The entirety of Social Security is of dubious legality, but that's not here nor there. Compelled participation in a retirement program doesn't interest me, and I would choose to opt out of SS if I were both able to and ready to go back to private sector employement. My current job allows me to pay into a pension rather than SS. It is still not voluntary, but at least is better than the Federal way. I would rather see retirement be a completely private-sector and voluntary choice, but barring that, it is more appropriate at the State level.
I don't think the Federal should have no budget; I see considerable need for there to be a Federal government. We used to operate that level through excise and tariff. This kept it to a reasonable size, and prevented it from trampling State powers, as well as individual rights. It also allowed the States to be very different from each other, which is better for our freedoms. A combination of constant loans (the endless printing of fiat currency) and the ability to take as much of the GDP as desired has allowed the Federal to remove nearly all authority from the States and become much more powerful than ever intended.
The Constitution does not explicitly allow the Federal to issue passports, either. However, the purpose of such a document is more easily understood to be necessarily independant of any one State, and necessary for the security of the Nation. Also, many citizens are never issued a passport, since it is not required for any government service.
A DL is accepted across state lines because of reciprocal state agreement. Not all states accept out of state licenses for all things. For example, MA did not accept out of state DL as proof of age for liquor purchase for a long time. FWIW, the "power of the purse" is one of the many reasons why the Federal was never supposed to have a revenue source such as income tax: it let them gain undue power over the States and citizens. You can look fairly square at 1913 as the cause (amendments 16, 17).
Is the power to issue and regulate ID granted to the Federal by the Constitution? The answer is, obviously NO, IT IS NOT. That means that the Federal is barred from doing so, and that power is reserved to the States.
The passage that you reference reads: "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
Seeing that the Constitution does not give the Federal the power to issue individually identify and/or track all of the citizens of the country, nor does it give any power that depends on doing so, it is not necessary *or* proper for the Federal to do so.
Just because a parade of despots decided to take advantage of a gullible populace does not make them right for doing so.
1. New to Microsoft features, yes. Most of the huge, touted, wonderful features of Vista are the same sort that most users turn off right away. You have to love the ridiculous theme trash, the crap default sidebar, the poorly implemented 3d junk, etc. I love how I have to play games to get rid of that stuff... it really makes me love dealing with a new install of XP, and I just adore the time it takes to turn it all off in Vista. Keep it.
2. Vista is a nightmare to get to work on quite a few laptops, desktops, workstations, and everything else. Something about a total lack of useable drivers for a large amount of hardware. Ubuntu, on the other hand, just worked for everything I threw it on, but definitely had rough edges on a few laptops. I made sure that it worked on my hardware before any of it was purchased. I won't waste money on ATI hardware, so Vista is right out, for example.
4. My Linux install only implements the DRM on DVDs so far as to completely circumvent it. Seeing as to how Vista would attempt to disable my hardware instead, they don't seem equivalent. Most of the non-US world doesn't really give a damn about how the RIAA/MPAA wants to control all of the computers in the solar system, but would still like to watch movies and listen to music. MS just made it easier for all of those rotten groups to gain ownership over *your* computer, and they didn't have to do that. They certainly could have skipped *paying* for the "privilege". I know that I won't.
5. I have spent an order of magnitude more time fixing/working around Windows than I spent learning everything I know about UNIX and its derivatives. I would absolutely *love* to bill Microsoft for the time that I have wasted on their software.
7. The GP point was that if you have to retrain for Vista (and you certainly would have to), why not just save the money and migrate to Ubuntu. If you didn't notice, Vista is a lot different than Win2000 or WinXP.
As potentially good as security enhancements, such as UAC could be, Microsoft managed to screw such a simple thing up. There are far too many mundane things that trigger UAC, and MS implemented the entire feature in a complete half-assed fashion. Most users are going to turn it off, and it is useless in corporate deployments. Something like PatchGuard is also a great idea, if you didn't end up needing AV, add-in firewalls, and spyware scanners anyway.
For what it's worth, people like you are *why* we get stuck with the status quo. Quit being a short-sighted fool and put some effort into the day after tomorrow. MS is going to collapse eventually, just as every other monopoly has. Either their software will become completely unusable, or a better competitor will take the market, or perhaps the die through regulation. Whatever it is, it will happen eventually. Your mindset will put you, and whoever depends on you, firmly behind everyone else, hemmoraging cash.
You aren't paying for the music as much as the convenience of format and access. You can get Ogg Vorbis, MP3, or FLAC files, in whatever bitrates that you want. You pay by how much data you transfer. You can do searches, and you definitely get what you want. It is a whole lot like iTunes, but much cheaper, and without the DRM.
With P2P, you tend to get 128kbps MP3 files... sometimes you might get 160kbps or 192kbps, and often they are CBR instead of ABR or VBR. Not the best way in the world.
Also, the artists *could* receive money, but the RIAA and associated member companies refuse to collect their royalties from the applicable Russian copyright organization that has been collecting them.
Isn't this likely to cause even more foreign policy problems?
Perhaps installing a mobile weapons system using our civilian transport jets as a platform is not the *best* idea in the world. I get the feeling that many other countries won't like that idea that we're bringing such things into their airspace many times a day.
I do have to admit that the idea of a Boeing 747 shooting down a model rocket is amusing, though.
As far as parking tickets go, that is not within Federal jurisdiction. Some states may have made reciprocal agreements with foreign countries regarding tickets, though. I am aware that as a US citizen, the US expects me to follow Federal law no matter where I am. I don't believe that extends to State law, however.
A prisoner loses their right to vote, as does someone that is considered mentally deficient. It is uncommon that someone is sentenced in such a way that they are permanently barred from voting. Most of those cases involve Federal felonies. I don't agree with ever removing a person's right to vote. I stand by what I said: voting is a basic right of all citizens, I just don't agree with what the government has done in that regard, and I never will.
I like the idea of considering patent and such to be fiat currency. That makes it much easier to explain why it is perfectly reasonable to take it as a fine!
No, that is really not the same at all. First off, the parking ticket would have occurred in a foreign country, and so you shouldn't be punished for it in the US. Second, the right to vote is guaranteed to all citizens by the US Constitution. A patent is temporary property; the right to vote is a basic right of all citizens.
Revoking MS' patents would be more like issuing a very large fine, and forcing the company to pay it. Oh wait, that punishment might fit *exactly* to the crime! If we revoke any patents related to their violation, and begin to allow the free market to reassert itself, then MS may no longer fall afault of all the anti-trust laws that they are currently ignoring (and violating).
Well, will you look at that. I've been lied to by sales reps for quite some time, it would seem. Makes me wonder whether the Windows Server licenses that I've purchased in the past are actually real, either.
It looks like it's just for the client, at least. I don't think I know any business that followed that rule, which makes me wonder if they invented it recently.
The blurb from that Dell page is just saying that FreeDOS has nothing to do with MS and in no way gives you a license to use anything MS related. If you take the full quote, it makes much more sense. This was the line directly before the bold part:
"The open-source n Series desktops feature select popular models from the DimensionTM desktop, OptiPlexTM desktop and Dell PrecisionTM workstation lines available with a copy of the FreeDOSTM open-source operating system included in the box, ready to install."
As far the MS licenses, yes, if you have a volume license, you can certainly use it on bare hardware. There are plenty of places that do use white box systems, too. Most of the time, it just isn't worth the cost to maintain everything in-house, so you go to a Dell or IBM for hardware. If you have good people and policies, then white box is a nice cost cutting measure. No little hologram stickers are required.
There are unlimited licenses from MS, too. You just buy a site license, and don't worry about the numbers. Most vendors have something like that, just for the big companies.
If you want a really interesting view of exactly how much MS slashes pricing to con schools into force-feeding its software, take a look at "www.asap.com". If you go around in there, you will find a link to government and educational pricing. Things like a CAL for $2 and copies of Office Pro for $60.
So *NO*, schools definitely don't pay the same price!
Cairo was more of a platform plan than a specific OS. Win95, NT4, 2000, and Vista-before-removal all included pieces of Cairo, as did Exchange, and IIS/MSN Desktop Search. It was an object UI (Explorer), MS-RPC, X.500 Directory (Active Directory), object search (MSN Desktop), WinFS, and X.400 messaging (groupware).
MS did manage to deliver a piece of the Cairo platform in every NT OS revision, up to, but not including, XP and Vista. Now it looks like it could be another 5 years before MS adds the object filesystem to the OS. They *might*, just maybe, perhaps, deliver it in a new version of SQL Server, so they say.
I agree, every new UI adjustment in Windows has made my computer harder to use, by default. At least in XP, I could turn it all off and go back to the more functional Win2K mode. In Vista, I can't turn it all off any more, and now they are pushing all ISV products to have the same brain-dead designs. I don't tend to mind learning to use a new platform, but I *do* mind when the new platform is less efficient and/or less useful than the old one.
Try to stop and restart themes support in the services mmc applet. I had a very similar problem with RC1... every time that damned privilege escalation prompt came up, it would corrupt the fonts and theme elements.
I ran that on an Athlon64 3000 with 1GB RAM and an ATA133 drive. It was "ok", but it only took me four days to format it back to Ubuntu and XP. Definitely was slower than XP, a big pile of my software didn't work right, and it was ass-ugly if you turned off Aero. I don't think I noticed it swapping that much, but I wasn't running an IDE.
That's what they tell you to keep you happy. There are cameras on the checkouts in almost any large store to help prevent shorting the register, pocketing credit card receipts, or not ringing up items. Honestly, I would think that you'd have more problems with stock clerks than with cashiers.
I have always just walked from the register straight out the door. If someone were to run after me, I would probably stop and see what was up, but I'm not going to be treated like a criminal without a decent reason. If they are willing to make a scene, then they probably really thought I was doing something. I will give a store employee the benefit of the doubt on that one. That has never happened, and I doubt that it ever will.
On the other hand, some stores post policies as terms of shopping at their store. BJs and Sam's Club, for example, check your receipt on the way out. This is acceptable, since it was part of the terms for your being able to shop at that store.
Could you please point me to the setting that does this? As has been pointed out by oh so many people, Windows has the option to one time only cascade or tile the open windows. What it does *not* have is an option to auto-cascade or auto-tile windows as they are opened.
So what does that make you? Hint: it might be a socially inept Windows zealot that doesn't know how the platform works. Cascade/tile windows only does that one time. It does *NOT* auto-tile or auto-cascade windows, as I have to do it every time I open a new window.
And what happens when you open a new window? Does it actually continue to cascade/tile all new windows, as well? I still have never noticed it doing such a thing. (It doesn't auto-cascade or auto-tile new windows, btw.)
I think you missed the point. A Linux user that tries Windows is not going to like it, because it is very different. Likewise, a Windows user that just up and tries Linux is probably not going to be that thrilled. You need a better reason to switch platforms than hearing it was better.
3) You can auto-tile or auto-cascade windows under MS Windows? I never found anything of the sort in the 17 years that I've had a copy around.
4) I haven't seen the problem you are having. Maybe the poorly/un-documented interface for your network card differs slightly than what the manufacturer claims it as. Hard to troubleshoot in a post. Under Windows, you may enter your key in the vendor software, the Windows Zero Config software, through Network Properties, or through the advanced box in the vendor or Windows supplied wireless software. There may be others, but I don't have a copy of Windows to check. I never ran a Network Wizard to connect to a wireless network in Windows, so I guess that makes five.
Video) Ubuntu can't ship the restricted codecs in the default install. If they did that, they would have to make special discs depending on what country you are in. The US, for example, as idiotic laws that prevent many of those codecs from being distributed without licenses. MS can sign agreements, or pay money for licenses, to distribute. Ubuntu can't do that. It *IS* inconvenient, but that's the fault of bad laws, not bad design.
1) That's great, unless you have a Dell that comes with Roxio junk, or an older drive, or an older version of Nero that MS broke in a newer version of Windows, etc. I was on my fifth drive before I got a copy of Nero with one, and that's the only decent CD/DVD burning software on Windows.
K3b is nice software, and it does suck that the KDE and Gnome people haven't made things better. I find that a lot of KDE software is much nicer than the Gnome equivalent. I use Kopete instead of Gaim, Amarok instead of RhythmBox, and K3b instead of Nautilus or GnomeBaker. It doesn't take any time to start a KDE program on Gnome, at least not for me.
2) That wasn't the point the GP was making. Windows doesn't come with any programming software, at all. Getting some things to work is in the Not Fun category. Obviously, there are ports of most languages to Windows, it's just that some work better than others. Saying you have trouble running the latest MS Visual Studio.NET for MS Windows under Linux is pretty stupid, as Linux is not MS Windows.
It sounds like you had your Ubuntu install quite misconfigured. I'm not sure how that came about, but I made no changes to my system to get these things working. I installed one program (from Add/Remove...) to make my wireless easier.
1) CD burned works out of box for me, as does DVD burning. I had no need to mess with permissions or run with sudo. 2).NET is a MS property designed for Windows. It shouldn't surprise you that a tech that is only supported by MS on Windows does work on Linux.:P There is Mono, of course, but that is not quite the same thing. 3) I don't see this myself. My system runs much faster with Ubuntu than it did with XP. 4) Wireless does work a little better on Windows, but not enough so for me to care. The problem that I had with it under Ubuntu was that they didn't include NetworkManager Applet in the default install. If you install that, life is much easier, and you get full WPA suppport. 5) Windows *does* have more commercial software options.
You sound like you were running Linux for all the wrong reasons. Of of your five things, one is subjective, two were a misconfiguration, and two are obvious reasons to not switch off Windows. You set yourself up for failure by expecting Linux to be Windows.
VLC can do the same thing on UNIX that it can do on Windows. It uses self-contained codecs that are just compiled targetted at whatever platform you are on. If it works under Windows, then it works under Linux. You may have been using different versions. More likely, you had another aspect of your Linux box misconfigured, as well, especially considering all of the other problems that you had.
My machines are by no means high end. On my 1.86GHz Pentium M laptop, I have none of the problems that you have. The same is true of my Athlon64 3000 and my P4 Celeron 2.6GHz. Two of those run Ubuntu 6.10, and one runs MythDora. The only one that required a little manual intervention was MythDora, and you know that will be required going into it.
Quote from article about the disappearing island:
"An annual 3.14 mm rise in sea level at Sunderbans due to climate change is eating away 12 islands on the delta, says a study by a group of scientists from Jadavpur University." http://in.news.yahoo.com/061030/48/68wfx.html
Also, there has been an estimated 18.5cm rise in sea level over the last 100 years. That would yield an average of 1-2mm/yr, though satellite data is showing a slightly higher rise of 3mm/yr.
Where in the world did you find 34mm/yr? Someone would have to be out of their mind to actually publish that! At over an inch/yr, substantial parts of our continents would have gone under water in the last century. You're talking about an 8 *FOOT* rise over the last century at 34mm/yr, rather than the actual measured increases that an order of magnitude smaller, and then some.
Terminal Island sank because the area is geologically unstable. We may have helped it by releasing some of the contained liquid acting as bedrock, but it wasn't due to the ocean becoming deeper.
It takes a long time to build up new islands in a busy delta. The sand that formed these islands was eroded, and then washed out to sea. It could be decades, or more, before more silt builds up to make new islands. It has taken decades for the islands that *have* disappeared to do so, even.
If you jump to Wikipedia and search for Lohachara Island, there are links to a few other articles on the topic. TFA is probably the worst written of all of them.
Except that in this case, it has little to nothing to do with global warming. If there had been no human interaction, there would be a good chance that this island would have vanished. This is how river delta islands work. They are not formed of bedrock; they are sand. Sand washes away, and then your island is gone. These islands are disappearing due to *erosion*.
Don't be such a follower. Do a little research before shooting your mouth off. When the "alternative explanation" is the real one, that makes the explanation from the mass media false. Think of how often the media gets anything having to do with science or technology wrong... then apply it to these types of articles. It should not surprise you when the alarmist pieces are wrong as well.
If you read a few other articles on the topic, you will find out that they are predicted these island to disappear by 2020, and that they are not all evacuated, since there is no need. You would also find out that the sea level in that area is rising by about 3mm a year, from various causes. You would *also* find out that some of those people were evacuated more than 20 years ago.
If you forward the X connection to the host desktop using regular X protocol in a tunnel from the VM, you can let the host system take care of window collection. Systems like NCDWare and Hummingbird eXceed have been doing this for quite some time. They would have to write a decent X server for the OSX desktop, but it isn't that bad. The hard part is making drag and drop, and the clipboard, work well.
It is a very slick thing that they're doing with Windows apps. Quite a bit of overhead, but newer Macs are beefy, and you're probably not running more than one or two Windows apps anyway.
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The entirety of Social Security is of dubious legality, but that's not here nor there. Compelled participation in a retirement program doesn't interest me, and I would choose to opt out of SS if I were both able to and ready to go back to private sector employement. My current job allows me to pay into a pension rather than SS. It is still not voluntary, but at least is better than the Federal way. I would rather see retirement be a completely private-sector and voluntary choice, but barring that, it is more appropriate at the State level.
I don't think the Federal should have no budget; I see considerable need for there to be a Federal government. We used to operate that level through excise and tariff. This kept it to a reasonable size, and prevented it from trampling State powers, as well as individual rights. It also allowed the States to be very different from each other, which is better for our freedoms. A combination of constant loans (the endless printing of fiat currency) and the ability to take as much of the GDP as desired has allowed the Federal to remove nearly all authority from the States and become much more powerful than ever intended.
The Constitution does not explicitly allow the Federal to issue passports, either. However, the purpose of such a document is more easily understood to be necessarily independant of any one State, and necessary for the security of the Nation. Also, many citizens are never issued a passport, since it is not required for any government service.
A DL is accepted across state lines because of reciprocal state agreement. Not all states accept out of state licenses for all things. For example, MA did not accept out of state DL as proof of age for liquor purchase for a long time. FWIW, the "power of the purse" is one of the many reasons why the Federal was never supposed to have a revenue source such as income tax: it let them gain undue power over the States and citizens. You can look fairly square at 1913 as the cause (amendments 16, 17).
Is the power to issue and regulate ID granted to the Federal by the Constitution? The answer is, obviously NO, IT IS NOT. That means that the Federal is barred from doing so, and that power is reserved to the States.
The passage that you reference reads:
"To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
Seeing that the Constitution does not give the Federal the power to issue individually identify and/or track all of the citizens of the country, nor does it give any power that depends on doing so, it is not necessary *or* proper for the Federal to do so.
Just because a parade of despots decided to take advantage of a gullible populace does not make them right for doing so.
1. New to Microsoft features, yes. Most of the huge, touted, wonderful features of Vista are the same sort that most users turn off right away. You have to love the ridiculous theme trash, the crap default sidebar, the poorly implemented 3d junk, etc. I love how I have to play games to get rid of that stuff... it really makes me love dealing with a new install of XP, and I just adore the time it takes to turn it all off in Vista. Keep it.
2. Vista is a nightmare to get to work on quite a few laptops, desktops, workstations, and everything else. Something about a total lack of useable drivers for a large amount of hardware. Ubuntu, on the other hand, just worked for everything I threw it on, but definitely had rough edges on a few laptops. I made sure that it worked on my hardware before any of it was purchased. I won't waste money on ATI hardware, so Vista is right out, for example.
4. My Linux install only implements the DRM on DVDs so far as to completely circumvent it. Seeing as to how Vista would attempt to disable my hardware instead, they don't seem equivalent. Most of the non-US world doesn't really give a damn about how the RIAA/MPAA wants to control all of the computers in the solar system, but would still like to watch movies and listen to music. MS just made it easier for all of those rotten groups to gain ownership over *your* computer, and they didn't have to do that. They certainly could have skipped *paying* for the "privilege". I know that I won't.
5. I have spent an order of magnitude more time fixing/working around Windows than I spent learning everything I know about UNIX and its derivatives. I would absolutely *love* to bill Microsoft for the time that I have wasted on their software.
7. The GP point was that if you have to retrain for Vista (and you certainly would have to), why not just save the money and migrate to Ubuntu. If you didn't notice, Vista is a lot different than Win2000 or WinXP.
As potentially good as security enhancements, such as UAC could be, Microsoft managed to screw such a simple thing up. There are far too many mundane things that trigger UAC, and MS implemented the entire feature in a complete half-assed fashion. Most users are going to turn it off, and it is useless in corporate deployments. Something like PatchGuard is also a great idea, if you didn't end up needing AV, add-in firewalls, and spyware scanners anyway.
For what it's worth, people like you are *why* we get stuck with the status quo. Quit being a short-sighted fool and put some effort into the day after tomorrow. MS is going to collapse eventually, just as every other monopoly has. Either their software will become completely unusable, or a better competitor will take the market, or perhaps the die through regulation. Whatever it is, it will happen eventually. Your mindset will put you, and whoever depends on you, firmly behind everyone else, hemmoraging cash.
You aren't paying for the music as much as the convenience of format and access. You can get Ogg Vorbis, MP3, or FLAC files, in whatever bitrates that you want. You pay by how much data you transfer. You can do searches, and you definitely get what you want. It is a whole lot like iTunes, but much cheaper, and without the DRM.
With P2P, you tend to get 128kbps MP3 files... sometimes you might get 160kbps or 192kbps, and often they are CBR instead of ABR or VBR. Not the best way in the world.
Also, the artists *could* receive money, but the RIAA and associated member companies refuse to collect their royalties from the applicable Russian copyright organization that has been collecting them.
Isn't this likely to cause even more foreign policy problems?
Perhaps installing a mobile weapons system using our civilian transport jets as a platform is not the *best* idea in the world. I get the feeling that many other countries won't like that idea that we're bringing such things into their airspace many times a day.
I do have to admit that the idea of a Boeing 747 shooting down a model rocket is amusing, though.
As far as parking tickets go, that is not within Federal jurisdiction. Some states may have made reciprocal agreements with foreign countries regarding tickets, though. I am aware that as a US citizen, the US expects me to follow Federal law no matter where I am. I don't believe that extends to State law, however.
A prisoner loses their right to vote, as does someone that is considered mentally deficient. It is uncommon that someone is sentenced in such a way that they are permanently barred from voting. Most of those cases involve Federal felonies. I don't agree with ever removing a person's right to vote. I stand by what I said: voting is a basic right of all citizens, I just don't agree with what the government has done in that regard, and I never will.
I like the idea of considering patent and such to be fiat currency. That makes it much easier to explain why it is perfectly reasonable to take it as a fine!
No, that is really not the same at all. First off, the parking ticket would have occurred in a foreign country, and so you shouldn't be punished for it in the US. Second, the right to vote is guaranteed to all citizens by the US Constitution. A patent is temporary property; the right to vote is a basic right of all citizens.
Revoking MS' patents would be more like issuing a very large fine, and forcing the company to pay it. Oh wait, that punishment might fit *exactly* to the crime! If we revoke any patents related to their violation, and begin to allow the free market to reassert itself, then MS may no longer fall afault of all the anti-trust laws that they are currently ignoring (and violating).
Well, will you look at that. I've been lied to by sales reps for quite some time, it would seem. Makes me wonder whether the Windows Server licenses that I've purchased in the past are actually real, either.
It looks like it's just for the client, at least. I don't think I know any business that followed that rule, which makes me wonder if they invented it recently.
The blurb from that Dell page is just saying that FreeDOS has nothing to do with MS and in no way gives you a license to use anything MS related. If you take the full quote, it makes much more sense. This was the line directly before the bold part:
"The open-source n Series desktops feature select popular models from the DimensionTM desktop, OptiPlexTM desktop and Dell PrecisionTM workstation lines available with a copy of the FreeDOSTM open-source operating system included in the box, ready to install."
As far the MS licenses, yes, if you have a volume license, you can certainly use it on bare hardware. There are plenty of places that do use white box systems, too. Most of the time, it just isn't worth the cost to maintain everything in-house, so you go to a Dell or IBM for hardware. If you have good people and policies, then white box is a nice cost cutting measure. No little hologram stickers are required.
There are unlimited licenses from MS, too. You just buy a site license, and don't worry about the numbers. Most vendors have something like that, just for the big companies.
If you want a really interesting view of exactly how much MS slashes pricing to con schools into force-feeding its software, take a look at "www.asap.com". If you go around in there, you will find a link to government and educational pricing. Things like a CAL for $2 and copies of Office Pro for $60.
So *NO*, schools definitely don't pay the same price!
Cairo was more of a platform plan than a specific OS. Win95, NT4, 2000, and Vista-before-removal all included pieces of Cairo, as did Exchange, and IIS/MSN Desktop Search. It was an object UI (Explorer), MS-RPC, X.500 Directory (Active Directory), object search (MSN Desktop), WinFS, and X.400 messaging (groupware).
MS did manage to deliver a piece of the Cairo platform in every NT OS revision, up to, but not including, XP and Vista. Now it looks like it could be another 5 years before MS adds the object filesystem to the OS. They *might*, just maybe, perhaps, deliver it in a new version of SQL Server, so they say.
I agree, every new UI adjustment in Windows has made my computer harder to use, by default. At least in XP, I could turn it all off and go back to the more functional Win2K mode. In Vista, I can't turn it all off any more, and now they are pushing all ISV products to have the same brain-dead designs. I don't tend to mind learning to use a new platform, but I *do* mind when the new platform is less efficient and/or less useful than the old one.
Try to stop and restart themes support in the services mmc applet. I had a very similar problem with RC1... every time that damned privilege escalation prompt came up, it would corrupt the fonts and theme elements.
I ran that on an Athlon64 3000 with 1GB RAM and an ATA133 drive. It was "ok", but it only took me four days to format it back to Ubuntu and XP. Definitely was slower than XP, a big pile of my software didn't work right, and it was ass-ugly if you turned off Aero. I don't think I noticed it swapping that much, but I wasn't running an IDE.
That's what they tell you to keep you happy. There are cameras on the checkouts in almost any large store to help prevent shorting the register, pocketing credit card receipts, or not ringing up items. Honestly, I would think that you'd have more problems with stock clerks than with cashiers.
I have always just walked from the register straight out the door. If someone were to run after me, I would probably stop and see what was up, but I'm not going to be treated like a criminal without a decent reason. If they are willing to make a scene, then they probably really thought I was doing something. I will give a store employee the benefit of the doubt on that one. That has never happened, and I doubt that it ever will.
On the other hand, some stores post policies as terms of shopping at their store. BJs and Sam's Club, for example, check your receipt on the way out. This is acceptable, since it was part of the terms for your being able to shop at that store.
Could you please point me to the setting that does this? As has been pointed out by oh so many people, Windows has the option to one time only cascade or tile the open windows. What it does *not* have is an option to auto-cascade or auto-tile windows as they are opened.
So what does that make you? Hint: it might be a socially inept Windows zealot that doesn't know how the platform works. Cascade/tile windows only does that one time. It does *NOT* auto-tile or auto-cascade windows, as I have to do it every time I open a new window.
And what happens when you open a new window? Does it actually continue to cascade/tile all new windows, as well? I still have never noticed it doing such a thing. (It doesn't auto-cascade or auto-tile new windows, btw.)
I think you missed the point. A Linux user that tries Windows is not going to like it, because it is very different. Likewise, a Windows user that just up and tries Linux is probably not going to be that thrilled. You need a better reason to switch platforms than hearing it was better.
.NET for MS Windows under Linux is pretty stupid, as Linux is not MS Windows.
3) You can auto-tile or auto-cascade windows under MS Windows? I never found anything of the sort in the 17 years that I've had a copy around.
4) I haven't seen the problem you are having. Maybe the poorly/un-documented interface for your network card differs slightly than what the manufacturer claims it as. Hard to troubleshoot in a post. Under Windows, you may enter your key in the vendor software, the Windows Zero Config software, through Network Properties, or through the advanced box in the vendor or Windows supplied wireless software. There may be others, but I don't have a copy of Windows to check. I never ran a Network Wizard to connect to a wireless network in Windows, so I guess that makes five.
Video) Ubuntu can't ship the restricted codecs in the default install. If they did that, they would have to make special discs depending on what country you are in. The US, for example, as idiotic laws that prevent many of those codecs from being distributed without licenses. MS can sign agreements, or pay money for licenses, to distribute. Ubuntu can't do that. It *IS* inconvenient, but that's the fault of bad laws, not bad design.
1) That's great, unless you have a Dell that comes with Roxio junk, or an older drive, or an older version of Nero that MS broke in a newer version of Windows, etc. I was on my fifth drive before I got a copy of Nero with one, and that's the only decent CD/DVD burning software on Windows.
K3b is nice software, and it does suck that the KDE and Gnome people haven't made things better. I find that a lot of KDE software is much nicer than the Gnome equivalent. I use Kopete instead of Gaim, Amarok instead of RhythmBox, and K3b instead of Nautilus or GnomeBaker. It doesn't take any time to start a KDE program on Gnome, at least not for me.
2) That wasn't the point the GP was making. Windows doesn't come with any programming software, at all. Getting some things to work is in the Not Fun category. Obviously, there are ports of most languages to Windows, it's just that some work better than others. Saying you have trouble running the latest MS Visual Studio
It sounds like you had your Ubuntu install quite misconfigured. I'm not sure how that came about, but I made no changes to my system to get these things working. I installed one program (from Add/Remove...) to make my wireless easier.
.NET is a MS property designed for Windows. It shouldn't surprise you that a tech that is only supported by MS on Windows does work on Linux. :P There is Mono, of course, but that is not quite the same thing.
1) CD burned works out of box for me, as does DVD burning. I had no need to mess with permissions or run with sudo.
2)
3) I don't see this myself. My system runs much faster with Ubuntu than it did with XP.
4) Wireless does work a little better on Windows, but not enough so for me to care. The problem that I had with it under Ubuntu was that they didn't include NetworkManager Applet in the default install. If you install that, life is much easier, and you get full WPA suppport.
5) Windows *does* have more commercial software options.
You sound like you were running Linux for all the wrong reasons. Of of your five things, one is subjective, two were a misconfiguration, and two are obvious reasons to not switch off Windows. You set yourself up for failure by expecting Linux to be Windows.
VLC can do the same thing on UNIX that it can do on Windows. It uses self-contained codecs that are just compiled targetted at whatever platform you are on. If it works under Windows, then it works under Linux. You may have been using different versions. More likely, you had another aspect of your Linux box misconfigured, as well, especially considering all of the other problems that you had.
My machines are by no means high end. On my 1.86GHz Pentium M laptop, I have none of the problems that you have. The same is true of my Athlon64 3000 and my P4 Celeron 2.6GHz. Two of those run Ubuntu 6.10, and one runs MythDora. The only one that required a little manual intervention was MythDora, and you know that will be required going into it.
Quote from article about the disappearing island:
e aLevel/index.htmle s/images.php3?img_id=17300
"An annual 3.14 mm rise in sea level at Sunderbans due to climate change is eating away 12 islands on the delta, says a study by a group of scientists from Jadavpur University." http://in.news.yahoo.com/061030/48/68wfx.html
Also, there has been an estimated 18.5cm rise in sea level over the last 100 years. That would yield an average of 1-2mm/yr, though satellite data is showing a slightly higher rise of 3mm/yr.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Key_Topics/IceSheet_S
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImag
Where in the world did you find 34mm/yr? Someone would have to be out of their mind to actually publish that! At over an inch/yr, substantial parts of our continents would have gone under water in the last century. You're talking about an 8 *FOOT* rise over the last century at 34mm/yr, rather than the actual measured increases that an order of magnitude smaller, and then some.
Terminal Island sank because the area is geologically unstable. We may have helped it by releasing some of the contained liquid acting as bedrock, but it wasn't due to the ocean becoming deeper.
That should be 3.4mm, BTW, which is 0.134 inches.
It takes a long time to build up new islands in a busy delta. The sand that formed these islands was eroded, and then washed out to sea. It could be decades, or more, before more silt builds up to make new islands. It has taken decades for the islands that *have* disappeared to do so, even.
If you jump to Wikipedia and search for Lohachara Island, there are links to a few other articles on the topic. TFA is probably the worst written of all of them.
Except that in this case, it has little to nothing to do with global warming. If there had been no human interaction, there would be a good chance that this island would have vanished. This is how river delta islands work. They are not formed of bedrock; they are sand. Sand washes away, and then your island is gone. These islands are disappearing due to *erosion*.
Don't be such a follower. Do a little research before shooting your mouth off. When the "alternative explanation" is the real one, that makes the explanation from the mass media false. Think of how often the media gets anything having to do with science or technology wrong... then apply it to these types of articles. It should not surprise you when the alarmist pieces are wrong as well.
If you read a few other articles on the topic, you will find out that they are predicted these island to disappear by 2020, and that they are not all evacuated, since there is no need. You would also find out that the sea level in that area is rising by about 3mm a year, from various causes. You would *also* find out that some of those people were evacuated more than 20 years ago.
Definitely agreed about Jabber; it really is a great system. Don't forget that Google Talk is Jabber, btw. That's getting used a good bit more lately.
If you forward the X connection to the host desktop using regular X protocol in a tunnel from the VM, you can let the host system take care of window collection. Systems like NCDWare and Hummingbird eXceed have been doing this for quite some time. They would have to write a decent X server for the OSX desktop, but it isn't that bad. The hard part is making drag and drop, and the clipboard, work well.
It is a very slick thing that they're doing with Windows apps. Quite a bit of overhead, but newer Macs are beefy, and you're probably not running more than one or two Windows apps anyway.