For the humour-challenged on this thread, there is a whole site devoted to ways of programming '99 bottles of beer': http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/
"25,000 lines of Javascript ? What could you possibly be doing which requires that level of Javascript interaction ?????"
document.write('25,000 bottles of beer on the wall, 25,000 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around - 24,999 bottles of beer on the wall'); document.write('24,999 bottles of beer on the wall, 24,999 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around - 24,998 bottles of beer on the wall'); document.write('24,998 bottles of beer on the wall, 24,998 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around - 24,997 bottles of beer on the wall');
I think the OP's point is that the cost of Windows ends up being paid for by the companies paying HP to put their adware on the PC. And then you just nuke the lot and put Linux on it.
So *you* haven't paid for Windows, the adware providers have. And you have just wiped both the adware and "their" OS off the PC.
You aren't supporting Windows, rather it is Norton's etc who do this - and they only exist because of Windows. What do you care if Norton's gradually goes bust paying Microsoft so that you can have Windows for free - and then you go and junk their "gift" (as I would too)?
Of course, this all presumes that the revenue to HP from adware does in fact exceed the cost to HP of Windows. I remain to be convinced of this.
They download it once, and install on every computer they sell (ghost the image). And that allows them to test the hardware before it goes out the door. And the user gets a ready-to-use computer with office suite (guess what? Microsoft doesn't supply one of them with Windows)... and a more virus resistant environment (MS doesn't supply that either).
So the consumer benefits. And they can still buy it with MS if they want. Nobody restricting them in any way. The consumer wins.
So it is alright for Microsoft to force HP (markets have forces) into selling PCs only with Windows, but it is not alright for the government to force HP into providing whatever commodity the consumers want?
I can see you greatly care about free markets. Like your mentor, Microsoft.
Most Linux distros come with a office suite, but windows has no presentation software, no spreadsheet, no database front end, and a second rate word processor. And Windows costs more than the bare machine and a free OS.
Put a free copy of Ubuntu with OpenOffice on every HP, and let the user buy another OS (like Solaris or Windows) separately if they want it.
"Gun confiscation leads to a loss of freedom, increased crime, and the government moving to the left. This has already happened in England and Australia."
Australia? Moving to the left? RUBBISH! You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Since banning semi-automatic weapons in Australia in the mid 1990s, we have had 10 years of the most right-wing conservative government that Australia has known in my lifetime. We have moved rightwards, not to the left. Little Johnny Howard (our Prime Minister) is the cheek-to-cheek friend of George W Bush, and admirer of Reagan and Thatcher. He is more right-wing than any preceding government by his own party (e.g. Menzies, Fraser, Gorton).
And crime rates in my Australian state are coming down, not going up. Violent crime rates are mostly a function of drug dealing and the "war on drugs" - little to do with firearms legislation whatsoever. Our murder rate is about half that the the US, and it is stable or declining slightly.
Guns don't kill people. Armed people don't kill people. Bullets kill people. Bullets that come from guns that are held by armed people.
On the Easter front, as you call it, wouldn't they be saying: "Each of our tank crew could eat five of their eggs. We kept eating six." And that is why their tank crews got too fat and couldn't fit into their tanks any more. Too much chocolate.
I'll tell you about the Christmas front some other time.
Was that the news item that mentioned the second amendment to the new Iraqi constitution:
"A well regulated insurgency being necessary to the insecurity of an unstable State, the right of the Iraqi people to keep and bear rocket launchers, explosives and heavy weapons shall not be infringed."
It seems to benefit certain very rich Americans. And they seem to think that their private interests ARE America's interests. And they pay the American politicians to think the same.
So Howard *is* protecting *that* America's interests.
The trouble with democracy by vote is that nothing can stop a nation of idiots from democratically electing a bunch of criminal incompetents.
A more reliable system might be democracy without the vote: randomly select enough people to fill the legislature. The government will then be statistically representative of the people (with the usual variance in outcomes), and no campaign funds from big business, no policy bribes (vote for me and I will outlaw homosexuality), no phone campaigns, no Diebold voting machines, etc can intervene.
In a nation like the US, it may be the better choice. Certainly cheaper than voting.
You can tell if I (the IT staff) am reading your email.
Just put your bank account login and PIN in an email to yourself. If you still have any money left in your account on the following day, I am not reading your email.
Let me see... how many Ecumenical Councils were there? So the Nicene Council around 325 - oh, wait, the Nicene Creed was amended a little at the later Constinopolitan Council... so it has only been unchanged in the last 1500 years. Besides the creed itself, they passed a whole lot of provisions of canon law. Then there were the provisions of the other councils, and the later Orthodox and Catholic Councils that still have force as canon law. The laws of England include provisions going back to the reign of Edward III (1300s) that are still in force (or were until recently). Hmmm Magna Carta - now there is a document to make your Constitution look like a juvenile.
History wasn't invented in America. Some places have been around longer, and have a longer tradition of unchanged principles. Jewish law goes back, in some matters, over 3,000 years. America is just a Johnny-come-lately in the world of legal history.
In Australia, everyone votes (we have over 90% turnouts, as it is compulsory to vote, and you will get a $55 fine in the mail if you don't vote).
Voting is slightly more complicated than marking X next to your candidate: we have preferential voting, so you rank the candidates from 1 to N, with 1 indicating your most preferred candidate.
Scrutineers from all parties watch the whole counting process like hawks (little pieces of paper put in the ballot boxes) - and usually know the result several hours after the polls close. We vote on a Saturday, and my local polling booth is about 100 meters from my house and has no queues if I go there about 3PM. This is largely true over the whole of Australia. The elections are run by an independent electoral commission which takes pride in getting polling booths to everyone, and in running a tight, clean, accurate shop. I think the system works very well, and would see no advantage in computerising it. Paper ballots and pencils just works fine. It involves the local community in scrutineering and in running the polling booths. Accountability.
America could do worse than copy Australia - especially as they have already copied our secret ballot system. I am appalled at the lackadaisical system of voting in America.
Our only problem is the lack of a good indentification system for voters. Tests suggest a low rate of multiple voting (we're an honest bunch), but it would be good to fix this one shortcoming.
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For the humour-challenged on this thread, there is a whole site devoted to ways of programming '99 bottles of beer': http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/
"25,000 lines of Javascript ? What could you possibly be doing which requires that level of Javascript interaction ?????"
...
document.write('25,000 bottles of beer on the wall, 25,000 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around - 24,999 bottles of beer on the wall');
document.write('24,999 bottles of beer on the wall, 24,999 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around - 24,998 bottles of beer on the wall');
document.write('24,998 bottles of beer on the wall, 24,998 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around - 24,997 bottles of beer on the wall');
etc
I think the OP's point is that the cost of Windows ends up being paid for by the companies paying HP to put their adware on the PC. And then you just nuke the lot and put Linux on it.
So *you* haven't paid for Windows, the adware providers have. And you have just wiped both the adware and "their" OS off the PC.
You aren't supporting Windows, rather it is Norton's etc who do this - and they only exist because of Windows. What do you care if Norton's gradually goes bust paying Microsoft so that you can have Windows for free - and then you go and junk their "gift" (as I would too)?
Of course, this all presumes that the revenue to HP from adware does in fact exceed the cost to HP of Windows. I remain to be convinced of this.
What about...
() Debian (add $0)
They download it once, and install on every computer they sell (ghost the image). And that allows them to test the hardware before it goes out the door. And the user gets a ready-to-use computer with office suite (guess what? Microsoft doesn't supply one of them with Windows)... and a more virus resistant environment (MS doesn't supply that either).
So the consumer benefits. And they can still buy it with MS if they want. Nobody restricting them in any way. The consumer wins.
So it is alright for Microsoft to force HP (markets have forces) into selling PCs only with Windows, but it is not alright for the government to force HP into providing whatever commodity the consumers want?
I can see you greatly care about free markets. Like your mentor, Microsoft.
Or selling computers without an office suite.
Most Linux distros come with a office suite, but windows has no presentation software, no spreadsheet, no database front end, and a second rate word processor. And Windows costs more than the bare machine and a free OS.
Put a free copy of Ubuntu with OpenOffice on every HP, and let the user buy another OS (like Solaris or Windows) separately if they want it.
"Gun confiscation leads to a loss of freedom, increased crime, and the government moving to the left. This has already happened in England and Australia."
Australia? Moving to the left? RUBBISH! You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Since banning semi-automatic weapons in Australia in the mid 1990s, we have had 10 years of the most right-wing conservative government that Australia has known in my lifetime. We have moved rightwards, not to the left. Little Johnny Howard (our Prime Minister) is the cheek-to-cheek friend of George W Bush, and admirer of Reagan and Thatcher. He is more right-wing than any preceding government by his own party (e.g. Menzies, Fraser, Gorton).
And crime rates in my Australian state are coming down, not going up. Violent crime rates are mostly a function of drug dealing and the "war on drugs" - little to do with firearms legislation whatsoever. Our murder rate is about half that the the US, and it is stable or declining slightly.
Guns don't kill people. Armed people don't kill people. Bullets kill people. Bullets that come from guns that are held by armed people.
On the Easter front, as you call it, wouldn't they be saying: "Each of our tank crew could eat five of their eggs. We kept eating six." And that is why their tank crews got too fat and couldn't fit into their tanks any more. Too much chocolate.
I'll tell you about the Christmas front some other time.
Was that the news item that mentioned the second amendment to the new Iraqi constitution:
"A well regulated insurgency being necessary to the insecurity of an unstable State, the right of the Iraqi people to keep and bear rocket launchers, explosives and heavy weapons shall not be infringed."
I haven't spent any money teaching my 2 children how to use a computer. They picked it up themselves.
My wife did a course, however, because she was too cautious to learn that way.
A lot of business expenses for training come from cautious grown-ups who have lost the capacity to learn for themselves.
I've worked it out, but I keep getting a negative answer.
"They" (Apple) do something new in their niche market, that's called "quaint".
"We" (Microsoft) copy Apple's quaint idea into our huge monopoly market, that's called "innovation".
Well, it was new to "our" consumers.
"they improved the error messages"
I'd be happier if they improved the errors.
What answer did Mark Shuttleworth give you?
It seems to benefit certain very rich Americans. And they seem to think that their private interests ARE America's interests. And they pay the American politicians to think the same.
So Howard *is* protecting *that* America's interests.
A Microsoft-owned company (MSN) fins that a Linux-based computer is a waste of time.
What a surprise!
So this guy wants to be informed about being uninformed?
The trouble with democracy by vote is that nothing can stop a nation of idiots from democratically electing a bunch of criminal incompetents.
A more reliable system might be democracy without the vote: randomly select enough people to fill the legislature. The government will then be statistically representative of the people (with the usual variance in outcomes), and no campaign funds from big business, no policy bribes (vote for me and I will outlaw homosexuality), no phone campaigns, no Diebold voting machines, etc can intervene.
In a nation like the US, it may be the better choice. Certainly cheaper than voting.
And the more times I vote, the more stubs I have to verify the tally system, thus ensuring even more the integrity of the system.
You can tell if I (the IT staff) am reading your email.
Just put your bank account login and PIN in an email to yourself. If you still have any money left in your account on the following day, I am not reading your email.
Let me see ... how many Ecumenical Councils were there? So the Nicene Council around 325 - oh, wait, the Nicene Creed was amended a little at the later Constinopolitan Council ... so it has only been unchanged in the last 1500 years. Besides the creed itself, they passed a whole lot of provisions of canon law. Then there were the provisions of the other councils, and the later Orthodox and Catholic Councils that still have force as canon law. The laws of England include provisions going back to the reign of Edward III (1300s) that are still in force (or were until recently). Hmmm Magna Carta - now there is a document to make your Constitution look like a juvenile.
History wasn't invented in America. Some places have been around longer, and have a longer tradition of unchanged principles. Jewish law goes back, in some matters, over 3,000 years. America is just a Johnny-come-lately in the world of legal history.
Well, it is not the case that it is not necessarily unclear.
Calling Planet America!
Calling Planet America!
Planet Earth's North American continent wants its land mass between Canada and Mexico returned, please.
Your gf has sex with your pilates ball?
/., what else is she supposed to do?
Kinky. But if you spend all your time posting on
In Australia, everyone votes (we have over 90% turnouts, as it is compulsory to vote, and you will get a $55 fine in the mail if you don't vote).
Voting is slightly more complicated than marking X next to your candidate: we have preferential voting, so you rank the candidates from 1 to N, with 1 indicating your most preferred candidate.
Scrutineers from all parties watch the whole counting process like hawks (little pieces of paper put in the ballot boxes) - and usually know the result several hours after the polls close. We vote on a Saturday, and my local polling booth is about 100 meters from my house and has no queues if I go there about 3PM. This is largely true over the whole of Australia. The elections are run by an independent electoral commission which takes pride in getting polling booths to everyone, and in running a tight, clean, accurate shop. I think the system works very well, and would see no advantage in computerising it. Paper ballots and pencils just works fine. It involves the local community in scrutineering and in running the polling booths. Accountability.
America could do worse than copy Australia - especially as they have already copied our secret ballot system. I am appalled at the lackadaisical system of voting in America.
Our only problem is the lack of a good indentification system for voters. Tests suggest a low rate of multiple voting (we're an honest bunch), but it would be good to fix this one shortcoming.