Well, in my case, the one thing Chrome has over Firefox is that it doesn't BSoD constantly. Don't get me wrong, I used to use Firefox exclusively and I loved my add-ons, but starting with about version 3.6 it's been pretty much incompatible with my computer. Not for lack of trying to get it to work, mind you; Mozilla refers me to an ATI problem, ATI refers me to Flash problem, and Flash refers me to Mozilla problem. After countless changes to more and more obscure settings, and probably 100 BSoD's, I gave up.
Chrome has Adblock (now), but I sorely miss NoScript. Given how long it's been, I doubt it ever will. Outside of the add-ons, I see no difference between the two at all. Chrome is a lot faster than the old Firefox used to be, that's for sure.
Yeah really. I follow everything I care to follow very easily via my internet connection. Legally if I can, illegally if I can't (or if the process to do it legally is utterly retarded, i.e., HBO GO).
Things are actually much better than they've been by historical standards.
No, things were much better. From WWII-the late 70's, things were great. Then Reagan, the first fully Corporate Owned President, came along and they rectified that thorny "democracy" problem.
Like I said above, I agree that Internet Access is a right in this day and age, but the reality of the situation is that many of our fellow citizen's do not see it that way, and honestly it doesn't even matter as none of the people that make our laws or enforce them advocate on behalf of the people anymore. Consider the majority of Americans that want Universal "European Style" Health Care; even though some polls say over 70% of the population in this country wants it, it will never happen, because the people aren't represented by our legislatures.
Call me a pessimist, but frankly, at this point, I'll believe that the people have a voice in this country again when the will of the people is actually done, and I see no evidence of that happening any time soon.
I agree with you whole-heartedly, but the reality of the situation is that what is fair and just for the people is of little consequence to those in power anymore. The days of fighting through legal channels is pretty much at an end, because the legal channels are all corrupted and totally preferential towards those with the most money to throw at it.
Or, SCOTUS could finally declare the broadband suppliers / ISPs as Common Carriers, in which case the ISPs would be screwed.
I'm way too much of a pessimist to even entertain that notion. Citizens United v. FEC and AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion is enough evidence in my mind to deduce that the Supreme Court is just another tool of Big Business, albeit not as obviously corrupted as our Legislative and Executive branches.
And once it goes to the Supreme Court they will shoot it down because, despite what the UN says, internet access is not considered a right here, it's a privilege.
I doubt there is anyone with the money to lobby on behalf of the consumer in this case (there never is) so, at the end of the day, this will get struck down and the ISPs will continue to throttle and do whatever they want because it's "their" network. Never mind the fact that there has been ridiculous amounts of public money involved in the creation of said network, either way, it belongs to them, because our representatives didn't care enough to fight for it. It's too damn late, now. The time for this battle was 10 years ago before the major ISPs became entrenched.
"The Media" have a vested interest in not accurately presenting the information. At the end of the day, it all comes down to money. Laws and regulations don't mean fuck all if you've got the capital and market share to protect you...two things ISPs have plenty of
I suspect the first ISP that gets nailed on Net Neutrality will take it all the way to the Supreme Court and they will rule that the ISP's have every right to provide whatever service they want because "hey, nobody needs the internet." The UN declaration of internet access being a human right was widely mocked here in the States if you'll recall (at least, widely mocked by those that get any real say in the matter anyway).
That conservative majority on the SCOTUS will take care of this no problem, you'll see.
Yeah, same here in the Midwest. Our only choice for hardware is the internet or Best Buy...and Best Buy can hardly be called a choice, unless you're looking for a ridiculously marked up Hard Drive.
10 years ago there were five Mom and Pop places within a 15 minute drive of my house, not to mention a CompUSA (back when they sold computer components in their stores!!), Circuit City, Best Buy. Newegg is great and all, but I really miss the days of being able to go out and replace a stick of RAM or a burnt out CD/DVD burner in 15 minutes...
That's assuming there are any vendors left to purchase the parts from to put it together.
As it is now the whitebox market is pretty damn niche as compared to the computer market overall. The death of the homebuilt PC has been heralded for years while we all scoffed, but not only is it happening, it's being deliberately driven that direction not only by the companies that benefit from vendor lock-in but consumers themselves. PC Gaming is being deliberately killed off in lieu of DRM-laden consoles and the cash cow that is DLC; meanwhile, "the cloud" is absorbing everything else.
Add in the new on-board DRM that prevents overclocking and such that Intel is working on (and I'm sure AMD will emulate eventually) and the overall drive towards portables in lieu of desktops by a large segment of the population and frankly it doesn't look good at all. Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I see too much ambivalence towards these trends by too large of a percentage of the population. People like you and I are the odd ones, and the people that just want to update their Facebook and play Angry Birds are the new norm. 10 years from now hardly anyone is even going to have a "real computer" anymore, they're going to have a terminal fetching data from somewhere else, whether that terminal takes the form of a laptop or tablet or even a desktop computer, the days of putting together a powerhouse computer yourself seems to be coming to a close.
AT&T's argument is that the amount of mobile devices and large bandwidth data users could grow by up to ten times the current amount in under five years.
With the ridiculous bandwidth caps and tethering blocks? Yeah, right.
I have a feeling we're going to see data usage plateau. I know I've curtailed my data usage heavily since Verizon instituted the 2GB cap.
It surprises me that these corporations don't just say stuff like that at this point. They own our government, and the vast majority of people don't even give a shit. Why be coy? There are no repercussions anyway.
Wiping your hard disk when installing a new OS, or re-imaging a computer could have disastrous effects.
Better buy that Extended Service Plan! Best Buy has professionals that can reinstall your OS for you! What, you want to do it yourself? What are you, some sort of hax0r?!!?
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Oh please, everyone know's climate change is a myth, it still gets cold in winter!
I'd bet almost anything this guy has Limewire installed on his computer. "False Positives", indeed....
causing UAC prompts
I do not know one single person under the age of 40 that left that stupid bullshit turned on.
As a Symantec employee, you're a liar!!!! Viruses are everywhere, block ALL the things!!!!!
Why not? Common Sense 2.0 covers the big things, MSE is just an insurance policy...
Well, in my case, the one thing Chrome has over Firefox is that it doesn't BSoD constantly. Don't get me wrong, I used to use Firefox exclusively and I loved my add-ons, but starting with about version 3.6 it's been pretty much incompatible with my computer. Not for lack of trying to get it to work, mind you; Mozilla refers me to an ATI problem, ATI refers me to Flash problem, and Flash refers me to Mozilla problem. After countless changes to more and more obscure settings, and probably 100 BSoD's, I gave up.
Chrome has Adblock (now), but I sorely miss NoScript. Given how long it's been, I doubt it ever will. Outside of the add-ons, I see no difference between the two at all. Chrome is a lot faster than the old Firefox used to be, that's for sure.
Yeah really. I follow everything I care to follow very easily via my internet connection. Legally if I can, illegally if I can't (or if the process to do it legally is utterly retarded, i.e., HBO GO).
Things are actually much better than they've been by historical standards.
No, things were much better. From WWII-the late 70's, things were great. Then Reagan, the first fully Corporate Owned President, came along and they rectified that thorny "democracy" problem.
Like I said above, I agree that Internet Access is a right in this day and age, but the reality of the situation is that many of our fellow citizen's do not see it that way, and honestly it doesn't even matter as none of the people that make our laws or enforce them advocate on behalf of the people anymore. Consider the majority of Americans that want Universal "European Style" Health Care; even though some polls say over 70% of the population in this country wants it, it will never happen, because the people aren't represented by our legislatures.
Call me a pessimist, but frankly, at this point, I'll believe that the people have a voice in this country again when the will of the people is actually done, and I see no evidence of that happening any time soon.
I agree with you whole-heartedly, but the reality of the situation is that what is fair and just for the people is of little consequence to those in power anymore. The days of fighting through legal channels is pretty much at an end, because the legal channels are all corrupted and totally preferential towards those with the most money to throw at it.
Or, SCOTUS could finally declare the broadband suppliers / ISPs as Common Carriers, in which case the ISPs would be screwed.
I'm way too much of a pessimist to even entertain that notion. Citizens United v. FEC and AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion is enough evidence in my mind to deduce that the Supreme Court is just another tool of Big Business, albeit not as obviously corrupted as our Legislative and Executive branches.
And once it goes to the Supreme Court they will shoot it down because, despite what the UN says, internet access is not considered a right here, it's a privilege.
I doubt there is anyone with the money to lobby on behalf of the consumer in this case (there never is) so, at the end of the day, this will get struck down and the ISPs will continue to throttle and do whatever they want because it's "their" network. Never mind the fact that there has been ridiculous amounts of public money involved in the creation of said network, either way, it belongs to them, because our representatives didn't care enough to fight for it. It's too damn late, now. The time for this battle was 10 years ago before the major ISPs became entrenched.
"The Media" have a vested interest in not accurately presenting the information. At the end of the day, it all comes down to money. Laws and regulations don't mean fuck all if you've got the capital and market share to protect you...two things ISPs have plenty of
I suspect the first ISP that gets nailed on Net Neutrality will take it all the way to the Supreme Court and they will rule that the ISP's have every right to provide whatever service they want because "hey, nobody needs the internet." The UN declaration of internet access being a human right was widely mocked here in the States if you'll recall (at least, widely mocked by those that get any real say in the matter anyway).
That conservative majority on the SCOTUS will take care of this no problem, you'll see.
Politicians are given large sums of money called "Campaign Donations" specifically so they will not do anything about that.
FTFY.
Capitalism, Fuck Yeah!
Yeah, same here in the Midwest. Our only choice for hardware is the internet or Best Buy...and Best Buy can hardly be called a choice, unless you're looking for a ridiculously marked up Hard Drive.
10 years ago there were five Mom and Pop places within a 15 minute drive of my house, not to mention a CompUSA (back when they sold computer components in their stores!!), Circuit City, Best Buy. Newegg is great and all, but I really miss the days of being able to go out and replace a stick of RAM or a burnt out CD/DVD burner in 15 minutes...
Why would they do that?
Well, so they can sell you a software upgrade later on, of course!
Can't have people buying cheaper processors and overclocking them now, can we? Gotta close that loophole STAT!
And then watch the resurgence of the whitebox.
That's assuming there are any vendors left to purchase the parts from to put it together.
As it is now the whitebox market is pretty damn niche as compared to the computer market overall. The death of the homebuilt PC has been heralded for years while we all scoffed, but not only is it happening, it's being deliberately driven that direction not only by the companies that benefit from vendor lock-in but consumers themselves. PC Gaming is being deliberately killed off in lieu of DRM-laden consoles and the cash cow that is DLC; meanwhile, "the cloud" is absorbing everything else.
Add in the new on-board DRM that prevents overclocking and such that Intel is working on (and I'm sure AMD will emulate eventually) and the overall drive towards portables in lieu of desktops by a large segment of the population and frankly it doesn't look good at all. Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I see too much ambivalence towards these trends by too large of a percentage of the population. People like you and I are the odd ones, and the people that just want to update their Facebook and play Angry Birds are the new norm. 10 years from now hardly anyone is even going to have a "real computer" anymore, they're going to have a terminal fetching data from somewhere else, whether that terminal takes the form of a laptop or tablet or even a desktop computer, the days of putting together a powerhouse computer yourself seems to be coming to a close.
AT&T's argument is that the amount of mobile devices and large bandwidth data users could grow by up to ten times the current amount in under five years.
With the ridiculous bandwidth caps and tethering blocks? Yeah, right.
I have a feeling we're going to see data usage plateau. I know I've curtailed my data usage heavily since Verizon instituted the 2GB cap.
It surprises me that these corporations don't just say stuff like that at this point. They own our government, and the vast majority of people don't even give a shit. Why be coy? There are no repercussions anyway.
They could still just update BIOS. I suspect this is just a method to enforce vendor lock-in and DMCA/DRM bullshit.
The BIOS really is an old relic the way it looks.
Honestly, why the hell does it matter? Who cares how it looks? It gets the job done for the most part, which is what matters.
Adding complexity to the boot process is just going to add potential for problems. Good for Geek Squad, bad for consumers.
Wiping your hard disk when installing a new OS, or re-imaging a computer could have disastrous effects.
Better buy that Extended Service Plan! Best Buy has professionals that can reinstall your OS for you! What, you want to do it yourself? What are you, some sort of hax0r?!!?
Don't worry, UEFI will make sure that's not a solution for much longer...
I feel like we're dealing with the old Microsoft again.
It allows you to boot Linux.
The cynical, realistic part of me thinks this is the real answer.