How could you _possibly_ be undertaxed? Are they paying you to live up there?:)
Seriously, though, if you think you're not paying your social due through taxes, I'm sure there are plenty of non-profit organizations who would be more than happy to take a donation. And there, you _know_ that your money is going to a good cause.
Figures, I have mod points all week, but by the time I see a truly deserving post, they're all expired...
Anyway, I've noticed the exact same thing. Any time journalists report on something I know about, I realize that the report is usually either a gross oversimplification or just plain incorrect. It's like the journalists don't even bother to learn what they're reporting on. Frankly, I'm beginning to wonder if all stories are like that. After all, if they can't figure out the basic facts in a technology story, why should they get the facts straight in a medical story? Or an advanced physics story? Or an economics story? Or a political story? Or a crime story? Or yesterday's high and low temperatures?
It almost takes a site like slashdot, with the user comments (which I consider to be/.'s greatest asset and probably the only reason why I continue to come here) to correct all the mistakes made by the journalists. It sure would be nice if something existed like that for my local paper (actually, I'd just like to mod (almost) all the letters to the editor as 'troll':)
... or if the person hopes to receive files in return...
Wait a minute... isn't that kind of what the whole open source movement is founded upon? Sure, there's nothing in the GPL says that if I make my program open source that you have to make yours open as well (assuming they aren't related), but there is hope that will happen (at least for some people). And there's also hope that by making my program open source, others will contribute patches to it to make it better.
So, can open source programmers be sent to a Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison just for sharing their programs with the world?
Or is it just for illegally sharing copyrighted works that this law applies? (that would make the most sense, but that's giving legislators an awful lot of credit:)
Re:Australia's plastic money is much better..
on
Cashless Society
·
· Score: 1
All of Australia's banknotes are made out of plastic. Which gives them the advantage of last a sodding long time...
I don't know about other countries, but the US Mint puts a lot of effort into making paper bills that last a damn long time. At one point they considered putting holograms on the bills to make them harder to counterfit, but rejected this idea because the holograms wouldn't pass the stress test, which includes things like simulating being run through a washing machine, and extreme heat and cold. They also make sure that the bills can be crumpled into small balls and still be usable.
Though I don't know anything about these plastic bills, I'd really be surprised if they could stand up to the stress that US currency is forced to.
Note, IANAL, but this is what I understand about defamation (libel/slandar) laws...
If you're ever unsure when you're about to say something negative about someone, preface it with "In my opinion,...". That way, there's no doubt it's your opinion, which isn't libel (only statements of fact can be libel). That's the safest way -- otherwise, you have to determine whether your statement was one of opinion or fact.
With public figures, such as the President, there's a stronger standard, as well. I believe that the person actually had to know that the statement is false. (I don't remember the exact details, but I know it's harder for public figures to win defamation suits).
I don't think making the defamation into a song would protect you. You could just charge royalties for anyone else singing it (but they might get sued by the victim as well).
Oh, and to be defamation, the statement must also be false. So, if someone actually is an asshole, and you could convince a jury of that fact, then it wouldn't be defamation either.
Basically, defamation suits are intended to discourage from people lying about others. So, if I say "Walmart is a terrible store. All their food is rotten, and they overcharge me all the time.", that would be slandar because it's not true, and tarnishes Walmart's reputation. But if I say "RoadRunner is a terrible ISP. They block incoming port 80 so I can't serve web content.", that would not be slandar, since it's true (they actually just started doing that -- I think they're trying to get people to use their business class service). Note that in both cases, "terrible" is a matter of opinion.
Basically, if all your statements are true, then you don't have to worry about slandaring anyone. Of course, consult a real lawyer if you plan to do otherwise:)
Food tax? Where do you live? Everywhere I've been, groceries (unprepared food) are exempt from standard sales tax. Some things that are considered either luxery or prepared foods (things like soda or microwave dinners, I think) are still taxes at the standard sales tax rate.
But you're right, there are a lot of taxes. And another poster mentioned the taxes you don't directly see because your employer pays them for you. So whatever is taken out of your paycheck in taxes, double that is your real income tax burden.
It's amazing that the government is not only able to spend that much money, but is actually able to spend _more_ than what it takes in. Of course, it does do a lot of good things with that money, but it's still amazing. Especially since I still clip coupons to save 25 cents on food (and by that, I mean I'm cheap -- I know there are people who need to just to get by)
And, of course, that same principle applies to any electronic voting as well. Voter intimiation is not a significant argument against electronic voting.
The local press will stop them. If any candidate tried that, they'd make all the newspapers (and other news sources) the next day. And that would almost certainly invalidate their win (assuming they did win). No way that would fly.
With the current system, there are people who drive around to take people to the polls. While they may drive through democrat or republican areas (which ever they want), they always say that they're trying to get everyone to vote. And they certainly don't refuse to take people because of how they might vote.
I don't know all the laws in this area (nor am I a lawyer), but it seems that forcing people to vote a certain way (either through intimidation or bribery) would be illegal. So anyone trying that runs the risk of getting caught. And if that doesn't scare them, then the corruption is so widespread it doesn't matter if there's Internet voting or not. So we ensure that Internet voting is not coerced in the same way we ensure things like jury decisions are not coerced -- we trust those citizens making the decisions, and those around them, and if all else fails, follow the money.
Frankly, I'd trust Internet voting with a simple web app over an SSL connection way more than those mysterious black box vote scanners they're using where I live. Of course, I guess they're at least as good as humans counting them...
ARGH! You could WEAR the necklace?!? Well, that's information I could have used about 17 years ago...:)
I think you're right that it was Castle Adventure, after finding it on this abandonware site. Unfortunately, I'd need a 4.77 MHz computer to play it again. Or maybe even slower -- IIRC, it was a little fast even at that speed.
Wow, I remember those. I used to play a game called "castle" (or something like that?) on one of those. Damn, I'm getting old (of course, I couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 at the time:P )
I wonder whatever happened to that game. I never did beat it. Kept dying in a basement flood or something. I think the magic wand had something to do with it, but never could figure it out...
Except that it's all in real format, which means you can't (easily) save it for listening to later (like if I don't happen to be up when Car Talk is on:) Also, while I think Real has a Linux client, I've never tried installing it, so I don't know how well/if it works.
Though, from the original poster, I found that WUNC is shoutcasting in mp3 format -- maybe I can whip up a crontab script to catch cartalk from them...
I've talked to people before who didn't realize that installing the same copy of Windows on multiple machines was actually wrong. They were quite surprised when I explained to them that it was illegal. I wouldn't be surprised if that is widespread among people not familiar with copyright law. Especially since most people don't read the EULAs.
i'd also venture to guess that there's MANY, MANY, MANY unused licensed copies of Win9x/2k/XP.
Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 that I have. One 98 license that came with my Windows box, one extra 2k license (I bought one, then got one for free!), and an XP license (that I also got for free).
I'd assert that most people don't care about the law. Almost everyone speeds. Almost everyone illegally copies software or other media. I won't be surprised if most people had incorrectly filled out their taxes before (thought that's probably more accidently that intentionally). But that's what thousands of (sometimes incomprehensible) traffic laws, copyright laws, tax laws, and for some people drug laws have done. They've created a society where people don't care about breaking the law -- they care about getting CAUGHT.
Now, it's not really that bad. Most people, most of the time, are still good intentioned and will try to follow the law. At least most of the laws. Like laws against shoplifting. Or laws against killing people. These are things that they know are wrong, irrespective of what their lawyer tells them.
But look what happens with something that's illegal but doesn't seem wrong -- speeding. Most people (from my anecdotal experience) drive about 0-10 MPH above the speed limit, whatever that is. And it's probably pretty close to a bell curve on that range as well, with most people driving an average of 5 MPH above the limit. Of course, this varies with many parameters, but on a 35 MPH road, most people are going about 40, and on a 40 MPH road, most people are going about 45. And almost no one actually drives below the speed limit.
Of course, this is all illegal. But people don't get stopped for doing +5, so most people do it. This is a situation where their conscience doesn't tell them that going a little faster is wrong -- it's simply a matter of law. And in that case, people will do whatever they can do without getting caught.
Now, back on topic, the same applies with DVDs on Linux. But it's even worse, since in this case, people would feel that it is RIGHT for them to play the DVD (they paid for it, after all), and if the law says otherwise then the law is just wrong. So people will not feel any pangs of guilt from downloading MPlayer to watch the DVD. In fact, (if they're not Windows users who always download 3rd party players) they'll probably be upset that it wasn't included in the Distro. And certainly, no studio is going to hunt down all those _criminals_ watching their DVDs on Linux, either.
My point is, not having a legal DVD player for Linux isn't that much of a stumbling block to Linux's success on the desktop.
No, they won't outlaw public libraries, per se, because most people still see public libraries as a good thing. Trying to shut them down would cause the public too see the *AA as most/.'ers see them now, and that's not something they want.
No, what they'll probably try and do is turn public libraries into book rental shops. Just like you pay to rent a movie from Blockbuster, you'll pay a small amount to rent a book from your local library. A (small) percentage of that fee will go to the copyright holder (with the rest going to some other organization, such as the one enforcing this fee). I'd imagine that most people will see this as OK, since most people don't like getting stuff for free (never mind that they're already paying for it through their taxes -- most people can't think that far ahead). Actually, people do like getting stuff for free, but only if they're still paying money for something (such as "buy 1 get 1 free" sales, or "look at all the free crap, er, software you get with this computer!").
It will be a sad day when that happens, but I won't be too surprised when it does.
but in the real world, companies cannot simply give away trade secrets, patent info, algorithms just to help the enemy
I'll give you trade secrets, since the whole point of those is to not give them away (or they wouldn't be secrets anymore). Algorithms would fall into either patents or trade secrets (depending on what the company wanted) so that's not relevent. But the WHOLE POINT of patents is to get the owner to tell the WORLD about the invention. In return, no one can use the invention without the owner's permission for a period of time (about 20 years currently). Now, I don't know all the details with nVidia, but it seems to me that patents are a pretty flimsy excuse for not open sourcing the code. The only thing I could see is that they're licensing a Microsoft patent and one condition is that they can't open source the implementation.
More likely, they probably licensed some implementation from some 3rd party who refueses to let them open source the code. Or nVidia just doesn't want to for other reasons.
But patent info is inherently given away -- it's just not usable by anyone else for 20 years.
* How about symlinks? And no, shortcuts don't count (though that's how cygwin fakes it). NT can barely do hard links (you need a third party tool to create them).
* Mounting partitions in any directory (I know win2k can do this, but you still have the c:, d:, etc. drives). And mounting many different filesystems.
*/proc/cpuinfo./proc/meminfo. Just about anything in/proc that tells you all sorts of stuff about your PC.
* cat/boot/vmlinuz >/dev/dsp. Oh, wait, don't do that:) I guess for kids, logging in remotely and playing random sound files to scare people in the room.
* A well set up security model (yes, NT _can_ be set up correctly, but it seems like often the whole drive is wrold writable)
* Easy remote administration (through ssh of course)
* Cron. Though NT kind of has this, it's not as easy to use (and the jobs don't run if you're not logged in!)
* Compiling programs.
* Shell scripts. Hell, having a decent shell. Perl, python, sed, awk, grep, less, and all the other productivity tools Linux users take for granted (sure, you can get them for win32, but most people don't).
* More than one workspace for your GUI. More than one viewport within each workspace.
* Text based logins in case you screw something up and the GUI won't work.
* Almost all the software is written with the user's interests in mind and not some corporation's bottom line (though sometimes those two interests are both accomplished). So you get things like popup blocking, for example.
I could go on and on. Most of the things I mentioned Windows can do, but it's not as polished, or isn't as easy to use. Things like Cygwin do clean up Windows a lot, and are great if you have to use Windows (can gcc cross compile to win32?), but having so many nice things native to the OS makes everything smoother.
Don't get me wrong, there are nice things about windows (the GUI is much snappier than X, even on much slower machines; it's gererally easier to get started on; it's familiar for most people; high end games run on it), but there are lots of deficiencies. And I for one prefer working on Linux/Unix to working on Windows, for a lot of the reasons above.
That's a very cynical view of advertising (though I have on occasion thought that's what modern advertisers have sometimes sunk to). Advertising should be about informing people of your product/service and convincing them that your product/service is valuable to them. That last part should be based on the merits of the product/service and not based on fraud.
Advertising isn't always bad. I know I'll usually go through many of the ads in the newspaper looking for good deals. That's the advertising I like -- when I'm actually looking for it (not while I'm doing something else like watching TV or browsing the web or reading email).
The core problem as you put it is humans. There's not much we can do to force everyone to play nice. There will always be greedy abusers of the system, criminals, spammers, scam artists, and the like. And there will always be people who either encourage them or do nothing to stop them. And the rest of us are just caught in the crossfire.
Quite frankly, I browse the web without any popups, etc. and very few actual ads. My email accounts get almost no spam (I don't even need to use tools like spamassin).
The only way to solve the core problem of spam is to convince people to play nice. And call me a cynic, but I just don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. So all that's left is "band-aid engineering" (or mass genocide, but I don't think that's a particularly good solution, even for spammers:)
Slashdot Mirror
How could you _possibly_ be undertaxed? Are they paying you to live up there? :)
Seriously, though, if you think you're not paying your social due through taxes, I'm sure there are plenty of non-profit organizations who would be more than happy to take a donation. And there, you _know_ that your money is going to a good cause.
Figures, I have mod points all week, but by the time I see a truly deserving post, they're all expired...
/.'s greatest asset and probably the only reason why I continue to come here) to correct all the mistakes made by the journalists. It sure would be nice if something existed like that for my local paper (actually, I'd just like to mod (almost) all the letters to the editor as 'troll' :)
Anyway, I've noticed the exact same thing. Any time journalists report on something I know about, I realize that the report is usually either a gross oversimplification or just plain incorrect. It's like the journalists don't even bother to learn what they're reporting on. Frankly, I'm beginning to wonder if all stories are like that. After all, if they can't figure out the basic facts in a technology story, why should they get the facts straight in a medical story? Or an advanced physics story? Or an economics story? Or a political story? Or a crime story? Or yesterday's high and low temperatures?
It almost takes a site like slashdot, with the user comments (which I consider to be
Hmmm, it seems like if you make a product whose name ends in "x" you're much more likely to have it end up becoming a generic
:)
What does that say for the Xbox? It both starts and ends with "x"
... or if the person hopes to receive files in return ...
:)
Wait a minute... isn't that kind of what the whole open source movement is founded upon? Sure, there's nothing in the GPL says that if I make my program open source that you have to make yours open as well (assuming they aren't related), but there is hope that will happen (at least for some people). And there's also hope that by making my program open source, others will contribute patches to it to make it better.
So, can open source programmers be sent to a Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison just for sharing their programs with the world?
Or is it just for illegally sharing copyrighted works that this law applies? (that would make the most sense, but that's giving legislators an awful lot of credit
All of Australia's banknotes are made out of plastic. Which gives them the advantage of last a sodding long time...
I don't know about other countries, but the US Mint puts a lot of effort into making paper bills that last a damn long time. At one point they considered putting holograms on the bills to make them harder to counterfit, but rejected this idea because the holograms wouldn't pass the stress test, which includes things like simulating being run through a washing machine, and extreme heat and cold. They also make sure that the bills can be crumpled into small balls and still be usable.
Though I don't know anything about these plastic bills, I'd really be surprised if they could stand up to the stress that US currency is forced to.
You can download said trailer here (it's 18 MB, so those with slower connections be warned).
Note, IANAL, but this is what I understand about defamation (libel/slandar) laws...
...". That way, there's no doubt it's your opinion, which isn't libel (only statements of fact can be libel). That's the safest way -- otherwise, you have to determine whether your statement was one of opinion or fact.
:)
If you're ever unsure when you're about to say something negative about someone, preface it with "In my opinion,
With public figures, such as the President, there's a stronger standard, as well. I believe that the person actually had to know that the statement is false. (I don't remember the exact details, but I know it's harder for public figures to win defamation suits).
I don't think making the defamation into a song would protect you. You could just charge royalties for anyone else singing it (but they might get sued by the victim as well).
Oh, and to be defamation, the statement must also be false. So, if someone actually is an asshole, and you could convince a jury of that fact, then it wouldn't be defamation either.
Basically, defamation suits are intended to discourage from people lying about others. So, if I say "Walmart is a terrible store. All their food is rotten, and they overcharge me all the time.", that would be slandar because it's not true, and tarnishes Walmart's reputation. But if I say "RoadRunner is a terrible ISP. They block incoming port 80 so I can't serve web content.", that would not be slandar, since it's true (they actually just started doing that -- I think they're trying to get people to use their business class service). Note that in both cases, "terrible" is a matter of opinion.
Basically, if all your statements are true, then you don't have to worry about slandaring anyone. Of course, consult a real lawyer if you plan to do otherwise
Food tax? Where do you live? Everywhere I've been, groceries (unprepared food) are exempt from standard sales tax. Some things that are considered either luxery or prepared foods (things like soda or microwave dinners, I think) are still taxes at the standard sales tax rate.
But you're right, there are a lot of taxes. And another poster mentioned the taxes you don't directly see because your employer pays them for you. So whatever is taken out of your paycheck in taxes, double that is your real income tax burden.
It's amazing that the government is not only able to spend that much money, but is actually able to spend _more_ than what it takes in. Of course, it does do a lot of good things with that money, but it's still amazing. Especially since I still clip coupons to save 25 cents on food (and by that, I mean I'm cheap -- I know there are people who need to just to get by)
Teacher in Space is all well and good, but where's the "Software Engineer in Space" program? That's the one I want to sign up for!
And, of course, that same principle applies to any electronic voting as well. Voter intimiation is not a significant argument against electronic voting.
The local press will stop them. If any candidate tried that, they'd make all the newspapers (and other news sources) the next day. And that would almost certainly invalidate their win (assuming they did win). No way that would fly.
With the current system, there are people who drive around to take people to the polls. While they may drive through democrat or republican areas (which ever they want), they always say that they're trying to get everyone to vote. And they certainly don't refuse to take people because of how they might vote.
I don't know all the laws in this area (nor am I a lawyer), but it seems that forcing people to vote a certain way (either through intimidation or bribery) would be illegal. So anyone trying that runs the risk of getting caught. And if that doesn't scare them, then the corruption is so widespread it doesn't matter if there's Internet voting or not. So we ensure that Internet voting is not coerced in the same way we ensure things like jury decisions are not coerced -- we trust those citizens making the decisions, and those around them, and if all else fails, follow the money.
Frankly, I'd trust Internet voting with a simple web app over an SSL connection way more than those mysterious black box vote scanners they're using where I live. Of course, I guess they're at least as good as humans counting them...
I don't know... I'd hate to be the one "voted off the spacecraft" halfway to Mars :)
In the 'fridgerator, of course :P
ARGH! You could WEAR the necklace?!? Well, that's information I could have used about 17 years ago... :)
I think you're right that it was Castle Adventure, after finding it on this abandonware site. Unfortunately, I'd need a 4.77 MHz computer to play it again. Or maybe even slower -- IIRC, it was a little fast even at that speed.
That was a fun game, though.
Wow, I remember those. I used to play a game called "castle" (or something like that?) on one of those. Damn, I'm getting old (of course, I couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 at the time :P )
I wonder whatever happened to that game. I never did beat it. Kept dying in a basement flood or something. I think the magic wand had something to do with it, but never could figure it out...
Except that it's all in real format, which means you can't (easily) save it for listening to later (like if I don't happen to be up when Car Talk is on :) Also, while I think Real has a Linux client, I've never tried installing it, so I don't know how well/if it works.
Though, from the original poster, I found that WUNC is shoutcasting in mp3 format -- maybe I can whip up a crontab script to catch cartalk from them...
I've talked to people before who didn't realize that installing the same copy of Windows on multiple machines was actually wrong. They were quite surprised when I explained to them that it was illegal. I wouldn't be surprised if that is widespread among people not familiar with copyright law. Especially since most people don't read the EULAs.
i'd also venture to guess that there's MANY, MANY, MANY unused licensed copies of Win9x/2k/XP.
Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 that I have. One 98 license that came with my Windows box, one extra 2k license (I bought one, then got one for free!), and an XP license (that I also got for free).
Like Al Gore?
:P
OK, I give up. What is "xshisenso" and what does it do that's so great? I couldn't find any reference to it on Google...
People don't WANT to break the law.
I'd assert that most people don't care about the law. Almost everyone speeds. Almost everyone illegally copies software or other media. I won't be surprised if most people had incorrectly filled out their taxes before (thought that's probably more accidently that intentionally). But that's what thousands of (sometimes incomprehensible) traffic laws, copyright laws, tax laws, and for some people drug laws have done. They've created a society where people don't care about breaking the law -- they care about getting CAUGHT.
Now, it's not really that bad. Most people, most of the time, are still good intentioned and will try to follow the law. At least most of the laws. Like laws against shoplifting. Or laws against killing people. These are things that they know are wrong, irrespective of what their lawyer tells them.
But look what happens with something that's illegal but doesn't seem wrong -- speeding. Most people (from my anecdotal experience) drive about 0-10 MPH above the speed limit, whatever that is. And it's probably pretty close to a bell curve on that range as well, with most people driving an average of 5 MPH above the limit. Of course, this varies with many parameters, but on a 35 MPH road, most people are going about 40, and on a 40 MPH road, most people are going about 45. And almost no one actually drives below the speed limit.
Of course, this is all illegal. But people don't get stopped for doing +5, so most people do it. This is a situation where their conscience doesn't tell them that going a little faster is wrong -- it's simply a matter of law. And in that case, people will do whatever they can do without getting caught.
Now, back on topic, the same applies with DVDs on Linux. But it's even worse, since in this case, people would feel that it is RIGHT for them to play the DVD (they paid for it, after all), and if the law says otherwise then the law is just wrong. So people will not feel any pangs of guilt from downloading MPlayer to watch the DVD. In fact, (if they're not Windows users who always download 3rd party players) they'll probably be upset that it wasn't included in the Distro. And certainly, no studio is going to hunt down all those _criminals_ watching their DVDs on Linux, either.
My point is, not having a legal DVD player for Linux isn't that much of a stumbling block to Linux's success on the desktop.
No, they won't outlaw public libraries, per se, because most people still see public libraries as a good thing. Trying to shut them down would cause the public too see the *AA as most /.'ers see them now, and that's not something they want.
No, what they'll probably try and do is turn public libraries into book rental shops. Just like you pay to rent a movie from Blockbuster, you'll pay a small amount to rent a book from your local library. A (small) percentage of that fee will go to the copyright holder (with the rest going to some other organization, such as the one enforcing this fee). I'd imagine that most people will see this as OK, since most people don't like getting stuff for free (never mind that they're already paying for it through their taxes -- most people can't think that far ahead). Actually, people do like getting stuff for free, but only if they're still paying money for something (such as "buy 1 get 1 free" sales, or "look at all the free crap, er, software you get with this computer!").
It will be a sad day when that happens, but I won't be too surprised when it does.
but in the real world, companies cannot simply give away trade secrets, patent info, algorithms just to help the enemy
I'll give you trade secrets, since the whole point of those is to not give them away (or they wouldn't be secrets anymore). Algorithms would fall into either patents or trade secrets (depending on what the company wanted) so that's not relevent. But the WHOLE POINT of patents is to get the owner to tell the WORLD about the invention. In return, no one can use the invention without the owner's permission for a period of time (about 20 years currently). Now, I don't know all the details with nVidia, but it seems to me that patents are a pretty flimsy excuse for not open sourcing the code. The only thing I could see is that they're licensing a Microsoft patent and one condition is that they can't open source the implementation.
More likely, they probably licensed some implementation from some 3rd party who refueses to let them open source the code. Or nVidia just doesn't want to for other reasons.
But patent info is inherently given away -- it's just not usable by anyone else for 20 years.
OK, I'll bite...
/proc/cpuinfo. /proc/meminfo. Just about anything in /proc that tells you all sorts of stuff about your PC.
/boot/vmlinuz > /dev/dsp. Oh, wait, don't do that :) I guess for kids, logging in remotely and playing random sound files to scare people in the room.
* How about symlinks? And no, shortcuts don't count (though that's how cygwin fakes it). NT can barely do hard links (you need a third party tool to create them).
* Mounting partitions in any directory (I know win2k can do this, but you still have the c:, d:, etc. drives). And mounting many different filesystems.
*
* cat
* A well set up security model (yes, NT _can_ be set up correctly, but it seems like often the whole drive is wrold writable)
* Easy remote administration (through ssh of course)
* Native X forwarding.
* This client terminal servers. And kind of along with that, though different is clustering technology.
* Cron. Though NT kind of has this, it's not as easy to use (and the jobs don't run if you're not logged in!)
* Compiling programs.
* Shell scripts. Hell, having a decent shell. Perl, python, sed, awk, grep, less, and all the other productivity tools Linux users take for granted (sure, you can get them for win32, but most people don't).
* More than one workspace for your GUI. More than one viewport within each workspace.
* Text based logins in case you screw something up and the GUI won't work.
* Almost all the software is written with the user's interests in mind and not some corporation's bottom line (though sometimes those two interests are both accomplished). So you get things like popup blocking, for example.
I could go on and on. Most of the things I mentioned Windows can do, but it's not as polished, or isn't as easy to use. Things like Cygwin do clean up Windows a lot, and are great if you have to use Windows (can gcc cross compile to win32?), but having so many nice things native to the OS makes everything smoother.
Don't get me wrong, there are nice things about windows (the GUI is much snappier than X, even on much slower machines; it's gererally easier to get started on; it's familiar for most people; high end games run on it), but there are lots of deficiencies. And I for one prefer working on Linux/Unix to working on Windows, for a lot of the reasons above.
That's a very cynical view of advertising (though I have on occasion thought that's what modern advertisers have sometimes sunk to). Advertising should be about informing people of your product/service and convincing them that your product/service is valuable to them. That last part should be based on the merits of the product/service and not based on fraud.
Advertising isn't always bad. I know I'll usually go through many of the ads in the newspaper looking for good deals. That's the advertising I like -- when I'm actually looking for it (not while I'm doing something else like watching TV or browsing the web or reading email).
The core problem as you put it is humans. There's not much we can do to force everyone to play nice. There will always be greedy abusers of the system, criminals, spammers, scam artists, and the like. And there will always be people who either encourage them or do nothing to stop them. And the rest of us are just caught in the crossfire.
:)
Quite frankly, I browse the web without any popups, etc. and very few actual ads. My email accounts get almost no spam (I don't even need to use tools like spamassin).
The only way to solve the core problem of spam is to convince people to play nice. And call me a cynic, but I just don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. So all that's left is "band-aid engineering" (or mass genocide, but I don't think that's a particularly good solution, even for spammers