(this opst ain't ALL off-topic, I'll make a point at the end)
You just picked up the phone, if someone was yakking on it (no one had a dedicated phone, they were all party lines with like 6 houses on each circuit) you asked when they would be done....
I'm quite young (almost 30 years old) and the above was the case in *my* lifetime! Of course I was also born and raised in a rural area of Canada (and yes, many rural parts of the US were just as "backwards" or more so in the 70's and early 80's). We had a colour TV thoughan horrid inflation in the 70s and early 80's made everything a bit more expensive.
When I was a wee lad my early experiences with the phone were quite similar. We had a clunky rotary-dial phone (didn't need operator assistance of course). All the lines on our local exchange outside the town limits were shared by two to six people. Touch-tone phones could not be used to dial out (although you could use one as an extension once the call was conencted or to spy on the neighbours when they were talking). Not only did you not have to dial the area code for any local calls as you have to do in some cases today, you didn't even have to dial the exchange code if you were on a common exchange! You just dialled the last four digits to connect if you were both on the same exchange(if your number was 555-1234 and you wanted to call 555-4321 all you did was dial 4321--If you wanted to call 321-5555 you'd need to dial the whole thing).
RJ11 or those wonky 4-prong connectors existed, but it was still common for the phone to be HARD-WIRED to the wall! You still couldn't buy your own phone or even add an extension in your own house without the government telephone company's involvement and extra charges. That was the case for everyone, not just in the country either. You couldn't even get your own line, much less a second one or even a second number no matter that you were willing to pay.
That all started to change in about 1985. Rural residents finally got touch-tone dialling and a dedicated (non-party) line (although each residence had to pay a few hundred dollars to get the line). We also were given ownership of the lines within our homes (at no cost) so we could do our own wiring and add extensions at no cost. We were no longer forced to rent phones and were allowed to purchase our own. And we were officially allowed to use answering machines and computer modems (finally--they were not allowed on party lines although they would technically function to some degree)!
As time went on, the government telephone company was privatised and we could buy long distance from competitors. There have been downsides (local company customer service stinks even worse than it used to) but overall the upsides are much greater (waaaay cheaper long distance, no party line, more flexible options, more features like call waiting and so on). In less than 20 years the difference is extremely dramatic!
This all looks like the reverse of the Sun/Microsoft vision actually. Some compare it to cellphones but I think of it more as the way government owned telephone system worked pre-1985 where I live--which is even worse. The parallels are there:
* Computers will be "free" (but neither in the "gratis" OR "libre" sense--it'll be no money up front but the "rental fee" will be mandatory or built into your monthly bill for service). Just like when you couldn't actually OWN your phone. At least you have SOME choices with cellphones.
* Technicians will come to your home and set everything up for you. Really convenient, but when you try to set up a second computer on your own (if you could even obtain one on your own) or alter your existing PC you'd be breaking your service contract, not only causing you to be fined but maybe you'd lose internet access or even the entire PC! (kinda like if you tried to add an extension or use an answering machine and got into trouble). Can you imagine... "we have evidence that you've connected an unaut
...becaus your plan would be illegal part of the time. As far as I know there are not really restrictions on importing music and other content from Canada into the US, but Canada has restrictions on importing foreign content into Canada.
You could only get around that by buying enough Canadian-produced music in the 'states to sell back to Canadians.
And you wondered why it's so damn hard to find HBO on TV in Canada and you poor Americans are infliced with so much Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, Jim Carrey etc etc ad nauseum....
...that all taxes are ussed for the common good. Sometimes taxes ARE theft. I consider my tax money stolen when the government collects it for one purpose and uses it for another.
In Canada, automotive fuel is taxed at about 100% (The actual revenue stations take in is 40-somehting cents per litre and consumers are paying 80 to 90 cents). The government put these taxes in to cover road repair but the bulk of it now goes into general revenue and our roads are crumbling (at least they are in places that don't vote for the governing party). They broke their promise and keep taking the money. That's dishonest and I think a form of theft.
The government also collects Employment Insurance as a payroll deduction on our cheques. The EI program has generally taken in millions more than it pays out. When he was finance minister, our current prime minister took a sizeable amount of money from the program and put it into general revenue to pay for other programs and debt financing. HE STOLE OUR MONEY--money meant as protection against job loss and spent it on God knows what.
Socialists also tend to think that Government is Good. Private companies are self interested---they are out to make a buck off you no matter what, while government is there to protect your interests and ideally would always break even. Apparently government regulators and publicly-owned organisations are immune to "corruption, kickbacks and nepotism" and will always be cheaper than private interests because there is no profit motive...
What a bunch of CRAP. It costs me 60-some dollars to register my vehicle--the province ownd the data but registration is handled by private companies. In Canada, all firearms must be registered to be legal. The federal gov't handles the whole thing top to bottom. Gun owners pay quite a bit more out-of-pocket to register each gun, and the taxpayers have paid even more...no exaggeration--the government has spent OVER $3000 PER GUN just to register them much less enforce the law! Regardless of anyones views on gun control everyone is outraged at the waste in this program. The civil service seems to thrive on nepotism and waste...hire your friends and if you're the boss of enough people you get a raise.
Not only can governtment be notoriously INefficient when compared to private enterprise, it can be notoriously corrupt. Ask Italians whether government stepping in will reduce corruption. Heck, as us up here in Canada! Our previous prine minister used his connections with a government-owned financial institution to shore up a money losing hotel in his riding in which he had invested. The government established a giant "national unity" program that did whatever they want and broke the governments own rules on accountability. Millions of dollars were spent on reports and advertising that were never produced--the marketing and advertising firms that got the money sure liked to donate to the governing party's election campaigns though.
Kinda reminds me of how companies owned by friends of Bush and Cheney in the US get some pretty sweet deals in rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, and how they go the extra mile in defending oil interests...
Anyways, given my observations perhaps you can understand my skepticism of government regulation and ownership in VoIP or any other industry.
...you should check to see if you actually know what you are talking about
I generally do. Maybe you should do the same.
EL and Cold Cathode Flourescent Lamps (CCFL's) aren't usually used in cellphones. LED technology is generally preferred. They use DC power with an operating voltage of about 3v or so. They are also cheaper than inverter+CCFL/EL and use less power, and they don't whine when powered on (my phone certainly doesn't whine). Here is an example of a typical backlight LED (a blue one used in a typical monochrome cellphone display). Colour phones of course use while LEDs which do consume a bit more power but not dramatically so.
Even so, CCFL's do need AC voltage, but the conversion circuitry is generally low power and sealed within the display unit--in other words not an explosion hazard. Operating current is 5 mA. Even if you were to bust open the display unit and have it remain functional, operating voltage wouldn't exceed 1000V. Keep in mind that this is all tightly sealed inside a unit with the LCD. The external power connectors on the backlight/LCD unit are typically 3.3V or 5V DC in your cellphone or PDA.
Regardless of the display type, power-wise they consume milliwatts to a watt or so. The dome light in your car probably uses more power than that. Regardless of voltage or frequency, they wouldn't cause an explosion or really even injure you.
You've got that right. Cellphones draw current in the milliamp range even at low voltages. If you were to try to step up the voltage to the point where it would make your ear tingle much less zap it would reduce the current to basically zero. That requires THOUSANDS of volts and some measure of current to provide adequate power.
Small colour LCDs use very little power, even with backlight (a colour display on your PDA uses probably less than 2 WATTS of power--a celphone probably much less than that). They work on less than 5VDC. They do NOT need voltage step-up. They do NOT need AC power.
IT'S A DAMN CELLPHONE...NOT a 17" desktop LCD with a mega-bright backlight! The ringer doesn't use AC power either. Hell most modern DESK phones don't really need it either...the ring is simulated with electronics and they all use low power displays. The only phones that needed high voltage AC are the old clunkers that had an actual metal bell and hammer in them!
As for the latest gas-station-cellphone incident it's pure hogwash. The cellphone chatter who got burned likely zapped himself on the car or the pump nozzle when he was fishing around to answer the phone or was otherwise distracted when using it. The whole issue is nonsense.
The battery in your car is higher voltage and puts out way more current than any cellphone. The electric fuel pump THAT IS *INSIDE* THE GAS TANK uses many times more electric energy than your phone. A cellphone is normally about the least risky thing to have on you when you fill up your car.
Of course if you use a cheap, defective LiIon battery and charge it improperly there's a BIT of a chance it'll heat up quite nicely and burn you, but you don't need a gas pump to help that along, and there'd be no kaboom that's for sure...
At any rate, I don't care how warm it gets, I'd rather live next to a big pile of digested crap than barrels of the scary stuff nuclear facilities leave behind...
Curious to know what is done with the crap left over when its usefulness as a power source is done.
duh...of course...confirmed by RTFA...
However, from the article...
With net metering, small producers like Straus can reduce or erase their energy bills but cannot be paid for pumping excess energy into the grid. Net metering has been available to owners of home solar systems for several years
Do they at least get a credit on their power bill? What's wrong with paying ALL energy producers? With todays high-tech, automated systems it shouldn't be a problem to do this and it would certainly give incentive. I'm curious to know the threshold at which you cease to be too small to be paid as an energy producer.
...So it's a good thing the US didn't sign the accord. Still pretty sh*tty in terms of greenhouse gas emissions so it wouldn't help meet Kyoto targets. Oh well, Kyoto is all about politics and shifting wealth and does nothing meaningful to address climate change or environmental protection anyways (I'll put away the flamethrower now).
On the upside, sh*t is a renewable resource and supply has historically exceeded demand, so it a cheap source of energy. And because it is renewable it could be argued that it is "good" greenhouse emissions as it is less disruptive on the "carbon cycle" of the global environment (that is, we are not pulling carbon sources out of the ground that have been out of the cycle for a bazillion years and disrupting natures balance to the same degree).
Good to see some creative ways to address our energy needs. Curious to know what is done with the crap left over when its usefulness as a power source is done. Good fertiliser I suppose and I'd hope a great deal less aromatic.
Peameal or backbacon...I think it is geographically dependent (the term "peameal" seems to be mostly used in Ontario and points east--out here in the west you'd likely get the response "what the heck is peameal?")
One thing to note is that like Chinese food served in North America, "Canadian Bacon" as served in the US is a pale and inaccurate imitation of the real thing--it is NOT seasoned nor cured the way it actually is in Canada. It's like calling corned beef Montreal Smoked Meat (they're different and it's always disappointing when the former is pawned off as the latter).
If you like the real thing but can't find it in the US, try ordering it from this site.
Anyways, to keep this post on-topic, I'd say that "corporate Canada" and "corporate America" are pretty much like "US style Canadian Bacon" and peameal/backbacon--quite similar in general but when you look further you notice differences. Among them:
* The "competitive drive" is not as pronounced in Canada. Americans seem to place more importance on climbing the ladder, job titles and so on. Canadians strive to move up, but it doesn't seem the emphasis on being "VP" or "Regional Manager". We don't care what our title is so long as we are fairly compensated.
* Canadian business seems more fixated on process and bureaucracy. My employer is a global corporation, and even within the same company there is more paperwork and business processes seem more combersome than in our American offices.
* Be prepared for a shock when you see your first paycheque. The income tax, CPP (pension) and EI (employment insurance) deductions will take a bigger chunk of your earnings than you are used to. That and your salary will be a bit smaller to start with (don't worry, it's in Canadian dollars so it won't APPEAR to be significantly less). Overall the tax take is higher but it is taken in bigger chunks. In the US, you have federal, state, municipal taxes, health insurance, this fee, that fee, etc. US government nickels and dimes. In Canada they clobber you in the head and take your money all at ones, more or less (except for the GST).
* Cost of living is cheaper in Canada overall--Houses cost a bit less, medicare is cheaper, food is a bit cheaper, broadband internet access and cable TV are significantly cheaper (for you slashdotters out there). Makes up for the insanely high gasoline prices.
There's more but you get the idea...kind of a parallel universe really...
Remember, a good deal of the Mac users out there are clueless ex-Windows user friends that we instructed to purchase Macs after scrubbing their old PCs of viruses, adware, spyware and other such crap one too many times.
No matter how often we tell them otherwise, it is ingrained in them to use the icon as an indictor of a file's content. If it wasn't then a great deal fewer email viruses would make it into the wild.
As an example - if someone made a car that looked very much like a Jaguar, but cost a third as much and had more commodity parts under the hood, and started selling it as the Panther. That's very obviously wrong, and even those theme-makers will probably agree.
You mean something like this and this? Guess it's not always wrong as long as you aren't misrepresenting yourself.
I think that more often than not there is nothing wrong with imitation at all. It seems to drive down prices for end consumers and foster more rapid innovation. Linux brings together the best of UNIX, MacOS and MS Windows at the lowest price point possible for example. If patents, copyrights and trademarks were abused to the extreme to protect every little idea, how much innovation would market leaders have to meaningfully improve their product?
There should be one qualificatino though. A "disarmed society" would be ideal IF EVERYBODY was disarmed. Infortunately the world is far from an ideal place so long as someone, somewhere makes weapons.
In the American case I'd say most law-abiding gun owners are either hunters or those concerned about their personal safety, being US criminals tend to be quite a bit more armed in realation to those in other countries (that's a feedback loop of a different sort).
In the case of China, you have a population that is completely disarmed and a government (a REPRESSIVE one) that is VERY armed. The Chinese police force is not independent from the government ether, so it is not just there to enforce the law it is used as another weapon to protect government power. When a government cannot be voted out after all, the only possibility of regime change is a revolt so force is the most effective way to maintain power.
I'd say that in this case it is a relevant point. Teenagers are emulating their government because they see it gets what it wants through force and intimidation. This aggression is directed at regular citizens (the internet cafe owners) because the govenrment is much too powerful (and armed) to overpower when your weapons happen to be rocks, bats, fire extiguishers or whatever. The shop owner can't defend himself, but the policeman can shoot them on site.
Business owners/operators in China won't pressure the governmet to change the law because they value their new-found economic freedom too much to risk losing it. Government won't accomodate their every concern and if they put up too much of a fuss they'll lose their business at least, or at worst be imprisoned for subversion.
So what is the best solution? How do we cut off that "feedback loop"? I could not live in a society that is completeyl disarmed while its government is armed to the teeth. I'd also be a bit nervous living in parts of the US where it seems any old nut can get himself a gun.
It'd be really nice if all the weapons in the world cold e destroyed, but that isn't going to happen...if all gons were destroyed, people will make use of other items as weapons. So Of the two "evils" I'll take the US one thank you very much. I'd probably temper that with laws that do not restrict ownership but instead govern BEHAVIOUR in the intrests of public safety--and those laws should be enforced effectively. Deer hunting with automatic weapons? I think not! Loaded, concealed weapons on posession in public, urban areas? Not the best idea. Hunters, target shooters, security and police personnel, any personal firearm safely stored in the owner's home? The cost of messing with those situations for outweighs the potential safety concerns.
...not so much because it "has partnerships" with spyware developers, it is because the EULAs of a lot of software like that form Gator, Bonzi Buddy and Kazza Lite grant you use of the software only in conjunction with the spyware and adware components it installs.
So on essence, Dell could have their asses sued off for assisting its customers in software piracy, DMCA violations and so on. So it's probably on advice of their lawyers to cover their butts by not getting involved in spyware support calls.
It's apparent that the editors only search their CD backups when they check for dupes.
It's also apparent that they store these CDs next to (or on top of) their (literally) smoking hot, case-modded, overclocked Athlon gaming boxes/workstations.
(it's a joke...laugh....please don't hurt me Mr. Malda...)
The REAL truth is that it was "fuggin expensive" in part due to royalty costs and in part due to the "collusion" that RAMBUS complains about. The problem is that RAMBUS management is too retarded to see the motive behind the collusion, which is what has to be established to prove the chip makers were acting illegally.
To put it briefly: RAMBUS invents a nifty new technology and thinks its kung-fu is so good that it patents the crap out of it and does a fancy dog and pony show to the linkes of Intel, Micron, Siemens and so on. Said show is well received and people get on board. When everyone is rip roarin' to go, RAMBUS says "oh yeah, we forgot to mention the little thing about our protection money---pay up or we'll break your kneecaps so you can never run again".
This is where the collusion comes in. Micron and other chip makers have a choice between the old, open standby PC100/PC133/SDR/DDR/whatever that is widely known and pretty much vendor neutral, or a new, incompatible and more expensive technology that puts their gonads squarely in the slowly clenching fists of RAMBUS (and Intel to some degree).
One company owns all the patents and gets all the royalties and can decide on a whim to jack up royalies or take away your license to use their technology on a whim. Based on RAMBUS's behaviour to that point who could blame the chip makers for shutting out RAMBUS en-masse? It didn't take great deal of effort and coordination for all parties to reach the same decision.
It's kind of ironic really. RAMBUS is whining about collusion and monopolistic practises of others because their attempt at monopolistic practises failed. This "collusion" wasn't driven by the desire to eliminate a competitor and cement market share, it was a common sense decision that any company would've made.
You'd think someone at RAMBUS would've heard the well worn case studies on Betamax video tape and IBMs MCA bus and avoided such bone-headedness. At least Sony didn't sue JVC, Panasonic and Toshiba because they preferred to make VHS machines instead of giving a cut of their profits to competitor Sony, and IBM didn't sue Compaq et al for creating their own EISA and VLB instead of buying MCA from IBM...
Or maybe perhaps there is really something wrong with your PC?
Not sure what you're implying there. I would be scared to run a 'Modern Linux Desktop' on an Intel machine with a mere 256MB of RAM.
MERE 256 MB? I have a Celeron 750 with 128MB of ram running a fairly recent release of Mandrake (not known for being a slim distro) with GNOME desktop and it sems to work fine for me. OpenOffice takes quite awhile to load but it works fine one it's up it seems. The same distro was even useable (if a bit pokey) of an AMD K6-2 350 with 96MB of ram--upgraded it to 192MB and it was pretty close to the same as the Celeron 750 for basic tasks.
If you are having trouble using a 256MB machine with a "Modern Linux desktop" you are doing something wrong or are using a very demanding application. The hardware might be misconfigured, or software drivers, or you have a big pile of services turned on that are only applicable to servers (Apache, Postfix, PostgreSQL, ProFTPd etc etc etc...they take up little memory on their own but together they add up).
In addition to this: I can and do run Office 2000, on Windows 95, on an aging Toshiba 486 laptop that only has 32 megs of RAM. It works pretty darn well for writing and spreadsheets. I know for a fact that I could NEVER get acceptable performance with that machine running Linux with OpenOffice.
The 32MB ram part is probably right (I've run Win 95 and Office 2000 on a 24 MB machine). If you run Win NT or 2k forget it though. And the 486 part is utter crap. I tried the Office 2k install on a 486 DX4 100 and it laughed in my face--OFFICE 2000 REQUIRES A PENTIUM CLASS MACHINE TO EVEN RUN AT ALL. And if you think it would run Excel "pretty darn well" then you're standards for performance are quite low and I'm surprised a Linux machine with EIGHT TIMES THE MEMORY couldn't fit the bill.
I want good drivers for my aging software, and as Linux has marched ahead as a platform for closed-source drivers for bleeding edge hardware, and as a server platform, it's partially abandoned most of the 'desktop' hardware I own.
I've found Linux to be BETTER for legacy hardware support. I do concede that drivers that come "ready to run" and automatic HW detection are lacking for stuff that sometimes isn't even THAT old in Linux, you can always hunt down what you need on the 'net--and often in source code form so you can compile it against the CPU and distro you use. Of course you have to have a lot of know-how to do so and the situation sucks, but at least it;s POSSIBLE.
Not so for Windows. I have an old parallel port scanner that still works great on Linux. Windows? forget it. It worked fine in Win 9x but the drivers don't work on ME, NT, 2K or XP. There was an NT driver but it was not very reliable to begin with... and didn't work at all in 2K or XP. No source for the driver of course so couldn't fix it or re-build it even if I had the know-how to do so.
I don't know what it is that turned you off Linux, but it is STILL cool. You also play up Windows and MS Office more than it deserves-- it isn't as snappy as you play it up to be and Office 2k was quite the buggy piece of crap before all the patches and service releases. Kind of refreshing though--if you were trolling you were relatively subtle, and I'm used to seeing MS software get put down MORE than it deserves as well (for example, as long as you have 64MB--more RAM if possible--Win 2K works alright on a machine as slow as a P233--and Windows XP is usable with 128MB of RAM on a PII 266 or 300...it seems that RAM and not processor speed it what Windows hungers for most). So it's nice to see a more "reasonable" MS fanboy
You demonstrate some ignorance of the "Linux community" in your opening paragraph:
Do you think they are the first company to sell a distribution? RedHat, Mandrage, SUSE, you can buy a copy of their distro from all of em. If you don't like doing so, then just DL an ISO somewhere, otherwise, quit complaining.
Open source/free software advocates are generally NOT anti-capitalist/communist (in fact they are more likely to be of a libertarian mindset politically). Open source is about "libre" rather than "gratis", and when staunch advocates complain about non-free software it is concern about restricted RIGHTS, not the monetary cost.
Oddly enough, it isn't the gratis/"free as in beer" aspect of Linux that puts off those "big name companies". In the case of the GPL, it's a rights restriction of another sort--one that prevents derivative works from being made closed source--that scares them. If "free as in beer" scared Microsoft we would've been paying for IE and Media Player and whatever. MS is the MASTER of "free as in beer" then it helps them become dominant.
Thankfully, some "big name companies" (IBM, Novell...) are sensible enough to get past the paranoia to embrace Linux. It's also good to see some Linux companies that bring the technology into the domain of proprietary software in the name of competition. I prefer that when possible that an OPEN alternative be available, but so long as some "viral" proprietary licensing restriction doesn't contaminate Linux all the more power to them...if you're a purist on one side or the other, you can use Debian (if you're a Stallman) or Windows (if you're a Ballmer) and avoid applications with distasteful license agreements.
I'd have to say that Canadians are generally more reluctant to embrace government-mandated censorship, but I think Canada and the US are mostly different sides of the same coin......I have more freedom in what I say in Canada, just due to the fact that many of the limitations on free speech are imposed by private citizens who control some form of media or forum, and have an axe to grind...
Concentration of media ownership is a threat to freedom of expression in Canada at LEAST as much as in the US. Sometimes it ssems the government-funded CBC is not entirely arms length. Then we have CanWest Global and Bell GlobeMedia which together form a near-monopoly and are headed by well-known supporters of the Liberal party. Right now it doesn't seem to have compromised objectivity (Liberal-related scandals still make a lot of press), however red flags have been raised in the past when editorials in regional papers offended the political sensibilities of the "big boss" and those newspapers were ordered to print an editorial issued from upon high that defended the prime minister.
In other aspects Canada has done its own share on censorship lunacy. In the US, the "religious right" lobbies to supress "un-American, un-Christian" expression. In Canada it's the opposite, although not to the same magnitude--there is an "athiestic left" that works to limit religious expression for example. I'd say the average Canadian has no problem with not having prayer in public schools, however pressure from the left extends in some cases to banning "God Save the Queen" from schools and advocating the removal of the word "God" and phrases like "all thy sons command" from the anthem, and in some schools advocation of religous holidays is frowned upon (Christmas, Easter and sometimes even non-Christian holidays such as Hanukkah or Eid).
Canadians are less sensitive to strong language or nutity on television than the US, but we make up for it in our sensitivity to French-English relations. Not long after Janet's outfit malfunctioned an uncensored picture of it appeared inside the newspapers in Canada, right alongside articles about Don Cherry's putdown of French hockey players sparking debate in Parliament and the implementation of a tape-delay on Cherry's future commentaries.
Seems freedom of expression must be defended diligently no matter where you live...
Looks to me like fishing for job justification on the part of music execs to me...
With CDs, you get a shiney little disc in a little plastic box with a pretty cover and lyrics or other crap printed inside, and that the publishers put up posters and displays in stores and so on has this psychological effect on people that makes them more comfortable justifying a $10 to $20 purchase.
With online music services, that psychological justification just isn't there. Computer users know how easy it is to download and share music--on the old Napster and Kazaa and such the direct cost was zero. There is no shiney object, no pretty cover--just bits coming in on a wire. Users cannot justify paying the same kind of prices for something that intangible.
Yes online distribution is cheaper but that is only the surface argument. Music execs are used to the pre-information age when they acually played an important role. They had to get the music produced. They had to distribute the media. They had to market it--let the public know where to go and get it. This was "real work" without the internet.
Now PCs are commonplace and the internet is a part of everyday life. The big players in the music industry are becoming obsolete in the same way typewriter makers all died off or shifted business focus. It's getting to the point where indies can record fairly good quality albums with "pro-sumer" level hardware, leverage the internet and modern media in creative and inexpensive ways and distribute music on-line without relinquishing ownership and control to a recording company.
The technology can is open and the worms are everywhere now, and whatever legislative barriers RIAA tries to shove through or "creative price adjustments" on-line music providers try to inflict on consumers will eventually prove ineffective as consumers are more fickle than ever. ITunes and Napster overpriced? Regardless of the UI they'll switch to Wal-Mart.com or simialr cheap competitor. They'll buy used CDs. They'll turn back to tune sharing. Copy protection and DRM is too easily thwarted right now and hairbrained schemes to introduce crippled technology (DRM-enabled music files, self-destructing DVDs, limited-play devices) will be ignored by the public. **Left to its own devices**, the market will determine the value in the end, not some coporate executive.
...for not using simple paper ballots. Canada is a British Parliamentary Democracy and its voting system is based upon what Britain does...and the population of Britain has not been an issue. Hell, India has run elections on the same system with WAAAY more voters (it being the most populous democratic nation in the world by a large margin). I admit that India is moving towards a mechanised way of voting at some levels but population is not the biggest motivator there.
When you have a bigger population, it follows that you'll have more ridings, more polling places, more scrutineers (counters) so the task of counting the vote does not become insurmountable. What makes the need for an automated system more pressing in the USA is it's system of government.
I myself am Canadian so I may have a different perspective than a US-born citizen, but IMHO the US is the most democratic nation in the world. Americans vote for EVERYTHING. They elect their head of state (president), their federal representatives in both houses (congress and senate) as well as state and local governments. They elect their judiciary (judges, police chiefs) and hold binding votes on legislation (propositions). In the presidential race they even have primaries to vote for candidates they want to vote for in the main election! They also hold elections quite often...federally, elections are held every two years.
In the US elections are WAY more important to the governing process than anywhere else in the world--I don't think many non-Americans appreciate that fact (even here in Canada most don't). When an American votes they aren't making an X by someone's name once every 3 to 5 years...they could be voting for their congressman, their senator, president, a number of propositions, local judge and their state govenor all in one year. It's easy to count votes for an election manually, but who wants to that when you have so many elections to count? No wonder it's such a hot issue in the US (even discounting the contoversy of the 2000 election)?
In Canada, we vote for our Member of Parliament federally, our MLA/MPP/MNA provincially and for a councillor, mayor and school board rep municipally. That's it. Ever. Any other votes held are not binding (municipal plebicites and what have you--although the outcomes carry political weight). These elections are every 3 to 5 years, unless (usually because of a minority govenrnemt situation) a vote of non-confidence triggers one sooner. Why would we ever need more than a pencil and paper with such a simple, infrequent system of elections?
In a way I envy the American system. Canadians do not get to elect our head of state--that would technically be Elizabeth II, HRH Queen of Canada. Her Canadian representative (the R.Hon Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, who basically gives assent to our bills to make them law on behalf of the Queen) is also an appointed position. All the members of the Canadian senate are also appointed. All judges are appointed too, and referrendums (binding votes on legislation) are extremely rare and have only been conducted on major constitutional issues.
All these appointments are selected (technically with the Queen's blessing/rubber stamp) by our Prime Minister--the "real" leader of Canada (R. Hon Paul Martin II), who was acclaimed leader at his party's convention and was elected to parliament by winning the most votes of any candidate in his home riding. Meaning that in the strictest sense only a few tens of thousands of people residing in a small patch of Quebec actually got to vote for the Prime Minister. This year if the Conservatives miraculously win it's the same thing, except that a few thousand Alberta residents are the lucky ones--but at least in that case there was actually a real race for the party leadership and a more democratic method of selection than the traditional Liberal convention.
Soo....unlike the "grandparent post" I would NOT recommend the US follow the Canadian system. The fiasco the US is going t
If you want 'easy' the way you define it...
on
A Babe in Tuxland
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Then the best option is a Mac, then perhaps Windows and Linux in a tie for second, IMHO...
Yes, Linux systems can have issues during install, config and so on. However I find the issues to be not much different than with Windows. In both platforms, setting up a local printer is trivial--a smart 4-year-old could probably do it (in Linux certain apps have issues using the printer more than in windows I suppose). Setting up a NETWORK printer in Win OR Linux can potentially cause grief.
Setting up a network I found was actually EASIER in Linux until Win2k and later (I remember when you even looked at network settings the wrong way WinNT and 9x wanted to reboot). The issues are the same with both. The one point you make that is true is the wireless networking issue--MS is further ahead there since drivers are more readily available (mostly for "political" issues rather than technical). However it's still common for Windows users to just plug everything in and turn it on--and have wireless networking completely unsecure, then there is a completely DIFFERENT set of problems. I suppose a good side effect of being troublesome to set up in Linux is that the users that manage to get it working are tech-savvy enough to know the importance of setting up a SECURE wireless connection.
In my experience recently, I've found that newbies get their PCs with XP pre-installed, they plug it all in and everything "just works"...for about a week. By then (because they didn't run windows update to patch everything right away) several exploits/worms/spywares will have infested the system and various other freeware (as in beer)/demoware/adware and other cruft will slow their shiney new 2.4GHz P4 to a 386-like crawl. Linux and Mac systems of course are much less vulnerable. Once you set them up they "just work" and STAY that way so even a four year old can play with it and grandma can send her emails.
Is Windows easier to "know" and set up? perhaps in some ways. Easier to maintain and keep healthy? HELL NO. If you want that get Linux, and if you also want "easy too know", spend a bit more and get a Mac system.
You are right in your suspicions that these sort of "studies" are commissioned by Microsoft as part of their marketing strategy (just part of the business--Oracle, Sun, IBM etc parade studies flatter their products as well after all). However, I don't dwell at all on these sorts of studies and I certainly wouldn't give them any meaningful weight when making a decision on deploying Linux (or not).
Even given the positive spin towards Microsoft, however, Forrester's comments on the study are a barely lukewarm endorsement of Microsoft, and don't seem to be too critical of Linux. Check out some of the comments by Forrester analyst Laura Koetzle:
Surprisingly, Microsoft did the best job at patching vulnerabilities fast, even though it ranked at the top with the largest percentage of its security holes rated as high
So they DID acknowledge that Microsoft's platform had the most HIGH RISK vulnerabilities, althought this fact is glossed over in the article. Koetzle also acknowledges that the study did NOT look at how WELL the patches addressed the problem (MS often needs to issue more than one patch to get it right, and sometimes they fix one bug and introduce another).
"The fact that the Linux distributors fixed such a high percentage of their vulnerabilities is a remarkable achievement," she said. "Even Debian, in last place, was pretty darn thorough."
Sure doesn't sound like something you'd expect an MS-paid cheerleader to day about the competition...
This is very much a case of your mileage may vary
Translation: even if patches are made fast they can still leak...
The bottom line? Any of these platforms can be operated securely
Quite the ringing endorsement for MS ain't it? Nice to see their people so solidly back their studies...
My employer is a large organisation with literally tens of thousands of systems to support in locations around the globe. Great effort is spent on maintaining a largely Microsoft-based infrastructure--keeping the countless worms and viruses at bay, keeping our information secure, making sure the AS/400s can talk to everything else and making sure all our applications functions properly. Standardisation is MANDATORY to allow our IT people to do their already admirable job.
Besides the important fact that Microsoft's offer probably violates OUR corporate ethics policy, it also circumvents our IT management policies. These free copies of the latest office (which wouldn't be approved software for a couple of years with our processes) are a potential support nightmare--the possibilities of incompatible file formats, new security concerns and pressure to support the server-dependent features are intolerable.
Therefore unfortunately for Microsoft, its free offer of the new "office system" is not likely to gain traction with large corporate customers (at least those that are sensibly manged or conservative in nature). Besides the post-Enron focus on more effective enforcement of ethical guidelines blocking such "gifts", the IT department will not only not support "unauthorised/unevaluated" software, upon its discovery the user will be instructed to REMOVE it immidiately on threat of suspension of network access.
This offer will allow MS to infiltrate some organisations of course (probably those large enough to afford licensing costs but small enough that an upper-management "PHB"-type easily distracted by shiney new toys can steeer corporate IT policy). However, MS wants to grab a piece of the REAL "big iron" enterprise--large corporations and public institutions with thousans of seats. This is where Linux has had the most success as well. This "gift" is a boneheaded strategy in that market and will do NOTHING to improve an already dimming view of Microsoft in that space.
Cuz if the guy is a slimeball who found your wallet lost on the street and decided to have some fun on you it's all to easy for him to do that. Whenever I use my credit card in person I'm never asked to prove my identity. One time awhile back a boss I had asked me to fill his truck and use his card and to call if they gave me any trouble. They swiped the card without even looking at it.
Hell, even if it's you using your own card...people are really careless and only seem to have concerns about using their card on the 'net. Too may people out there verbally broadcast their credit card info to strangers over the phone who solicit them for donations to feed the starving Africans, or hand their cards to the attendant at the full-service station when they fill their vehicles, or willingly give it to the waitress when they have lunch at Denny's, or whatever else.
I dated a diner waitress once, and know the types of losers who ended up as permanent pump jockeys from summer jobs as a teenager. I have personally witnessed those environments. In both situations many (if not most in some cases) of those employees are poorly educated, poorly paid, perennially broke, dopey chronic potheads. Also, some call centres are also pretty lax and will hire anyone who will stay long enough to learn how to use the predictive dialer system. AND WE TRUST THESE PEOPLE WITH OUR CREDIT CARDS!
Because of that I NEVER buy anything, book a room or hire a car over the phone...I go online so my credit card number is at least encrypted (and I hope that the computer jockeys are at least a bit more trustworthy than a call centre operator). I NEVER give my credit card to a waitress or a pump jockey--if I use my card at all I go to the cashier and have them swipe it electronically. Authorisation is instant and the receipt they retain doesn't show the whole number anymore (I also NEVER use the old "click-clack" impression machines either).
Sounds paranoid? Well, it's far easier to exploit those common real-world events than to set up an internet phishing expedition. C.C. fraud on the INTERNET? Even if your number was sent in the clear it's typically in transit for less than a second, and could only be aniffed out by people with access to special equipment. Sure you have to be careful about encryption and authentication but (for now) online transactions are still mostly safe. Much less bother for criminals to pursue other opportunities.
...bases its IT infrastructure descisions based on what the product logo looks like then the world is clearly going straight to hell in a handbasket.
However, I'm sure that affixed to the handbasket in which we are riding will be a label with a slick, professional logo that was heavily tested by a leading marketing agency using a large number of diverse focus groups.
Slashdot Mirror
(this opst ain't ALL off-topic, I'll make a point at the end)
...
You just picked up the phone, if someone was yakking on it (no one had a dedicated phone, they were all party lines with like 6 houses on each circuit) you asked when they would be done.
I'm quite young (almost 30 years old) and the above was the case in *my* lifetime! Of course I was also born and raised in a rural area of Canada (and yes, many rural parts of the US were just as "backwards" or more so in the 70's and early 80's). We had a colour TV thoughan horrid inflation in the 70s and early 80's made everything a bit more expensive.
When I was a wee lad my early experiences with the phone were quite similar. We had a clunky rotary-dial phone (didn't need operator assistance of course). All the lines on our local exchange outside the town limits were shared by two to six people. Touch-tone phones could not be used to dial out (although you could use one as an extension once the call was conencted or to spy on the neighbours when they were talking). Not only did you not have to dial the area code for any local calls as you have to do in some cases today, you didn't even have to dial the exchange code if you were on a common exchange! You just dialled the last four digits to connect if you were both on the same exchange(if your number was 555-1234 and you wanted to call 555-4321 all you did was dial 4321--If you wanted to call 321-5555 you'd need to dial the whole thing).
RJ11 or those wonky 4-prong connectors existed, but it was still common for the phone to be HARD-WIRED to the wall! You still couldn't buy your own phone or even add an extension in your own house without the government telephone company's involvement and extra charges. That was the case for everyone, not just in the country either. You couldn't even get your own line, much less a second one or even a second number no matter that you were willing to pay.
That all started to change in about 1985. Rural residents finally got touch-tone dialling and a dedicated (non-party) line (although each residence had to pay a few hundred dollars to get the line). We also were given ownership of the lines within our homes (at no cost) so we could do our own wiring and add extensions at no cost. We were no longer forced to rent phones and were allowed to purchase our own. And we were officially allowed to use answering machines and computer modems (finally--they were not allowed on party lines although they would technically function to some degree)!
As time went on, the government telephone company was privatised and we could buy long distance from competitors. There have been downsides (local company customer service stinks even worse than it used to) but overall the upsides are much greater (waaaay cheaper long distance, no party line, more flexible options, more features like call waiting and so on). In less than 20 years the difference is extremely dramatic!
This all looks like the reverse of the Sun/Microsoft vision actually. Some compare it to cellphones but I think of it more as the way government owned telephone system worked pre-1985 where I live--which is even worse. The parallels are there:
* Computers will be "free" (but neither in the "gratis" OR "libre" sense--it'll be no money up front but the "rental fee" will be mandatory or built into your monthly bill for service). Just like when you couldn't actually OWN your phone. At least you have SOME choices with cellphones.
* Technicians will come to your home and set everything up for you. Really convenient, but when you try to set up a second computer on your own (if you could even obtain one on your own) or alter your existing PC you'd be breaking your service contract, not only causing you to be fined but maybe you'd lose internet access or even the entire PC! (kinda like if you tried to add an extension or use an answering machine and got into trouble). Can you imagine... "we have evidence that you've connected an unaut
...becaus your plan would be illegal part of the time. As far as I know there are not really restrictions on importing music and other content from Canada into the US, but Canada has restrictions on importing foreign content into Canada.
You could only get around that by buying enough Canadian-produced music in the 'states to sell back to Canadians.
And you wondered why it's so damn hard to find HBO on TV in Canada and you poor Americans are infliced with so much Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, Jim Carrey etc etc ad nauseum....
...that all taxes are ussed for the common good. Sometimes taxes ARE theft. I consider my tax money stolen when the government collects it for one purpose and uses it for another.
In Canada, automotive fuel is taxed at about 100% (The actual revenue stations take in is 40-somehting cents per litre and consumers are paying 80 to 90 cents). The government put these taxes in to cover road repair but the bulk of it now goes into general revenue and our roads are crumbling (at least they are in places that don't vote for the governing party). They broke their promise and keep taking the money. That's dishonest and I think a form of theft.
The government also collects Employment Insurance as a payroll deduction on our cheques. The EI program has generally taken in millions more than it pays out. When he was finance minister, our current prime minister took a sizeable amount of money from the program and put it into general revenue to pay for other programs and debt financing. HE STOLE OUR MONEY--money meant as protection against job loss and spent it on God knows what.
Socialists also tend to think that Government is Good. Private companies are self interested---they are out to make a buck off you no matter what, while government is there to protect your interests and ideally would always break even. Apparently government regulators and publicly-owned organisations are immune to "corruption, kickbacks and nepotism" and will always be cheaper than private interests because there is no profit motive...
What a bunch of CRAP. It costs me 60-some dollars to register my vehicle--the province ownd the data but registration is handled by private companies. In Canada, all firearms must be registered to be legal. The federal gov't handles the whole thing top to bottom. Gun owners pay quite a bit more out-of-pocket to register each gun, and the taxpayers have paid even more...no exaggeration--the government has spent OVER $3000 PER GUN just to register them much less enforce the law! Regardless of anyones views on gun control everyone is outraged at the waste in this program. The civil service seems to thrive on nepotism and waste...hire your friends and if you're the boss of enough people you get a raise.
Not only can governtment be notoriously INefficient when compared to private enterprise, it can be notoriously corrupt. Ask Italians whether government stepping in will reduce corruption. Heck, as us up here in Canada! Our previous prine minister used his connections with a government-owned financial institution to shore up a money losing hotel in his riding in which he had invested. The government established a giant "national unity" program that did whatever they want and broke the governments own rules on accountability. Millions of dollars were spent on reports and advertising that were never produced--the marketing and advertising firms that got the money sure liked to donate to the governing party's election campaigns though.
Kinda reminds me of how companies owned by friends of Bush and Cheney in the US get some pretty sweet deals in rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, and how they go the extra mile in defending oil interests...
Anyways, given my observations perhaps you can understand my skepticism of government regulation and ownership in VoIP or any other industry.
...you should check to see if you actually know what you are talking about
I generally do. Maybe you should do the same.
EL and Cold Cathode Flourescent Lamps (CCFL's) aren't usually used in cellphones. LED technology is generally preferred. They use DC power with an operating voltage of about 3v or so. They are also cheaper than inverter+CCFL/EL and use less power, and they don't whine when powered on (my phone certainly doesn't whine). Here is an example of a typical backlight LED (a blue one used in a typical monochrome cellphone display). Colour phones of course use while LEDs which do consume a bit more power but not dramatically so.
Even so, CCFL's do need AC voltage, but the conversion circuitry is generally low power and sealed within the display unit--in other words not an explosion hazard. Operating current is 5 mA. Even if you were to bust open the display unit and have it remain functional, operating voltage wouldn't exceed 1000V. Keep in mind that this is all tightly sealed inside a unit with the LCD. The external power connectors on the backlight/LCD unit are typically 3.3V or 5V DC in your cellphone or PDA.
Regardless of the display type, power-wise they consume milliwatts to a watt or so. The dome light in your car probably uses more power than that. Regardless of voltage or frequency, they wouldn't cause an explosion or really even injure you.
I'm not an electrical engineer
You've got that right. Cellphones draw current in the milliamp range even at low voltages. If you were to try to step up the voltage to the point where it would make your ear tingle much less zap it would reduce the current to basically zero. That requires THOUSANDS of volts and some measure of current to provide adequate power.
Small colour LCDs use very little power, even with backlight (a colour display on your PDA uses probably less than 2 WATTS of power--a celphone probably much less than that). They work on less than 5VDC. They do NOT need voltage step-up. They do NOT need AC power.
IT'S A DAMN CELLPHONE...NOT a 17" desktop LCD with a mega-bright backlight! The ringer doesn't use AC power either. Hell most modern DESK phones don't really need it either...the ring is simulated with electronics and they all use low power displays. The only phones that needed high voltage AC are the old clunkers that had an actual metal bell and hammer in them!
As for the latest gas-station-cellphone incident it's pure hogwash. The cellphone chatter who got burned likely zapped himself on the car or the pump nozzle when he was fishing around to answer the phone or was otherwise distracted when using it. The whole issue is nonsense.
The battery in your car is higher voltage and puts out way more current than any cellphone. The electric fuel pump THAT IS *INSIDE* THE GAS TANK uses many times more electric energy than your phone. A cellphone is normally about the least risky thing to have on you when you fill up your car.
Of course if you use a cheap, defective LiIon battery and charge it improperly there's a BIT of a chance it'll heat up quite nicely and burn you, but you don't need a gas pump to help that along, and there'd be no kaboom that's for sure...
I mention the theory in my first post.
At any rate, I don't care how warm it gets, I'd rather live next to a big pile of digested crap than barrels of the scary stuff nuclear facilities leave behind...
Curious to know what is done with the crap left over when its usefulness as a power source is done.
duh...of course...confirmed by RTFA...
However, from the article...
With net metering, small producers like Straus can reduce or erase their energy bills but cannot be paid for pumping excess energy into the grid. Net metering has been available to owners of home solar systems for several years
Do they at least get a credit on their power bill? What's wrong with paying ALL energy producers? With todays high-tech, automated systems it shouldn't be a problem to do this and it would certainly give incentive. I'm curious to know the threshold at which you cease to be too small to be paid as an energy producer.
...So it's a good thing the US didn't sign the accord. Still pretty sh*tty in terms of greenhouse gas emissions so it wouldn't help meet Kyoto targets. Oh well, Kyoto is all about politics and shifting wealth and does nothing meaningful to address climate change or environmental protection anyways (I'll put away the flamethrower now).
On the upside, sh*t is a renewable resource and supply has historically exceeded demand, so it a cheap source of energy. And because it is renewable it could be argued that it is "good" greenhouse emissions as it is less disruptive on the "carbon cycle" of the global environment (that is, we are not pulling carbon sources out of the ground that have been out of the cycle for a bazillion years and disrupting natures balance to the same degree).
Good to see some creative ways to address our energy needs. Curious to know what is done with the crap left over when its usefulness as a power source is done. Good fertiliser I suppose and I'd hope a great deal less aromatic.
Peameal or backbacon...I think it is geographically dependent (the term "peameal" seems to be mostly used in Ontario and points east--out here in the west you'd likely get the response "what the heck is peameal?")
One thing to note is that like Chinese food served in North America, "Canadian Bacon" as served in the US is a pale and inaccurate imitation of the real thing--it is NOT seasoned nor cured the way it actually is in Canada. It's like calling corned beef Montreal Smoked Meat (they're different and it's always disappointing when the former is pawned off as the latter).
If you like the real thing but can't find it in the US, try ordering it from this site.
Anyways, to keep this post on-topic, I'd say that "corporate Canada" and "corporate America" are pretty much like "US style Canadian Bacon" and peameal/backbacon--quite similar in general but when you look further you notice differences. Among them:
* The "competitive drive" is not as pronounced in Canada. Americans seem to place more importance on climbing the ladder, job titles and so on. Canadians strive to move up, but it doesn't seem the emphasis on being "VP" or "Regional Manager". We don't care what our title is so long as we are fairly compensated.
* Canadian business seems more fixated on process and bureaucracy. My employer is a global corporation, and even within the same company there is more paperwork and business processes seem more combersome than in our American offices.
* Be prepared for a shock when you see your first paycheque. The income tax, CPP (pension) and EI (employment insurance) deductions will take a bigger chunk of your earnings than you are used to. That and your salary will be a bit smaller to start with (don't worry, it's in Canadian dollars so it won't APPEAR to be significantly less). Overall the tax take is higher but it is taken in bigger chunks. In the US, you have federal, state, municipal taxes, health insurance, this fee, that fee, etc. US government nickels and dimes. In Canada they clobber you in the head and take your money all at ones, more or less (except for the GST).
* Cost of living is cheaper in Canada overall--Houses cost a bit less, medicare is cheaper, food is a bit cheaper, broadband internet access and cable TV are significantly cheaper (for you slashdotters out there). Makes up for the insanely high gasoline prices.
There's more but you get the idea...kind of a parallel universe really...
Remember, a good deal of the Mac users out there are clueless ex-Windows user friends that we instructed to purchase Macs after scrubbing their old PCs of viruses, adware, spyware and other such crap one too many times.
No matter how often we tell them otherwise, it is ingrained in them to use the icon as an indictor of a file's content. If it wasn't then a great deal fewer email viruses would make it into the wild.
As an example - if someone made a car that looked very much like a Jaguar, but cost a third as much and had more commodity parts under the hood, and started selling it as the Panther. That's very obviously wrong, and even those theme-makers will probably agree.
You mean something like this and this? Guess it's not always wrong as long as you aren't misrepresenting yourself.
I think that more often than not there is nothing wrong with imitation at all. It seems to drive down prices for end consumers and foster more rapid innovation. Linux brings together the best of UNIX, MacOS and MS Windows at the lowest price point possible for example. If patents, copyrights and trademarks were abused to the extreme to protect every little idea, how much innovation would market leaders have to meaningfully improve their product?
...even if it is an inflammatory statement.
There should be one qualificatino though. A "disarmed society" would be ideal IF EVERYBODY was disarmed. Infortunately the world is far from an ideal place so long as someone, somewhere makes weapons.
In the American case I'd say most law-abiding gun owners are either hunters or those concerned about their personal safety, being US criminals tend to be quite a bit more armed in realation to those in other countries (that's a feedback loop of a different sort).
In the case of China, you have a population that is completely disarmed and a government (a REPRESSIVE one) that is VERY armed. The Chinese police force is not independent from the government ether, so it is not just there to enforce the law it is used as another weapon to protect government power. When a government cannot be voted out after all, the only possibility of regime change is a revolt so force is the most effective way to maintain power.
I'd say that in this case it is a relevant point. Teenagers are emulating their government because they see it gets what it wants through force and intimidation. This aggression is directed at regular citizens (the internet cafe owners) because the govenrment is much too powerful (and armed) to overpower when your weapons happen to be rocks, bats, fire extiguishers or whatever. The shop owner can't defend himself, but the policeman can shoot them on site.
Business owners/operators in China won't pressure the governmet to change the law because they value their new-found economic freedom too much to risk losing it. Government won't accomodate their every concern and if they put up too much of a fuss they'll lose their business at least, or at worst be imprisoned for subversion.
So what is the best solution? How do we cut off that "feedback loop"? I could not live in a society that is completeyl disarmed while its government is armed to the teeth. I'd also be a bit nervous living in parts of the US where it seems any old nut can get himself a gun.
It'd be really nice if all the weapons in the world cold e destroyed, but that isn't going to happen...if all gons were destroyed, people will make use of other items as weapons. So Of the two "evils" I'll take the US one thank you very much. I'd probably temper that with laws that do not restrict ownership but instead govern BEHAVIOUR in the intrests of public safety--and those laws should be enforced effectively. Deer hunting with automatic weapons? I think not! Loaded, concealed weapons on posession in public, urban areas? Not the best idea. Hunters, target shooters, security and police personnel, any personal firearm safely stored in the owner's home? The cost of messing with those situations for outweighs the potential safety concerns.
...not so much because it "has partnerships" with spyware developers, it is because the EULAs of a lot of software like that form Gator, Bonzi Buddy and Kazza Lite grant you use of the software only in conjunction with the spyware and adware components it installs.
So on essence, Dell could have their asses sued off for assisting its customers in software piracy, DMCA violations and so on. So it's probably on advice of their lawyers to cover their butts by not getting involved in spyware support calls.
It's apparent that the editors only search their CD backups when they check for dupes.
It's also apparent that they store these CDs next to (or on top of) their (literally) smoking hot, case-modded, overclocked Athlon gaming boxes/workstations.
(it's a joke...laugh....please don't hurt me Mr. Malda...)
The REAL truth is that it was "fuggin expensive" in part due to royalty costs and in part due to the "collusion" that RAMBUS complains about. The problem is that RAMBUS management is too retarded to see the motive behind the collusion, which is what has to be established to prove the chip makers were acting illegally.
To put it briefly: RAMBUS invents a nifty new technology and thinks its kung-fu is so good that it patents the crap out of it and does a fancy dog and pony show to the linkes of Intel, Micron, Siemens and so on. Said show is well received and people get on board. When everyone is rip roarin' to go, RAMBUS says "oh yeah, we forgot to mention the little thing about our protection money---pay up or we'll break your kneecaps so you can never run again".
This is where the collusion comes in. Micron and other chip makers have a choice between the old, open standby PC100/PC133/SDR/DDR/whatever that is widely known and pretty much vendor neutral, or a new, incompatible and more expensive technology that puts their gonads squarely in the slowly clenching fists of RAMBUS (and Intel to some degree).
One company owns all the patents and gets all the royalties and can decide on a whim to jack up royalies or take away your license to use their technology on a whim. Based on RAMBUS's behaviour to that point who could blame the chip makers for shutting out RAMBUS en-masse? It didn't take great deal of effort and coordination for all parties to reach the same decision.
It's kind of ironic really. RAMBUS is whining about collusion and monopolistic practises of others because their attempt at monopolistic practises failed. This "collusion" wasn't driven by the desire to eliminate a competitor and cement market share, it was a common sense decision that any company would've made.
You'd think someone at RAMBUS would've heard the well worn case studies on Betamax video tape and IBMs MCA bus and avoided such bone-headedness. At least Sony didn't sue JVC, Panasonic and Toshiba because they preferred to make VHS machines instead of giving a cut of their profits to competitor Sony, and IBM didn't sue Compaq et al for creating their own EISA and VLB instead of buying MCA from IBM...
Or maybe perhaps there is really something wrong with your PC?
Not sure what you're implying there. I would be scared to run a 'Modern Linux Desktop' on an Intel machine with a mere 256MB of RAM.
MERE 256 MB? I have a Celeron 750 with 128MB of ram running a fairly recent release of Mandrake (not known for being a slim distro) with GNOME desktop and it sems to work fine for me. OpenOffice takes quite awhile to load but it works fine one it's up it seems. The same distro was even useable (if a bit pokey) of an AMD K6-2 350 with 96MB of ram--upgraded it to 192MB and it was pretty close to the same as the Celeron 750 for basic tasks.
If you are having trouble using a 256MB machine with a "Modern Linux desktop" you are doing something wrong or are using a very demanding application. The hardware might be misconfigured, or software drivers, or you have a big pile of services turned on that are only applicable to servers (Apache, Postfix, PostgreSQL, ProFTPd etc etc etc...they take up little memory on their own but together they add up).
In addition to this: I can and do run Office 2000, on Windows 95, on an aging Toshiba 486 laptop that only has 32 megs of RAM. It works pretty darn well for writing and spreadsheets. I know for a fact that I could NEVER get acceptable performance with that machine running Linux with OpenOffice.
The 32MB ram part is probably right (I've run Win 95 and Office 2000 on a 24 MB machine). If you run Win NT or 2k forget it though. And the 486 part is utter crap. I tried the Office 2k install on a 486 DX4 100 and it laughed in my face--OFFICE 2000 REQUIRES A PENTIUM CLASS MACHINE TO EVEN RUN AT ALL. And if you think it would run Excel "pretty darn well" then you're standards for performance are quite low and I'm surprised a Linux machine with EIGHT TIMES THE MEMORY couldn't fit the bill.
I want good drivers for my aging software, and as Linux has marched ahead as a platform for closed-source drivers for bleeding edge hardware, and as a server platform, it's partially abandoned most of the 'desktop' hardware I own.
I've found Linux to be BETTER for legacy hardware support. I do concede that drivers that come "ready to run" and automatic HW detection are lacking for stuff that sometimes isn't even THAT old in Linux, you can always hunt down what you need on the 'net--and often in source code form so you can compile it against the CPU and distro you use. Of course you have to have a lot of know-how to do so and the situation sucks, but at least it;s POSSIBLE.
Not so for Windows. I have an old parallel port scanner that still works great on Linux. Windows? forget it. It worked fine in Win 9x but the drivers don't work on ME, NT, 2K or XP. There was an NT driver but it was not very reliable to begin with... and didn't work at all in 2K or XP. No source for the driver of course so couldn't fix it or re-build it even if I had the know-how to do so.
I don't know what it is that turned you off Linux, but it is STILL cool. You also play up Windows and MS Office more than it deserves-- it isn't as snappy as you play it up to be and Office 2k was quite the buggy piece of crap before all the patches and service releases. Kind of refreshing though--if you were trolling you were relatively subtle, and I'm used to seeing MS software get put down MORE than it deserves as well (for example, as long as you have 64MB--more RAM if possible--Win 2K works alright on a machine as slow as a P233--and Windows XP is usable with 128MB of RAM on a PII 266 or 300...it seems that RAM and not processor speed it what Windows hungers for most). So it's nice to see a more "reasonable" MS fanboy
You demonstrate some ignorance of the "Linux community" in your opening paragraph:
Do you think they are the first company to sell a distribution? RedHat, Mandrage, SUSE, you can buy a copy of their distro from all of em. If you don't like doing so, then just DL an ISO somewhere, otherwise, quit complaining.
Open source/free software advocates are generally NOT anti-capitalist/communist (in fact they are more likely to be of a libertarian mindset politically). Open source is about "libre" rather than "gratis", and when staunch advocates complain about non-free software it is concern about restricted RIGHTS, not the monetary cost.
Oddly enough, it isn't the gratis/"free as in beer" aspect of Linux that puts off those "big name companies". In the case of the GPL, it's a rights restriction of another sort--one that prevents derivative works from being made closed source--that scares them. If "free as in beer" scared Microsoft we would've been paying for IE and Media Player and whatever. MS is the MASTER of "free as in beer" then it helps them become dominant.
Thankfully, some "big name companies" (IBM, Novell...) are sensible enough to get past the paranoia to embrace Linux. It's also good to see some Linux companies that bring the technology into the domain of proprietary software in the name of competition. I prefer that when possible that an OPEN alternative be available, but so long as some "viral" proprietary licensing restriction doesn't contaminate Linux all the more power to them...if you're a purist on one side or the other, you can use Debian (if you're a Stallman) or Windows (if you're a Ballmer) and avoid applications with distasteful license agreements.
I'd have to say that Canadians are generally more reluctant to embrace government-mandated censorship, but I think Canada and the US are mostly different sides of the same coin... ...I have more freedom in what I say in Canada, just due to the fact that many of the limitations on free speech are imposed by private citizens who control some form of media or forum, and have an axe to grind...
Concentration of media ownership is a threat to freedom of expression in Canada at LEAST as much as in the US. Sometimes it ssems the government-funded CBC is not entirely arms length. Then we have CanWest Global and Bell GlobeMedia which together form a near-monopoly and are headed by well-known supporters of the Liberal party. Right now it doesn't seem to have compromised objectivity (Liberal-related scandals still make a lot of press), however red flags have been raised in the past when editorials in regional papers offended the political sensibilities of the "big boss" and those newspapers were ordered to print an editorial issued from upon high that defended the prime minister.
In other aspects Canada has done its own share on censorship lunacy. In the US, the "religious right" lobbies to supress "un-American, un-Christian" expression. In Canada it's the opposite, although not to the same magnitude--there is an "athiestic left" that works to limit religious expression for example. I'd say the average Canadian has no problem with not having prayer in public schools, however pressure from the left extends in some cases to banning "God Save the Queen" from schools and advocating the removal of the word "God" and phrases like "all thy sons command" from the anthem, and in some schools advocation of religous holidays is frowned upon (Christmas, Easter and sometimes even non-Christian holidays such as Hanukkah or Eid).
Canadians are less sensitive to strong language or nutity on television than the US, but we make up for it in our sensitivity to French-English relations. Not long after Janet's outfit malfunctioned an uncensored picture of it appeared inside the newspapers in Canada, right alongside articles about Don Cherry's putdown of French hockey players sparking debate in Parliament and the implementation of a tape-delay on Cherry's future commentaries.
Seems freedom of expression must be defended diligently no matter where you live...
Looks to me like fishing for job justification on the part of music execs to me...
With CDs, you get a shiney little disc in a little plastic box with a pretty cover and lyrics or other crap printed inside, and that the publishers put up posters and displays in stores and so on has this psychological effect on people that makes them more comfortable justifying a $10 to $20 purchase.
With online music services, that psychological justification just isn't there. Computer users know how easy it is to download and share music--on the old Napster and Kazaa and such the direct cost was zero. There is no shiney object, no pretty cover--just bits coming in on a wire. Users cannot justify paying the same kind of prices for something that intangible.
Yes online distribution is cheaper but that is only the surface argument. Music execs are used to the pre-information age when they acually played an important role. They had to get the music produced. They had to distribute the media. They had to market it--let the public know where to go and get it. This was "real work" without the internet.
Now PCs are commonplace and the internet is a part of everyday life. The big players in the music industry are becoming obsolete in the same way typewriter makers all died off or shifted business focus. It's getting to the point where indies can record fairly good quality albums with "pro-sumer" level hardware, leverage the internet and modern media in creative and inexpensive ways and distribute music on-line without relinquishing ownership and control to a recording company.
The technology can is open and the worms are everywhere now, and whatever legislative barriers RIAA tries to shove through or "creative price adjustments" on-line music providers try to inflict on consumers will eventually prove ineffective as consumers are more fickle than ever. ITunes and Napster overpriced? Regardless of the UI they'll switch to Wal-Mart.com or simialr cheap competitor. They'll buy used CDs. They'll turn back to tune sharing. Copy protection and DRM is too easily thwarted right now and hairbrained schemes to introduce crippled technology (DRM-enabled music files, self-destructing DVDs, limited-play devices) will be ignored by the public. **Left to its own devices**, the market will determine the value in the end, not some coporate executive.
...for not using simple paper ballots. Canada is a British Parliamentary Democracy and its voting system is based upon what Britain does...and the population of Britain has not been an issue. Hell, India has run elections on the same system with WAAAY more voters (it being the most populous democratic nation in the world by a large margin). I admit that India is moving towards a mechanised way of voting at some levels but population is not the biggest motivator there.
When you have a bigger population, it follows that you'll have more ridings, more polling places, more scrutineers (counters) so the task of counting the vote does not become insurmountable. What makes the need for an automated system more pressing in the USA is it's system of government.
I myself am Canadian so I may have a different perspective than a US-born citizen, but IMHO the US is the most democratic nation in the world. Americans vote for EVERYTHING. They elect their head of state (president), their federal representatives in both houses (congress and senate) as well as state and local governments. They elect their judiciary (judges, police chiefs) and hold binding votes on legislation (propositions). In the presidential race they even have primaries to vote for candidates they want to vote for in the main election! They also hold elections quite often...federally, elections are held every two years.
In the US elections are WAY more important to the governing process than anywhere else in the world--I don't think many non-Americans appreciate that fact (even here in Canada most don't). When an American votes they aren't making an X by someone's name once every 3 to 5 years...they could be voting for their congressman, their senator, president, a number of propositions, local judge and their state govenor all in one year. It's easy to count votes for an election manually, but who wants to that when you have so many elections to count? No wonder it's such a hot issue in the US (even discounting the contoversy of the 2000 election)?
In Canada, we vote for our Member of Parliament federally, our MLA/MPP/MNA provincially and for a councillor, mayor and school board rep municipally. That's it. Ever. Any other votes held are not binding (municipal plebicites and what have you--although the outcomes carry political weight). These elections are every 3 to 5 years, unless (usually because of a minority govenrnemt situation) a vote of non-confidence triggers one sooner. Why would we ever need more than a pencil and paper with such a simple, infrequent system of elections?
In a way I envy the American system. Canadians do not get to elect our head of state--that would technically be Elizabeth II, HRH Queen of Canada. Her Canadian representative (the R.Hon Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, who basically gives assent to our bills to make them law on behalf of the Queen) is also an appointed position. All the members of the Canadian senate are also appointed. All judges are appointed too, and referrendums (binding votes on legislation) are extremely rare and have only been conducted on major constitutional issues.
All these appointments are selected (technically with the Queen's blessing/rubber stamp) by our Prime Minister--the "real" leader of Canada (R. Hon Paul Martin II), who was acclaimed leader at his party's convention and was elected to parliament by winning the most votes of any candidate in his home riding. Meaning that in the strictest sense only a few tens of thousands of people residing in a small patch of Quebec actually got to vote for the Prime Minister. This year if the Conservatives miraculously win it's the same thing, except that a few thousand Alberta residents are the lucky ones--but at least in that case there was actually a real race for the party leadership and a more democratic method of selection than the traditional Liberal convention.
Soo....unlike the "grandparent post" I would NOT recommend the US follow the Canadian system. The fiasco the US is going t
Then the best option is a Mac, then perhaps Windows and Linux in a tie for second, IMHO...
Yes, Linux systems can have issues during install, config and so on. However I find the issues to be not much different than with Windows. In both platforms, setting up a local printer is trivial--a smart 4-year-old could probably do it (in Linux certain apps have issues using the printer more than in windows I suppose). Setting up a NETWORK printer in Win OR Linux can potentially cause grief.
Setting up a network I found was actually EASIER in Linux until Win2k and later (I remember when you even looked at network settings the wrong way WinNT and 9x wanted to reboot). The issues are the same with both. The one point you make that is true is the wireless networking issue--MS is further ahead there since drivers are more readily available (mostly for "political" issues rather than technical). However it's still common for Windows users to just plug everything in and turn it on--and have wireless networking completely unsecure, then there is a completely DIFFERENT set of problems. I suppose a good side effect of being troublesome to set up in Linux is that the users that manage to get it working are tech-savvy enough to know the importance of setting up a SECURE wireless connection.
In my experience recently, I've found that newbies get their PCs with XP pre-installed, they plug it all in and everything "just works"...for about a week. By then (because they didn't run windows update to patch everything right away) several exploits/worms/spywares will have infested the system and various other freeware (as in beer)/demoware/adware and other cruft will slow their shiney new 2.4GHz P4 to a 386-like crawl. Linux and Mac systems of course are much less vulnerable. Once you set them up they "just work" and STAY that way so even a four year old can play with it and grandma can send her emails.
Is Windows easier to "know" and set up? perhaps in some ways. Easier to maintain and keep healthy? HELL NO. If you want that get Linux, and if you also want "easy too know", spend a bit more and get a Mac system.
You are right in your suspicions that these sort of "studies" are commissioned by Microsoft as part of their marketing strategy (just part of the business--Oracle, Sun, IBM etc parade studies flatter their products as well after all). However, I don't dwell at all on these sorts of studies and I certainly wouldn't give them any meaningful weight when making a decision on deploying Linux (or not).
Even given the positive spin towards Microsoft, however, Forrester's comments on the study are a barely lukewarm endorsement of Microsoft, and don't seem to be too critical of Linux. Check out some of the comments by Forrester analyst Laura Koetzle:
Surprisingly, Microsoft did the best job at patching vulnerabilities fast, even though it ranked at the top with the largest percentage of its security holes rated as high
So they DID acknowledge that Microsoft's platform had the most HIGH RISK vulnerabilities, althought this fact is glossed over in the article. Koetzle also acknowledges that the study did NOT look at how WELL the patches addressed the problem (MS often needs to issue more than one patch to get it right, and sometimes they fix one bug and introduce another).
"The fact that the Linux distributors fixed such a high percentage of their vulnerabilities is a remarkable achievement," she said. "Even Debian, in last place, was pretty darn thorough."
Sure doesn't sound like something you'd expect an MS-paid cheerleader to day about the competition...
This is very much a case of your mileage may vary
Translation: even if patches are made fast they can still leak...
The bottom line? Any of these platforms can be operated securely
Quite the ringing endorsement for MS ain't it? Nice to see their people so solidly back their studies...
...and the folks in IT support are mad as hell.
My employer is a large organisation with literally tens of thousands of systems to support in locations around the globe. Great effort is spent on maintaining a largely Microsoft-based infrastructure--keeping the countless worms and viruses at bay, keeping our information secure, making sure the AS/400s can talk to everything else and making sure all our applications functions properly. Standardisation is MANDATORY to allow our IT people to do their already admirable job.
Besides the important fact that Microsoft's offer probably violates OUR corporate ethics policy, it also circumvents our IT management policies. These free copies of the latest office (which wouldn't be approved software for a couple of years with our processes) are a potential support nightmare--the possibilities of incompatible file formats, new security concerns and pressure to support the server-dependent features are intolerable.
Therefore unfortunately for Microsoft, its free offer of the new "office system" is not likely to gain traction with large corporate customers (at least those that are sensibly manged or conservative in nature). Besides the post-Enron focus on more effective enforcement of ethical guidelines blocking such "gifts", the IT department will not only not support "unauthorised/unevaluated" software, upon its discovery the user will be instructed to REMOVE it immidiately on threat of suspension of network access.
This offer will allow MS to infiltrate some organisations of course (probably those large enough to afford licensing costs but small enough that an upper-management "PHB"-type easily distracted by shiney new toys can steeer corporate IT policy). However, MS wants to grab a piece of the REAL "big iron" enterprise--large corporations and public institutions with thousans of seats. This is where Linux has had the most success as well. This "gift" is a boneheaded strategy in that market and will do NOTHING to improve an already dimming view of Microsoft in that space.
Cuz if the guy is a slimeball who found your wallet lost on the street and decided to have some fun on you it's all to easy for him to do that. Whenever I use my credit card in person I'm never asked to prove my identity. One time awhile back a boss I had asked me to fill his truck and use his card and to call if they gave me any trouble. They swiped the card without even looking at it.
Hell, even if it's you using your own card...people are really careless and only seem to have concerns about using their card on the 'net. Too may people out there verbally broadcast their credit card info to strangers over the phone who solicit them for donations to feed the starving Africans, or hand their cards to the attendant at the full-service station when they fill their vehicles, or willingly give it to the waitress when they have lunch at Denny's, or whatever else.
I dated a diner waitress once, and know the types of losers who ended up as permanent pump jockeys from summer jobs as a teenager. I have personally witnessed those environments. In both situations many (if not most in some cases) of those employees are poorly educated, poorly paid, perennially broke, dopey chronic potheads. Also, some call centres are also pretty lax and will hire anyone who will stay long enough to learn how to use the predictive dialer system. AND WE TRUST THESE PEOPLE WITH OUR CREDIT CARDS!
Because of that I NEVER buy anything, book a room or hire a car over the phone...I go online so my credit card number is at least encrypted (and I hope that the computer jockeys are at least a bit more trustworthy than a call centre operator). I NEVER give my credit card to a waitress or a pump jockey--if I use my card at all I go to the cashier and have them swipe it electronically. Authorisation is instant and the receipt they retain doesn't show the whole number anymore (I also NEVER use the old "click-clack" impression machines either).
Sounds paranoid? Well, it's far easier to exploit those common real-world events than to set up an internet phishing expedition. C.C. fraud on the INTERNET? Even if your number was sent in the clear it's typically in transit for less than a second, and could only be aniffed out by people with access to special equipment. Sure you have to be careful about encryption and authentication but (for now) online transactions are still mostly safe. Much less bother for criminals to pursue other opportunities.
...bases its IT infrastructure descisions based on what the product logo looks like then the world is clearly going straight to hell in a handbasket.
However, I'm sure that affixed to the handbasket in which we are riding will be a label with a slick, professional logo that was heavily tested by a leading marketing agency using a large number of diverse focus groups.
*whew* That makes me feel better...