Maybe it's time I bouht a yacht and start living in international water so that stupid US laws don't apply to me. After all, what does the US government actually do for me?
Anyone who would give up essential freedom for a little bit of security deserves neither.
Simplistic thinking
on
Genome Surprise
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The complexity of organisms is not solely determined by how many genes they have. There are many other factors. One of them is the expression level of different genes. Differentially expressed genes in different cells leads to different cell types, which form tissues, organs, and overall complicated organisms. There are also other ways of conveying information from one generation to the next other than genes. There is an entire epigenome out there -- non-bp modifications to the DNA (e.g., methylation of DNA) and DNA structure (e.g., methylation of Histone-3's at the Lys 4 and 9, v. acetylation at those sites, v. phosphorylation). This relates to imprinting. For interesting reading, do NCBI searches on the following expressions:
Various epigenetic (that is, above the DNA-bp level) states are epigenetically inherited. They often determine chromatin structure, and are involved in a war between maternal and paternal genomes, genetic conflict. And, they contribute to creating a much more cmplicated organism than the number of genes alone would indicate.
Also, it is important to notice that more complex eukaryotes tend to have more transcription factors, zinc-finger proteins, and so on and so forth. The number of regulatory proteins has mushroomed as organisms become more complicated. It is clear that one of the most important things in determining the complexity of organisms is the differential regulation of various genes.
Maintain a list of those with whom you want to collaborate via e-mail. Tell your prog to only download e-mails from these people, and inform you of SPAM with a message, asking you to check the server. When you feel like it, you can check the server (if you want).
Alternatively, use SpamAssasin, which uses Bayesian filtering. Btw, if you're going to be throwing the term Bayesian filtering around, please at least find out what Bayesian Inference and Bayes Factors are, and maybe understand MCMC.
11 years, and the open source community is still no where near Windows or Macintosh on the desktop. In another decade, maybe we can catch up. The reason why? We don't need to innovate, only clone! The reason why it's possible to catch up is because we are duplicating the innovation of other people, not innovating and investing in research and development ourselves.
Many people would beg to differ. The WindowManagerss in GNU/Linux are very good (my favorite is WindowMaker), are are the DesktopEnvironments (I prefer Xfce, but most ppl like GNOME or KDE), though they tend to be bloated.
Regarding "innovation", there hasn't been much real "innovation" in the software field in terms of UI. Not since the very first GUI. Windows GUI hasn't evolved to any significant extend since '95. MacOS' UI hasn't evolved to any significant extent for a while either. OSX is just "different", not really a major evolutionary step (in fact, in many areas, it goes backwards...white is the best color for background, as it allows for good contrast, and prevents glare).
There has been little innovation in software. What there has been is small tiny incremental evolutionary steps. Almost all of them very obvious next steps. Btw, if you think there is no innovation going on in the FS / OSS World, you should inquire into some of the more theoretical, far-sighted projects. For starters, you can look at Fsv, 3DWM, TDFSB, Vision - 3D File Manager. Those are all 3D-file managers.
Also, in many areas outside of the UI, GNU/Linux is way ahead of MS & Apple. I'm thinking here of journaling file systems for a start. Take a look at ReiserFS. Sure, SGI has Xfs, but most people using GNU/Linux don't need to manage files many gigabytes large.
No, it doesn't. Linux has captured nearly 10% with virtually non-existent OEM support to speak of.
10% compared to MS' 90% hardly constitutes "popular". Btw, not that I'm a fan of non-Free OS', but I haven't seen any closed OS' have a shot against MS. Last superior closed OS that failed was BeOS.
Linux is following the same trend as playing catch-up as everybody else would. There is no catch-22
They wouldn't need to play as much catch-up if they weren't going against a monopoly that the vast majority of OEMs and software vendors complacent to only provide software for Win, and maybe MacOS. If they were entering into a more divided market (say one with 10 OS' controlling 10% of the market each), then the cost of entry wouldn't be so high.
Because MS is a monopoly, there is an inordinately high cost of entry to any newcomers.
So you insult me, and I can't say that you believe stupid things?
Anyone who uses the "word" fucktard is certainly opening himself up to being labelled negatively. Being on slashdot does not mean you get to create new words.
Your more than welcomed to criticize anything I say. However, comparisons to mythical folklore are hardly relevant nor valid. Btw, there are no stupid things I believe in, or at least none that I've stated here.
I'll grant you that. No generality for any field outside of that field's necessity holds. I'm simply saying that from my experience, tech-support guys are idiots. Haven't talked with one who offered me anything I didn't already know. Since I'm not a genius, that must mean that they are dumb. Ok, dumb is not the proper word. Uninformed, without knowledge, would be more appropriate. However, dumb is in some cases accurate. I've run into computer problems that I can't solve based on previous knowledge alone, but where I had to combine variouis pieces of knowledge and intuition; that's called thinking, something tech-support, from my experience, doesn't do at all.
However, your generality that geeks have spread about some kind of techno-mythology about computers is just as unjustifiably generalizing. Maybe some have. But most that I've talked to haven't, and have been very clear about questions put to them. For reference on this, do a Google for "dh003i FASTA". I had a particular question about how to do a certain task, and useful help was provided, which was understandable.
In regards to making information available or not, for the very reasons you cited (self-importance), I provide as relevant and clear information as I can. This may be partially because I'm from a scientific (molecular/cell/genetic/bioinf) background, and in biological sciences, you need to explain everythingr with proof to back it up, and can't just assert (most) things.
Regarding tech-support calls, I can-not remember my last 5 particular calls. However, here are some notable ones I do remember:
* Seg-fault compilation errors in GCC 3.0 (under Cygwin, btw). Called Gateway. Segfaults are usually due to some kind of hardware issue, like bad RAM, or the CPU or other components running too hot. So asked them "how do I underclock". The response: "segfault errors have nothing to do with hardware, but with software". I could not extract any information on how to underclock (indeed, it's impossible on my computer, since the BIOS is crippled, but I was hoping they could provide me with an appropriate modification). Their advice was useless. As a last-ditch effort, I opened up my computer and found cob-webs and gobs of dust inside the case, which surprised me because my house is pretty dust-free and clean. After cleaning it off, things worked fine. Nothing to do with hardware my ass. * Faulty hard-drive. Hard drive was faulting, causing slow and predictable path towards critical corruption of critical files. Re-zeroed hard-drive several times, finally got sick of it and called Gateway. Told me to run GWSCAN, a prog they sent me. It found no errors, but I knew that the hard-drive was fucked. They told me it was fine and to reinstall. Since I knew that was bullshit, I called up a day or two later and said that I'd reinstalled several times and got the same corruption problems. This coerced them to send me a replacement. * In regards to the faulty hard-drive. When sent the replacement, I took it in to them and had them install the new HD. (I am not good with putting together things physically). This was before my compilation problem, but it's obvious that they would have seen the dust in there. One would think they would have cleaned it off.
There are other examples, but I can't think of them all right now. In short, I've never met a technical support guy who knew more than I did or suggested something I haven't thought of. There may be intelligent knowledgeable tech-support guys out there. But they're certainly hidden from the consumer, and I certainly haven't seen any of them.
MS had a monopoly before they did anything illegal? Yea, right. I'll assent that their rise to monopoly status was helped by the complete ineptitude of IBM and UNIX vendors, but the idea that they did nothing illegal is bullshit that only the most stupid optimist would believe.
Regarding the developments in GNU/Linux over an incredibly short time-frame, that's obviously proof of the superiority of the development models used. Naturally, when you allow the entire world to help you out, you can evolve pretty quickly. The only reason GNU/Linux was able to evolve so fast was because it was completely open and transparent, so any capable person who wanted to work on it could. Any competition to MS revolving around a business model comparable to MS' (closed-software) invariably flopped (see BeOS, etc). Even if GNU/Linux technically can run on the vast majority of hardware, it isn't officially supported by manufacturers in most cases, thus non-experts will have technical problems just getting it to work.
You also completely ignored the latter half of my statement. Software support is also needed. Let's just look at games (probably the only thing keeping Win9x on anyone's computer who knows anything about computing). Let's just look at the popular ones. Sure, the Quake and Descent series are supported. However, no Tomb Raider series, and no Baldur's Gate series. In order for an OS to become popular, it needs software support. In order for it to gain software support, it needs to become popular. Hence, the catch-22 (I believe I said catch-69 before...perhaps my mind was elsewhere).
Finally, my premise can be extended to OEMs. In order for an OS to become popular, it needs to be supported by OEMs. The vast majority of people stick with whatever comes preinstalled. But for an OS to be supported by OEMs as a preinstallation option, it needs to be popular. Another catch-22. All of these lose-lose situations for competition create situations where there are inordinately high barriers to entry for any competitors to MS.
Considering the other things you believe, that doesn't surprise me a bit.
No, I do not believe that. I know that. Period. End of story.
It wouldn't surprise me if you still believe in Santa Claus
More irrelevant personal insults. FYI, unlike most morons in the US, I have no superstitious mythic beliefs. There are no aliens, no UFOs, no ghosts, no god, no devil, no allah, no xenu's. There are only idiots who believe in that bullshit. Btw, if you are one of the idiots who believes in some magical invisible man in the sky, you are in no position to talk about anyone's silly beliefs.
Um, tech support guys are not equivalent to computer "geeks". They may be above-average users, but they are hardly geeks. They are reading from a cookbook, and usually know NOTHING. Every time I've called tech-support, I've found that the person was a complete and total moron and knew less than I did. Their solution to all problems is "uninstall, reinstall, if that didn't work, reinstall OS". This is what mystifies computing. Geeks, on the other hand, tend to explain things, at least if asked to do so. You obviously haven't used Google's newsgroup feature.
Are you over 18? I don't mean this snidely
Bullshit. If you weren't trying to be snide, you wouldn't have said that. This is your way of saying, "I disagree with what you're saying, but can't find any valid way to criticize it, other than trying to label you as naive in a round-about-way". I won't contribute to your fuzzy logic (that somehow the age of a person changes the validity of his or her arguments), so I'm not going to assert that I am or am not some unverifiable age.
And, now that MS has used illegal strategies to get their monopoly, it's pretty much self-perpetual. Let's just assume that these slap-on-the-wrist restrictions will actually stop MS' illegal and anti-competitive behavior (ha).
Assuming that, so what? There's still that catch-69 for ANY and ALL alternate OS'. In the current MS-monopoly environment, here's how things work. In order for an OS to become popular, it needs to have lots of software and hardware support. In order for and OS to have lots of software and hardware support, it needs to be popular. Hmmm. You can easily see how this creates a situation where there is a prohibitive cost to entry of any newcomer, and how this makes it ever-difficult for any alternate OS to gain popularity, no matter how superior it is to MS Windows (read, GNU/Linux, BeOS, NeXT, and so on and so-forth).
Mr. Garcia, you are a fucktard
The only people who I've seen use that particular term are idiots.
Aside from "installing ____ is not difficult", that's all BS.
The average user is not afraid to install alternate OS' because geeks have created some kind of techno-mythology around computers. Quite the opposite, geeks explain what's going on in computers, de-mytsticizing them.
It's those at MS and Apple who detach users from knowledge of what's really going on in their computers that cause this. Users don't know where programs are installed, and aren't encouraged to find out. Most users, in fact, think that programs are "in the start menu". This is not to say that short-cuts are bad, but simply that not clarifying that they're shortcuts is bad.
Consider what the average tech-support session goes like:
"Have a problem with some software? Oh, well, what did you install lately? Oh, uninstall that, it might be causing a problem. Oh, that didn't fix it, well, er, um, something's not working right. I'm sorry, but I've taken you through my little cook-book of for-morons idiotic answers for simple questions. Now you'll have to reinstall the entire OS, because for some mystical reason, your computer just isn't working right anymore."
Uhm, he said it was proven insecure. Try again, sparky
Gee, the zillion security holes we hear about don't prove that MS is insecure? Them producing a broken version of Java that (aside from being non-portable) is also extremely insecure proves nothing, right? Oh yea, running as root by default -- real secure, as well.
As for your idea that all of the OEMs could have banded together and boycotted MS, that's bullshit. Try thinking next time. OEMs are competing entities. For the most part, loss on the part of one translates into gain on the part of another, provided the overall market does not shrink. Let's say that the OEMs decided to boycott MS. As is the case with cartels, now there's an enormous incentive for one of the OEMs to cheat. The idea that OEMs can all act together for their collective benefit (in the manner you suggest) is as stupid and outdated as the idea that genes are unselfish benefactors of the organism.
Sure, it's possible that OEMs could have done such. It's also possible that all of the citizens of N. Korea could band together and overthrow their ruthless dictator.
MS used high handed blackballing tactics against OEMs to shove certain products down users' throats. Whether or not you used MS Windows or any MS products, you paid for them when you bought a computer. The average user was and still is incapable of installing an operating system. Even the average user today is completely incapable of doing what it takes to install a dual OS alongside Windows, whatever the other OS may be; this is precluded just by the average user being unable to safely partition the HD.
True, they can do it. It's also possible I could shoot 20 3-point shots in a row. The odds are, something's going to go wrong, because I'm not good at basketball, just like the average user isn't good with computers. Furthermore, the average user will be scared off from the start by scary-sounding things like, "backup all of your data, repartitioning could destroy everything".
In a fair, free, and competitive market, no company can ever gain anything near a monopoly. Period. Competition precludes it. That's the entire idea of the free market -- that fierce competition prevents any one entity from becoming a monopoly like MS, thus fucking over the consumers. But just because something is a free market and is working good at some point in time, doesn't mean it's any good at keeping itself as a free market. The actions of selfish entities can easily destroy that. Very analagous to selfish DNA. This is why laws need to be made to prevent any one entity from obtaining a monopoly or its functional equivalent, and to prevent certain dirty business tactics, as MS employs.
The simple fact is, monopolies are always bad for consumers in the long run. Sometimes it may be harder to imagine how you can have a useful competitive market in some areas, but market evolution should work things out. A good example is electric companies, which are monopolies. Where I live (Rochester, NY) there was recently an ice storm which knocked out power, because iced trees fell over and knocked down power-lines. Had the power-lines been under ground, that wouldn't have been a problem. Yea, monopolies really benefit the consumer, right?
Um, well, yes, the average user is forced to use Win9x/2k/XP. The average user can't install any OS from scratch and is too afraid to try, even with fail-safe instructions.
So, whichever OS is on the typical users' computer when (s)he buys it from the OEM is what (s)he's stuck with. Period. End of story.
Just because there's another 10% of the market out there that isn't MS-controlled doesn't mean that they're not a monopoly and that most consumers have a *reasonable* choice.
Refer to Minna Kirai's response to your post. None of the examples you give are valid for what I'm talking about.
I'm not talking about the right to demand that producers tell you what's in their products. I'm saying that they shouldn't be able to prevent ANYONE from informing the consumer. They shouldn't be able to prevent you from analyzing their products to determine what's in them.
Once they can do these things -- and it's pretty clear that the DMCA allows them too -- they are effectively immune from informed consumer-review, because consumers can't figure out what's in these things, how they're working, etc.
They want to have a secret, fine. They can use whatever private legal methods they want to keep that secret. But once they SELL something to the public -- and software is a SALE, some EULA that no-one signs doesn't count compared to the actual purchase of it at a store -- they can't prevent anyone from finding out. The legal system is not here to help you hide questionable ingredients/code/whatever in your product from the consumer so that you can blindside him/her.
Hahaha, that comment's so full of BS I had to laugh.
Software is not a product that you can't take appart. It obviously is something you can take apart, as is shown by reverse-engineering.
As for software being "licensed", that's such bullshit. If it looks like a sale and feels like a sale, it's a sale. You ask for a computer program at a store, they say "would you like to buy a copy of it"...That's what counts, not some contract that's hidden from the consumer, that they never sign, and that they can't see until after they've bought the software and can't return it (because they opened the package).
As for the fifth amendment, that qualifies as the most ridiculous item of the day. The fifth amendment (against self-incrimination) only applies in a court. It does not guarantee you the right to not be incriminated by anything you SELL to the PUBLIC.
You sell something to the public, if you have secrets in it, you have no legal standing to use the force of law to keep them secret. You can use other means, but the law no.
Coca-Cola has no grounds for filing a lawsuit against you if you analyze their coke in a lab and report on any harmful ingreidents in it that they dont' disclose to the public.
So, according to you, we should buy something to determine if it's good or not, risking our money on a gamble, without any reliable criticism of the product? People who review this product aren't going to do the kind of comprehensive, thorough, reviews required. They aren't going to look through the millions of sites this thing blocks for some that SHOULD NOT be blocked. Nor is it feasible to do so. The best -- and only feasible -- way to determine if this thing is blocking sites it shoudn't be blocking is to reverse-engineer it.
If a product is really doing what it says it's doing? If it has an accurate method for filtering out what is pornography from what isn't? If the people writing the program used proper definitions of pornography when deciding what should be filtered? What the court has done is grant this company impermeability to review or criticism.
Good post. This confirms what I figured intuitively. Threatening to publish a review of a company saying that they defrauded and ripped you off -- unless they refund your money -- is not extortion, nor is it lebellous (if it's true that they ripped you off). This is the case with the very original parent poster.
Um, no. It's being truthful. You say to a company, I am going to write a review of your service. Either I will say that you treated me fairly and did not rip me off, or I will say that you ripped me off and did not refund me, depending upon how you act. This is simply doing what it takes to get what is rightfully yours. Btw, "property". Since their obtainment of your money was fraudulent and void, it is not their "property".
Why didn't you demand that they give you your money back because their service was bullshit, otherwise you'd publish a story about how they rip off consumers, using your case as an example?
If it's true, it's not extortion, even if you ask them for a refund.
In any respect, it's absurd. The RIAA makes another stupid move which will cause it to lose even more credibility. Now, they're even worse than those evil fucks at Monsanso multinational biotech, who bankrupted a farmer.
Fact is, the RIAA can stomp their feet all they want, nothing's going to change. What do you mean the RIAA didn't make these laws? Bullshit. They paid for these laws. The RIAA and the MPAA don't get off the hook just because you say, "the laws are the fault of our government". The RIAA and MPAA are the one's who bribed the politicians to make those laws. As for changing these laws, let's not pretend that donating a few hundred -- or even thousand -- bucks to the EFF is going to change anything. Nor is protesting, writing letters to Congressmen, or anything else. Nothing we can do is going to compare to the billions of dollars that the RIAA and MPAA and BSA bribe our government with. Trying to get our government to do the right thing is about as pointless as trying to get John Gotti to do the right thing.
Really, the RIAA must think we're all stupid. That college student isn't going to pay a dime to the RIAA. He'll declare bankruptcy and they won't get shit. In fact, they'll be in the hole quite a bit, on the cost of the lawsuite, and the negative press this is getting them.
We can't make a difference in the political world. These people who say, "rather than whining, change the law" are complete idiots who obviously have no idea as to how things work in our fake democracy. Money talks. It's simple as that. We can, however, make it impossible for these evil fucks to get to us by coding around their legislation. FreeNet is a prime example, which allows us to bypass our draconian government. Other examples would be better P2P software, so as to preserve anonymosity.
**note: When I say that our government is draconian, I mean it is draconian in the same sense that Hussein and Hitler are and were draconian. Our government is no more legitimate than theirs. It is not a difference of kind, only of magnitude. If Hussein is analagous to a serial-killer, then the US Government is analagous to a one-time killer. Not as bad, but still worthy of execution.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it's time I bouht a yacht and start living in international water so that stupid US laws don't apply to me. After all, what does the US government actually do for me?
Anyone who would give up essential freedom for a little bit of security deserves neither.
The complexity of organisms is not solely determined by how many genes they have. There are many other factors. One of them is the expression level of different genes. Differentially expressed genes in different cells leads to different cell types, which form tissues, organs, and overall complicated organisms. There are also other ways of conveying information from one generation to the next other than genes. There is an entire epigenome out there -- non-bp modifications to the DNA (e.g., methylation of DNA) and DNA structure (e.g., methylation of Histone-3's at the Lys 4 and 9, v. acetylation at those sites, v. phosphorylation). This relates to imprinting. For interesting reading, do NCBI searches on the following expressions:
Epigenetics
Imprinting
Histone Code
Imprinting Histone Code
Various epigenetic (that is, above the DNA-bp level) states are epigenetically inherited. They often determine chromatin structure, and are involved in a war between maternal and paternal genomes, genetic conflict. And, they contribute to creating a much more cmplicated organism than the number of genes alone would indicate.
Also, it is important to notice that more complex eukaryotes tend to have more transcription factors, zinc-finger proteins, and so on and so forth. The number of regulatory proteins has mushroomed as organisms become more complicated. It is clear that one of the most important things in determining the complexity of organisms is the differential regulation of various genes.
Maintain a list of those with whom you want to collaborate via e-mail. Tell your prog to only download e-mails from these people, and inform you of SPAM with a message, asking you to check the server. When you feel like it, you can check the server (if you want).
h tm
Alternatively, use SpamAssasin, which uses Bayesian filtering. Btw, if you're going to be throwing the term Bayesian filtering around, please at least find out what Bayesian Inference and Bayes Factors are, and maybe understand MCMC.
A good place to start is here:
http://members.tripod.com/~Probability/bayes01.
Summarily, here's Bayes' Theorum:
P(A|B) = P(B|A)P(A) / summation { P(B|A)P(A) }
Simply put, Bayes Theorum is a way of altering existing hypothesis' (the prior) progressively given newly generated data.
11 years, and the open source community is still no where near Windows or Macintosh on the desktop. In another decade, maybe we can catch up. The reason why? We don't need to innovate, only clone! The reason why it's possible to catch up is because we are duplicating the innovation of other people, not innovating and investing in research and development ourselves.
Many people would beg to differ. The WindowManagerss in GNU/Linux are very good (my favorite is WindowMaker), are are the DesktopEnvironments (I prefer Xfce, but most ppl like GNOME or KDE), though they tend to be bloated.
Regarding "innovation", there hasn't been much real "innovation" in the software field in terms of UI. Not since the very first GUI. Windows GUI hasn't evolved to any significant extend since '95. MacOS' UI hasn't evolved to any significant extent for a while either. OSX is just "different", not really a major evolutionary step (in fact, in many areas, it goes backwards...white is the best color for background, as it allows for good contrast, and prevents glare).
There has been little innovation in software. What there has been is small tiny incremental evolutionary steps. Almost all of them very obvious next steps. Btw, if you think there is no innovation going on in the FS / OSS World, you should inquire into some of the more theoretical, far-sighted projects. For starters, you can look at Fsv, 3DWM, TDFSB, Vision - 3D File Manager. Those are all 3D-file managers.
Also, in many areas outside of the UI, GNU/Linux is way ahead of MS & Apple. I'm thinking here of journaling file systems for a start. Take a look at ReiserFS. Sure, SGI has Xfs, but most people using GNU/Linux don't need to manage files many gigabytes large.
No, it doesn't. Linux has captured nearly 10% with virtually non-existent OEM support to speak of.
10% compared to MS' 90% hardly constitutes "popular". Btw, not that I'm a fan of non-Free OS', but I haven't seen any closed OS' have a shot against MS. Last superior closed OS that failed was BeOS.
Linux is following the same trend as playing catch-up as everybody else would. There is no catch-22
They wouldn't need to play as much catch-up if they weren't going against a monopoly that the vast majority of OEMs and software vendors complacent to only provide software for Win, and maybe MacOS. If they were entering into a more divided market (say one with 10 OS' controlling 10% of the market each), then the cost of entry wouldn't be so high.
Because MS is a monopoly, there is an inordinately high cost of entry to any newcomers.
So you insult me, and I can't say that you believe stupid things?
Anyone who uses the "word" fucktard is certainly opening himself up to being labelled negatively. Being on slashdot does not mean you get to create new words.
Your more than welcomed to criticize anything I say. However, comparisons to mythical folklore are hardly relevant nor valid. Btw, there are no stupid things I believe in, or at least none that I've stated here.
Regarding your arguments
* not all tech-support guys are morons
I'll grant you that. No generality for any field outside of that field's necessity holds. I'm simply saying that from my experience, tech-support guys are idiots. Haven't talked with one who offered me anything I didn't already know. Since I'm not a genius, that must mean that they are dumb. Ok, dumb is not the proper word. Uninformed, without knowledge, would be more appropriate. However, dumb is in some cases accurate. I've run into computer problems that I can't solve based on previous knowledge alone, but where I had to combine variouis pieces of knowledge and intuition; that's called thinking, something tech-support, from my experience, doesn't do at all.
However, your generality that geeks have spread about some kind of techno-mythology about computers is just as unjustifiably generalizing. Maybe some have. But most that I've talked to haven't, and have been very clear about questions put to them. For reference on this, do a Google for "dh003i FASTA". I had a particular question about how to do a certain task, and useful help was provided, which was understandable.
In regards to making information available or not, for the very reasons you cited (self-importance), I provide as relevant and clear information as I can. This may be partially because I'm from a scientific (molecular/cell/genetic/bioinf) background, and in biological sciences, you need to explain everythingr with proof to back it up, and can't just assert (most) things.
Regarding tech-support calls, I can-not remember my last 5 particular calls. However, here are some notable ones I do remember:
* Seg-fault compilation errors in GCC 3.0 (under Cygwin, btw). Called Gateway. Segfaults are usually due to some kind of hardware issue, like bad RAM, or the CPU or other components running too hot. So asked them "how do I underclock". The response: "segfault errors have nothing to do with hardware, but with software". I could not extract any information on how to underclock (indeed, it's impossible on my computer, since the BIOS is crippled, but I was hoping they could provide me with an appropriate modification). Their advice was useless. As a last-ditch effort, I opened up my computer and found cob-webs and gobs of dust inside the case, which surprised me because my house is pretty dust-free and clean. After cleaning it off, things worked fine. Nothing to do with hardware my ass.
* Faulty hard-drive. Hard drive was faulting, causing slow and predictable path towards critical corruption of critical files. Re-zeroed hard-drive several times, finally got sick of it and called Gateway. Told me to run GWSCAN, a prog they sent me. It found no errors, but I knew that the hard-drive was fucked. They told me it was fine and to reinstall. Since I knew that was bullshit, I called up a day or two later and said that I'd reinstalled several times and got the same corruption problems. This coerced them to send me a replacement.
* In regards to the faulty hard-drive. When sent the replacement, I took it in to them and had them install the new HD. (I am not good with putting together things physically). This was before my compilation problem, but it's obvious that they would have seen the dust in there. One would think they would have cleaned it off.
There are other examples, but I can't think of them all right now. In short, I've never met a technical support guy who knew more than I did or suggested something I haven't thought of. There may be intelligent knowledgeable tech-support guys out there. But they're certainly hidden from the consumer, and I certainly haven't seen any of them.
MS had a monopoly before they did anything illegal? Yea, right. I'll assent that their rise to monopoly status was helped by the complete ineptitude of IBM and UNIX vendors, but the idea that they did nothing illegal is bullshit that only the most stupid optimist would believe.
Regarding the developments in GNU/Linux over an incredibly short time-frame, that's obviously proof of the superiority of the development models used. Naturally, when you allow the entire world to help you out, you can evolve pretty quickly. The only reason GNU/Linux was able to evolve so fast was because it was completely open and transparent, so any capable person who wanted to work on it could. Any competition to MS revolving around a business model comparable to MS' (closed-software) invariably flopped (see BeOS, etc). Even if GNU/Linux technically can run on the vast majority of hardware, it isn't officially supported by manufacturers in most cases, thus non-experts will have technical problems just getting it to work.
You also completely ignored the latter half of my statement. Software support is also needed. Let's just look at games (probably the only thing keeping Win9x on anyone's computer who knows anything about computing). Let's just look at the popular ones. Sure, the Quake and Descent series are supported. However, no Tomb Raider series, and no Baldur's Gate series. In order for an OS to become popular, it needs software support. In order for it to gain software support, it needs to become popular. Hence, the catch-22 (I believe I said catch-69 before...perhaps my mind was elsewhere).
Finally, my premise can be extended to OEMs. In order for an OS to become popular, it needs to be supported by OEMs. The vast majority of people stick with whatever comes preinstalled. But for an OS to be supported by OEMs as a preinstallation option, it needs to be popular. Another catch-22. All of these lose-lose situations for competition create situations where there are inordinately high barriers to entry for any competitors to MS.
Considering the other things you believe, that doesn't surprise me a bit.
No, I do not believe that. I know that. Period. End of story.
It wouldn't surprise me if you still believe in Santa Claus
More irrelevant personal insults. FYI, unlike most morons in the US, I have no superstitious mythic beliefs. There are no aliens, no UFOs, no ghosts, no god, no devil, no allah, no xenu's. There are only idiots who believe in that bullshit. Btw, if you are one of the idiots who believes in some magical invisible man in the sky, you are in no position to talk about anyone's silly beliefs.
Um, tech support guys are not equivalent to computer "geeks". They may be above-average users, but they are hardly geeks. They are reading from a cookbook, and usually know NOTHING. Every time I've called tech-support, I've found that the person was a complete and total moron and knew less than I did. Their solution to all problems is "uninstall, reinstall, if that didn't work, reinstall OS". This is what mystifies computing. Geeks, on the other hand, tend to explain things, at least if asked to do so. You obviously haven't used Google's newsgroup feature.
Are you over 18? I don't mean this snidely
Bullshit. If you weren't trying to be snide, you wouldn't have said that. This is your way of saying, "I disagree with what you're saying, but can't find any valid way to criticize it, other than trying to label you as naive in a round-about-way". I won't contribute to your fuzzy logic (that somehow the age of a person changes the validity of his or her arguments), so I'm not going to assert that I am or am not some unverifiable age.
And, now that MS has used illegal strategies to get their monopoly, it's pretty much self-perpetual. Let's just assume that these slap-on-the-wrist restrictions will actually stop MS' illegal and anti-competitive behavior (ha).
Assuming that, so what? There's still that catch-69 for ANY and ALL alternate OS'. In the current MS-monopoly environment, here's how things work. In order for an OS to become popular, it needs to have lots of software and hardware support. In order for and OS to have lots of software and hardware support, it needs to be popular. Hmmm. You can easily see how this creates a situation where there is a prohibitive cost to entry of any newcomer, and how this makes it ever-difficult for any alternate OS to gain popularity, no matter how superior it is to MS Windows (read, GNU/Linux, BeOS, NeXT, and so on and so-forth).
Mr. Garcia, you are a fucktard
The only people who I've seen use that particular term are idiots.
Aside from "installing ____ is not difficult", that's all BS.
The average user is not afraid to install alternate OS' because geeks have created some kind of techno-mythology around computers. Quite the opposite, geeks explain what's going on in computers, de-mytsticizing them.
It's those at MS and Apple who detach users from knowledge of what's really going on in their computers that cause this. Users don't know where programs are installed, and aren't encouraged to find out. Most users, in fact, think that programs are "in the start menu". This is not to say that short-cuts are bad, but simply that not clarifying that they're shortcuts is bad.
Consider what the average tech-support session goes like:
"Have a problem with some software? Oh, well, what did you install lately? Oh, uninstall that, it might be causing a problem. Oh, that didn't fix it, well, er, um, something's not working right. I'm sorry, but I've taken you through my little cook-book of for-morons idiotic answers for simple questions. Now you'll have to reinstall the entire OS, because for some mystical reason, your computer just isn't working right anymore."
Uhm, he said it was proven insecure. Try again, sparky
Gee, the zillion security holes we hear about don't prove that MS is insecure? Them producing a broken version of Java that (aside from being non-portable) is also extremely insecure proves nothing, right? Oh yea, running as root by default -- real secure, as well.
As for your idea that all of the OEMs could have banded together and boycotted MS, that's bullshit. Try thinking next time. OEMs are competing entities. For the most part, loss on the part of one translates into gain on the part of another, provided the overall market does not shrink. Let's say that the OEMs decided to boycott MS. As is the case with cartels, now there's an enormous incentive for one of the OEMs to cheat. The idea that OEMs can all act together for their collective benefit (in the manner you suggest) is as stupid and outdated as the idea that genes are unselfish benefactors of the organism.
Sure, it's possible that OEMs could have done such. It's also possible that all of the citizens of N. Korea could band together and overthrow their ruthless dictator.
MS used high handed blackballing tactics against OEMs to shove certain products down users' throats. Whether or not you used MS Windows or any MS products, you paid for them when you bought a computer. The average user was and still is incapable of installing an operating system. Even the average user today is completely incapable of doing what it takes to install a dual OS alongside Windows, whatever the other OS may be; this is precluded just by the average user being unable to safely partition the HD.
True, they can do it. It's also possible I could shoot 20 3-point shots in a row. The odds are, something's going to go wrong, because I'm not good at basketball, just like the average user isn't good with computers. Furthermore, the average user will be scared off from the start by scary-sounding things like, "backup all of your data, repartitioning could destroy everything".
In a fair, free, and competitive market, no company can ever gain anything near a monopoly. Period. Competition precludes it. That's the entire idea of the free market -- that fierce competition prevents any one entity from becoming a monopoly like MS, thus fucking over the consumers. But just because something is a free market and is working good at some point in time, doesn't mean it's any good at keeping itself as a free market. The actions of selfish entities can easily destroy that. Very analagous to selfish DNA. This is why laws need to be made to prevent any one entity from obtaining a monopoly or its functional equivalent, and to prevent certain dirty business tactics, as MS employs.
The simple fact is, monopolies are always bad for consumers in the long run. Sometimes it may be harder to imagine how you can have a useful competitive market in some areas, but market evolution should work things out. A good example is electric companies, which are monopolies. Where I live (Rochester, NY) there was recently an ice storm which knocked out power, because iced trees fell over and knocked down power-lines. Had the power-lines been under ground, that wouldn't have been a problem. Yea, monopolies really benefit the consumer, right?
Um, well, yes, the average user is forced to use Win9x/2k/XP. The average user can't install any OS from scratch and is too afraid to try, even with fail-safe instructions.
So, whichever OS is on the typical users' computer when (s)he buys it from the OEM is what (s)he's stuck with. Period. End of story.
Just because there's another 10% of the market out there that isn't MS-controlled doesn't mean that they're not a monopoly and that most consumers have a *reasonable* choice.
Refer to Minna Kirai's response to your post. None of the examples you give are valid for what I'm talking about.
I'm not talking about the right to demand that producers tell you what's in their products. I'm saying that they shouldn't be able to prevent ANYONE from informing the consumer. They shouldn't be able to prevent you from analyzing their products to determine what's in them.
Once they can do these things -- and it's pretty clear that the DMCA allows them too -- they are effectively immune from informed consumer-review, because consumers can't figure out what's in these things, how they're working, etc.
They want to have a secret, fine. They can use whatever private legal methods they want to keep that secret. But once they SELL something to the public -- and software is a SALE, some EULA that no-one signs doesn't count compared to the actual purchase of it at a store -- they can't prevent anyone from finding out. The legal system is not here to help you hide questionable ingredients/code/whatever in your product from the consumer so that you can blindside him/her.
Hahaha, that comment's so full of BS I had to laugh.
Software is not a product that you can't take appart. It obviously is something you can take apart, as is shown by reverse-engineering.
As for software being "licensed", that's such bullshit. If it looks like a sale and feels like a sale, it's a sale. You ask for a computer program at a store, they say "would you like to buy a copy of it"...That's what counts, not some contract that's hidden from the consumer, that they never sign, and that they can't see until after they've bought the software and can't return it (because they opened the package).
As for the fifth amendment, that qualifies as the most ridiculous item of the day. The fifth amendment (against self-incrimination) only applies in a court. It does not guarantee you the right to not be incriminated by anything you SELL to the PUBLIC.
You sell something to the public, if you have secrets in it, you have no legal standing to use the force of law to keep them secret. You can use other means, but the law no.
Why not? Coca-cola has been doing it for decades.
Coca-Cola has no grounds for filing a lawsuit against you if you analyze their coke in a lab and report on any harmful ingreidents in it that they dont' disclose to the public.
So, according to you, we should buy something to determine if it's good or not, risking our money on a gamble, without any reliable criticism of the product? People who review this product aren't going to do the kind of comprehensive, thorough, reviews required. They aren't going to look through the millions of sites this thing blocks for some that SHOULD NOT be blocked. Nor is it feasible to do so. The best -- and only feasible -- way to determine if this thing is blocking sites it shoudn't be blocking is to reverse-engineer it.
If a product is really doing what it says it's doing? If it has an accurate method for filtering out what is pornography from what isn't? If the people writing the program used proper definitions of pornography when deciding what should be filtered? What the court has done is grant this company impermeability to review or criticism.
Good post. This confirms what I figured intuitively. Threatening to publish a review of a company saying that they defrauded and ripped you off -- unless they refund your money -- is not extortion, nor is it lebellous (if it's true that they ripped you off). This is the case with the very original parent poster.
A: Hitler was elected fair and square.
jj
Um, no. It's being truthful. You say to a company, I am going to write a review of your service. Either I will say that you treated me fairly and did not rip me off, or I will say that you ripped me off and did not refund me, depending upon how you act. This is simply doing what it takes to get what is rightfully yours. Btw, "property". Since their obtainment of your money was fraudulent and void, it is not their "property".
Trying to get your money back on a rip-off job is not extortion if you threaten to expose that to the world. The company is the one at fault here.
Why didn't you demand that they give you your money back because their service was bullshit, otherwise you'd publish a story about how they rip off consumers, using your case as an example?
If it's true, it's not extortion, even if you ask them for a refund.
In any respect, it's absurd. The RIAA makes another stupid move which will cause it to lose even more credibility. Now, they're even worse than those evil fucks at Monsanso multinational biotech, who bankrupted a farmer.
Fact is, the RIAA can stomp their feet all they want, nothing's going to change. What do you mean the RIAA didn't make these laws? Bullshit. They paid for these laws. The RIAA and the MPAA don't get off the hook just because you say, "the laws are the fault of our government". The RIAA and MPAA are the one's who bribed the politicians to make those laws. As for changing these laws, let's not pretend that donating a few hundred -- or even thousand -- bucks to the EFF is going to change anything. Nor is protesting, writing letters to Congressmen, or anything else. Nothing we can do is going to compare to the billions of dollars that the RIAA and MPAA and BSA bribe our government with. Trying to get our government to do the right thing is about as pointless as trying to get John Gotti to do the right thing.
Really, the RIAA must think we're all stupid. That college student isn't going to pay a dime to the RIAA. He'll declare bankruptcy and they won't get shit. In fact, they'll be in the hole quite a bit, on the cost of the lawsuite, and the negative press this is getting them.
We can't make a difference in the political world. These people who say, "rather than whining, change the law" are complete idiots who obviously have no idea as to how things work in our fake democracy. Money talks. It's simple as that. We can, however, make it impossible for these evil fucks to get to us by coding around their legislation. FreeNet is a prime example, which allows us to bypass our draconian government. Other examples would be better P2P software, so as to preserve anonymosity.
**note: When I say that our government is draconian, I mean it is draconian in the same sense that Hussein and Hitler are and were draconian. Our government is no more legitimate than theirs. It is not a difference of kind, only of magnitude. If Hussein is analagous to a serial-killer, then the US Government is analagous to a one-time killer. Not as bad, but still worthy of execution.
I'm on Debian. When I get this program and run it, it tells me that there are no kernel headers. How can I fix this?
According to Palladium:
Safe software = made by Microsoft
Unsafe software = everything else