> An argument for censorship is an argument for fascism.
And I can assume you would be equally certain of your position when a right wing nutjob does a documentary on the Vince Foster was killed by Bill Clinton conspiracy theory? Any theatre refusing to run it is engaging in censorship and is therefore fascist? Riight.
> It would be stupid for theatres to block Moore's films because they > are major cash generators.
Really. This one was on day one. If a theatre dropped it next week they would be in the black. But I suspect their contract won't allow that so they will have to suffer with empty rooms for a few weeks. It was number one on a weekend with no major opposition. Go look at boxofficemojo if you don't believe me. But Spidey will kick Moore's ass next weekend, hell White Chicks will probably be #2 and Moore will probably be way down the chart. You Deaniacs made it #1 this weekend by all turning out for opening weekend. But who will be going next week? Nobody.
Theaters should do the smart thing and reject overly political films. Leave left wing conspiracy 'documentaries' where they belong. PBS.
Re:We have a free market of ideas in this country.
on
Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
> then it is not a documentary. It's a getBushoutofofficumentary.
Exactly. As Moore has been bloviating every time a fawning press has stuck a microphone near his fat head. It is about "getting Bush out of office."
I hope Hollywood understands the implications of this movie. It means their end if they aren't careful. Think about it. This is the first feature film written, produced and released with the expressed purpose of influencing an election. It is so blatent that the FEC is probably going to restrict the TV ads after Jul 31 as political ads. (Which only means the DVD release will get spamvertised on the evening news and Larry King, just means Lions Gate won't have to actually spend ad money but anyway...) But this movie making a profit will only open a floodgate of copycats, and the Hollywood system being what it is almost all will be liberal. Liberal news bias was always something they could argue doesn't really exist. NOBODY is willing to take the position that Moore isn't outright political and all Deaniac/nutjob, including Moore himself. F911 is ALL about Moore's ego and grandstanding. In other words it is Hollywood.
But the backlash will be sure and swift. Theatre chains will have to become like newspapers and choose sides, of course most will be leftist and give prime screen space to the leftist pictures over profitable entertainment. This will cause an even further decline in attendence, especially out here in flyover country where you will be hard pressed to find a screen that averages $100/day over this Moore flick's run.
All you/. kids just ask yourself if you would be less inclined to see a movie at a theatre that was unabashedly conservative? Well isn't it reasonable to assume us conservatives are equally less likely to patronize an out of the closet pinko chain? Doesn't that spell lower attendance for both sides, especially here in flyover country where most towns only have one major theatre showing first run movies?
> "We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically > intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, > too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." -- Ann > Coulter, 02/26/2002
Besides the obvious retort of "And you object to exactly what part of that statement?" I'll be a little more serious.
You should NEVER take one of Ms. Coulter's tag lines out of context. You really have to read the entire column it was in to understand where she was going with it. That one you quote above is a good one, but not even the most extreme line from her. The one that got her dropped from National Review (A mistake by a on overly timid editor IMHO.) was even better. The one about "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christanity." on 9/13/01 was priceless. But I actually read that one and the column as a very rational discussion for the time and didn't actually end up advocating a "Last Crusade" solution.
Although personally I think that if the Islamic world doesn't actually start trying to 'discourage' its more extreme elements I'm about to decide they really don't disagree with those elements, say screw em all and lets just outlaw Islam in that part of the world the same way Nazism is outlawed in Germany. If the bastards want to hate our guts we should oblige them and actually give them a reason.
> As of now on boxofficemojo.com, F911 is showing $16M gross for two > days, which now brings it up to 2nd highest grossing documentary in > history.
And just how many documentaries have been produced in the last decade? Inflation my friend. Just like how we have a new top grossing movie every couple of years even if the new one isn't quite as popular as the one it replaced. They count gross and since ticket prices increase.... Plus we do have positive population growth in the USA thanks to illegal imigration. (As opposed to most of Old Europe.)
> This movie will certainly now gain much wider release than the 868 > theatres in which it is showing now.
Yes, the initial showings filled due to the ABB/Deaniac crowd so they will use these numbers to justify pushing it onto several thousand screens. Where I predict it will be a $250/screen turkey by next weekend. Even sane Democrats don't need to go watch Moore bloviate for two hours about subjects he lacks the mental ability to comprehend or discuss rationally.
> The blame doesn't rest with stubborn users who refuse to switch.
Wrong. The blame doesn't rest with the ignorant masses who don't even know there is a choice. But those who DO know there was a choice and choose IE are more to blame than Microsoft when they get owned. Life in a Free Society breaks down unless people are expected to accept responsibility for the choices they make. They knew the risk and accepted it. That means they are responsible for the results and should be bled like cattle when they bring their PC in to be fixed and the techs should sleep the peaceful sleep of the just when they go home at the end of the day after dealing with these fools. If this attitude becomes widespread, perhaps they will make wiser choices in the future.
I'll give you Betamax. But since I have a Sharp Mini-disc I'd dispute the MD. And I know other companies make DAT, but nobody cares about it because of the copy restriction tech Congress forced on it.
Other companies make Memory Stick, but again, who cares? It was a dumb idea to try introducing yet another format, especially one with a 128MB memory limit!
So yes, they will almost certainly license this stuff.... assuming THEY aren't just licensing it themselves.
> Try downloading or running a binary from 1994 that was compiled for > linux and see if it works, im sure libc and glibc and aout and elf will > make things fun.
Amazingly you CAN run a binary from that far back. Admittedly no modern distro includes the compat libs required for that anymore but you can do it. More importantly if you had a machine originally installed with RH 3.x and upgraded it over the years you would still have the ability to run a.out binaries you installed back then. One of my machines was originally loaded with RH4.0 and still has Mosiac on it. It runs. Of course there aren't many webpages left that will render correctly in it but that isn't the point. If you needed to run one of those apps today you would simply go out and obtain the compat libs packages and install them via rpm.
> The average doorknob enduser just wants their stuff to work... the > hell with the consequences.
Exactly their attitude. And exactly why mine is "to hell with them." I finally realized they didn't care because they expected me to save them from their stupidity. So more power to the local computer shops that gouge the willfully ignorant for every coin they can get out of them.
As I said it is about people making decisions and living with the consequences. If you decide running Windows is worth it to keep the kiddies happy and don't mind PAYING THE CONSEQUENCES then it is a fair deal. I just got tired of ENABLING Microsoft victims by taking pity on folks who got their machines hosed by Windows and helping them out. I realized that what I was doing was removing the CONSEQUENCES of their decision to stick with Windows. Let em pay full market rates or invest their own time into keeping Windows running and the cost/benefit figure goes to hell. Maybe they buy a Mac next time.
Do I sound cynical? Probably. I can even identify the exact moment I went over to the cynical side. Wasn't even a Windows thing exactly, but the same attitude. Was doing tech support for an ISP. Out in the field helping a customer get setup to receive stock quotes via the Internet. Got everything setup and asked her to come over so I could give her the ten minute "how to connect and get stuff talk" when she interrupted me with this exact quote, "Stop right there, you are trying to teach me. I don't care about that, you just make it work." She got most of what she wanted. I set it up so that when she pushed power it booted, dialed in and started Netscape maximized with the homepage showing her quotes. She did have to learn how to do a proper shutdown, but I doubt she actually did one, ignorant bitch probably just switched off power. I never had to deal with her again so who knows, perhaps she did manage one click on close and an exit from Program Manager. (Win3.1)
> actually sir, if a user does not have the computer litteracy to install > spybot search and destroy, AVG antivirus and a zone alarm firewall onto > their windows system, I *DREAD* to think of them on a linux system.
Then they should buy a Mac as you say and I also state in this thread. Linux doesn't have to be THE answer to every problem. But Windows IS the problem.
> hate to say this, but the software quality just isn't there under > linux. show me an gui ftp client as good as filezilla
Gftp?
> or a word processor that makes a good job of outputting.doc files > (because you really are asking for it if you don't send your CV at > least in.doc format).
Sorry, but if you define the question as "Name a program closer to Word than Word is" tis a circular argument. In this day you most certainly CAN send a PDF anywhere you would send a.doc file in that sort of situation. You should have cited a situation involving colabaration where the argument would have some merit. But for view/print/store purposes a PDF is better. It won't get tripped up in anti-virus software just for starters.
Sounds like you are in that group I referred to with "unless it is your JOB to know". Hell yes, if an employer pays me (and a lot more than I ask for UNIX stuff, since I LIKE doing UNIX stuff) enough filthy lucre to cover the higher training costs, more frequent turnover of my bookshelf, overtime for allnighters when the latest worm hits and to cover the generally higher mental stress of exposure to Windows I'd happily spend my days on MSDN learning the latest registry tweaks so the Beastie Boys couldn't 'own' the boss's machine when one of the kids sticks a CD in.
But just listen to yourself above! You are "happy" with the performance of a machine you expend a great deal of effort on to keep software NOT installed on, think nothing of rebooting every couple of weeks and unless you are bootlegging that anti-virus program from work, you paid more for it than linuxant wants for a wireless driver. Besides, had you done better presale research you would have selected a wireless card that was compatible. (Giving you the benefit of the doubt here and assuming you actually found a home computer preloaded with the W2K bug or got the machine from work.)
> Also, how else can I play some of my favorite games?
Nintendo Gamecube, Microsoft X-Box or Sony Playstation 2. All have their advantages and disadvantages, best discussed on a forum for that sort of thing. Besides, my first and only console was the Atari 2600 so I'm the wrong guy to ask for advice. But if games is your only remaining reason for keeping Windows on a machine, just consider how expensive a PC is to buy and maintain vs a console.
> OS X does not autorun cds either. Even if it did, it would prompt for > an admin password before it could install anything.
Quoth the article:
"It seems that Capitol Records has some sort of new copy protection system, that automatically, silently, installs "helpful" copy protection software on MacOS and Windows as soon as you insert the CD into default systems."
Either you didn't realize that His Holiness (Mr. Jobs) would sell yer ass to the RIAA, you are in denial or of course the original story could be full of crap. Modern journalism being what it is and all that, it could happen.
> Become Tech Savvy, try to understand what the fuck windows is doing eh?
Not really an option. If you understand Windows you realize it is broken by design and can't really BE fixed. Sure you might learn not to open attachments but you can't be there to stop the overly curious but not quite bright enough to know better nephew from clicking on something. And since Windows still has no security model (just TRY running a locked down system in a home environment and see how far you get) a Windows PC can never be more secure than the least clueful user with access to the machine.
Plus, unless it is your major purpose in life you can't really KNOW Windows because it changes so fast, even if real accurate documentation were available to non-developers. While over here in UNIX land vi has pretty much been been vi for over twenty years; even if we all use vim, vile or elvis now they still act EXACTLY like vi (except a few of the most obscure and unused commands). A GNU Emacs manual from 1994 would still be very relevent today and will likely still be useful in 2014. An X11 program from 1994 will probably still compile on Fedora Core 2. (Question: Will the current Visual C++ still build a Win16 app? A DOS app?) POSIX has been set in stone for a good while. This is a good thing.
Seriously,over the last twenty years the Microsoft world has had major upheavals. DOS being replaced with Windows. Windows being replaced with Win32 (and the end of compiler memory models, yea!), DOS vs NT kernel, the coming and apparently now the exit of.net in favor of mono.. or maybe it was what.net was originally going to be.. except for a timeline problem.... and now looking forward to yet another major rewrite of damned near everything with Longhorn. Seriously, unless it is your JOB, who has time to keep up with the latest registry hack?
And just how useful would an MS Word manual from 1994 be now? Or how about a WP manual from 1984? How useful will an Office 2003 manual be in 2014? Who can afford to keep a Windows reference bookshelf up to date? I know I couldn't, I can barely keep up with O'Reilly's UNIX/Linux books as they rev. and then only because I can usually read the list of what is new and decide I don't need the new version yet. But every single book on Windows XP will be useless when Longhorn ships, exactly like every book on Windows 9x is useless for working with W2K and XP.
> You can say "get a new OS" all you want, but unless you are willing to > set it up so everything works perfectly, including their webcam with > AIM, Yahoo, etc, and all their Windows games, then you can tell them > to "get a new OS".
Or you can tell them what I say to that argument:
Listen, you have a choice.
Option 1: Keep Windows, reinstall every few months and suffer through every malware that comes along and run the risk of some criminal outfit in Russia keystroke logging your credit card and DON'T BUG ME ABOUT ANY OF THIS BECAUSE I WARNED YOU. I can't fix it for you and other than a trivial tweak now and then I don't plan to even try. Bill Gates can't fix Windows, why do you think I can?
Option 2: Toss the PC and buy a Mac. Sorry, that isn't my preferred platform so I won't be able to help you much. I do know they don't suffer from most of the ills of Windows though and from my limited experience on one they are very easy to use so you shouldn't have too much difficulty.
Option 3: Invest the effort in learning Linux. Almost all of the important software genres are available, you will just have to adapt to different programs. I have been running Linux for about ten years now and I'll be happy to help when you get stuck on something. (No, I have never recommended someone use BSD. If you don't know enough to know when to choose BSD on your own, you are not ready for BSD.)
Life in a Free Society is about making choices, and living with the consequences. Windows has some pretty dire consequences and I have little pity for the ones who know the risks and choose Windows anyway. The ones who don't even know there ARE choices are a different matter though, I'll spend a little more time on those folks.
> And since Linux doesn't have an autorun annoyance... I mean feature
Depends on your preferred distro. RedHat has autorun, but they do it in a sane way. When it automounts a CD it looks for an autorun file and if it finds one it pops up a dialog box asking if you would like to run it.
This is totally a Microsoft & Apple security problem. The system is running untrusted code without asking the user or even informing them something is running. Just goes to show how much the mindset has to change in the closed world before they have a chance to start getting security right.
> Yeah, and in five hundred years people will be ashamed of the > "barbarians pre-space humans who exterminated bacterial diversity on > Mars".
Yea, I suspect you are right. And the heart of the movement will be at Mars University. They will be weak kneed mushy headed students lead by a few ivory tower dwelling pseudo intellectuals. But the most anyone else will say is "oh well, I ain't giving it back to the germs." and get on with their comfortable martian life. Or in other words, nothing new. Just a bunch of useless morons with nothing better to do than bitch and moan about how 'evil' their forefathers were once things have progressed to a point where genetic culls like themselves don't get killed off by the harsh pioneer environment.
IF we find life on Mars I'd probably agree with going VERY slow so as not to screw up something before we understand it fully. But if there isn't life there, it belongs to us to use as we see fit. Same goes for the rest of the Solar System.
> This old argument about Mac having no apps is very old, very tired, > and very tiresome.
The guy is talking about the enterprise space, not some git sitting in his underroos surfing the web and using AIM.
And yes there are a buttload of line of business apps that don't run on Mac. If your business has a dependency on just one or two you probably can't migrate off of Windows unless you can find a way to bring them along. Windows emulators running on a Mac aren't anymore practical than VMWare on Linux. They can save you if you have one or two that you don't use often but still need but probably won't cut it for an app a large percentage of the userbase uses regularly.
Small ones like Timeclocks, contact managers, accounting, inventory control. Big ones like all encompasing industry specific apps that employees spend most of their day in. Things like teachers spending a bug chunk of their day in one of a couple of apps specific for schools, each district buys into one of them and everyone must run it. If it doesn't run on Mac then that district doesn't tend to have ANY macs. Same for most other professions. Nowadays cops don't use Word to write their reports, they have all encompasing apps specially designed for law enforcment and they run on Windows.
Buy more hard drives and stick them in FireWire or USB2 enclosures and use em like tapes. Sure the 'tapes' cost more but since the 'drive' is usually included on a modern motherboard you win unless you need a LOT of tapes. They can also double as hard drives! And it is SO much easier to recover a single file from a backup when your backup program is rsync or "cp -a".
Re:You want to talk chilling free speech...
on
Testing ISP Censorship
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> Brigitte Bardot is apparently an ignorant bigot.
Without doubt.
> Ignorant bigots have a right to spout their ignorant bigotry, just as > I have a right to tell them they sound like ignorant bigots.
Exactly, the correct response to an idiot isn't to fine them, but to call them an idiot. Something starting off with "Brigitte, you ignorant slut..." would be appropriate.;)
> (I will, however, take issue with you calling a relatively small fine > a "human rights abuse." I don't recall any jail time, torture, or loss > of liberty being mentioned in the article.)
Basic human rights include not just the right to live a life free of torture and prison. The include the right to speak and worship as one pleases. The 1st Amendment isn't just for Americans, it is a statement of one of those "inalienable rights" the Founding Fathers were always going on about.
Buty mostlyu I was hoping to tweak a few of the overly sanctimonious Europeans who have been spending the last year or so explaining how morally superior they are. We would never dream of doing anything as horrible as what the French seem to do as a normal matter of course. Of course there ARE some Americans who wouldn't mind adopting a more "European" view of Free Speech, with PC speech codes and "Hate Speech" laws of our own.
Tis assumed that has already failed if things are bad enough to vote with your feet. Voting only works up to a point, ask anyone who suffered through the Soviet Union or currently 'votes' in Communist China. Or the 100% who 'voted' for Saddam in his last election. Or the near 100% who 'vote' for Castro every year or two down in Cuba.
So all you eurotrash (and for that matter the moveon crowd here) who crawl out of the woodwork every few days to take pot shots at how "fascist" America is and how Ashcroft is the devil incarnate, care to speak to this REAL human rights abuse as opposed to your fantasies?
We have something called the 1st Amendment that means that anyone proposing such a law would simply be laughed at.... and a 2nd that says anyone who managed to do it anyway wouldn't last long.
Jeeze, can we cry wolf a few more times?
on
Testing ISP Censorship
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Ok, I know the/. crowd just loves to wear tinfoil hats and believe the government (doesn't matter which one, just The Government) and Big Evil Corporations are out to get them, but this is a non-story.
As others have already pointed out, this isn't censorship because censorship is prior restraint. When you need to submit your blog to the censors and get it preapproved before posting about the cute thing your kitty just did, THEN you can yell about censorship while I'm locking and loading my 'sporting goods.'
But this asshat calling for more government regulation to solve a perceived lack of freedom is so dumb boggles the mind. Find me a government that isn't out to expand its powers at your expense? If you have a problem with your ISP you can get another in a few minutes and be totally switched over in a day or two. Changing governments requires moving.... and then only while they still allow that.
> The question is, "Just how much exaclty is Microsoft afraid of Apple".
Zero. Apple is the official token competition, but they can be snuffed at will by withholding Office. I'd bet good money that the truth eventually comes out that there was a deal between Gates and Jobs wherein Apple promised to remain a 10% player and would be allowed to do anything else they wanted to so long as they stayed in single digits. Jobs is happy with that role, because he can price as high as he wants and milk large margins from his small number of units. The faithful will pay and he isn't worried about growing the market.
The iPod is an interesting departure from that strategy though.
>...they recommended that I don't use Microsoft's Services for > Macintosh, and instead use a Mac product called 'Dave.' For this > advice, they charged us an astounding hourly rate.
Quit yer bitchin. They told you exactly how to solve your problem, even at the expense of having you use a non-microsoft product. I'm sure you just got lucky on that call because getting ANY useful answer out of a tech support operation is rare enough and you got one from MICROSOFT. They aren't exactly known as a support & services operation for good reason, they normally suck at it.
Slashdot Mirror
> An argument for censorship is an argument for fascism.
And I can assume you would be equally certain of your position when a right wing nutjob does a documentary on the Vince Foster was killed by Bill Clinton conspiracy theory? Any theatre refusing to run it is engaging in censorship and is therefore fascist? Riight.
> It would be stupid for theatres to block Moore's films because they
> are major cash generators.
Really. This one was on day one. If a theatre dropped it next week they would be in the black. But I suspect their contract won't allow that so they will have to suffer with empty rooms for a few weeks. It was number one on a weekend with no major opposition. Go look at boxofficemojo if you don't believe me. But Spidey will kick Moore's ass next weekend, hell White Chicks will probably be #2 and Moore will probably be way down the chart. You Deaniacs made it #1 this weekend by all turning out for opening weekend. But who will be going next week? Nobody.
Theaters should do the smart thing and reject overly political films. Leave left wing conspiracy 'documentaries' where they belong. PBS.
> then it is not a documentary. It's a getBushoutofofficumentary.
/. kids just ask yourself if you would be less inclined to see a movie at a theatre that was unabashedly conservative? Well isn't it reasonable to assume us conservatives are equally less likely to patronize an out of the closet pinko chain? Doesn't that spell lower attendance for both sides, especially here in flyover country where most towns only have one major theatre showing first run movies?
Exactly. As Moore has been bloviating every time a fawning press has stuck a microphone near his fat head. It is about "getting Bush out of office."
I hope Hollywood understands the implications of this movie. It means their end if they aren't careful. Think about it. This is the first feature film written, produced and released with the expressed purpose of influencing an election. It is so blatent that the FEC is probably going to restrict the TV ads after Jul 31 as political ads. (Which only means the DVD release will get spamvertised on the evening news and Larry King, just means Lions Gate won't have to actually spend ad money but anyway...) But this movie making a profit will only open a floodgate of copycats, and the Hollywood system being what it is almost all will be liberal. Liberal news bias was always something they could argue doesn't really exist. NOBODY is willing to take the position that Moore isn't outright political and all Deaniac/nutjob, including Moore himself. F911 is ALL about Moore's ego and grandstanding. In other words it is Hollywood.
But the backlash will be sure and swift. Theatre chains will have to become like newspapers and choose sides, of course most will be leftist and give prime screen space to the leftist pictures over profitable entertainment. This will cause an even further decline in attendence, especially out here in flyover country where you will be hard pressed to find a screen that averages $100/day over this Moore flick's run.
All you
> "We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically
> intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed,
> too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." -- Ann
> Coulter, 02/26/2002
Besides the obvious retort of "And you object to exactly what part of that statement?" I'll be a little more serious.
You should NEVER take one of Ms. Coulter's tag lines out of context. You really have to read the entire column it was in to understand where she was going with it. That one you quote above is a good one, but not even the most extreme line from her. The one that got her dropped from National Review (A mistake by a on overly timid editor IMHO.) was even better. The one about "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christanity." on 9/13/01 was priceless. But I actually read that one and the column as a very rational discussion for the time and didn't actually end up advocating a "Last Crusade" solution.
Although personally I think that if the Islamic world doesn't actually start trying to 'discourage' its more extreme elements I'm about to decide they really don't disagree with those elements, say screw em all and lets just outlaw Islam in that part of the world the same way Nazism is outlawed in Germany. If the bastards want to hate our guts we should oblige them and actually give them a reason.
> As of now on boxofficemojo.com, F911 is showing $16M gross for two
> days, which now brings it up to 2nd highest grossing documentary in
> history.
And just how many documentaries have been produced in the last decade? Inflation my friend. Just like how we have a new top grossing movie every couple of years even if the new one isn't quite as popular as the one it replaced. They count gross and since ticket prices increase.... Plus we do have positive population growth in the USA thanks to illegal imigration. (As opposed to most of Old Europe.)
> This movie will certainly now gain much wider release than the 868
> theatres in which it is showing now.
Yes, the initial showings filled due to the ABB/Deaniac crowd so they will use these numbers to justify pushing it onto several thousand screens. Where I predict it will be a $250/screen turkey by next weekend. Even sane Democrats don't need to go watch Moore bloviate for two hours about subjects he lacks the mental ability to comprehend or discuss rationally.
> >The nerds will rebuild, and will be filthy rich. Women will throw
> > themselves at us.
> This implies that all nerds are men. Or lesbians.
Close enough that the exceptions don't really matter statistically.
> The blame doesn't rest with stubborn users who refuse to switch.
Wrong. The blame doesn't rest with the ignorant masses who don't even know there is a choice. But those who DO know there was a choice and choose IE are more to blame than Microsoft when they get owned. Life in a Free Society breaks down unless people are expected to accept responsibility for the choices they make. They knew the risk and accepted it. That means they are responsible for the results and should be bled like cattle when they bring their PC in to be fixed and the techs should sleep the peaceful sleep of the just when they go home at the end of the day after dealing with these fools. If this attitude becomes widespread, perhaps they will make wiser choices in the future.
> I got a few more. :-)
> DAT, Mini-disc, betamax.
I'll give you Betamax. But since I have a Sharp Mini-disc I'd dispute the MD. And I know other companies make DAT, but nobody cares about it because of the copy restriction tech Congress forced on it.
Other companies make Memory Stick, but again, who cares? It was a dumb idea to try introducing yet another format, especially one with a 128MB memory limit!
So yes, they will almost certainly license this stuff.... assuming THEY aren't just licensing it themselves.
> Try downloading or running a binary from 1994 that was compiled for
> linux and see if it works, im sure libc and glibc and aout and elf will
> make things fun.
Amazingly you CAN run a binary from that far back. Admittedly no modern distro includes the compat libs required for that anymore but you can do it. More importantly if you had a machine originally installed with RH 3.x and upgraded it over the years you would still have the ability to run a.out binaries you installed back then. One of my machines was originally loaded with RH4.0 and still has Mosiac on it. It runs. Of course there aren't many webpages left that will render correctly in it but that isn't the point. If you needed to run one of those apps today you would simply go out and obtain the compat libs packages and install them via rpm.
> The average doorknob enduser just wants their stuff to work... the
> hell with the consequences.
Exactly their attitude. And exactly why mine is "to hell with them." I finally realized they didn't care because they expected me to save them from their stupidity. So more power to the local computer shops that gouge the willfully ignorant for every coin they can get out of them.
As I said it is about people making decisions and living with the consequences. If you decide running Windows is worth it to keep the kiddies happy and don't mind PAYING THE CONSEQUENCES then it is a fair deal. I just got tired of ENABLING Microsoft victims by taking pity on folks who got their machines hosed by Windows and helping them out. I realized that what I was doing was removing the CONSEQUENCES of their decision to stick with Windows. Let em pay full market rates or invest their own time into keeping Windows running and the cost/benefit figure goes to hell. Maybe they buy a Mac next time.
Do I sound cynical? Probably. I can even identify the exact moment I went over to the cynical side. Wasn't even a Windows thing exactly, but the same attitude. Was doing tech support for an ISP. Out in the field helping a customer get setup to receive stock quotes via the Internet. Got everything setup and asked her to come over so I could give her the ten minute "how to connect and get stuff talk" when she interrupted me with this exact quote, "Stop right there, you are trying to teach me. I don't care about that, you just make it work." She got most of what she wanted. I set it up so that when she pushed power it booted, dialed in and started Netscape maximized with the homepage showing her quotes. She did have to learn how to do a proper shutdown, but I doubt she actually did one, ignorant bitch probably just switched off power. I never had to deal with her again so who knows, perhaps she did manage one click on close and an exit from Program Manager. (Win3.1)
> actually sir, if a user does not have the computer litteracy to install
.doc files .doc format).
.doc file in that sort of situation. You should have cited a situation involving colabaration where the argument would have some merit. But for view/print/store purposes a PDF is better. It won't get tripped up in anti-virus software just for starters.
> spybot search and destroy, AVG antivirus and a zone alarm firewall onto
> their windows system, I *DREAD* to think of them on a linux system.
Then they should buy a Mac as you say and I also state in this thread. Linux doesn't have to be THE answer to every problem. But Windows IS the problem.
> hate to say this, but the software quality just isn't there under
> linux. show me an gui ftp client as good as filezilla
Gftp?
> or a word processor that makes a good job of outputting
> (because you really are asking for it if you don't send your CV at
> least in
Sorry, but if you define the question as "Name a program closer to Word than Word is" tis a circular argument. In this day you most certainly CAN send a PDF anywhere you would send a
> but at my work that's what we use
Sounds like you are in that group I referred to with "unless it is your JOB to know". Hell yes, if an employer pays me (and a lot more than I ask for UNIX stuff, since I LIKE doing UNIX stuff) enough filthy lucre to cover the higher training costs, more frequent turnover of my bookshelf, overtime for allnighters when the latest worm hits and to cover the generally higher mental stress of exposure to Windows I'd happily spend my days on MSDN learning the latest registry tweaks so the Beastie Boys couldn't 'own' the boss's machine when one of the kids sticks a CD in.
But just listen to yourself above! You are "happy" with the performance of a machine you expend a great deal of effort on to keep software NOT installed on, think nothing of rebooting every couple of weeks and unless you are bootlegging that anti-virus program from work, you paid more for it than linuxant wants for a wireless driver. Besides, had you done better presale research you would have selected a wireless card that was compatible. (Giving you the benefit of the doubt here and assuming you actually found a home computer preloaded with the W2K bug or got the machine from work.)
> Also, how else can I play some of my favorite games?
Nintendo Gamecube, Microsoft X-Box or Sony Playstation 2. All have their advantages and disadvantages, best discussed on a forum for that sort of thing. Besides, my first and only console was the Atari 2600 so I'm the wrong guy to ask for advice. But if games is your only remaining reason for keeping Windows on a machine, just consider how expensive a PC is to buy and maintain vs a console.
> OS X does not autorun cds either. Even if it did, it would prompt for
> an admin password before it could install anything.
Quoth the article:
"It seems that Capitol Records has some sort of new copy protection system, that automatically, silently, installs "helpful" copy protection software on MacOS and Windows as soon as you insert the CD into default systems."
Either you didn't realize that His Holiness (Mr. Jobs) would sell yer ass to the RIAA, you are in denial or of course the original story could be full of crap. Modern journalism being what it is and all that, it could happen.
> Become Tech Savvy, try to understand what the fuck windows is doing eh?
.net in favor of mono.. or maybe it was what .net was originally going to be.. except for a timeline problem.... and now looking forward to yet another major rewrite of damned near everything with Longhorn. Seriously, unless it is your JOB, who has time to keep up with the latest registry hack?
Not really an option. If you understand Windows you realize it is broken by design and can't really BE fixed. Sure you might learn not to open attachments but you can't be there to stop the overly curious but not quite bright enough to know better nephew from clicking on something. And since Windows still has no security model (just TRY running a locked down system in a home environment and see how far you get) a Windows PC can never be more secure than the least clueful user with access to the machine.
Plus, unless it is your major purpose in life you can't really KNOW Windows because it changes so fast, even if real accurate documentation were available to non-developers. While over here in UNIX land vi has pretty much been been vi for over twenty years; even if we all use vim, vile or elvis now they still act EXACTLY like vi (except a few of the most obscure and unused commands). A GNU Emacs manual from 1994 would still be very relevent today and will likely still be useful in 2014. An X11 program from 1994 will probably still compile on Fedora Core 2.
(Question: Will the current Visual C++ still build a Win16 app? A DOS app?) POSIX has been set in stone for a good while. This is a good thing.
Seriously,over the last twenty years the Microsoft world has had major upheavals. DOS being replaced with Windows. Windows being replaced with Win32 (and the end of compiler memory models, yea!), DOS vs NT kernel, the coming and apparently now the exit of
And just how useful would an MS Word manual from 1994 be now? Or how about a WP manual from 1984? How useful will an Office 2003 manual be in 2014? Who can afford to keep a Windows reference bookshelf up to date? I know I couldn't, I can barely keep up with O'Reilly's UNIX/Linux books as they rev. and then only because I can usually read the list of what is new and decide I don't need the new version yet. But every single book on Windows XP will be useless when Longhorn ships, exactly like every book on Windows 9x is useless for working with W2K and XP.
> You can say "get a new OS" all you want, but unless you are willing to
> set it up so everything works perfectly, including their webcam with
> AIM, Yahoo, etc, and all their Windows games, then you can tell them
> to "get a new OS".
Or you can tell them what I say to that argument:
Listen, you have a choice.
Option 1: Keep Windows, reinstall every few months and suffer through every malware that comes along and run the risk of some criminal outfit in Russia keystroke logging your credit card and DON'T BUG ME ABOUT ANY OF THIS BECAUSE I WARNED YOU. I can't fix it for you and other than a trivial tweak now and then I don't plan to even try. Bill Gates can't fix Windows, why do you think I can?
Option 2: Toss the PC and buy a Mac. Sorry, that isn't my preferred platform so I won't be able to help you much. I do know they don't suffer from most of the ills of Windows though and from my limited experience on one they are very easy to use so you shouldn't have too much difficulty.
Option 3: Invest the effort in learning Linux. Almost all of the important software genres are available, you will just have to adapt to different programs. I have been running Linux for about ten years now and I'll be happy to help when you get stuck on something. (No, I have never recommended someone use BSD. If you don't know enough to know when to choose BSD on your own, you are not ready for BSD.)
Life in a Free Society is about making choices, and living with the consequences. Windows has some pretty dire consequences and I have little pity for the ones who know the risks and choose Windows anyway. The ones who don't even know there ARE choices are a different matter though, I'll spend a little more time on those folks.
> And since Linux doesn't have an autorun annoyance... I mean feature
Depends on your preferred distro. RedHat has autorun, but they do it in a sane way. When it automounts a CD it looks for an autorun file and if it finds one it pops up a dialog box asking if you would like to run it.
This is totally a Microsoft & Apple security problem. The system is running untrusted code without asking the user or even informing them something is running. Just goes to show how much the mindset has to change in the closed world before they have a chance to start getting security right.
> Yeah, and in five hundred years people will be ashamed of the
> "barbarians pre-space humans who exterminated bacterial diversity on
> Mars".
Yea, I suspect you are right. And the heart of the movement will be at Mars University. They will be weak kneed mushy headed students lead by a few ivory tower dwelling pseudo intellectuals. But the most anyone else will say is "oh well, I ain't giving it back to the germs." and get on with their comfortable martian life. Or in other words, nothing new. Just a bunch of useless morons with nothing better to do than bitch and moan about how 'evil' their forefathers were once things have progressed to a point where genetic culls like themselves don't get killed off by the harsh pioneer environment.
IF we find life on Mars I'd probably agree with going VERY slow so as not to screw up something before we understand it fully. But if there isn't life there, it belongs to us to use as we see fit. Same goes for the rest of the Solar System.
> This old argument about Mac having no apps is very old, very tired,
> and very tiresome.
The guy is talking about the enterprise space, not some git sitting in his underroos surfing the web and using AIM.
And yes there are a buttload of line of business apps that don't run on Mac. If your business has a dependency on just one or two you probably can't migrate off of Windows unless you can find a way to bring them along. Windows emulators running on a Mac aren't anymore practical than VMWare on Linux. They can save you if you have one or two that you don't use often but still need but probably won't cut it for an app a large percentage of the userbase uses regularly.
Small ones like Timeclocks, contact managers, accounting, inventory control. Big ones like all encompasing industry specific apps that employees spend most of their day in. Things like teachers spending a bug chunk of their day in one of a couple of apps specific for schools, each district buys into one of them and everyone must run it. If it doesn't run on Mac then that district doesn't tend to have ANY macs. Same for most other professions. Nowadays cops don't use Word to write their reports, they have all encompasing apps specially designed for law enforcment and they run on Windows.
Buy more hard drives and stick them in FireWire or USB2 enclosures and use em like tapes. Sure the 'tapes' cost more but since the 'drive' is usually included on a modern motherboard you win unless you need a LOT of tapes. They can also double as hard drives! And it is SO much easier to recover a single file from a backup when your backup program is rsync or "cp -a".
> Brigitte Bardot is apparently an ignorant bigot.
;)
Without doubt.
> Ignorant bigots have a right to spout their ignorant bigotry, just as
> I have a right to tell them they sound like ignorant bigots.
Exactly, the correct response to an idiot isn't to fine them, but to call them an idiot. Something starting off with "Brigitte, you ignorant slut..." would be appropriate.
> (I will, however, take issue with you calling a relatively small fine
> a "human rights abuse." I don't recall any jail time, torture, or loss
> of liberty being mentioned in the article.)
Basic human rights include not just the right to live a life free of torture and prison. The include the right to speak and worship as one pleases. The 1st Amendment isn't just for Americans, it is a statement of one of those "inalienable rights" the Founding Fathers were always going on about.
Buty mostlyu I was hoping to tweak a few of the overly sanctimonious Europeans who have been spending the last year or so explaining how morally superior they are. We would never dream of doing anything as horrible as what the French seem to do as a normal matter of course. Of course there ARE some Americans who wouldn't mind adopting a more "European" view of Free Speech, with PC speech codes and "Hate Speech" laws of our own.
> No, changing governments requires voting...
Tis assumed that has already failed if things are bad enough to vote with your feet. Voting only works up to a point, ask anyone who suffered through the Soviet Union or currently 'votes' in Communist China. Or the 100% who 'voted' for Saddam in his last election. Or the near 100% who 'vote' for Castro every year or two down in Cuba.
While slashdot dons their tinfoil hats about a non-issue, how about a real case of someone being FINED for speaking their mind?
Brigitte Bardot fined for inciting racial hatred
So all you eurotrash (and for that matter the moveon crowd here) who crawl out of the woodwork every few days to take pot shots at how "fascist" America is and how Ashcroft is the devil incarnate, care to speak to this REAL human rights abuse as opposed to your fantasies? We have something called the 1st Amendment that means that anyone proposing such a law would simply be laughed at.... and a 2nd that says anyone who managed to do it anyway wouldn't last long.
Ok, I know the /. crowd just loves to wear tinfoil hats and believe the government (doesn't matter which one, just The Government) and Big Evil Corporations are out to get them, but this is a non-story.
As others have already pointed out, this isn't censorship because censorship is prior restraint. When you need to submit your blog to the censors and get it preapproved before posting about the cute thing your kitty just did, THEN you can yell about censorship while I'm locking and loading my 'sporting goods.'
But this asshat calling for more government regulation to solve a perceived lack of freedom is so dumb boggles the mind. Find me a government that isn't out to expand its powers at your expense? If you have a problem with your ISP you can get another in a few minutes and be totally switched over in a day or two. Changing governments requires moving.... and then only while they still allow that.
> The question is, "Just how much exaclty is Microsoft afraid of Apple".
Zero. Apple is the official token competition, but they can be snuffed at will by withholding Office. I'd bet good money that the truth eventually comes out that there was a deal between Gates and Jobs wherein Apple promised to remain a 10% player and would be allowed to do anything else they wanted to so long as they stayed in single digits. Jobs is happy with that role, because he can price as high as he wants and milk large margins from his small number of units. The faithful will pay and he isn't worried about growing the market.
The iPod is an interesting departure from that strategy though.
> ...they recommended that I don't use Microsoft's Services for
> Macintosh, and instead use a Mac product called 'Dave.' For this
> advice, they charged us an astounding hourly rate.
Quit yer bitchin. They told you exactly how to solve your problem, even at the expense of having you use a non-microsoft product. I'm sure you just got lucky on that call because getting ANY useful answer out of a tech support operation is rare enough and you got one from MICROSOFT. They aren't exactly known as a support & services operation for good reason, they normally suck at it.
Nah. HURD vs. Longhorn. Now THAT is race to sleep through. :)