I for one would use it to show difference between focused window and unfocused windows. Like, if you had two windows on the screen, and you focused on one of them, the unfocued windows would fade in to background by becoming partially transparent. That seems like an effective way of focusing users attention to the relevant window
Another thing would be to use it for notifications. Instead of having a dialog-box in front of you, you could have a nice, unobtrusive and partially transparent notification-box in the corner of the screen. You could still see it, but it wouldn't scream out "oooh, ooh! look at me!"
then we could have times when the user wants to quickly check something, while still being able to see what's in the background. And it would also enable cool eye-candy. Like when closing a window. Instead of simply disappearing, it could fade in to the background.
And besides, why isn't eye-candy a valid reason for some feature? People LOVE eye-candy!
Dual-Core Dual-CPU G5 will be the ultimate design powerhouse
Add multithreading to the mix, and you would have a real killer system.... Each core would be capable of handling two threads, two cores per chip, two chips per system...
No i think liberal means the same thing pretty much everywhere..
In Finland (and pretty much rest of Europe) "Liberals" usually refer to people who support individual freedoms and responsibilities, low taxation, free-market economy and the like. I wasn't aware that socialists support those things as well!
Yes, I wrote to my MEP. He told me (it took 30 minutes for him to reply!) flat-out that he's against software-patents. I urged him to be present at the vote, and vote accordingly. I actually exchanged quite a few mails over the issue, and I was pleasantly surprised that he found the time to talk to a concerned voter.
That said, I also wrote to our minister of trade and industry (who is ultimately responsible for Finland's stand of software-patents). I told him how utterly disappointed I was with him and his policies. I re-iterated why software-patents are a bad idea, and how they will harm the industry. I also mentioned that since he's in the different vote-district as I am (so I can't boycott him personally in the elections), I will boycott his party instead. My mail was formal and polite. No reply as of yet.
As to the rest of your load of shit, having been in the Army (1st SF) I can tell you we handed the heads to many other nations troops when training and running OPFOR.
And I have heard several stories where soldiers from other militaries whipped the asses of US troops. Like when some Finnish troops went to Norway for some arctic-warfare training with American and Norwegian troops. As it turned out, only Finns and Norwegians did any actual combat-training. US troops just sat in their tents and tried to stay alive in the cold.
Or how US Troops routinely rolled down the hills with their Bradleys (which were too heavy and clumsy for the mountain-roads) in Bosnia, and Finnish soldiers had to save their sorry asses with their smaller wheeled APC's.
I have heard similar stories from German Bundeswehr, where the Germans were less than impressed by actions of US Army in joint exercises.
Of course, there are the numerous cases where US Troops have distinguished themselves by killing friendly soldiers... They seem to be particularly good at this. They have now started to train the troops in Iraq to differentiate between friendly forces from the insurgents. British troops have loaned them personnel, equipment and British flags so they can learn the difference between British soldier and an insurgent.
Yes, there are lots of fine soldiers in US Military. No, they are not some uber-soldiers that mop the floor with everyone else. Sure, overall the US Military is the strongest in the world (with all that money, it better be). But their individual soldiers are not really any better than soldiers in other militaries.
s far as I know neither no one at Gnome has gotten paid by Novell or Redhat or whatever
Well, Novell owns Ximian, and Ximian is gung-ho about Gnome. Red Hat also employs several Gnome-hackers. Also, Sun spent quite a bit of resources at Gnome's usability-efforts and HIG. And, like I said earlier, even with all that money and resources being pumped at Gnome, they can only keep up with KDE (which lacks such resources). Why aren't they mopping the floor with KDE?
Considering how long it takes to compile those packages (Gnome is far better than KDE in that respect)
Whine to the GCC-guys. KDE does that longer to compile than Gnome does. And the reason for that is that GCC is dog-slow at compiling C++ when compared to compiling C.
it doesn't change why KDE has had a head-start compared with GNOME.
Yep it did. It was started before Gnome was started. But at this point, that difference is more or less irrelevant. Few moths difference back then is irrelevant today, since both desktops have thousands of man-years of developement behind them.
ou seem to be stuck in a "GNOME vs KDE" flamewar mentality. Grow the fuck up.
You clearly never read the threads where they were considering writing their own multimedia framework from scratch because GStreamer wasn't written in C++.
AFAIK, they are still debating as to what multimedia-framework to use in 4.0. Gstreamer has alot going for it, but it's being written in C instead of C++ is a hindrance.
Frameworks and APIs are just means to an end: in this case, it seems KDE lost sight of that and put so much effort into the APIs that they became more important than the desktop did.
You mean stuff like DCOP, Kparts and KIO-slaves? I for one use them every day. I simply do not see stuff like that in Gnome. Or, if it's there, it's not being used. KDE has technology that lets the user get job done. And it lets developers make their apps better. And both users and developers take advantage of that technology. And that results in better desktop. So I really fail to see the problem in trying to come up with kick-ass API's and frameworks.
they've been talking about cleaning up the control center for years, longer than I've been using Linux in fact, yet it never gets done.
KDE is pretty conservative with changes like that. They do not want to disprupt the desktop too much (unlike Gnome-hackers, who freely do stuff like switch to spatial filemanagement in a minor release...). But rejoice: you do have alternative method of accessing the settings (at least in 3.3 and onwards)! Fire up Konqueror, type "settings:/" in the location-bar, and you can change the settings of your system. No need to use the control center. Changing the actual control-center will propably take place in 4.0.
uh, no. GTK+ is maintained by the GTK+-guys. And GTK+ was there when Gnome was born, it's not like they had to come up with yet another toolkit for their desktop.
and has had to do it with more "committee" involvement
How is that different from KDE? KDE has NO real leader, perceived or otherwise. there is no dictator who decides anything.
there is no central Gtk+ company
And you could say that there is no central KDE-company like Ximian, Red Hat or Sun. So what's your point?
If GNOME has caught up to KDE as you've implied, it either means GNOME development is faster
What happened back when the two projects were born is more or less irrelevant these days. And besides, I do not think Gnome has caught up with KDE. The two progress more or less at same speed, but that does not mean that Gnome has caught up with KDE. KDE still has (IMO) the technological edge. I would guess that Gnome is technologically about where KDE 2.2-3.0 was.
yes, you could say that KDE had better design. Gnome has only recently started to be technologically where KDE has been since 2.x-days! Kparts, DCOP, KIO-slaves etc. etc. Those have been around KDE for a long time and they are widely used. It seems to me that comparable stuff in Gnome are not as widely used, or they are so recent developements that they haven't yset gained any foothold inside Gnome. regardless: they have been in KDE for a long time, and are widely used.
Yes, I maintain that the two desktops progress at a more or less similar pace. Difference is that Gnome has resources of Ximian/Novell, Red Hat, Sun and others at it's disposal, whereas KDE is predominantly a volunteer-effort. How do you explain the fact that the two progress at an equal pace, even though one of them has huge amount of resources at it's disposal, whereas other does not? If Gnome has a better design (as you claim), and huge amounts of resources being thrown at it (something not done for KDE), why doesn't Gnome walk all over KDE? The two seem to progress at an equal pace. According to your logic, Gnome should rule the desktop by now, with KDE withering in to irrelevancy. Unfortunately for you, that has not happened. Why is that? There seems to be something missing from your argument.
I also saw you complain about KDE's developement-methods in your other post. I haven't seen any of that. They seem to have steady releases, with each release being better than the last one. I haven't seen any major slowdowns or the like. I really don't see what your point is.
It might be true that Gnome gets more corporate backing that KDE does. Yet it seems to me that even with all that money and resources being thrown at Gnome, they can only keep up with KDE, not surpass it. Maybe KDE has better design, maybe their hackers are simply better, I don't know. But it seems that they do not need all those resources to compete with Gnome, whereas Gnome seems to need the resources of Novell/Ximian, Red Hat and other just to be able to compete with KDE.
I can't help but wonder what would happen if those resources were invested in KDE, instead of Gnome...
If you havent completely given up on your PC you might want to look into replacing the heatsink/fan on your processor with something more quiet. I'm assuming you are using the stock heatsink/fan which sounds like a jet engine under heavy load.
Yes I use the stock heatsink/fan. And, according to reviews, it's pretty silent. And the fan slows down when the CPU is not doing much. And I can still hear it! No matter how much I worked on the machine, it would still have 4 fans in it (case-fan, PSU-fan, CPU-fan and GPU-fan). The Mini has one uber-silent fan. Even if I managed to quiet down the CPU-fan, I would still have three fans to go. And of those three, two are already "silent" variety.
I am going to keep my PC. There are times when I need extra CPU/GPU-power and Windows. Usually that means gaming;).
Nano-ITX, while relatively new, was announced many months before the Mac Mini or this empty box from Intel.
Yep, it was "announced", but it's still not available! have you seen one for sale? Anywhere? Not to mention that their performance sucks when compared to Mac Mini. And their price is more or less the same as the Mini. And you can't run OS X on one;). I'm no Mac-fanboy, but I would like to try out OS X. The Mini suits me perfectly. While I could almost get the same size with Mini-ITX, with comparable price (but not the performance), I couldn't run OS X on it.
The Mini is interesting and newsworthy because it does the same thing Mini-ITX and the like do, only better. And because it's the cheapest Mac there is.
You know, I used to think like that. But the I started to re-consider. My computer is powerful (A64 3200+), and I tried to make it as silent as possible. But I can still hear the computer even when I'm not in the same room! And 95% of the time, I don't need all that power. A small computer that is silent would be perfect for me. I wouldn't hear any whirring fans or the like, It would be completely silent. And just because it would be less powerful, it doesn't mean it does "less". Quite the contrary: it allows you to do stuff you couldn't do with that full-tower uber-computer. It allows for silent computing. It allows you to do your job without being distracted by the fans in your computer.
I was looking for a suitable Mini-ITX-machine, when Apple came up with Mac Mini. It had similar price, alot better performance and features, so I bought one (still waiting for it to be delivered). I think it will suit me nicely.
Maybe I just want something else from my computer besides raw performance. I can have that performance quite easily. But it will cost me in size of the computer, noise and price. What's the point if I don't need all that power most of the time?
You pay to be hooked up to the phone network, you pay in your time, and you pay in having the phone unavailable for other uses whilst on a call with a telemarketer.
And, like I said, there are several methods of making sure one does not get harassed by telemarketers. And those calls last for about 10 seconds, hardly relevant. Compare that to the fact that spam can render yuor email-address completely unusable. 10-second phone-call does not render the phoneline unusable.
The costs don't have to be strictly monetary; the argument junk mailers successfully made was it is not too great a burden to have to sort and throw out junk mail.
And I disagree with that. it IS great burden to sort dozens of spam each day, to camouflage your email-address so that spam-bots can't use it, to configure your antispam in such way that it catches spam, but doesn't catch valid email. Yes, it is a pain!
Also, in the US we have a do not call list. It's the equivalent, basically, of a 'no solicitors' sign in the front yard. No reason why you couldn't have one for spam.
Because spammers have demonstrated that they are dishonest scumbags who would propably wipe their ass with such a list? Because large amount of the spam comes from machines outside USA (or whatever country you happen to be in)?
During the call it does.
For a whopping 10 seconds a week, whereas spam can render the email-address unusable permanently. Again: hardly comparable.
As for mail and usenet, they're still easily filterable.
Spambots harvest usenet for new addresses to send spam to. Posting to Usenet is a good way to receive more spam.
The situation is hardly dire.
Considering that about 70% of all email is spam, I agree, it's not dire. It's a disaster!
Well, I'm saying that it might be okay to penalize spammers that didn't respect opt outs, either actual, or via a dnm list.
Since people have gotten used to the fact that such lists only increase the amount of spam, they are more than hesitant to try them out now. And the spammers know it.
Seems to me the 'ban all spam' people don't have a good solution either, at least not one that wouldn't work just as well in a more specific arena such as I'm discussing.
Well, my solution to the problem would be to decapitate the spammers, but nobody listens to me, so....
Seriously, legal solution to spam is difficult to come by, since there are so many loopholes and jurisdictions involved. But one step could be to ban spam by default. If the persons wants to receive spam, he would have to opt in. That's about as good as we can get using legal means. We then do have technological solutions, like reworking SMTP and the like. But that costs money. Although it would be just for the spammers to pay for the damage they have done. Their profits could be used to overhaul SMTP.
And if I telemarket to you, I still have to call you on your landline, which you pay for
I do not pay for incoming calls. And besides, you get those calls... what, once a week (I'm in Finland, and I NEVER get those calls, I don't know what it's like in USA)? And there are several "do-not-call"-lists that can eliminate the problem. One of my email-accounts got about 30 spam-emails a day (with about 100 more being caught by anti-spam). I think the two are NOT comparable. Telemarketing does not render the landline useless, whereas spam CAN (and quite often does) render email (and related things, like Usenet) useless or next to useless. And you do not have effective way of getting rid of spam. Emailing the spammer and asking him to stop? Hah! Emailing him would simply confirm that your email-address is active, and he would send MORE spam to you! "Do-not-mail"-lists? Sorry, those do not work.
And still: I do not have to pay for the privilige of getting telemarketing-calls. But if spam eats large amount of my bandwidth and fills my inbox, it causes direct financial harm to me. Not to mention the costs the ISP's suffer because of spam.
If telemarketers called me 20 times a day, and I had no means to stop receiving those calls, then you MIGHT have a point.
As for compromised machines, that's illegal whether they're used for spam or not. Don't cloud the issue.
the fact that they use compromised machines to send their mail say quite alot about their character, IMO. I think the methods of which they send the spam are directly related to spam and the people who send it. I'm not clouding the issue.
So you're saying that I cannot call you on your landline because you own your telephone? Or that I cannot write you a letter because you own the mail slot in your door? Don't be silly.
I pay for my bandwidth and I pay for my HD-space. Spammers have to use both of those in sending spam to me, and I didn't give them my permission to do so. Add to that the costs the ISP's have due to spam (spam-filters, bandwidth etc. etc.) that are ultimately passed on to me. Not to mention using compromised computers to send spam (that would be more equivalent of spammers breaking in to your home, and using you envelopes, stamps and landline for bulk snailmail and telemarketing).
Of course the built-in mouse is not equivalent to some Logitech-mouse, for example. But it CAN be a decent mouse that get's the job done. Having just one mouse-button is IMO simply too awkward. I'm not looking for some uber-mouse, a mouse that gets my work done would be enough.
Slashdot Mirror
I for one would use it to show difference between focused window and unfocused windows. Like, if you had two windows on the screen, and you focused on one of them, the unfocued windows would fade in to background by becoming partially transparent. That seems like an effective way of focusing users attention to the relevant window
Another thing would be to use it for notifications. Instead of having a dialog-box in front of you, you could have a nice, unobtrusive and partially transparent notification-box in the corner of the screen. You could still see it, but it wouldn't scream out "oooh, ooh! look at me!"
then we could have times when the user wants to quickly check something, while still being able to see what's in the background. And it would also enable cool eye-candy. Like when closing a window. Instead of simply disappearing, it could fade in to the background.
And besides, why isn't eye-candy a valid reason for some feature? People LOVE eye-candy!
They had the teaser of Part 2 in the ending of the Part 1. I actually waited for years for the Part 2 to appear, but no!
"Jews in space!"
You mean something like this?
Add multithreading to the mix, and you would have a real killer system.... Each core would be capable of handling two threads, two cores per chip, two chips per system...
In Finland (and pretty much rest of Europe) "Liberals" usually refer to people who support individual freedoms and responsibilities, low taxation, free-market economy and the like. I wasn't aware that socialists support those things as well!
Usually Intel publishes the "typical" power-consumption of their CPU, whereas AMD publishes the maximum power-consumption of their CPU.
Yes, I wrote to my MEP. He told me (it took 30 minutes for him to reply!) flat-out that he's against software-patents. I urged him to be present at the vote, and vote accordingly. I actually exchanged quite a few mails over the issue, and I was pleasantly surprised that he found the time to talk to a concerned voter.
That said, I also wrote to our minister of trade and industry (who is ultimately responsible for Finland's stand of software-patents). I told him how utterly disappointed I was with him and his policies. I re-iterated why software-patents are a bad idea, and how they will harm the industry. I also mentioned that since he's in the different vote-district as I am (so I can't boycott him personally in the elections), I will boycott his party instead. My mail was formal and polite. No reply as of yet.
And I have heard several stories where soldiers from other militaries whipped the asses of US troops. Like when some Finnish troops went to Norway for some arctic-warfare training with American and Norwegian troops. As it turned out, only Finns and Norwegians did any actual combat-training. US troops just sat in their tents and tried to stay alive in the cold.
Or how US Troops routinely rolled down the hills with their Bradleys (which were too heavy and clumsy for the mountain-roads) in Bosnia, and Finnish soldiers had to save their sorry asses with their smaller wheeled APC's.
I have heard similar stories from German Bundeswehr, where the Germans were less than impressed by actions of US Army in joint exercises.
Of course, there are the numerous cases where US Troops have distinguished themselves by killing friendly soldiers... They seem to be particularly good at this. They have now started to train the troops in Iraq to differentiate between friendly forces from the insurgents. British troops have loaned them personnel, equipment and British flags so they can learn the difference between British soldier and an insurgent.
Yes, there are lots of fine soldiers in US Military. No, they are not some uber-soldiers that mop the floor with everyone else. Sure, overall the US Military is the strongest in the world (with all that money, it better be). But their individual soldiers are not really any better than soldiers in other militaries.
Well, Novell owns Ximian, and Ximian is gung-ho about Gnome. Red Hat also employs several Gnome-hackers. Also, Sun spent quite a bit of resources at Gnome's usability-efforts and HIG. And, like I said earlier, even with all that money and resources being pumped at Gnome, they can only keep up with KDE (which lacks such resources). Why aren't they mopping the floor with KDE?
Whine to the GCC-guys. KDE does that longer to compile than Gnome does. And the reason for that is that GCC is dog-slow at compiling C++ when compared to compiling C.
Yep it did. It was started before Gnome was started. But at this point, that difference is more or less irrelevant. Few moths difference back then is irrelevant today, since both desktops have thousands of man-years of developement behind them.
Pot, meet ketttle. Kettle, this is pot.
So what? Why is that relevant? There is a company dedicated to improving Gnome (Ximian), KDE does not have such company. Why is that fact irrelevant?
AFAIK, they are still debating as to what multimedia-framework to use in 4.0. Gstreamer has alot going for it, but it's being written in C instead of C++ is a hindrance.
You mean stuff like DCOP, Kparts and KIO-slaves? I for one use them every day. I simply do not see stuff like that in Gnome. Or, if it's there, it's not being used. KDE has technology that lets the user get job done. And it lets developers make their apps better. And both users and developers take advantage of that technology. And that results in better desktop. So I really fail to see the problem in trying to come up with kick-ass API's and frameworks.
KDE is pretty conservative with changes like that. They do not want to disprupt the desktop too much (unlike Gnome-hackers, who freely do stuff like switch to spatial filemanagement in a minor release...). But rejoice: you do have alternative method of accessing the settings (at least in 3.3 and onwards)! Fire up Konqueror, type "settings:/" in the location-bar, and you can change the settings of your system. No need to use the control center. Changing the actual control-center will propably take place in 4.0.
uh, no. GTK+ is maintained by the GTK+-guys. And GTK+ was there when Gnome was born, it's not like they had to come up with yet another toolkit for their desktop.
How is that different from KDE? KDE has NO real leader, perceived or otherwise. there is no dictator who decides anything.
And you could say that there is no central KDE-company like Ximian, Red Hat or Sun. So what's your point?
What happened back when the two projects were born is more or less irrelevant these days. And besides, I do not think Gnome has caught up with KDE. The two progress more or less at same speed, but that does not mean that Gnome has caught up with KDE. KDE still has (IMO) the technological edge. I would guess that Gnome is technologically about where KDE 2.2-3.0 was.
yes, you could say that KDE had better design. Gnome has only recently started to be technologically where KDE has been since 2.x-days! Kparts, DCOP, KIO-slaves etc. etc. Those have been around KDE for a long time and they are widely used. It seems to me that comparable stuff in Gnome are not as widely used, or they are so recent developements that they haven't yset gained any foothold inside Gnome. regardless: they have been in KDE for a long time, and are widely used.
Yes, I maintain that the two desktops progress at a more or less similar pace. Difference is that Gnome has resources of Ximian/Novell, Red Hat, Sun and others at it's disposal, whereas KDE is predominantly a volunteer-effort. How do you explain the fact that the two progress at an equal pace, even though one of them has huge amount of resources at it's disposal, whereas other does not? If Gnome has a better design (as you claim), and huge amounts of resources being thrown at it (something not done for KDE), why doesn't Gnome walk all over KDE? The two seem to progress at an equal pace. According to your logic, Gnome should rule the desktop by now, with KDE withering in to irrelevancy. Unfortunately for you, that has not happened. Why is that? There seems to be something missing from your argument.
I also saw you complain about KDE's developement-methods in your other post. I haven't seen any of that. They seem to have steady releases, with each release being better than the last one. I haven't seen any major slowdowns or the like. I really don't see what your point is.
It might be true that Gnome gets more corporate backing that KDE does. Yet it seems to me that even with all that money and resources being thrown at Gnome, they can only keep up with KDE, not surpass it. Maybe KDE has better design, maybe their hackers are simply better, I don't know. But it seems that they do not need all those resources to compete with Gnome, whereas Gnome seems to need the resources of Novell/Ximian, Red Hat and other just to be able to compete with KDE.
I can't help but wonder what would happen if those resources were invested in KDE, instead of Gnome...
So, if they don't cream their pants at everything Apple does, they are not "Apple fans"?
Yes I use the stock heatsink/fan. And, according to reviews, it's pretty silent. And the fan slows down when the CPU is not doing much. And I can still hear it! No matter how much I worked on the machine, it would still have 4 fans in it (case-fan, PSU-fan, CPU-fan and GPU-fan). The Mini has one uber-silent fan. Even if I managed to quiet down the CPU-fan, I would still have three fans to go. And of those three, two are already "silent" variety.
I am going to keep my PC. There are times when I need extra CPU/GPU-power and Windows. Usually that means gaming
Yep, it was "announced", but it's still not available! have you seen one for sale? Anywhere? Not to mention that their performance sucks when compared to Mac Mini. And their price is more or less the same as the Mini. And you can't run OS X on one
The Mini is interesting and newsworthy because it does the same thing Mini-ITX and the like do, only better. And because it's the cheapest Mac there is.
You know, I used to think like that. But the I started to re-consider. My computer is powerful (A64 3200+), and I tried to make it as silent as possible. But I can still hear the computer even when I'm not in the same room! And 95% of the time, I don't need all that power. A small computer that is silent would be perfect for me. I wouldn't hear any whirring fans or the like, It would be completely silent. And just because it would be less powerful, it doesn't mean it does "less". Quite the contrary: it allows you to do stuff you couldn't do with that full-tower uber-computer. It allows for silent computing. It allows you to do your job without being distracted by the fans in your computer.
I was looking for a suitable Mini-ITX-machine, when Apple came up with Mac Mini. It had similar price, alot better performance and features, so I bought one (still waiting for it to be delivered). I think it will suit me nicely.
Maybe I just want something else from my computer besides raw performance. I can have that performance quite easily. But it will cost me in size of the computer, noise and price. What's the point if I don't need all that power most of the time?
...Mini Me Too?
And, like I said, there are several methods of making sure one does not get harassed by telemarketers. And those calls last for about 10 seconds, hardly relevant. Compare that to the fact that spam can render yuor email-address completely unusable. 10-second phone-call does not render the phoneline unusable.
And I disagree with that. it IS great burden to sort dozens of spam each day, to camouflage your email-address so that spam-bots can't use it, to configure your antispam in such way that it catches spam, but doesn't catch valid email. Yes, it is a pain!
Because spammers have demonstrated that they are dishonest scumbags who would propably wipe their ass with such a list? Because large amount of the spam comes from machines outside USA (or whatever country you happen to be in)?
For a whopping 10 seconds a week, whereas spam can render the email-address unusable permanently. Again: hardly comparable.
Spambots harvest usenet for new addresses to send spam to. Posting to Usenet is a good way to receive more spam.
Considering that about 70% of all email is spam, I agree, it's not dire. It's a disaster!
Since people have gotten used to the fact that such lists only increase the amount of spam, they are more than hesitant to try them out now. And the spammers know it.
Well, my solution to the problem would be to decapitate the spammers, but nobody listens to me, so....
Seriously, legal solution to spam is difficult to come by, since there are so many loopholes and jurisdictions involved. But one step could be to ban spam by default. If the persons wants to receive spam, he would have to opt in. That's about as good as we can get using legal means. We then do have technological solutions, like reworking SMTP and the like. But that costs money. Although it would be just for the spammers to pay for the damage they have done. Their profits could be used to overhaul SMTP.
I do not pay for incoming calls. And besides, you get those calls... what, once a week (I'm in Finland, and I NEVER get those calls, I don't know what it's like in USA)? And there are several "do-not-call"-lists that can eliminate the problem. One of my email-accounts got about 30 spam-emails a day (with about 100 more being caught by anti-spam). I think the two are NOT comparable. Telemarketing does not render the landline useless, whereas spam CAN (and quite often does) render email (and related things, like Usenet) useless or next to useless. And you do not have effective way of getting rid of spam. Emailing the spammer and asking him to stop? Hah! Emailing him would simply confirm that your email-address is active, and he would send MORE spam to you! "Do-not-mail"-lists? Sorry, those do not work.
And still: I do not have to pay for the privilige of getting telemarketing-calls. But if spam eats large amount of my bandwidth and fills my inbox, it causes direct financial harm to me. Not to mention the costs the ISP's suffer because of spam.
If telemarketers called me 20 times a day, and I had no means to stop receiving those calls, then you MIGHT have a point.
the fact that they use compromised machines to send their mail say quite alot about their character, IMO. I think the methods of which they send the spam are directly related to spam and the people who send it. I'm not clouding the issue.
I pay for my bandwidth and I pay for my HD-space. Spammers have to use both of those in sending spam to me, and I didn't give them my permission to do so. Add to that the costs the ISP's have due to spam (spam-filters, bandwidth etc. etc.) that are ultimately passed on to me. Not to mention using compromised computers to send spam (that would be more equivalent of spammers breaking in to your home, and using you envelopes, stamps and landline for bulk snailmail and telemarketing).
Of course the built-in mouse is not equivalent to some Logitech-mouse, for example. But it CAN be a decent mouse that get's the job done. Having just one mouse-button is IMO simply too awkward. I'm not looking for some uber-mouse, a mouse that gets my work done would be enough.