I'd be interested in learning more about the compatibility problems you're having with real apps and.net framework versions.
We know that there are ocassionally compat issues because we have large customers we work with to try and mitigate them.
Typically it's an issue with installers, not necessarily products themselves. When installing various utilities, especially products that haven't been - or needed to be - updated in a while, I've encountered installers that simply won't proceed until a legacy.NET framework is installed. They're not checking for higher versions, they're not checking for equivalent versions, they're checking for precisely the version they were written for. Sometimes you can ignore that and proceed. Sometimes you can't.
I admit I don't have specific examples of product vendors and names to provide you. I honestly haven't bothered to keep track over the last decade. I do however know that I've prepped many a server and had to install up to three different frameworks to satisfy installers so I could get everything from anti-spam tools to disk-space monitoring tools to random things like (but not necessarily identical to) MAPI exploration tools to install.
Last comment on this, there's clearly a reason why installing framework 4.5 doesn't remote everything older.
Now we can have/need the.NET 3, 4, 4.5 and 5 runtimes all on the same machine, meaning monthly patches will take another half-hour.
I get it..NET runtimes recompile and optimize for the environment they're installed on and that's a Good Thing, but as someone who supports a lot of small & medium business who can't justify WSUS or similar,.NET is - by far - the thing I dread seeing not yet applied to a customer's machine. One new runtime a decade would be just fine by me.
Yes, there's supposed to be a certain degree of backwards-compatibility, but in practice that degree is "not enough that installing Product X doesn't frequently force you to install runtime Y".
If my doctor doesn't already know whether X is right for me, then I need to get a new doctor.
Agreed. On top of that what bothers me is the sales hook:
"Do you have symptoms that include being nervous when in complicated social situations?"
"Does your skin sometimes itch?"
"Do you experience shortness of breath after running marathons?"
They frequently describe circumstances that are so vague they apply to pretty much every self-diagnosing hypocondriac on the planet. Might as well ask "are you a fool with money you need to be parted from?"
Up here in Canada, direct-to-proto-patient marketing is illegal. Strangely we're not all dying because we haven't heard of some med. Also, our meds are typically cheaper than in the US.
Personally, I think the biggest problem isn't malware. It's that on average advertising works.
The industry exists specifically and solely to manipulate buyer perception. While yes, sometimes advertising connects a buyer with a product at just the right time, more often advertising is about selling you stuff you don't know you need in quantities you don't know you want. Witness the American drug advertisements. "Does your skin feel things? Do you sometimes have the sense that gravity exists? Do you have symptoms that suggest you are a human being? Well, go ask your doctor if Ambitrexo is right for you. If your doctor says 'no', ask another doctor. Ambitrexo may cause dizziness, nausea, anal bleeding, spontaneous limb loss, blindness, or gender inversion. Do not take Ambitrexo if you are pregnant, know anyone who is pregnant, or if you live within 50 miles of a pizzeria."
I will happily live in a world without innocent "FYI our product exists" ads if that's what it takes to get rid of "on sale now, limit X per customer". That limit X statement is literally designed to perform successful psychological manipulation to encourage you to buy more of the product than you wanted. It's called the Availability Heuristic. Advertising uses a large number of psychological manipulations and that's what I think is the real problem.
I realize that most business models are usually wiped/imaged anyway, but this is more disgusting behavior by Lenovo. Stuff like this will keep me from buying and recommending their products.
I know it's cool to get outraged, and I'm certainly not comfortable with spying in general, but I actually read the article and it's kind of weird.
It's repeatedly iterated that the feedback tool gathers information on Lenovo's own software only. Lenovo business machines don't ship with much. There's a more flexible power-manager, a tool that checks if your hardware is falling part (does memory tests, hard drive SMART tests etc periodically), and a tool that makes it easy to download updated drivers and BIOS. There's typically not much that has what you'd think of as "data".
Sure, it's valuable to Lenovo to know how many people disable the scheduled hardware tests, or opt to remove the bundled AV software immediately upon install. It's valuable to them to know how often people use their System Update to keep up-to-date, and how often all of this stuff simply doesn't work. Even knowing the average user's preference in power management settings is useful.
While it's entirely possible that this is also gathering things it shouldn't, by and large this all seems a case of "should not care".
I've been around here for a while (check my UID). I remember back in the 90's when they explained this - and it never made sense to me then, nor does it make sense to me now.
Reddit proved that editing/deleting posts doesn't have those kinds of issues.
Even if you accept that argument, getting around it by instituting some sort of versioning for posts - ("This post was edited. Click here to see previous versions.") can eliminate that.
The easier change would be for you to get over the aversion to having something you wrote somewhere being permanently wrong. The horror.
Honestly I'm impressed you came back and admitted to having made a mistake. I'd far rather have the high opinion of you I currently do than have none because your original post was edited to remove the inaccuracy.
How do you judge the intent of a drone flying over your property?
I grant that's non-trivial. But there is a way to at least reasonably guess. The only prerequisite is being human.
What is the intent behind the quadrocopter that's currently over my property?
A} Its owner intends to irradiate me and kill me with an experimental weapon system.
B} Its owner is hoping that I take my pants off so they can film my genitals and blackmail me.
C} Its owner is hoping that I work on some secret invention in plain sight so they can steal it.
D} Its owner is a random neighbor who is flying his new toy for random fun and it has NOTHING to do with me.
Did you guess D? Because ninety nine times out of a hundred, if the drone's operator is a human being, that's the correct answer. I mean, yeah, maybe they're going to get some footage of you picking your nose or scratching your balls or something silly but people being people, these things aren't being bought by-and-large for nefarious reasons. Because there aren't that many truly nefarious ones.
I see a drone flying over, I take it out. Period.
Why? What - in short - does it matter to you? I don't mean in this in the sense of police stopping you and searching your car without cause and "if you don't have anything to hide, it's okay" but rather in the sense of "where is the harm?" Note, I'm not talking about prolonged, patterned, or heavily repeated traffic that signals something specific... I'm talking about the once-in-a-while zip over your property line.
There's something I just can't grasp about this degree of territorial behaviour.
The asshole flying the drone can then present is case to the local judge and explain why I have his drone in my yard.
Wow. Just to be clear, if your neighbor's seven-year-old is gifted a drone and flies it over your property a few times, getting it somewhere interesting or just generally goofing around, that kid is inherently an asshole? I mean, I grant that respect for another person's property (physical and land) is a good thing, but I'm a bit taken aback by the intolerance of what most likely is the equivalent of "oh, darn, my ball just fell in Mr. Wilson's yard... I'll just climb the fence and go get it."
So what, nobody should have the right to fly a spying machine over your house.
Meh. Maybe something's wrong with me, but personally I think intent matters. As it happens, nobody does have the right to fly a spying machine over my/your house.
It's just like my lawn. I mean, yeah, those kids legally better get off my damned law, but I'm a curmudgeon if I yell at them and a psycho if I start breaking their crap because they stepped over the property line. HOWEVER, when the intent is abuse, I'm on your side; if the kids in the area decide it's time to start playing soccer in my yard without my permission, or generally start loitering without permission, then I'd not be a curmudgeon for asking them to move on.
In this case, if the drone pilot really only flew over once or twice and really only hovered for 22 seconds, well 22 seconds is... "crap, my girlfriend just texted me... gotta reply or she'll think I don't love her any more". Point is it's really hard to judge intent from where WE sit, with nothing but news stories to go by. Maybe the drone pilot was a perv. Maybe the property-owner is a psycho. Probably the truth is somewhere in between.
If you don't have riveting hero(s), you darned well better have an awesome presentation.
Iron Man is kind of interesting. Batman's cool. Spiderman even, and many of the X-Men. The general public will usually risk those.
But when you start getting into "WHO?" territory, like Guardians of the Galaxy or the upcoming Deadpool, you need an incredible presentation to draw attention. GotG had that. Deadpool looks like it's going to be great. Point is, the further you stray from well-known characters into comic culture, you need a movie so cool that people who don't care about the characters will find it interesting. I still only know GotG as "Starlord, Groot, the funny raccoon, green Zoe Saldana and some red guy. But I'd pay to watch a sequel in a heartbeat.
The total change from the Windows 3.1 Start button to the subsequent Start buttons was making the Start menu a 2-column menu, putting the contents of the former Programs menu in the left pane and putting the rest of the Start menu items in the right pane. That's it. Oh, and making the initial view not show all the Programs items but only a subset, with an extra item at the bottom to show everything in the same form as it was under the Programs menu.
As for Win3.1 being complicated, every secretary I knew managed to get a handle on it within a few days so it couldn't have been that complicated. The only people I know of who couldn't figure out Win3.1 are the ones who to this day need repeated reminders of how to get to anything that's not directly on their desktop, so methinks the problem doesn't lie in Windows.
Um. You know that Windows 3.1 didn't actually have a Start Button, right?
Good point. Can I say simply that I believe that once something is over, it should stay that way?
You can, you have, and I respect and thank you for it.
Now comes the discussion and debate. I'd counter by pointing out meals are an excellent thing to revisit once they're over. To never order pizza again because the first box is emptied is a sad, sad thing. I'd point at orgasms as another excellent thing to strive towards recreating as soon as one is done.
All I'm saying is that there are exceptions to your guideline. Some artistic works shouldn't see sequels, remakes, or revivals. I think we can all name movies, books, TV shows, and even songs where things should've ended. But then there's... oh, say Pink Floyd's last album, released in November. First in 20 years, and it's mostly ambient snippets and sounds. But I'll tell you, while it's nothing like The Wall or any of their other major works, it's absolutely like getting one last hug from a beloved one you thought you'd never see again.
Some things are better because they were paused instead of carried on. That's why orgasms are better than the Simpsons.
I *loved* Bloom County and read it from when I first discovered it in 1982 while I was in university. It was funny, relevant and smart.
It continued to be right up until Mr. Breathed ended the strip. But it ended, I've (and I think most people have) moved on and, now that it's 25 years later, Mr. Breathed should be looking at new avenues for his considerable talents.
Now, having said that, the example panel is pretty vintage but I still think it's time for Mr. Breathed (and us) to move on.
It's traditional to include some sort of reason for your opinions so people can debate and discuss them. You've said what you think, but not why you think it, or even why you think you think it.
I botched up my disk drive's EFI partition while trying to install Windows 10. By the time I resolve all my problems, I may not be able to activate the damn install!
Fortunately you weren't trying out a beta on your production machine, so the two weeks without Win10 won't matter, right?
my point is that most of the people that are going to check will do so only to see how "polluted" space is.
Which is... very.
Would you stake your life on being able to run a Kerbal Space Program moon-landing mission without hitting any of the DEB (debris) objects? Would you stake your life on being able to run a KSP to launch something into a stable LEO that could loop around the planet 100 times without hitting any? How about a thousand times?
Communications and navigation satellites - to say nothing of the ISS and its resupply missions - require orbits that never intersect any of the crap up there. And while obviously there are hundreds of miles between each item you see at any given time, sit and watch the display for a while and try to predict somewhere that's "safe".
LEO is polluted, heavily. Space programs are mandated to be safe these days, with very little tolerated risk. Every GPS satellite or comms satellite we launch makes things significantly harder, and it's not a linear progression. Worse, the delta-V required to actually DO anything about this problem is hugely problematic as well. So we're screwing up our gateway to not-here, and doing it in a manner that makes it massively difficult to fix.
Yes, lots of this will de-orbit. In decades, or longer.
Here's a crazy idea: let's have everyone vote, and then see what the results are before we report on it?
I expect that wouldn't work. The "have everyone vote" part, specifically. If you're not riled up being told that those guys with the wrong-coloured-signs are going to win, what motivates you to go out and vote?
Imagine you are on school grounds and you can see this guy on the street, distance of maybe 200 feet. Would you be able to be sure the black gun shaped thing was a toy from that distance?
If the "gun" is at such a distance I can't, then maybe* I shouldn't be pissing my pants.
*Maybe as in, unless I hear shots and see bodies dropping, no.
In a fucking gasoline-powered car. Where do they find these geniuses?
I'm kind of concerned about that line as well. The implication is that that the odor of gas was suspected to be related to the presumed explosive device. Thing is, the pressure-cooker turned out to not be an explosive device. So... it turns out the odor of gasoline was either fabricated or as you say, due to a defective car. A huge part of police responsibility is being able to determine truth. It's not hard to figure out that a car is leaking gas. Unless you're making shit up, which is what this particular instance sounds like.
Seriously? It's actually that easy to part you from your money? It's pretty clear the problem here is you, not the people trying to sell stuff. You make the decision, if what you really want is your money then why are you trading it? You already have what you want.
What are some actual examples of when this has happened to you?
Seriously.
It is exactly as easy to part me from my money as it is. No more, no less. When advertising doesn't work, there's no issue. It's when it does - and you KNOW it does, else it wouldn't exist - that something has gone wrong.
Are you trying to pretend that (all) the debt-load people in developed nations have is because they've just fallen behind temporarily? Or do you actually get it that people buy crap they don't need? Specific itemized examples from my life aren't useful... they're just anecdotal evidence. That advertising exists, and has existed for a long time, is empirical evidence that the practice is profitable on average. And that's not acceptable to me.
It doesn't matter who is, or is not "too weak-willed to spend wisely". What does matter is that active advertising is an inherently predatory act. You know it, I know it, and the rest of the people asking "really? WTF's wrong with you. I just save my money, you sub-human schlup!" know it.
Finally, yes, I get it that there are shades of grey here and that we're not talking about human sacrifice or something 10/10 for evil. But some guy with a vested interest in advertising has decided to spout off on the morality of ad-blocking, which makes looking at the morality of advertising itself fair game. So while this isn't a huge deal, it's on-topic.
You read something, then you decide to buy something. "In some circles, that's theft." Umm, no, it's not. You made a choice to spend money. That's not "theft" by any stretch of the imagination.
Did I? Did I make the choice or was that choice made for me? You know why you see signs saying "limit 10 per customer" over a stack of crap? Because the way the human mind works, you deviate off the most recent number you've seen to make estimates. So, if you see a stack of crap at a "good" price, you'll start asking yourself "how many do I want", and you'll get the answer right. But if you see that sign, you'll start at 10 and work your way down to a number you can settle for, which is almost always higher than the number you actually want.
That's how marketing and advertisement works. Massive studies have been undertaken to figure out how to manipulate buyers. This is not news.
The choice is not mine.
See, all of those words mean different things. "Coercion" is generally immoral and often illegal. "Enticing" or "encouraging" are not. "Manipulating" is usually immoral, but whether it's illegal depends on context.
Difference without a distinction. When your target goal in coercion, enticement, or manipulation is to cause a person to act against their benefit, it's wrong. Enticing a suicide off a ledge isn't because it's in their best interest to be convinced not to jump. Encouraging a person to spend more than they want to is wrong. That's my premise.
I hate advertising probably as much as you do. And I agree with you that it sometimes exploits people psychologically in unfair ways. I wish there were less of it. But as long as you don't have a significant mental deficit and the advertising is basically true (not false or misleading), I cannot possibly see how you say that someone choosing to spend money is "theft."
One: hyperbole makes a point.
Two: as you mentioned in your post, there's significant grey-area in what "theft" means. If it's applied to copyright infringement (and it is, linguistic purist desires be damned), then it can be applied to purchases influenced by active advertising. While yes, I get something for my money, it's not what I really want, which is my money, which I would still have were I not advertised to. You can steal a house out from under the nose of an unwary elderly person, yes? Just because someone agrees to a purchase/sale contract doesn't preclude it being theft.
To be clear, I mean active advertising, in the sense of placing product information out of context. That includes billboards, products in movies, commercials between songs or before movies, and most of the crap that shows up in the mail. I don't have an issue with passive advertising, for instance having "the special of the day" on an e-commerce site, or related product information such as offering me different vehicles if I am visiting a vehicle sales site.
Active advertising is literally coercion, enticing, manipulating, and encouraging a viewer to make purchases that they otherwise do not wish to make. "If only you knew about our great product" does not justify the psychological arm-twisting advertisers undertake. Yes, by the end of your advert I might "want" your product that I'd never heard of, but as the OP says, "fuck you". You are taking money out of my pocket that I did not plan to allow its removal. In some circles, that's theft.
Unless you're a prostitute, don't fuck your customer.
You can get away with DRM on DVDs because consumers don't understand the tech. The phallus is invisible.
You can't get away with DRM on a plastic cup with coffee grounds in it. The consumers UNDERSTAND that product, and KNOW you're fucking them. The phallus is very much visible.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be interested in learning more about the compatibility problems you're having with real apps and .net framework versions.
We know that there are ocassionally compat issues because we have large customers we work with to try and mitigate them.
Typically it's an issue with installers, not necessarily products themselves. When installing various utilities, especially products that haven't been - or needed to be - updated in a while, I've encountered installers that simply won't proceed until a legacy .NET framework is installed. They're not checking for higher versions, they're not checking for equivalent versions, they're checking for precisely the version they were written for. Sometimes you can ignore that and proceed. Sometimes you can't.
I admit I don't have specific examples of product vendors and names to provide you. I honestly haven't bothered to keep track over the last decade. I do however know that I've prepped many a server and had to install up to three different frameworks to satisfy installers so I could get everything from anti-spam tools to disk-space monitoring tools to random things like (but not necessarily identical to) MAPI exploration tools to install.
Last comment on this, there's clearly a reason why installing framework 4.5 doesn't remote everything older.
Now we can have/need the .NET 3, 4, 4.5 and 5 runtimes all on the same machine, meaning monthly patches will take another half-hour.
.NET runtimes recompile and optimize for the environment they're installed on and that's a Good Thing, but as someone who supports a lot of small & medium business who can't justify WSUS or similar, .NET is - by far - the thing I dread seeing not yet applied to a customer's machine. One new runtime a decade would be just fine by me.
I get it.
Yes, there's supposed to be a certain degree of backwards-compatibility, but in practice that degree is "not enough that installing Product X doesn't frequently force you to install runtime Y".
If my doctor doesn't already know whether X is right for me, then I need to get a new doctor.
Agreed. On top of that what bothers me is the sales hook:
"Do you have symptoms that include being nervous when in complicated social situations?"
"Does your skin sometimes itch?"
"Do you experience shortness of breath after running marathons?"
They frequently describe circumstances that are so vague they apply to pretty much every self-diagnosing hypocondriac on the planet. Might as well ask "are you a fool with money you need to be parted from?" Up here in Canada, direct-to-proto-patient marketing is illegal. Strangely we're not all dying because we haven't heard of some med. Also, our meds are typically cheaper than in the US.
these wealthy people don't just adopt.
You don't understand; the wealthy people want to try to pass on the wealthy gene.
The biggest problem with ads is malware.
Personally, I think the biggest problem isn't malware. It's that on average advertising works.
The industry exists specifically and solely to manipulate buyer perception. While yes, sometimes advertising connects a buyer with a product at just the right time, more often advertising is about selling you stuff you don't know you need in quantities you don't know you want. Witness the American drug advertisements. "Does your skin feel things? Do you sometimes have the sense that gravity exists? Do you have symptoms that suggest you are a human being? Well, go ask your doctor if Ambitrexo is right for you. If your doctor says 'no', ask another doctor. Ambitrexo may cause dizziness, nausea, anal bleeding, spontaneous limb loss, blindness, or gender inversion. Do not take Ambitrexo if you are pregnant, know anyone who is pregnant, or if you live within 50 miles of a pizzeria."
I will happily live in a world without innocent "FYI our product exists" ads if that's what it takes to get rid of "on sale now, limit X per customer". That limit X statement is literally designed to perform successful psychological manipulation to encourage you to buy more of the product than you wanted. It's called the Availability Heuristic. Advertising uses a large number of psychological manipulations and that's what I think is the real problem.
I realize that most business models are usually wiped/imaged anyway, but this is more disgusting behavior by Lenovo. Stuff like this will keep me from buying and recommending their products.
I know it's cool to get outraged, and I'm certainly not comfortable with spying in general, but I actually read the article and it's kind of weird.
It's repeatedly iterated that the feedback tool gathers information on Lenovo's own software only. Lenovo business machines don't ship with much. There's a more flexible power-manager, a tool that checks if your hardware is falling part (does memory tests, hard drive SMART tests etc periodically), and a tool that makes it easy to download updated drivers and BIOS. There's typically not much that has what you'd think of as "data".
Sure, it's valuable to Lenovo to know how many people disable the scheduled hardware tests, or opt to remove the bundled AV software immediately upon install. It's valuable to them to know how often people use their System Update to keep up-to-date, and how often all of this stuff simply doesn't work. Even knowing the average user's preference in power management settings is useful.
While it's entirely possible that this is also gathering things it shouldn't, by and large this all seems a case of "should not care".
I've been around here for a while (check my UID). I remember back in the 90's when they explained this - and it never made sense to me then, nor does it make sense to me now.
Reddit proved that editing/deleting posts doesn't have those kinds of issues.
Even if you accept that argument, getting around it by instituting some sort of versioning for posts - ("This post was edited. Click here to see previous versions.") can eliminate that.
The easier change would be for you to get over the aversion to having something you wrote somewhere being permanently wrong. The horror.
Honestly I'm impressed you came back and admitted to having made a mistake. I'd far rather have the high opinion of you I currently do than have none because your original post was edited to remove the inaccuracy.
How do you judge the intent of a drone flying over your property?
I grant that's non-trivial. But there is a way to at least reasonably guess. The only prerequisite is being human.
What is the intent behind the quadrocopter that's currently over my property?
A} Its owner intends to irradiate me and kill me with an experimental weapon system.
B} Its owner is hoping that I take my pants off so they can film my genitals and blackmail me.
C} Its owner is hoping that I work on some secret invention in plain sight so they can steal it.
D} Its owner is a random neighbor who is flying his new toy for random fun and it has NOTHING to do with me.
Did you guess D? Because ninety nine times out of a hundred, if the drone's operator is a human being, that's the correct answer. I mean, yeah, maybe they're going to get some footage of you picking your nose or scratching your balls or something silly but people being people, these things aren't being bought by-and-large for nefarious reasons. Because there aren't that many truly nefarious ones.
I see a drone flying over, I take it out. Period.
Why? What - in short - does it matter to you? I don't mean in this in the sense of police stopping you and searching your car without cause and "if you don't have anything to hide, it's okay" but rather in the sense of "where is the harm?" Note, I'm not talking about prolonged, patterned, or heavily repeated traffic that signals something specific... I'm talking about the once-in-a-while zip over your property line.
There's something I just can't grasp about this degree of territorial behaviour.
The asshole flying the drone can then present is case to the local judge and explain why I have his drone in my yard.
Wow. Just to be clear, if your neighbor's seven-year-old is gifted a drone and flies it over your property a few times, getting it somewhere interesting or just generally goofing around, that kid is inherently an asshole? I mean, I grant that respect for another person's property (physical and land) is a good thing, but I'm a bit taken aback by the intolerance of what most likely is the equivalent of "oh, darn, my ball just fell in Mr. Wilson's yard... I'll just climb the fence and go get it."
So what, nobody should have the right to fly a spying machine over your house.
Meh. Maybe something's wrong with me, but personally I think intent matters. As it happens, nobody does have the right to fly a spying machine over my/your house.
It's just like my lawn. I mean, yeah, those kids legally better get off my damned law, but I'm a curmudgeon if I yell at them and a psycho if I start breaking their crap because they stepped over the property line. HOWEVER, when the intent is abuse, I'm on your side; if the kids in the area decide it's time to start playing soccer in my yard without my permission, or generally start loitering without permission, then I'd not be a curmudgeon for asking them to move on.
In this case, if the drone pilot really only flew over once or twice and really only hovered for 22 seconds, well 22 seconds is... "crap, my girlfriend just texted me... gotta reply or she'll think I don't love her any more". Point is it's really hard to judge intent from where WE sit, with nothing but news stories to go by. Maybe the drone pilot was a perv. Maybe the property-owner is a psycho. Probably the truth is somewhere in between.
If you don't have riveting hero(s), you darned well better have an awesome presentation.
Iron Man is kind of interesting. Batman's cool. Spiderman even, and many of the X-Men. The general public will usually risk those.
But when you start getting into "WHO?" territory, like Guardians of the Galaxy or the upcoming Deadpool, you need an incredible presentation to draw attention. GotG had that. Deadpool looks like it's going to be great. Point is, the further you stray from well-known characters into comic culture, you need a movie so cool that people who don't care about the characters will find it interesting. I still only know GotG as "Starlord, Groot, the funny raccoon, green Zoe Saldana and some red guy. But I'd pay to watch a sequel in a heartbeat.
I don't see F4 having that... zing.
The total change from the Windows 3.1 Start button to the subsequent Start buttons was making the Start menu a 2-column menu, putting the contents of the former Programs menu in the left pane and putting the rest of the Start menu items in the right pane. That's it. Oh, and making the initial view not show all the Programs items but only a subset, with an extra item at the bottom to show everything in the same form as it was under the Programs menu.
As for Win3.1 being complicated, every secretary I knew managed to get a handle on it within a few days so it couldn't have been that complicated. The only people I know of who couldn't figure out Win3.1 are the ones who to this day need repeated reminders of how to get to anything that's not directly on their desktop, so methinks the problem doesn't lie in Windows.
Um. You know that Windows 3.1 didn't actually have a Start Button, right?
Good point. Can I say simply that I believe that once something is over, it should stay that way?
You can, you have, and I respect and thank you for it.
Now comes the discussion and debate. I'd counter by pointing out meals are an excellent thing to revisit once they're over. To never order pizza again because the first box is emptied is a sad, sad thing. I'd point at orgasms as another excellent thing to strive towards recreating as soon as one is done.
All I'm saying is that there are exceptions to your guideline. Some artistic works shouldn't see sequels, remakes, or revivals. I think we can all name movies, books, TV shows, and even songs where things should've ended. But then there's... oh, say Pink Floyd's last album, released in November. First in 20 years, and it's mostly ambient snippets and sounds. But I'll tell you, while it's nothing like The Wall or any of their other major works, it's absolutely like getting one last hug from a beloved one you thought you'd never see again.
Some things are better because they were paused instead of carried on. That's why orgasms are better than the Simpsons.
I *loved* Bloom County and read it from when I first discovered it in 1982 while I was in university. It was funny, relevant and smart.
It continued to be right up until Mr. Breathed ended the strip. But it ended, I've (and I think most people have) moved on and, now that it's 25 years later, Mr. Breathed should be looking at new avenues for his considerable talents.
Now, having said that, the example panel is pretty vintage but I still think it's time for Mr. Breathed (and us) to move on.
It's traditional to include some sort of reason for your opinions so people can debate and discuss them. You've said what you think, but not why you think it, or even why you think you think it.
I botched up my disk drive's EFI partition while trying to install Windows 10. By the time I resolve all my problems, I may not be able to activate the damn install!
Fortunately you weren't trying out a beta on your production machine, so the two weeks without Win10 won't matter, right?
Of course.
my point is that most of the people that are going to check will do so only to see how "polluted" space is.
Which is... very.
Would you stake your life on being able to run a Kerbal Space Program moon-landing mission without hitting any of the DEB (debris) objects? Would you stake your life on being able to run a KSP to launch something into a stable LEO that could loop around the planet 100 times without hitting any? How about a thousand times?
Communications and navigation satellites - to say nothing of the ISS and its resupply missions - require orbits that never intersect any of the crap up there. And while obviously there are hundreds of miles between each item you see at any given time, sit and watch the display for a while and try to predict somewhere that's "safe".
LEO is polluted, heavily. Space programs are mandated to be safe these days, with very little tolerated risk. Every GPS satellite or comms satellite we launch makes things significantly harder, and it's not a linear progression. Worse, the delta-V required to actually DO anything about this problem is hugely problematic as well. So we're screwing up our gateway to not-here, and doing it in a manner that makes it massively difficult to fix.
Yes, lots of this will de-orbit. In decades, or longer.
Among other things, sounds like Slashdot's current owners are on a similar path...
That was what... a year and a half ago?
Here's a crazy idea: let's have everyone vote, and then see what the results are before we report on it?
I expect that wouldn't work. The "have everyone vote" part, specifically. If you're not riled up being told that those guys with the wrong-coloured-signs are going to win, what motivates you to go out and vote?
Imagine you are on school grounds and you can see this guy on the street, distance of maybe 200 feet. Would you be able to be sure the black gun shaped thing was a toy from that distance?
If the "gun" is at such a distance I can't, then maybe* I shouldn't be pissing my pants.
*Maybe as in, unless I hear shots and see bodies dropping, no.
"...an odor of gasoline was detected"
In a fucking gasoline-powered car. Where do they find these geniuses?
I'm kind of concerned about that line as well. The implication is that that the odor of gas was suspected to be related to the presumed explosive device. Thing is, the pressure-cooker turned out to not be an explosive device. So... it turns out the odor of gasoline was either fabricated or as you say, due to a defective car. A huge part of police responsibility is being able to determine truth. It's not hard to figure out that a car is leaking gas. Unless you're making shit up, which is what this particular instance sounds like.
Seriously? It's actually that easy to part you from your money? It's pretty clear the problem here is you, not the people trying to sell stuff. You make the decision, if what you really want is your money then why are you trading it? You already have what you want.
What are some actual examples of when this has happened to you?
Seriously.
It is exactly as easy to part me from my money as it is. No more, no less. When advertising doesn't work, there's no issue. It's when it does - and you KNOW it does, else it wouldn't exist - that something has gone wrong.
Are you trying to pretend that (all) the debt-load people in developed nations have is because they've just fallen behind temporarily? Or do you actually get it that people buy crap they don't need? Specific itemized examples from my life aren't useful... they're just anecdotal evidence. That advertising exists, and has existed for a long time, is empirical evidence that the practice is profitable on average. And that's not acceptable to me.
It doesn't matter who is, or is not "too weak-willed to spend wisely". What does matter is that active advertising is an inherently predatory act. You know it, I know it, and the rest of the people asking "really? WTF's wrong with you. I just save my money, you sub-human schlup!" know it.
Finally, yes, I get it that there are shades of grey here and that we're not talking about human sacrifice or something 10/10 for evil. But some guy with a vested interest in advertising has decided to spout off on the morality of ad-blocking, which makes looking at the morality of advertising itself fair game. So while this isn't a huge deal, it's on-topic.
Advertising isn't some form of magic mind control
You're right; it's not magic. It's a very, very well understood science.
You read something, then you decide to buy something. "In some circles, that's theft." Umm, no, it's not. You made a choice to spend money. That's not "theft" by any stretch of the imagination.
Did I? Did I make the choice or was that choice made for me? You know why you see signs saying "limit 10 per customer" over a stack of crap? Because the way the human mind works, you deviate off the most recent number you've seen to make estimates. So, if you see a stack of crap at a "good" price, you'll start asking yourself "how many do I want", and you'll get the answer right. But if you see that sign, you'll start at 10 and work your way down to a number you can settle for, which is almost always higher than the number you actually want. That's how marketing and advertisement works. Massive studies have been undertaken to figure out how to manipulate buyers. This is not news. The choice is not mine.
See, all of those words mean different things. "Coercion" is generally immoral and often illegal. "Enticing" or "encouraging" are not. "Manipulating" is usually immoral, but whether it's illegal depends on context.
Difference without a distinction. When your target goal in coercion, enticement, or manipulation is to cause a person to act against their benefit, it's wrong. Enticing a suicide off a ledge isn't because it's in their best interest to be convinced not to jump. Encouraging a person to spend more than they want to is wrong. That's my premise.
I hate advertising probably as much as you do. And I agree with you that it sometimes exploits people psychologically in unfair ways. I wish there were less of it. But as long as you don't have a significant mental deficit and the advertising is basically true (not false or misleading), I cannot possibly see how you say that someone choosing to spend money is "theft."
One: hyperbole makes a point.
Two: as you mentioned in your post, there's significant grey-area in what "theft" means. If it's applied to copyright infringement (and it is, linguistic purist desires be damned), then it can be applied to purchases influenced by active advertising. While yes, I get something for my money, it's not what I really want, which is my money, which I would still have were I not advertised to. You can steal a house out from under the nose of an unwary elderly person, yes? Just because someone agrees to a purchase/sale contract doesn't preclude it being theft.
I'm of the opinion that advertising is immoral.
To be clear, I mean active advertising, in the sense of placing product information out of context. That includes billboards, products in movies, commercials between songs or before movies, and most of the crap that shows up in the mail. I don't have an issue with passive advertising, for instance having "the special of the day" on an e-commerce site, or related product information such as offering me different vehicles if I am visiting a vehicle sales site.
Active advertising is literally coercion, enticing, manipulating, and encouraging a viewer to make purchases that they otherwise do not wish to make. "If only you knew about our great product" does not justify the psychological arm-twisting advertisers undertake. Yes, by the end of your advert I might "want" your product that I'd never heard of, but as the OP says, "fuck you". You are taking money out of my pocket that I did not plan to allow its removal. In some circles, that's theft.
I'm guessing you're a grade-school teacher?
I will never buy a DRM coffee machine...
Unless you're a prostitute, don't fuck your customer.
You can get away with DRM on DVDs because consumers don't understand the tech. The phallus is invisible.
You can't get away with DRM on a plastic cup with coffee grounds in it. The consumers UNDERSTAND that product, and KNOW you're fucking them. The phallus is very much visible.