> and to do so, I know of 'some students', who have pirated the various programs.
Find a vendor who doesn't offer a student discount. Oh, you don't want the crippled student version? It does everything you need to pass the course, so don't use that watermark on every page to justify stealing the full edition.
> please don't give me Gimp when I ask for Photoshop.
If you can AFFORD Photoshop, great! Many people who edit photographs professionally believe the price is more than offset by their increased productivity. But if you can't afford Photoshop you have no right to steal it. Don't you even try justifying it either. Try Paint Shop Pro if you just can't learn The GIMP. PSP is well regarded and much less expensive.
> Interesting view - shaft them, then they'll come to us!
Not at all. But remember, we DO believe in copyrights, it is what makes our licenses work. If we expect people to obey the GPL it isn't much of a mental leap to believe people should honor Microsoft's copyright. Forget the EULA, it is worthless and almost certainly unenforcable outside of site licenses which are real signed contracts. But Windows/Office ARE copyrighted works and people shouldn't be bootlegging em.
If someone tries to justify it correct them. No, it isn't right to pirate Windows/Office just because you can't afford them. When there was no other choice some people would fuzz the issue and try to justify it. But when there are safe, legal and FREE alternatives there is no moral argument possible for stealing.
And if a site still insists on running bootleg, drop a dime to the BSA and make sure they suffer the consequences of their moral failings. Even if they are too stupid to learn they can at least be an example to others. What is wrong with seeing the wicked suffer? Would you ignore a drug dealer? Pimp? Pawn shop knowingly dealing in stolen goods? Someone knowingly buying stolen goods? No, be a good citizen and take a bite out of crime.
Which is precisely why Free Software/Open Source folk need to be even more anal retentive than the BSA regarding software piracy. Zero tolerance! Report em all. Take piracy off the table as an option and we can make some major inroads from people who can't afford Microsoft and other commercial products now. And later they wouldn't bother switching from something that they already know and is free.
There really isn't an excuse to pirate anymore. In days gone by there just wasn't an option for people who couldn't afford software that cost far more than the hardware, especially in the developing world, starving students, etc. But now we can offer those people a safe, legal and effective alternative. Piracy is just unfair competition for us.:) So lets help stamp it out. Microsoft wants to make WGA even more locked down? Great! How can we help!
> Quick! Someone post some linux evangelism there!
Yes Linux has a better record. But then so does everyone else. Go ahead, name the operating system with a security record equal or inferior to Windows over the last decade.
*BSD? Nope, even if you exempt OpenBSD *BSD has a far better record than anything Microsoft has released in the past decade. And OpenBSD wears the crown when it comes to security. Usability, scalability and such are legitimate counter concerns though and explain why OpenBSD hasn't conquered the world.
Linux? Regardless of the distribution, if it is a large enough operation to keep up with the torrent of errata teh universe of OpenSource/Free Software generates they have all done better then Microsoft when it comes to timely updates. And with the bonus of the existence of "Enterprise" distributions for a good part of the decade that focus on errata updates that won't have unrelated breakage.
Apple? Their record with OS 8 and OS 9 beat Microsoft and OS X just upped their game.
Sun? HP? IBM? Please.
I'm not saying anyone should be proud of their security history and methodology, all software currently sucks ass. But since we have to use something NOW the question is why is the worst vendor on 90% of the world's machines?
What I'd like to see is a major concerted effort to raise software quality over adding new features. Engage the CS departments in teh universities to have all students audit some code. After all, most operating systems these days allow access to the source. And auditing real code would be a good experience for em. They would see first hand how wretched much of the code actually in use is firsthand. And if legends are writing that stuff they just might listen a bit more when when the prof is badgering about not hotdogging in the belief they are too leet to make those 'idiot' mistakes.
And for the Linux world I'd like to see the major distros come together to take every package not currently at 1.0 and finish em or dump em. Then stabilise the codebase, audit the crap out of it and then freeze them, only accepting bug fixes. And a nice side effect is they would all have the SAME version. The original project can still release new versions but it won't get integrated into a major stable distro until they announce a new feature complete and AUDITED version. Seriously, is there anything else that needs to go into glibc? So why not stabilize it, sudit it and then freeze it? We need a trusted core that we don't have to update several times per year. As computers become central to our civilization we need them to work a lot more than we need shiny new features.
And just remember, this is the same development house that the whole world seems to have no problem with the thought of giving root acces to their machines so they can keep them 'safe.'
If those idiots don't screw the world up by their own incompetence first they are going to get Windows Update 0wn3d and allow someone malevolent to wreak even worse havok on the world.
Seriously, I can't understand how any Microsoft product is permitted to be used in any role where failure isn't an option. Finance, military, medical, etc should have imposed a ban a decade ago, forbidding the stuff from even being connected to a network port inside the secure inner firewall. Instead we are installing the stuff into the engine room on our warships, giving it sole control of the propulsion system.
This is insanity on a global scale. A lot of people even seem to understand the danger yet are too afraid to speak up loudly enough to be heard.
> Uhm, if you look at the braintrust behind "No Child Left Behind", I'm sure you'll rethink that statement.
1. The schools have been a void of academic activity for a generation, long before GW (shrub) Bush & Ted (drunken murdering basterd) Kennedy smiled together at a lectern to announce NCLB.
2. The sort of mental defectives who Ariana Huffington lets blog at her asylum are part of the problem, not the solution.
The idea behind NCLB was great, but of course after it made it's way through Congress, where the Democrats in the Senate would have fillibustered any bill that actually reduced the power of a key source of campaign funding, the end product was somewhat less.
Please explain your objection to the core ideas behind NCLB? The one most often railed against by the union thugs is the testing. It isn't fair, now we spend most of our time just prepping kids to take the test. And the problem with that is? If the test represents a valid set of the things a student should know before exiting a grade level then where is the objection? If it doesn't correctly represent the knowledge required wouldn't the better course of action to be pushing to revise the question pool or the examination procedure believed to be defective?
Or is it a case of political correct theory, i.e. no subjective test is possible. Which I read as "Don't you dare presume to judge what we, the annointed few in teachers union, deign to teach your children. If they can't balance a checkbook after graduation that isn't important, we felt it best to enhance their self esteem."
Sorry, without testing no improvement in quality is possible. And of course the next logical step is that until we are willing to sack teachers and whole schools who consistently underperform little progress is going to be possible.
> I don't see why paying people based on merit (versus seniority) is unacceptable. That's how most of the real world works.
But you don't understand. The schools aren't about the students, they are all about the teachers unions. In exactly the same way the big three automakers slowly morphed from being about making cars into social programs for union autoworkers. It is what unions do, and when it is a union in control of a government monopoly like education it gets insane. The schools now exist for the benefit of the teachers, students are at best a useful prop for lobbying for more money. Reality has long been divorced from what goes on inside government schools. Untested fads by fashionable marxists intellectuals get rolled out into classrooms nationwide without any sort of testing, political correctness runs rampant, etc. Accountability is almost non existant. Unless a teacher gets caught in a politically incorrect belief or having sex with a student their odds of being fired for malpractice isn't measurable.
And yet the beauracy is so wretched that no sane person wants to teach even with the fairly good pay (and it IS fairly good pay in most states for the hours worked and the level of education required) in most states and the all but certain job security mentioned above, A doctorate in math or science is not good enough to qualify one to teach unless you can first endure a couple of semesters of mind numbing 'teaching' courses designed to both indoctrinate politically correct views and raise an artifical barrier to entry into the profession.
> No true rightist/conservative/facist believes that all men are created equal.
Of course not. Only an idiot believes everyone is equal. But we must all be equal before the law to the maximum extent we can manage. My testimony in court should be equal to Donald Trump, although in reality we both know the jury will probably weight the Donald a bit more. Theory, meet reality. But we don't have rules like the crap in Sharia law that says a man's testimony is equal to three women's.
> They pay lip service to everyone competing on level playing fields but in the end all right theory boils down > to those not born with a silver spoon in their mouths existing only to feed the rich.
Bullcrap. Go pull the Forbes list of richest people and go count the ones 'born with a silver spoon' vs the ones who made their wealth themselves. In America and most of Western Civilivation for that matter, anyone with a little ability, a lot of desire and a dash of luck can rise from abject poverty to the middle class and more than a few make it to the upper classes in a single generation.
> You really can't have civil liberties as we commonly understand them when there are people who are denied > even such basic human needs as education and health care because their family incomes are below > a certain level.
I don't know where you are posting from, but here in the US of A everyone has an opportunity to get an education. Some government schools suck more than others but at even the worse a determined pupil CAN learn to read enough to learn how to learn and we have lots of public libraries to learn what the schools can't/won't teach.
As for an entitlement to health care I'll save that rant for another day, this thread has already drifted too much.
> You can't really have the right to free speech when you can't even afford a printing press or to access > other mass communication media.
In modern America everyone has access to mass communication either directly or as part of an organization. Even the poorest can afford to have enough handbills printed to plaster a city. A small group can afford billboards, pamphlets and local radio and TV. And because of the 1st Amendment they don't have to get permission... at least until recently if you want to politic near an election.
> You don't know what civil liberties are if you think you need a printing press or a 50,000 watt > transmitter to exercise them.
Ok, there are worse degrees of tyranny. But being 'free' to bitch and moan at a bar somewhere so long as nobody but a few of yer mates hear it really isn't what the Founding Fathers had in mind when crafting the 1st Amendment. No, the 1st Amendment was about having the right to enter the public arena of ideas and try your damndest to influence policy. Nowadays in a nation of 300 million that means access to the mass media. If only an annointed few are permitted access to the media then you have an elite who rules and everyone else who shuts the hell up and obeys.
> I realise that in general, welfare systems - as they're currently implemented, do not function in this way
And it can't ever work as you describe so long as they are essentially "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." and any government attempt at welfare programs must degenerate to that, almost by definition but certainly in practice.
Because if the government is doing it you get several undesirable side effects. First is that is done at gunpoint, like anything the government does, i.e 'donate' or we will kill/imprision you. Second is that letting the government do it turns charity into an entitlement. When someone is down on their luck and depending on a private charity they understand (or are quickly educated) that they are getting a free handout because someone feels sorry for em and that if they don't show some motivation to improve themselves they will eventually get told to bugger off. But if one is entitled, simply by virtue of citizenship (or now just by managing to scurry over the border....) to being supported out of the government's treasury then it is a short mental jump to deciding they are OWED a living.
But the worst problem with a representitive government getting into the charity business is that the freeloaders can vote themselves bread and circuses...... it has only taken a couple of generations to create a vast and growing unproductive class who have decided that not only are they owed a minimal existence that they are also owed enough to afford a cell phone, cable tv, dvd and a stash of weed. And it didn't take long at all to find an ample supply of politicians who are willing to pander to the needs of those who 'vote for a living.'
Consider that most of the people displaced out of those housing projects in New Orleans' 9th Ward were second, third and a fair number of fourth generation welfare clients incapable of ever sustaining themselves. Which is why for all the public statements, every city was desperately trying to divert as many of those busses elsewhere as they could. And for good reason, the vast majority of them are to this day still wards of the state, living in the housing projects in their new host states & cities.
> I know you're just a trolling nutbag who wants attention....
Pot meet kettle. Why not try attacking his ideas instead of launching a pointless personal attack? Start with pointing out which of the things he assterted are false:
That Rodney King was
1) speeding (in a totally reckless manner)
2) probably high on PCP
3) resisted arrest, tried to attack a policeman
4) had to be beaten into submission
I'd say someone who meets all four of those qualifications could rightly be called a 'scumbag', but we will probably have to agree to disagree. But what isn't debatable is #4 since that was the primary issue in the trial and the verdict of the jury is final.
> The rest of us do not evaulate whether the police are brutal by who the brutalizing is done to, but rather > by what exactly the police brutally do.
Despite this event being a key part of the mythology of the left in the US, the plain fact is that Rodney King was not the victim of excessive force. By exactly the same relentless logic that OJ didn't kill his ex wife. The jury in neither case was hung, there was no mistrial or a case tossed on appeal by a techicality, both were unambigious not guilty verdicts. So pull yer panties up and get over it.
No true leftist/progressive/socialist believes in -individual- civil liberties. They pay lip service to group rights but don't believe in that either. In the end all left theory boils down to the individual is a meaningless cog in the system who has no inalienable rights, existing only to serve the state.
You really can't have civil liberties as we commonly understand them without the economic and property rights that make them real. You can't really have the right to free speech for example if you aren't allowed to own a printing press or purchase access to other mass communication media. See the US McCain/Feingold bill for example.
This new French law is for one purpose only, to suppress knowledge of the ongoing riots by the Religiojn of Peace(tm) in the slums around Paris.
> Check among similarly educated persons and teachers indeed do make less than average.
Not really. One Masters degree is not equal to a another. There are far too many incompetents walking around with advanced degrees from education programs to compare them with real degrees. It has always been a truism that "Those who can't do, Teach." but it has never been more true than in today's government schools, only the incompetents who can't hack it anywhere else enter the system or stay in the profession for long. Paying them more would only be throwing good money after bad, because paying the same dullards, morons, union hacks and disillisioned folk hoping to hang in to retirement more would change nothing. And unless you could double the pay few competent people would be willing to endure the mind numbing brainwashing required to get the teaching certficate required to enter the profession.
Fact: At least 50% of current degreed teachers have a practical level of skill below the official 'high school' education level. They may know more than 50% of what gets passed out of the government schools with a diploma every year but that is a different story.
Fact: A Doctorate in Math, Science or History is insufficient credentials to teach a High School course in the subject. Unless one is willing to endure years of brain numbing courses in 'teaching' the unions won't allow you to teach in government schools. Which all but ensures that only the mindless will be teaching. No amount of money can change that.
Fact: Unlike most degreed professions, teaching is unionized. This means that unlike other professions, teachers must be regarded as interchangable cogs; merit pay is violently opposed for example. This means market based reforms can't be tried. Add in tenure and change is impossible. Tenure was an idea intended to protect those in academic settings who might espouse controversial ideas or want to publish research the mainstream might find objectionable. For scholars who needed the academic freedom to follow their research wherever the facts or their conscience lead them without fear of being sacked. K12 teachers do not publish new research and often aren't even permitted to design their own lesson plans without oversight. Why the hell do they get tenure?
No, the only solution is to end the government schools and try again in the private sector. That also has potential problems but we already know how horrible the government's attempt turned out.
> let me restate that ps3 with full hardware access, or hacked 360(full hardware access implied)
No. The PS3 also uses a hypervisor to keep Linux out of things Sony doesn't want you to touch. They allow basic framebuffer access, including direct YUV video modes at all of the popular HD resolutions. But 3D is reserved for PS3 games who pay their percentage to Sony. Hard drive access is also regulated to keep Linux inside the portion of the drive reserved for it.
On the other hand this hack for the 360 is useless. To make use of it means you have to abandon ANY use of the hardware as a game console (or at least never connect it to Live again) and even that assumes a sufficient supply of machines with that narrow band of revision numbers can be located to have a critical mass to create and sustain a Linux port.
Really, this is just another incarnation of the 'I'm anonymous on the Internet.... What? I ain't?' You can't just flaunt the law and expect to get away with it forever. Doesn't matter whether you 'feel' you should be allowed to share music/video with a couple million of your best friends, the law in most countries says you can't.
So admit you are breaking the law and do it like a criminal, out of the open and looking over your shoulder. Swap with people you KNOW. If you are doing it online do it in closed groups with crypto and in cells to minimize the damage from infiltration.
With a little thought put into it there could be almost as much file sharing as now, and if the natural urge to go for a hub/spoke arrangement can be curbed there wouldn't be much that could be done to stop it.
> You do know that you can password protect the Wii's Internet access, right?
No, don't have a Wii. Personally don't own a console and haven't since the 2600. But I did hook up the grandkids with a Gamecube for Xmas and when they get a little older a Wii would be a natural next step since it is backwards compatible. Good to know the "Big N" was on the ball though.
> Killing the connection at the router is not a good measure, since your neighbor might have an open router.
So it can't be locked to an ESSID or to secure connections? That would be weak. But anyway, I have more of a problem with neighbors associating to my open AP than accidentally picking up others. I see a few others, but all fairly weak signals.
And yes my AP is open, I don't care if the guy next door borrows some bandwidth now and again, I tell em it's ok. Yes there are risks, but if we all fort up and lock everything the world is a crappier place. I like finding open access points so the Golden Rule says I should return the favor.
> Access isn't the issue in the modern era; teaching kids good judgment is.
No. Listen up, I love the Internet. But way back in the 90's when I was selling access I would be blunt with parents on the issue of kids & the Internet. Being in Louisiana I'd use this as an example: "The Internet is great, there is just about anything you could ask for on it. And that is also the bad part. Unless you are the sort of parent who would take the kids to Mardi Gras and tell em to "Have a good time, we will meet back up here in the morning." you won't turn kids loose unsupervised. Because the horror stories in the news aren't even close to describing what lurks in the horrid dank corners of the 'net." No, kids should NOT have unrestricted Internet connectivity in their room. Somewhere in the teens, yes. Exactly when depends on the maturity level of the kid in question.
It is easy to understand why Nintendo wants Wii to get Internet access. But they really need to put in an interlock so parents can have the option to disable it. For a Wii in the living room it would be great, for a unit intended to be installed in a pre-teen's bedroom it would be a dealbreaker for me if not for the fact I'm a geek and could just kill access at the router.
Because the Internet is NOT 'child safe' and I like it that way. There is really only two ways this can play out in the end, either we make the whole Internet 'child proof', turning the greatest wonder of the modern age into one huge smarmy Disney/Nick horror or we have to say "No, the Internet isn't for small children." and limit em to a whitelist of safe domains.
> Understanding how Microsoft Zune's DRM works helps to answer a lot of questions:
Except for one important difference. People actually give a crap about iTunes/FairPlay, whereas Microsoft's little brown chunk 'o oversized product is a different matter.....
And we must not forget that in the digital music scene Microsoft doesn't wield anywhere close to monopoly levels of market power, while Apple currently does. (Yea I know Microsoft eventually WILL have the monopoly, but that is the future. It is Apple's destiny to turn over their markets to Microsoft after all.)
> well then get what's on the market with the least negative impact on our planet.
No, screw that. I buy what is in MY long term best interest. I am switching to CFL lighting because that is where the math leads me. They save ME money. Would I pay $100 for a light that had the same power consumption as CFL but less environmental (say no mercury content) impact? Hell no and I bet your pious green ass wouldn't either.
Environmentalism sounds great if you are a hippy still in college or living in Mom's basement. But in the real world out here with us who write the check for things we care about cost efficiencies at least as much as green politics. You want to end fossil fuels? Find something that is more efficient and the market will take care of the rest.
> Having said all of that, anyone who walks into a store and buys an incandescent is either > a) stupid, b) very stupid, or c) they live in an apartment with unmetered electricity.
Lots of reasons to buy an incandescent light. Lights that see very short on cycles, i.e. closets, second bathroom, etc. Anywhere the cost of the actual power consumption is small compared to the cost of replacing a much more expensive light that has a service life that depends far more on on/off cycles than power on hours despite the ad copy on the package talking about how many years it will last.
Any application where the spectral qualities of the light source matter, i.e. photography is another must use incandescent light situation. I can promise you that if idiot Democrats outlaw incandescent lighting they will either make an exception for professional photography/cinematography or watch a large black market operate in the open in Hollywood and Madison Ave.
Now about that 'smarter than thou' attitude of yours? Why don't you just STFU ya ignorant savage.
Ok, I'll feed the troll on the off chance you are really serious, besides you will probably be the only one reading a reply this old....
> Please give me some examples of what makes Vista a "turd."
Just helped a relative build a new box to feed their Vanguard addiction. And of course they ordered Vista Home Premium. The graphics in the game were crap, it would only see 2GB of the 4 they installed and PeoplePC wouldn't work with Vista. Well it sorta worked, Seamonkey would work, IE and Vanguard would prompt to make a connection even though it was dialed up. They just went and got a copy of XP and reloaded. Still only sees 2GB but teh graphics are what one would expect from a 512MB Nvidia product and dialup works again.
> My very large company is considering upgrading and after reading your comment is now very concerned that this may not be a very good thing to do.
You can expect the same sort of 'stuff that works in XP don't work.' I'm sure they will beat down the more horrible bugs by SP1 though.
The problem is more complex than just blaming the media. It is a circular problem, modern Americans are amoral, lazy and uneducated so the media gives em what they want. Of course the media also had a large hand in creating that populace but gets to share the blame with the government schools, the entertainment industry (related to the media but somewhat seperate) and the socialists who pushed things down this road to hell we are now pretty much stuck on.
A hundred years ago the average American was a hell of a lot more educated than his modern descendent, such that most people would have seen right through the idiocy and emotional based 'policies' that drive modern political discourse. Which is why a determined campaign was waged to dumb people down.
Ideas that can't be expressed in a paragraph (or better a bumber sticker) have no chance of going anywhere in these days of two minute TV news stories that have to fit in the idea, the other party objecting to it and the network twit pontificating about it. And ideas that by all rights should be dead issues because they are so self evidently bogus are taken seriously because politicians can rely on 90% of the viewers being too ignorant to know better and that under no condition will the TV dude call them out on saying something retarded.
So where does it end? Can it be reversed? Doubt it. It will end, as Amb. Kosh said, "In fire."
Oh course Vista is a turd now, like every other Microsoft release. Which is why anyone with a lick of sense waits until the first service pack before deploying. Then it will only suck, but that is about as good as Microsoft knows how to make a product so those stuck on Windows have learned to live with that level of pain.
Of course ya just gotta feel sorry for the poor schmucks who buy a new namebrand PC between the release of Vista and SP1 since they don't get a choice. Which is just one more reason why only the uneducated masses buy a namebrand PC.
> I tell everyone: "Assume your hard drive will fail at any moment, starting now! What is on your > hard drive that you would be upset if you never saw it again?"
True enough, I use a similar warning. Mine is, "Don't leave anything on your hard drive you care about. If you manage to make it a year without reloading Windows the drive can crap out with no warning. Burn anything you can't download again to a CD/DVD."
Personally I don't have to worry about Windows and I have a RAID5 at home.... but I still burn anythiing I care about. Important stuff like photos get backed up to a DVD-RAM until I fill it then I burn two DVD-R copies on different brands of quality media.
The problem is hard drives have become freaking huge. Where can you backup a modern large drive? We are back where we were when backing up a 60MB drive meant a crate of floppies, only now we need a spindle of DVD-Rs and we actually need more time. We need those holographics DVDs!
I have taken to recommending RAID1. It is cheap and almost any non-laptop can do it these days. With drives as unreliable as they have become it makes sense for anything other than a gaming rig.
> Um, but doesn't the summary of the paper say that there is no infant mortality effect, and that > failure rates increase with time, and thus the bathtub curve doesn't actually apply?
That may be the new 'theory' but we all know about theory vs reality. Here in reality if you put a couple of dozen new drives into service you have one or two spare hard drives to replace the ones that WILL fail in the first week. Especially with consumer grade drives typical in workstation deployment. If you only have one dud out of twenty it was a good rollout.
And as for some of the other assertions in this paper (well the summary, haven't read this one yet, still wanting to reread the google paper again, need to hours in a day.... bah!).......
> Costly FC and SCSI drives are more reliable than cheap SATA drives.
Sorta. Again, real world vs theory. Try banging the hell out of an off the shelf consumer drive 24/7/365 and see how long it holds up. Yea, thought so. Hope you didn't have anything important on that paperweight.
> RAID 5 is safe because the odds of two drives failing in the same RAID set are so low.
This one should bother ya if you are overly relying on the 'infallibility' of RAID5. Remember kids, drives fail from two major groups of causes, internal and external. If a power event kills one drive in the array the odds are pretty low of only one being dead, you just might not KNOW about #2 yet. And filesystem corruption will be faithfully mirrored onto the array. Obey the 1st Commandment: "Thou Shalt Make Backups."
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> and to do so, I know of 'some students', who have pirated the various programs.
Find a vendor who doesn't offer a student discount. Oh, you don't want the crippled student version? It does everything you need to pass the course, so don't use that watermark on every page to justify stealing the full edition.
> please don't give me Gimp when I ask for Photoshop.
If you can AFFORD Photoshop, great! Many people who edit photographs professionally believe the price is more than offset by their increased productivity. But if you can't afford Photoshop you have no right to steal it. Don't you even try justifying it either. Try Paint Shop Pro if you just can't learn The GIMP. PSP is well regarded and much less expensive.
> Interesting view - shaft them, then they'll come to us!
Not at all. But remember, we DO believe in copyrights, it is what makes our licenses work. If we expect people to obey the GPL it isn't much of a mental leap to believe people should honor Microsoft's copyright. Forget the EULA, it is worthless and almost certainly unenforcable outside of site licenses which are real signed contracts. But Windows/Office ARE copyrighted works and people shouldn't be bootlegging em.
If someone tries to justify it correct them. No, it isn't right to pirate Windows/Office just because you can't afford them. When there was no other choice some people would fuzz the issue and try to justify it. But when there are safe, legal and FREE alternatives there is no moral argument possible for stealing.
And if a site still insists on running bootleg, drop a dime to the BSA and make sure they suffer the consequences of their moral failings. Even if they are too stupid to learn they can at least be an example to others. What is wrong with seeing the wicked suffer? Would you ignore a drug dealer? Pimp? Pawn shop knowingly dealing in stolen goods? Someone knowingly buying stolen goods? No, be a good citizen and take a bite out of crime.
Which is precisely why Free Software/Open Source folk need to be even more anal retentive than the BSA regarding software piracy. Zero tolerance! Report em all. Take piracy off the table as an option and we can make some major inroads from people who can't afford Microsoft and other commercial products now. And later they wouldn't bother switching from something that they already know and is free.
:) So lets help stamp it out. Microsoft wants to make WGA even more locked down? Great! How can we help!
There really isn't an excuse to pirate anymore. In days gone by there just wasn't an option for people who couldn't afford software that cost far more than the hardware, especially in the developing world, starving students, etc. But now we can offer those people a safe, legal and effective alternative. Piracy is just unfair competition for us.
> Quick! Someone post some linux evangelism there!
Yes Linux has a better record. But then so does everyone else. Go ahead, name the operating system with a security record equal or inferior to Windows over the last decade.
*BSD? Nope, even if you exempt OpenBSD *BSD has a far better record than anything Microsoft has released in the past decade. And OpenBSD wears the crown when it comes to security. Usability, scalability and such are legitimate counter concerns though and explain why OpenBSD hasn't conquered the world.
Linux? Regardless of the distribution, if it is a large enough operation to keep up with the torrent of errata teh universe of OpenSource/Free Software generates they have all done better then Microsoft when it comes to timely updates. And with the bonus of the existence of "Enterprise" distributions for a good part of the decade that focus on errata updates that won't have unrelated breakage.
Apple? Their record with OS 8 and OS 9 beat Microsoft and OS X just upped their game.
Sun? HP? IBM? Please.
I'm not saying anyone should be proud of their security history and methodology, all software currently sucks ass. But since we have to use something NOW the question is why is the worst vendor on 90% of the world's machines?
What I'd like to see is a major concerted effort to raise software quality over adding new features. Engage the CS departments in teh universities to have all students audit some code. After all, most operating systems these days allow access to the source. And auditing real code would be a good experience for em. They would see first hand how wretched much of the code actually in use is firsthand. And if legends are writing that stuff they just might listen a bit more when when the prof is badgering about not hotdogging in the belief they are too leet to make those 'idiot' mistakes.
And for the Linux world I'd like to see the major distros come together to take every package not currently at 1.0 and finish em or dump em. Then stabilise the codebase, audit the crap out of it and then freeze them, only accepting bug fixes. And a nice side effect is they would all have the SAME version. The original project can still release new versions but it won't get integrated into a major stable distro until they announce a new feature complete and AUDITED version. Seriously, is there anything else that needs to go into glibc? So why not stabilize it, sudit it and then freeze it? We need a trusted core that we don't have to update several times per year. As computers become central to our civilization we need them to work a lot more than we need shiny new features.
And just remember, this is the same development house that the whole world seems to have no problem with the thought of giving root acces to their machines so they can keep them 'safe.'
If those idiots don't screw the world up by their own incompetence first they are going to get Windows Update 0wn3d and allow someone malevolent to wreak even worse havok on the world.
Seriously, I can't understand how any Microsoft product is permitted to be used in any role where failure isn't an option. Finance, military, medical, etc should have imposed a ban a decade ago, forbidding the stuff from even being connected to a network port inside the secure inner firewall. Instead we are installing the stuff into the engine room on our warships, giving it sole control of the propulsion system.
This is insanity on a global scale. A lot of people even seem to understand the danger yet are too afraid to speak up loudly enough to be heard.
> Uhm, if you look at the braintrust behind "No Child Left Behind", I'm sure you'll rethink that statement.
1. The schools have been a void of academic activity for a generation, long before GW (shrub) Bush & Ted (drunken murdering basterd) Kennedy smiled together at a lectern to announce NCLB.
2. The sort of mental defectives who Ariana Huffington lets blog at her asylum are part of the problem, not the solution.
The idea behind NCLB was great, but of course after it made it's way through Congress, where the Democrats in the Senate would have fillibustered any bill that actually reduced the power of a key source of campaign funding, the end product was somewhat less.
Please explain your objection to the core ideas behind NCLB? The one most often railed against by the union thugs is the testing. It isn't fair, now we spend most of our time just prepping kids to take the test. And the problem with that is? If the test represents a valid set of the things a student should know before exiting a grade level then where is the objection? If it doesn't correctly represent the knowledge required wouldn't the better course of action to be pushing to revise the question pool or the examination procedure believed to be defective?
Or is it a case of political correct theory, i.e. no subjective test is possible. Which I read as "Don't you dare presume to judge what we, the annointed few in teachers union, deign to teach your children. If they can't balance a checkbook after graduation that isn't important, we felt it best to enhance their self esteem."
Sorry, without testing no improvement in quality is possible. And of course the next logical step is that until we are willing to sack teachers and whole schools who consistently underperform little progress is going to be possible.
> I don't see why paying people based on merit (versus seniority) is unacceptable. That's how most of the real world works.
But you don't understand. The schools aren't about the students, they are all about the teachers unions. In exactly the same way the big three automakers slowly morphed from being about making cars into social programs for union autoworkers. It is what unions do, and when it is a union in control of a government monopoly like education it gets insane. The schools now exist for the benefit of the teachers, students are at best a useful prop for lobbying for more money. Reality has long been divorced from what goes on inside government schools. Untested fads by fashionable marxists intellectuals get rolled out into classrooms nationwide without any sort of testing, political correctness runs rampant, etc. Accountability is almost non existant. Unless a teacher gets caught in a politically incorrect belief or having sex with a student their odds of being fired for malpractice isn't measurable.
And yet the beauracy is so wretched that no sane person wants to teach even with the fairly good pay (and it IS fairly good pay in most states for the hours worked and the level of education required) in most states and the all but certain job security mentioned above, A doctorate in math or science is not good enough to qualify one to teach unless you can first endure a couple of semesters of mind numbing 'teaching' courses designed to both indoctrinate politically correct views and raise an artifical barrier to entry into the profession.
> No true rightist/conservative/facist believes that all men are created equal.
Of course not. Only an idiot believes everyone is equal. But we must all be equal before the law to the maximum extent we can manage. My testimony in court should be equal to Donald Trump, although in reality we both know the jury will probably weight the Donald a bit more. Theory, meet reality. But we don't have rules like the crap in Sharia law that says a man's testimony is equal to three women's.
> They pay lip service to everyone competing on level playing fields but in the end all right theory boils down
> to those not born with a silver spoon in their mouths existing only to feed the rich.
Bullcrap. Go pull the Forbes list of richest people and go count the ones 'born with a silver spoon' vs the ones who made their wealth themselves. In America and most of Western Civilivation for that matter, anyone with a little ability, a lot of desire and a dash of luck can rise from abject poverty to the middle class and more than a few make it to the upper classes in a single generation.
> You really can't have civil liberties as we commonly understand them when there are people who are denied
> even such basic human needs as education and health care because their family incomes are below
> a certain level.
I don't know where you are posting from, but here in the US of A everyone has an opportunity to get an education. Some government schools suck more than others but at even the worse a determined pupil CAN learn to read enough to learn how to learn and we have lots of public libraries to learn what the schools can't/won't teach.
As for an entitlement to health care I'll save that rant for another day, this thread has already drifted too much.
> You can't really have the right to free speech when you can't even afford a printing press or to access
> other mass communication media.
In modern America everyone has access to mass communication either directly or as part of an organization. Even the poorest can afford to have enough handbills printed to plaster a city. A small group can afford billboards, pamphlets and local radio and TV. And because of the 1st Amendment they don't have to get permission... at least until recently if you want to politic near an election.
> You don't know what civil liberties are if you think you need a printing press or a 50,000 watt
> transmitter to exercise them.
Ok, there are worse degrees of tyranny. But being 'free' to bitch and moan at a bar somewhere so long as nobody but a few of yer mates hear it really isn't what the Founding Fathers had in mind when crafting the 1st Amendment. No, the 1st Amendment was about having the right to enter the public arena of ideas and try your damndest to influence policy. Nowadays in a nation of 300 million that means access to the mass media. If only an annointed few are permitted access to the media then you have an elite who rules and everyone else who shuts the hell up and obeys.
> I realise that in general, welfare systems - as they're currently implemented, do not function in this way
And it can't ever work as you describe so long as they are essentially "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." and any government attempt at welfare programs must degenerate to that, almost by definition but certainly in practice.
Because if the government is doing it you get several undesirable side effects. First is that is done at gunpoint, like anything the government does, i.e 'donate' or we will kill/imprision you. Second is that letting the government do it turns charity into an entitlement. When someone is down on their luck and depending on a private charity they understand (or are quickly educated) that they are getting a free handout because someone feels sorry for em and that if they don't show some motivation to improve themselves they will eventually get told to bugger off. But if one is entitled, simply by virtue of citizenship (or now just by managing to scurry over the border....) to being supported out of the government's treasury then it is a short mental jump to deciding they are OWED a living.
But the worst problem with a representitive government getting into the charity business is that the freeloaders can vote themselves bread and circuses...... it has only taken a couple of generations to create a vast and growing unproductive class who have decided that not only are they owed a minimal existence that they are also owed enough to afford a cell phone, cable tv, dvd and a stash of weed. And it didn't take long at all to find an ample supply of politicians who are willing to pander to the needs of those who 'vote for a living.'
Consider that most of the people displaced out of those housing projects in New Orleans' 9th Ward were second, third and a fair number of fourth generation welfare clients incapable of ever sustaining themselves. Which is why for all the public statements, every city was desperately trying to divert as many of those busses elsewhere as they could. And for good reason, the vast majority of them are to this day still wards of the state, living in the housing projects in their new host states & cities.
> I know you're just a trolling nutbag who wants attention....
Pot meet kettle. Why not try attacking his ideas instead of launching a pointless personal attack? Start with pointing out which of the things he assterted are false:
That Rodney King was
1) speeding (in a totally reckless manner)
2) probably high on PCP
3) resisted arrest, tried to attack a policeman
4) had to be beaten into submission
I'd say someone who meets all four of those qualifications could rightly be called a 'scumbag', but we will probably have to agree to disagree. But what isn't debatable is #4 since that was the primary issue in the trial and the verdict of the jury is final.
> The rest of us do not evaulate whether the police are brutal by who the brutalizing is done to, but rather
> by what exactly the police brutally do.
Despite this event being a key part of the mythology of the left in the US, the plain fact is that Rodney King was not the victim of excessive force. By exactly the same relentless logic that OJ didn't kill his ex wife. The jury in neither case was hung, there was no mistrial or a case tossed on appeal by a techicality, both were unambigious not guilty verdicts. So pull yer panties up and get over it.
> Not all leftists believe in civil liberties...
No true leftist/progressive/socialist believes in -individual- civil liberties. They pay lip service to group rights but don't believe in that either. In the end all left theory boils down to the individual is a meaningless cog in the system who has no inalienable rights, existing only to serve the state.
You really can't have civil liberties as we commonly understand them without the economic and property rights that make them real. You can't really have the right to free speech for example if you aren't allowed to own a printing press or purchase access to other mass communication media. See the US McCain/Feingold bill for example.
This new French law is for one purpose only, to suppress knowledge of the ongoing riots by the Religiojn of Peace(tm) in the slums around Paris.
> Check among similarly educated persons and teachers indeed do make less than average.
Not really. One Masters degree is not equal to a another. There are far too many incompetents walking around with advanced degrees from education programs to compare them with real degrees. It has always been a truism that "Those who can't do, Teach." but it has never been more true than in today's government schools, only the incompetents who can't hack it anywhere else enter the system or stay in the profession for long. Paying them more would only be throwing good money after bad, because paying the same dullards, morons, union hacks and disillisioned folk hoping to hang in to retirement more would change nothing. And unless you could double the pay few competent people would be willing to endure the mind numbing brainwashing required to get the teaching certficate required to enter the profession.
Fact: At least 50% of current degreed teachers have a practical level of skill below the official 'high school' education level. They may know more than 50% of what gets passed out of the government schools with a diploma every year but that is a different story.
Fact: A Doctorate in Math, Science or History is insufficient credentials to teach a High School course in the subject. Unless one is willing to endure years of brain numbing courses in 'teaching' the unions won't allow you to teach in government schools. Which all but ensures that only the mindless will be teaching. No amount of money can change that.
Fact: Unlike most degreed professions, teaching is unionized. This means that unlike other professions, teachers must be regarded as interchangable cogs; merit pay is violently opposed for example. This means market based reforms can't be tried. Add in tenure and change is impossible. Tenure was an idea intended to protect those in academic settings who might espouse controversial ideas or want to publish research the mainstream might find objectionable. For scholars who needed the academic freedom to follow their research wherever the facts or their conscience lead them without fear of being sacked. K12 teachers do not publish new research and often aren't even permitted to design their own lesson plans without oversight. Why the hell do they get tenure?
No, the only solution is to end the government schools and try again in the private sector. That also has potential problems but we already know how horrible the government's attempt turned out.
> let me restate that ps3 with full hardware access, or hacked 360(full hardware access implied)
No. The PS3 also uses a hypervisor to keep Linux out of things Sony doesn't want you to touch. They allow basic framebuffer access, including direct YUV video modes at all of the popular HD resolutions. But 3D is reserved for PS3 games who pay their percentage to Sony. Hard drive access is also regulated to keep Linux inside the portion of the drive reserved for it.
On the other hand this hack for the 360 is useless. To make use of it means you have to abandon ANY use of the hardware as a game console (or at least never connect it to Live again) and even that assumes a sufficient supply of machines with that narrow band of revision numbers can be located to have a critical mass to create and sustain a Linux port.
Really, this is just another incarnation of the 'I'm anonymous on the Internet.... What? I ain't?' You can't just flaunt the law and expect to get away with it forever. Doesn't matter whether you 'feel' you should be allowed to share music/video with a couple million of your best friends, the law in most countries says you can't.
So admit you are breaking the law and do it like a criminal, out of the open and looking over your shoulder. Swap with people you KNOW. If you are doing it online do it in closed groups with crypto and in cells to minimize the damage from infiltration.
With a little thought put into it there could be almost as much file sharing as now, and if the natural urge to go for a hub/spoke arrangement can be curbed there wouldn't be much that could be done to stop it.
> You do know that you can password protect the Wii's Internet access, right?
No, don't have a Wii. Personally don't own a console and haven't since the 2600. But I did hook up the grandkids with a Gamecube for Xmas and when they get a little older a Wii would be a natural next step since it is backwards compatible. Good to know the "Big N" was on the ball though.
> Killing the connection at the router is not a good measure, since your neighbor might have an open router.
So it can't be locked to an ESSID or to secure connections? That would be weak. But anyway, I have more of a problem with neighbors associating to my open AP than accidentally picking up others. I see a few others, but all fairly weak signals.
And yes my AP is open, I don't care if the guy next door borrows some bandwidth now and again, I tell em it's ok. Yes there are risks, but if we all fort up and lock everything the world is a crappier place. I like finding open access points so the Golden Rule says I should return the favor.
> Access isn't the issue in the modern era; teaching kids good judgment is.
No. Listen up, I love the Internet. But way back in the 90's when I was selling access I would be blunt with parents on the issue of kids & the Internet. Being in Louisiana I'd use this as an example: "The Internet is great, there is just about anything you could ask for on it. And that is also the bad part. Unless you are the sort of parent who would take the kids to Mardi Gras and tell em to "Have a good time, we will meet back up here in the morning." you won't turn kids loose unsupervised. Because the horror stories in the news aren't even close to describing what lurks in the horrid dank corners of the 'net." No, kids should NOT have unrestricted Internet connectivity in their room. Somewhere in the teens, yes. Exactly when depends on the maturity level of the kid in question.
It is easy to understand why Nintendo wants Wii to get Internet access. But they really need to put in an interlock so parents can have the option to disable it. For a Wii in the living room it would be great, for a unit intended to be installed in a pre-teen's bedroom it would be a dealbreaker for me if not for the fact I'm a geek and could just kill access at the router.
Because the Internet is NOT 'child safe' and I like it that way. There is really only two ways this can play out in the end, either we make the whole Internet 'child proof', turning the greatest wonder of the modern age into one huge smarmy Disney/Nick horror or we have to say "No, the Internet isn't for small children." and limit em to a whitelist of safe domains.
> Understanding how Microsoft Zune's DRM works helps to answer a lot of questions:
Except for one important difference. People actually give a crap about iTunes/FairPlay, whereas Microsoft's little brown chunk 'o oversized product is a different matter.....
And we must not forget that in the digital music scene Microsoft doesn't wield anywhere close to monopoly levels of market power, while Apple currently does. (Yea I know Microsoft eventually WILL have the monopoly, but that is the future. It is Apple's destiny to turn over their markets to Microsoft after all.)
> well then get what's on the market with the least negative impact on our planet.
No, screw that. I buy what is in MY long term best interest. I am switching to CFL lighting because that is where the math leads me. They save ME money. Would I pay $100 for a light that had the same power consumption as CFL but less environmental (say no mercury content) impact? Hell no and I bet your pious green ass wouldn't either.
Environmentalism sounds great if you are a hippy still in college or living in Mom's basement. But in the real world out here with us who write the check for things we care about cost efficiencies at least as much as green politics. You want to end fossil fuels? Find something that is more efficient and the market will take care of the rest.
> Having said all of that, anyone who walks into a store and buys an incandescent is either
> a) stupid, b) very stupid, or c) they live in an apartment with unmetered electricity.
Lots of reasons to buy an incandescent light. Lights that see very short on cycles, i.e. closets, second bathroom, etc. Anywhere the cost of the actual power consumption is small compared to the cost of replacing a much more expensive light that has a service life that depends far more on on/off cycles than power on hours despite the ad copy on the package talking about how many years it will last.
Any application where the spectral qualities of the light source matter, i.e. photography is another must use incandescent light situation. I can promise you that if idiot Democrats outlaw incandescent lighting they will either make an exception for professional photography/cinematography or watch a large black market operate in the open in Hollywood and Madison Ave.
Now about that 'smarter than thou' attitude of yours? Why don't you just STFU ya ignorant savage.
Ok, I'll feed the troll on the off chance you are really serious, besides you will probably be the only one reading a reply this old....
> Please give me some examples of what makes Vista a "turd."
Just helped a relative build a new box to feed their Vanguard addiction. And of course they ordered Vista Home Premium. The graphics in the game were crap, it would only see 2GB of the 4 they installed and PeoplePC wouldn't work with Vista. Well it sorta worked, Seamonkey would work, IE and Vanguard would prompt to make a connection even though it was dialed up. They just went and got a copy of XP and reloaded. Still only sees 2GB but teh graphics are what one would expect from a 512MB Nvidia product and dialup works again.
> My very large company is considering upgrading and after reading your comment is now very concerned that this may not be a very good thing to do.
You can expect the same sort of 'stuff that works in XP don't work.' I'm sure they will beat down the more horrible bugs by SP1 though.
The problem is more complex than just blaming the media. It is a circular problem, modern Americans are amoral, lazy and uneducated so the media gives em what they want. Of course the media also had a large hand in creating that populace but gets to share the blame with the government schools, the entertainment industry (related to the media but somewhat seperate) and the socialists who pushed things down this road to hell we are now pretty much stuck on.
A hundred years ago the average American was a hell of a lot more educated than his modern descendent, such that most people would have seen right through the idiocy and emotional based 'policies' that drive modern political discourse. Which is why a determined campaign was waged to dumb people down.
Ideas that can't be expressed in a paragraph (or better a bumber sticker) have no chance of going anywhere in these days of two minute TV news stories that have to fit in the idea, the other party objecting to it and the network twit pontificating about it. And ideas that by all rights should be dead issues because they are so self evidently bogus are taken seriously because politicians can rely on 90% of the viewers being too ignorant to know better and that under no condition will the TV dude call them out on saying something retarded.
So where does it end? Can it be reversed? Doubt it. It will end, as Amb. Kosh said, "In fire."
Oh course Vista is a turd now, like every other Microsoft release. Which is why anyone with a lick of sense waits until the first service pack before deploying. Then it will only suck, but that is about as good as Microsoft knows how to make a product so those stuck on Windows have learned to live with that level of pain.
Of course ya just gotta feel sorry for the poor schmucks who buy a new namebrand PC between the release of Vista and SP1 since they don't get a choice. Which is just one more reason why only the uneducated masses buy a namebrand PC.
> I tell everyone: "Assume your hard drive will fail at any moment, starting now! What is on your
> hard drive that you would be upset if you never saw it again?"
True enough, I use a similar warning. Mine is, "Don't leave anything on your hard drive you care about. If you manage to make it a year without reloading Windows the drive can crap out with no warning. Burn anything you can't download again to a CD/DVD."
Personally I don't have to worry about Windows and I have a RAID5 at home.... but I still burn anythiing I care about. Important stuff like photos get backed up to a DVD-RAM until I fill it then I burn two DVD-R copies on different brands of quality media.
The problem is hard drives have become freaking huge. Where can you backup a modern large drive? We are back where we were when backing up a 60MB drive meant a crate of floppies, only now we need a spindle of DVD-Rs and we actually need more time. We need those holographics DVDs!
I have taken to recommending RAID1. It is cheap and almost any non-laptop can do it these days. With drives as unreliable as they have become it makes sense for anything other than a gaming rig.
> Um, but doesn't the summary of the paper say that there is no infant mortality effect, and that
> failure rates increase with time, and thus the bathtub curve doesn't actually apply?
That may be the new 'theory' but we all know about theory vs reality. Here in reality if you put a couple of dozen new drives into service you have one or two spare hard drives to replace the ones that WILL fail in the first week. Especially with consumer grade drives typical in workstation deployment. If you only have one dud out of twenty it was a good rollout.
And as for some of the other assertions in this paper (well the summary, haven't read this one yet, still wanting to reread the google paper again, need to hours in a day.... bah!).......
> Costly FC and SCSI drives are more reliable than cheap SATA drives.
Sorta. Again, real world vs theory. Try banging the hell out of an off the shelf consumer drive 24/7/365 and see how long it holds up. Yea, thought so. Hope you didn't have anything important on that paperweight.
> RAID 5 is safe because the odds of two drives failing in the same RAID set are so low.
This one should bother ya if you are overly relying on the 'infallibility' of RAID5. Remember kids, drives fail from two major groups of causes, internal and external. If a power event kills one drive in the array the odds are pretty low of only one being dead, you just might not KNOW about #2 yet. And filesystem corruption will be faithfully mirrored onto the array. Obey the 1st Commandment: "Thou Shalt Make Backups."