4) Get over it and stop being a bad WWW author. Once the content hits the user's computer, anything can happen. Spend your time on the content instead of stupid scripts to try to force a display independent medium to look the same on everything.
Oddly enough, the presentation being decided on the client-side was EXACTLY the intent of HTML. Stuff like GreaseMonkey, AdBlock, user CSS, etc. is supposed to be possible. The user is supposed to decide how the HTML will ultimately be output.
That's why the Flash infestation is bad. It's why WWW content control is bad. It's why PDF instead of HTML is bad. It takes away output control from the user. It takes away the whole point of these markup languages.
No, you use the mouse to aim and the keyboard to move. Also, you can't properly use a gun with one hand. And gun motion is going to change your aim, not your position.
When badly simulating the real world on a monitor it shouldn't be surprising that you can't adapt real world interactions well.
People have the advantage of being able to move many body parts independantly. Right now, we can't track all of those things for the purposes of a video game. You would need to track head position, body position, eyes, arms, hands, and wrist angles. Then you would need a way of translating motion that didn't suck.
For a FPS, you could cheat the a bit and you would only need body position, gun position and angle, and direction to face. That last one is the difficult one! You could make it happen ok if you had a VR headset type display, but would still need movement translation.
I don't want to argue against any points other than the dev numbers. You're right on with the others in so far as the facts. The only point we *really* seem to disagree on is the performance. Given the piss poor code I've seen from other languages, Java is almost certainly faster in many cases. I just get annoyed when people say that it's faster, end of story, do not pass go.
Don't forget that Java is basically a cost-free modern platform to get your hands on. I'm sure there are a lot of students and amateurs that download it, but unfortunately that article isn't going to show the differences between them and professionals.
I suppose that leaves it as a difference of opinion as I don't have anything to back up my statement on the numbers.
Actually, they charged for encoders. Not like that's much better. They had a patent on the produced bitstream that represented the MP3 format. I don't think they even *could* force you to pay anything for a decoder unless you used part of their reference implementation.
Bub, you miss out on some very big things here. I'll take it in the stages that they occurred to me.
First, Java code might be able to be faster than full native code, but for a few issues. You have to load the Java VM and initialize it. That takes a fair bit of time and memory. Then you have to convert the bytecode to native instructions (!!) and execute them. Java gets a speed improvement because it can do different kinds of optimizations and predictions than a traditional compiler can do, as a result of pseudo-interpreted bytecode.
A virtual machine can be an emulator. A VM is just not strictly an emulator in the modern definition. But it does create a fake environment that the code is "compiled" to. That "compiled" bytecode then has to be converted to native code to execute. You have abstraction between your code and everything else.
Way back in the day we had a way of loading code dynamically without shared objects. They were called overlays. You literally loaded them on top of another segment of code. This was done mostly to get around memory limitations.
Opinion: Java really doesn't have any features that make it worth the failings. Anything you can do in Java, I can do in C/C++. Java is written in C/C++!
Also, don't get your hopes up about those "millions of other professional developers". I doubt there are millions of developers, and most are certainly not Java devs.
Same thing that happens with most cars. The engine stops and you lose power-assisted systems. No more power steering, power brakes, power door locks, power windows, windshield wipers, horn, lights, etc. Not a friendly situation at all!
Some people out there aren't that appreciative of being forced to have airbags, ABS, seat belts, etc. The pollution controls are reasonable, and more so every day. You can retrofit many things to an older car to fix some of that up.
Basically, leave things up to the people they effect. Environmental concerns effect everyone. Personal safety just effects you.
Vehicle taxes are ridiculous anyway. In the USA it is very difficult to live without a car; to go without one is only an option in cities. The government use the drivers license as a hostage for countless things as a result. I would have to say that the Japanese way is the wrong way, but it is the way they decided, and that's up to them.
I'd agree that digital brakes are not something I would want. Volkswagen uses a throttle by wire setup now, and I don't mind that. I've had an accelerator cable break on me while trying to merge on the highway. This is less likely to break if properly designed (which I feel it is). It also makes the cruise control work better.
I wouldn't want a car that I couldn't decide to be in full control of. I disable my stability management system as soon as I turn on the car, for example. If the car starts doing something that computer would override, there's a damned good chance that I'm doing it on purpose.
Would you get rid of your automatic transmission? That takes away your control over the car a dramatic amount! It's three quarters of the reason that I always buy cars with a manual transmission. (Honestly, the other quarter is because I think they're much more fun to drive.) The automatic is more difficult in poor weather (you can't engine brake), less fuel efficient, has less performance (result of gearing), causes the brakes to wear faster (engine braking again), and make the vehicle quite a bit heavier. You also have much less control over the car if your brakes fail. With the manual you can change gear and engine brake the car, rather than trying the hand brake first. This is always a better plan!
Many cars also only have power-assisted steering. This means that it will still work without hydraulics, it will just require a lot of muscle. I've driven cars without power steering before, and it's not a big deal; you get used to it fast. Unfortunately, a power-assisted steering system is much harder to use without the power. I think it's worth it, though. The likelihood of losing pressure while driving at a decent RPM isn't that great, and you're likely to have some warning signs. Basically, it can be dealt with even if it does die.
A lot of these things aren't a problem if you actively check your car and properly maintain your car. Many problems occur because people treat them as black boxes instead of learning about them and being responsible. Very much like how different the average computer user is now: their computers are in a sorry state because they're trying to be a black-box appliance.
They can't make the IRS charge you a fine, but I bet you that the IRS has that 500$ hidden in a regulation somewhere as an administrative fee or tax estimation or something. Perhaps they decided that you must be leaving the country to earn an income and not report it. I'm not sure what to tell you.
Like the above poster said, though, they can't refuse you the passport if you don't provide the SSN. They can throw a temper tantrum, but ultimately, they have to issue it without one.
You don't need to have a SSN as an US citizen until you're an adult, either. There are a few cases that can make you get one earlier, and most people just have one issued right away when they have a child. If you leave the country before one has been issued, you can still get that passport, they'll just threaten you with that potential fee. (See the "may" in your wording.)
In MA, Federal law says that schools can't make me use my SSN. If you're silly enough to *give* it to them, then they can use it. The Privacy Act of 1974 says that a government agency cannot deny you anything as a result of your refusal to disclose your SSN, unless the use of the SSN is mandated by statute. I wasn't able to find a statute that says a local school department needs any student's SSN.
If they're messing with you on it, I bet you have a lawsuit in the works. Try it out and see if maybe it helps to fix the problem. These sort of places really need to learn better.
The private sector isn't supposed to use SSNs to begin with. Take a look at the Social Security Act (1936 I believe) and then at the Privacy Act of 1974.
We don't need RealID or anything other stupid thing, we just need to enforce the existing laws. Just like almost everything else Congress passes new laws about.
No they really should never be used for anything other than social security. As in how the law that creates social security says that it may only be used for social security. All other uses are actually supposed to be illegal. Then Congress had to go and screw up and let the IRS use it in 1961. However, in 1974, they made it illegal for any government agency to require you to disclose your SSN unless specifically mandated by statute.
So really, no college, bank, or most anything else is allowed to make you give them your SSN. If you decided to actually sue that school, you might even win; then maybe places would stop trying to force you to use that damned number.
The "No Fly" list is considered to be national security, and so is not public record.
UPS and FedEx both do letter delivery on the same time frame as USPS. The USPS also does tracking, signature verification, and time sensitive delivery. This could have been verified from their web site.
Nowhere did this say "free or subsidized internet". You sell the access at above your cost to provide it. You subsidize the installation of the infrastructure, not the access. This is done for telephone and cable in various ways already. BTW, there are quite a few municipalities out there that *do* provide electric, phone, cable, internet, trash collection, etc. They don't subsidize the operating costs; they take less profit. If you don't want this, either don't live there, or vote differently. No public support tends to mean it doesn't happen, though you're right in that it is not always the case.
As for expansion: my town has authority over my town. It cannot decide to start running roads or levying taxes on a neighboring town. Similarly it cannot decide to start running fibre, building roads, or passing laws in another town.
Private broadband quality has deteriorated over time. Like I said, just because more people can get it doesn't make it better. More people can get McDonald's food now than twenty years ago, but the food is still lower quality. We could play "is too; is not" for the next month, but it wouldn't spontaneously invent proof on your part. I stated where the quality dropped.
Nothing makes me think municipal internet wouldn't do that, but the residents would have a say in its operation. You don't have that with a private company. Plus, just because there is more than one provider, doesn't make their service less crappy. Telco service, cable service, and most national ISP's restrict usage heavily. There just happens to be a few CLEC/ISP combos that allow for different service. In many places your only choice is an ILEC or cable carrier.
Plus, the facts show that you're wrong able cable internet quality of service. It's less reliable and more restricted, but faster and available in more places. If it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, who cares how fast it goes! Also, corporations can indirectly tax. If the ILEC wants to offer cheaper DSL, they can leverage their PSTN fees to offset DSL costs, raising the basic access price accordingly. The cable provider can offset cable internet costs by giving a "discount" on your internet access if you have cable already. They do this by simply taking a slightly smaller massive profit on the combined service. They still get their per subscriber profit if you don't get cable tv by charging more for the internet access.
And what is this "no alternative" garbage. If people were unhappy with municipal offerings, they don't have to use it, just like now with private offerings. They could say with the private company, they could just not have internet, they could use dial-up. It isn't like the cable operators and ILECs are just going to up and remove all their equipment because the government is also offering service.
I explained in another post to you just how all your insistence that there is not competetion against the government was wrong. In every market the government is involved that it is possible to compete, there is competition. Schools, fire prevention/protection, police, retirement, medical coverage, and so on. The only things you came up with that there was no competetion was either a government granted monopoly, or only feasable for one entity to do (ie: roads). In the case of roads, you would be a massive fool to let that privatize, as you need to guarantee access to everyone, regardless of whether they've paid some access fee. No matter what, I can walk or ride a bike down the road, even if I haven't paid the state for an auto/motorcycle operator's license. If it was private, that could be denied to me.
Also, you didn't give me real numbers, you gave me percentages you just made up. As I said, you sell the service, and provide the intrastructure. Seriously, go and research some of this stuff instead of being so paranoid.
This has been fun, but you can't argue this way, as much as I like to argue.
It is illegal for the government to censor. It is illegal for the government to censor.
You are not granting municipalities a monopoly. You are creating a base service to fill a need. If private business did it better, people would use that instead. If people distrusted the governemtn, they would use the private service.
Government did not hold monopolies on phone or cable. They allowed private companies to hold a monopoly to get them to build the networks. It was worth it for the company to agree to provide service to everyone if they didn't have to worry about competition.
Your leasing suggestion will just lead to big providors leasing while they gauge profit to install their own network. Odds are that your state doesn't own the power distribution grid. Odds are that a private company that is a state permitted monopoly owns it, just like everywhere else. You can pick and choose your power provider in most states now. Massachusetts does this, and they don't own the lines. National Grid/MassElectric owns the distribution grid.
Odds are that the TOS for a municipal ISP will reflect what the residents want. It will definitely be more open than a commercial interest TOS, because the government isn't allowed to do many things that are fine in private sector. Anything that municipal ISP did is likely to be public record, as well.
First, for your library filtering: that is a failing of the market. Those filters are provided by companies who refuse to publish their block lists. If that list was compiled by the government, they would be required to turn over the contents.
Second, to refute your competition argument. There *IS* competetition to the USPS. They are companies like FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc. As for water district, roads, and similar, there isn't competition because it isn't worth it. The barrier to entry is astronomically high. You would have to obtain easments and right-of-ways to lay all our piping, or run your roadway. This doesn't happen because it just isn't worth it. There is competition to social security, medicare, fire services, police services, hospitals, schools, and more. They all do rather well.
Why would the government get into broadband? First reason is that the citizens want them it. Second could be that it's a revenue source that could help fund other things. Any profit that municipal broadband makes can offset taxes.
Municipal internet access can't expand past the municipality without making the service go private and incorporate. That is very hard to make happen.
Private sector broadband service has deteriorated since it's inception. It has become more plentiful, and less expensive, but the service you get provides you with less. You now typically get filtered services, transfer caps, invisible traffic limits, blocked ports, the inability to run servers, inability to get static addressing. In some areas you can get service from a decent company who doesn't lie about what they're selling. In many areas you can only get cable internet, which has gotten worse over time. Perhaps Verizon's terrible service, or Comcast's invisible rules is better? Utilities subsidize one service with another, too.
If what you talk about with government run internet access happened, people would stop using it. Don't be ridiculous with your arguments. If you amended the Constitution, then there is something larger going on than filtering on your internet link. People are stupid/short-sighted, but they don't tend to actively try to get themselves screwed. You could force a vote on your local ballot and force the internet service private, or dismantle it entirely.
Do you know the model number? (eg: CT0072 or SB0092) It should be printed on the board. Also, the worst case, and maybe also the best case, is you can use the KX Project drivers. Not so great for gamers, but wonderful for musicians. You get much higher sound quality using these, and far less delay. Plus you can do ASIO and GSIF.
What sound card do you have? I've been able to get drivers for any Creative card I've ever run across, including odd OEM models. Perhaps I can tell you where to find them.
I see your difference, and that is better than my first impression. Still, doesn't zooming the icon interfere with your access to icons behind the edges of the zoomed one? (Or we're typing about two different things...;-)
This is entirely true. AOL filters their connections and runs a great deal of their traffic through proxies. It's a plus for insulating their subscribers, and a big minus for using the Internet as a peer. The subscribers probably don't know the difference, but they signed up for it, in theory knowing what they were buying: less access, more protection.
No, icon zooming is a bad idea. Things shouldn't move around like that, it makes the system harder to use. Leave icons and such in place and just make them arranged better and a bit larger. For example, every program throwing crap on the desktop is a bad thing. All the programs now that use the notification area is a bad thing. (Note the name there: notification.) As for the QuickLaunch, MS even turns that off by default now, making you use the seriously oversized and substantially more useless start menu. It's similar to throwing more buttons on the keyboard. It was only more convenient before because there was a few extra buttons that had obvious use. My keyboard has a pile of useless buttons, and I chose it because it was one of the ones out there that had the least of them damned things. Why do I need "Webcam, Messenger, iTouch, Search, Shopping, or F-Lock"?
Well, here in MA, USA the car is cheaper to insure and operate than taking public transit. It is also needed to get to public transit, and the only reasonable way to go anywhere but Boston and the immediate Boston-metro area. It can also take potentially 3 hours to get somewhere that is 30mins by car, and doesn't leave you stranded after midnight. Not suprising to me is that both of you points of benefit (fast and cheap) are completely false. For people that like living in high crime, poorly run, overcrowed, ridiculously expensive, and polluted cities, then fine I suppose public transit might be fast and cheap. Most of the world is not a city; nearly 100% of it, I would guess.
In other words, no, to hell with you, I enjoy the tremendous benefits of being able to go where I want, when I want. *YOU* can take public transit. *I* will drive my car. If you make the car generate power more efficiently or fix laws to allow for faster travel and enforce safety violations on the roads, and car transit gets better.
I've also never had to walk a few blocks to find a parking spot. Not even in a city. This includes New York City, Boston, Worcester, Albany, Hartford, New Haven, and Providence. Washington DC was pretty pitiful, but so is public transit there.
We're fixated on automobiles because it is the most effective available form of transit. It allows for freedom of movement.
1) Many developers HATE the Windows Registry. The thing is an abomination and makes life hellish. We don't need it.
2)/home (On Windows your user shouldn't even be able to save in/Program Files/, so their data is in their version of/home.)
3) You can. Use scp/ftp/whatever. (Files and Settings Transfer Wizard on Windows.)
4) No, use the package manager for that. I want to be able to see the files. Windows mucked this up severely. Not seeing the extensions and other files really screws people up and makes supporting them a lot more difficult.
5) Yes, damnit, and it shouldn't be the Windows UI, especially not the horrific Windows XP one.
6) MS was smart with the single Control Panel idea. If you don't place a link to it somewhere, people won't know. That's a problem, too. Having to hit CTRL+Q+3+# at the same time is not acceptable.
7) The Desktop way of doing things isn't the best way either, but I don't know what the right way is. A varient of a quote from Linus, I believe: All GUI's suck, it's just that the desktop sucks less than everything else.
Slashdot Mirror
I really hope that you're trying to troll.
4) Get over it and stop being a bad WWW author. Once the content hits the user's computer, anything can happen. Spend your time on the content instead of stupid scripts to try to force a display independent medium to look the same on everything.
Oddly enough, the presentation being decided on the client-side was EXACTLY the intent of HTML. Stuff like GreaseMonkey, AdBlock, user CSS, etc. is supposed to be possible. The user is supposed to decide how the HTML will ultimately be output.
That's why the Flash infestation is bad. It's why WWW content control is bad. It's why PDF instead of HTML is bad. It takes away output control from the user. It takes away the whole point of these markup languages.
No, you use the mouse to aim and the keyboard to move. Also, you can't properly use a gun with one hand. And gun motion is going to change your aim, not your position.
When badly simulating the real world on a monitor it shouldn't be surprising that you can't adapt real world interactions well.
People have the advantage of being able to move many body parts independantly. Right now, we can't track all of those things for the purposes of a video game. You would need to track head position, body position, eyes, arms, hands, and wrist angles. Then you would need a way of translating motion that didn't suck.
For a FPS, you could cheat the a bit and you would only need body position, gun position and angle, and direction to face. That last one is the difficult one! You could make it happen ok if you had a VR headset type display, but would still need movement translation.
I don't want to argue against any points other than the dev numbers. You're right on with the others in so far as the facts. The only point we *really* seem to disagree on is the performance. Given the piss poor code I've seen from other languages, Java is almost certainly faster in many cases. I just get annoyed when people say that it's faster, end of story, do not pass go.
Don't forget that Java is basically a cost-free modern platform to get your hands on. I'm sure there are a lot of students and amateurs that download it, but unfortunately that article isn't going to show the differences between them and professionals.
I suppose that leaves it as a difference of opinion as I don't have anything to back up my statement on the numbers.
Actually, they charged for encoders. Not like that's much better. They had a patent on the produced bitstream that represented the MP3 format. I don't think they even *could* force you to pay anything for a decoder unless you used part of their reference implementation.
Bub, you miss out on some very big things here. I'll take it in the stages that they occurred to me.
First, Java code might be able to be faster than full native code, but for a few issues. You have to load the Java VM and initialize it. That takes a fair bit of time and memory. Then you have to convert the bytecode to native instructions (!!) and execute them. Java gets a speed improvement because it can do different kinds of optimizations and predictions than a traditional compiler can do, as a result of pseudo-interpreted bytecode.
A virtual machine can be an emulator. A VM is just not strictly an emulator in the modern definition. But it does create a fake environment that the code is "compiled" to. That "compiled" bytecode then has to be converted to native code to execute. You have abstraction between your code and everything else.
Way back in the day we had a way of loading code dynamically without shared objects. They were called overlays. You literally loaded them on top of another segment of code. This was done mostly to get around memory limitations.
Opinion: Java really doesn't have any features that make it worth the failings. Anything you can do in Java, I can do in C/C++. Java is written in C/C++!
Also, don't get your hopes up about those "millions of other professional developers". I doubt there are millions of developers, and most are certainly not Java devs.
Same thing that happens with most cars. The engine stops and you lose power-assisted systems. No more power steering, power brakes, power door locks, power windows, windshield wipers, horn, lights, etc. Not a friendly situation at all!
;-)
You still have your hand brake, though.
Some people out there aren't that appreciative of being forced to have airbags, ABS, seat belts, etc. The pollution controls are reasonable, and more so every day. You can retrofit many things to an older car to fix some of that up.
Basically, leave things up to the people they effect. Environmental concerns effect everyone. Personal safety just effects you.
Vehicle taxes are ridiculous anyway. In the USA it is very difficult to live without a car; to go without one is only an option in cities. The government use the drivers license as a hostage for countless things as a result. I would have to say that the Japanese way is the wrong way, but it is the way they decided, and that's up to them.
I'd agree that digital brakes are not something I would want. Volkswagen uses a throttle by wire setup now, and I don't mind that. I've had an accelerator cable break on me while trying to merge on the highway. This is less likely to break if properly designed (which I feel it is). It also makes the cruise control work better.
I wouldn't want a car that I couldn't decide to be in full control of. I disable my stability management system as soon as I turn on the car, for example. If the car starts doing something that computer would override, there's a damned good chance that I'm doing it on purpose.
Would you get rid of your automatic transmission? That takes away your control over the car a dramatic amount! It's three quarters of the reason that I always buy cars with a manual transmission. (Honestly, the other quarter is because I think they're much more fun to drive.) The automatic is more difficult in poor weather (you can't engine brake), less fuel efficient, has less performance (result of gearing), causes the brakes to wear faster (engine braking again), and make the vehicle quite a bit heavier. You also have much less control over the car if your brakes fail. With the manual you can change gear and engine brake the car, rather than trying the hand brake first. This is always a better plan!
Many cars also only have power-assisted steering. This means that it will still work without hydraulics, it will just require a lot of muscle. I've driven cars without power steering before, and it's not a big deal; you get used to it fast. Unfortunately, a power-assisted steering system is much harder to use without the power. I think it's worth it, though. The likelihood of losing pressure while driving at a decent RPM isn't that great, and you're likely to have some warning signs. Basically, it can be dealt with even if it does die.
A lot of these things aren't a problem if you actively check your car and properly maintain your car. Many problems occur because people treat them as black boxes instead of learning about them and being responsible. Very much like how different the average computer user is now: their computers are in a sorry state because they're trying to be a black-box appliance.
They can't make the IRS charge you a fine, but I bet you that the IRS has that 500$ hidden in a regulation somewhere as an administrative fee or tax estimation or something. Perhaps they decided that you must be leaving the country to earn an income and not report it. I'm not sure what to tell you.
Like the above poster said, though, they can't refuse you the passport if you don't provide the SSN. They can throw a temper tantrum, but ultimately, they have to issue it without one.
You don't need to have a SSN as an US citizen until you're an adult, either. There are a few cases that can make you get one earlier, and most people just have one issued right away when they have a child. If you leave the country before one has been issued, you can still get that passport, they'll just threaten you with that potential fee. (See the "may" in your wording.)
In MA, Federal law says that schools can't make me use my SSN. If you're silly enough to *give* it to them, then they can use it. The Privacy Act of 1974 says that a government agency cannot deny you anything as a result of your refusal to disclose your SSN, unless the use of the SSN is mandated by statute. I wasn't able to find a statute that says a local school department needs any student's SSN.
If they're messing with you on it, I bet you have a lawsuit in the works. Try it out and see if maybe it helps to fix the problem. These sort of places really need to learn better.
The private sector isn't supposed to use SSNs to begin with. Take a look at the Social Security Act (1936 I believe) and then at the Privacy Act of 1974.
We don't need RealID or anything other stupid thing, we just need to enforce the existing laws. Just like almost everything else Congress passes new laws about.
No they really should never be used for anything other than social security. As in how the law that creates social security says that it may only be used for social security. All other uses are actually supposed to be illegal. Then Congress had to go and screw up and let the IRS use it in 1961. However, in 1974, they made it illegal for any government agency to require you to disclose your SSN unless specifically mandated by statute.
So really, no college, bank, or most anything else is allowed to make you give them your SSN. If you decided to actually sue that school, you might even win; then maybe places would stop trying to force you to use that damned number.
The "No Fly" list is considered to be national security, and so is not public record.
UPS and FedEx both do letter delivery on the same time frame as USPS. The USPS also does tracking, signature verification, and time sensitive delivery. This could have been verified from their web site.
Nowhere did this say "free or subsidized internet". You sell the access at above your cost to provide it. You subsidize the installation of the infrastructure, not the access. This is done for telephone and cable in various ways already. BTW, there are quite a few municipalities out there that *do* provide electric, phone, cable, internet, trash collection, etc. They don't subsidize the operating costs; they take less profit. If you don't want this, either don't live there, or vote differently. No public support tends to mean it doesn't happen, though you're right in that it is not always the case.
As for expansion: my town has authority over my town. It cannot decide to start running roads or levying taxes on a neighboring town. Similarly it cannot decide to start running fibre, building roads, or passing laws in another town.
Private broadband quality has deteriorated over time. Like I said, just because more people can get it doesn't make it better. More people can get McDonald's food now than twenty years ago, but the food is still lower quality. We could play "is too; is not" for the next month, but it wouldn't spontaneously invent proof on your part. I stated where the quality dropped.
Nothing makes me think municipal internet wouldn't do that, but the residents would have a say in its operation. You don't have that with a private company. Plus, just because there is more than one provider, doesn't make their service less crappy. Telco service, cable service, and most national ISP's restrict usage heavily. There just happens to be a few CLEC/ISP combos that allow for different service. In many places your only choice is an ILEC or cable carrier.
Plus, the facts show that you're wrong able cable internet quality of service. It's less reliable and more restricted, but faster and available in more places. If it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, who cares how fast it goes! Also, corporations can indirectly tax. If the ILEC wants to offer cheaper DSL, they can leverage their PSTN fees to offset DSL costs, raising the basic access price accordingly. The cable provider can offset cable internet costs by giving a "discount" on your internet access if you have cable already. They do this by simply taking a slightly smaller massive profit on the combined service. They still get their per subscriber profit if you don't get cable tv by charging more for the internet access.
And what is this "no alternative" garbage. If people were unhappy with municipal offerings, they don't have to use it, just like now with private offerings. They could say with the private company, they could just not have internet, they could use dial-up. It isn't like the cable operators and ILECs are just going to up and remove all their equipment because the government is also offering service.
I explained in another post to you just how all your insistence that there is not competetion against the government was wrong. In every market the government is involved that it is possible to compete, there is competition. Schools, fire prevention/protection, police, retirement, medical coverage, and so on. The only things you came up with that there was no competetion was either a government granted monopoly, or only feasable for one entity to do (ie: roads). In the case of roads, you would be a massive fool to let that privatize, as you need to guarantee access to everyone, regardless of whether they've paid some access fee. No matter what, I can walk or ride a bike down the road, even if I haven't paid the state for an auto/motorcycle operator's license. If it was private, that could be denied to me.
Also, you didn't give me real numbers, you gave me percentages you just made up. As I said, you sell the service, and provide the intrastructure. Seriously, go and research some of this stuff instead of being so paranoid.
This has been fun, but you can't argue this way, as much as I like to argue.
It is illegal for the government to censor. It is illegal for the government to censor.
You are not granting municipalities a monopoly. You are creating a base service to fill a need. If private business did it better, people would use that instead. If people distrusted the governemtn, they would use the private service.
Government did not hold monopolies on phone or cable. They allowed private companies to hold a monopoly to get them to build the networks. It was worth it for the company to agree to provide service to everyone if they didn't have to worry about competition.
Your leasing suggestion will just lead to big providors leasing while they gauge profit to install their own network. Odds are that your state doesn't own the power distribution grid. Odds are that a private company that is a state permitted monopoly owns it, just like everywhere else. You can pick and choose your power provider in most states now. Massachusetts does this, and they don't own the lines. National Grid/MassElectric owns the distribution grid.
Odds are that the TOS for a municipal ISP will reflect what the residents want. It will definitely be more open than a commercial interest TOS, because the government isn't allowed to do many things that are fine in private sector. Anything that municipal ISP did is likely to be public record, as well.
First, for your library filtering: that is a failing of the market. Those filters are provided by companies who refuse to publish their block lists. If that list was compiled by the government, they would be required to turn over the contents.
Second, to refute your competition argument. There *IS* competetition to the USPS. They are companies like FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc. As for water district, roads, and similar, there isn't competition because it isn't worth it. The barrier to entry is astronomically high. You would have to obtain easments and right-of-ways to lay all our piping, or run your roadway. This doesn't happen because it just isn't worth it. There is competition to social security, medicare, fire services, police services, hospitals, schools, and more. They all do rather well.
Why would the government get into broadband? First reason is that the citizens want them it. Second could be that it's a revenue source that could help fund other things. Any profit that municipal broadband makes can offset taxes.
Municipal internet access can't expand past the municipality without making the service go private and incorporate. That is very hard to make happen.
Private sector broadband service has deteriorated since it's inception. It has become more plentiful, and less expensive, but the service you get provides you with less. You now typically get filtered services, transfer caps, invisible traffic limits, blocked ports, the inability to run servers, inability to get static addressing. In some areas you can get service from a decent company who doesn't lie about what they're selling. In many areas you can only get cable internet, which has gotten worse over time. Perhaps Verizon's terrible service, or Comcast's invisible rules is better? Utilities subsidize one service with another, too.
If what you talk about with government run internet access happened, people would stop using it. Don't be ridiculous with your arguments. If you amended the Constitution, then there is something larger going on than filtering on your internet link. People are stupid/short-sighted, but they don't tend to actively try to get themselves screwed. You could force a vote on your local ballot and force the internet service private, or dismantle it entirely.
Do you know the model number? (eg: CT0072 or SB0092) It should be printed on the board. Also, the worst case, and maybe also the best case, is you can use the KX Project drivers. Not so great for gamers, but wonderful for musicians. You get much higher sound quality using these, and far less delay. Plus you can do ASIO and GSIF.
KX Project:
http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/
What sound card do you have? I've been able to get drivers for any Creative card I've ever run across, including odd OEM models. Perhaps I can tell you where to find them.
I see your difference, and that is better than my first impression. Still, doesn't zooming the icon interfere with your access to icons behind the edges of the zoomed one? (Or we're typing about two different things... ;-)
This is entirely true. AOL filters their connections and runs a great deal of their traffic through proxies. It's a plus for insulating their subscribers, and a big minus for using the Internet as a peer. The subscribers probably don't know the difference, but they signed up for it, in theory knowing what they were buying: less access, more protection.
No, icon zooming is a bad idea. Things shouldn't move around like that, it makes the system harder to use. Leave icons and such in place and just make them arranged better and a bit larger. For example, every program throwing crap on the desktop is a bad thing. All the programs now that use the notification area is a bad thing. (Note the name there: notification.) As for the QuickLaunch, MS even turns that off by default now, making you use the seriously oversized and substantially more useless start menu. It's similar to throwing more buttons on the keyboard. It was only more convenient before because there was a few extra buttons that had obvious use. My keyboard has a pile of useless buttons, and I chose it because it was one of the ones out there that had the least of them damned things. Why do I need "Webcam, Messenger, iTouch, Search, Shopping, or F-Lock"?
Sigh.
Well, here in MA, USA the car is cheaper to insure and operate than taking public transit. It is also needed to get to public transit, and the only reasonable way to go anywhere but Boston and the immediate Boston-metro area. It can also take potentially 3 hours to get somewhere that is 30mins by car, and doesn't leave you stranded after midnight. Not suprising to me is that both of you points of benefit (fast and cheap) are completely false. For people that like living in high crime, poorly run, overcrowed, ridiculously expensive, and polluted cities, then fine I suppose public transit might be fast and cheap. Most of the world is not a city; nearly 100% of it, I would guess.
In other words, no, to hell with you, I enjoy the tremendous benefits of being able to go where I want, when I want. *YOU* can take public transit. *I* will drive my car. If you make the car generate power more efficiently or fix laws to allow for faster travel and enforce safety violations on the roads, and car transit gets better.
I've also never had to walk a few blocks to find a parking spot. Not even in a city. This includes New York City, Boston, Worcester, Albany, Hartford, New Haven, and Providence. Washington DC was pretty pitiful, but so is public transit there.
We're fixated on automobiles because it is the most effective available form of transit. It allows for freedom of movement.
1) Many developers HATE the Windows Registry. The thing is an abomination and makes life hellish. We don't need it.
/home (On Windows your user shouldn't even be able to save in /Program Files/, so their data is in their version of /home.)
2)
3) You can. Use scp/ftp/whatever. (Files and Settings Transfer Wizard on Windows.)
4) No, use the package manager for that. I want to be able to see the files. Windows mucked this up severely. Not seeing the extensions and other files really screws people up and makes supporting them a lot more difficult.
5) Yes, damnit, and it shouldn't be the Windows UI, especially not the horrific Windows XP one.
6) MS was smart with the single Control Panel idea. If you don't place a link to it somewhere, people won't know. That's a problem, too. Having to hit CTRL+Q+3+# at the same time is not acceptable.
7) The Desktop way of doing things isn't the best way either, but I don't know what the right way is. A varient of a quote from Linus, I believe: All GUI's suck, it's just that the desktop sucks less than everything else.
Bub, that's thicker than even *I* would dare to lay it on, heh. :)