The culprits:
1.- Virus writers.
2.- Stupid managers and Sys Admins that keep using stupid email client software.
3.- Stupid email software.
4.- The users?????
There is pine for Windows, even Netscape and many others.
To blame the users for opening a message in an email program is just plain ridiculous. I have gotten viruses that seem to come from legitimate people and you can not know they are viruses until you open them. Your email program should not be designed to execute anything at all, to execute something should be a concious task in which you conciously decide to execute or open something.
The solutions:
1.-Use a serious mail server.
2.- Don't use unsafe email clients.
3.- Educate your users.
If we are providing users with insecure technology please lets not blame them for what is other people mistakes.
If at least the map showed percentages of computers affected per location then it would have some meaning representing lack of preparation. It just reflects which countries have more computer users than others.
And about his honesty not hiding his money you don't know, I don't know, and anyway his wealth and how he decides to use it is beyond the point. what is under discussion is why MS is in problems today and if perhaps the obvious stuborness of Gates could lead MS into the abyss.
Who said he his evil? Megalomany, although not a desirable part of anybody's character is not evil, just undesirable.
You say "he gave the old aristocracy the finger": which old aristocracy? MS predatory bussiness practices are aimed to put out of bussiness or control companies owned mainly by people of Gates' generation, other geeks, as you would put it. The old aristocracy in more traditional industries either do not care or is unaffected (oil industry and banking rely in non MS software for most of theri bussiness) and the aristocrats of the World are more worried about not being harrased by paparazzis than about anything MS and Gates do or don't do.
You say Gates has ideas and passion. I said they are the wrong ideas or other people's ideas and that passion that clouds your common sense and judgment is of no use and is more a liability than an asset.
If the typical geek believes that the way to fame and fortune is by being arrogant, bullying your bussiness partners and clients and who knows what else then yes, Gates is one of them.
It's funny to see people lying about Windows just as much as Microsoft does about linux. Honestly, you are no better than Microsoft's team of liars
So you do accept that MS people are lying! So when they talk about how wonderful their OSes are they are lying(I think I can imply that from your own sentence), that means their OSes are not as good as they tell us. And that is why you see so many people "lying" about Windows: because their daily experience is one of frustration.
You can't have it both ways: if two people talking about the same thing have completely opposite opinions one of them is either lying, misinformed or deluding herself (that is lying without intention). In your first sentence you say both MS an Linux people are liars which obviously is a contradiction.
I have many computers. I have run one with Windows 95 for about 3 years with no major problems (and no regular blue screens except when messing with shady software), I had a P133 with 32MB of memory, and that was enough to run what I did, which included photo editing, Internet Explorer 4, Netscape 4.5, etc. Really, it wasn't that bad. I recently got another computer that is running Windows ME, which I have had no significant problems as well. I have gotten more blue screens than I did on Windows 95, but even then I'd say I've had a total of 4 in the past month. That also is from dealing with shady software (god damn you zsnes!)
Well, I have 5 computers at home, 2 of them run W98, one is dual booting between W98 and Linux and one (the router/firewall/mailserver,etc) runs only Linux.
The three machines running Windows crash at least once every 2 days (they have all the recommended service packs and two of them have nothing but MS software). One of them just becomes stupid and stops doing networking,have not done anything but what MS says and no joy (reboot solves the problem temporarily).
My Linux machines crash on average once every month and this during experiments for settings for new hardware or while testing new drivers.
At work my desktop Windows NT machine has to be rebooted once a week because it becomes absolutely useless. At the same time we have UNIX boxes that have been running for one year and a half and we expect them to go down in one year time when moving building. I don't mention NT servers because I have not regular contact with them, but they for sure go down once a month for software upgrades (our email has to be stopped because we rely on a NT machine for that, grrrrr!).
If you are going to compare MS stuff at least use Windows server stuff against Linux/Unix stuff, then some useful argumentation can be made.
To even attempt to compare W95-98-Me in terms of stability against Linux just shows a profund lack of knowledge and exposure to OS technology: Linux is so good and flexible that an attempt can be made to make it a Desktop OS, Windows 95-98-Me are not enterprise OSes, serious and wealthy companies don't even bother to consider them as alternatives in their desktops(some even ban them altogether, while allowing Linux experimentation), neither do MS that clearly markets them as home OS.
Linux brings enterprise class resilience to your desktop for free. The lower MS OSes are not in the same league.
I have many other computers that have had nearly no problems as well. Maybe you are having so many problems because you fucked up your windows installation. Just because you don't know what you are doing with Windows doesn't mean that it is completely unreliable.
Nearly no problems is not good enough for many people: the frustration that comes with every time you are in the middle of something time consuming and complex and your machine dies is enormous.
And to suggest that Linux people, which in general have a far better understanding of computer technoloy than the average Windows user, will not figure out how to solve problems in Windows as well, is disingenious to say the least.
More often than not I have seen people knowing Linux/UNIX solve problems with Wintel machines (even if they don't work with them in a regular basis) than the other way around.
I see NT admins constantly getting UNIX tools to get the job done, I don't see UNIX admins moaning about the lack of a GUI.
I see Wintel, Mac and Unix users not knowing about such a thing as a command line neither caring about it because they don't need it.
My take: UNIX does not have a GUI for everything because there is no demand for it, the CLI is so expresive for programming and administrative tasks that demand is limited to say the least.
I can make with a one liner in UNIX things that somebody using NT can only dream about (unless he/she is clever and installs a shell clone or perl).
My information was lost, and not once or twice but several times. I took me some time to put all the stuff together again!
I got replacement disks but they were of no use, one out of 5 or 6 will be defective. I bought new drive a couple of times, different computer. No joy.
Then I tried Iomega's "technical support". I was left hanging in the phone most of the time (at international phone rates....).
I hope they go burst.... Great idea, poor performance....
Design is the single most important factor of the product, and the lifecycle should reflect that the design should only be modified during the coding process.
And what about if the design was flawed?
Perhaps some considerations you made at the beginning were incomplete or plain wrong thus the design did not solve the problem. Sorry, you have to go back and modify the design. Example: M$ releases WordPLus (or whatever, long time since I lost track of what M$ was doing in this field) but they judge that nobody needs the old doc format so they don't include compatibily in their product. You are Billy Boy, have 90% of the World population of computer users angry: what do you do? Do you stick to your design or allow for a converter to/from the old format?
The incorrect answer is "you should have done it properly from the begining" because we are just people that do mistakes, a lifecycle model that does not allow for this mistakes that always happen to be corrected, is not worth the bytes in which it is PowerPointed.
-Janitors also get keys to the building and to all the offices. That is not a sign of respect.
-If you believe they can't get rid of you easily and that you are a valuable asset let me tell you something: you are wrong, but that was to be expected from somebody unexperienced in the work place. I have seen people saving or making *millions* to companies that have been dismissed due to other considerations unrelated to their performance.
Now, don't misunderstand, most probably you have a clued boss that values you for what you are worth, but a little bit of healty sceptisism comes always handy.
Yes, you are.
To dial in to the net or configure a laptop to connect to the net in a network that is not yours in an office that is not yours is not instantaneous (and depending on the company/country/planet you are visiting, sometimes is pretty painful). Perhaps you could work in another persons machine, but they will not necesarily the environment you require. And some companies are so paranoid about security that will not let you touch their computers or. heaven forbids, download something.
With mobile media you can overcome some of thos situations. I don't trust a company who knows where to keep my data also, so I prefer to have my data safely stored in a CD at home....er..... well, nothing is perfect I guess...
It surely is profiteering, but I think it is hardly squatting. They came with the name idea before anybody knew about MS wanderings in the game market with their gizmo.
Now, if MS did not do its homework (common guys, I gues typing something like grep -i xbox , or something like that, is not that difficult, is it?) to find out if the name was available, then tough luck.
In general, it's easy to blather droll like this post, until you realize that the pathetic world these people live in is the consequence of their choice in government, believe in mysticism, etc. As long as they keep wishing for happiness while supporting corrupt governments, they'll be poor
I looove some Americans! Honest! They look all sooo cute when they are ignorant.
The previously truly democraticaly elected president in Mexico was Francisco I. Madero in 1910, unfortunately for him (and for Mexico) the US did not like him, so they supported a traitor that killed the President and the Vicepresident. Mexico had to endure 80 years of mainly corrupt goverments as a consequence.
Other "friends" of the US:
-Anastasio Somoza.
-The Duvalier's in Haiti.
-Mobutu Sese Seko in today's DR of Congo.
-Sadamm Hussein in Irak.
-The former apartheid regime in South Africa.
So belive me, it is not always that countries elect or tolerate corrupt leaders, there are forces that have nothing to do with what the people deserve, in the case of Brazil they had military dictatorships for many years.
If I was an advertiser I would want both pieces of information. I would like to know exactly what Suzy buys every time, then I would have a better idea if my next "Barbie SM"(tm) would appeal to her.
The point is not that any way, the point is that this company has the power (because the US Congress had given them that power) to snoop in 12 million children while pretending to be the keepers against all the Internet evils.
I hink/. is not the place to do this "remembrance" stuff, but if/. considers it important enough so be it but lets put things in perspective: what happened to 6 or 7 unfortunate people 15 or whatever years ago pales in comparison to last week's quake in Gujarat, India, that killed an estimated 30000 people. And there are tragedies related to technology far more dreadful than the Challenger thing, Chernobyl is a token example.
As Salman Rushdie wrote about the media in his book The Satanic Verses, the media is the great equalizer, huge events look smaller, small events look huge and at the end all of them seem the same.
As sad as this event was, it is only remarkable because it got ingrained in the minds of many US children that were glued to their TV that day, and being the US media the most powerful in the World, we all get a reminder of the event, via/. as well, no matter other more important things are going on around the world.
Re:School Children saw it.
on
The Challenger
·
· Score: 1
"The media, not knowing that schoolchildren were watching, didn't pull any punches, and repeatedly stated that the astronaughts and crew were most likely dead."
Death is also part of life. You can't hide it for god's sake!
I remember that during the Tamagotchi craze the product for the US had to be modified because children there were disturbed knowing that their digipets were , well, how can I put it... dead.Instead they went to dreamland or something ludicrous like that.
Curious that it is the same land where boys in their teens can go and hunt classmates with assault guns. Perhaps they don't know what death is because adults will go to such pains to hide it from them?
That is hsortsightness: you and many here think that their talents are very special and will remain like that for ever. There was a time when differential calculus was mastered only by Newton, or when only Chopin or Lizst could play their own music. Now any high school or first year-college guy *has* to understand calculus, and in any music school you can find a dozen people that can play the piano as well as it could be expected in Chopin's time.
Lets say that the IT wrokers are better off *now* without unions, but that will not last forever because those skills we thing are so precious now will be common currency sooner than we expect.
God bless M$ that keeps moving the posts without reason. I loathe Linux that makes the skills I acuired 5 years ago be equaly relevant today;-)
MP3s sound like crap to *you* (did you know that sound perception changes with age, the older one gets, the worst it gets?), obviously the quality is good enough for other people to prefer the format and for the record industry to worry about it (remember they tried to shutdown Rio?).
Now, if what you claim is true: what are the record (and othe IP) companies waiting to change their business model?:
-Release for free full versions of a song digitized at low quality.
-Produce high quality CDs and DVDs of the same song. And let pirates copy them at free will.
-Laugh to the bank while people flock to buy the best product, avoiding the annoyance of copying a low quality product or the lack of service from pirates. Of course the price is the same one offered by the pirate, but a big corporation can offer support (your CD was broken, or does not play: they will exchange it), promotions, gifts, etc. to promote the product and at the same time can have a deal to present the artists all around the world singing that song live (so the lazy musicians get their asses out of the studio and make music the way it was meant to be), getting a cut of the money slice. In other words they can provide *services* around the IP that they initialy produced. They have all the infraestructure already in place!
They have stumbled accross the golden egg goose (like I would stumble with my cat in a room: by chance and not by my own doing), and as we know they do the only rational thing: they try to kill it.
What is next? Psycological exams to check who is thinking sick things to be able to lock them up, even if they havent commited any crime?
This latest attack on freedom of expression just seems to me like more of the you are guilty until proven innocent thing.
What about if tomorrow there is a majority of people that find religion moraly undesirable? Should we then ban religion? Did you learn anything from 70 years of Communism or were you playing too many computer games!
You are assuming that medical advice is completely and absolutely unbiased and objective, which it it is neither.
Just now in the newspaper I read that wine (in moderate amounts of course) does not help fight heart disease, contradicting many report in the contrary. I have heard as many reports claiming that mobile phones are harmful to your health as other claiming exactly the oposite and recently in the UK there has been a debate about the triple vaccine, some people claiming it can cause autism and other nasty stuff and some others claiming that that is just bollocks.
So now tell us: from these opossing, contradictory points of view, which side would you "attack" (meaning prosecut? ban? forbid?).
The only thing that protects us is as much information as we can posibly get about any topic. For example the favourable reports about safety of mobile phones usualy (but not always) come from studies supported by mobile phone companies. Mmmm... Or in the case of the vaccine, the study that lasted the longest and the involved more people says it is safe. Nevertheless there are valid points in the opossite camp (there are still a few children getting ill after vaccination, and we don't really now how safe mobile phones are because we don't have enoug evidence yet).
Our knowledge about anything could not grow without letting everybody (even the charlatans) put their point forward).
Slashdot Mirror
The culprits:
1.- Virus writers.
2.- Stupid managers and Sys Admins that keep using stupid email client software.
3.- Stupid email software.
4.- The users?????
There is pine for Windows, even Netscape and many others.
To blame the users for opening a message in an email program is just plain ridiculous. I have gotten viruses that seem to come from legitimate people and you can not know they are viruses until you open them. Your email program should not be designed to execute anything at all, to execute something should be a concious task in which you conciously decide to execute or open something.
The solutions:
1.-Use a serious mail server.
2.- Don't use unsafe email clients.
3.- Educate your users.
If we are providing users with insecure technology please lets not blame them for what is other people mistakes.
That is the point! Viruses do cost you money! They are so prevalent that they are part of the job! Part of your salary is the cost.
The question is: why is everybody still using Outlook!?!?!?!?
Why?
I worked in Y2K stuff, I saw hundreds of related problems solved and saw what happened when the problems were present.
If you think it was a myth is because you were not there slaving yourself solving the problem.
I could not agree more about the cruft part....
If at least the map showed percentages of computers affected per location then it would have some meaning representing lack of preparation. It just reflects which countries have more computer users than others.
Who is blaming Gates for leaving college? Nobody.
And about his honesty not hiding his money you don't know, I don't know, and anyway his wealth and how he decides to use it is beyond the point. what is under discussion is why MS is in problems today and if perhaps the obvious stuborness of Gates could lead MS into the abyss.
Who said he his evil? Megalomany, although not a desirable part of anybody's character is not evil, just undesirable.
You say "he gave the old aristocracy the finger": which old aristocracy? MS predatory bussiness practices are aimed to put out of bussiness or control companies owned mainly by people of Gates' generation, other geeks, as you would put it. The old aristocracy in more traditional industries either do not care or is unaffected (oil industry and banking rely in non MS software for most of theri bussiness) and the aristocrats of the World are more worried about not being harrased by paparazzis than about anything MS and Gates do or don't do.
You say Gates has ideas and passion. I said they are the wrong ideas or other people's ideas and that passion that clouds your common sense and judgment is of no use and is more a liability than an asset.
If the typical geek believes that the way to fame and fortune is by being arrogant, bullying your bussiness partners and clients and who knows what else then yes, Gates is one of them.
It's funny to see people lying about Windows just as much as Microsoft does about linux. Honestly, you are no better than Microsoft's team of liars
So you do accept that MS people are lying! So when they talk about how wonderful their OSes are they are lying(I think I can imply that from your own sentence), that means their OSes are not as good as they tell us. And that is why you see so many people "lying" about Windows: because their daily experience is one of frustration.
You can't have it both ways: if two people talking about the same thing have completely opposite opinions one of them is either lying, misinformed or deluding herself (that is lying without intention). In your first sentence you say both MS an Linux people are liars which obviously is a contradiction.
I have many computers. I have run one with Windows 95 for about 3 years with no major problems (and no regular blue screens except when messing with shady software), I had a P133 with 32MB of memory, and that was enough to run what I did, which included photo editing, Internet Explorer 4, Netscape 4.5, etc. Really, it wasn't that bad. I recently got another computer that is running Windows ME, which I have had no significant problems as well. I have gotten more blue screens than I did on Windows 95, but even then I'd say I've had a total of 4 in the past month. That also is from dealing with shady software (god damn you zsnes!)
Well, I have 5 computers at home, 2 of them run W98, one is dual booting between W98 and Linux and one (the router/firewall/mailserver,etc) runs only Linux.
The three machines running Windows crash at least once every 2 days (they have all the recommended service packs and two of them have nothing but MS software). One of them just becomes stupid and stops doing networking,have not done anything but what MS says and no joy (reboot solves the problem temporarily).
My Linux machines crash on average once every month and this during experiments for settings for new hardware or while testing new drivers.
At work my desktop Windows NT machine has to be rebooted once a week because it becomes absolutely useless. At the same time we have UNIX boxes that have been running for one year and a half and we expect them to go down in one year time when moving building. I don't mention NT servers because I have not regular contact with them, but they for sure go down once a month for software upgrades (our email has to be stopped because we rely on a NT machine for that, grrrrr!).
If you are going to compare MS stuff at least use Windows server stuff against Linux/Unix stuff, then some useful argumentation can be made.
To even attempt to compare W95-98-Me in terms of stability against Linux just shows a profund lack of knowledge and exposure to OS technology: Linux is so good and flexible that an attempt can be made to make it a Desktop OS, Windows 95-98-Me are not enterprise OSes, serious and wealthy companies don't even bother to consider them as alternatives in their desktops(some even ban them altogether, while allowing Linux experimentation), neither do MS that clearly markets them as home OS.
Linux brings enterprise class resilience to your desktop for free. The lower MS OSes are not in the same league.
I have many other computers that have had nearly no problems as well. Maybe you are having so many problems because you fucked up your windows installation. Just because you don't know what you are doing with Windows doesn't mean that it is completely unreliable.
Nearly no problems is not good enough for many people: the frustration that comes with every time you are in the middle of something time consuming and complex and your machine dies is enormous.
And to suggest that Linux people, which in general have a far better understanding of computer technoloy than the average Windows user, will not figure out how to solve problems in Windows as well, is disingenious to say the least.
More often than not I have seen people knowing Linux/UNIX solve problems with Wintel machines (even if they don't work with them in a regular basis) than the other way around.
I see NT admins constantly getting UNIX tools to get the job done, I don't see UNIX admins moaning about the lack of a GUI.
I see Wintel, Mac and Unix users not knowing about such a thing as a command line neither caring about it because they don't need it.
My take: UNIX does not have a GUI for everything because there is no demand for it, the CLI is so expresive for programming and administrative tasks that demand is limited to say the least.
I can make with a one liner in UNIX things that somebody using NT can only dream about (unless he/she is clever and installs a shell clone or perl).
My information was lost, and not once or twice but several times. I took me some time to put all the stuff together again!
I got replacement disks but they were of no use, one out of 5 or 6 will be defective. I bought new drive a couple of times, different computer. No joy.
Then I tried Iomega's "technical support". I was left hanging in the phone most of the time (at international phone rates....).
I hope they go burst.... Great idea, poor performance....
Design is the single most important factor of the product, and the lifecycle should reflect that the design should only be modified during the coding process.
And what about if the design was flawed?
Perhaps some considerations you made at the beginning were incomplete or plain wrong thus the design did not solve the problem. Sorry, you have to go back and modify the design. Example: M$ releases WordPLus (or whatever, long time since I lost track of what M$ was doing in this field) but they judge that nobody needs the old doc format so they don't include compatibily in their product. You are Billy Boy, have 90% of the World population of computer users angry: what do you do? Do you stick to your design or allow for a converter to/from the old format?
The incorrect answer is "you should have done it properly from the begining" because we are just people that do mistakes, a lifecycle model that does not allow for this mistakes that always happen to be corrected, is not worth the bytes in which it is PowerPointed.
-Janitors also get keys to the building and to all the offices. That is not a sign of respect.
-If you believe they can't get rid of you easily and that you are a valuable asset let me tell you something: you are wrong, but that was to be expected from somebody unexperienced in the work place. I have seen people saving or making *millions* to companies that have been dismissed due to other considerations unrelated to their performance.
Now, don't misunderstand, most probably you have a clued boss that values you for what you are worth, but a little bit of healty sceptisism comes always handy.
Yes, you are.
To dial in to the net or configure a laptop to connect to the net in a network that is not yours in an office that is not yours is not instantaneous (and depending on the company/country/planet you are visiting, sometimes is pretty painful). Perhaps you could work in another persons machine, but they will not necesarily the environment you require. And some companies are so paranoid about security that will not let you touch their computers or. heaven forbids, download something.
With mobile media you can overcome some of thos situations. I don't trust a company who knows where to keep my data also, so I prefer to have my data safely stored in a CD at home....er..... well, nothing is perfect I guess...
Obviously you have not heard about the infamous click of death.
I lost countless disks to this problems with several different drives until I threw the thing away....
It surely is profiteering, but I think it is hardly squatting. They came with the name idea before anybody knew about MS wanderings in the game market with their gizmo.
Now, if MS did not do its homework (common guys, I gues typing something like grep -i xbox , or something like that, is not that difficult, is it?) to find out if the name was available, then tough luck.
In general, it's easy to blather droll like this post, until you realize that the pathetic world these people live in is the consequence of their choice in government, believe in mysticism, etc. As long as they keep wishing for happiness while supporting corrupt governments, they'll be poor
I looove some Americans! Honest! They look all sooo cute when they are ignorant.
The previously truly democraticaly elected president in Mexico was Francisco I. Madero in 1910, unfortunately for him (and for Mexico) the US did not like him, so they supported a traitor that killed the President and the Vicepresident. Mexico had to endure 80 years of mainly corrupt goverments as a consequence.
Other "friends" of the US:
-Anastasio Somoza.
-The Duvalier's in Haiti.
-Mobutu Sese Seko in today's DR of Congo.
-Sadamm Hussein in Irak.
-The former apartheid regime in South Africa.
So belive me, it is not always that countries elect or tolerate corrupt leaders, there are forces that have nothing to do with what the people deserve, in the case of Brazil they had military dictatorships for many years.
If I was an advertiser I would want both pieces of information. I would like to know exactly what Suzy buys every time, then I would have a better idea if my next "Barbie SM"(tm) would appeal to her.
The point is not that any way, the point is that this company has the power (because the US Congress had given them that power) to snoop in 12 million children while pretending to be the keepers against all the Internet evils.
I find this unethical and immoral.
I hink /. is not the place to do this "remembrance" stuff, but if /. considers it important enough so be it but lets put things in perspective: what happened to 6 or 7 unfortunate people 15 or whatever years ago pales in comparison to last week's quake in Gujarat, India, that killed an estimated 30000 people. And there are tragedies related to technology far more dreadful than the Challenger thing, Chernobyl is a token example.
/. as well, no matter other more important things are going on around the world.
As Salman Rushdie wrote about the media in his book The Satanic Verses, the media is the great equalizer, huge events look smaller, small events look huge and at the end all of them seem the same.
As sad as this event was, it is only remarkable because it got ingrained in the minds of many US children that were glued to their TV that day, and being the US media the most powerful in the World, we all get a reminder of the event, via
"The media, not knowing that schoolchildren were watching, didn't pull any punches, and repeatedly stated that the astronaughts and crew were most likely dead."
Death is also part of life. You can't hide it for god's sake!
I remember that during the Tamagotchi craze the product for the US had to be modified because children there were disturbed knowing that their digipets were , well, how can I put it... dead.Instead they went to dreamland or something ludicrous like that.
Curious that it is the same land where boys in their teens can go and hunt classmates with assault guns. Perhaps they don't know what death is because adults will go to such pains to hide it from them?
... stuff that matters, I am Tux the penguin.
Is there a way to moderate down the original poster....????
What are your favorite books:
-About ksh?
-Computer science in general?
-Novel?
Irony is not that thing you use to burn your AOL CDs..... and your fingers sometimes.
I know, I know, OT and flame bait. So be it: shoot! But aim well. I pardon all of you.....
Good UNIX Sys Admin in the UK: 53000 pounds per year, maybe more.
That leaves you (after taxes, etc, etc) with 3000 in your pocket each month.
Don't get excited, each month I pay:
-1100 rent (house, 3 bedrooms).
-240 transportation.
So as others say, it depends: where are you going?
That is hsortsightness: you and many here think that their talents are very special and will remain like that for ever. There was a time when differential calculus was mastered only by Newton, or when only Chopin or Lizst could play their own music. Now any high school or first year-college guy *has* to understand calculus, and in any music school you can find a dozen people that can play the piano as well as it could be expected in Chopin's time.
;-)
Lets say that the IT wrokers are better off *now* without unions, but that will not last forever because those skills we thing are so precious now will be common currency sooner than we expect.
God bless M$ that keeps moving the posts without reason. I loathe Linux that makes the skills I acuired 5 years ago be equaly relevant today
MP3s sound like crap to *you* (did you know that sound perception changes with age, the older one gets, the worst it gets?), obviously the quality is good enough for other people to prefer the format and for the record industry to worry about it (remember they tried to shutdown Rio?).
Now, if what you claim is true: what are the record (and othe IP) companies waiting to change their business model?:
-Release for free full versions of a song digitized at low quality.
-Produce high quality CDs and DVDs of the same song. And let pirates copy them at free will.
-Laugh to the bank while people flock to buy the best product, avoiding the annoyance of copying a low quality product or the lack of service from pirates. Of course the price is the same one offered by the pirate, but a big corporation can offer support (your CD was broken, or does not play: they will exchange it), promotions, gifts, etc. to promote the product and at the same time can have a deal to present the artists all around the world singing that song live (so the lazy musicians get their asses out of the studio and make music the way it was meant to be), getting a cut of the money slice. In other words they can provide *services* around the IP that they initialy produced. They have all the infraestructure already in place!
They have stumbled accross the golden egg goose (like I would stumble with my cat in a room: by chance and not by my own doing), and as we know they do the only rational thing: they try to kill it.
And how do you know what "turns people on"?
And who is to decide?
What is next? Psycological exams to check who is thinking sick things to be able to lock them up, even if they havent commited any crime?
This latest attack on freedom of expression just seems to me like more of the you are guilty until proven innocent thing.
What about if tomorrow there is a majority of people that find religion moraly undesirable? Should we then ban religion? Did you learn anything from 70 years of Communism or were you playing too many computer games!
You are assuming that medical advice is completely and absolutely unbiased and objective, which it it is neither.
Just now in the newspaper I read that wine (in moderate amounts of course) does not help fight heart disease, contradicting many report in the contrary. I have heard as many reports claiming that mobile phones are harmful to your health as other claiming exactly the oposite and recently in the UK there has been a debate about the triple vaccine, some people claiming it can cause autism and other nasty stuff and some others claiming that that is just bollocks.
So now tell us: from these opossing, contradictory points of view, which side would you "attack" (meaning prosecut? ban? forbid?).
The only thing that protects us is as much information as we can posibly get about any topic. For example the favourable reports about safety of mobile phones usualy (but not always) come from studies supported by mobile phone companies. Mmmm... Or in the case of the vaccine, the study that lasted the longest and the involved more people says it is safe. Nevertheless there are valid points in the opossite camp (there are still a few children getting ill after vaccination, and we don't really now how safe mobile phones are because we don't have enoug evidence yet).
Our knowledge about anything could not grow without letting everybody (even the charlatans) put their point forward).