What was the tech's opinion on the problem? ... a virus.
Just ran into the virus excuse yesterday. A friend is getting e-mails addressed to a person with with one letter different in the name. My friend called his ISP and was told he had a virus. Norton showed nothing, so he called me.
I looked at a couple of the e-mail headers, and, as best I could tell, my friend was getting someone elses e-mail. I have no idea how it could accidentally happen. But, if it's a virus, it sure is clever, abeit, apparently useless.
My friends name starts with the letter C, hence, has the address clastname@isp.com. And was getting mail addressed to klastname@isp.com. Text in the e-mail sounded like typical conversation with previous quoted messages in place, including the persons name, which begins with the letter K.
So, is it a brilliant e-mail harvesting trick? Or does the ISP have a problem? Regardless, quickly dismissing it as a virus just isn't the right answer.
Why are there two standards that seemingly do the same thing? Firewire and USB are both industry standards, yet they seemingly are designed to connect peripherals to PCs.
If I had my druthers, the world would be FireWire. Last time I did serious computer purchasing, FireWire was way better than the original USB. I went with FireWire although it was much more expensive. So, really, they weren't the same. (USB2 is better than the original USB, but now I am so biased I would probably still opt for FireWire if I was shopping for a new pooter.) It's more like comparing IDE and SCSI. They do the same thing, but SCSI is hard to beat in various situations despite the cost savings of IDE.
If I were running Microsoft, I'd give up on copy-protection altogether. It's a waste of resources, because it simply does not work and never will.
It never will stop everybody, but that is not the point. The objective is to get the maximum number of paying users. No copy protection would result in more illegal copies. Too much copy protection would result in upsetting too many legit users without hindering enough pirates.
I suspect the issue of allowing everyone access to SP2 was discussed for all of five minutes in a meeting. Someone probably said, "This is what we learned from blocking SP1" with a little PowerPoint slide showing some advantages and many disadvantages. A couple of points were probably briefly addressed, and it was decided to allow every access. And that was that. Onto the next topic.
Everyone knows that there will always be a niche of people who just won't use legal copies. The only concern for MS is keeping that number to a minimum while not loosing paying customers.
I wonder if I could walk around on the street and get random girls to flash their boobs
Interesting comparison, but, this is what those in college call "real life". I have no idea why anyone would want to have these photos taken, but people are strange. HOWEVER, we have to keep in mind that American soldiers are supposed to KILL the enemy. Now they have these prisoners, these prisoners who are supposed to kill the guards. EFFING DUH? Hasn't it been driven into your head that EVERYONE HATES Americans? So, these people hate the people holding them, they want to kill them, yet, we are surprised that the gaurds are big meanies? Um, someone please explain why this abuse is a surprise?
Now somebody like that picks up the GIMP and expects to be able to be just as fluent but with only a miniscule fraction of the effort put into learning it.
I hate doing the anecdotal thing, but, as I've lived it, I can't resist.
Last year I worked with a guy who ran his own print shop with several designers. He started as an independent graphic designer after working for several years at a large shop. He always owned all the Adobe tools and had a couple version installed on his network. Obviously had to use Adobe et al previously as an emplopyee. He continued to do a large amount of the graphics labor, although he owned the shop. I watched him work in Corel tools, and it was like watching a magician. He was brilliant. I saw him using Adobe tools and he was lost. This isn't a "doctor" installing a firewall or doing some other unrelated task. This was a graphics pro, who mastered one set of tools in his trade, and, from my perspective, he may as well as been a clueless newbie when it came to using photoshop et al.
Total opinion here, but I'd say give the creative artistic folks all the tools, and let them choose what they think is best. If the sysadmins time is too valuable to deal with it, the shop isn't charging enough. If the sysadmins time IS worth more, then you don't need all the features of the closed source tools.
Adobe Photoshop is highly overrated, and I doubt people would be singing the praise about it if they actually bought the $700 package.
I am totally hooked on gimp. I used photoshop for a few years in the mid 90's. Once I learned my way around gimp, I could never go back to photoshop (and I've tried). I don't need photoshop. HOWEVER, if you need photoshop, $700 is nothing.
Is a SCSI RAID overrated vs a single IDE drive for a server because my laptop uses a single IDE? Fer kripes sake, my desktop doesn't even have a SCSI raid. Let's get rid of those overpriced RAIDS?
My dad only uses his computer to play solitaire. That's a video game. He doesn't need a high end video card. Good video cards are useless for video games?
Insert your favorite example here of comparing chickens and oxen.
Which is exactly why MS machines should update themselves automatically by default
And, what, 60% of the U.S. remains on dialup. (Insert quote about dishonest stats here). Ever download MS updates via a modem connection? A current update takes longer than downloading the linux OS back in the BBS days.
As for the opt out. It only takes one person who says they asked to be taken off and wern't....
The catch here is that he will most likely be able to point out that you "unsubscribed" to abc.xyz.com only, but you did not ask to be removed from its affiliate def.xyz.com or any other the countless others.
And in regards to the person who stated that the e-mail address was only listed on a web site, and it was never used to "opt-in": It will be said that someone else used that address. As they never require confirmatiion from the owner of the address, there is no way to prove someone didn't. A really determined spammer trying to appear legit could easily whip up bogus entries for addresses that have been harvested.
I bought a box off ebay sans OS. Did a dual boot with Windows 2000 Pro (which cost a few hundred dollars) and the Lycoris distro of Linux (which cost a few ten dollars). The sound card manufacturer didn't offer w2k support, and the 9x version they had available for download locked up the system. But Lycoris autodetected the card, and it worked just fine.
I concluded that some really nice person who used Linux also used the same sound card that was in my box and cared enough to support it, which is more than I could say for the company that was paid to make the darn card. Nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately, the author of the article doesn't have my wisdom.
It's not the same as political speech which gets a much higher level of protection.
Over Easter weekend I was checking my Yahoo mail on my nephews computer and got hit with a pop-up to vote for GWB. As I've never known yahoo to have pop-up ads, I assume it came from one of the various spyware thingies infecting said computer (later removed by me). Hence, it could be argued that the pop-up inducing software is political speech.
Outsourcing in one form or another is nothing new. I want to know why it is attracting so much attention now. It seems to me to be nothing more than media hype. Is there any real solid evidence to show that there is something significantly different happening now other than increased awareness?
Fr'example, how many threads here evolve into minute discussions of thread scheduling, micro- versus monolithic-kernel structures, memory subsystems, etc.?
[snip]
I bring this up because, in my opinion, this is the exact wrong focus needed to help Linux gain widespread home usage.
Um, when I was getting my MCSE a couple years ago I spent lots of time in Windows forums that discussed details of no interest to Joe User. Many MS Enthusiasts told me to go back to Linux when I would occasionally complain about problems with Win2k. Similarly, the clueless newbies who popped in with stupid questions were treated poorly by the self proclaimed MS gurus. But Windows remains more popular than Linux although the fanatics are just as big of a-holes and discuss equally minor issues with great fervor. Quite simply, Joe User generally avoids such message boards.
Put in a different perspective: Last night I attended a party hosted by a NASCAR driver and was chatting with some mechanics. If I asked them about my cars blinker fluid, I may or may not get a polite answer. If a dozen people came along asked the same stupid question, I'd assume that they would get less and less polite as time progressed.
I don't blame regular slashdot readers for being rude in this forum when reading the same stupid complaints about OSofChoice time and time again. It isn't "Slashdot: cheerful helpful friendly geeks who want to shower you with love" but "News for nerds". The use of nerds implying a sense of being a bit of an outcast, and this is a place where they can gather together and be united and feel strong (and rip my grammar).
There are places where people can voice opinions or repeat the same old questions, and they will be treated with respect. The biggest problem, really, is that it may be difficult for people to find the best place to address their concerns. But this isn't unique to any OS. I know of a company that paid Microsoft for tech support, but the problem was never resolved, and one year later it remained an open ticket. Money was not refunded, however. Maybe if Microsoft took your advise and became nicer they would become the number one OS.
>>... book an hour on the timesheet to >> "reading EULAs" each time you install software
> But how can a techie hope to understand legalese? > That stuff should be sent to the legal department
That is so painfully obvious, it amazes me that I never thought of it. I think of places I've worked in the past: Any purchase had to go through a couple of channels for approval. But computers were the sole domain of the computer staff. One particular place refused to use simple cleaning chemicals from only one company because they thought it important to avoid vendor lock-in -- And this was for cleaning the bathrooms! But I'll give you one guess as to who was providing 100% of the software.
But, on the other hand, I can see a tech sending the EULA to the legal department, and not having the EULA scrutinized, but, instead, the idiot who brought it in would probably have his head examined. My guess is that 99.999% of lawyers would think it a joke that someone would want the terms of the MS EULA analyzed. (FOSS terms are another matter, but where doesn't hypocrisy prevail)
Maybe it's because I'm reading at a threshold of 2, but I didn't see anyone mention actually wanting these "features" of google. Lots of people defending it, saying it's a voluntary agreement. But no one saying, "Man, it'll be great to have google knowing more about me." But, honestly, that's my opinion. I use Yahoo every day, and they consistantly present me with unrelated links. I am sick of looking at ads for the personals, for home loans, and for screen savers. See 'em every day, and I have no use for them. I use most of the Yahoo services, so, potentially, they could know a heck of a lot about me. But it seems they treat me as just another generic surfer. I think it would be nice if google could actually pull off a level of artificial intelligence clever enough to cater to my interests.
How can it possibly benefit the world if the software is not free. How can it be free as in speech, but not as in beer? Wouldn't one necessitate the other?...The main advantage of Open Source to most people is not in the openness of the code, but in the freeness of the binary.
Businesses and research facilities use software that is of little interest to Joe Consumer. I don't know the numbers, but I believe a huge percentage of programmers work on software that has limited use to anyone outside a specific industry. If the software is open source, it means the purchaser is not dependant on the provider for updates and fixes. But the writers sure as heck aren't going to give it away, nor does the purchaser have a desire to offer it for free download. Or, maybe more common, businesses pay programmers for customization of existing open sourced code. In either case, I would argue that the code is the main advantage to those who don't shop at BestBuy for their software.
I've never visited this site before, and I wanted to see what they were about.
I think the fact that you never visited the site before is the primary problem, as I feel it is safe to say that many others never visited the site either. I doubt the choice in requiring IE has anything to do with the failure. Didn't the original iTunes store require a Mac? But Apple had some marketing. Jeepers, buymusic.com wanted a million sales a day - I can't help but hear Doctor Evil saying that. Where the heck were they planning on getting such high volume traffic?
The author makes some interesting arguments about why the Internet has not been as great a vessel for democratic progress as some hoped it would be.
One argument is that yes, geeks do not socialize. More specifically, the author argues that the Internet is inherently detrimental to social debate
The comment that caught my attention, and that I have seen in such internet cafes, is that people aren't looking for detailed news and political information but the mentioned mtv.com
In general, people are more interested in the weather and sports scores than overthrowing the government. Another point overlooked is that if I was going to try to find some governement secrets and discuss them, the last place I would want to do that is in an internet cafe.
The computer is nothing special -- just another thing. You have plumbers and electicians, etc. Computer service is really just another semi-skilled trade that anyone could do if they wanted to invest a little time to learn, but they prefer to use their time in other pursuits.
I often pick up painting jobs for a few extra bucks (and because I like doing some manual labor from time to time). I don't think it's any different than doing basic computer service.
Isn't a goal of the computer field to have pooters so easy to use that anyone can do it? If I was feeling grumpy I would happily argue that most trades which the typical geek might describe as "lowly" or "pathetic" are actually more challenging than 90% of computer related tasks performed by conceited pricks in the IT field. And the most conceited of the bunch never touch the 10% of work which required any degree of intelligence, but they are simply insecure fems who think that somehow working on a computer makes them better than others.
I pay my ISP $60 per month. That is for the right to quickly access other sites who want my money. Just this week I used a mozilla plugin called stumbleupon with is supposed to lead you to the "best of the net" but it just sent me to more pages asking for money.
My !!!Guess!!! is that it will come down to ISPs. One will offer XY and Z services for the price of connection while the other only offers X and Y.
Poo Poo all you want, but look at the basics. Pretty much everyone goes to a one of a handful of portals -- MSN, Yahoo, Google, Netscape, et al. Yahoo, MSN, and Netscape all offer internet access.
Yahoo includes launchcast and much more. blah blah blah. Basically, the world is an online service, and we are merely watchers.
Welcome the world were YOUR ISP gives you something in return.
Sorry, I have only read a few replies. This topic simply annoys me to no end.
Pretty much ever CD I have purchased, I would have bought regardless of the price (within reason). To me, within reason is $10 - $20 U.S. dollars. I see it as basic econ (although, it is far from that, but I digress). I wouldn't buy a CD from a band if it cost $5 if I didn't like the band. But I would pay $20 for a cd from a band I liked. A music CD is a luxury! No one is going hungry because of the price of a song. For the music I like, I will pay pretty much anything. Oddly, my favorite band it the Grateful Dead. TONS of free music, yet I own most of the groups CDs that were released on the record label. I didn't buy the CDs because I felt obligated, but simply because I like the effen pictures.
To me, this entire music arguement is a bunch of tight ass white boys whining about nothing. If you like the music, you will buy it as long as the price is reasonable. What is reasonable varies from person to person, but you are talking about a piece of insignificant "sheet". A dollar or two or three really doesn't matter. You do NOT need to own a CD in order to stay alive. A couple of bucks is truly meaningless in the realm of music.
Slashdot Mirror
What was the tech's opinion on the problem?
... a virus.
Just ran into the virus excuse yesterday. A friend is getting e-mails addressed to a person with with one letter different in the name. My friend called his ISP and was told he had a virus. Norton showed nothing, so he called me.
I looked at a couple of the e-mail headers, and, as best I could tell, my friend was getting someone elses e-mail. I have no idea how it could accidentally happen. But, if it's a virus, it sure is clever, abeit, apparently useless.
My friends name starts with the letter C, hence, has the address clastname@isp.com. And was getting mail addressed to klastname@isp.com. Text in the e-mail sounded like typical conversation with previous quoted messages in place, including the persons name, which begins with the letter K.
So, is it a brilliant e-mail harvesting trick? Or does the ISP have a problem? Regardless, quickly dismissing it as a virus just isn't the right answer.
Why are there two standards that seemingly do the same thing? Firewire and USB are both industry standards, yet they seemingly are designed to connect peripherals to PCs.
If I had my druthers, the world would be FireWire. Last time I did serious computer purchasing, FireWire was way better than the original USB. I went with FireWire although it was much more expensive. So, really, they weren't the same. (USB2 is better than the original USB, but now I am so biased I would probably still opt for FireWire if I was shopping for a new pooter.) It's more like comparing IDE and SCSI. They do the same thing, but SCSI is hard to beat in various situations despite the cost savings of IDE.
If I were running Microsoft, I'd give up on copy-protection altogether. It's a waste of resources, because it simply does not work and never will.
It never will stop everybody, but that is not the point. The objective is to get the maximum number of paying users. No copy protection would result in more illegal copies. Too much copy protection would result in upsetting too many legit users without hindering enough pirates.
I suspect the issue of allowing everyone access to SP2 was discussed for all of five minutes in a meeting. Someone probably said, "This is what we learned from blocking SP1" with a little PowerPoint slide showing some advantages and many disadvantages. A couple of points were probably briefly addressed, and it was decided to allow every access. And that was that. Onto the next topic.
Everyone knows that there will always be a niche of people who just won't use legal copies. The only concern for MS is keeping that number to a minimum while not loosing paying customers.
I wonder if I could walk around on the street and get random girls to flash their boobs
Interesting comparison, but, this is what those in college call "real life". I have no idea why anyone would want to have these photos taken, but people are strange. HOWEVER, we have to keep in mind that American soldiers are supposed to KILL the enemy. Now they have these prisoners, these prisoners who are supposed to kill the guards. EFFING DUH? Hasn't it been driven into your head that EVERYONE HATES Americans? So, these people hate the people holding them, they want to kill them, yet, we are surprised that the gaurds are big meanies? Um, someone please explain why this abuse is a surprise?
Now somebody like that picks up the GIMP and expects to be able to be just as fluent but with only a miniscule fraction of the effort put into learning it.
I hate doing the anecdotal thing, but, as I've lived it, I can't resist.
Last year I worked with a guy who ran his own print shop with several designers. He started as an independent graphic designer after working for several years at a large shop. He always owned all the Adobe tools and had a couple version installed on his network. Obviously had to use Adobe et al previously as an emplopyee. He continued to do a large amount of the graphics labor, although he owned the shop. I watched him work in Corel tools, and it was like watching a magician. He was brilliant. I saw him using Adobe tools and he was lost. This isn't a "doctor" installing a firewall or doing some other unrelated task. This was a graphics pro, who mastered one set of tools in his trade, and, from my perspective, he may as well as been a clueless newbie when it came to using photoshop et al.
Total opinion here, but I'd say give the creative artistic folks all the tools, and let them choose what they think is best. If the sysadmins time is too valuable to deal with it, the shop isn't charging enough. If the sysadmins time IS worth more, then you don't need all the features of the closed source tools.
Adobe Photoshop is highly overrated, and I doubt people would be singing the praise about it if they actually bought the $700 package.
I am totally hooked on gimp. I used photoshop for a few years in the mid 90's. Once I learned my way around gimp, I could never go back to photoshop (and I've tried). I don't need photoshop. HOWEVER, if you need photoshop, $700 is nothing.
Is a SCSI RAID overrated vs a single IDE drive for a server because my laptop uses a single IDE? Fer kripes sake, my desktop doesn't even have a SCSI raid. Let's get rid of those overpriced RAIDS?
My dad only uses his computer to play solitaire. That's a video game. He doesn't need a high end video card. Good video cards are useless for video games?
Insert your favorite example here of comparing chickens and oxen.
Which is exactly why MS machines should update themselves automatically by default
And, what, 60% of the U.S. remains on dialup. (Insert quote about dishonest stats here). Ever download MS updates via a modem connection? A current update takes longer than downloading the linux OS back in the BBS days.
As for the opt out. It only takes one person who says they asked to be taken off and wern't....
The catch here is that he will most likely be able to point out that you "unsubscribed" to abc.xyz.com only, but you did not ask to be removed from its affiliate def.xyz.com or any other the countless others.
And in regards to the person who stated that the e-mail address was only listed on a web site, and it was never used to "opt-in": It will be said that someone else used that address. As they never require confirmatiion from the owner of the address, there is no way to prove someone didn't. A really determined spammer trying to appear legit could easily whip up bogus entries for addresses that have been harvested.
Presumably connects to the current crawler which still accepts the old format :)
Ya, but I followed the link to get my free copy of Internet Explorer that is advertised on the page and got
Whatever that means.
I bought a box off ebay sans OS. Did a dual boot with Windows 2000 Pro (which cost a few hundred dollars) and the Lycoris distro of Linux (which cost a few ten dollars). The sound card manufacturer didn't offer w2k support, and the 9x version they had available for download locked up the system. But Lycoris autodetected the card, and it worked just fine.
I concluded that some really nice person who used Linux also used the same sound card that was in my box and cared enough to support it, which is more than I could say for the company that was paid to make the darn card. Nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately, the author of the article doesn't have my wisdom.
It's not the same as political speech which gets a much higher level of protection.
Over Easter weekend I was checking my Yahoo mail on my nephews computer and got hit with a pop-up to vote for GWB. As I've never known yahoo to have pop-up ads, I assume it came from one of the various spyware thingies infecting said computer (later removed by me). Hence, it could be argued that the pop-up inducing software is political speech.
Outsourcing in one form or another is nothing new. I want to know why it is attracting so much attention now. It seems to me to be nothing more than media hype. Is there any real solid evidence to show that there is something significantly different happening now other than increased awareness?
Fr'example, how many threads here evolve into minute discussions of thread scheduling, micro- versus monolithic-kernel structures, memory subsystems, etc.?
[snip]I bring this up because, in my opinion, this is the exact wrong focus needed to help Linux gain widespread home usage.
Um, when I was getting my MCSE a couple years ago I spent lots of time in Windows forums that discussed details of no interest to Joe User. Many MS Enthusiasts told me to go back to Linux when I would occasionally complain about problems with Win2k. Similarly, the clueless newbies who popped in with stupid questions were treated poorly by the self proclaimed MS gurus. But Windows remains more popular than Linux although the fanatics are just as big of a-holes and discuss equally minor issues with great fervor. Quite simply, Joe User generally avoids such message boards.
Put in a different perspective: Last night I attended a party hosted by a NASCAR driver and was chatting with some mechanics. If I asked them about my cars blinker fluid, I may or may not get a polite answer. If a dozen people came along asked the same stupid question, I'd assume that they would get less and less polite as time progressed.
I don't blame regular slashdot readers for being rude in this forum when reading the same stupid complaints about OSofChoice time and time again. It isn't "Slashdot: cheerful helpful friendly geeks who want to shower you with love" but "News for nerds". The use of nerds implying a sense of being a bit of an outcast, and this is a place where they can gather together and be united and feel strong (and rip my grammar).
There are places where people can voice opinions or repeat the same old questions, and they will be treated with respect. The biggest problem, really, is that it may be difficult for people to find the best place to address their concerns. But this isn't unique to any OS. I know of a company that paid Microsoft for tech support, but the problem was never resolved, and one year later it remained an open ticket. Money was not refunded, however. Maybe if Microsoft took your advise and became nicer they would become the number one OS.
>>... book an hour on the timesheet to
>> "reading EULAs" each time you install software
> But how can a techie hope to understand legalese?
> That stuff should be sent to the legal department
That is so painfully obvious, it amazes me that I never thought of it. I think of places I've worked in the past: Any purchase had to go through a couple of channels for approval. But computers were the sole domain of the computer staff. One particular place refused to use simple cleaning chemicals from only one company because they thought it important to avoid vendor lock-in -- And this was for cleaning the bathrooms! But I'll give you one guess as to who was providing 100% of the software.
But, on the other hand, I can see a tech sending the EULA to the legal department, and not having the EULA scrutinized, but, instead, the idiot who brought it in would probably have his head examined. My guess is that 99.999% of lawyers would think it a joke that someone would want the terms of the MS EULA analyzed. (FOSS terms are another matter, but where doesn't hypocrisy prevail)
I was thinking the name should be BILLGATES
Bad Implementation of Linux Lamely Going After The Established System
Doesn't mention Windows anywhere, and it accurately descripes the companies mission statement
Oops, should have used Preview.
.NET 7.1
Anyway, peek at the HTML source of the page and all your questions will be answered.
name="GENERATOR" Content="Microsoft Visual Studio
name="CODE_LANGUAGE" Content="C#"
MS_POSITIONING="GridLayout"
ect...
> Since it is running on IIS they have to use .asp
> and probably some custom software.
Channel 9
Maybe it's because I'm reading at a threshold of 2, but I didn't see anyone mention actually wanting these "features" of google. Lots of people defending it, saying it's a voluntary agreement. But no one saying, "Man, it'll be great to have google knowing more about me." But, honestly, that's my opinion. I use Yahoo every day, and they consistantly present me with unrelated links. I am sick of looking at ads for the personals, for home loans, and for screen savers. See 'em every day, and I have no use for them. I use most of the Yahoo services, so, potentially, they could know a heck of a lot about me. But it seems they treat me as just another generic surfer. I think it would be nice if google could actually pull off a level of artificial intelligence clever enough to cater to my interests.
How about naming your baby "Oops"?
Ever notice that oops is simply spew backwards?
How can it possibly benefit the world if the software is not free. How can it be free as in speech, but not as in beer? Wouldn't one necessitate the other?...The main advantage of Open Source to most people is not in the openness of the code, but in the freeness of the binary.
Businesses and research facilities use software that is of little interest to Joe Consumer. I don't know the numbers, but I believe a huge percentage of programmers work on software that has limited use to anyone outside a specific industry. If the software is open source, it means the purchaser is not dependant on the provider for updates and fixes. But the writers sure as heck aren't going to give it away, nor does the purchaser have a desire to offer it for free download. Or, maybe more common, businesses pay programmers for customization of existing open sourced code. In either case, I would argue that the code is the main advantage to those who don't shop at BestBuy for their software.
I've never visited this site before, and I wanted to see what they were about.
I think the fact that you never visited the site before is the primary problem, as I feel it is safe to say that many others never visited the site either. I doubt the choice in requiring IE has anything to do with the failure. Didn't the original iTunes store require a Mac? But Apple had some marketing. Jeepers, buymusic.com wanted a million sales a day - I can't help but hear Doctor Evil saying that. Where the heck were they planning on getting such high volume traffic?
The author makes some interesting arguments about why the Internet has not been as great a vessel for democratic progress as some hoped it would be.
One argument is that yes, geeks do not socialize. More specifically, the author argues that the Internet is inherently detrimental to social debate
The comment that caught my attention, and that I have seen in such internet cafes, is that people aren't looking for detailed news and political information but the mentioned mtv.com
In general, people are more interested in the weather and sports scores than overthrowing the government. Another point overlooked is that if I was going to try to find some governement secrets and discuss them, the last place I would want to do that is in an internet cafe.
The computer is nothing special -- just another thing. You have plumbers and electicians, etc. Computer service is really just another semi-skilled trade that anyone could do if they wanted to invest a little time to learn, but they prefer to use their time in other pursuits.
I often pick up painting jobs for a few extra bucks (and because I like doing some manual labor from time to time). I don't think it's any different than doing basic computer service.
Isn't a goal of the computer field to have pooters so easy to use that anyone can do it? If I was feeling grumpy I would happily argue that most trades which the typical geek might describe as "lowly" or "pathetic" are actually more challenging than 90% of computer related tasks performed by conceited pricks in the IT field. And the most conceited of the bunch never touch the 10% of work which required any degree of intelligence, but they are simply insecure fems who think that somehow working on a computer makes them better than others.
I pay my ISP $60 per month. That is for the right to quickly access other sites who want my money. Just this week I used a mozilla plugin called stumbleupon with is supposed to lead you to the "best of the net" but it just sent me to more pages asking for money.
My !!!Guess!!! is that it will come down to ISPs. One will offer XY and Z services for the price of connection while the other only offers X and Y.
Poo Poo all you want, but look at the basics. Pretty much everyone goes to a one of a handful of portals -- MSN, Yahoo, Google, Netscape, et al. Yahoo, MSN, and Netscape all offer internet access.
Yahoo includes launchcast and much more. blah blah blah. Basically, the world is an online service, and we are merely watchers.
Welcome the world were YOUR ISP gives you something in return.
Sorry, I have only read a few replies. This topic simply annoys me to no end.
Pretty much ever CD I have purchased, I would have bought regardless of the price (within reason). To me, within reason is $10 - $20 U.S. dollars. I see it as basic econ (although, it is far from that, but I digress). I wouldn't buy a CD from a band if it cost $5 if I didn't like the band. But I would pay $20 for a cd from a band I liked. A music CD is a luxury! No one is going hungry because of the price of a song. For the music I like, I will pay pretty much anything. Oddly, my favorite band it the Grateful Dead. TONS of free music, yet I own most of the groups CDs that were released on the record label. I didn't buy the CDs because I felt obligated, but simply because I like the effen pictures.
To me, this entire music arguement is a bunch of tight ass white boys whining about nothing. If you like the music, you will buy it as long as the price is reasonable. What is reasonable varies from person to person, but you are talking about a piece of insignificant "sheet". A dollar or two or three really doesn't matter. You do NOT need to own a CD in order to stay alive. A couple of bucks is truly meaningless in the realm of music.