I don't know about you, but it seems more like I live in the Land of the Fucking Owned. A land owned by fucking assholes, totalitarian politicians, selfish and infinitely greedy (and incredibly crooked) multi-national corporations, and foreign laws like the recent cell phone unlocking, which was conveniently signed away from American citizens, giving foreign countries the 'right' to dictate what we can and cannot do.
Why doesn't the U.S. just fully sell themselves out? It seems like they desperately want to. Most goods are already produced and/or manufactured in China. Most support calls to American companies already connect you to people from India or some other cheap country, who not only can't even speak or understand English worth shit, they don't seem to know a fucking thing about the question at hand.
The U.S. is excellent at outsourcing, incarceration, taking money, and generally just fucking over its citizens. Too bad those are not really the kinds of things you would want your home country to excel at.
If you try to shove ads in my face, you're an asshole--and damn right I am going to use some form of ad blocking to eliminate that unwanted, distracting bullshit. When I want something, I am more than capable of doing the research to find the product that really is likely to be the right one for me.
Advertising tries to make you 'think' a company's product is better with no real facts or comparison at all, and when these things do exist, you know it is paid bullshit and propaganda with no sturdy, believable basis. Sorry, I just don't work that way. Advertisers, fuck off.
Optimistic? I think the word you meant was 'bullshit'. There is a difference between something that may be possible under 100% perfect conditions (yet nearly 100% unlikely in real-world conditions)... and something that has been completely rigged in such ways that even in perfect theoretical conditions it is impossible for the car, unmodified and straight from the factory, to ever come close to such manipulated stats.
This is worse than controlled, theoretical lab tests... this is downright crooked. There is absolutely nothing 'optimistic' about it. This is fraud.
I personally don't see why Valve doesn't just aim for Debian support. If that works, Ubuntu, Mint and many more should be minimal effort.
Just a guess: Maybe they really think Ubuntu is better, they think with Ubuntu's popularity they'll have a better chance of succeeding (supporting everything would be a bad business decision and not feasible, plus they gotta start somewhere), or Canonical has a deal ($$$) with them. Never know... Ubuntu would be fine on a Steam/gaming-only machine, but I agree that it sucks these days for regular use.
Too bad the phrase doesn't hold up to time, because Debian has been getting incredibly easy to install, with pretty much everything except "non-free" drivers working at first boot... but yeah, it is a good phrase that historically has some truth to it.
Except... how old is Ethernet? Did it just get popular last year or something? It has been on every single machine I've seen since broadband Internet connections took over dial-up. How long was that again? It is basic, expected functionality... not working by default. Hey, isn't that what people bitch about with Linux? The complete lack of drivers for something that important or even critical by default, and even a lack of installable XP drivers on Dell's own site (I checked--I was considering dual-booting), is pretty fucking pathetic. That [basic networking support with Ethernet] is one thing that no Linux distribution (or even Windows up to that point) has ever failed me on. And that's pretty damn bad.
And by the way... SATA and Ethernet are interfaces, while hardware and the drivers that run them are not exactly comparable as you seem to be trying to do...
Wow. You're going on and on about how Linux hardware support sucks and Windows' is the best ever. The computer I'm on now, a basic Dell from around 2006, came with Vista. I installed my copy of XP a while back just to update the BIOS. Guess what? The fucking Ethernet card doesn't even work! What good is a god damn creaky 14-year-old piece of shit operating system that everyone has moved on from, even the hardware manufacturers?
It's pretty bad... I've experienced some trouble in the past getting wireless cards to work, but at least generally the Ethernet card worked to actually fetch whatever firmware or other files were needed. Windows? Lucky I had an easy way of just getting the file downloaded on another machine and transferred to the target with a USB flash drive, because the last thing I want to fuck with is trying to get something as basic as an Ethernet network card to work. And there you are, bragging that this ancient rotting collection of bits works every bit as well as it did closer to its prime. Bullshit.
And I repeat, this is a Vista-era machine... IT IS FROM FUCKING 2006. The computer itself is old. I would hate to see how XP would react on a brand-new machine. Then again, maybe it would be something dangerously fascinating like a fireworks show. Don't even get me started on how "well" Windows XP worked on pre-XP (Windows ME) hardware.
Really, I'm too tired and don't even feel like reading your full response or answering any more of your points. Assuming you can call it that, it seems like nothing more than random bitching about everything today. Troll on.
And, dare I say it, movies. Even with a "full-screen" CRT TV I always bought the "original" wide-screen versions of DVDs. I have watched movies on many TVs, and nothing, NOTHING beats the contrast of a CRT. On a CRT, black really is black. I wish they still made TVs like they used to. LCD/LED, plasma, DLP--you name it, they all pretty much suck in comparison to a halfway decent CRT.
If video games weren't designed to run in HD/wide-screen these days and you could actually read the text on the screen, chances are I would prefer CRTs for those too. True, there are wide-screen CRT HDTVs, but I don't have one. But with older non-HD gaming systems (GameCube/Xbox/PS2 and before)... CRT is a must. Call me crazy, but I actually *like* the scan line effect... I tend to enable it whenever possible when using classic game console emulators. The high-res "HD" textures on a modern TV also tend to give things an unnatural plastic-y look... what can I say, I guess my preferences lean toward the old style...
But everywhere you used the word "trash", the reader should infer the word "recycle". Many communities have recycling centers that will accept electronics for free.
And there lies the problem. They "take" the stuff to "recycle" and cash in on it themselves. What would I get if I were the one who did the favor to send it to recycling? Not a fucking thing. So, aside from aluminum and other metals, which the local recycling center actually pays for, everything goes to the curb in bags. Straight to the dump. As soon as they give me incentive to recycle glass beer bottles, I will. As soon as they give something in return for the profit they will undoubtedly make off computer hardware, I'll think about it. As soon as they give me a reason to recycle stupid plastic bottles... well, nothing will change, because plastic will never be worth shit. As for paper... well it'll continue going in the garbage; they easily have enough tree farms out there to keep paper products in supply. And if they run out... well maybe they'll legalize hemp and stop relying on such slow-growing plants.
What is your point, and what exactly are you talking about? Bing *or* Windows Phone? And this is not "Linux 2%," it is "Steam for Linux 2%." Big difference.
Spotty? I think the word you were looking for is shitty. I have yet to see a response that was actually worth a shit. I have signed several petitions too, including this one. Every single one of them had to have been a god damn joke. The many petitions from the time the site went up calling for an end to the drug war and the legalization of marijuana and hemp all get pretty much the same government anti-drug propaganda bullshit that they've been spewing for decades while claiming to be based on "scientific facts," and each petition even received the same exact response. I don't really expect it to get any better, but what the hell--if on occasion I hear about a petition of something that interests me, it's a quick log-in and "Sign Petition" click away. Password to that crappy site is stored anyway. Eventually I'll probably give up--maybe once I get a new computer and don't bother to remember/store my password.
LOL... the cause of and answer to all of life's and the government's problems...
They already likely took money from these carriers and the lobbying groups to fuck up the legal state of phone unlocking... what's a bit more gonna hurt?
Nah; I wish HURD would just hurry the hell up (I know, wishful thinking) and I wonder why the hell eComStation costs so damn much. It's no big deal though, nothing to be worried about... there are alternatives that exist right now, are useful and modern, and don't cost an arm and a leg. But it would be nice to be able to play around with something new for a change.
I was also just thinking this might be a DNS hijacking based on the summary. If so, sounds like I'll remain unaffected from their attempts to waste my time doing what I want with my web browser, because I haven't been using the ISP-provided DNS resolver for quite a while now. And I don't even know what my ISP-provided e-mail address and password even is, let alone the site to go to, to get to their webmail interface. If it were a standard webmail service, the account would have been deleted years ago due to inactivity.
And what if the customer's only available choices are, say, Time Warner (Cable) and AT&T (DSL)? Would that make it effectively "ten strikes and you're completely fucked" or something similar? Maybe some of the other companies providing service on behalf of the main two can bail your ass out for a little while (Road Runner and EarthLink both provide services through Time Warner around here), but assuming that were possible (i.e. that RR or EL gives the strikes not TW), you'll be out of choices fast. Aren't monopolies great? Strike 10 would effectively be giving up the Internet.
...but how long until Microsoft swoops down, releases a Windows version for the platform, and requires Secure Boot to be enabled with no way to turn it off--effectively locking Debian and Linux in general back out?
Stay away from Windows, obviously... problem minimized. Also distrust any other "mainstream" OS and avoid typing up anything important with them. I don't know why the fuck anyone would be using a phone or tablet computer to type up anything important, but Android would probably be included as mainstream... with the added bonus of being easily stolen, since people take the machines that run it everywhere they go.
The virus would likely have to be written to download the torrents to \Device\Null on Microsoft operating systems for it to have much of an impact on the ISPs./dev/null would probably affect either Android or Apple, depending on which one it was written for, and would attack cell phone carriers more than the traditional providers of cable/DSL home Internet services...
I'm pretty sure in that case, you at least own the physical equipment used to perform, record and produce that music... and that stuff doesn't exactly come free. So in a way... actually, you did kind of pay for it. Just not directly.
After many years of Firefox being a major pain in the ass due to Mozilla adding one new obnoxious "feature" after another, requiring more crap to be disabled and/or changed upon new installation of every new Firefox release... they're *finally* taking a step forward by actually changing a setting to be more useful, requiring one less change for once? Wow... this is quite shocking. Very good move for once, Mozilla. Of course, Firefox is still hopeless with its default settings for my own usage, so this won't be a major change overall, but it's still a welcome change. Only question: Why the fuck wasn't this the default years ago!?!
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Refined or rewritten bullshit is still bullshit.
I don't know about you, but it seems more like I live in the Land of the Fucking Owned. A land owned by fucking assholes, totalitarian politicians, selfish and infinitely greedy (and incredibly crooked) multi-national corporations, and foreign laws like the recent cell phone unlocking, which was conveniently signed away from American citizens, giving foreign countries the 'right' to dictate what we can and cannot do.
Why doesn't the U.S. just fully sell themselves out? It seems like they desperately want to. Most goods are already produced and/or manufactured in China. Most support calls to American companies already connect you to people from India or some other cheap country, who not only can't even speak or understand English worth shit, they don't seem to know a fucking thing about the question at hand.
The U.S. is excellent at outsourcing, incarceration, taking money, and generally just fucking over its citizens. Too bad those are not really the kinds of things you would want your home country to excel at.
If you try to shove ads in my face, you're an asshole--and damn right I am going to use some form of ad blocking to eliminate that unwanted, distracting bullshit. When I want something, I am more than capable of doing the research to find the product that really is likely to be the right one for me.
Advertising tries to make you 'think' a company's product is better with no real facts or comparison at all, and when these things do exist, you know it is paid bullshit and propaganda with no sturdy, believable basis. Sorry, I just don't work that way. Advertisers, fuck off.
Optimistic? I think the word you meant was 'bullshit'. There is a difference between something that may be possible under 100% perfect conditions (yet nearly 100% unlikely in real-world conditions)... and something that has been completely rigged in such ways that even in perfect theoretical conditions it is impossible for the car, unmodified and straight from the factory, to ever come close to such manipulated stats.
This is worse than controlled, theoretical lab tests... this is downright crooked. There is absolutely nothing 'optimistic' about it. This is fraud.
I personally don't see why Valve doesn't just aim for Debian support. If that works, Ubuntu, Mint and many more should be minimal effort.
Just a guess: Maybe they really think Ubuntu is better, they think with Ubuntu's popularity they'll have a better chance of succeeding (supporting everything would be a bad business decision and not feasible, plus they gotta start somewhere), or Canonical has a deal ($$$) with them. Never know... Ubuntu would be fine on a Steam/gaming-only machine, but I agree that it sucks these days for regular use.
Too bad the phrase doesn't hold up to time, because Debian has been getting incredibly easy to install, with pretty much everything except "non-free" drivers working at first boot... but yeah, it is a good phrase that historically has some truth to it.
...maybe it would have saved him a lot of embarrassment.
Then again, he would have probably threw his monitor or keyboard instead...
Except Africa. That wretched continent breeds nothing but human incompetence and disease...
Except... how old is Ethernet? Did it just get popular last year or something? It has been on every single machine I've seen since broadband Internet connections took over dial-up. How long was that again? It is basic, expected functionality... not working by default. Hey, isn't that what people bitch about with Linux? The complete lack of drivers for something that important or even critical by default, and even a lack of installable XP drivers on Dell's own site (I checked--I was considering dual-booting), is pretty fucking pathetic. That [basic networking support with Ethernet] is one thing that no Linux distribution (or even Windows up to that point) has ever failed me on. And that's pretty damn bad.
And by the way... SATA and Ethernet are interfaces, while hardware and the drivers that run them are not exactly comparable as you seem to be trying to do...
Wow. You're going on and on about how Linux hardware support sucks and Windows' is the best ever. The computer I'm on now, a basic Dell from around 2006, came with Vista. I installed my copy of XP a while back just to update the BIOS. Guess what? The fucking Ethernet card doesn't even work! What good is a god damn creaky 14-year-old piece of shit operating system that everyone has moved on from, even the hardware manufacturers?
It's pretty bad... I've experienced some trouble in the past getting wireless cards to work, but at least generally the Ethernet card worked to actually fetch whatever firmware or other files were needed. Windows? Lucky I had an easy way of just getting the file downloaded on another machine and transferred to the target with a USB flash drive, because the last thing I want to fuck with is trying to get something as basic as an Ethernet network card to work. And there you are, bragging that this ancient rotting collection of bits works every bit as well as it did closer to its prime. Bullshit.
And I repeat, this is a Vista-era machine... IT IS FROM FUCKING 2006. The computer itself is old. I would hate to see how XP would react on a brand-new machine. Then again, maybe it would be something dangerously fascinating like a fireworks show. Don't even get me started on how "well" Windows XP worked on pre-XP (Windows ME) hardware.
Really, I'm too tired and don't even feel like reading your full response or answering any more of your points. Assuming you can call it that, it seems like nothing more than random bitching about everything today. Troll on.
And, dare I say it, movies. Even with a "full-screen" CRT TV I always bought the "original" wide-screen versions of DVDs. I have watched movies on many TVs, and nothing, NOTHING beats the contrast of a CRT. On a CRT, black really is black. I wish they still made TVs like they used to. LCD/LED, plasma, DLP--you name it, they all pretty much suck in comparison to a halfway decent CRT.
If video games weren't designed to run in HD/wide-screen these days and you could actually read the text on the screen, chances are I would prefer CRTs for those too. True, there are wide-screen CRT HDTVs, but I don't have one. But with older non-HD gaming systems (GameCube/Xbox/PS2 and before)... CRT is a must. Call me crazy, but I actually *like* the scan line effect... I tend to enable it whenever possible when using classic game console emulators. The high-res "HD" textures on a modern TV also tend to give things an unnatural plastic-y look... what can I say, I guess my preferences lean toward the old style...
Agreed completely.
But everywhere you used the word "trash", the reader should infer the word "recycle". Many communities have recycling centers that will accept electronics for free.
And there lies the problem. They "take" the stuff to "recycle" and cash in on it themselves. What would I get if I were the one who did the favor to send it to recycling? Not a fucking thing. So, aside from aluminum and other metals, which the local recycling center actually pays for, everything goes to the curb in bags. Straight to the dump. As soon as they give me incentive to recycle glass beer bottles, I will. As soon as they give something in return for the profit they will undoubtedly make off computer hardware, I'll think about it. As soon as they give me a reason to recycle stupid plastic bottles... well, nothing will change, because plastic will never be worth shit. As for paper... well it'll continue going in the garbage; they easily have enough tree farms out there to keep paper products in supply. And if they run out... well maybe they'll legalize hemp and stop relying on such slow-growing plants.
What is your point, and what exactly are you talking about? Bing *or* Windows Phone?
And this is not "Linux 2%," it is "Steam for Linux 2%." Big difference.
Ever hear of growth? You have to start somewhere. I'd say it's not bad. Just give it time, you're passing judgment too soon.
I'd say it feels more like a week. After a decade, people probably won't even know (or remember) what the thing is.
Spotty? I think the word you were looking for is shitty. I have yet to see a response that was actually worth a shit. I have signed several petitions too, including this one. Every single one of them had to have been a god damn joke. The many petitions from the time the site went up calling for an end to the drug war and the legalization of marijuana and hemp all get pretty much the same government anti-drug propaganda bullshit that they've been spewing for decades while claiming to be based on "scientific facts," and each petition even received the same exact response. I don't really expect it to get any better, but what the hell--if on occasion I hear about a petition of something that interests me, it's a quick log-in and "Sign Petition" click away. Password to that crappy site is stored anyway. Eventually I'll probably give up--maybe once I get a new computer and don't bother to remember/store my password.
LOL... the cause of and answer to all of life's and the government's problems...
They already likely took money from these carriers and the lobbying groups to fuck up the legal state of phone unlocking... what's a bit more gonna hurt?
Nah; I wish HURD would just hurry the hell up (I know, wishful thinking) and I wonder why the hell eComStation costs so damn much. It's no big deal though, nothing to be worried about... there are alternatives that exist right now, are useful and modern, and don't cost an arm and a leg. But it would be nice to be able to play around with something new for a change.
I was also just thinking this might be a DNS hijacking based on the summary. If so, sounds like I'll remain unaffected from their attempts to waste my time doing what I want with my web browser, because I haven't been using the ISP-provided DNS resolver for quite a while now. And I don't even know what my ISP-provided e-mail address and password even is, let alone the site to go to, to get to their webmail interface. If it were a standard webmail service, the account would have been deleted years ago due to inactivity.
And what if the customer's only available choices are, say, Time Warner (Cable) and AT&T (DSL)? Would that make it effectively "ten strikes and you're completely fucked" or something similar? Maybe some of the other companies providing service on behalf of the main two can bail your ass out for a little while (Road Runner and EarthLink both provide services through Time Warner around here), but assuming that were possible (i.e. that RR or EL gives the strikes not TW), you'll be out of choices fast. Aren't monopolies great? Strike 10 would effectively be giving up the Internet.
...but how long until Microsoft swoops down, releases a Windows version for the platform, and requires Secure Boot to be enabled with no way to turn it off--effectively locking Debian and Linux in general back out?
Stay away from Windows, obviously... problem minimized. Also distrust any other "mainstream" OS and avoid typing up anything important with them. I don't know why the fuck anyone would be using a phone or tablet computer to type up anything important, but Android would probably be included as mainstream... with the added bonus of being easily stolen, since people take the machines that run it everywhere they go.
The virus would likely have to be written to download the torrents to \Device\Null on Microsoft operating systems for it to have much of an impact on the ISPs. /dev/null would probably affect either Android or Apple, depending on which one it was written for, and would attack cell phone carriers more than the traditional providers of cable/DSL home Internet services...
I'm pretty sure in that case, you at least own the physical equipment used to perform, record and produce that music... and that stuff doesn't exactly come free. So in a way... actually, you did kind of pay for it. Just not directly.
After many years of Firefox being a major pain in the ass due to Mozilla adding one new obnoxious "feature" after another, requiring more crap to be disabled and/or changed upon new installation of every new Firefox release... they're *finally* taking a step forward by actually changing a setting to be more useful, requiring one less change for once? Wow... this is quite shocking. Very good move for once, Mozilla. Of course, Firefox is still hopeless with its default settings for my own usage, so this won't be a major change overall, but it's still a welcome change. Only question: Why the fuck wasn't this the default years ago!?!