are you sure it has no ethernet? that old-computers.com page you linked to says it has.
back in those days, ethernet ports were mostly either BNC (coax cable, 10base2) or AUI.
You can still find PCI cards for PCs with BNC connectors. Probably not new any more, but try a swap meet or ebay or in the old-parts bins at small computer retailers. lots of cheap NE2000 clones had both RJ45 and BNC. you'd also need a length of cable and a terminator for each end of the cable. this stuff is all long-obsolete but not that hard to find. esp the connectors and terminators.
you can even find MAUs with RJ-45 connectors (i've still got one lying around some where).
of course, getting this working might end up transferring the data a lot faster but could take you days to figure out how to set up networking on the old machine. serial is probably still best and easiest.
one easy way would be to use a linux box as a terminal (null-modem cable, running cu or minicom or something). set the linux software to log everything to disk and then cat the/dev/ node for the hard disk through 'od'. or, optionally, 'cat/dev/XXX | compress | od'.
that will get you a text hex dump of the entire disk. you can then extract that into a disk image. you may even be able to mount that on linux.
NOTE: od will massively inflate the size of the transfer. that's because it's converting the binary into an ascii representation. if the altos system has uuencode installed, that would probably be a better choice than od (it's a lot more efficient, averaging about 40% inflation of file size instead of more than doubling it with od).
similarly, you can get the files rather than a disk image by using tar. capture and log the output of "tar cf - / | od". again, optionally use compress in the pipeline. that will end up giving you a standard old-fashioned tar file which can just be extracted with GNU tar.
unfortunately, od has no ecc or even checksumming. if you have awk on the altos system, it might be better to write an awk script that does a hex dump with support for error correction). you could probably do it in sh too if you had to. note: it would be better to do it in a scripting language rather than C because the system may not even have a compiler installed, and even if it does you don't want to thrash the disk to compile something.
if the altos system has zmodem software installed (quite likely since it was a BBS), that would be even better. use minicom on the linux end (and make sure you have the lrzsz package installed for zmodem receive support), then pipe the output of cat or tar into sz instead of od. that would give you a transfer with error detection and recovery (i.e. error free transfer) and no need to mess around with the log to extract the actual data.
carefully read the man page for sz on the altos system to find out how to set the filename when transferring stdin. it may have a default filename that it uses, or it may let you set an env var (e.g. the linux version of sz you can set the $ONAME environment variable).
to summarise:
1. "cat/dev/XXX" (disk image) or "tar cf -/" (files). or do both. 2. use zmodem "sz" if it's installed. 3. otherwise use "uuencode" if it's installed 4. otherwise, use "od" 5. if the system doesn't have od (unlikely) or some other hex-dumper, then write up a clone in awk or sh or something.
yes, so is javascript. that's why i use the NoScript plugin.
I don't want ANYONE running programs on my computer just because I happened to visit their web site. If I allow them to run anything (js, flash, whatever) then it will ONLY be after I have evaluated the site and the code (as much as i am able), and made a conscious, deliberate choice to enable scripting for that site.
Obviously, that is not a guarantee of perfect safety. But it's a hell of a lot safer than just blindly running everything that my browser encounters.
BTW, javascript isn't quite as bad as flash. there are more limitations on what js can do, and it's not compiled so the source is readable (although it might be obfuscated).
there's one huge difference between HTML5 video and Flash.
a video file is just inert data. it doesn't *DO* anything.
Flash is a program. it could do *anything*. flash has been used and abused for years to spy on users.
personally, i wouldn't care even if flash was 1000 times faster than HTML5 video. I don't want random websites executing arbitrary code on MY computer, just because i happened to visit them.
in fact, i don't even want video files to start playing on a web page just because it's open in my browser. I want nothing except a still image until i click on it. and i want it to stop playing when i tell it to.
BTW, the article smells like astro-turfing from Adode...especially since it takes at face value Adobe's whinge about "being cut out of the loop" on the Mac. if they weren't too lazy to program it, they could have accelerated video on the mac (and on linux) if they wanted to.
Probably because you block ads, therefore preventing the ad hosting companies from developing a history of your browsing habits with which to create better targeted content. So when you do finally unblock ads you have to suffer whatever random ads their confused algorithm throws your way. It's a vicious cycle, I know, but if you are genuinely open to targeted advertising then you have to sacrifice a little of your privacy.
so, in order to get ads (that i don't want) which advertise some product that there's a chance i may be interested in (but still won't click on the ad to buy because I always research a product before buying it) I have to let some advertising company spy on me for months? and even then i'll STILL mostly get mainstream market ads because they constitute the bulk of all advertising.
FTFAJ.
my browser displays only text ads (e.g. from google) and sometimes i even notice them. all graphic, flash, etc ads are blocked....i started blocking ads in the mid 1990s by spending a few hours figuring out how to write a squid redirector script shortly after i was annoyed by the first animated banner ad that i ever saw (i wasn't annoyed by gif ads until they started being animated and distracting from the content). i'm never going to change this practice.
i occasionally (e.g. when using someone else's browser, or trying a new browser that doesn't have ad-blocking capability) view web sites with all of the ads....and i'm fucking appalled at just how unbearably ghastly it is. if i had to use the web with all that shit all the time, i just wouldn't bother - it wouldn't be worth it. (just like how i rarely watch commercial TV and *never* listen to commercial radio - ad-infested radio is so bad i just can't understand how ANYBODY can listen to it for more than a few minutes without wanting to smash their radio)
and there's no way i'm *ever* going to let advertising companies run programs - flash, silverlight, javascript, whatever - on my computer.
the drug itself pushes people desperate for a fix into criminal behavior, not society.
no, it's the law, not the drug that does that.
whatever problems drugs cause (and true, they are not harmless) are magnified a million-fold by prohibition.
and to make it even worse, prohibition doesn't even make it harder to get drugs - it doesn't eliminate or even reduce either supply or demand. it increases both...supply because a black-market makes it far more profitable, and demand because taboo will always be popular.
meanwhile, if they could get their heroin prescription at the corner drug store, they would then lose that day zoned out and unproductive in relationship or work.
you've chosen a particular bad drug to use as an example for this. you couldn't have chosen a worse example. many people with long-term heroin addictions manage to hold down very productive, highly paid, and extremely responsible jobs while they are addicts?
how? because they have access to a cheap, clean supply of heroin and other opiates.
it has been proven repeatedly, in study after study, over many years that it is the "junkie lifestyle" that is the problem, not the drug (note: i didn't say "it's the junkie lifestyle that fucks people up", because there's almost as much evidence that people who end up in the junkie lifestyle were pretty fucked up to begin with...the lifestyle just makes it worse and MUCH harder to get their shit together and get out of it)
a drug habit is not necessary. so why don't i instead prevent you from taking heroin, force you to go clean, and make you support yourself.
maybe for the same reason that we don't ban thousands of other unneccesary things, or lock people up and ruin their lives for indulging in them. like driving a car, or mountain climbing or sky-diving, or swimming or football or other sports (note: all of these are far more dangerous and life-threatening activities than taking drugs)
or you are going to tell me someone high on heroin can work and carry on a healthy relationship?
yes. it's not at all uncommon. many doctors, nurses, and other people in the health-care professions have serious opiate addictions. they have a cheap (or free), clean supply so they don't have to obsessively worry about where their next fix is coming from, they know. it doesn't affect their work, because few are stupid enough to be stoned while at work. their biggest risk is getting caught. the worst health complication they might suffer is chronic constipation, and they also have access to laxatives.
if i needed surgery and i had a choice between a heroin-addicted surgeon and an alcoholic surgeon, i would WITHOUT ANY HESITATION whatsoever choose the heroin addict. and i'd be yelling in the strongest possible terms "keep that other drunken bastard the hell away from me". alcoholics get the shakes when they're not drinking. heroin addicts don't.
Because a slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy, therefore false by definition.
it may be a logical fallacy, but it's a real-world phenomenon.
in case you hadn't noticed, the real world - ESPECIALLY politics - doesn't operate on logic, or anything even remotely similar to logic.
the "slippery slope" doesn't state or even imply a direct causal relationship. it's a shorthand summary of the empirical knowledge that if a govt or corporation (or even an individual) gets away with something once, they will almost certainly try to do it again in other contexts AND use their previous success as excuse/justification.
acknowledging that users are (often) stupid or ignorant or both is not in itself a bad thing. it's just recognition of one of the unfortunate truths about people.
it's how that knowledge affects how you deal with the client that's important.
if it makes you dismissive or rude or patronising, or you just give up on them, then it's a bad thing (and it probably means that you're burnt out and bitter and should start looking for some other line of work that doesn't piss you off so much)
if it gives you insight which helps you to communicate more effectively to solve their problem then it's an extremely good thing.
it's no more an adversarial relationship than a teacher has towards their students. a good, knowledgeable teacher(*) has a far greater understanding of the subject being taught than their students. in a lot of cases, they're a lot smarter than their students too. a good teacher will be well aware of this difference in knowledge/experience/intelligence, but it's their job to find a way to communicate their knowledge and understanding to their pupils regardless.
While we all like to laugh at stupid user tricks, the real problem is a lack of communication.
no. the real problem is that the user is stupid or ignorant or both.
communication is the workaround solution, not the problem....the support person has to continually rephrase the same question in several different ways so that the user understands the question and answers honestly (while interpretation and understanding are often part of the problem, in many cases users understand exactly what you are asking and will flat out LIE - "no, i didn't do X", "yes, of course i did Y", "no, there's nothing on the screen", "no, i haven't installed or changed anything").
ditto for explanations and instructions. keep rephrasing until the user understands and is able to follow the instructions.
One thing I have learned is don't think the other person understood what you said - their frame of reference may be different and you need to consider that when communicating.
yes. i agree with your conclusion if not with your premise (and remember: quite often their frame of reference is that of a stupid or ignorant person)
a good tech support person will try to teach the user - even if you know it's futile, even if you know they'll forget it 5 seconds after the problem is solved because you've already taught the same person the exact same thing many times before.
since when did smoking look "cool"? maybe before 1970. but that was 40 years ago.
since then, smoking doesn't say "cool". it says poor, it says lower class, it says white trash. decidedly uncool.
so, it's not about being "cool". it's about the stimulant effect of the drug. and patches just don't give anywhere near the same effect as smoking. neither do nicotine lozenges or chewing gum. kind of like the difference between a crap instant coffee and a short black espresso, only more so.
vaporisers do give the same hit without the carcinogenic and other toxic by-products of burning. and wowser scumbags had them banned. they like to pretend they give a shit about other people's health. in reality, they're just inflicting their own personal moral beliefs on others.
so because someone chooses to ingest one kind or some kinds of poison(s), it's perfectly legitimate to force other poisons on them withour their consent and/or against their will?
it's fascist wowser harm-maximisation thinking like yours that prevents safer forms of nicotine ingestion from being available on the market. ditto for other drugs.
I'm talking even more granular than that. Every issue should be voted on in an electronic open forum. The real problem is the lack of social responsibility within society.
the trouble with this idea is that it's effectively giving the government to fox news and their ilk (true, they already own most of the govt but occasionally they get thwarted by other vested interests)
the vast bulk of the population are cretinously stupid sheep who are easy prey for propagandists, scare-mongerers, and advertising vermin. they're easily whipped up into hysteria and made to "demand" amazingly stupid things of the government, which are very much against their own interests but which are exactly what their corporate masters want.
stupid people and the evil scumbags who are willing to exploit and manipulate them are responsible for most of what's wrong with the world.
Well I know the ACCC would be all over this. Does the US have a similar consumer watchdog?
not really. not with any teeth, anyway.
the trouble is that while the rest of the world sees "caveat emptor" as a sad and unfortunate truth about the world, the US sees it as a virtue - if you can con someone into paying good money for worthless crap then you deserve to keep what you've "earned". More to the point, the victim *DESERVED* to get ripped off because they were stupid and careless.
it's the same kind of callous and cruel attitude behind the typical US-ian attitude that poor people are poor because they deserve to be poor...and, worse, that they deserve contempt, not support and certain not welfare for that sin.
it's more than just a blindness to systemic problems and inequities that lead to either ripoffs or poverty...it really is a callous and, at times, vindictive attitude towards the unfortunate.
Both VISA and Mastercard have very explicit regulations on data sharing, and how 'Cross Sales' are conducted: they both prohibit it in their merchant agreements. VISA is somewhat lax on its [...] Mastercard will fine and terminate merchants [...] To say that no regulation exists is somewhat uninformed.
to think that company policies are anything even remotely like *regulation* is not only naive, it is stupid. to *say* it or offer it as advice is either deliberate deception or, more likely, just negligent.
yeah, right, a wikipedia article describing the existence of a private health care industry in the UK *really* proves your point that "in countries with universal health care (UK, France, etc), you aren't allowed to pay for better medical care then what the state can provide for you"
it's obvious - if there's a private health care industry that just PROVES beyond any doubt that paying for better, or even an alternative, to state-provided health care is prohibited. Like, why would they bother running such businesses if they were actually *allowed* to have customers.
> in countries with universal health care (UK, France, etc), you aren't allowed > to pay for better medical care then what the state can provide for you
do you enjoy publicly demonstrating that you speak out of your arse without the faintest fucking clue?
i don't recall ever getting games included with a video card.
maybe it happens with the expensive high-end cards, but i've only ever bought the budget or mid-range cards. the most i've ever spent on a video card is $105 AUD.
> > For the same cost as that thing, I could build a pretty high powered gaming-class > > PC that would still work with Linux. > > And you'd be paying into the subsidies for Norton and other software, > yes, for the cheaper hardware?
*building* a system generally involves buying parts and putting them together yourself - or perhaps getting the whitebox clone dealer to build it for you (many will do it for free or for a small charge).
systems built like this typically DO NOT come with software included (although many dealers sell optionally OEM versions of windows with the motherboard). No windows, no Norton Utilities and, aside from driver disks included with the motherboard and video card etc, no other software.
therefore, no software tax.
I've been building systems like this since the early 1980s. I've lost count of the number i've built over the years. I've never once had to buy a windows license (i've never even had any version of windows on any of my machines. i used to run ms-dos, then OS/2, and, since 1993, linux).
btw, 359 euro is about 560 australian dollars. I could *easily* build a far better system with only linux-compatible hardware for far less than that. I could build a basic (but still better) system for less than half that (under $250 AUD). either version would have more pci & pci-e slots, more usb sockets, more sata interfaces and drive bays, more RAM, and MUCH better graphics capability. They'd also be upgradable....which is important when you consider that the high-end top-of-the-line CPU that costs $AUD600+ today will inevitably be selling for around $200 in 12 months time, and the $300-500 graphics card of today will be the mid-range $100 card in a year, and the budget $40-$60 card in less than two years.
(yes, such a system would use significantly more power when running. so what? that's only one criteria for optimisation of a system build, and isn't terribly important to some)
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...and the next time i commit a major crime and get caught, i'll cut a deal with the police so that they charge my toe-nail clipping rather than me.
are you sure it has no ethernet? that old-computers.com page you linked to says it has.
back in those days, ethernet ports were mostly either BNC (coax cable, 10base2) or AUI.
You can still find PCI cards for PCs with BNC connectors. Probably not new any more, but try a swap meet or ebay or in the old-parts bins at small computer retailers. lots of cheap NE2000 clones had both RJ45 and BNC. you'd also need a length of cable and a terminator for each end of the cable. this stuff is all long-obsolete but not that hard to find. esp the connectors and terminators.
you can even find MAUs with RJ-45 connectors (i've still got one lying around some where).
of course, getting this working might end up transferring the data a lot faster but could take you days to figure out how to set up networking on the old machine. serial is probably still best and easiest.
one easy way would be to use a linux box as a terminal (null-modem cable, running cu or minicom or something). set the linux software to log everything to disk and then cat the /dev/ node for the hard disk through 'od'. or, optionally, 'cat /dev/XXX | compress | od'.
that will get you a text hex dump of the entire disk. you can then extract that into a disk image. you may even be able to mount that on linux.
NOTE: od will massively inflate the size of the transfer. that's because it's converting the binary into an ascii representation. if the altos system has uuencode installed, that would probably be a better choice than od (it's a lot more efficient, averaging about 40% inflation of file size instead of more than doubling it with od).
similarly, you can get the files rather than a disk image by using tar. capture and log the output of "tar cf - / | od". again, optionally use compress in the pipeline. that will end up giving you a standard old-fashioned tar file which can just be extracted with GNU tar.
unfortunately, od has no ecc or even checksumming. if you have awk on the altos system, it might be better to write an awk script that does a hex dump with support for error correction). you could probably do it in sh too if you had to. note: it would be better to do it in a scripting language rather than C because the system may not even have a compiler installed, and even if it does you don't want to thrash the disk to compile something.
if the altos system has zmodem software installed (quite likely since it was a BBS), that would be even better. use minicom on the linux end (and make sure you have the lrzsz package installed for zmodem receive support), then pipe the output of cat or tar into sz instead of od. that would give you a transfer with error detection and recovery (i.e. error free transfer) and no need to mess around with the log to extract the actual data.
carefully read the man page for sz on the altos system to find out how to set the filename when transferring stdin. it may have a default filename that it uses, or it may let you set an env var (e.g. the linux version of sz you can set the $ONAME environment variable).
to summarise:
1. "cat /dev/XXX" (disk image) or "tar cf - /" (files). or do both.
2. use zmodem "sz" if it's installed.
3. otherwise use "uuencode" if it's installed
4. otherwise, use "od"
5. if the system doesn't have od (unlikely) or some other hex-dumper, then write up a clone in awk or sh or something.
yes, so is javascript. that's why i use the NoScript plugin.
I don't want ANYONE running programs on my computer just because I happened to visit their web site. If I allow them to run anything (js, flash, whatever) then it will ONLY be after I have evaluated the site and the code (as much as i am able), and made a conscious, deliberate choice to enable scripting for that site.
Obviously, that is not a guarantee of perfect safety. But it's a hell of a lot safer than just blindly running everything that my browser encounters.
BTW, javascript isn't quite as bad as flash. there are more limitations on what js can do, and it's not compiled so the source is readable (although it might be obfuscated).
it's not just about performance.
there's one huge difference between HTML5 video and Flash.
a video file is just inert data. it doesn't *DO* anything.
Flash is a program. it could do *anything*. flash has been used and abused for years to spy on users.
personally, i wouldn't care even if flash was 1000 times faster than HTML5 video. I don't want random websites executing arbitrary code on MY computer, just because i happened to visit them.
in fact, i don't even want video files to start playing on a web page just because it's open in my browser. I want nothing except a still image until i click on it. and i want it to stop playing when i tell it to.
BTW, the article smells like astro-turfing from Adode...especially since it takes at face value Adobe's whinge about "being cut out of the loop" on the Mac. if they weren't too lazy to program it, they could have accelerated video on the mac (and on linux) if they wanted to.
you do realise that that's precisely why people use adblock, don't you? to block ads before they see them.
so, in order to get ads (that i don't want) which advertise some product that there's a chance i may be interested in (but still won't click on the ad to buy because I always research a product before buying it) I have to let some advertising company spy on me for months? and even then i'll STILL mostly get mainstream market ads because they constitute the bulk of all advertising.
FTFAJ.
my browser displays only text ads (e.g. from google) and sometimes i even notice them. all graphic, flash, etc ads are blocked....i started blocking ads in the mid 1990s by spending a few hours figuring out how to write a squid redirector script shortly after i was annoyed by the first animated banner ad that i ever saw (i wasn't annoyed by gif ads until they started being animated and distracting from the content). i'm never going to change this practice.
i occasionally (e.g. when using someone else's browser, or trying a new browser that doesn't have ad-blocking capability) view web sites with all of the ads....and i'm fucking appalled at just how unbearably ghastly it is. if i had to use the web with all that shit all the time, i just wouldn't bother - it wouldn't be worth it. (just like how i rarely watch commercial TV and *never* listen to commercial radio - ad-infested radio is so bad i just can't understand how ANYBODY can listen to it for more than a few minutes without wanting to smash their radio)
and there's no way i'm *ever* going to let advertising companies run programs - flash, silverlight, javascript, whatever - on my computer.
no, it's the law, not the drug that does that.
whatever problems drugs cause (and true, they are not harmless) are magnified a million-fold by prohibition.
and to make it even worse, prohibition doesn't even make it harder to get drugs - it doesn't eliminate or even reduce either supply or demand. it increases both...supply because a black-market makes it far more profitable, and demand because taboo will always be popular.
you've chosen a particular bad drug to use as an example for this. you couldn't have chosen a worse example. many people with long-term heroin addictions manage to hold down very productive, highly paid, and extremely responsible jobs while they are addicts?
how? because they have access to a cheap, clean supply of heroin and other opiates.
it has been proven repeatedly, in study after study, over many years that it is the "junkie lifestyle" that is the problem, not the drug (note: i didn't say "it's the junkie lifestyle that fucks people up", because there's almost as much evidence that people who end up in the junkie lifestyle were pretty fucked up to begin with...the lifestyle just makes it worse and MUCH harder to get their shit together and get out of it)
maybe for the same reason that we don't ban thousands of other unneccesary things, or lock people up and ruin their lives for indulging in them. like driving a car, or mountain climbing or sky-diving, or swimming or football or other sports (note: all of these are far more dangerous and life-threatening activities than taking drugs)
yes. it's not at all uncommon. many doctors, nurses, and other people in the health-care professions have serious opiate addictions. they have a cheap (or free), clean supply so they don't have to obsessively worry about where their next fix is coming from, they know. it doesn't affect their work, because few are stupid enough to be stoned while at work. their biggest risk is getting caught. the worst health complication they might suffer is chronic constipation, and they also have access to laxatives.
if i needed surgery and i had a choice between a heroin-addicted surgeon and an alcoholic surgeon, i would WITHOUT ANY HESITATION whatsoever choose the heroin addict. and i'd be yelling in the strongest possible terms "keep that other drunken bastard the hell away from me". alcoholics get the shakes when they're not drinking. heroin addicts don't.
it's not humour. it's the truth.
it may be a logical fallacy, but it's a real-world phenomenon.
in case you hadn't noticed, the real world - ESPECIALLY politics - doesn't operate on logic, or anything even remotely similar to logic.
the "slippery slope" doesn't state or even imply a direct causal relationship. it's a shorthand summary of the empirical knowledge that if a govt or corporation (or even an individual) gets away with something once, they will almost certainly try to do it again in other contexts AND use their previous success as excuse/justification.
acknowledging that users are (often) stupid or ignorant or both is not in itself a bad thing. it's just recognition of one of the unfortunate truths about people.
it's how that knowledge affects how you deal with the client that's important.
if it makes you dismissive or rude or patronising, or you just give up on them, then it's a bad thing (and it probably means that you're burnt out and bitter and should start looking for some other line of work that doesn't piss you off so much)
if it gives you insight which helps you to communicate more effectively to solve their problem then it's an extremely good thing.
it's no more an adversarial relationship than a teacher has towards their students. a good, knowledgeable teacher(*) has a far greater understanding of the subject being taught than their students. in a lot of cases, they're a lot smarter than their students too. a good teacher will be well aware of this difference in knowledge/experience/intelligence, but it's their job to find a way to communicate their knowledge and understanding to their pupils regardless.
(*) yes, hard to find, i know. but some do exist.
no. the beginning of the slippery slope was the introduction of sex-offender registers. as has been amply proven by this new register.
no. the real problem is that the user is stupid or ignorant or both.
communication is the workaround solution, not the problem....the support person has to continually rephrase the same question in several different ways so that the user understands the question and answers honestly (while interpretation and understanding are often part of the problem, in many cases users understand exactly what you are asking and will flat out LIE - "no, i didn't do X", "yes, of course i did Y", "no, there's nothing on the screen", "no, i haven't installed or changed anything").
ditto for explanations and instructions. keep rephrasing until the user understands and is able to follow the instructions.
yes. i agree with your conclusion if not with your premise (and remember: quite often their frame of reference is that of a stupid or ignorant person)
a good tech support person will try to teach the user - even if you know it's futile, even if you know they'll forget it 5 seconds after the problem is solved because you've already taught the same person the exact same thing many times before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Therapeutic_uses
since when did smoking look "cool"? maybe before 1970. but that was 40 years ago.
since then, smoking doesn't say "cool". it says poor, it says lower class, it says white trash. decidedly uncool.
so, it's not about being "cool". it's about the stimulant effect of the drug. and patches just don't give anywhere near the same effect as smoking. neither do nicotine lozenges or chewing gum. kind of like the difference between a crap instant coffee and a short black espresso, only more so.
vaporisers do give the same hit without the carcinogenic and other toxic by-products of burning. and wowser scumbags had them banned. they like to pretend they give a shit about other people's health. in reality, they're just inflicting their own personal moral beliefs on others.
did your mummy tell you all that?
one day you'll grow up and understand that things aren't anything like that in the real, or grown-up, world.
so because someone chooses to ingest one kind or some kinds of poison(s), it's perfectly legitimate to force other poisons on them withour their consent and/or against their will?
it's fascist wowser harm-maximisation thinking like yours that prevents safer forms of nicotine ingestion from being available on the market. ditto for other drugs.
the trouble with this idea is that it's effectively giving the government to fox news and their ilk (true, they already own most of the govt but occasionally they get thwarted by other vested interests)
the vast bulk of the population are cretinously stupid sheep who are easy prey for propagandists, scare-mongerers, and advertising vermin. they're easily whipped up into hysteria and made to "demand" amazingly stupid things of the government, which are very much against their own interests but which are exactly what their corporate masters want.
stupid people and the evil scumbags who are willing to exploit and manipulate them are responsible for most of what's wrong with the world.
just what i want in my back yard - a machine running at 1000 degrees C.
the only question is - does it come with a set of bbq tools and a removable hot plate for easy cleaning?
that's like saying the purpose of the US PATRIOT Act is to encourage patriotism.
90% of everything is crud
not really. not with any teeth, anyway.
the trouble is that while the rest of the world sees "caveat emptor" as a sad and unfortunate truth about the world, the US sees it as a virtue - if you can con someone into paying good money for worthless crap then you deserve to keep what you've "earned". More to the point, the victim *DESERVED* to get ripped off because they were stupid and careless.
it's the same kind of callous and cruel attitude behind the typical US-ian attitude that poor people are poor because they deserve to be poor...and, worse, that they deserve contempt, not support and certain not welfare for that sin.
it's more than just a blindness to systemic problems and inequities that lead to either ripoffs or poverty...it really is a callous and, at times, vindictive attitude towards the unfortunate.
to think that company policies are anything even remotely like *regulation* is not only naive, it is stupid. to *say* it or offer it as advice is either deliberate deception or, more likely, just negligent.
company policies are not regulation.
yeah, right, a wikipedia article describing the existence of a private health care industry in the UK *really* proves your point that "in countries with universal health care (UK, France, etc), you aren't allowed to pay for better medical care then what the state can provide for you"
it's obvious - if there's a private health care industry that just PROVES beyond any doubt that paying for better, or even an alternative, to state-provided health care is prohibited. Like, why would they bother running such businesses if they were actually *allowed* to have customers.
moron.
> in countries with universal health care (UK, France, etc), you aren't allowed
> to pay for better medical care then what the state can provide for you
do you enjoy publicly demonstrating that you speak out of your arse without the faintest fucking clue?
i don't recall ever getting games included with a video card.
maybe it happens with the expensive high-end cards, but i've only ever bought the budget or mid-range cards. the most i've ever spent on a video card is $105 AUD.
> > For the same cost as that thing, I could build a pretty high powered gaming-class
> > PC that would still work with Linux.
>
> And you'd be paying into the subsidies for Norton and other software,
> yes, for the cheaper hardware?
*building* a system generally involves buying parts and putting them together yourself - or perhaps getting the whitebox clone dealer to build it for you (many will do it for free or for a small charge).
systems built like this typically DO NOT come with software included (although many dealers sell optionally OEM versions of windows with the motherboard). No windows, no Norton Utilities and, aside from driver disks included with the motherboard and video card etc, no other software.
therefore, no software tax.
I've been building systems like this since the early 1980s. I've lost count of the number i've built over the years. I've never once had to buy a windows license (i've never even had any version of windows on any of my machines. i used to run ms-dos, then OS/2, and, since 1993, linux).
btw, 359 euro is about 560 australian dollars. I could *easily* build a far better system with only linux-compatible hardware for far less than that. I could build a basic (but still better) system for less than half that (under $250 AUD). either version would have more pci & pci-e slots, more usb sockets, more sata interfaces and drive bays, more RAM, and MUCH better graphics capability. They'd also be upgradable....which is important when you consider that the high-end top-of-the-line CPU that costs $AUD600+ today will inevitably be selling for around $200 in 12 months time, and the $300-500 graphics card of today will be the mid-range $100 card in a year, and the budget $40-$60 card in less than two years.
(yes, such a system would use significantly more power when running. so what? that's only one criteria for optimisation of a system build, and isn't terribly important to some)