Is there really a "Microsoft tax"? When I looked at laptops, the same hardware was actually cheaper with Windows than with Linux.
Er, whut? The MS Tax started out as, "Buy new machine; comes with Win* pre-installed whether buyer wanted that or not. Good luck saying no to the EULA and getting reimbursed for the Win* you didn't want."
If the same hardware sells for less with Win* installed than with anything else installed, that's even more blatant. Buy a machine with no Win* installed, and you'll pay more for the privilege. Hey!?!
I'm not really taking sides on this. For me, blowing away Win* and converting it to a Linux box has always been an enjoyable esthetic experience for me, well worth the OEM installed price of Win*.
According to his own page (Andrew Nikolic), "I have removed my response on this issue from Facebook"
That's it?!? No apology for having no sense of humour? No apology for threatening to report FB Likes to employers? No apology for having blown innocuous criticism way out of proportion when he's running for a seat in the legislature? What's he going to do in candidate debates? Bring a gun?
What I see here is that people have discovered "hey, I can download stuff for free" and then just make up all sorts of excuses like "RIAA suppresses innovation" to desperately justify what they are doing.
What I see here is your lack of reading comprehension. Some of us despise the *AAs for what they're doing to legislatures the world over. We despise them for their Hollywood accounting schemes that leave the real artists in debt to the distribution companies. The IP maximalists are making money hand over fist, so much so that they can afford to buy legislation favorable (they believe) to them, yet they're equally convinced that piracy is destroying their gravy train. They're like children running around with their fingers in their ears shouting, "Lalalalalala..." They don't listen to reasoned arguments, and anyone who disagrees with them is assumed to be a pirate, by definition.
Some of us advocate boycotting everything even remotely related to the *AAs, hoping they'll just die and wither away troubling the world no further. The anti-piracy crusade these middlemen are on is immoral and abusive to artists and fans and to legal systems the world over, and I for one can't wait to see the back of them.
I won't buy their stuff, I won't steal their stuff, and I won't consume their stuff. I'm looking forward to the day the artists wise up and stop falling for their spiel. The artists don't need them when the Internet can do their distributing and marketing for them, and we certainly don't need the secondary effects of the anti-piracy crusade they're pushing.
Thank you. That'd be an interesting acronym to plug into a search engine.
They got the "H" wrong though. That one started with the MIT Model Railroading Club, which morphed into computing with the advance of tech. Hacking back then was just generic fiddling with tech. No malicious implications attached.
They got the "A" wrong too. You don't have to be a bomb thrower to be an anarchist. Cf. Ruby Ridge. They just wanted to be left alone.
They used 'hack' in the populist security sense, rather than the traditional sense
Where does everybody get the sense that back in the day we didn't use the word for both of those things?
Back then, "crackers" "hacked" into systems and just walked around in them looking at stuff. They tried to be careful to not break anything, and just tried to learn from the experience of being in a system that they didn't know. Steve and Woz' phone phreaking was a lot more malicious than what those crackers were doing. S&W were actually stealing access from POTS systems with their antics.
Later, black hats figured out how to do the same thing and started raping systems they broke into for valuable, exploitable intel. That's when politicians started to make "cracking" illegal.
It has never been surprising to me that unsophisticated computer users and the wider public (incl. "MSM") couldn't distinguish between the many different shades of gray in that spectrum. When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Clifford Stoll's "A Cuckoo's Egg" was the tipping point.
With important new partnership, Microsoft open a new front on malware distributors, by curbing proliferation of the fundamental skills needed to write software! Windows has never been more secure!
Yes, and you absolutely, positively, without question need to be using a Linux system to do anything like that. It's not like just about any sort of network capable system can be used for that sort of nefarious purpose.
Somewhere, a Barnes & Noble manager's employees are giggling their heads off behind the back of their oblivious manager, only barely managing to not pee themselves, patting him on the back with "Kick me, I'm stupid!" signs. He's going to go home tonight and hear his ten year old son say, "Dad, you wouldn't believe what I heard some incredibly stupid B&N manager did today!"
That's when he pulls out the Scotch and starts to beat his wife.
Mods, please take your meds. This was modded Troll?!? It's Funny, ffs!
By the way, I'd also like to mention here that my brother in law was Marina Sirtis' personal assistant last week during the Comiccon here. I am so proud of him. I hope she had a lovely time.
Just because one or two people may use hammer to hurt others, doesn't mean all shops should be banned from selling them.
I just used that same thing at the dinner table last night defending computers in general. You can use a hammer to build a house or to bash in someone's head. It's just a tool. If they couldn't find a hammer, there's lots of other tools they could find that would suffice. Al Capone liked baseball bats, according to the movie.
P. S. I like baseball bats too. That doesn't mean I want to bash anyone's head in.
That's correct, they stock self-defense and physical exercise magazines. Those magazines don't talk about how to go out and find people to hurt.
Last I saw, they stock Soldier of Fortune and militia culture mags. Timothy McVeigh is at least an order of magnitude scarier than Linus Torvalds (no offense meant to Linus:-).
Or just a "unfortunate coincidence" that the magazine censured over a word is a Linux magazine?
I love a good conspiracy theory, but it feels like this has a lot more stupid/dumbth involved (since 2600 is still allowed) than it does evil/malevolence. However, that could just be me.
Using Linux is kind of like being one of the kids whose parents were alcoholics but did their best, in between drunken rants about the futility of life.
Well, MY distro has the parents on methadone. It's clearly superior.
Ah, OpenBSD. Did you notice they just released their latest the other day?
Using Linux is like being a one eyed telepath in a world full of blind people, and you smell funny, so they grimace at you when you pass them but they don't have any clue why they need to.
That's because Linux is an OS used predominately by criminals to hack machines.
(0) infidel/home/keeling_ dict predominately No definitions found for "predominately"
On topic: Is it just me, or did the whole world get a lot more stupid on Monday? It's sure felt that way from here. What the hell is wrong with teaching people how to assess the security of their systems? That's Apple's job in this century?
If you grow up in a walled garden, you expect anyone who didn't to be a potential threat.
Look at what's happening to the conservatard hatred of homosexuality in the US. They themselves admit they've lost "this battle" against gay acceptance. That's the power of ideas.
Rick Santorum made it to the level of Presidential Candidate, not to mention Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and GWB. That's also the power of ideas.
It's on. It's on between the forces of darkness- the religious fundies in every nation- and civilization. My bet is on civilization. Let's roll.
I applaud your optimism but think you're way too optimistic. Renouncing Islam in Pakistan is still a capital offence. Being raped in Pakistan can land a woman in jail. Just walking to school can buy a girl a face full of sulphuric acid. Allah akbar. A religion of peace.
Plenty of countries throughout history have let themselves be held hostage by a minority composed of concerted fanatics. Coup de gras: Pakistan has nukes. Not good.
I missed the part of the Constitution that said "All provisions and amendments of this document are to be suspended during any period when the President says the country is at war."
Especially, when it seems your nation is always at war with someone or something.
Of course there is the issue of the people who run non-common hardware, such as TV-cards, special capture cards, etc. where no drivers are provided for linux. But for the common user? Ubuntu is ready, it is just that the common user is unaware...
Yes, if there's anything I'd suggest to noobs, don't try it with bleeding edge hardware. Linux doesn't get the inside access that commercial OSs have to manufacturers, so it's often a bit behind, especially in optimization.
On the other hand, it enables that you don't have to upgrade (throw away) hardware when your OS vendor decides it wants more money from you for their latest release. I have Intel P-IVs that run this stuff fine. I run 32 bit Sempron and 64 bit Turion dual core that run it fine.
Linux lets you ignore the bleeding edge that manufacturers want you to *need* to buy.
It basically comes down to Windows does more out of the box than linux because it was designed to be that way.
You must be a manager. I can't believe that anyone who actually knows their way around IT would believe this. Windows out of the box runs supplied crapware, other vendors installers, IE, and a couple of games.
Linux out of the box offers you the opportunity to download and install ca. 18,000 programs (in the case of Debian) for free. If you're a developer, you can go to work at once because all the tools are already there.
IMHO the problem has a lot to do with managing a large number of computers.
Also solved a long time ago. Check the/. archives. I saw a story about a guy who was setting up a bunch of machines for a convention, and he wanted to know how to keep them synced. There's plenty of ways.
Something along the lines of MS's Group Policies is needed.
I usually give up when I need to install a program I've downloaded from the web.... When it starts telling me to open a terminal and enter a string of commands, I get lost and give up. Fix this one issue and I would be a convert.
Fixed long ago. All the various distros have their own repos. Synaptic is a GUI that interfaces your system with your distro's repo. No, I don't use synaptic, but others swear by it (I prefer CLI). At least Suse and Redhat can do essentially the same thing, and Slackware and its downstreams do well here too.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there really a "Microsoft tax"? When I looked at laptops, the same hardware was actually cheaper with Windows than with Linux.
Er, whut? The MS Tax started out as, "Buy new machine; comes with Win* pre-installed whether buyer wanted that or not. Good luck saying no to the EULA and getting reimbursed for the Win* you didn't want."
If the same hardware sells for less with Win* installed than with anything else installed, that's even more blatant. Buy a machine with no Win* installed, and you'll pay more for the privilege. Hey!?!
I'm not really taking sides on this. For me, blowing away Win* and converting it to a Linux box has always been an enjoyable esthetic experience for me, well worth the OEM installed price of Win*.
WTF does that hillbilly racist/elitist datribe have to do with universities withholding transcripts on unpaid student loans?!?
According to his own page (Andrew Nikolic), "I have removed my response on this issue from Facebook"
That's it?!? No apology for having no sense of humour? No apology for threatening to report FB Likes to employers? No apology for having blown innocuous criticism way out of proportion when he's running for a seat in the legislature? What's he going to do in candidate debates? Bring a gun?
What I see here is that people have discovered "hey, I can download stuff for free" and then just make up all sorts of excuses like "RIAA suppresses innovation" to desperately justify what they are doing.
What I see here is your lack of reading comprehension. Some of us despise the *AAs for what they're doing to legislatures the world over. We despise them for their Hollywood accounting schemes that leave the real artists in debt to the distribution companies. The IP maximalists are making money hand over fist, so much so that they can afford to buy legislation favorable (they believe) to them, yet they're equally convinced that piracy is destroying their gravy train. They're like children running around with their fingers in their ears shouting, "Lalalalalala ..." They don't listen to reasoned arguments, and anyone who disagrees with them is assumed to be a pirate, by definition.
Some of us advocate boycotting everything even remotely related to the *AAs, hoping they'll just die and wither away troubling the world no further. The anti-piracy crusade these middlemen are on is immoral and abusive to artists and fans and to legal systems the world over, and I for one can't wait to see the back of them.
I won't buy their stuff, I won't steal their stuff, and I won't consume their stuff. I'm looking forward to the day the artists wise up and stop falling for their spiel. The artists don't need them when the Internet can do their distributing and marketing for them, and we certainly don't need the secondary effects of the anti-piracy crusade they're pushing.
Thank you. That'd be an interesting acronym to plug into a search engine.
They got the "H" wrong though. That one started with the MIT Model Railroading Club, which morphed into computing with the advance of tech. Hacking back then was just generic fiddling with tech. No malicious implications attached.
They got the "A" wrong too. You don't have to be a bomb thrower to be an anarchist. Cf. Ruby Ridge. They just wanted to be left alone.
They used 'hack' in the populist security sense, rather than the traditional sense
Where does everybody get the sense that back in the day we didn't use the word for both of those things?
Back then, "crackers" "hacked" into systems and just walked around in them looking at stuff. They tried to be careful to not break anything, and just tried to learn from the experience of being in a system that they didn't know. Steve and Woz' phone phreaking was a lot more malicious than what those crackers were doing. S&W were actually stealing access from POTS systems with their antics.
Later, black hats figured out how to do the same thing and started raping systems they broke into for valuable, exploitable intel. That's when politicians started to make "cracking" illegal.
It has never been surprising to me that unsophisticated computer users and the wider public (incl. "MSM") couldn't distinguish between the many different shades of gray in that spectrum. When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Clifford Stoll's "A Cuckoo's Egg" was the tipping point.
With important new partnership, Microsoft open a new front on malware distributors, by curbing proliferation of the fundamental skills needed to write software! Windows has never been more secure!
Yes, and you absolutely, positively, without question need to be using a Linux system to do anything like that. It's not like just about any sort of network capable system can be used for that sort of nefarious purpose.
Somewhere, a Barnes & Noble manager's employees are giggling their heads off behind the back of their oblivious manager, only barely managing to not pee themselves, patting him on the back with "Kick me, I'm stupid!" signs. He's going to go home tonight and hear his ten year old son say, "Dad, you wouldn't believe what I heard some incredibly stupid B&N manager did today!"
That's when he pulls out the Scotch and starts to beat his wife.
Thanks Linux. You made my damned day.
Mods, please take your meds. This was modded Troll?!? It's Funny, ffs!
By the way, I'd also like to mention here that my brother in law was Marina Sirtis' personal assistant last week during the Comiccon here. I am so proud of him. I hope she had a lovely time.
Quiet! B&N might catch on and stop selling 2600 as well!
So subscribe. Get yourself onto the fibbies watch list, and support the USPS.
Just because one or two people may use hammer to hurt others, doesn't mean all shops should be banned from selling them.
I just used that same thing at the dinner table last night defending computers in general. You can use a hammer to build a house or to bash in someone's head. It's just a tool. If they couldn't find a hammer, there's lots of other tools they could find that would suffice. Al Capone liked baseball bats, according to the movie.
P. S. I like baseball bats too. That doesn't mean I want to bash anyone's head in.
That's correct, they stock self-defense and physical exercise magazines. Those magazines don't talk about how to go out and find people to hurt.
Last I saw, they stock Soldier of Fortune and militia culture mags. Timothy McVeigh is at least an order of magnitude scarier than Linus Torvalds (no offense meant to Linus :-).
Odds are that Linux Format magazine is about to see an increase in circulation.
And B&N will be getting none of that. Funny how the world works. Classic exercise in shooting oneself in the foot.
WIndows is like being raised in Stepford.
Truer words were never written. Good one.
Microsoft: "We tried to be an Apple, but failed miserably, yet we wound up selling like hotcakes anyway. Go figure."
Or just a "unfortunate coincidence" that the magazine censured over a word is a Linux magazine?
I love a good conspiracy theory, but it feels like this has a lot more stupid/dumbth involved (since 2600 is still allowed) than it does evil/malevolence. However, that could just be me.
predominately | adverb
another term for predominantly.
Must be a Murricanism then.
Using Linux is kind of like being one of the kids whose parents were alcoholics but did their best, in between drunken rants about the futility of life.
Well, MY distro has the parents on methadone. It's clearly superior.
Ah, OpenBSD. Did you notice they just released their latest the other day?
Using Linux is like being a one eyed telepath in a world full of blind people, and you smell funny, so they grimace at you when you pass them but they don't have any clue why they need to.
[/.: "26 6 * * * /usr/local/bin/varnish_the_damned_cache_when_users_are_asleep"]
That's because Linux is an OS used predominately by criminals to hack machines.
(0) infidel /home/keeling_ dict predominately
No definitions found for "predominately"
On topic: Is it just me, or did the whole world get a lot more stupid on Monday? It's sure felt that way from here. What the hell is wrong with teaching people how to assess the security of their systems? That's Apple's job in this century?
If you grow up in a walled garden, you expect anyone who didn't to be a potential threat.
Pakistani military, no.
Pakistani intelligence service (ISI?), yes.
Look at what's happening to the conservatard hatred of homosexuality in the US. They themselves admit they've lost "this battle" against gay acceptance. That's the power of ideas.
Rick Santorum made it to the level of Presidential Candidate, not to mention Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and GWB. That's also the power of ideas.
It's on. It's on between the forces of darkness- the religious fundies in every nation- and civilization. My bet is on civilization. Let's roll.
I applaud your optimism but think you're way too optimistic. Renouncing Islam in Pakistan is still a capital offence. Being raped in Pakistan can land a woman in jail. Just walking to school can buy a girl a face full of sulphuric acid. Allah akbar. A religion of peace.
Plenty of countries throughout history have let themselves be held hostage by a minority composed of concerted fanatics. Coup de gras: Pakistan has nukes. Not good.
I missed the part of the Constitution that said "All provisions and amendments of this document are to be suspended during any period when the President says the country is at war."
Especially, when it seems your nation is always at war with someone or something.
Of course there is the issue of the people who run non-common hardware, such as TV-cards, special capture cards, etc. where no drivers are provided for linux. But for the common user? Ubuntu is ready, it is just that the common user is unaware...
Yes, if there's anything I'd suggest to noobs, don't try it with bleeding edge hardware. Linux doesn't get the inside access that commercial OSs have to manufacturers, so it's often a bit behind, especially in optimization.
On the other hand, it enables that you don't have to upgrade (throw away) hardware when your OS vendor decides it wants more money from you for their latest release. I have Intel P-IVs that run this stuff fine. I run 32 bit Sempron and 64 bit Turion dual core that run it fine.
Linux lets you ignore the bleeding edge that manufacturers want you to *need* to buy.
If we consider the fact that distractions (like switching to a different partition to get at a program I need to do the fun-work I am doing) ...
Good troll, ignorant one. Got it. You don't know how to use it. No shame.
You might have considered trying to learn how to use the shell (bash), appending its dir to your PATH, ...
You're not fooling anyone (that matters).
It basically comes down to Windows does more out of the box than linux because it was designed to be that way.
You must be a manager. I can't believe that anyone who actually knows their way around IT would believe this. Windows out of the box runs supplied crapware, other vendors installers, IE, and a couple of games.
Linux out of the box offers you the opportunity to download and install ca. 18,000 programs (in the case of Debian) for free. If you're a developer, you can go to work at once because all the tools are already there.
IMHO the problem has a lot to do with managing a large number of computers.
Also solved a long time ago. Check the /. archives. I saw a story about a guy who was setting up a bunch of machines for a convention, and he wanted to know how to keep them synced. There's plenty of ways.
Something along the lines of MS's Group Policies is needed.
No it's not.
I usually give up when I need to install a program I've downloaded from the web. ... When it starts telling me to open a terminal and enter a string of commands, I get lost and give up. Fix this one issue and I would be a convert.
Fixed long ago. All the various distros have their own repos. Synaptic is a GUI that interfaces your system with your distro's repo. No, I don't use synaptic, but others swear by it (I prefer CLI). At least Suse and Redhat can do essentially the same thing, and Slackware and its downstreams do well here too.