Voluntary code, no right of redress, zero transparency for your own protection, we have your best interest at heart (translated: we are scared of lawyers, and are too dumb to realise that by being selective we open the doors wide for missing the odd one and being held liable) etc etc.
From the organisation that brought you Phorm (and didn't tell you), a new violation of their own service T&Cs.
Lawyers, please sharpen pencils and expense account - BT has just dropped the soap in the shower..
If it absolutely has to be incorruptable, use a read-only medium.. Installing a permanent trojan is going to be a tad difficult if you can only write to memory..
I must do some digging - I'm not sure it's quite willing to advertise itself so publicly (they're in general very discrete), but I know there's at least one datacenter in Switzerland built along the same lines. I just don't know if they have gone for the dramatic decoration as well (which is IMHO a good lot of fun).
I rather like the idea of a self sustaining facility, but for a house. I just don't like the idea of several tonnes of rock above me..
I don't need to point out to you that online storage means easier access by a 3rd party without you knowing - no such problems with the floppies..
3 steps: first, get these floppies on a backup medium, even a USB disk is better (although the client segregation is then voided, maybe USB sticks, or separate archive files per client). Second, back up the backup and stick it in a bank vault. Repeat every week (most of my friends have two disks which they alternate). Third, ensure the use of full disk crypto (Truecrypt or PGP, with PGP slightly more user friendly and, in corporate mode, offering recovery token facilities) if they run around with laptops - ditto for the office computer (burglary proofing).
If you must collaborate online (typically the case with a practice of lawyers) use a reliable provider of groupware, I'm quite partial to Zimbra myself. Big caveat: I use a provider which operates under banking secrecy as well as data protection laws, but I'm in a country where those laws still count - not sure if you can find anyone that reliable in the US (I don't trust US authorities in any way, shape or form not to casually demand data if it so pleases them). AFAIK my provider accepts foreign subscribers, maybe an option?
Otherwise, install groupware inside the office and VPN it out - but ensure you have a backup regime that moves files off premise or the next burglary or fire will nuke the business.
Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious - make sure your backups are password protected. Select a good master password and stick it in a bank safe.
Usable software: PGP (also for email) or Truecrypt, Acronis True Image (IMHO the best backup software you can get). Truecrypt also enables you to create USB sticks which auto-start a Truecrypt mount (so-called "traveller mode") - that enables your friend to share data without disclosure risk, but you MUST teach him then to unmount properly or he'll mess up file integrity.
It's no easy to give you a sensible answer without more info so YMMV, but I think I've covered most of the basics. Good luck.
I have a feeling that especially in high-rise Manhattan there isn't that much sky visible for a sat-nav to get a precise reading. If that assumption is correct, unless the GPS is actually built in (i.e. navigation data is supplemented by magnetic compass and readings from the ABS sensors) it won't be of much use..
I personally am in favour of the open market idea as it appeared in Indiana, and I am TOTALLY against the cartel forming that can take place. However, what you cannot get away from is licensing because you need to keep a grip on who does what. In London they started a scheme where they do at least some criminal checks, and barring the usual incompetence displayed by any London authority it has indeed resulted in a reduction of cab-based crime. However, that should not cost a fortune.
There is a 3rd way, but I lack the time to do it. You can set up a mechanism that creates the open market and - at the same time - manages carbon reduction and helps cab drivers to keep their paperwork in order (i.e. everyone wins). Maybe some other time (too busy with other things anyway)..
You're 100% right. This also goes for consultants, btw. It's is perfectly possible to advise a client to go into direction "A" and advise him to go into direction "B" half a year later - if you find a client who doesn't have a clue (like a government, for instance) you can more or less print money for as long as it happens. Afterwards you then use this as reference for new victims..
I wish you luck with that change. The lock that MS has on desktops shows up in unexpected and frankly irritating places such as Outlook, where mobile phone companies decided that that was the only code worth integrating with. Thank God for "Over The Air" updates..
My personal best experience was switching over a completely non-computer literate financial journalist to Linux when her laptop blew up. The only reason she switched back was lack of support options, which is important for business end users. At your volume you can take that inhouse - once matters are stable you can spend most of your time supporting end users.
My personal favourite money saver is OpenOffice. For 80% of what people do it's more than usable, and it stops people from totally losing productivity by switching to Office 2007 with it's "where the f*ck did this-and-that feature go" UI. I have yet to find anything that actually IMPROVES working with Office (OK, Word finally has a decent Outline mode, but I already worked my way around that).
A word or sentence relating this to the original article would have been enlightening, methinks.
I presume you were drunk when you wrote this:-).
Whatever fashion someone sees IBM, I doubt they would shaft a local provider on almost the day he's about to open. That's an approach one expects from we-are-happy-to-promise-anything-as-long-as-it-makes-us-money-and-we-are-not-held-to-it Microsoft, but not from IBM.
I rather like the event (although I feel sorry for the owner) - it just adds tremendous weight to the argument that it does not matter what line of business you're in, dealing with Microsoft is pure poison. No news..
Quickie on ghosting the drive: set him up with a copy of Acronis True Image Home. I'm not sure if you can shorten the process to "click on an icon" simple, but it is by far the best software out there (IMHO) for both restore-from-bare-metal and file recovery. Just one tip: make sure you also store an ISO or the recovery start disk on the external drive you use. Saves time later. It allows you to recover a machine really from the ground up without having to re-enter a gazillion license codes. As a matter of fact, the use of Open Source stuff such as OpenOffice will probably help there too:-)
The Acronis license policy is excellent as well: you can always grab a copy off the Net and use it for 30 days to recover - so when you have just landed in the sh*t you don't need to rescue that first - good thinking. Worth the money - I have all my machines licensed for it. I just hope their Linux support improves so I have one solution for dual boots..
As for longetivity: hardware is NOT your problem. IMHO your main worry is the incessant OS updates and patches put out by MS, but at least the infernal driver search has lessened. If your software runs on generic Windows XP you ought to be OK, but keep a separate copy of the OS around. If you use Acronis as described, do yourself a favour and image the machine bare, before you install the app. That way you can reconstruct the base machine very quickly as well. In that context I like the VMWare suggestion in one of the comments - that really isolates you from hardware issues with upgrades.
Yeah, cute. You're forgetting that MS has yet to contribute to the economy in the form of taxes, and even jobs are now exported so there's no contribution there either.
It's interesting to see the US hollering about so-called tax havens but gingerly stepping around the corporate abuse in their own country. And that's not a joke.
The key question (IMHO, of course) is what you define as "programming". If it is "formal" coding in the sense of a programming language, fine, I 100% agree.
However, although they *totally* botched the implementation, MS did actually have a point when they made language changes in VBA (donning flameproof gear). Hear me out on this.
For: it allowed people to write formulae in their own language - the language in which they learned math at school. As someone who has studied in multiple languages I can very much understand the need to read something in your mother tongue, so from that angle I would be inclined to offer a 3rd suggestion to "yes" or "no": make it possible to choose the language.
Against: IF you go for such a choice option, please avoid what MS did in VBA. Why MS decided that formulae weren't tokenized so the VBA "programs" (sorry for the insult to the concept) would work in ANY language and simply changed presentation is a mystery to me. As I work in multiple languages I occasionally get spreadsheets that are not in English, and some of them have some basic formulae - which will not work because my system runs in English. It's fantastically unbelievably stupid to do things this way, so from this angle I would be all for a 100% English environment. And for thumbscrews for whoever came up with that implementation.
I'm with Torvalds on commenting - I never even thought to comment in another language too when coding. That has IMHO a simple cause: most people who speak a language also then THINK in that language, so commenting in another language would mean switching back and forth. Not impossible, but usually not worth the effort.
PS: in case someone wants to comment that all is done more intelligently in OpenOffice: sorry, such a change won't happen just yet, especially now marketing has discovered the shading and 3D tinsel in Powerpoint. Sigh.
Given that the average desktop takes anywhere between 1 minute and 10 to actually become usable, just how much power is wasted just waiting? I mean, if you're going to check out costs that don't contribute to productivity (like me typing this message, but I digress) this strikes me as a major one.
Even those that power down at the down of the day have this waste built in.
It seems that a quick bootup would do more than just cater for my impatience:-).
I think you make a mistake here. It's NOT impossible to secure, for all you know Google could have done a good job, you don't know either way.
What you CAN say is that it is impossible to TRUST Google. You have no solid contracts, the company gets up to all sorts of shenanigans with your data (which, btw, you agreed to, read the T&Cs you accepted) and ownership and use of the information you store with them is very much in doubt.
I don't create a business dependency on companies I don't trust, even if I have a legal grip on them.
Sorry to pour cold water on this, but to get someone declared "vexatious" in the UK is VERY hard. You need a long history of questionable cases, and I think you probably need to serve the person the order.
If they are untruthful about living somewhere (it's as easy as not opening the door yourself and calling the court sheriffs that you don't live there to make that happen) it's even a question if you can make that declaration stick.
The excuse is that it would unfairly prejudice the litigant because he'd have to ask permission for each court case, but I can't see that as prejudice - there's still nothing stopping the person filing if they have a valid case.
[Sorry if this sounds sharp - I have been chasing a fraud through the UK courts and it has been an enlightening and extraterrestrial experience that had in no way, shape or form anything to do with law or justice]
The RIAA is but a front. The whole idea of the RIAA is to act as a firewall between the legal abuse and the actual operators. The good news is that that firewall has already been broken (AFAIK) so it's becoming increasingly likely that the record companies are dreaming up new abuse to ensure they don't have to accept that business has changed.
A shorter title would have been: Large Recording Companies vs The Defenseless: how chequebook justice is destroying US society..
I can't believe that anyone ever been exposed to what currently passes for "justice" in the RIAA cases will come away with the same respect for the law as before. And that is IMHO a much larger risk that is conveniently ignored.
So, just to get this straight, the RIAA pursued a questionable case that has already costed the defendant money to prepare for, and as soon as credible resistance emerges they quickly run and do it again to someone else - without sanctions?
I mentioned I occasionally check in and have a look (usually I grab a newly launched distro like Kubuntu or OpenSuSE and see if I can get it to run on my not-so-special hardware) - that's install, config, experiment, sigh, remove.
The problem is that I have almost 2 decades worth of Microsoft experience where they have been doing the same thing - always promising the new version will be faster/safer/more functional/less buggy/usable (the boldest claim of all). And it's still crap..
At least with KDE you can expect real progress rather than marketing BS:-)
Interesting. Your story ties in with my experience with the iPhone. I have one as a business phone (there's a sensible reason for it) and I was shocked by what I call a lack of depth to the interface. Even with MS software you can grow from beginner-with-a-mouse to experienced-user-with-shortcuts (although in 2007 they've done their best to ensure those users too totally lose productivity - hence my OpenOffice default at work:-)).
There is *nothing* below that glossy surface. Niente, nada, nop, zilch, zip. Nothing at all. My normal phone is a Sony Ericsson P1i and that is quirky but more usable by miles. About the only app that redeems the iPhone in my eyes is TapForms. If that's what the Mac is like as well it will probably take me about an hour or less to cross the system edge to edge and get exceptionally pissed off with it.
An iPhone makes life easy for beginners. And you'll remain a beginner forever - no thanks.
Hmm, I don't think it's "hate" as such, more profound disappointment. I can't speak for others, but KDE 3.5 was moving along nicely, was functional and had *heaps* of apps to make it a complete desktop. With Compiz Fusion added it was even damn flash, but the main thing is that it did the job and enough apps were available to create some flexibility.
Along comes 4 and whammo - I even have trouble finding a decent WiFi manager. All those 3.5 apps I was used to don't have a 4 replacement, and I don't really want to be a whining git asking the developers of every single app to upgrade their code (which is AFAIK not that easy either) - besides, I don't have the time.
So 4.0 was for me going from a functional 3.5 desktop to a black hole. I won't bitch about it, I occasionally check in and see if the situation has improved. So far, the answer is "not really", so I'll use Gnome of a lighter desktop. It also means that I can no longer wean people off Windows because KDE 4 just doesn't cut it yet as a replacement.
In summary, to me, going to KDE 4 was as much an upgrade to 3.5 as Vista was an upgrade to XP..
What I'd like is simply what 3.5 was offering, stable compiz fusion graphics added (flashiness aside, a cube is actually quite a good working desktop model from a functionality point of view) and a complete array of apps form printing, WiFi (well, OK, that still sucks in seven ways to Sunday on Linux IMHO).
Having said that, I'll probably buy a Mac instead. Functionality without the risk or hassle..
I used to have a Sony Clie - IR remote control was standard (which was fun in waiting rooms with TVs).
I'd love my phone to have remote control capabilities, but so far, all the ones I've had were only using IR for IRDA, which I've used 10 years ago for the last time..
On the plus side, they are already Bluetooth equipped, which could help with the PS/3. I can appreciate the reason behind the choice, but it's occasionally irritating when you play a movie..
So, if it wasn't for Apple leaving our IR abilities altogether it would have become THE killer app for the iPhone.. Doh!
I think it's premature to expect all officials to tow the Obama line. Don't forget that the Bush government had 8 full years to "recalibrate" officialdom to its liking (which was amply demonstrated by Europe having to read MS the riot act instead of the US), I doubt you'll be able to see any change for at least another 2..3 years.
Having said that, nothing wrong with getting questions asked. What the RIAA has been doing is IMHO subversive and that needs to be stopped, DoJ in tow or not.
Slashdot Mirror
I took the standard company urine test
That explains it. Even then they were obviously taking the p*ss..
Voluntary code, no right of redress, zero transparency for your own protection, we have your best interest at heart (translated: we are scared of lawyers, and are too dumb to realise that by being selective we open the doors wide for missing the odd one and being held liable) etc etc.
From the organisation that brought you Phorm (and didn't tell you), a new violation of their own service T&Cs.
Lawyers, please sharpen pencils and expense account - BT has just dropped the soap in the shower..
If it absolutely has to be incorruptable, use a read-only medium.. Installing a permanent trojan is going to be a tad difficult if you can only write to memory..
"Buffalo is the sauce they put on them."
So the wings are not buffalo meat? Damn.
I must do some digging - I'm not sure it's quite willing to advertise itself so publicly (they're in general very discrete), but I know there's at least one datacenter in Switzerland built along the same lines. I just don't know if they have gone for the dramatic decoration as well (which is IMHO a good lot of fun).
I rather like the idea of a self sustaining facility, but for a house. I just don't like the idea of several tonnes of rock above me..
I don't need to point out to you that online storage means easier access by a 3rd party without you knowing - no such problems with the floppies..
3 steps: first, get these floppies on a backup medium, even a USB disk is better (although the client segregation is then voided, maybe USB sticks, or separate archive files per client). Second, back up the backup and stick it in a bank vault. Repeat every week (most of my friends have two disks which they alternate). Third, ensure the use of full disk crypto (Truecrypt or PGP, with PGP slightly more user friendly and, in corporate mode, offering recovery token facilities) if they run around with laptops - ditto for the office computer (burglary proofing).
If you must collaborate online (typically the case with a practice of lawyers) use a reliable provider of groupware, I'm quite partial to Zimbra myself. Big caveat: I use a provider which operates under banking secrecy as well as data protection laws, but I'm in a country where those laws still count - not sure if you can find anyone that reliable in the US (I don't trust US authorities in any way, shape or form not to casually demand data if it so pleases them). AFAIK my provider accepts foreign subscribers, maybe an option?
Otherwise, install groupware inside the office and VPN it out - but ensure you have a backup regime that moves files off premise or the next burglary or fire will nuke the business.
Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious - make sure your backups are password protected. Select a good master password and stick it in a bank safe.
Usable software: PGP (also for email) or Truecrypt, Acronis True Image (IMHO the best backup software you can get). Truecrypt also enables you to create USB sticks which auto-start a Truecrypt mount (so-called "traveller mode") - that enables your friend to share data without disclosure risk, but you MUST teach him then to unmount properly or he'll mess up file integrity.
It's no easy to give you a sensible answer without more info so YMMV, but I think I've covered most of the basics. Good luck.
I have a feeling that especially in high-rise Manhattan there isn't that much sky visible for a sat-nav to get a precise reading. If that assumption is correct, unless the GPS is actually built in (i.e. navigation data is supplemented by magnetic compass and readings from the ABS sensors) it won't be of much use..
I personally am in favour of the open market idea as it appeared in Indiana, and I am TOTALLY against the cartel forming that can take place. However, what you cannot get away from is licensing because you need to keep a grip on who does what. In London they started a scheme where they do at least some criminal checks, and barring the usual incompetence displayed by any London authority it has indeed resulted in a reduction of cab-based crime. However, that should not cost a fortune.
There is a 3rd way, but I lack the time to do it. You can set up a mechanism that creates the open market and - at the same time - manages carbon reduction and helps cab drivers to keep their paperwork in order (i.e. everyone wins). Maybe some other time (too busy with other things anyway)..
You're 100% right. This also goes for consultants, btw. It's is perfectly possible to advise a client to go into direction "A" and advise him to go into direction "B" half a year later - if you find a client who doesn't have a clue (like a government, for instance) you can more or less print money for as long as it happens. Afterwards you then use this as reference for new victims..
I wish you luck with that change. The lock that MS has on desktops shows up in unexpected and frankly irritating places such as Outlook, where mobile phone companies decided that that was the only code worth integrating with. Thank God for "Over The Air" updates..
My personal best experience was switching over a completely non-computer literate financial journalist to Linux when her laptop blew up. The only reason she switched back was lack of support options, which is important for business end users. At your volume you can take that inhouse - once matters are stable you can spend most of your time supporting end users.
My personal favourite money saver is OpenOffice. For 80% of what people do it's more than usable, and it stops people from totally losing productivity by switching to Office 2007 with it's "where the f*ck did this-and-that feature go" UI. I have yet to find anything that actually IMPROVES working with Office (OK, Word finally has a decent Outline mode, but I already worked my way around that).
Anyway, good luck :-)
A word or sentence relating this to the original article would have been enlightening, methinks.
I presume you were drunk when you wrote this :-).
Whatever fashion someone sees IBM, I doubt they would shaft a local provider on almost the day he's about to open. That's an approach one expects from we-are-happy-to-promise-anything-as-long-as-it-makes-us-money-and-we-are-not-held-to-it Microsoft, but not from IBM.
I rather like the event (although I feel sorry for the owner) - it just adds tremendous weight to the argument that it does not matter what line of business you're in, dealing with Microsoft is pure poison. No news..
Quickie on ghosting the drive: set him up with a copy of Acronis True Image Home. I'm not sure if you can shorten the process to "click on an icon" simple, but it is by far the best software out there (IMHO) for both restore-from-bare-metal and file recovery. Just one tip: make sure you also store an ISO or the recovery start disk on the external drive you use. Saves time later. It allows you to recover a machine really from the ground up without having to re-enter a gazillion license codes. As a matter of fact, the use of Open Source stuff such as OpenOffice will probably help there too :-)
The Acronis license policy is excellent as well: you can always grab a copy off the Net and use it for 30 days to recover - so when you have just landed in the sh*t you don't need to rescue that first - good thinking. Worth the money - I have all my machines licensed for it. I just hope their Linux support improves so I have one solution for dual boots..
As for longetivity: hardware is NOT your problem. IMHO your main worry is the incessant OS updates and patches put out by MS, but at least the infernal driver search has lessened. If your software runs on generic Windows XP you ought to be OK, but keep a separate copy of the OS around. If you use Acronis as described, do yourself a favour and image the machine bare, before you install the app. That way you can reconstruct the base machine very quickly as well. In that context I like the VMWare suggestion in one of the comments - that really isolates you from hardware issues with upgrades.
Good luck.
Yeah, cute. You're forgetting that MS has yet to contribute to the economy in the form of taxes, and even jobs are now exported so there's no contribution there either.
It's interesting to see the US hollering about so-called tax havens but gingerly stepping around the corporate abuse in their own country. And that's not a joke.
The key question (IMHO, of course) is what you define as "programming". If it is "formal" coding in the sense of a programming language, fine, I 100% agree.
However, although they *totally* botched the implementation, MS did actually have a point when they made language changes in VBA (donning flameproof gear). Hear me out on this.
For: it allowed people to write formulae in their own language - the language in which they learned math at school. As someone who has studied in multiple languages I can very much understand the need to read something in your mother tongue, so from that angle I would be inclined to offer a 3rd suggestion to "yes" or "no": make it possible to choose the language.
Against: IF you go for such a choice option, please avoid what MS did in VBA. Why MS decided that formulae weren't tokenized so the VBA "programs" (sorry for the insult to the concept) would work in ANY language and simply changed presentation is a mystery to me. As I work in multiple languages I occasionally get spreadsheets that are not in English, and some of them have some basic formulae - which will not work because my system runs in English. It's fantastically unbelievably stupid to do things this way, so from this angle I would be all for a 100% English environment. And for thumbscrews for whoever came up with that implementation.
I'm with Torvalds on commenting - I never even thought to comment in another language too when coding. That has IMHO a simple cause: most people who speak a language also then THINK in that language, so commenting in another language would mean switching back and forth. Not impossible, but usually not worth the effort.
PS: in case someone wants to comment that all is done more intelligently in OpenOffice: sorry, such a change won't happen just yet, especially now marketing has discovered the shading and 3D tinsel in Powerpoint. Sigh.
Prove it :-)
Given that the average desktop takes anywhere between 1 minute and 10 to actually become usable, just how much power is wasted just waiting? I mean, if you're going to check out costs that don't contribute to productivity (like me typing this message, but I digress) this strikes me as a major one.
Even those that power down at the down of the day have this waste built in.
It seems that a quick bootup would do more than just cater for my impatience :-).
I think you make a mistake here. It's NOT impossible to secure, for all you know Google could have done a good job, you don't know either way.
What you CAN say is that it is impossible to TRUST Google. You have no solid contracts, the company gets up to all sorts of shenanigans with your data (which, btw, you agreed to, read the T&Cs you accepted) and ownership and use of the information you store with them is very much in doubt.
I don't create a business dependency on companies I don't trust, even if I have a legal grip on them.
Sorry to pour cold water on this, but to get someone declared "vexatious" in the UK is VERY hard. You need a long history of questionable cases, and I think you probably need to serve the person the order.
If they are untruthful about living somewhere (it's as easy as not opening the door yourself and calling the court sheriffs that you don't live there to make that happen) it's even a question if you can make that declaration stick.
The excuse is that it would unfairly prejudice the litigant because he'd have to ask permission for each court case, but I can't see that as prejudice - there's still nothing stopping the person filing if they have a valid case.
[Sorry if this sounds sharp - I have been chasing a fraud through the UK courts and it has been an enlightening and extraterrestrial experience that had in no way, shape or form anything to do with law or justice]
The RIAA is but a front. The whole idea of the RIAA is to act as a firewall between the legal abuse and the actual operators. The good news is that that firewall has already been broken (AFAIK) so it's becoming increasingly likely that the record companies are dreaming up new abuse to ensure they don't have to accept that business has changed.
A shorter title would have been: Large Recording Companies vs The Defenseless: how chequebook justice is destroying US society..
I can't believe that anyone ever been exposed to what currently passes for "justice" in the RIAA cases will come away with the same respect for the law as before. And that is IMHO a much larger risk that is conveniently ignored.
So, just to get this straight, the RIAA pursued a questionable case that has already costed the defendant money to prepare for, and as soon as credible resistance emerges they quickly run and do it again to someone else - without sanctions?
Or did I miss something?
I mentioned I occasionally check in and have a look (usually I grab a newly launched distro like Kubuntu or OpenSuSE and see if I can get it to run on my not-so-special hardware) - that's install, config, experiment, sigh, remove.
The problem is that I have almost 2 decades worth of Microsoft experience where they have been doing the same thing - always promising the new version will be faster/safer/more functional/less buggy/usable (the boldest claim of all). And it's still crap..
At least with KDE you can expect real progress rather than marketing BS :-)
Interesting. Your story ties in with my experience with the iPhone. I have one as a business phone (there's a sensible reason for it) and I was shocked by what I call a lack of depth to the interface. Even with MS software you can grow from beginner-with-a-mouse to experienced-user-with-shortcuts (although in 2007 they've done their best to ensure those users too totally lose productivity - hence my OpenOffice default at work :-)).
There is *nothing* below that glossy surface. Niente, nada, nop, zilch, zip. Nothing at all. My normal phone is a Sony Ericsson P1i and that is quirky but more usable by miles. About the only app that redeems the iPhone in my eyes is TapForms. If that's what the Mac is like as well it will probably take me about an hour or less to cross the system edge to edge and get exceptionally pissed off with it.
An iPhone makes life easy for beginners. And you'll remain a beginner forever - no thanks.
Thanks for the tip.
Hmm, I don't think it's "hate" as such, more profound disappointment. I can't speak for others, but KDE 3.5 was moving along nicely, was functional and had *heaps* of apps to make it a complete desktop. With Compiz Fusion added it was even damn flash, but the main thing is that it did the job and enough apps were available to create some flexibility.
Along comes 4 and whammo - I even have trouble finding a decent WiFi manager. All those 3.5 apps I was used to don't have a 4 replacement, and I don't really want to be a whining git asking the developers of every single app to upgrade their code (which is AFAIK not that easy either) - besides, I don't have the time.
So 4.0 was for me going from a functional 3.5 desktop to a black hole. I won't bitch about it, I occasionally check in and see if the situation has improved. So far, the answer is "not really", so I'll use Gnome of a lighter desktop. It also means that I can no longer wean people off Windows because KDE 4 just doesn't cut it yet as a replacement.
In summary, to me, going to KDE 4 was as much an upgrade to 3.5 as Vista was an upgrade to XP..
What I'd like is simply what 3.5 was offering, stable compiz fusion graphics added (flashiness aside, a cube is actually quite a good working desktop model from a functionality point of view) and a complete array of apps form printing, WiFi (well, OK, that still sucks in seven ways to Sunday on Linux IMHO).
Having said that, I'll probably buy a Mac instead. Functionality without the risk or hassle..
I used to have a Sony Clie - IR remote control was standard (which was fun in waiting rooms with TVs).
I'd love my phone to have remote control capabilities, but so far, all the ones I've had were only using IR for IRDA, which I've used 10 years ago for the last time..
On the plus side, they are already Bluetooth equipped, which could help with the PS/3. I can appreciate the reason behind the choice, but it's occasionally irritating when you play a movie..
So, if it wasn't for Apple leaving our IR abilities altogether it would have become THE killer app for the iPhone.. Doh!
I think it's premature to expect all officials to tow the Obama line. Don't forget that the Bush government had 8 full years to "recalibrate" officialdom to its liking (which was amply demonstrated by Europe having to read MS the riot act instead of the US), I doubt you'll be able to see any change for at least another 2..3 years.
Having said that, nothing wrong with getting questions asked. What the RIAA has been doing is IMHO subversive and that needs to be stopped, DoJ in tow or not.