in your VM, within Windows, or in Firefox, I couldn't even begin to guess. In my case, I have 1 gig of memory allocated to the VM - if you have less memory, that might be something to look at.
Of course it's possible that my FF is different than yours in some subtle way. I upgraded from FF 3.5 b4 to FF 3.5 RC1 and then to FF 3.5 final. I really wouldn't EXPECT there to be any real difference, but crap happens, right?
I want a user locked down tight, so that he may ONLY perform two or three specific tasks, which are part of his job description. I want to ensure the he can't even play solitaire while on company time. So, I create his user account, require him to log in to a chrooted terminal, and he only has those two or three scripts that I make available. Nothing else. Zero interaction with any system files whatsoever - match that with group policy editor.
Yes - I've seen NT systems "locked down" to the point that the user only ever sees the screen from which he is supposed to do productive work. I've also seen unsophisticated immigrants with no technical training at all bypass the locks, to play solitaire on a production machine, and start up Internet Explorer. If ethernet had been connected, he could have downloaded any number of worms and trojans.
Nothing like that has ever happened on our *nix machines. When they are locked, they stay locked, simple as that.
I seem to hear a parrot: "Just like Windows, AWWWK!" Really, the key words in your post are "I have no idea what you're trying to say" so I'll show you a picture. Note the controls I can place on a new user's account.
Semantics? If you say so. All the same your engine is exploding all the time.
As for Google - name one thing that they do, that all the others don't do. "Oh, Evil Google!! They are tracking internet usage!"
I presume that you read the terms of service before you use ANY internet service or feature. I mean, read them, all the way through the obfuscated fine print? They all presume to have the right to track your usage. Some few restrict that right to their own site(s) while others don't.
It's a free for all out there - and if you're unaware of that, well, I just don't know what to say.
Almost every car you see on America's highways have exploding engines. Of course, living in the stone age, you don't understand that. The internal combustion engine is powered by a succession of controlled explosions. You may or may not wish to experiment, but mixing gasoline and oxygen in carefully metered proportion, followed by the introduction of a spark, ALWAYS results in an explosion. ALWAYS.
You sound like the sort who would buy a non-exploding engine, then wonder why the car won't carry you to work.
Don't be late for your classes, or I'll give you detention and extra assignments.
There is still something that you apparently miss: Windows has vulnerabilities. Note, from my posts, that I didn't bother to try cleaning up the infection. I didn't even bother to identify it. Bandwidth died, Avast alarmed out, the machine became unresponsive. It was infected, and I didn't want to mess with it, so I deleted the partition and started all over.
Humor me. Let's work backward in time, alright? Vista was released, in part, to correct or patch vulnerabilities in XP SP3. And, XP SP3 was released to patch vulnerabilities in XP SP2. XP SP2 was released to patch XP SP1. And so forth.
Having stated that my fresh install of XP SP2 was infected immediately after connecting to the web, you declare that XP SP2 was a safe operating system, and that stuff like that isn't possible. Or, at least impossible for a "properly configured" system.
Then, why does MS waste their time trying to make their OS more secure, if it is so secure that SP2 couldn't be compromised, out of the box?
Really, you're not making any points here - this is foolish. I know what I did with that machine, I know the firewall was turned on, I know that I had an antivirus installed. I also know that I felt secure in the knowledge that crackers and script kiddies don't waste time scanning lame-ass dial up networks. All the same, the machine was hijacked in front of my eyes. You may believe it, you may dismiss it, but you can't win an argument in which you accuse me of "changing something". Fresh, out of the box installation, hijacked. You can google for more accounts of similar experiences - or not, as you choose.
You live in a stone age village in Afghanistan, right? Check out noscript and adblockplus for Firefox. This is the age of enlightenment. Enlightened people can be logged into iGoogle, and still block adsense and all the other crap they disapprove of. The class for "Weaponized Bronze" will be right after "Safer Spearchucking". Have a nice day, boys and girls.
Permissions, primarily. As I sit here in front of my Debian/Ubuntu machine, my user name is "guy". I can do nothing outside of my home folder. I can't infect another user's files, can't touch any system file, can't touch root's folder. There is no C:\Program Files - meaning that I don't have write permissions to ANYTHING outside my home folder. If I wish to install a program on this machine without becoming root, I can install it to my home folder. In such a case, the program has no write permissions outside my home folder. Using any programs that root has installed doesn't give me write permissions even to that program's folder - any data that the program needs to save to my profile, history, or whatever is written inside my own home folder. In fact, I don't have access to all the programs that root has installed. I have to become root to use things like Wireshark properly, or to use the package manager.
With Windows, a limited user has to ActiveX among other things. A limited user can save files to various places outside his home folders, unlike *nix. While the Windows Administrator can lock down a lot of Windows system files, he can't prevent even a limited user from making changes and/or writing files that might be booby traps lying around waiting to be executed by a more privileged user.
While NT variants of Windows are vastly superior to Win9.x in that they actually HAVE a security model, that model doesn't compare with that of any *nix system.
Until I type in my password for sudo or root, I have fewer privileges on Debian than I would have on a limited account on Windows. I can't even open an internet connection - root does that at bootup with a script.
And, to be perfectly honest, I don't NEED privileges very often. I could probably run this account for the next year without becoming root, and manage to do everything I wanted to do, except for testing new programs and updating.
AC should make a few nice steaks. I like meat. No, I love meat. AC, marinated in beer for a week, then rolled in egg & milk, some cornmeal breading, then deepfried. Mmmmm - mmmmm!!
Nope. Windows firewall runs by default on XP SP2, if you'll recall. I did NOT disable the firewall. 100% clean install, all default values, nothing changed. I installed Avast before connecting, and ten minutes later, the connection slowed to a crawl. Another few minutes, Avast alarmed out over infections, but failed to clean them.
It WAS a dialup connection, so there was no hardware firewall, just Windows own software firewall. On my own machines, under the same circumstances, I would have installed Tiny Firewall, but I was unwilling to "pirate" Tiny for a third party.
"The government would not "love to lock you away" for that. Imprisonment is expensive as is identifying and prosecuting criminals."
The US government has found that keeping about 1% of it's population imprisoned is a lucrative business. It keeps a huge number of people employed, it justifies a number of bonds and taxes, and it keeps a number of "worthless" people off the streets. Keeping people imprisoned is so lucrative that private industry has gotten into the act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prisons
Pardon me, my young friend, but I believe you are being dishonest. I believe that you are saying that you run Windows, and that you run absolutely no security software at all, and that you have NEVER had any sort of malware problems. If I've misunderstood you, then the rest of this post has little value for you.
In my own personal experience, I've taken possession of a totally dicked up Windows box, formatted, installed Windows from CD, installed a few apps from CD (avast included) then connected to the internet for updates. Within ten minutes, the machine was infected with yet more malware. Within ten minutes. Apparently, some botnet just happened to scan the block of IP addresses that I was in, and took advantage of one exploit or another. But, within ten minutes, long before I had any opportunity to complete updates, it was infected. (Lesson learned was to download AV and updates on a clean machine BEFORE installing Windows.)
Anyone who tries to convince the world that he runs a naked installation of Windows, and routinely browses the internet without viral infections is simply lying through his teeth.
Citations? Yes, yes, yes, a *nix box can be broken into. Of course it can - anything that one man builds can be broken by another man. But - citations that *nix boxes are "commonly" broken into? Evidence that more *nix boxes are hacked than Windows boxes are?
Until citations are presented, you'll pardon me for thinking you are spouting some foul smelling substance that should be ejected at the other end of your digestive tract.
To claim that Window's insecurities aren't part of the true cost of Windows is genuinely dishonest. If you run Windows, and you DO NOT invest in security measures, you are a complete and utter fool. If you run Windows and you invest in inadequate security measures, then you are a mere run of the mill fool.
Any mission critical computer with sensitive information on it has to have expensive security software installed, and it must be supervised and monitored frequently. It is EXPENSIVE to keep a Windows machine "secure".
Only the basest of MS fanbois will say the same about *nix. Granted, only an idiot would set up a *nix machine without setting up a firewall, permissions, and other accepted security measures. But, an idiot can indeed manage to set a box up, and to run it for extended periods of time without problem, because *nix has a lot of security BUILT INTO IT. (Well, as long as our idiot doesn't run as root all the time - nothing can save an idiot from himself if he disregards ALL security measures.)
I can't address "common usage" as I don't know WHAT the average user does with his browser.
At this moment, I have Firefox (v.3.0.11)open in Ubuntu, two windows with about 30 tabs total. I have a sound issue with VirtualBox and Windows 7, almost all those tabs relate to that issue.
Within VirtualBox, I'm just browsing in one FF (v.3.5 b4) window, and gaming in another window. The browsing window grows to as many as ten tabs, and shrinks down to 4 tabs. The gaming window grows to as many as 40 tabs, then shrinks down to 5 tabs.
I've allocated 1 gig of memory to Windows, and FF uses 218M of that.
Ubuntu has 2 gig of memory left at it's disposal, and FF uses 265M of memory.
In total, I'm using about 1/2 gig of memory for FF, between two machines.
The single most interesting thing about all that memory usage is, Ubuntu's windows have been open for about 4 days, and Windows browsers have been open for a little more than two days. The "memory leak" isn't as bad as it used to be, or I'd have had to close and reopen Firefox at least once within Windows.
Sexconker is modded a troll - quite unfairly. Cross site scripting sucks. Simple as that. I go to a site, first thing I see is noscript's popup message that anywhere between 2 and 20 sites want to run scripts in my browser. I click the popup, to see WHO wants to run scripts. Sometimes, it's easy to see who wants to do what, and deciding to allow site a, but not site b is quite simple.
Often enough, it's just not that simple. I want to see some stupid flash presentation, and the only way to see it is to enable flash. Unfortunately, three different sites are offering a flash. Which one do I want? I choose one to be allowed, and I get rickrolled.
That is hamshite. Nothing more, and nothing less. The original site should be hosting it's own material, or they should supply the link to see the flash presentation. Cross site scripting is a ripoff that just helps to confuse the security conscious. And, God knows there are far to few users who are conscious. (I'd like to see a scientific poll that demonstrates just how many users really are brain dead - it has to be over 20%, and might be over 50%)
I won't attempt to make the numbers add up here. I only wish to point out that it depends on who is working the numbers, how big they get. If you play online games, you certainly know that gold mining is a pretty big problem for the gaming industry. The manner in which they deal with it varies from one company to the next. But, it is easy to imagine that the practice probably nets a billion dollars per year for the Chinese people. It IS a huge industry!!
The hundreds of thousands of dollars mentioned above can't be a drop in the bucket, because such a small amount of activity wouldn't even be noticeable in game. I played Runescape for a long time (still do occasionally) and you literally stumbled over gold miners everywhere you went in the game.
Runescape has managed to deal with the issue pretty successfully. The system isn't perfect, of course, but the miners aren't blatantly apparent anymore.
In reality, it is probably impossible to track all of the mining that is going on, and quantify it with any certainty.
Of course, that doesn't excuse the sloppy math work in TFA.
I have to agree with the coward, this time. There are more than a dozen search engines out there, all of them trying to install themselves with each browser I download and install. At least a dozen try to give me a freaking toolbar - I think that Yahoo and Ask are the two worst offenders. I always just unclick the radio button, and tell them to go away. Even when I run IE, I set my default to Google. Who needs any of the rest of them? If/when I actually need one, I can enter the freaking address myself, or I can Google for the address.
All the rest of them can just bite my bling bing bling. If they want market share, they need to offer something as good as, or better than, what Google offers. Til then, bling bing bling all of them, and the donkeys they rode up on as well!
You rely on gimmicks that have been marketed by Microsoft. AD - I don't need or want it. The corporate world can get by without it. There are.net alternatives available. Open Office is there. Just dump the proprietary "standards" that MS markets. People using those "standards" are really just fish, on MS's hook. There is no data in the world that cannot be preserved, and transmitted by way of OO and/or one of the various PDF utilities. Nothing. The only thing that I ever use MS Office for, is to run a calculator that relies on macros specific to MS office. Given time, OO could figure out how to run all of MS Office macros, but by then, MS will come up with yet more "standards" for the fish to bite on. Phhht. It's a race that can't be won, with no real prize at the end, so why bother? The fish need to be taught that they ARE fish, and they are being reeled in just as fast as MS can reel. It's all about money, that you really have no need to part with.
Wait, one. You think that I don't believe that global warming is taking place? No, I do believe that global warming is taking place. That seems pretty obvious, as weather and climate has changed drastically since I was a child. It doesn't require a science degree, or even a lot of intelligence to determine that the earth has warmed.
Study and experimentation are in order, though. Not the constant hype we see and hear in the media.
Although, I already gave tribute to the new religion, in that a lot of people are waking up and learning to conserve not only energy, but all resources. People are learning to clean up, rather than dump all their polluting trash into the ditches, into the rivers, and into the air.
Pollution of any kind is bad, after all. Not to mention stupid.
It's going to take a good deal of real evidence to convince me that global warming is due to man's actions though. Hypothesese based on models that are largely guesswork doesn't cut it with me.
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I suspect some configuration problem on your end, to be honest. I'm running FF3.5 on XP SP3 inside of VirtualBox. I do not see that behaviour. Using snaplinks, I just opened six tabs, and the current tab remained responsive while they loaded in the background.
Whether the configuration problem is in your VM, within Windows, or in Firefox, I couldn't even begin to guess. In my case, I have 1 gig of memory allocated to the VM - if you have less memory, that might be something to look at.
Of course it's possible that my FF is different than yours in some subtle way. I upgraded from FF 3.5 b4 to FF 3.5 RC1 and then to FF 3.5 final. I really wouldn't EXPECT there to be any real difference, but crap happens, right?
This is getting rather silly.
I want a user locked down tight, so that he may ONLY perform two or three specific tasks, which are part of his job description. I want to ensure the he can't even play solitaire while on company time. So, I create his user account, require him to log in to a chrooted terminal, and he only has those two or three scripts that I make available. Nothing else. Zero interaction with any system files whatsoever - match that with group policy editor.
Yes - I've seen NT systems "locked down" to the point that the user only ever sees the screen from which he is supposed to do productive work. I've also seen unsophisticated immigrants with no technical training at all bypass the locks, to play solitaire on a production machine, and start up Internet Explorer. If ethernet had been connected, he could have downloaded any number of worms and trojans.
Nothing like that has ever happened on our *nix machines. When they are locked, they stay locked, simple as that.
I seem to hear a parrot: "Just like Windows, AWWWK!" Really, the key words in your post are "I have no idea what you're trying to say" so I'll show you a picture. Note the controls I can place on a new user's account.
[IMG]http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc226/Runaway1956/permissions.png[/IMG]
In short, NO, IT IS NOT JUST LIKE WINDOWS!!
Semantics? If you say so. All the same your engine is exploding all the time.
As for Google - name one thing that they do, that all the others don't do. "Oh, Evil Google!! They are tracking internet usage!"
I presume that you read the terms of service before you use ANY internet service or feature. I mean, read them, all the way through the obfuscated fine print? They all presume to have the right to track your usage. Some few restrict that right to their own site(s) while others don't.
It's a free for all out there - and if you're unaware of that, well, I just don't know what to say.
People ONLY track me when I permit them to. You?
Almost every car you see on America's highways have exploding engines. Of course, living in the stone age, you don't understand that. The internal combustion engine is powered by a succession of controlled explosions. You may or may not wish to experiment, but mixing gasoline and oxygen in carefully metered proportion, followed by the introduction of a spark, ALWAYS results in an explosion. ALWAYS.
You sound like the sort who would buy a non-exploding engine, then wonder why the car won't carry you to work.
Don't be late for your classes, or I'll give you detention and extra assignments.
There is still something that you apparently miss: Windows has vulnerabilities. Note, from my posts, that I didn't bother to try cleaning up the infection. I didn't even bother to identify it. Bandwidth died, Avast alarmed out, the machine became unresponsive. It was infected, and I didn't want to mess with it, so I deleted the partition and started all over.
Humor me. Let's work backward in time, alright? Vista was released, in part, to correct or patch vulnerabilities in XP SP3. And, XP SP3 was released to patch vulnerabilities in XP SP2. XP SP2 was released to patch XP SP1. And so forth.
Having stated that my fresh install of XP SP2 was infected immediately after connecting to the web, you declare that XP SP2 was a safe operating system, and that stuff like that isn't possible. Or, at least impossible for a "properly configured" system.
Then, why does MS waste their time trying to make their OS more secure, if it is so secure that SP2 couldn't be compromised, out of the box?
Really, you're not making any points here - this is foolish. I know what I did with that machine, I know the firewall was turned on, I know that I had an antivirus installed. I also know that I felt secure in the knowledge that crackers and script kiddies don't waste time scanning lame-ass dial up networks. All the same, the machine was hijacked in front of my eyes. You may believe it, you may dismiss it, but you can't win an argument in which you accuse me of "changing something". Fresh, out of the box installation, hijacked. You can google for more accounts of similar experiences - or not, as you choose.
You live in a stone age village in Afghanistan, right? Check out noscript and adblockplus for Firefox. This is the age of enlightenment. Enlightened people can be logged into iGoogle, and still block adsense and all the other crap they disapprove of. The class for "Weaponized Bronze" will be right after "Safer Spearchucking". Have a nice day, boys and girls.
"and it's not fair (nor should it be legal!) to penalize that person for clicks outside their control"
If you own a dog, you're responsible for it. If you own a car, you're responsible for it. If you own a computer, you're not responsible?
Cry us a river - - -
I'm headed down to the bus station. See you all later.......
Permissions, primarily. As I sit here in front of my Debian/Ubuntu machine, my user name is "guy". I can do nothing outside of my home folder. I can't infect another user's files, can't touch any system file, can't touch root's folder. There is no C:\Program Files - meaning that I don't have write permissions to ANYTHING outside my home folder. If I wish to install a program on this machine without becoming root, I can install it to my home folder. In such a case, the program has no write permissions outside my home folder. Using any programs that root has installed doesn't give me write permissions even to that program's folder - any data that the program needs to save to my profile, history, or whatever is written inside my own home folder. In fact, I don't have access to all the programs that root has installed. I have to become root to use things like Wireshark properly, or to use the package manager.
With Windows, a limited user has to ActiveX among other things. A limited user can save files to various places outside his home folders, unlike *nix. While the Windows Administrator can lock down a lot of Windows system files, he can't prevent even a limited user from making changes and/or writing files that might be booby traps lying around waiting to be executed by a more privileged user.
While NT variants of Windows are vastly superior to Win9.x in that they actually HAVE a security model, that model doesn't compare with that of any *nix system.
Until I type in my password for sudo or root, I have fewer privileges on Debian than I would have on a limited account on Windows. I can't even open an internet connection - root does that at bootup with a script.
And, to be perfectly honest, I don't NEED privileges very often. I could probably run this account for the next year without becoming root, and manage to do everything I wanted to do, except for testing new programs and updating.
AC should make a few nice steaks. I like meat. No, I love meat. AC, marinated in beer for a week, then rolled in egg & milk, some cornmeal breading, then deepfried. Mmmmm - mmmmm!!
Nope. Windows firewall runs by default on XP SP2, if you'll recall. I did NOT disable the firewall. 100% clean install, all default values, nothing changed. I installed Avast before connecting, and ten minutes later, the connection slowed to a crawl. Another few minutes, Avast alarmed out over infections, but failed to clean them.
No bullshit.
http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/bizarre-virus-after-fresh-install/80205.html
It WAS a dialup connection, so there was no hardware firewall, just Windows own software firewall. On my own machines, under the same circumstances, I would have installed Tiny Firewall, but I was unwilling to "pirate" Tiny for a third party.
"The government would not "love to lock you away" for that. Imprisonment is expensive as is identifying and prosecuting criminals."
The US government has found that keeping about 1% of it's population imprisoned is a lucrative business. It keeps a huge number of people employed, it justifies a number of bonds and taxes, and it keeps a number of "worthless" people off the streets. Keeping people imprisoned is so lucrative that private industry has gotten into the act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prisons
Pardon me, my young friend, but I believe you are being dishonest. I believe that you are saying that you run Windows, and that you run absolutely no security software at all, and that you have NEVER had any sort of malware problems. If I've misunderstood you, then the rest of this post has little value for you.
In my own personal experience, I've taken possession of a totally dicked up Windows box, formatted, installed Windows from CD, installed a few apps from CD (avast included) then connected to the internet for updates. Within ten minutes, the machine was infected with yet more malware. Within ten minutes. Apparently, some botnet just happened to scan the block of IP addresses that I was in, and took advantage of one exploit or another. But, within ten minutes, long before I had any opportunity to complete updates, it was infected. (Lesson learned was to download AV and updates on a clean machine BEFORE installing Windows.)
Anyone who tries to convince the world that he runs a naked installation of Windows, and routinely browses the internet without viral infections is simply lying through his teeth.
Citations? Yes, yes, yes, a *nix box can be broken into. Of course it can - anything that one man builds can be broken by another man. But - citations that *nix boxes are "commonly" broken into? Evidence that more *nix boxes are hacked than Windows boxes are?
Until citations are presented, you'll pardon me for thinking you are spouting some foul smelling substance that should be ejected at the other end of your digestive tract.
To claim that Window's insecurities aren't part of the true cost of Windows is genuinely dishonest. If you run Windows, and you DO NOT invest in security measures, you are a complete and utter fool. If you run Windows and you invest in inadequate security measures, then you are a mere run of the mill fool.
Any mission critical computer with sensitive information on it has to have expensive security software installed, and it must be supervised and monitored frequently. It is EXPENSIVE to keep a Windows machine "secure".
Only the basest of MS fanbois will say the same about *nix. Granted, only an idiot would set up a *nix machine without setting up a firewall, permissions, and other accepted security measures. But, an idiot can indeed manage to set a box up, and to run it for extended periods of time without problem, because *nix has a lot of security BUILT INTO IT. (Well, as long as our idiot doesn't run as root all the time - nothing can save an idiot from himself if he disregards ALL security measures.)
I can't address "common usage" as I don't know WHAT the average user does with his browser.
At this moment, I have Firefox (v.3.0.11)open in Ubuntu, two windows with about 30 tabs total. I have a sound issue with VirtualBox and Windows 7, almost all those tabs relate to that issue.
Within VirtualBox, I'm just browsing in one FF (v.3.5 b4) window, and gaming in another window. The browsing window grows to as many as ten tabs, and shrinks down to 4 tabs. The gaming window grows to as many as 40 tabs, then shrinks down to 5 tabs.
I've allocated 1 gig of memory to Windows, and FF uses 218M of that.
Ubuntu has 2 gig of memory left at it's disposal, and FF uses 265M of memory.
In total, I'm using about 1/2 gig of memory for FF, between two machines.
The single most interesting thing about all that memory usage is, Ubuntu's windows have been open for about 4 days, and Windows browsers have been open for a little more than two days. The "memory leak" isn't as bad as it used to be, or I'd have had to close and reopen Firefox at least once within Windows.
True, I'm probably not the "average" user.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1029489/The-lowdown-on-the-Iranian-uprising
The situation in Iran is NOT what the media makes it out to be here. Nor is it what our government would like us to believe.
Human rights abuses? Maybe, but it's really awfully damned small scale, considering all the coverage. But, it makes for good bandwagon bullshit.
Sexconker is modded a troll - quite unfairly. Cross site scripting sucks. Simple as that. I go to a site, first thing I see is noscript's popup message that anywhere between 2 and 20 sites want to run scripts in my browser. I click the popup, to see WHO wants to run scripts. Sometimes, it's easy to see who wants to do what, and deciding to allow site a, but not site b is quite simple.
Often enough, it's just not that simple. I want to see some stupid flash presentation, and the only way to see it is to enable flash. Unfortunately, three different sites are offering a flash. Which one do I want? I choose one to be allowed, and I get rickrolled.
That is hamshite. Nothing more, and nothing less. The original site should be hosting it's own material, or they should supply the link to see the flash presentation. Cross site scripting is a ripoff that just helps to confuse the security conscious. And, God knows there are far to few users who are conscious. (I'd like to see a scientific poll that demonstrates just how many users really are brain dead - it has to be over 20%, and might be over 50%)
I MUST post this story on every developer forum on the web. Start with:
Ubuntu forums
Suse forums
Debian forums
Redhat forums
Mozilla forums
Ohhhh, I better get busy, I can fill in the list as I go.........
I won't attempt to make the numbers add up here. I only wish to point out that it depends on who is working the numbers, how big they get. If you play online games, you certainly know that gold mining is a pretty big problem for the gaming industry. The manner in which they deal with it varies from one company to the next. But, it is easy to imagine that the practice probably nets a billion dollars per year for the Chinese people. It IS a huge industry!!
The hundreds of thousands of dollars mentioned above can't be a drop in the bucket, because such a small amount of activity wouldn't even be noticeable in game. I played Runescape for a long time (still do occasionally) and you literally stumbled over gold miners everywhere you went in the game.
Runescape has managed to deal with the issue pretty successfully. The system isn't perfect, of course, but the miners aren't blatantly apparent anymore.
In reality, it is probably impossible to track all of the mining that is going on, and quantify it with any certainty.
Of course, that doesn't excuse the sloppy math work in TFA.
Friends, don't allow friends to yahoo. Take the keys, steal the distributor, do SOMETHING. Yahoo has no principles (or principals either).
I have to agree with the coward, this time. There are more than a dozen search engines out there, all of them trying to install themselves with each browser I download and install. At least a dozen try to give me a freaking toolbar - I think that Yahoo and Ask are the two worst offenders. I always just unclick the radio button, and tell them to go away. Even when I run IE, I set my default to Google. Who needs any of the rest of them? If/when I actually need one, I can enter the freaking address myself, or I can Google for the address.
All the rest of them can just bite my bling bing bling. If they want market share, they need to offer something as good as, or better than, what Google offers. Til then, bling bing bling all of them, and the donkeys they rode up on as well!
You rely on gimmicks that have been marketed by Microsoft. AD - I don't need or want it. The corporate world can get by without it. There are .net alternatives available. Open Office is there. Just dump the proprietary "standards" that MS markets. People using those "standards" are really just fish, on MS's hook. There is no data in the world that cannot be preserved, and transmitted by way of OO and/or one of the various PDF utilities. Nothing. The only thing that I ever use MS Office for, is to run a calculator that relies on macros specific to MS office. Given time, OO could figure out how to run all of MS Office macros, but by then, MS will come up with yet more "standards" for the fish to bite on. Phhht. It's a race that can't be won, with no real prize at the end, so why bother? The fish need to be taught that they ARE fish, and they are being reeled in just as fast as MS can reel. It's all about money, that you really have no need to part with.
Wait, one. You think that I don't believe that global warming is taking place? No, I do believe that global warming is taking place. That seems pretty obvious, as weather and climate has changed drastically since I was a child. It doesn't require a science degree, or even a lot of intelligence to determine that the earth has warmed.
Study and experimentation are in order, though. Not the constant hype we see and hear in the media.
Although, I already gave tribute to the new religion, in that a lot of people are waking up and learning to conserve not only energy, but all resources. People are learning to clean up, rather than dump all their polluting trash into the ditches, into the rivers, and into the air.
Pollution of any kind is bad, after all. Not to mention stupid.
It's going to take a good deal of real evidence to convince me that global warming is due to man's actions though. Hypothesese based on models that are largely guesswork doesn't cut it with me.