To put it simply, faith is trust based on evidence.
No, you prove the distinction below. You start from the assumption of that the bible must contain truth, or at least be valuable, and try to interpret until it seems to fit. I go in the opposite direction: I look at each part, evaluate it on its own merits, and then assign a worth to the whole based on how the parts hold up.
Another thing to remember is context. When the Bible says 'in all the land of Egypt', that doesn't necessarily mean what the literal reading might indicate. For example, the Bible said the flood covered the whole earth, or that all Israel was at temple celebrations, or that all the Canaanites were wiped out, etc.
Then it's useless to even try to guess what it might mean, if you can create any tortured interpretation you want. I have no need to try to reconcile the bible with reality, as I'm not invested in it. If the bible's account doesn't add up, I don't try to twist the language into sort of fitting: I simply conclude it's wrong and move on.
This last one might give us an interpretive key, as obviously, if we encounter Canaanites later on, they weren't all wiped out. When the Bible speaks in this way (common to other writings of the time), it generally means 'effectively all' rather than 'absolutely all'. For example, the flood did wipe out the whole earth of humanity (the purpose), or the Canaanites were conquered by Israel.
Simpler explanations: whoever wrote the "all wiped out" part initially was wrong, or whoever wrote the later encounter of Caanites was wrong about them being Caanites, or the order of events is mistaken.
A bit over the top. For example, "every firstborn son in all of Egypt died (11:5), wiping out an entire generation of people". If you kill the firstborn of most ancient families, it certainly won't wipe out an entire generation.
Point. But it's still quite a few dead people, and the rest of the plague should kill quite a few more.
Most of the rest is problematic due to an overly-wooden reading of the account.
But that's precisely it. In science we do intentionally do everything in an overly wooden way. Correctness is paramount, and imprecision is heavily frowned upon. One thing that makes me so sure that the bible is bunk is the amount of fudging needed. If it was 100% solid that'd be impressive indeed, but it isn't, and needs "intrepretative keys" like you say above, and each of those I see as a failure.
I figure that if one has the position that accepting things on faith makes sense, that ought to extend to other people doing the same, even if they disagree.
Sure it does, that's how we know history. What I'm saying is that WE KNOW Egypt WOULD NOT have reported such a thing if their behavior is consistent at all. So, we wouldn't EXPECT this to have been reported... so that it isn't is no surprise (and lends no weight to your claim).
No, it's not needed. There's more to look at than writings. People don't leave their environment undisturbed and leave traces. And assuming Egypt somehow avoided recording anything about all this, there still would be archaelogical evidence, and the neighbours would still have noticed, and have plenty time to make good use of the situation.
The effects would be very noticeable. If such a thing happened, Egypt would have been dealt a huge blow. Massive amounts of death leave traces, even if nobody writes them down.
We're talking here about: unusable water, all the fish in the Nile dead, rotting animals and people everywhere, lots of insects, ruined harvest, dead livestock, lots of dead people, and no army. Add to that half a million people that suddenly vanished. The immediate aftermath would involve yet more massive amounts of death from starvation and illness.
By all rights, Egypt should have been in an enormous crisis that would at the very least critically cripple the country for generations. It would give anybody a terrific opportunity to invade and conquer Egypt. Yet again, it didn't happen.
First, from my understanding, this was one city/region in Egypt, not all of Egypt. Second, I'm not sure how it would have left ample evidence. That was a long time ago.
Archaeology, for instance.
- Not true. First, you should know that even among Biblical scholars, the numbers (population size) are disputed, BASED on the text (not just liberal skepticism).
Ah, so it's okay to read to children so long they don't actually understand what it means? And the problem of representing it graphically is that it makes it understandable?
I think there should be consistency: Either both the book and the bible should be removed, or both the book and the bible should be fine to sell.
I am failing to follow your argument there. What does the % of population believing something have to do with it being fact or fiction?
66% of the planet doesn't think it's the truth. If a book doesn't contain truth then it contains something somebody made up, and we call that "fiction". So according to most of the planet, the bible is fiction.
plagues of Egypt (Note: a claim isn't an argument.): but to address your assertion, Hebrew people were there... Hebrew people left... Egypt didn't report defeats.
It doesn't matter if they reported something or not, anything like what's depicted in the bible would have been absolutely devastating to Egypt and left ample evidence.
Speaking of Exodus, there's no evidence of 600000 people packing up and leaving Egypt either. That would also have left traces.
News flash: Christianity is only 33% of the world belief, so just by that measure, most of the world doesn't believe in the contents, making it a work of fiction in their view.
Then there's that the bible references plenty events that clearly didn't happen, such as a global flood or the plagues of Egypt, which definitely is fiction.
It seems pointless. If somebody already has enough privileges on your server to mess with the logs, how is a hash going to help? There's a whole bunch of things an attacker can do that makes this useless.
Most obviously, they can corrupt or erase the contents of the file. Noticeable, but the traces of you accessing can be deleted, so that the admin can't figure out who did it.
The attacker can save an old file, do whatever needs hiding, and replace the file with the old copy. Depending on how it works this may result in logging being continued to the replaced file, or the log daemon keeping to write into a now nameless file, while an old one is visible in the directory instead.
The hash seems pointless. If the attacker can modify the logs directly, they likely have root access, which means they can debug any process, and subvert any cryptography that might be happening. They can also regenerate the log file with the correct hashes but with a few deleted lines, or replace the daemon with one that doesn't log some things.
Maybe if you could REFRAIN FROM SHOUTING and use fewer profanities, you'd have more credibility
I don't see what one's credibility has to do with the language one uses. Credibility comes from having data that backs one's position, and there's lots of it for climate change, including multiple groups that came up with the same conclusion.
And if you wouldn't treat it as a black and white, this or that issue, it would also help your case.
But it is a black and white issue: it either happens or it doesn't. I don't understand what would constitute an acceptable way of putting it in your view.
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
-- Socrates
Every single generation seems to have been saying the same thing.
Yes. Age is not a cure for stupidity. Some people absorb information like a sponge and are well informed and well read at 20. Some people manage to plug their ears and know nothing at 60.
The only good way of finding out what a person knows is testing their knowledge. Age is irrelevant.
You suggested decompressing and double-clicking packages in the file manager. That's like manually managing music files in the era of jukebox apps like iTunes.
You're confusing two separate things.
1. A.tar.gz can be uncompressed, and the installer executed from a GUI. Just because most people use the command line for it, doesn't mean you can't untar something from the GUI of your choice.
2. A.deb or a.rpm can be installed by just clicking on it, without needing anything extra. No special software is needed. Manual uncompression isn't needed either.
The success of software stores like Steam and Apple's app store signals that directly dealing with packages through the filesystem has become an outdated concept.
Steam and Apple's app store aren't necessary when the OS already provides the same functionality. If you don't like clicking.deb files, then use the software manager app instead.
I think the only thing that is needed is a distributed system for the root servers.
Then everybody can keep using their BIND or whatever setup, and the only action needed is to register it in the system, and for users to change to a different resolver.
You'd really rather "tar xvfz &&./runme" instead of installing in a GUI?
Yes. If you really want a GUI you can always uncompress and doubleclick in one instead. If it's a package then just clicking it will bring up the software manager, what else is needed?
I do not need my stuff to be managed by some third party. I want to deal with the developer only, and nobody else.
Here in the EU, you're the owner of your data. You have the right to request from any company that has personally identifiable data on you for any reason, to request it to be corrected, or to request it to be deleted.
There are also limits on how the information can be used.
Compliance with this isn't optional. There are big sanctions for not complying with the requirements, which go as high half a million Euro for the "very grave" category in some countries. And since at least where I am, the agency is self-financed, they're quite keen on collecting those.
The construction industry builds, among other things, the places people live and work. People, for all sorts of sentimental and illogical reasons, like to be in spaces that feel handmade.
"Feel" is the key word. Enough tech can solve that problem. There are two ways:
The "precision machined" option: What high end cell phones go for. Ignore the handmade part entirely. Make things with a precision to the fraction of a millimeter, shiny and perfectly polished beyond the ability of the best artist.
The "faux handmade" option: Take the above and add a "human" touch by engraving something with a laser/CNC machine, to give it the "crafted by an artist" sort of look. With good enough equipment you can take that precision and mirror all the imperfections of something made by human hands, if you want.
They'll get there. At some point they'll show up with some sort of huge 3D printer, make the whole structure for the house, then glue on wooden panels over that for the sake making it feel handmade.
I've seen the fake brick version already on a photo of a house after a hurricane.
I'd love to live in a super-insulated plastic house with a roof and exterior finish that will last forever without maintenance and can be built for half the price of stick-built, sort of a "500 square foot Japanese pod hotel concept" house. Such a thing is technologically possible. But you can't buy one. No one offers it because no one except us weird tech geeks would ever want to live in one, no matter how practical it is.
You can have anything you want, if you pay for it. People have built all sorts of weird houses: The hobbit home from LOTR, houses made from shipping containers, geodesic domes, etc.
tl;dr - Construction is a conservative (nearly hidebound) business and while technology may disrupt it, the basic trades like electrician and plumber will remain a good way to make a living for at least another generation, probably longer.
I don't think that's what the grandparent was talking about though. Being an electrician or a plumber requires education, and as far as I can't tell they're not fields that need a lot of people.
A lot of the people on kickstarter are asking for money they will use up on manufacturing, or for living expenses while they say, write a book. Most also ask for the bare minimum because if it's not reached they don't get anything.
By the time people start complaining, there's unlikely to be anything left.
I treat Kickstarter like a high risk investment. Don't pay into it more than you can afford to lose.
Projects I contributed to in general seem to be going well.
I think that's an acceptable tradeoff. I do not think that rewarding the very few people that indeed deserve it outweighs the problems patents currently cause.
Also, it seems we have reached the point where lone inventors are unlikely to make much advancement, without running into a patent issue themselves. Once the modern era of patent wars and "defensive patents" started, every company started acquiring more and more of them and trying to make them as broad as possible.
The entries for the IOCCC can show a lot of cleverness, but nobody in their right mind would accept such code. The beauty of the Underhanded C ones is that the code looks reasonable, but does extremely undesirable things.
Also, just what kind of low cost labor are you thinking of, anyway? There's a constant push to eliminate as much of the lowest cost labor as possible. Where does your hypothetical uneducated worker go?
Well, they could go work at a warehouse. Except not for long. Now there is warehouse automation. Yes, people are still needed there, but they need much fewer people, and the people needed are completely disposable. There's zero chances for advancement. If you don't go nuts from years of picking up a package from one robot, passing it through a scanner, and placing it in another, you'll probably be out of a job in 10 years anyway, as they'll figure out how to eliminate the remaining human labor eventually.
Or they could go work at a supermarket. Which also keep reducing worker count through tech like RFID and attempts at automatic checkout systems. They'll get there eventually.
Maybe they could go work in construction. Except the tech will get there as well. You can bet that the construction companies are salivating at the prospect of having machines that print walls, and they'll get made at some point.
My point is, what you're advocating is increasing the amount of people in a segment of the population that's quickly becoming obsolete. A lot of those people will find out that they can't get a job because nobody needs a brainless drone anymore. That's not good for the economy (because unemployed people don't buy much), and not good for political stability either.
Have you considered that maybe like say, programming, biology is also a big field with a lot of room for specialization?
Just because somebody can do a good job of writing an operating system doesn't mean they'd be a good game programmer. Same way, I don't see why this guy would necessarily have the right skills to work on diabetes.
Also, on what grounds do you think you can command people to do whatever research you think is important? If it's that big of a deal for you, why aren't you doing the research yourself, or at least funding it?
Sorry folks, here in Canada, my band is postponing our annual nationwide tour because larger venues are doing less and less live music in favour of DJ bullshit (which many of them play pirated music) so we're now competing with Juno award winners for 200-500 seat venues. We now have to book a year in advance to get the key venues to make the tour profitable.
Which band? You have a chance for some self-promotion, why are you ignoring it?
So you'll have to forgive me as I break ranks with other musicians who have placated piracy advocates. We're just being polite because our reputations require it. I've done over 100,000 miles of touring, I've seen members of hit bands looking for odds jobs because their back catalog doesn't sell, I've seen the empty floors at Sony's NYC offices, I know excellent producers that are hopelessly in debt, and I know musicians that kick the shit out of current pop stars but can't get 1/10th the record deal they could have in the 80's.
Welcome to 2011, where anybody can make music, and where there's an ever growing amount of stuff to listen to. Your new music then makes a smaller and smaller addition to the whole.
People still buy ABBA CDs. It sounds perfectly good, and a lot of people don't particularly feel like trying to filter out the good songs of 2011 from the trash when they can just buy a collection of the classics and have something perfectly nice to listen to while commuting.
You do not know what the fuck you're talking about. No matter how you interpret the infinitesimal amount of information you have on the matter, your advocacy of piracy directly prevents me from doing what I love and providing for other talented musicians. I'm not going to pretend I can stop you from pirating music, but please shut the fuck up.
No, I don't plan to shut up.
Here's where I stand: I care about my freedom and my Internet much more than I care about my music. If push comes to shove, I'll glady accept having the entire music industry bankrupt, if it means they stop trying to mess with my hardware, my Internet connection, and sneakily trying to reach into my wallet.
One day I looked at an invoice, and noticed that half the purchase price for some DVD-Rs amounted to a tax for the music industry. So, I decided to vote with my dollars. In the last 5 years I've not bought any music. Where I am, they tax recordable media, so I stopped buying DVD-Rs as well. They tax other media too, so I just have it shipped from another country (at extra shipping expense, purely for the satisfaction of not giving money to organizations I don't like)
No, I don't pirate it either, I just keep listening to what I have and find alternative things to listen to (music from Jamendo, TED talks, etc). That's just it, I'm tired of this music industry crap, and decided they will not have any of my money. No matter what anti-piracy measures are taken, no matter what laws are passed, I'm done with the music industry, and they're not getting another cent from me that I can avoid paying, even if it involves shipping hard disks from the other side of the planet. Sony has empty floors now? Good.
Only way I will pay for music ever again is if it comes from a street musician, or indie musician who is not associated with the various recording associations.
Switched to Linux long ago. Got Linux on the laptop, servers, cell phone (N900), WiFi AP, at home and at work.
I've not really had to use anything else in 5 years or so. Very rarely needed to use a Windows VM, but not for anything resembling real usage.
Last version I really used for serious work was Windows 2000. Used XP for a bit, mostly as a way of launching PuTTY sessions and Firefox. Haven't really had to deal with Vista or anything newer.
On the rare ocassion I have to use a Windows box, I find I can't wait to switch back, as it seems to be purpose made to drive me nuts. Sure, my personal home setup worked well because I bothered to maintain it, but even that took some thought, maintenance and fairly regular reformatting. I find Linux keeps working well for much longer.
Currently I run Ubuntu, though I've not even seen Unity yet. I used to run a KDE desktop, now switched to a XFCE one due to maxing out the amount of RAM on my hardware and wanting to squeeze out a bit more performance of what I have.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing. I'm not appealing to authority, nor trying to argue that reality is democratic.
I'm simply answering to the incredulity of the "work of fiction?!?!?" bit, by pointing out that the view isn't particularly odd.
No, you prove the distinction below. You start from the assumption of that the bible must contain truth, or at least be valuable, and try to interpret until it seems to fit. I go in the opposite direction: I look at each part, evaluate it on its own merits, and then assign a worth to the whole based on how the parts hold up.
Then it's useless to even try to guess what it might mean, if you can create any tortured interpretation you want. I have no need to try to reconcile the bible with reality, as I'm not invested in it. If the bible's account doesn't add up, I don't try to twist the language into sort of fitting: I simply conclude it's wrong and move on.
Simpler explanations: whoever wrote the "all wiped out" part initially was wrong, or whoever wrote the later encounter of Caanites was wrong about them being Caanites, or the order of events is mistaken.
Point. But it's still quite a few dead people, and the rest of the plague should kill quite a few more.
But that's precisely it. In science we do intentionally do everything in an overly wooden way. Correctness is paramount, and imprecision is heavily frowned upon. One thing that makes me so sure that the bible is bunk is the amount of fudging needed. If it was 100% solid that'd be impressive indeed, but it isn't, and needs "intrepretative keys" like you say above, and each of those I see as a failure.
I figure that if one has the position that accepting things on faith makes sense, that ought to extend to other people doing the same, even if they disagree.
No, it's not needed. There's more to look at than writings. People don't leave their environment undisturbed and leave traces. And assuming Egypt somehow avoided recording anything about all this, there still would be archaelogical evidence, and the neighbours would still have noticed, and have plenty time to make good use of the situation.
The effects would be very noticeable. If such a thing happened, Egypt would have been dealt a huge blow. Massive amounts of death leave traces, even if nobody writes them down.
We're talking here about: unusable water, all the fish in the Nile dead, rotting animals and people everywhere, lots of insects, ruined harvest, dead livestock, lots of dead people, and no army. Add to that half a million people that suddenly vanished. The immediate aftermath would involve yet more massive amounts of death from starvation and illness.
By all rights, Egypt should have been in an enormous crisis that would at the very least critically cripple the country for generations. It would give anybody a terrific opportunity to invade and conquer Egypt. Yet again, it didn't happen.
Archaeology, for instance.
Bible disagrees. In multiple translations.
More info here
Ah, so it's okay to read to children so long they don't actually understand what it means? And the problem of representing it graphically is that it makes it understandable?
I think there should be consistency: Either both the book and the bible should be removed, or both the book and the bible should be fine to sell.
66% of the planet doesn't think it's the truth. If a book doesn't contain truth then it contains something somebody made up, and we call that "fiction". So according to most of the planet, the bible is fiction.
It doesn't matter if they reported something or not, anything like what's depicted in the bible would have been absolutely devastating to Egypt and left ample evidence.
Speaking of Exodus, there's no evidence of 600000 people packing up and leaving Egypt either. That would also have left traces.
News flash: Christianity is only 33% of the world belief, so just by that measure, most of the world doesn't believe in the contents, making it a work of fiction in their view.
Then there's that the bible references plenty events that clearly didn't happen, such as a global flood or the plagues of Egypt, which definitely is fiction.
It seems pointless. If somebody already has enough privileges on your server to mess with the logs, how is a hash going to help? There's a whole bunch of things an attacker can do that makes this useless.
Most obviously, they can corrupt or erase the contents of the file. Noticeable, but the traces of you accessing can be deleted, so that the admin can't figure out who did it.
The attacker can save an old file, do whatever needs hiding, and replace the file with the old copy. Depending on how it works this may result in logging being continued to the replaced file, or the log daemon keeping to write into a now nameless file, while an old one is visible in the directory instead.
The hash seems pointless. If the attacker can modify the logs directly, they likely have root access, which means they can debug any process, and subvert any cryptography that might be happening. They can also regenerate the log file with the correct hashes but with a few deleted lines, or replace the daemon with one that doesn't log some things.
Disagree.
I don't see what one's credibility has to do with the language one uses. Credibility comes from having data that backs one's position, and there's lots of it for climate change, including multiple groups that came up with the same conclusion.
But it is a black and white issue: it either happens or it doesn't. I don't understand what would constitute an acceptable way of putting it in your view.
Every single generation seems to have been saying the same thing.
Yes. Age is not a cure for stupidity. Some people absorb information like a sponge and are well informed and well read at 20. Some people manage to plug their ears and know nothing at 60.
The only good way of finding out what a person knows is testing their knowledge. Age is irrelevant.
You're confusing two separate things.
1. A .tar.gz can be uncompressed, and the installer executed from a GUI. Just because most people use the command line for it, doesn't mean you can't untar something from the GUI of your choice.
2. A .deb or a .rpm can be installed by just clicking on it, without needing anything extra. No special software is needed. Manual uncompression isn't needed either.
Steam and Apple's app store aren't necessary when the OS already provides the same functionality. If you don't like clicking .deb files, then use the software manager app instead.
I like the idea, and I agree: there's no need to come up with something new and strange when Linux already has perfectly good package management.
I think the only thing that is needed is a distributed system for the root servers.
Then everybody can keep using their BIND or whatever setup, and the only action needed is to register it in the system, and for users to change to a different resolver.
I think this is a sign that DNS needs getting replaced with a non-centralized system.
Is there anybody working on such a thing?
You should pay more attention when reading.
What micromanagement? You double click the .deb or .rpm, it asks if you want to install it, and that's it.
Yes. If you really want a GUI you can always uncompress and doubleclick in one instead. If it's a package then just clicking it will bring up the software manager, what else is needed?
I do not need my stuff to be managed by some third party. I want to deal with the developer only, and nobody else.
Irrelevant.
Here in the EU, you're the owner of your data. You have the right to request from any company that has personally identifiable data on you for any reason, to request it to be corrected, or to request it to be deleted.
There are also limits on how the information can be used.
Compliance with this isn't optional. There are big sanctions for not complying with the requirements, which go as high half a million Euro for the "very grave" category in some countries. And since at least where I am, the agency is self-financed, they're quite keen on collecting those.
Don't like it? Don't do business in the EU.
"Feel" is the key word. Enough tech can solve that problem. There are two ways:
The "precision machined" option: What high end cell phones go for. Ignore the handmade part entirely. Make things with a precision to the fraction of a millimeter, shiny and perfectly polished beyond the ability of the best artist.
The "faux handmade" option: Take the above and add a "human" touch by engraving something with a laser/CNC machine, to give it the "crafted by an artist" sort of look. With good enough equipment you can take that precision and mirror all the imperfections of something made by human hands, if you want.
They'll get there. At some point they'll show up with some sort of huge 3D printer, make the whole structure for the house, then glue on wooden panels over that for the sake making it feel handmade.
I've seen the fake brick version already on a photo of a house after a hurricane.
You can have anything you want, if you pay for it. People have built all sorts of weird houses: The hobbit home from LOTR, houses made from shipping containers, geodesic domes, etc.
I don't think that's what the grandparent was talking about though. Being an electrician or a plumber requires education, and as far as I can't tell they're not fields that need a lot of people.
How would this accountability work, anyway?
A lot of the people on kickstarter are asking for money they will use up on manufacturing, or for living expenses while they say, write a book. Most also ask for the bare minimum because if it's not reached they don't get anything.
By the time people start complaining, there's unlikely to be anything left.
I treat Kickstarter like a high risk investment. Don't pay into it more than you can afford to lose.
Projects I contributed to in general seem to be going well.
I think that's an acceptable tradeoff. I do not think that rewarding the very few people that indeed deserve it outweighs the problems patents currently cause.
Also, it seems we have reached the point where lone inventors are unlikely to make much advancement, without running into a patent issue themselves. Once the modern era of patent wars and "defensive patents" started, every company started acquiring more and more of them and trying to make them as broad as possible.
The IOCCC is cool, but the Underhanded C Contest was a lot more valuable.
The entries for the IOCCC can show a lot of cleverness, but nobody in their right mind would accept such code. The beauty of the Underhanded C ones is that the code looks reasonable, but does extremely undesirable things.
You first.
Also, just what kind of low cost labor are you thinking of, anyway? There's a constant push to eliminate as much of the lowest cost labor as possible. Where does your hypothetical uneducated worker go?
Well, they could go work at a warehouse. Except not for long. Now there is warehouse automation. Yes, people are still needed there, but they need much fewer people, and the people needed are completely disposable. There's zero chances for advancement. If you don't go nuts from years of picking up a package from one robot, passing it through a scanner, and placing it in another, you'll probably be out of a job in 10 years anyway, as they'll figure out how to eliminate the remaining human labor eventually.
Or they could go work at a supermarket. Which also keep reducing worker count through tech like RFID and attempts at automatic checkout systems. They'll get there eventually.
Maybe they could go work in construction. Except the tech will get there as well. You can bet that the construction companies are salivating at the prospect of having machines that print walls, and they'll get made at some point.
My point is, what you're advocating is increasing the amount of people in a segment of the population that's quickly becoming obsolete. A lot of those people will find out that they can't get a job because nobody needs a brainless drone anymore. That's not good for the economy (because unemployed people don't buy much), and not good for political stability either.
Have you considered that maybe like say, programming, biology is also a big field with a lot of room for specialization?
Just because somebody can do a good job of writing an operating system doesn't mean they'd be a good game programmer. Same way, I don't see why this guy would necessarily have the right skills to work on diabetes.
Also, on what grounds do you think you can command people to do whatever research you think is important? If it's that big of a deal for you, why aren't you doing the research yourself, or at least funding it?
Which band? You have a chance for some self-promotion, why are you ignoring it?
Welcome to 2011, where anybody can make music, and where there's an ever growing amount of stuff to listen to. Your new music then makes a smaller and smaller addition to the whole.
People still buy ABBA CDs. It sounds perfectly good, and a lot of people don't particularly feel like trying to filter out the good songs of 2011 from the trash when they can just buy a collection of the classics and have something perfectly nice to listen to while commuting.
No, I don't plan to shut up.
Here's where I stand: I care about my freedom and my Internet much more than I care about my music. If push comes to shove, I'll glady accept having the entire music industry bankrupt, if it means they stop trying to mess with my hardware, my Internet connection, and sneakily trying to reach into my wallet.
One day I looked at an invoice, and noticed that half the purchase price for some DVD-Rs amounted to a tax for the music industry. So, I decided to vote with my dollars. In the last 5 years I've not bought any music. Where I am, they tax recordable media, so I stopped buying DVD-Rs as well. They tax other media too, so I just have it shipped from another country (at extra shipping expense, purely for the satisfaction of not giving money to organizations I don't like)
No, I don't pirate it either, I just keep listening to what I have and find alternative things to listen to (music from Jamendo, TED talks, etc). That's just it, I'm tired of this music industry crap, and decided they will not have any of my money. No matter what anti-piracy measures are taken, no matter what laws are passed, I'm done with the music industry, and they're not getting another cent from me that I can avoid paying, even if it involves shipping hard disks from the other side of the planet. Sony has empty floors now? Good.
Only way I will pay for music ever again is if it comes from a street musician, or indie musician who is not associated with the various recording associations.
Switched to Linux long ago. Got Linux on the laptop, servers, cell phone (N900), WiFi AP, at home and at work.
I've not really had to use anything else in 5 years or so. Very rarely needed to use a Windows VM, but not for anything resembling real usage.
Last version I really used for serious work was Windows 2000. Used XP for a bit, mostly as a way of launching PuTTY sessions and Firefox. Haven't really had to deal with Vista or anything newer.
On the rare ocassion I have to use a Windows box, I find I can't wait to switch back, as it seems to be purpose made to drive me nuts. Sure, my personal home setup worked well because I bothered to maintain it, but even that took some thought, maintenance and fairly regular reformatting. I find Linux keeps working well for much longer.
Currently I run Ubuntu, though I've not even seen Unity yet. I used to run a KDE desktop, now switched to a XFCE one due to maxing out the amount of RAM on my hardware and wanting to squeeze out a bit more performance of what I have.