Microsoft is unfortunately in a bad place in its little corner of the industry. I don't use their product for anything other than games, because of feature problems, user interface annoyances, and major security concerns. Never the less, the fact of the matter is that Windows works fine for a lot of people, or at least "good enough."
Unfortunately, Microsoft's inattention to security issues in the past has spurned a huge third party market for utilities that fix Microsoft's oversights. An operating system these days should have a firewall, autoupdate service, and be reasonably secure against some of the brain-dead bugs that have cropped up (buffer overflows in JPEG display code in a email reader, anyone?). So a third party market with the likes of Symantec cropped up, and now Microsoft has two choices: Fix it themselves and run these guys out of business, while simultaneously maybe getting hit with an anti-trust suit, or leave it full of holes and keep the third parties in business, but have this stop keep popping up.
Then, as you say, there are the users. I think, however, that the fact that you can be easily infected from a pop-up window on a web site is more of an error on Microsoft's part. Sure, the user is a freaking idiot, but most of the time the issue never should have arisen.
So release it as an MPEG or even a common-codec non-DRM WMV. Then it plays out of the box on around 99% of the target audience's computers, whether it run Linux, Windows, or MacOS.
Watch it, now. Some of the Microsoft and MPAA apologists might mod you a troll for this, the same way they mod me as a troll every time I post this kind of thing.
They've released it, but they've released it only for people with particular kinds of computers, despite the fact that it is just as easy, if not easier, to release it in a format that is platform-independent, like DivX. Further, since their entire point is to get this distributed so that people who like it go see the movie, this makes even less sense.
So, effectively, they lock the user who wants to use it into Windows Media Player and MSIE. So, in effect, aside from the obvious angle of setting a precident, their offer is worthless to many people by design. So now, like the music download services, they can claim "Hey, there is a legal alternative! We're trying to deal with the preferred distribution channels!" when in reality they've done jack, and haven't provided a service to a lot of people. Those people see no benefit directly from this, other than taking the industry trying to take away the excuse that there is no such distribution channel.
Probably the latter. Think about it: If FOX doesn't let your TiVo record the show, then chances are you won't watch it. There is then no chance you will see their commercials. If FOX does let you record the show, then chances are you will watch it, and maybe see the commercials. Then FOX gets to take advantage of the stats that the TiVo sends back to, well, TiVo. In other words, even if you're skipping commercials, there's really no downside for FOX letting you record the thing, and there is a downside for turning on the DRM flag.
Me? I'm waiting for the class action against TiVo so I can join in.
IE 5.5 and Windows 98? Dude, you're asking to get pwned!
I know the true way! Whenever I set up a Windows box for someone, I install Windows 98, never patch it, install IE 5.5, never patch it, and preinstall Gator because, well, alligators are fearsome creatures.
I am a CISSP security expert! Hear me roar! (whimper)
I've been a Linux user for something like 11. Still waiting too.;)
The main problem with Windows and MacOS X both are users running as admin all the time. Linux has the same problem in many cases, but it's stuff running as root that has no business running as root.
A doctor brought his laptop in the other day to show me this cool imaging stuff he was doing with MRI data. Interesting and all that, but I couldn't help cringing when he goes to log into X11... as root.
It's not libel if it's true. The problem is these people will get massive lawsuits which will require them to spend mass quantities of money before they even see the inside of a court room. A doctor with a highly paid lawyer could probably bury a regular person with a lawyer they can barely afford in litigation. The aim? To force them to pay out a settlement and "admit" they were "lying" regardless of the facts.
Sounds a lot like the typical malpractice claim against a doctor. The patient goes out and gets some scheister personal injury lawyer, requiring the doctor to spend mass quantities of money before he even sees the inside of a courtroom. A plantiff with a sufficiently shady malpractice attorney can probably bury a regular doctor in litigation. The aim? To force them to pay out a settlement and "admit" the "malpractice" regardless of the facts.
Nurses in hospitals work with many physicians, and have definite opinions about them.
Careful now. Can they be sued?
Yes, but for the same reasons as the patients in this case can be.
If I'm a nurse and someone asks me for a referral, and I say "Go see Dr. Smith," that's one thing. Even better if I give good reasons. If, on the other hand, I say "Don't see Dr. Jones, because he prescribes Golytely for fecal impactions," then there are two things going on here. First, I just impacted Dr. Jones' business. No problem there, in isolation. But second, I just spread bullshit to a potential patient who doesn't know Golytely from Milk of Magnesia from lactulose -- and I know this -- and as a result can be sued to hell and back by the doctor. In order for that second statement to be valid, I'd have to say, "I wouldn't see Dr. Jones, because he prescribes Golytely for fecal impactions. In my experience -- and limited of course because I have no medical education, but am rather a nurse -- many of these cases could be better treated by promoting good bowel habits and prescribing milk of magnesia as a standing prescription with perhaps lactulose occasionally when those patients get really backed up."
Which do you think is going to be posted on the Internet? Which do you think is a more realistic conversation? And if I know that one treatment isn't necessarily better than the other, and further that the patient doesn't know the difference anyway, than I'm also at fault.
That's what's going on here. You have people whose medical knowledge might as well come out of the old DOS game "Life and Death" bashing doctors based largely on opinion and misinformation, while simultaneously hiding behind anonymity and patient privacy laws, preaching to people who are of equal knowledge and skill, and negatively impacting said doctor's livelihood in the process. Even if they post their entire medical record to the net, it isn't realistic to expect the readers, many of whom can barely program their VCRs, to weigh the information, so the poster damned well better make sure that it's balanced, accurate, and free of any kind of falsehood.
Really? When I gained 50 pounds at the age of 25, was told by numerous young doctors to get on Lipitor and other drugs for blood pressure and choleserol, and was having bouts of emotional frustration and told to get on an anti-depressent "temporarily" by 5 different doctors, I said no.
My elderly doctor said lower my carbs. I did. 6 months later, problems were all solved. 5 years later they're still fine.
Agreed. So based on your post, I have to assume that you were hypertensive and had dyslipidemia.
Had the doctor not prescribed a statin and antihypertensive medication, he could have been sued for gross incompetence for not doing so. Even years later when you drop dead of a heart attack at age 45. Then you're depressed, so he's going to prescribe an SSRI for you. Both those interventions are well within the standard of care. In fact, they are the standard of care, in addition to telling you to lose the weight. If you go in there and say that you aren't going to take the medications, you're noncompliant. If you don't like it, find another doctor. That's your right.
It isn't your right to go bash that specific doctor for prescribing, say, Lipitor, metaprolol, and Prozac. And if you do, he has the right to sue you for damages if you call him a quack without bothering to mention that your LDL and triglycerides were through the roof, your blood pressure was 150/110, and you were borderline suicidal.
That's the root of the problem, really. Because the doctor can't retort, even if he had the time and found your complaint, because of privacy regulations, his only resource is to sue you for libel if you happen to leave out the crucial information that your blood pressure was high, you had high cholesterol, and wanted to off yourself with a lamp cord.
That depends on what the malpractice claim was for. Or, more accurately, whether it had any merit in the first place.
Most malpractice claims are dubious at best. When you come into the office and say you're on an MAO inhibitor and the doctor gives you demerol for pain, then that is an example of a legitimate malpractice claim. (The interaction is lethal.) The problem is that a lot of these cases are based on, to put it bluntly, bullshit, like the assertion that if someone is allergic to sulfa drugs then were administered a drug containing sulfur, the doctor is at fault for any sequelae that occur as a result of that. (For those who didn't read carefully, sulfur != sulfa. Depends on a lot of things.)
People who sue for bullshit like that, regardless of whether they know it's bullshit or not, should expect people to not take care of them. The idea that we should have a national registry of doctors to chronicle such claims but at the same time should not be able to have a national registry of people who file the claims is hypocritical and makes no sense.
There's a malpractice attorney in my town who has filed so many bullshit lawsuits and badgered people to settling out of court or pulling tear-jerking bullshit on the stand that none of the doctors here will take care of her. She has to go to a county hospital to get care for her kids. The last time she came in I was there. The attendings and residents were drawing straws. Literally.
The problem isn't that someone goes to a doctor, gets really bad service, and then complains about it. The problem is that, as you say, some of these people have about as much medical knowledge as a FisherPrice book yet assume that they can diagnose their illness better than the doctor.
Just this week, for example, we had some woman come in to the hospital complaining of depression. Normally, we'd just screen her for depression and treat it. If we told her to go to hell, that would be one thing. We didn't. The problem was that we had to address her rampant drug problems because we can't diagnose her with depression while she's strung out. She promptly goes off on a tear about how "all we want to talk about is her drug problem" and so on.
Now, if she posts a balanced review and people would read it, nobody would care. The problem is that if she were to post one, it would be one-sided by nature, inaccurate, and full pretty basic lies. Then worse, other people with about as much knowledge read the thing, or just count some dumb "good/bad" review count metric. Given that people don't tend to post good reviews about anything (cars, doctors, whatever) compared to the number of bad reviews that get posted, it turns into a mess.
It's analogous to someone buying a computer from you with a copy of Windows XP, not having any clue how it works, then blaming you for everything from their spyware problem, to their virus problem, to their slow Internet connectivity, to not being able to find a copy of some obscure song on Kazaa. Of course they're idiots, and you know they're idiots, and I know they're idiots, but the other idiots don't know they're idiots because they're idiots too. So now it starts to negatively impact your business when you've done nothing wrong, and they're simply posting misinformed falsehoods somewhere.
Instead of any kind of informed opinion, most of these sites are probably filled with "Dr. Smith prescribed me Vioxx! He's an incompetent doctor!"
That's when it becomes a problem. "DrSmithsucks.com" or "farmerssucks.com" aren't a big deal to anyone credible so long as they're posting correct information. Hey, if you screw up or you legitimately piss someone off, bash away. But when you're posting that Ford sucks because you were drunk while driving (and conveniently leave that bit of vital information out), expect Ford to sue your ass.
Agreed totally. There's no point in being able to attach non-local (i.e., not attached to the email) images, or any kind of executable. Links? Okay. Attachments? Okay. Images? Okay. Movies? Okay. Notice that the common theme is that the content isn't executable. (Though with Mickeysoft, the reality is that nonexecutable content often becomes executable, such as in the various image overflow bugs.)
Which actually begs the question: Why don't email clients, if they feel that they must execute some attachment, execute it as some unique, jailed UID? That way it can't even destroy the user's mail directories.
Of course, as I mentioned. The miscommunication, I think, is from the definition of "coding." If a gene codes for a protein, and then that protein gets spliced to hell and back into a combination of products, there's still only one gene, and the DNA still coded for it. The RNA didn't code for anything. The RNA was merely transcribed from the DNA template. The same goes for post-translational modifications to proteins.
RNA can't code for more than DNA, because the RNA is produced from the DNA. DNA -> RNA -> protein. Now, some RNA is catalytically active, and some of it kicks back and exercises regulatory functions, and that kind of thing, but the RNA doesn't code for anything itself.
If the/. editor is trying to claim that RNA codes for things in and of itself, then that opens an interesting possibility: Mainly that RNA, in addition to DNA, must be transferred to produce a clone (for example) because some of the RNA is unique and not coded for by DNA.
And no, I didn't RTFA because I was afraid I might barf after reading the Slashdot leader.
Maybe I'm just not clued in, at which point I hope someone enlightens me, but SCO wasn't a product that was really useful back in 1995, let alone 2005. Linux blew it off the map almost immediately, and this was made even worse by SCO's pricing schemes.
In 1995, I was working with this (lame) company that sold industrial database frontend software. That isn't important. But they based their system off of something called OpenBasic, and ran it on SCO systems. So one day this new computer comes in, and I just partition the drive and install Linux on it.
Not surprisingly, Linux ran the SCO OpenBasic interpreter binary just fine. For free. Meanwhile, the systems administrator (the kind of guy with a tin-type photo -- yes, that old) is back in the server room trying to install all sorts of patches to get their copy of SCO to run on a 486 processor. Then when he finally got it done, it boots up, and promptly hardlocks. Wash, rinse, repeat. So I calmly explain the situation with the Linux box, but they won't have anything of it because Linux doesn't have SCO's great support. Fast forward to him three hours later still trying to get SCO to fix it.
SCO is now totally irrelevant, because even the people who dislike free software are either going to use some flavor of Windows, or some flavor of UNIX that isn't SCO.
This has already been pretty much hinted at already, but it bears restatement. Mod me Redundant if it really annoys you; my karma is impenetrable.
Classifying something costs a lot more than declassifying it. To classify something, you get the data, then have to figure out whether to classify it. We're even so far. But then you have to protect the data, and there's an associated cost with that. Add to all that security clearance procedures,and it gets pretty expensive really fast.
Just the process of getting a security clearance is expensive. For the low level clearances, it isn't that expensive. They just check you against terrorist lists, check your criminal history, and call up the people you list. When you start applying for higher clearances, they personally interview people, and that's when it starts getting expensive: you're paying for the lodging and travel for the FBI guy, his salary, and all the bureaucratic nonsense that goes along with it.
That is actually something I would like to see in Linux. I've thought off and on about throwing together a cheap SQL database on my LAN, and writing some kind of network layer for it. Effectively, files would be stored on the filesystem, indexed in the SQL database, and an interface layer would get the files regardless of where on my LAN they're stored. Add to that some security settings and that kind of thing.
Of course, this is a lot easier said than done. No matter how I might do it, I'd have to get creative and hack software to do it. Not a big problem for something like XMMS. It starts to get dicey when you have to start hacking everything from OpenOffice to Evolution, however. That particular pain in the ass keeps me from doing it.
If Linux had such a system with some kind of interface layer that a genius out there wrote, and if it were standard, it might take off. That seems to be the kind of thing that Microsoft is trying to do with WinFS.
I generally despise Microsoft, but this might actually turn out to be good.
I stopped donating blood a while back. Now I'm in the medical field, so I understand how important it is to donate and all that. The problem with our current blood donation system in terms of "donator service" is twofold. First, they ask an incredibly annoying battery of questions for high risk screening, which turns a lot of people off. (I don't care about that personally.) But second, they reject people for some of the most ridiculous reasons which makes me not even bother. An example of the latter is rejecting someone who took Tylenol for a headache, someone who is on a relatively benign psych drug chronically (e.g., Prozac), etc.
It's pretty random when you get down to the second. Some places have some sense when dealing with it. Some places go off the deep end, like rejecting me because I took Benadryl for alergies.
Well, I hold out some faith that maybe it won't suck, but that's entirely blind faith. I still have flashbacks of when someone conned me into watching "Wing Commander" to MiST3K the thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, Microsoft's inattention to security issues in the past has spurned a huge third party market for utilities that fix Microsoft's oversights. An operating system these days should have a firewall, autoupdate service, and be reasonably secure against some of the brain-dead bugs that have cropped up (buffer overflows in JPEG display code in a email reader, anyone?). So a third party market with the likes of Symantec cropped up, and now Microsoft has two choices: Fix it themselves and run these guys out of business, while simultaneously maybe getting hit with an anti-trust suit, or leave it full of holes and keep the third parties in business, but have this stop keep popping up.
Then, as you say, there are the users. I think, however, that the fact that you can be easily infected from a pop-up window on a web site is more of an error on Microsoft's part. Sure, the user is a freaking idiot, but most of the time the issue never should have arisen.
So release it as an MPEG or even a common-codec non-DRM WMV. Then it plays out of the box on around 99% of the target audience's computers, whether it run Linux, Windows, or MacOS.
They've released it, but they've released it only for people with particular kinds of computers, despite the fact that it is just as easy, if not easier, to release it in a format that is platform-independent, like DivX. Further, since their entire point is to get this distributed so that people who like it go see the movie, this makes even less sense.
So, effectively, they lock the user who wants to use it into Windows Media Player and MSIE. So, in effect, aside from the obvious angle of setting a precident, their offer is worthless to many people by design. So now, like the music download services, they can claim "Hey, there is a legal alternative! We're trying to deal with the preferred distribution channels!" when in reality they've done jack, and haven't provided a service to a lot of people. Those people see no benefit directly from this, other than taking the industry trying to take away the excuse that there is no such distribution channel.
Me? I'm waiting for the class action against TiVo so I can join in.
I know the true way! Whenever I set up a Windows box for someone, I install Windows 98, never patch it, install IE 5.5, never patch it, and preinstall Gator because, well, alligators are fearsome creatures.
I am a CISSP security expert! Hear me roar! (whimper)
The main problem with Windows and MacOS X both are users running as admin all the time. Linux has the same problem in many cases, but it's stuff running as root that has no business running as root.
A doctor brought his laptop in the other day to show me this cool imaging stuff he was doing with MRI data. Interesting and all that, but I couldn't help cringing when he goes to log into X11... as root.
Not surprisingly, nobody asks why such personal data on a mobile computer was not encrypted.
Sounds a lot like the typical malpractice claim against a doctor. The patient goes out and gets some scheister personal injury lawyer, requiring the doctor to spend mass quantities of money before he even sees the inside of a courtroom. A plantiff with a sufficiently shady malpractice attorney can probably bury a regular doctor in litigation. The aim? To force them to pay out a settlement and "admit" the "malpractice" regardless of the facts.
Yes, but for the same reasons as the patients in this case can be.
If I'm a nurse and someone asks me for a referral, and I say "Go see Dr. Smith," that's one thing. Even better if I give good reasons. If, on the other hand, I say "Don't see Dr. Jones, because he prescribes Golytely for fecal impactions," then there are two things going on here. First, I just impacted Dr. Jones' business. No problem there, in isolation. But second, I just spread bullshit to a potential patient who doesn't know Golytely from Milk of Magnesia from lactulose -- and I know this -- and as a result can be sued to hell and back by the doctor. In order for that second statement to be valid, I'd have to say, "I wouldn't see Dr. Jones, because he prescribes Golytely for fecal impactions. In my experience -- and limited of course because I have no medical education, but am rather a nurse -- many of these cases could be better treated by promoting good bowel habits and prescribing milk of magnesia as a standing prescription with perhaps lactulose occasionally when those patients get really backed up."
Which do you think is going to be posted on the Internet? Which do you think is a more realistic conversation? And if I know that one treatment isn't necessarily better than the other, and further that the patient doesn't know the difference anyway, than I'm also at fault.
That's what's going on here. You have people whose medical knowledge might as well come out of the old DOS game "Life and Death" bashing doctors based largely on opinion and misinformation, while simultaneously hiding behind anonymity and patient privacy laws, preaching to people who are of equal knowledge and skill, and negatively impacting said doctor's livelihood in the process. Even if they post their entire medical record to the net, it isn't realistic to expect the readers, many of whom can barely program their VCRs, to weigh the information, so the poster damned well better make sure that it's balanced, accurate, and free of any kind of falsehood.
Agreed. So based on your post, I have to assume that you were hypertensive and had dyslipidemia.
Had the doctor not prescribed a statin and antihypertensive medication, he could have been sued for gross incompetence for not doing so. Even years later when you drop dead of a heart attack at age 45. Then you're depressed, so he's going to prescribe an SSRI for you. Both those interventions are well within the standard of care. In fact, they are the standard of care, in addition to telling you to lose the weight. If you go in there and say that you aren't going to take the medications, you're noncompliant. If you don't like it, find another doctor. That's your right.
It isn't your right to go bash that specific doctor for prescribing, say, Lipitor, metaprolol, and Prozac. And if you do, he has the right to sue you for damages if you call him a quack without bothering to mention that your LDL and triglycerides were through the roof, your blood pressure was 150/110, and you were borderline suicidal.
That's the root of the problem, really. Because the doctor can't retort, even if he had the time and found your complaint, because of privacy regulations, his only resource is to sue you for libel if you happen to leave out the crucial information that your blood pressure was high, you had high cholesterol, and wanted to off yourself with a lamp cord.
Most malpractice claims are dubious at best. When you come into the office and say you're on an MAO inhibitor and the doctor gives you demerol for pain, then that is an example of a legitimate malpractice claim. (The interaction is lethal.) The problem is that a lot of these cases are based on, to put it bluntly, bullshit, like the assertion that if someone is allergic to sulfa drugs then were administered a drug containing sulfur, the doctor is at fault for any sequelae that occur as a result of that. (For those who didn't read carefully, sulfur != sulfa. Depends on a lot of things.)
People who sue for bullshit like that, regardless of whether they know it's bullshit or not, should expect people to not take care of them. The idea that we should have a national registry of doctors to chronicle such claims but at the same time should not be able to have a national registry of people who file the claims is hypocritical and makes no sense.
There's a malpractice attorney in my town who has filed so many bullshit lawsuits and badgered people to settling out of court or pulling tear-jerking bullshit on the stand that none of the doctors here will take care of her. She has to go to a county hospital to get care for her kids. The last time she came in I was there. The attendings and residents were drawing straws. Literally.
Just this week, for example, we had some woman come in to the hospital complaining of depression. Normally, we'd just screen her for depression and treat it. If we told her to go to hell, that would be one thing. We didn't. The problem was that we had to address her rampant drug problems because we can't diagnose her with depression while she's strung out. She promptly goes off on a tear about how "all we want to talk about is her drug problem" and so on.
Now, if she posts a balanced review and people would read it, nobody would care. The problem is that if she were to post one, it would be one-sided by nature, inaccurate, and full pretty basic lies. Then worse, other people with about as much knowledge read the thing, or just count some dumb "good/bad" review count metric. Given that people don't tend to post good reviews about anything (cars, doctors, whatever) compared to the number of bad reviews that get posted, it turns into a mess.
It's analogous to someone buying a computer from you with a copy of Windows XP, not having any clue how it works, then blaming you for everything from their spyware problem, to their virus problem, to their slow Internet connectivity, to not being able to find a copy of some obscure song on Kazaa. Of course they're idiots, and you know they're idiots, and I know they're idiots, but the other idiots don't know they're idiots because they're idiots too. So now it starts to negatively impact your business when you've done nothing wrong, and they're simply posting misinformed falsehoods somewhere.
Instead of any kind of informed opinion, most of these sites are probably filled with "Dr. Smith prescribed me Vioxx! He's an incompetent doctor!"
That's when it becomes a problem. "DrSmithsucks.com" or "farmerssucks.com" aren't a big deal to anyone credible so long as they're posting correct information. Hey, if you screw up or you legitimately piss someone off, bash away. But when you're posting that Ford sucks because you were drunk while driving (and conveniently leave that bit of vital information out), expect Ford to sue your ass.
Agreed totally. There's no point in being able to attach non-local (i.e., not attached to the email) images, or any kind of executable. Links? Okay. Attachments? Okay. Images? Okay. Movies? Okay. Notice that the common theme is that the content isn't executable. (Though with Mickeysoft, the reality is that nonexecutable content often becomes executable, such as in the various image overflow bugs.)
Of course, as I mentioned. The miscommunication, I think, is from the definition of "coding." If a gene codes for a protein, and then that protein gets spliced to hell and back into a combination of products, there's still only one gene, and the DNA still coded for it. The RNA didn't code for anything. The RNA was merely transcribed from the DNA template. The same goes for post-translational modifications to proteins.
If the /. editor is trying to claim that RNA codes for things in and of itself, then that opens an interesting possibility: Mainly that RNA, in addition to DNA, must be transferred to produce a clone (for example) because some of the RNA is unique and not coded for by DNA.
And no, I didn't RTFA because I was afraid I might barf after reading the Slashdot leader.
A stick he holds in his mouth.
In 1995, I was working with this (lame) company that sold industrial database frontend software. That isn't important. But they based their system off of something called OpenBasic, and ran it on SCO systems. So one day this new computer comes in, and I just partition the drive and install Linux on it.
Not surprisingly, Linux ran the SCO OpenBasic interpreter binary just fine. For free. Meanwhile, the systems administrator (the kind of guy with a tin-type photo -- yes, that old) is back in the server room trying to install all sorts of patches to get their copy of SCO to run on a 486 processor. Then when he finally got it done, it boots up, and promptly hardlocks. Wash, rinse, repeat. So I calmly explain the situation with the Linux box, but they won't have anything of it because Linux doesn't have SCO's great support. Fast forward to him three hours later still trying to get SCO to fix it.
SCO is now totally irrelevant, because even the people who dislike free software are either going to use some flavor of Windows, or some flavor of UNIX that isn't SCO.
Classifying something costs a lot more than declassifying it. To classify something, you get the data, then have to figure out whether to classify it. We're even so far. But then you have to protect the data, and there's an associated cost with that. Add to all that security clearance procedures,and it gets pretty expensive really fast.
Just the process of getting a security clearance is expensive. For the low level clearances, it isn't that expensive. They just check you against terrorist lists, check your criminal history, and call up the people you list. When you start applying for higher clearances, they personally interview people, and that's when it starts getting expensive: you're paying for the lodging and travel for the FBI guy, his salary, and all the bureaucratic nonsense that goes along with it.
Of course, this is a lot easier said than done. No matter how I might do it, I'd have to get creative and hack software to do it. Not a big problem for something like XMMS. It starts to get dicey when you have to start hacking everything from OpenOffice to Evolution, however. That particular pain in the ass keeps me from doing it.
If Linux had such a system with some kind of interface layer that a genius out there wrote, and if it were standard, it might take off. That seems to be the kind of thing that Microsoft is trying to do with WinFS.
I generally despise Microsoft, but this might actually turn out to be good.
It's pretty random when you get down to the second. Some places have some sense when dealing with it. Some places go off the deep end, like rejecting me because I took Benadryl for alergies.
Well, I hold out some faith that maybe it won't suck, but that's entirely blind faith. I still have flashbacks of when someone conned me into watching "Wing Commander" to MiST3K the thing.