You can change icons from the get info window. Copy and paste. You have been able to do this since classic mac os way back when.
I'm not talking about changing the folder-icons and such, I'm talking about toolbar-icons. If changing those icons is so easy, why are we being offered an app called Candybar that can change those icons?
"Yes, I already knew about the reasons for MP3 and DVD licensing. You think an average user wants to mess with that stuff, though, whatever the reason?"
Who knows? But fact remains that free Linux-distros can't do anything about it. But commercial distros (SUSE for example) could ship with that functionality. And, AFAIK; they do have those features OOB. That said, enabling those features in Ubuntu is quite simple task indeed. Hell, last time I checked, Windows ships with no DVD-playback as well!
"* No built-in DVD playing * No built-in MP3 playing * Streaming MP3 problems"
All of those were propably due to the fact that offering free mp3-playback and DVD-decryption would be illegal. Some commercial Linux-distro could offer those, but free distros like Ubuntu or Fedora could not (legally that is) do it.
Want to complain to someone? Lawmakers would be the good place to start.
"* BitTorrent worked at *very* slow speeds, basically unusable"
You said that this was due to settings in your DSL-router. So this wasn't really problem with Linux as such?
"and the power cable is a marvelous design that I'd like to see other manufacturers using - it's a magnetic connector that if you trip over or accidentally pull on, just disconnects - no damage to the laptop or cord."
And it's a real pain when you want to use the machine while laying down on a sofa for example (read Ars Technica's review for example). The MagSafe is prone to disconnect whether you want it or not. Also, the cable itself is somewhat flimsy, and we have already had cases of damaged cables. Then we have the laptops that run very, very hot. And those laptops have CPU-heatsinks that are installed so wrong that I don't know whether I should laugh or cry. And due to running so hot, quite a few machines are shutting down randomly.
Yes, Macs do have many great design-features. But there are errors in 'em as well.
"but look: if I go into a store, buy a digital camera, and ship it to a person who has never used a computer before, they can read the installation instructions and get it working. You can't do the same with Linux, because the non-techie documentation level just isn't there."
I actually tried that in Ubuntu. Previously I had been using a Mac to manage my digital photos. Then I decided to find out what would happen if I plugged the camera in to my Ubuntu-box. Guess what happened? I got a dialog-box which said "Camera found, would you like to import photos?". It worked with zero tweaking and configuring. ZERO. Just how much simpler do you want it to be? Why is it so hard to use Linux, which automatically detect the camera and "just works" right out of the box, whereas Windows is "easy", even though you need to read manuals, and run install-CD's? Do I detect double-standard here?
"Click an icon in the menu labelled "Install new software", and it says "Do you... ( ) have a.deb file? ( ) have an.rpm file? ( ) have a.tar.gz file? ( ) have an installation CD? ( ) want to download it from the internet?" Do that, and suddenly my wife can download a file (say a.deb) from a web site, run the installer, and get it going -- even if I've never told her what to do."
Why not simply fire up a package-manager, select the app you want to install from the list and click "apply"? Why is it "easier" to have install-CD's, or hunt for installers on the net, than it is to select the app from a list and click "apply"?
"Sure, there's some grandmas that know perl scripting, but who wants to jump in and start compiling code just so they can play bridge with their friends over the net?"
I use Linux, and I have zero clue how to do Perl-scripting. And I haven't compiled anything in a LONG time. What makes you think that the user is required to compile anything? Seriously? Maybe it's safe to assume that you simply do not know what you are talking about?
Maybe the case of your grandmother is simply due to the fact that she has learned how Windows works, whereas she has NOT learned how Linux works? Back when I bought a Mac Mini, I created an account for my wife, and let her try it out. She had no idea how it worked. In the end I had to spend quite a bit of time telling her how things work and where she can find stuff. Two weeks ago I had to spend quite a bit of time telling her how she can change the desktop-background. All in all, she finds the system quite awkward to use.
"After a while some get fed up with commercial and shareware pop ups for the simplest things, and see the light."
Funny. I use OS X. And it seems that I need to buy some small trinket-apps to do even the simplest things in OS X. Want to change icons in Finder? Buy a small app that does that for $12.95! Let me repeat: changing the icons in Finder costs $12.95. In-fucking-sane. Decent FTP-client? $29.95. All kinds of little things that are free elsewhere costs money on the Mac.
There has always been basic phones out there. From Nokia alone: 1100, 1110i, 1101, 1112, 2100, 2310. I have always found the "but I just want to make phone-calls!"-argument to be pretty lame, since the market is full of phones that offer just the basics. Hell, three of those phones I listed have a B&W-screens.
I bought my neo-luddite mother Nokia 1100. Very basic phone that "just works". And she has no problems using it. And it has very long standby (100-400 hours) and talk-times (2.5 - 4.5 hours). It's very sturdy, with rubber-sides so it doesn't slip. So what's the big deal here?
"Human life is a continuum from conception to death."
"Human life" is life that can be identified as being "human". Some collection of cells in a uterus is not "human". And those cells are not self-sustaining, nor are they capable of higher thinking nor are they self-aware.
"Europe will be fully Muslim within a generation or two"
I'm sorry, but you sir are a complete moron. While birth-rates are quite low in Europe, and there is sizable Muslim-minority, it does NOT mean that "Europe will be fully Muslim withing generation or two". It seems that 4.3% of people in Europe are Muslims. And you claim that in "generation or two", 100% of people in Europe will be Muslims? Well, as it happens, the fastest-growing religion in Europe is not Islam, it's Buddhism.
"What should be stopped is the deliberate taking of an innocent human life."
Fetus is not a human. True, it's a line drawn in water as to when that fetus does become "human", but fact remains that a collection of cells in a womans uterus is not human.
And what we have here is someone (you) pushing his ideals and opinions on others. You can be against abortion, and still be pro-choice. You could think that abortion is something that should not be done, yet you feel that it's to every individual to make up their mind. But no, you insist that everyone must agree with your ideals and opinions on this matter. And if they don't, you want government to step in and enforce your ideals. Yay for "small government"!
I, for one, get very annoyed when someone tells me what to do and think. And that is why I'm pro-choice. I don'texpect people to agree with me, I consider it to be their personal decision. You do not, you just want to cram your viewpoints down other people's throats. Pro-lifers are very selfish in this regard.
"I don't know which is worse: how much I absolutely despise the Democrats or my anger at the Republicans."
Are there only two political parties in the USA? Why not vote for someone else instead? Because your vote would be "wasted"? That's the kind of mentality that gives you the duopoly the modern-day USA has. You have two parties that equally corrupt, just in different ways. And they know that their corruption and incompetence will not harm them, because people will vote for either of the two. They are confident that they can do all kinds of crappy things, since the voters are not going to "waste" their vote for a third-party. Either they keep on voting for dems and reps or they stay at home. Either way: they cling to the power.
Like I said: go out and vote, but for some other party than dems or reps.
"However, this is why the whole "Linux will never go mainstream" argument holds water."
If Linux is not mainstream, then there is only one OS that is: Windows. Since Linux and OS X have more or less similar market-share, then OS X isn't mainstream either.
Few years ago I saw some ads for triple-edged windwhield-wipers. A bit later some no-name company introduced 8-edged windshield-wiper. I mean, one is good, three is better, eight must really kick ass, right? I looked at a picture of the windshield-wiper, and it had some of the edges pointing AWAY from the windshield Yes, it had 8 edges, but only 2-3 of those actually touched the windshield.
That said, the triple-edged windshield-wiper disappeared soon afterwards. And the 8-edged is nowhere to be seen anymore either.
Because then it can move on to another pocket, and so on. The faster it does that, the more money everyone makes that year.
How so? Why is it better for the company to receive software, and give the software-company $1000 for it, as opposed for just receiving the software, and not paying a thing for it? Just because that $1000 is not paid to someone, does not mean that it does not exist. The money is still there, it just never leaves the company's account.
Yes, that scenario wouldn't be that good to companies that sell software. But it would benefit those who use software. And the users of software outnumber the sellers of software by about 1000:1.
In fact it's a large industry that fuels GDP, productivity and growth, and will raise living standards for the next century
Here's the thing: There's a lot more companies that use software, as opposed to companies that make and sell software. If a company buys a piece of software from another company for $1000 it increases the GDP by $1000. If they get similar piece of software for free, then GDP does not increase. But in both cases the user receives the benefits of the software. So is GDP accurate measure here? Why is it considered a good thing when money moves from one pocket to another pocket?
Why is it a good thing that large number of companies are spending huge amounts of money of software-licenses? Wouldn't it be better if those companies could get the software for free, and they could then use the money they saved on something else instead? You stare at the amount of sales that are related to software. But the money involved in those sales is taken from someone, and given to someone else. I see no inherint value in that if you could just keep the money and still get the software. Software-companies might be harmed to some extent, but the USERS of software would benefit trendemously.
As to your analogy on photographs... Well, in software we have this thing called "patents". You can't patent a picture of a sunset and then sue everyone else taking and sharing pictures of sunsets. In software, you could do just that. Also, you could look at pictures from several different photographers, you can't do that in software. We have handful of companies that control their stuff with iron fist, and give you EULA's that are 20 pages long, telling you what rights they reserve to themselves (usually all of them), and what you are denied to do. There really is a world of difference between photography and software, and your analogy is lame. What would you think if you had to sign a long and complicated agreement before you could see a photograph? What if you took a picture of a sunset, knowing that some other photographer could sue you because of that?
I have 15 mail-accounts (besides my own) directly accessible in my Lotus Notes, and I could access just about everyones mail if I wanted to. That includes the higher management. I occasionally need to glance at those 15 accounts to do my job. No, I don't read stuff I'm not supposed to read, and I don't comment on the things that I do read.
It's all about trust. If you don't have that trust, then you have bigger problems than sysadmins reading your mail. Hell, senior management trust their secretaries with just about everything, including their mail. What's the issue with the IT-department?
"1) I stopped using Linux (my primary OS) three years ago when I first purchased an OS X Mac. Absolutely no need for it. I can download and run most open source apps on OS X. It's full blown UNIX."
So, if you prefer open-source apps (like it seems that you do), why run them on a closed-source OS? To me, it seems that people who use OS X are people who are sacrificing their long-term security and control for their short-term comfort. That is a fact that can't be worked around in OS X (unless Apple released OS X as free software, which is not going to happen). No matter how you cut it, when you use OS X, you are at the mercy of Apple's whims.
But hey, at least you get that layer of iCandy, right?
This isn't true. There are 10's of thousands (maybe more) of Micro-isvs and mid-sized companies making > $500,000 per year with software and even more making money with services.
And there's A LOT more companies who use software, but they do not sell or create software. Compared to those companies, the amount of real software-companies is very limited. So my argument stands.
You must not be a developer or in any software related business. Basically you are saying that you would rather have software companies make less money for the good of everyone using it (so they can make more).
Basically, yes. I fail to see how society at large would benefit from having few megacorps making Microsoft-sized profits, as opposed to having "normal" profits, while offer products and services to customers at a lower price. I fail to see how price-gouging benefits the users.
True, but one can just take it and share it with anyone they want. There is no point in selling GPLd software.
You can sell it by offering perks. I have bought copies of SuSe because it came with nice manuals, as opposed to e-manuals. I actually liked having the CD's around, and I didn't feel like downloading it all.
Zealous followers of the GNU (and have a job in development) don't realize that they are actually supporting their own demise.
Like I said, Red Hat is doing just fine with GNU-software. And do you think that the coders have to be salaried employees for them to do anything good? Quite a few open source programmers are not paid for their work they do it on their free time. How would things change for them? They wouldn't. And there will alwys be salaried coders, even with GPL'ed software. All software Red Hat writes is GPL'ed, and they employ coders, and they are doing just fine. How is that possible?
I have a strange feeling that you simply have no idea what you are talking about.
don't regard it as a workaround but rather as an innovative alternative to the two button layout.
I consider it to be a workaround. It requires two hands to operate, whereas you could use two mouse-buttons with just one hand.
In fact Apple's solution is in this case IMHO a pretty practical way of getting the secondary mouse button functionality and in my experience it works 100% reliably and is just as convenient as a secondary mouse button.
So, you think that it's "practical" to use modifier-keys or weird schemes like putting your fingers on the trackpad and then clicking (both which require two hands to operate), as opposed of doing the easy, straighforward and obvious solution, which is to put a real second mouse-button in there? O....K....
Why nost just have two mouse-buttons instead of having workarounds like "put two fingers on the trackpad and click" or "push Ctrl and then click"? Why resort on awkward workarounds?
The members of the Council are not individual newspapers or tv-channels as such. Rather, it's members consist of organisations like Finnish Newspaper Associaton, Union of Radio and TV-journalists, YLE and so forth. Most Finnish newspapers (for example) are members of the Newspaper Association, but not all of them. So they can choose not to be members. Journalists can also choose to not belong to the union as well. And so forth.
Punishments that the Council hands out are notices that detail what the offending party has done, and why it's receiving the notice. The offender is required to publish the notice to the public as soon as possible. Of course, they can choose not to do so, in which case the Council will publish it themselves, which would be a major embarrassment to the offending party. So the "punishment" consists solely of letting the public know that the newspaper/channel/etc. has violated the guidelines and has recived a notice. There are no fines or anything like that involved.
A quote from their website:
The Council for Mass Media (CMM) is a self-regulating committee established in 1968 for publishers and journalists in the field of mass communication. Its task is to interpret good professional practice and defend the freedom of speech and publication.
CMM is not a court nor does it exercise legal jurisdiction. The journalists and other personnel engaged in mass media who have affiliated to the CMM have, by doing so, voluntarily committed themselves to advancing and upholding the ethical principles of the profession. Councils like the CMM are active in many other countries as well.
Is this Council censoring the free press? Or just the stations owned by the government? If it is the latter, that is indeed nasty: a big government censorship board that even clobbers newspapers.
What makes you think it's "government censorship board"? The Council was created by journalists, newspapers and operators of tv-channels, not the government. It can discipline it's members by issuing statements, which the guilty party must publish as fast as possible. That way the public will know that what was the error, and why were they disciplined ("disciplining", in this case, is a statement that condemns their action). The membership in the council is 100% voluntary. Most of the major tv-channels, newspapers and the like are members, however. The goal of the Council is to protect good journalistic practices and freedom of the press. It is NOT a government organisation! The current members of the council are mostly journalists. There are two politicians there (one is an ex-minister, the other is a head of a county. don't know the English term for it). There's also a teacher and a professor sitting in the board at the moment.
Why are you making drawing silly conclusions about this, when you are obviously lacking needed information to do so?
Yes, you are missing something. Divert your eyes to the right sidebar of the page. There are sections called "In this country" and "Reports", which contain more info.
Finland, the #1 country, actually has strong government-controlled media (with government radio making up 61% of listening time).
Well, yes and no. There is YLE, which is similar to the BBC. But besides YLE, there are commercially owned TV- and radio-channels, so it's not like YLE is your only choice. The newspapers are private (there is no "official state newspaper"), but some of the various political parties also publish their own newspapers and there are newspapers that are aligned to certain parties. That said, there are lots and lots of 100% independendent newspapers as well.
I don't really se any political coloring in modern-day YLE. They seem to be quite fair and balanced, and they do quite a bit of investigative journalism about politics and politicians, and they are not afraid to publish their results. It's not like the government knocks on their door and says "you are not allowed to talk about this".
Hell, the Prime Minister of Finland is quite miffed at the media at the moment, because they are making huge headlines about his womanizing. He has complained about the "right to privacy", but there's not much he could do about it.
You might be interested in taking a look at the Council of Mass Media in Finland website. The Council has bitch-slapped various tv-channels and newspapers over time because of breach of the code of conduct. And the newspaper/TV-channel must make their offence and punishment public. All in all, the system works very well.
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I'm not talking about changing the folder-icons and such, I'm talking about toolbar-icons. If changing those icons is so easy, why are we being offered an app called Candybar that can change those icons?
"Yes, I already knew about the reasons for MP3 and DVD licensing. You think an average user wants to mess with that stuff, though, whatever the reason?"
Who knows? But fact remains that free Linux-distros can't do anything about it. But commercial distros (SUSE for example) could ship with that functionality. And, AFAIK; they do have those features OOB. That said, enabling those features in Ubuntu is quite simple task indeed. Hell, last time I checked, Windows ships with no DVD-playback as well!
"* No built-in DVD playing
* No built-in MP3 playing
* Streaming MP3 problems"
All of those were propably due to the fact that offering free mp3-playback and DVD-decryption would be illegal. Some commercial Linux-distro could offer those, but free distros like Ubuntu or Fedora could not (legally that is) do it.
Want to complain to someone? Lawmakers would be the good place to start.
"* BitTorrent worked at *very* slow speeds, basically unusable"
You said that this was due to settings in your DSL-router. So this wasn't really problem with Linux as such?
"and the power cable is a marvelous design that I'd like to see other manufacturers using - it's a magnetic connector that if you trip over or accidentally pull on, just disconnects - no damage to the laptop or cord."
And it's a real pain when you want to use the machine while laying down on a sofa for example (read Ars Technica's review for example). The MagSafe is prone to disconnect whether you want it or not. Also, the cable itself is somewhat flimsy, and we have already had cases of damaged cables. Then we have the laptops that run very, very hot. And those laptops have CPU-heatsinks that are installed so wrong that I don't know whether I should laugh or cry. And due to running so hot, quite a few machines are shutting down randomly.
Yes, Macs do have many great design-features. But there are errors in 'em as well.
"but look: if I go into a store, buy a digital camera, and ship it to a person who has never used a computer before, they can read the installation instructions and get it working. You can't do the same with Linux, because the non-techie documentation level just isn't there."
.deb file? ( ) have an .rpm file? ( ) have a .tar.gz file? ( ) have an installation CD? ( ) want to download it from the internet?" Do that, and suddenly my wife can download a file (say a .deb) from a web site, run the installer, and get it going -- even if I've never told her what to do."
I actually tried that in Ubuntu. Previously I had been using a Mac to manage my digital photos. Then I decided to find out what would happen if I plugged the camera in to my Ubuntu-box. Guess what happened? I got a dialog-box which said "Camera found, would you like to import photos?". It worked with zero tweaking and configuring. ZERO. Just how much simpler do you want it to be? Why is it so hard to use Linux, which automatically detect the camera and "just works" right out of the box, whereas Windows is "easy", even though you need to read manuals, and run install-CD's? Do I detect double-standard here?
"Click an icon in the menu labelled "Install new software", and it says "Do you... ( ) have a
Why not simply fire up a package-manager, select the app you want to install from the list and click "apply"? Why is it "easier" to have install-CD's, or hunt for installers on the net, than it is to select the app from a list and click "apply"?
"Sure, there's some grandmas that know perl scripting, but who wants to jump in and start compiling code just so they can play bridge with their friends over the net?"
I use Linux, and I have zero clue how to do Perl-scripting. And I haven't compiled anything in a LONG time. What makes you think that the user is required to compile anything? Seriously? Maybe it's safe to assume that you simply do not know what you are talking about?
Maybe the case of your grandmother is simply due to the fact that she has learned how Windows works, whereas she has NOT learned how Linux works? Back when I bought a Mac Mini, I created an account for my wife, and let her try it out. She had no idea how it worked. In the end I had to spend quite a bit of time telling her how things work and where she can find stuff. Two weeks ago I had to spend quite a bit of time telling her how she can change the desktop-background. All in all, she finds the system quite awkward to use.
"After a while some get fed up with commercial and shareware pop ups for the simplest things, and see the light."
Funny. I use OS X. And it seems that I need to buy some small trinket-apps to do even the simplest things in OS X. Want to change icons in Finder? Buy a small app that does that for $12.95! Let me repeat: changing the icons in Finder costs $12.95. In-fucking-sane. Decent FTP-client? $29.95. All kinds of little things that are free elsewhere costs money on the Mac.
There has always been basic phones out there. From Nokia alone: 1100, 1110i, 1101, 1112, 2100, 2310. I have always found the "but I just want to make phone-calls!"-argument to be pretty lame, since the market is full of phones that offer just the basics. Hell, three of those phones I listed have a B&W-screens.
I bought my neo-luddite mother Nokia 1100. Very basic phone that "just works". And she has no problems using it. And it has very long standby (100-400 hours) and talk-times (2.5 - 4.5 hours). It's very sturdy, with rubber-sides so it doesn't slip. So what's the big deal here?
"Human life is a continuum from conception to death."
r ld-christian-encyclopedia.htm
"Human life" is life that can be identified as being "human". Some collection of cells in a uterus is not "human". And those cells are not self-sustaining, nor are they capable of higher thinking nor are they self-aware.
"Europe will be fully Muslim within a generation or two"
I'm sorry, but you sir are a complete moron. While birth-rates are quite low in Europe, and there is sizable Muslim-minority, it does NOT mean that "Europe will be fully Muslim withing generation or two". It seems that 4.3% of people in Europe are Muslims. And you claim that in "generation or two", 100% of people in Europe will be Muslims? Well, as it happens, the fastest-growing religion in Europe is not Islam, it's Buddhism.
source: http://www.bible.ca/global-religion-statistics-wo
"What should be stopped is the deliberate taking of an innocent human life."
Fetus is not a human. True, it's a line drawn in water as to when that fetus does become "human", but fact remains that a collection of cells in a womans uterus is not human.
And what we have here is someone (you) pushing his ideals and opinions on others. You can be against abortion, and still be pro-choice. You could think that abortion is something that should not be done, yet you feel that it's to every individual to make up their mind. But no, you insist that everyone must agree with your ideals and opinions on this matter. And if they don't, you want government to step in and enforce your ideals. Yay for "small government"!
I, for one, get very annoyed when someone tells me what to do and think. And that is why I'm pro-choice. I don'texpect people to agree with me, I consider it to be their personal decision. You do not, you just want to cram your viewpoints down other people's throats. Pro-lifers are very selfish in this regard.
"I don't know which is worse: how much I absolutely despise the Democrats or my anger at the Republicans."
Are there only two political parties in the USA? Why not vote for someone else instead? Because your vote would be "wasted"? That's the kind of mentality that gives you the duopoly the modern-day USA has. You have two parties that equally corrupt, just in different ways. And they know that their corruption and incompetence will not harm them, because people will vote for either of the two. They are confident that they can do all kinds of crappy things, since the voters are not going to "waste" their vote for a third-party. Either they keep on voting for dems and reps or they stay at home. Either way: they cling to the power.
Like I said: go out and vote, but for some other party than dems or reps.
"However, this is why the whole "Linux will never go mainstream" argument holds water."
If Linux is not mainstream, then there is only one OS that is: Windows. Since Linux and OS X have more or less similar market-share, then OS X isn't mainstream either.
Few years ago I saw some ads for triple-edged windwhield-wipers. A bit later some no-name company introduced 8-edged windshield-wiper. I mean, one is good, three is better, eight must really kick ass, right? I looked at a picture of the windshield-wiper, and it had some of the edges pointing AWAY from the windshield Yes, it had 8 edges, but only 2-3 of those actually touched the windshield.
That said, the triple-edged windshield-wiper disappeared soon afterwards. And the 8-edged is nowhere to be seen anymore either.
How so? Why is it better for the company to receive software, and give the software-company $1000 for it, as opposed for just receiving the software, and not paying a thing for it? Just because that $1000 is not paid to someone, does not mean that it does not exist. The money is still there, it just never leaves the company's account.
Yes, that scenario wouldn't be that good to companies that sell software. But it would benefit those who use software. And the users of software outnumber the sellers of software by about 1000:1.
Here's the thing: There's a lot more companies that use software, as opposed to companies that make and sell software. If a company buys a piece of software from another company for $1000 it increases the GDP by $1000. If they get similar piece of software for free, then GDP does not increase. But in both cases the user receives the benefits of the software. So is GDP accurate measure here? Why is it considered a good thing when money moves from one pocket to another pocket?
Why is it a good thing that large number of companies are spending huge amounts of money of software-licenses? Wouldn't it be better if those companies could get the software for free, and they could then use the money they saved on something else instead? You stare at the amount of sales that are related to software. But the money involved in those sales is taken from someone, and given to someone else. I see no inherint value in that if you could just keep the money and still get the software. Software-companies might be harmed to some extent, but the USERS of software would benefit trendemously.
As to your analogy on photographs... Well, in software we have this thing called "patents". You can't patent a picture of a sunset and then sue everyone else taking and sharing pictures of sunsets. In software, you could do just that. Also, you could look at pictures from several different photographers, you can't do that in software. We have handful of companies that control their stuff with iron fist, and give you EULA's that are 20 pages long, telling you what rights they reserve to themselves (usually all of them), and what you are denied to do. There really is a world of difference between photography and software, and your analogy is lame. What would you think if you had to sign a long and complicated agreement before you could see a photograph? What if you took a picture of a sunset, knowing that some other photographer could sue you because of that?
I have 15 mail-accounts (besides my own) directly accessible in my Lotus Notes, and I could access just about everyones mail if I wanted to. That includes the higher management. I occasionally need to glance at those 15 accounts to do my job. No, I don't read stuff I'm not supposed to read, and I don't comment on the things that I do read.
It's all about trust. If you don't have that trust, then you have bigger problems than sysadmins reading your mail. Hell, senior management trust their secretaries with just about everything, including their mail. What's the issue with the IT-department?
"1) I stopped using Linux (my primary OS) three years ago when I first purchased an OS X Mac. Absolutely no need for it. I can download and run most open source apps on OS X. It's full blown UNIX."
So, if you prefer open-source apps (like it seems that you do), why run them on a closed-source OS? To me, it seems that people who use OS X are people who are sacrificing their long-term security and control for their short-term comfort. That is a fact that can't be worked around in OS X (unless Apple released OS X as free software, which is not going to happen). No matter how you cut it, when you use OS X, you are at the mercy of Apple's whims.
But hey, at least you get that layer of iCandy, right?
"6) Smoking. SMOKING. SMOKING FAST! Fastest laptop I've ever used."
There's nothing in MacBooks or MacBook Pro's that make them faster than comparable PC-laptops. They use exactly the same hardware.
And I'm not talking about that pussified Gandhi, I'm talking about the the real deal!
And there's A LOT more companies who use software, but they do not sell or create software. Compared to those companies, the amount of real software-companies is very limited. So my argument stands.
Basically, yes. I fail to see how society at large would benefit from having few megacorps making Microsoft-sized profits, as opposed to having "normal" profits, while offer products and services to customers at a lower price. I fail to see how price-gouging benefits the users.
You can sell it by offering perks. I have bought copies of SuSe because it came with nice manuals, as opposed to e-manuals. I actually liked having the CD's around, and I didn't feel like downloading it all.
Like I said, Red Hat is doing just fine with GNU-software. And do you think that the coders have to be salaried employees for them to do anything good? Quite a few open source programmers are not paid for their work they do it on their free time. How would things change for them? They wouldn't. And there will alwys be salaried coders, even with GPL'ed software. All software Red Hat writes is GPL'ed, and they employ coders, and they are doing just fine. How is that possible?
I have a strange feeling that you simply have no idea what you are talking about.
I consider it to be a workaround. It requires two hands to operate, whereas you could use two mouse-buttons with just one hand.
So, you think that it's "practical" to use modifier-keys or weird schemes like putting your fingers on the trackpad and then clicking (both which require two hands to operate), as opposed of doing the easy, straighforward and obvious solution, which is to put a real second mouse-button in there? O....K....
Why nost just have two mouse-buttons instead of having workarounds like "put two fingers on the trackpad and click" or "push Ctrl and then click"? Why resort on awkward workarounds?
Punishments that the Council hands out are notices that detail what the offending party has done, and why it's receiving the notice. The offender is required to publish the notice to the public as soon as possible. Of course, they can choose not to do so, in which case the Council will publish it themselves, which would be a major embarrassment to the offending party. So the "punishment" consists solely of letting the public know that the newspaper/channel/etc. has violated the guidelines and has recived a notice. There are no fines or anything like that involved.
A quote from their website:
that sums it up.
What makes you think it's "government censorship board"? The Council was created by journalists, newspapers and operators of tv-channels, not the government. It can discipline it's members by issuing statements, which the guilty party must publish as fast as possible. That way the public will know that what was the error, and why were they disciplined ("disciplining", in this case, is a statement that condemns their action). The membership in the council is 100% voluntary. Most of the major tv-channels, newspapers and the like are members, however. The goal of the Council is to protect good journalistic practices and freedom of the press. It is NOT a government organisation! The current members of the council are mostly journalists. There are two politicians there (one is an ex-minister, the other is a head of a county. don't know the English term for it). There's also a teacher and a professor sitting in the board at the moment.
Why are you making drawing silly conclusions about this, when you are obviously lacking needed information to do so?
Yes, you are missing something. Divert your eyes to the right sidebar of the page. There are sections called "In this country" and "Reports", which contain more info.
Well, yes and no. There is YLE, which is similar to the BBC. But besides YLE, there are commercially owned TV- and radio-channels, so it's not like YLE is your only choice. The newspapers are private (there is no "official state newspaper"), but some of the various political parties also publish their own newspapers and there are newspapers that are aligned to certain parties. That said, there are lots and lots of 100% independendent newspapers as well.
I don't really se any political coloring in modern-day YLE. They seem to be quite fair and balanced, and they do quite a bit of investigative journalism about politics and politicians, and they are not afraid to publish their results. It's not like the government knocks on their door and says "you are not allowed to talk about this".
Hell, the Prime Minister of Finland is quite miffed at the media at the moment, because they are making huge headlines about his womanizing. He has complained about the "right to privacy", but there's not much he could do about it.
You might be interested in taking a look at the Council of Mass Media in Finland website. The Council has bitch-slapped various tv-channels and newspapers over time because of breach of the code of conduct. And the newspaper/TV-channel must make their offence and punishment public. All in all, the system works very well.