Sometimes safety is at odds with functionality. I could make just as much of a complaint about 18-wheeler semi-trailers, which also smash through windsheilds and hit people in the head with their height. They've tried putting in those bars that extend down in the back, but those don't really have a large effect in a collision. But I don't complain about this for two reasons: 1 - I realize that the trailers are high off the ground because that is needed for their function of carrying heavy loads - heavy loads require large diameter tires, which is why the trailers are raised so high off the ground. 2 - I realize that in a collision where a small car rear-ends a semi trailer, the driver of the small car is usually the one more at fault, because the trailer takes much longer to decellerate (There's not going to be a case where the trailer slams its brakes suddenly, causing the driver of the car behind to be unable to stop in time, unless said driver isn't paying attention.)
I don't care about a car rear-ending a semi. If I do that, I'm a moron, and your reason #2 explains why. However, next time you're on the road, take a look at the semis you see. Where are their bumpers? That's right, the bumpers are low to the ground. Yeah, sure, there's still a lot of metal above that bumper, but it's recessed -- by the time the grill hits me in a T-bone, hopefully that bumper has given my car enough of a bump that I'm already moving away from the front of the truck. In a collision with an SUV where the bumper is at head level, the first place I'll be hit is not in the side door (where there are structural reinforcements, side air bags, etc), but in the side windshield, right in the head. If I'm not dead by the time the rest of the SUV goes crashing through my car, I'll at least have head injuries to deal with. Not fun.
In the soccer mom school of "Bigger is Safer", an 18-wheeler would be the ultimate in family transportation. But then, those big trucks require special training for you to drive(heck, some of the larger SUVs should require special training). In most cases, "bigger" is not always "safer", especially not for others on the road. However, I think in this case it is, and for one simple reason -- the soccer mom trying to drive the 18-wheeler will kill herself much more quickly, thus ridding the road of her and her ilk, making it a safer place for me and all other cars.
Can you tell I'm bitter from being cut-off way too often by cell phone-talking, coffee-drinking, SUV-driving soccer moms?
In places with real winter weather, you don't need to go "off road" to find ground clearance useful. You just have to wait until it snows.
Seattle doesn't have "real winter weather", yet every fourth car here is an SUV. Odd.
I grew up in central Illinois, where we did have some bad winters. Somehow, my family always survived with just a normal sedan. Sure, my dad had big pickup trucks (hey, he's a farmer, they're actually used as workhorses like they were designed), but only in the very worst of winters did we ever need to break one of them out instead of the car. So while I'll give credence to the argument that an SUV is nice to have where weather is bad, I will disagree that it's a necessity as some people will try to tell you. (If so, why would they continue to drive the SUV in nice weather? And that says nothing about the 2-wheel drive SUVs...)
Hell, most Boxsters never see roads where they can be driven 100mph (well, maybe a straightaway just before a blind corner once in a while, but that's it.) Note that I'm also generalizing.
Sure, but I've taken mine to the track, and plan on doing that more often. However, owning a Boxster and driving it as a daily driver does not make me any more dangerous to other vehicles (please don't make the "speed kills" argument here -- I'm not talking about speeding, and even if I were, many SUVs where I'm at drive much faster than I do; I'm not treating my daily commute as though it were an F1 race...). Owning an SUV and driving it as a daily driver does make the SUV owner more dangerous to other drivers (... unless all the other drivers are in SUVs. I'm not buying that argument). If I never tracked my Boxster, then the only person who's lost anything is me (the enjoyment from really driving the car). If you've never off-roaded your SUV, then you've wasted your money on a vehicle that's dangerous to other drivers on a normal road and has no more utility than a van.
Then again, the thrill of a Boxster (or an MR2, for that matter) is not flat-out speed. These aren't dragsters. For the real fun, you need twisties, and there are quite a few of them around here if you know where to look (aside from any racetracks).
Safety is what you make it. There are plenty of non-SUV cars that wouldn't fit under the dangerous area of a SUV's bumper. No one forced you to get the car you got; you chose it and assumed the risk and responsibility on your own.
Correct. I'm not lobbying for SUV bumpers to be lowered, or any other extra safety restrictions put in place. I'm just making the point that SUVs are still dangerous, even if most other cars are safer today than they were 20 years ago. (Oh, yeah, and it doesn't help that many SUV drivers are idiots, driving their vehicles with no regard for drivers around them, going at speeds their vehicle was never designed to handle, without ever once looking up from the morning paper.) Yeah, it'd be nice to look out of my window and see a door or window or person's face rather than the SUV's suspension next to me, but I deal with it -- by making sure I can predict what the idiots are going to do before they do it, and making sure I'm not where they'll be doing whatever they're going to do.
My SUV's bumper is that high for one reason: ground clearance. Remember, these things were, at least originally, designed to go off-road.
On average, how many SUV owners take their SUVs off-road? Hell, most SUVs don't ever see anything but pavement (well, maybe a gravel parking lot once in a while, but that's it). Note that I'm generalizing. Out of my friends with SUVs, two of them actually use the SUVs for more than commuter vehicles (and those two are married to each other, so they really only count as one). The other four or five people with SUVs just drive them to work, the gym, and home.
Not to say that I don't sympathize, as I also own an MR2 (one of the lowest-slung cars around). Kinda freaky to be looking at the soccer-moms' differential...
You're roughly in the same position as I am in my Boxster (though I don't need a second car, because the Boxster actually has plenty of storage space, unlike an MR2). Many cars can drive under a semi trailer. I can drive under many SUVs. At least the jacked-up ones out here, anyway. (The jacked-up SUVs have bumpers that would just barely clip the top of my head in my car. The non-jacked-up SUVs have bumpers that will hit me squarely in the neck.).
No, this is why a new car today costs (on average) about $22,000 (US) whereas when I started driving in 1976 the average was closer to US$10,000. Cars are much better today: more reliable, safer for passengers, better on the environment, etc. That did not come for free: consumers said what they wanted and they got it but someone has to pay the bill.
I agree that cars today are safer than they've ever been, but there are still issues. For instance, why are SUVs allowed to have their bumpers up so high that if one hits me in my car, not only will it completely miss my bumpers and go right up the hood or trunk causing major damage, but if I'm hit from the side, those same bumpers are right at the position of my head. No amount of side airbags or curtain airbags are going to stop an SUV bumper from ripping my head off in a T-bone collision.
I know not all SUV bumpers are that high, but many are. What's the point? Van bumpers are in the proper position to be decent protection against a collision with a car, so why can't SUV bumpers be the same?
Until the providers allow cell phones to change networks, the useless ones will keep piling up!
Blame the US's silly infatuation with CDMA (or whatever the current version of CDMA is called). These phones have the programming information build directly into the phone (why you can't reprogram, I don't understand, because they can obviously program it once). GSM phones use a SIM chip, which can be easily replaced, or even swapped from phone to phone. (Most of) The rest of the world uses GSM, and even parts of the States (since I first signed up for digital cell coverage two years ago, I've been on GSM networks). If you don't like what the CDMA providers are doing with respect to old phone reuse, next time you switch providers pick one that does GSM.
From everything I've read (AVS Forums, Home Theater Spot), the ATI dongle seems to be a little flakey. For my money (and I know $200 >> $30), a proper VGA to Component transcoder is the way to go. Way fewer headaches. Though ATIs suck for custom resolutions, so expect to deal with a bit of overscan. It looks like the best solution right now is to pick up a WinPVR or WinPVR 250 and an nVidia GeForce-based card, a VGA->Component transcoder, and PowerStrip. I'm still dealing with my AIW 7500, though.
Now to wait for AT&T to bring HD to digital cable, and then find some way to get that into the HTPC...
Not a flame but.. I can't figure out why people would use POP instead of IMAP.. because if you're using IMAP you wouldn't be using Outlook but Pine, which is the greatest thing since sliced bread if you use IMAP and email a lot. Especially the remote config/address book files which allow you to use e-mail from anywhere without ever reconfiguring it. (except maybe smtp servers;) )
Funny. I use IMAP (over SSL, even), and I use Outlook. And things work! Oh my god!
If you can't handle pine then maybe you should unplug that keyboard, then.
I didn't say I "can't handle" pine. I said that I've used it (for a good three years, even), and found Outlook to be better, in my opinion.
Pine is way better than Outlook
Define "better". In my opinion, it's not. Maybe you would like to enlighten me?
no wasting time using a mouse
I don't have to use a mouse in Outlook if I don't want to do so. Everything is keyboard-accessible (see, that is true handicap accessibility).
waiting for a gui to draw on a slower machine
Not an issue. All the machines I use that run Outlook are capable (not neccessarily beefy, but at the least capable). As well, that's a complaint about GUIs in general, not Outlook, and it's not a problem I routinely have.
hell, you can even access pine across the net if you've got some kind of ssh setup.
As I mentioned, the rare times I check my mail on my linux machine, I use mutt. Generally, that's pretty much only when I'm travelling. I don't check my home mail from work (because when I'm at work, I'm working), and I don't suddenly feel the need to check my mail when I happen to not be at home. That said, I have found times when it's convenient to check my mail remotely (for example, back when I was interviewing for jobs my senior year in college, I'd often check my mail from public terminals in the cities where I was intervewing). Thus, I keep mutt around. But for normal, everyday e-mail work, I use Outlook and I like Outlook. (Just as a note, I'm only speaking about home use here. I do use Outlook at work as well, but the remote checking issue isn't one thanks to my work using OWA (Outlook Web Access), which works perfectly fine for me.)
Keep in mind that a TV will loose about 30% of the resolution on a TV. While NTSC is 640x480, the optical effect of interlacing (your computer monitor is non-interlaced, more commonly referred to as as progressive) the TV screen appears to be about 448x336.
And that's why you buy a TV with HD inputs, and a VGA to Component transcoder. That way, you can get progressive scan resolutions (480p, 720p if you buy a TV that supports it), or higher resolutions (1080i, while interlaced, is still pretty good -- 540p, which is based off of 1080i and really is still interlaced, is also pretty nice). And the most important part -- you don't need a separate video-out card to do composite or s-vid to your TV. This works with any standard VGA port, and requires no software support at all (well, aside from being able to manipulate your resolutions, but PowerStrip does that, and while it's Windows-only software, it can spit out X modelines, so you can use it in a roundabout way to do Linux.
Look a little deeper... I use Evolution and I'm not worried about your viruses.
Re-read my original post, and realize I'm not worried about "my" viruses, either. And the interface has to do with the mail client being useable, which factors into my figuring of "best" (if you can't use the mail client, how good can it be?).
That's why Evolution blatantly ripped off the Outlook interface, right? I've used pretty much everything out there -- pine, mutt (still use it, the few times I actually check mail from my linux box), Outlook Express, Eudora (3.something and 4.something), Netscape mail (3.x, 4.x), and even some of the more esoteric ones out there, like Pegasus mail. I've also tried many of the web-based solutions. And yet, I keep coming back to Outlook. When I said it's the best mail client I've found, I meant it.
The MS builds require STLport, an open-source replacement STL that's more compliant than Microsoft's -- ha, imagine that...
Does it still require STLport even with VC++.NET? VC++6's STL was pretty terrible, but then it's also quite a few years old, and the STL version they used was even older than that (deadline pressures and all, you know -- can't go adding in the latest&greatest when you've got to ship). VC.NET's STL is much better. I haven't seen any comparisons between it and STLport, though, so I don't know if there's something STLport does that VC.NET's STL doesn't.
If Outlook and Outlook Express are so unrelated, why are you REQUIRED to have Outlook Express installed to run Outlook 2000?
I haven't seen this one. Then again, I've not installed Outlook on any system that didn't have OE (just because it has OE doesn't it's used). Outlook requires Internet Explorer, sure, and OE is packaged as part of IE, so perhaps that's what you were seeing as a dependency? Based on the system requirements for Outlook XP, I don't see Outlook Express required at all (as for IE being required, check the list of supported operating systems, and you'll see all of them include IE, so it's redundant to call out a requirement for IE separately).
Guess what: You'd be amazed to learn that all safety precuations a regular user can discard *will* be discarded and this user *will* take action. We've seen it before.
At which point, you toss the user, not the client. However, when I said you have to take action, I meant you really have to screw around with Outlook XP (or any version of Outlook that's had the Outlook Security Patch applied) to be able to get viruses. It's not a matter of a popup asking if you're sure you want to do this, with a checkbox saying you're sure now and forever (sure, there are some of those, but not for the important stuff like attachment stripping).
why would anyone purposely run Outlook or Outlook Express as their mail client?
I can't personally speak for OE, as I've not used it in years, but I use Outlook XP because it's the best mail client I've found. I've never been infected by a virus in Outlook XP, because by default it strips malicious attachments (no, I'm not confusing that with an Exchange or mail server stripping those attachments -- we do that at work, sure, but I use Outlook at home with my postfix setup, and I know I'm not stripping attachments there, yet Outlook XP still strips the dangerous attachments). Out of the box, Outlook XP requires you to screw around to shoot yourself in the foot -- it warns you when you try to open an attachment, it'll tell you when there's possibly malicious script in a message and not let you view it in the preview pane, and so on. In short, you actually have to take action to get infected by a virus if you're using Outlook XP.
Just to clear up any possible misconceptions, Outlook and Outlook Express are two completely different products, with completely different codebases, developed by two completely different teams. The only thing they share is the word "Outlook".
Would you rather see him fined $70 Million dollars, declare bankruptcy and then end up having the taxpayers bail him out?
Instead, tax payers get to pay for his three hots and a cot for the next 33 months. Either way, the taxpayers get screwed. (For what it's worth, I agree with your toll road analogy, and I agree that the guy was in the wrong, and was caught, and is being punished. Could there have been a better punishment than just letting him rot in prison? Probably, just like most every other case there's a better punishment than prison. Our system just isn't creative enough to come up with these punishments, and so we have massively overcrowded prisons and a huge taxpayer burden).
Drinking and Driving still kills more people than speed.
Speed never killed anyone. It's how they decided to stop that caused the problem. <rimshot/> But seriously, most "speed-related deaths" statistics you'll find are artificially inflated. The way the statistics are counted is that if anybody involved was speeding (ie, going at least 1 mph over the limit), then it's categorized as speed-related. That's ignoring any of the true factors, like being alcohol-related, or caused by that little brat in the backseat that wouldn't sit down, or the driver was just an idiot (reading the morning paper while driving counts as idiocy).
Given that Win doesn't have group ownership for files, it really doesn't matter if your running as admin or guest. You can still use WSH as a guest and be able to fuck with system files, you just can't play with the registry...nice security model, it doesn't exist for files on Win systems.
You'd be right, if your system is using FAT16/32, though why you'd ever use that on an NT-based system (note my comment about NT-based Windows systems, and Win9x being dead), I don't know. Use NTFS, setup proper permissions (should be setup by default, if you installed using NTFS), and you have a better ACL system than the default user/group/other UNIX permission system (yes, I know various unices have better ACL systems, and various filesystems for Linux do as well, but most people use ext2 at the moment, which just does ugo by default -- you can add patches that do real ACLs, but last I checked that wasn't part of 2.4).
Just taking a quick look of C:\Windows on my XP system, I see:
Administrators group has full permissions
Power Users group has modify, read&exec, list folder contents, read, and write permissions (missing "special permissions")
SYSTEM has full control
Users (which is where you should normally be running) has read&exec, list folder contents, and read permission. No modify, no write.
So how is it, again, that Windows doesn't have group ownership?
I have to disagree with their evaluation of item W10, Windows Scripting Host. They're essentially blaming it for improper use by mail clients (I never heard of anything other than Outlook or Outlook Express having problems with.vbs scripts run through WSH -- Word macros, while VB, are not VBScript, and don't go through WSH. IE embeds vbscript and jscript, again not through WSH, so while I guess you could download a.vbs, you'd have to be a moron to tell it to run automatically). Sure, they do include the line, "While administrators should always keep applications like browsers, mail clients and productivity suites patched and updated, patching these applications to eliminate their susceptibility to a particular worm is an incomplete (and no better than reactive) solution to the risks posed by scripting," but that's paramount to suggesting all scripting is bad. Would it be bash's fault if mutt auto-ran.sh extensions? Or would it be perl's fault if mutt did the same thing with.pl extensions? No, it wouldn't, so to fault WSH for Outlook/OE problems is pretty ludicrous.
WSH is a very useful tool when used properly, just as bash or perl are very useful when used properly. Misuse by one or several applications does not mean the tool itself is at fault. A better thing to blame would be running as administrator (in NT-based Windows systems) full-time, rather than as a non-admin user. Again, this is directly parallel to running as root 24/7 in a unix system. You wouldn't do it there, so why do it in Windows? (Win9x is dead, let it rest in peace.)
This is the only part of your post I really didn't understand. You were the one who drew a comparison between mod chips and guns - wouldn't you therefore be forced, by your own assertions, to argue that a gun should only be legal if you build it yourself, and that people should not be allowed to SELL guns?
I owned up to being hypocritical on this point. What more do you want? Yes, I think people should be allowed to buy guns. No, I don't think people should be allowed to buy modchips. At the moment, in the US, guns are legal and modchips are not. So I support the status quo.
Mod chip manufacturers have jobs too, you know. Outlawing them will put them out of work as well, if you want to look at it that way.
s/Mod chip manufacturers/Drug dealers/. Whether you're for or against legalized drugs, it doesn't matter -- for the time being, dealing drugs is illegal (using drugs is also illegal, but in the privacy of your own home nobody's going to care unless you start dealing yourself). Some drugs may have some legal uses, and some people may even use those drugs legally, but a majority of drug users are not using those drugs for legal purposes. How's that for a scenario that is an exact match to the modchip scenario? Dealers and modchip sellers get shut down, users and modchip users are safe to use in the privacy of their own homes, and while there are legal uses for both drugs and modchips, most people using either are not doing so legally.
Guns are a bad comparison because outlawing guns might protect people from being hurt. A lot of very reasonable people are perfectly willing to give up some of their personal right to bear arms if it might mean that fewer people will die.
I do not own a gun, but I'm not willing to give up my constitutional right to bear one as I please (because if I give that up, what's next? free speech?).
Mod chips do not harm any person. They might harm the bottom line of a corporation, and as I don't work for a console manufacturer, it's not really my responsibility to help ensure their future profitability.
First off, piracy harms the game developer significantly more than the console's parent company (unless you're Sega, where you're both the console parent and one of the main game developers). Second, do you not realize there are people behind these companies? You can say that a mod chip won't harm any person, but you'd be wrong. You might say it won't harm them directly, but there is still harm. What's the difference between someone being shot with a gun and dieing, and someone losing their job because their smaller game development company couldn't profit in the face of piracy, ending up homeless on the streets, and dieing from disease, hunger, cold, or violence? Other than the amount of time between the action and the death, there isn't much difference (you may claim that death isn't certain in the modchip scenario, and I'll claim the exact same in the gun scenario -- death is not certain). Maybe that's being a little too sensationalist, but so is your argument about hammers.:)
Incidentally, what is the difference between buying a mod chip and building your own? What do you feel separates the two, morally or legally or whatever way you want to look at it?
Legally, I'm sure the DMCA prevents you from building your own chip. However, on an individual basis, I doubt they will care. My argument for allowing building but not selling is mostly ethical (I hesitate to use "moral", since it's a loaded word). If you're building your own modchip, it's simply you modifying some piece of equipment you already own. You're putting effort into it, which means few people are going to do it. If you then sell those modchips you're building, you're doing several things:
You're profiting off of a circumvention device, which lands you in hot water legally.
You're making it easy for other people to modify their XBoxes, which means more people will do it.
More people means a higher percentage of the types that think, "Ooo! Free games!" and mod their consoles for the sole purpose of stealing games.
In short, doing it yourself is localized, but once you start selling, things get hairy quickly.
So, things should be illegal because you and some others have a suspicion that they are to be used for illegal purposes?
Isn't that what most of the world has done with guns? "You can't own a firearm, because you might use it to shoot somebody." I disagree with that stance, but fine, I'll be a hypocrit. I think there's no reason for modchips to be sold. If you want to build your own, great. If you want to buy specs to build your own, I'm fine with that, too. But if you want to buy one, too bad.
But until anyone can prove to me that it wasn't against the will of people and unethical to zone games geographically, keeping people from buying import games that wouldn't be released here, I have 0 sympathy.
As you're the one wishing to change the status quo, the onus is on you to prove that people don't want zoning of games and movies, not upon me to prove that they do. Though, I'll bite. I have no research to back this up, obviously, but let's think about this rationally for a moment. The mass market in any country likes the games/movies they play/watch to be in their language. They also like them to run in the same format as their TVs (NTSC vs. PAL). Now, that means that most people in the US won't want Japanese games, because they're not in English, and most people in the UK won't want US games because they're not in PAL format. UK gamers won't want Japanese games because they're both in Japanese and not in PAL format. (yes, yes, I know that some TVs do both PAL and NTSC, and some people speak multiple languages, or don't care about the language like for an action game, but those are definitely in the minority.) And so on. What that means is that most people, whether there was zoning or not, would still wait for the software to be released in their market before buying it. What that tells me is that there's only a minority that even care about zoning at all, and likely even a minority within that minority that want to get rid of it. That's not to say that the majority would fight to keep zoning if the companies suddenly decided to remove it, only that they wouldn't care one way or the other.
Then, you go and defend MS for going after companies that make technology that does the *exact* same thing.. lets people access some content the producer would deny them from unless they paid full price for it or bought it in the correct region/market. You're saying: "MS has the right to ensure that nobody consumes their content unless its in the *exact* way they provide it, in the *exact* market they provide it", but use software that does *exactly* the same thing.
No, I'm saying, "MS has the right to stop someone from selling a copyright circumvention device (aka, modchip)." What I'm not saying is, "MS has the right to stop you from modifying your XBox." If you want to modify your XBox, have at it. But you don't have the right to buy illegal modchips to do so.
Incidentally, popups pay out anywhere from 4 to 10 times what banner ads do. Stripping out the popup ads is a large hit on a websites revenue, because they count on popups WAY more than banners for revenue. But I guess youre smart, responsible, and ethical enough to know all these thigns already right?
I realize pop-up ads pay more than banner ads, but I blame that not on the users who blocked banner ads, or those who block pop-up ads, but on companies that misunderstand the internet and refuse to treat it like any other media where advertising is out there to create brand recognition, not to garner an immediate sale. So what if I didn't click on your banner? I saw it, and if I see it enough, I just might connect "Joe Sixpack's Computer Sales" with buying a new computer next time I think "I need to buy a new computer." Just because I don't need to buy a new computer now doesn't mean your ad failed. Pop-ups don't fix this. They just work on the annoyance factor. Or worse, they rely on trickery (how many times have you seen a popup that looks like it has a titlebar and close button, but you know it doesn't because they designed the gif for win98, and not XP or Linux or Mac? How many people do you think get sucked into that?). I'm fine with interstitials. IGN uses them, and I have no problem with it. I don't like the flash ads that come up over the top of an article, effectively making the article unreadable. That's why I have ActiveX applets set to require my permission to run (uh-oh! Is Microsoft providing ad-blocking software built-into Internet Explorer, because it allows me to select which Flash applets I want to let run, and which I don't? Oh no! Hipocrisy!).
I guess my point is that the difference is that blocking pop-up ads (and only pop-up ads, mind you) is reducing my annoyance factor with everyday web browsing, which is not illegal.(what? You say I can't change the channel on my TV when an ad comes on? Is that illegal?) Adding a modchip to an XBox (or a PS2, for that matter, and Sony came down on modchip makers for that, too) is effectively designed for stealing games. Sure, you may use it for import games or running linux, but you can't tell me the temptation isn't there for you to go and download games rather than buying them. Trust me, I knew a lot of people in college with chipped PSXs, and even though they had decent jobs (decent for students, of course), rather than buying PSX games they'd just go to Blockbuster, rent a game, and rip it.
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I don't care about a car rear-ending a semi. If I do that, I'm a moron, and your reason #2 explains why. However, next time you're on the road, take a look at the semis you see. Where are their bumpers? That's right, the bumpers are low to the ground. Yeah, sure, there's still a lot of metal above that bumper, but it's recessed -- by the time the grill hits me in a T-bone, hopefully that bumper has given my car enough of a bump that I'm already moving away from the front of the truck. In a collision with an SUV where the bumper is at head level, the first place I'll be hit is not in the side door (where there are structural reinforcements, side air bags, etc), but in the side windshield, right in the head. If I'm not dead by the time the rest of the SUV goes crashing through my car, I'll at least have head injuries to deal with. Not fun.
In the soccer mom school of "Bigger is Safer", an 18-wheeler would be the ultimate in family transportation. But then, those big trucks require special training for you to drive(heck, some of the larger SUVs should require special training). In most cases, "bigger" is not always "safer", especially not for others on the road. However, I think in this case it is, and for one simple reason -- the soccer mom trying to drive the 18-wheeler will kill herself much more quickly, thus ridding the road of her and her ilk, making it a safer place for me and all other cars.
Can you tell I'm bitter from being cut-off way too often by cell phone-talking, coffee-drinking, SUV-driving soccer moms?
Seattle doesn't have "real winter weather", yet every fourth car here is an SUV. Odd.
I grew up in central Illinois, where we did have some bad winters. Somehow, my family always survived with just a normal sedan. Sure, my dad had big pickup trucks (hey, he's a farmer, they're actually used as workhorses like they were designed), but only in the very worst of winters did we ever need to break one of them out instead of the car. So while I'll give credence to the argument that an SUV is nice to have where weather is bad, I will disagree that it's a necessity as some people will try to tell you. (If so, why would they continue to drive the SUV in nice weather? And that says nothing about the 2-wheel drive SUVs ...)
Sure, but I've taken mine to the track, and plan on doing that more often. However, owning a Boxster and driving it as a daily driver does not make me any more dangerous to other vehicles (please don't make the "speed kills" argument here -- I'm not talking about speeding, and even if I were, many SUVs where I'm at drive much faster than I do; I'm not treating my daily commute as though it were an F1 race ...). Owning an SUV and driving it as a daily driver does make the SUV owner more dangerous to other drivers (... unless all the other drivers are in SUVs. I'm not buying that argument). If I never tracked my Boxster, then the only person who's lost anything is me (the enjoyment from really driving the car). If you've never off-roaded your SUV, then you've wasted your money on a vehicle that's dangerous to other drivers on a normal road and has no more utility than a van.
Then again, the thrill of a Boxster (or an MR2, for that matter) is not flat-out speed. These aren't dragsters. For the real fun, you need twisties, and there are quite a few of them around here if you know where to look (aside from any racetracks).
Correct. I'm not lobbying for SUV bumpers to be lowered, or any other extra safety restrictions put in place. I'm just making the point that SUVs are still dangerous, even if most other cars are safer today than they were 20 years ago. (Oh, yeah, and it doesn't help that many SUV drivers are idiots, driving their vehicles with no regard for drivers around them, going at speeds their vehicle was never designed to handle, without ever once looking up from the morning paper.) Yeah, it'd be nice to look out of my window and see a door or window or person's face rather than the SUV's suspension next to me, but I deal with it -- by making sure I can predict what the idiots are going to do before they do it, and making sure I'm not where they'll be doing whatever they're going to do.
On average, how many SUV owners take their SUVs off-road? Hell, most SUVs don't ever see anything but pavement (well, maybe a gravel parking lot once in a while, but that's it). Note that I'm generalizing. Out of my friends with SUVs, two of them actually use the SUVs for more than commuter vehicles (and those two are married to each other, so they really only count as one). The other four or five people with SUVs just drive them to work, the gym, and home.
You're roughly in the same position as I am in my Boxster (though I don't need a second car, because the Boxster actually has plenty of storage space, unlike an MR2). Many cars can drive under a semi trailer. I can drive under many SUVs. At least the jacked-up ones out here, anyway. (The jacked-up SUVs have bumpers that would just barely clip the top of my head in my car. The non-jacked-up SUVs have bumpers that will hit me squarely in the neck.).
I agree that cars today are safer than they've ever been, but there are still issues. For instance, why are SUVs allowed to have their bumpers up so high that if one hits me in my car, not only will it completely miss my bumpers and go right up the hood or trunk causing major damage, but if I'm hit from the side, those same bumpers are right at the position of my head. No amount of side airbags or curtain airbags are going to stop an SUV bumper from ripping my head off in a T-bone collision.
I know not all SUV bumpers are that high, but many are. What's the point? Van bumpers are in the proper position to be decent protection against a collision with a car, so why can't SUV bumpers be the same?
Blame the US's silly infatuation with CDMA (or whatever the current version of CDMA is called). These phones have the programming information build directly into the phone (why you can't reprogram, I don't understand, because they can obviously program it once). GSM phones use a SIM chip, which can be easily replaced, or even swapped from phone to phone. (Most of) The rest of the world uses GSM, and even parts of the States (since I first signed up for digital cell coverage two years ago, I've been on GSM networks). If you don't like what the CDMA providers are doing with respect to old phone reuse, next time you switch providers pick one that does GSM.
From everything I've read (AVS Forums, Home Theater Spot), the ATI dongle seems to be a little flakey. For my money (and I know $200 >> $30), a proper VGA to Component transcoder is the way to go. Way fewer headaches. Though ATIs suck for custom resolutions, so expect to deal with a bit of overscan. It looks like the best solution right now is to pick up a WinPVR or WinPVR 250 and an nVidia GeForce-based card, a VGA->Component transcoder, and PowerStrip. I'm still dealing with my AIW 7500, though.
Now to wait for AT&T to bring HD to digital cable, and then find some way to get that into the HTPC ...
Funny. I use IMAP (over SSL, even), and I use Outlook. And things work! Oh my god!
I didn't say I "can't handle" pine. I said that I've used it (for a good three years, even), and found Outlook to be better, in my opinion.
Define "better". In my opinion, it's not. Maybe you would like to enlighten me?
I don't have to use a mouse in Outlook if I don't want to do so. Everything is keyboard-accessible (see, that is true handicap accessibility).
Not an issue. All the machines I use that run Outlook are capable (not neccessarily beefy, but at the least capable). As well, that's a complaint about GUIs in general, not Outlook, and it's not a problem I routinely have.
As I mentioned, the rare times I check my mail on my linux machine, I use mutt. Generally, that's pretty much only when I'm travelling. I don't check my home mail from work (because when I'm at work, I'm working), and I don't suddenly feel the need to check my mail when I happen to not be at home. That said, I have found times when it's convenient to check my mail remotely (for example, back when I was interviewing for jobs my senior year in college, I'd often check my mail from public terminals in the cities where I was intervewing). Thus, I keep mutt around. But for normal, everyday e-mail work, I use Outlook and I like Outlook. (Just as a note, I'm only speaking about home use here. I do use Outlook at work as well, but the remote checking issue isn't one thanks to my work using OWA (Outlook Web Access), which works perfectly fine for me.)
And that's why you buy a TV with HD inputs, and a VGA to Component transcoder. That way, you can get progressive scan resolutions (480p, 720p if you buy a TV that supports it), or higher resolutions (1080i, while interlaced, is still pretty good -- 540p, which is based off of 1080i and really is still interlaced, is also pretty nice). And the most important part -- you don't need a separate video-out card to do composite or s-vid to your TV. This works with any standard VGA port, and requires no software support at all (well, aside from being able to manipulate your resolutions, but PowerStrip does that, and while it's Windows-only software, it can spit out X modelines, so you can use it in a roundabout way to do Linux.
Re-read my original post, and realize I'm not worried about "my" viruses, either. And the interface has to do with the mail client being useable, which factors into my figuring of "best" (if you can't use the mail client, how good can it be?).
That's why Evolution blatantly ripped off the Outlook interface, right? I've used pretty much everything out there -- pine, mutt (still use it, the few times I actually check mail from my linux box), Outlook Express, Eudora (3.something and 4.something), Netscape mail (3.x, 4.x), and even some of the more esoteric ones out there, like Pegasus mail. I've also tried many of the web-based solutions. And yet, I keep coming back to Outlook. When I said it's the best mail client I've found, I meant it.
Does it still require STLport even with VC++.NET? VC++6's STL was pretty terrible, but then it's also quite a few years old, and the STL version they used was even older than that (deadline pressures and all, you know -- can't go adding in the latest&greatest when you've got to ship). VC.NET's STL is much better. I haven't seen any comparisons between it and STLport, though, so I don't know if there's something STLport does that VC.NET's STL doesn't.
I haven't seen this one. Then again, I've not installed Outlook on any system that didn't have OE (just because it has OE doesn't it's used). Outlook requires Internet Explorer, sure, and OE is packaged as part of IE, so perhaps that's what you were seeing as a dependency? Based on the system requirements for Outlook XP, I don't see Outlook Express required at all (as for IE being required, check the list of supported operating systems, and you'll see all of them include IE, so it's redundant to call out a requirement for IE separately).
At which point, you toss the user, not the client. However, when I said you have to take action, I meant you really have to screw around with Outlook XP (or any version of Outlook that's had the Outlook Security Patch applied) to be able to get viruses. It's not a matter of a popup asking if you're sure you want to do this, with a checkbox saying you're sure now and forever (sure, there are some of those, but not for the important stuff like attachment stripping).
I can't personally speak for OE, as I've not used it in years, but I use Outlook XP because it's the best mail client I've found. I've never been infected by a virus in Outlook XP, because by default it strips malicious attachments (no, I'm not confusing that with an Exchange or mail server stripping those attachments -- we do that at work, sure, but I use Outlook at home with my postfix setup, and I know I'm not stripping attachments there, yet Outlook XP still strips the dangerous attachments). Out of the box, Outlook XP requires you to screw around to shoot yourself in the foot -- it warns you when you try to open an attachment, it'll tell you when there's possibly malicious script in a message and not let you view it in the preview pane, and so on. In short, you actually have to take action to get infected by a virus if you're using Outlook XP.
Just to clear up any possible misconceptions, Outlook and Outlook Express are two completely different products, with completely different codebases, developed by two completely different teams. The only thing they share is the word "Outlook".
Instead, tax payers get to pay for his three hots and a cot for the next 33 months. Either way, the taxpayers get screwed. (For what it's worth, I agree with your toll road analogy, and I agree that the guy was in the wrong, and was caught, and is being punished. Could there have been a better punishment than just letting him rot in prison? Probably, just like most every other case there's a better punishment than prison. Our system just isn't creative enough to come up with these punishments, and so we have massively overcrowded prisons and a huge taxpayer burden).
Speed never killed anyone. It's how they decided to stop that caused the problem. <rimshot /> But seriously, most "speed-related deaths" statistics you'll find are artificially inflated. The way the statistics are counted is that if anybody involved was speeding (ie, going at least 1 mph over the limit), then it's categorized as speed-related. That's ignoring any of the true factors, like being alcohol-related, or caused by that little brat in the backseat that wouldn't sit down, or the driver was just an idiot (reading the morning paper while driving counts as idiocy).
You'd be right, if your system is using FAT16/32, though why you'd ever use that on an NT-based system (note my comment about NT-based Windows systems, and Win9x being dead), I don't know. Use NTFS, setup proper permissions (should be setup by default, if you installed using NTFS), and you have a better ACL system than the default user/group/other UNIX permission system (yes, I know various unices have better ACL systems, and various filesystems for Linux do as well, but most people use ext2 at the moment, which just does ugo by default -- you can add patches that do real ACLs, but last I checked that wasn't part of 2.4).
Just taking a quick look of C:\Windows on my XP system, I see:
So how is it, again, that Windows doesn't have group ownership?
I have to disagree with their evaluation of item W10, Windows Scripting Host. They're essentially blaming it for improper use by mail clients (I never heard of anything other than Outlook or Outlook Express having problems with .vbs scripts run through WSH -- Word macros, while VB, are not VBScript, and don't go through WSH. IE embeds vbscript and jscript, again not through WSH, so while I guess you could download a .vbs, you'd have to be a moron to tell it to run automatically). Sure, they do include the line, "While administrators should always keep applications like browsers, mail clients and productivity suites patched and updated, patching these applications to eliminate their susceptibility to a particular worm is an incomplete (and no better than reactive) solution to the risks posed by scripting," but that's paramount to suggesting all scripting is bad. Would it be bash's fault if mutt auto-ran .sh extensions? Or would it be perl's fault if mutt did the same thing with .pl extensions? No, it wouldn't, so to fault WSH for Outlook/OE problems is pretty ludicrous.
WSH is a very useful tool when used properly, just as bash or perl are very useful when used properly. Misuse by one or several applications does not mean the tool itself is at fault. A better thing to blame would be running as administrator (in NT-based Windows systems) full-time, rather than as a non-admin user. Again, this is directly parallel to running as root 24/7 in a unix system. You wouldn't do it there, so why do it in Windows? (Win9x is dead, let it rest in peace.)
I owned up to being hypocritical on this point. What more do you want? Yes, I think people should be allowed to buy guns. No, I don't think people should be allowed to buy modchips. At the moment, in the US, guns are legal and modchips are not. So I support the status quo.
s/Mod chip manufacturers/Drug dealers/. Whether you're for or against legalized drugs, it doesn't matter -- for the time being, dealing drugs is illegal (using drugs is also illegal, but in the privacy of your own home nobody's going to care unless you start dealing yourself). Some drugs may have some legal uses, and some people may even use those drugs legally, but a majority of drug users are not using those drugs for legal purposes. How's that for a scenario that is an exact match to the modchip scenario? Dealers and modchip sellers get shut down, users and modchip users are safe to use in the privacy of their own homes, and while there are legal uses for both drugs and modchips, most people using either are not doing so legally.
I do not own a gun, but I'm not willing to give up my constitutional right to bear one as I please (because if I give that up, what's next? free speech?).
First off, piracy harms the game developer significantly more than the console's parent company (unless you're Sega, where you're both the console parent and one of the main game developers). Second, do you not realize there are people behind these companies? You can say that a mod chip won't harm any person, but you'd be wrong. You might say it won't harm them directly, but there is still harm. What's the difference between someone being shot with a gun and dieing, and someone losing their job because their smaller game development company couldn't profit in the face of piracy, ending up homeless on the streets, and dieing from disease, hunger, cold, or violence? Other than the amount of time between the action and the death, there isn't much difference (you may claim that death isn't certain in the modchip scenario, and I'll claim the exact same in the gun scenario -- death is not certain). Maybe that's being a little too sensationalist, but so is your argument about hammers. :)
Legally, I'm sure the DMCA prevents you from building your own chip. However, on an individual basis, I doubt they will care. My argument for allowing building but not selling is mostly ethical (I hesitate to use "moral", since it's a loaded word). If you're building your own modchip, it's simply you modifying some piece of equipment you already own. You're putting effort into it, which means few people are going to do it. If you then sell those modchips you're building, you're doing several things:
In short, doing it yourself is localized, but once you start selling, things get hairy quickly.
Isn't that what most of the world has done with guns? "You can't own a firearm, because you might use it to shoot somebody." I disagree with that stance, but fine, I'll be a hypocrit. I think there's no reason for modchips to be sold. If you want to build your own, great. If you want to buy specs to build your own, I'm fine with that, too. But if you want to buy one, too bad.
As you're the one wishing to change the status quo, the onus is on you to prove that people don't want zoning of games and movies, not upon me to prove that they do. Though, I'll bite. I have no research to back this up, obviously, but let's think about this rationally for a moment. The mass market in any country likes the games/movies they play/watch to be in their language. They also like them to run in the same format as their TVs (NTSC vs. PAL). Now, that means that most people in the US won't want Japanese games, because they're not in English, and most people in the UK won't want US games because they're not in PAL format. UK gamers won't want Japanese games because they're both in Japanese and not in PAL format. (yes, yes, I know that some TVs do both PAL and NTSC, and some people speak multiple languages, or don't care about the language like for an action game, but those are definitely in the minority.) And so on. What that means is that most people, whether there was zoning or not, would still wait for the software to be released in their market before buying it. What that tells me is that there's only a minority that even care about zoning at all, and likely even a minority within that minority that want to get rid of it. That's not to say that the majority would fight to keep zoning if the companies suddenly decided to remove it, only that they wouldn't care one way or the other.
No, I'm saying, "MS has the right to stop someone from selling a copyright circumvention device (aka, modchip)." What I'm not saying is, "MS has the right to stop you from modifying your XBox." If you want to modify your XBox, have at it. But you don't have the right to buy illegal modchips to do so.
I realize pop-up ads pay more than banner ads, but I blame that not on the users who blocked banner ads, or those who block pop-up ads, but on companies that misunderstand the internet and refuse to treat it like any other media where advertising is out there to create brand recognition, not to garner an immediate sale. So what if I didn't click on your banner? I saw it, and if I see it enough, I just might connect "Joe Sixpack's Computer Sales" with buying a new computer next time I think "I need to buy a new computer." Just because I don't need to buy a new computer now doesn't mean your ad failed. Pop-ups don't fix this. They just work on the annoyance factor. Or worse, they rely on trickery (how many times have you seen a popup that looks like it has a titlebar and close button, but you know it doesn't because they designed the gif for win98, and not XP or Linux or Mac? How many people do you think get sucked into that?). I'm fine with interstitials. IGN uses them, and I have no problem with it. I don't like the flash ads that come up over the top of an article, effectively making the article unreadable. That's why I have ActiveX applets set to require my permission to run (uh-oh! Is Microsoft providing ad-blocking software built-into Internet Explorer, because it allows me to select which Flash applets I want to let run, and which I don't? Oh no! Hipocrisy!).
I guess my point is that the difference is that blocking pop-up ads (and only pop-up ads, mind you) is reducing my annoyance factor with everyday web browsing, which is not illegal.(what? You say I can't change the channel on my TV when an ad comes on? Is that illegal?) Adding a modchip to an XBox (or a PS2, for that matter, and Sony came down on modchip makers for that, too) is effectively designed for stealing games. Sure, you may use it for import games or running linux, but you can't tell me the temptation isn't there for you to go and download games rather than buying them. Trust me, I knew a lot of people in college with chipped PSXs, and even though they had decent jobs (decent for students, of course), rather than buying PSX games they'd just go to Blockbuster, rent a game, and rip it.