I am typing on a system right now using the Intel "Bad Axe" D975XBX with an E6700 Core 2 Duo.. I am not an overclocker or anything, but so far this system has been rock stable and Gentoo Linux slid onto it like butter. I only have one hard drive and don't use RAID so I haven't tested that but onboard sound, all of the drive controllers, firewire, and so on were automatically detected by Linux.
*** Make sure if you are ordering the Intel D975XBX that it has a BIOS revision of at least 204. *** I've read that anything earlier than this will not boot with a Core 2 Duo. Some of these are being sold as "Conroe ready" or similar.
So, I can definitely recommend this combination to Linux users at least. I recall reading something about a motherboard jumper having to be reset if an overclock setting doesn't work properly.
Being fairly conservative, I used memory which others reported to work in a stable manner. Obviously not the fastest memory available, but rock stable without touching anything in the BIOS:
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 675 (PC2 5400) Unbuffered (from the invoice)
You can get faster memory but this was one that several people reported to work well, and it works well for me too.
Then I used an eVGA eGeForce 7900 GT KO. FPS is something like 16751 in glxgears. There was a revision of this video card recently which fixed problems some users were having - the eVGA site has information on the right SKUs for the revised cards.
Anyway I don't represent this as the best choice for performance or price or anything, but it works really well on Linux.
And yet at some point, something *will* go wrong, just, perhaps, not as often. I hear stories about Linux geeks who get, say, their moms to convert to using some kind of Linux because they can support it remotely. Though I'm sure there are people who use Linux like this independently, I don't encounter many of them. Most Linux installs have a Linux fan to maintain them, whether that is the user or the "computer genius son."
And I really can't wrap my head around why the irrational fear of scrolling text is something that should even be given an ounce of mental bandwidth in terms of an OS's design, look or feel. People have to *get over this*. Hiding that text especially during the initial install, is a net loss. Hiding information once you have things up and running and they just "work" is maybe another thing.
Hearing a modem does not provide any substantial benefit to the experience of using a dialup connection except to the extent that, the first time you use it, I would hope the speaker would be turned on by default so you know that it is working, and so the average user knows what to expect in case things start to go wrong down the road. Once things work and you know what a proper handshake sounds like, THAT is the time to turn the modem speaker off. A better analogy would be to surpress suppress all diagnostic messages from the modem - a bad idea until you're up and running.
If people fear having information, that's unfortunate conditioning by the Microsoft way of doing things. I am not one of these people who spends a lot of time ranting about Windows, but I will say that one facet - their tendency to obscure, obfuscate, or otherwise deny diagnostic information by default (some of this can be turned on if you know where to look) has no up side that I can see.
Like many people here on Slashdot - like you perhaps, I'm basing my opinions on this from the perspective of someone who uses computers, has been a fixit tech in a computer shop in the past, and who has done phone support for users of all levels. Trying to troubleshoot remotely without easily accessible diagnostic info is a drag - especially if the user already has problems describing his problem beyond "it's broke."
Hiding scrolling text is ALWAYS evil. I don't care what Windows users are ALLEGEDLY used to and prefer. Anyone who would prefer less information than more information - especially given the possibility that something can go wrong - is not someone I want making decisions about how Linux distros work.
I've never used Ark Linux before, but the idea that somehow by castrating Linux and making it look and feel like Windows it will somehow compete with or replace Windows strikes me as highly unlikely.
Apple - which, depending on what numbers you buy into, has even a greater market share than Linux, though has barely put up any kind of substantial fight against Microsoft in terms of the number of people using it - and where the Mac *has* succeeded is in the ways it is different from Windows. I wonder how many Mac users would applaud a choice by Apple to change something in the Mac OS so as "not to scare off Windows users." Answer: almost none. Or perhaps, none. Frankly, and I'm not even a Mac user, a Mac user who took that attitude would disappoint me as someone who is at least amused by OS partisanship.
If you are going to use Linux, or FreeBSD, be ready to use a command line. Some people can get by without it because they don't do much, or have incredible luck and every upgrade works perfectly and nothing ever breaks, but frankly, the population that is served by hiding the command line is miniscule compared to those of us who appreciate - and in fact use Linux or a BSD *because* of that command line.
I'm really getting tired of this idea of making "Linux ready for the desktop" in the sense of making it flashy and "slick" like Windows. I've got no objection to making Linux look nice and function logically in terms of its GUI, but not at the expense of dumbing it down and hiding its strengths, which a lot of people want to do.
I want VERBOSE error and status messages, and as much access to the console and logs as possible. Transparency all the way down. I want this in Windows too since I'm forced to use it for work but I'm not going to get it.
The command line is what makes UNIX-like OSes what they are - to me, anyway.
I'm sick of people trying to make it Windows, or make it like Windows, or look like Windows.
I'm not particularly interested in sacrificing functionality so people who are afraid or unwilling to learn command line basics.
As for the default browser, for god's sake, can we stop pretending that it MATTERS WHAT IS INSTALLED BY DEFAULT. Can we stop pretending that the main concern about Linux is what COMPLETE COMPUTER ILLITERATES will make of it? Sheesh. INSTALL AN ALTERNATE BROWSWER IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE DEFAULT CHOICE LIKE SO MANY WINDOWS USERS DO WHEN THEY DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL FIREFOX.
Guess what? In Linux you can install what you want, change the wallpaper, and change your menus and shortcuts around. Shocker!
Macs aren't (and rightfully so) measured against Windows in terms of similarity to Windows's philosophy of design (and look and feel) and neither should Linux. By which I mean, they're not measured against it as if not being like Windows is a deficit.
The idea is to present a significant alternative to Windows which is better (verbosity of the OS is definitely a plus - how many people like the way a Windows fresh install tries to hide system folders, file extensions, and resort to other such dicketry? Not me and frankly not anyone I know, including those who have a fraction of interest in computers than I do). How many people applaud having a completely withered, pathetic command line in Windows? Not me. How many people think having everything so GUI-centric in Windows has improved peoples computing skills, overall productivity, and so forth? I'm not bashing GUIs and wizards; I'm just saying that the command line should be a transparent, well-documented alternative so if the average user wants to automate simple tasks (like rotating wallpaper hourly or something), it's clear and obvious how to do that.
The USA is probably more free than most of its foreign critics insist, and less free than those who defend it assert.
My own feeling as an American is that I am mostly free but I feel that those freedoms are under constant threat from other Americans. Seems to me that everyone on the planet lists freedom as a virtue but, if I'm being kind, we define that differently, and if I'm being less than kind, I'll say that people don't know what freedom means or what they're talking about.
I am fairly certain I would feel this way in any Western nation. What's sad is how much time we spend sniping at each other when freedom loving people the world over should unite in opposition to the excesses of all governments.
The US's increasingly authoritarian (though I think support for this has passed its peak) policies such as the Patriot Act have counterpoints - in your own UK, the Orwellian obsession of police departments and various government bodies with public cameras, which I have been reading a lot about.
Too often here the tendency is for me to point out your government's own excesses - what both of us should be doing is - presuming of course that you, like me, are alarmed by Orwellian tendencies, is to stand up for each other.
I take no pleasure whatsoever when any other country becomes less free so that I can point at it as an example of how it's not just the US has a problem. I care about everyone's freedom, because in the end, a trend toward tyranny, authoritarianism, or whatever you want to call it, will spread and affect me to some degree. When I read a story about a decline in freedom or privacy in the UK or Canada, my reaction is sympathy for the citizens of those countries, alarm that something similar may be tried here, and acknowledgement that there is an international class of people who would lord over us all if they could.
What we need is an international coalition dedicated to the considerable list of principles that people do seem to agree on, mainly:
(*) Freedom of speech. The US criminalizes pornography, the Germans criminalize Nazi-oriented speech, and so on. We need to get past the need to express our disdain for, say, Neo-Nazis, which all enlightened people feel, and start making the case for freedom of speech and expression over the right "not to be offended." My own experience is that while Americans have enshrined this at the forefront of their statement of principles, the Bill of Rights, this is a broad western concept that many people in all western nations understand and share.
(*) Freedom of conscience / religion. France's ban on headscarves in schools, though I admire the general intent of a secular state (a version of our Separation of Church and State), is draconian and a violation of a person's religious expression. If others cannot understand how regulations like this can later be used to deny the rights of atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, or any other belief system, this point should be made and discussed. On an international basis in the 21st century, we ought to have freedom of conscience - that is, freedom of religion, and freedom *from* religion. Within reason no one should be forced by governments to act against their conscience. We need to better reconcile freedom across both the religious and non-religious and what that means. I am something like a secular humanist (though my focus is more on pro-human values and less on anti-mysticism or arguing with the religious.) I find myself often siding with the religious on personal values and siding against them on public policy. This tension can be reduced I think, and I have no reason to believe that this conflict is unique to the US (though frankly, the extremely religious have more sway here than in any western nation I can think of).
(*) Enlightenment and post-enlightenment principles as regards the foundation for governments and an understanding of the world. I am willing to acknowledge that free market individualism and social democracy / democratic sociali
And one of the reasons why our government will become more and more authoritarian is because people like you simply suck dry what benefits previous generations thought for and when faced with crisis, run away like a little bitch.
Stay here and fight. Stay here and help build a resistance. Stay here and be contrarian; raise your voice and for once walk the walk rather than talk the talk if freedom actually means anything to you. Why not use your education to formulate a counter-attack on all of this? Or do you seriously believe the war against statism is lost after only a few years? You say that you're educated: Where you is your historical perspective and sence of historical time?
Nah, you'll gladly move to some other country, sip coffee and let everyone else do the work.
You pathetic coward. You're not so much "smart" as a typical example of the attitude that is at the very base of this nation's decline.
In any other universe, you are, quite simply, spoiled.
I too am college aged, and successful. I don't know exactly what to do about all of this but one thing is for certain, I'm not going to just GIVE UP after a lousy six years.
THAT is pathetic.
On second thought, seriously, leave, you'll just be in the way, and if this is how you really think, you are most definitely part of the problem.
Wouldn't want you to, you know, break a nail or something.
Good point. The HBO series "The Wire," which is about the drug war in Baltimore, covers this in a fair amount of detail. In the show, pre-paid cellphones would be used up and simply discarded, littering the streets. Of course in The Wire, they were hamstrung by the phone companies' unwillingness to respond to a warrant (to monitor these phones) in a timely manner, as well as getting a warrant at all.
In point of fact, considering how much of a story this is, we can be certain that if any terrorists were commuting by conventional means, that will cease.
The Washington Post is not ordinarily considered to be a conservative paper. I'm not really sure that its readership can be described as you suggest, though I hope you're right nonetheless.
You've seen movie advertising that gives the impression that the crap Hollywood is pumping out might actually be half-decent? Where do you live?
I, for one, am thankful for movie and television advertising as it has kept me out of theaters and away from the television set during prime time hours.
It would be nearly impossible for film & tv advertising as well as commercial advertising to keep me away from screens and out of stores more than it does now.
In particular, I appreciate the fact that trite, grafted-on, endlessly tedious (and generic) sexual and romantic relationships are emphasized, along with dumb jokes, mugging to the camera, gratuitous (and also tedious) CGI, and cheesy catch phrases.
I'd like to thank Hollywood for reducing my movie viewing habits to about one movie (in the theater) a year. This may well decline further as thus far in 2006 I have not seen any movies at all. The big communal experience everyone always assures me exists in sitting in a packed theater of loud patrons, has always been lost on me. I want complete immersion when I see a movie. I don't want to be reminded I'm sitting in a god damned suburban fire-trap with a bunch of assholes who can't shut up for 90 minutes.
In addition, assuming I'm not alone, and I know I'm not, Hollywood has done a remarkable job of increasing the viewership of foreign and independent movies. The worse it gets, and the worse they attempt to pander to the dumbest among us, the more I broaden my perspective in search of entertainment. Thanks to Sundance, IFC, Flix, and the other channels on extended cable. How happy I am not to have to endure the "Latest Hollywood Blockbusters!" I cancelled HBO, which felt good. I can just wait for the DVDs of The Wire and The Sopranos to come out, Netflix em, and be done with it.
So for me, the making of insipid movies and insipid television shows, along with the insipid advertising that accompanies them has been pretty good, actually. More money in my pocket, less for besotted Hollywood execs and the cruddy but endlessly pretty $25mil per movie movie stars.
What I have to wonder is who the hell is pirating the crap they complain about? I can't think of a movie released in the past two years that I've been even remotely curious to obtain, even in the DVD bargain bin. This, to me, is the greatest mystery of all. Who the hell is wasting DVDs and copious bandwidth on Hollywood's slop? The same people pirating Ashlee Simpson records? Good grief.
The schadenfreude I feel at Hollywood's alleged hemhorraging, nonetheless, is without bounds. I hope it results in massive bankruptcy and the decline of the greater Los Angeles area as some kind of cultural bellwether for the USA.
Well the only possible sympathy I have in the examples given are for fans buying REM. Nothing could make me care about what people pay for Bon Jovi or Robbie Williams.
Maybe the way to really fight back against the music industry is to stop buying crappy music, and patronize your local used CD store. The big profits, I would imagine, come from the big multiplatinum albums, of which - maybe - one out of every 20 or 30 represents quality music?
Completely subjective, I know. Smaller labels that have not slashed prices really should, and people should make the effort to seek out independent music from these labels. People should explore new genres. I have a smattering of CDs I bought right from the small labels' websites themselves, for $10.00 for a new album, which isn't bad considering what new big-name artists' CDs sell for.
As for the issue of international markets and price gouging, nothing new here, either. In any case, when it comes to music, you don't necessarily get what you pay for either in Australia or anywhere else.
When you buy a top 40 album, you buy an image created by advertisers for the most part. There are probably half a million unsigned artists the world over who make music as good as or better than what you hear on your local top 40 station. Maybe they're not good looking, or don't know how to stand like a bunch of idiots with their hair hanging down in their eyes, or don't have the bodies to slut it up real good for MTV.
There are alternatives. Someone mentioned emusic.com - that's a good place to start.
But if you're really angry because the last Madonna CD is out of your price range, well...I'm trying real hard to care, but...
The documentation *is* far-flung, poorly organized, and often out of date. One of the reasons I run Gentoo is that they have put some priority on documentation, and having it in one place, as well as specific to Gentoo. The whole saw about Gentoo being difficult or not newbie-friendly isn't really true. There are other reasons not to run Gentoo but that's not one. Why? Step by step documentation is included and pretty easy to follow.
I think documentation is seen as a boring task. I don't think the problem is insurmountable though. Improving documentation on Linux topics is something I hope to get involved in.
I have an L-shaped desk with Gorilla Racks behind each long side of it and then one perpendicular to the short edge of one side. This allows me to put the computers up on the racks themselves, preserving desk space but still within reach (the lowest shelf is just slightly higher than the desk itself. This allows me to easily run wires for any equipment I do leave on my desk, such as the phone. Also, books and other equipment (like CD-ROM drives) are easily reachable.
I think with chairs, I've just gotten lucky. The chair I use is the pefect size for the desk and I rarely feel any physical fatigue even over long sessions.
I have most of my systems on the shelves oriented in such a way that the power supply fan blows toward the window, so I can easily open that up and exhaust the hot air that builds up. In addition, I have the machines which have cables I may need to unplug or switch on a regular basis on the shelf perpendicular to the short edge of the desk, so I can easily walk around behind the shelves and have full access to the back of the case.
Those Gorilla Racks are worth seeking out, by the way - I buy them at Costco and they have a capacity of something like 600 pounds per shelf (!) I never get close to this of course, but they feel steady in such a way that I don't mind piling equipment on there. The shelves can be adjusted to just about any height - you choose.
Preserving desk space is key to my own sanity since I often have books or printouts I am working from, along with my lunch, etc.
Another thing which helps is lighting. I have found that the best lighting for me is not very high above my desk. This allows my desk space to be flooded with light for reading, without diminishing the contrast of the monitor. Accordingly I use a light with a lampshade on it and have the lamp actually on my desk, at the edge.
Last weekend I dropped by a church rummage sale and reluctantly spent $20.00 on a used fax machine because my company won't get with the F'ing program with digital signatures. Faxes are horrible; I look forward to their complete obsolescence. That and checks. Hate them too. Whole bunch of things need to be retired.
This mirrors my thoughts exactly. Hanging pictures or painting the walls of my house does not add to their functionality at all but I have to look at them a lot. A flat white wall gets annoying to look at. So I put some paint on and hang some pictures.
I probably look at my computer more than any single wall of my house every day. I find myself occasionally staring at my monitor and zoning out completely.
I wrote a script which goes out to some Usenet newsgroups, grabs a mess of high resolution graphics from them, and saves them, once a day. Then once an hour I have my wallpaper rotate to something new. This alone has made looking at this screen for hours on end less monotonous.
That being said, obviously, some eye candy is distracting, garish, and stupid. (I am thinking of certain Windows apps which for whatever reason run as "round" windows or some non-standard shape. That really drives me nuts.)
Microsoft thinks that people want these kinds of effects, and that it will sell copies of their new OS. Probably they got this idea from looking at Macs (it's a shallow view of why people use Macs, but I've heard people make that comment before). Not much complicated there.
I graduated college before laptops were commonplace. In fact, I don't remember anyone bringing them to class (1990-1994). But man, I wish I had one at the time. I was often in a position where so much information was being delivered, and I was writing so fast, I couldn't always read my own handwriting. Beyond which, it could be painful.
I hear these responses about how they're distracting or how people don't pay attention, or the professor's ludicrous ideas about how students merely transcribe what he is saying, rather than "thinking" or "analyzing."
When I sat in class, people did crossword puzzles, read the campus paper, magazines, snacked, whatever. The other students were busy furiously scribbling down into notebooks what the professor was saying, and since you can't write nearly as fast as you can type, it was doubly exhausting and doubly attention-killing.
If you get distracted by someone's laptop, maybe you should just quit college altogether. I don't understand this idea that it's anyone's fault or responsibility but *yours* as to whether you pay attention or not. College students had better get a grip on technology and its appropriate place in life fast, because it's going to be the same challenge after college when you're in an office full of computers and other distractions and things are far more tedious and boring than most college classes are.
I've never understood why professors take attendance. If you can pass the class without showing up, that says a lot about the professor, frankly. If you fail because you don't show up, you own that too. I had great professors and I had crap ones. I was able to get an A in a class I showed up to three classes for the whole semester, Shakespeare 350 in a huge cavernous lecture hall. Did I miss out on something? It's 14 years later and I really don't think so. I read the plays - to my surprise I enjoyed them - and understood them. On a few occasions I went to the library to look at some discussions of parts I didn't understand. That was all it took.
In the end, you're paying for it anyway.
Professors are *really* idealistic if they think that class is about thinking and analyzing. Class is about grades. It's about graduating with a good GPA and being able to out-compete your fellow students for jobs. On the way, if you're lucky, and you have good professors and are in a curriculum you love, maybe you'll have some insights and epiphanies. I certainly did (mostly in history classes), but let's not kid ourselves. 99% of what I've learned I've learned in my spare time, reading what I wanted to read, because I was interested in it, not because I had to fill in some bullshit core curriculum requirement in a class I didn't care about then, and don't care about now.
To get the grades, you're going to need to know your stuff. To know the stuff, you're probably going to need good notes. If you have good notes, you'll have time later to reflect on what they mean. Most of the thinking and insight is going to come as you study, not while you're sitting there taking furious notes.
You can take better notes with a laptop. You can format them, clean them up later (and maybe in so doing, read them again and internalize the information therein). Maybe you'll be at the student center doing the cleanup, and you'll have an insight or epiphany with a mouthful of pizza.
Students should be left to their own devices in terms of what technology they use (if any), and whether or not they attend class, and how they learn. Every person is different, for one, and second, because they are paying for it. If typing furiously on a laptop isn't working, they'll know it long before the exam rolls around. Professors have huge egoes; the insight they claim to impart through the classroom experience is *usually* highly overrated (there are certainly exceptions; god bless the ones who can still enthrall).
Beyond which, there is the basic idea of learning how to positively interact with technology. This involves
Add me to the chorus of admirers. I haven't been a gamer...since Ultima IV.
Even before that my attention span was too short for many RPGs, including text adventures/IF that was popular in the early 80s.
I must say though, Ultima IV consumed me for several months. Everything fell to the side - my online activities at the time, my campaign to pester my father into installing a separate phone line in the house so I could put up a BBS, and of course, my schoolwork.
I have never been so consumed by a single computer-oriented pursuit since Ultima IV: The Quest of the Avatar, on the Commodore 64.
I'm in my 30s now, and from time to time I try to explain this game to people who haven't seen it, or who can't fully understand the state of the art of computer games in the early to middle 80s, and why this was such a broad leap forward. Most of my friends are not gamers either, or if they are, enjoy what's popular now, which are deathmatch-style games. For some reason I've had a hard time explaining why this game was so, so much better...so much more, somehow...important.
By the time Ultima IV came out, I was sick to death of hack and slash / shoot-to-kill games, owing to several years of blowing quarters on arcade games like Asteroids and countless hours of wandering around my neighborhood trading Atari 2600 cartridges with friends. I was into D&D at the time, but most of the games I (pirated) just didn't have the rich immersiveness of AD&D itself. As a result of both of these I remember wishing it was ten years in the future, because by then, no doubt, computer RPGs would be approaching the detail and richness of the AD&D experience.
And then someone gave me a copy of Ultima III, which was fasincating enough to me that I saved up my paycheck from delivering the Asbury Park Press, and bought U4, which came with the aforementioned cloth map, and a medallion/talisman kind of thing.
And then I didn't see daylight for quite some time.
I haven't been interested in games at all since the end of U4 with a few isolated (but casual) exceptions - Doom, when it came out (who could have resisted that?), and now and again I'll fire up bzflag for 15 minutes at a time.
Still, U4 is major part of the patchwork of my teenage years, and still represents to me, in a word, Excellence.
I usually skip any game-related stories on Slashdot, but I had to make a comment here, because for me, U4 is really the only game that ever mattered to me, in my lifetime.
Thank you Richard Garriott for firing up my imagination, for the idea that you can make an adventure game which involved actual morality, and for creating a non-linear world that seemed impossibly large; limitless, even.
I guess,for me, it wasn't just a game - it was art; no less important to me than some of the best books I've read, and the finest movies I've seen. I can't think of anything I learned in college which was anywhere as stimlating to me, intellectually, as this game. And that says a lot for someone who hasn't been a gamer for 20 years, I think.
Principally I'm talking about selling free software by its merits. It's one thing to say, "X sucks, this is better." It's another to have a comparative list of features. That's a fair way of showing the differences.
Another way to promote it is to show point by point comparisons on a need assessment.
For example, "We need X, Y, and Z" in a web server.
Show how, say, Apache meets these needs, how a competing product meets these needs, and then show the bottom line cost-wise.
This latter example was actually how we introduced Apache into my project at work. There was a lot of concern about Apache because my company generally used commercial software (including web servers). Most of the people who were to make the final decision weren't particularly interested in having tried-and-true commercial solutions bashed - whatever problems commercial products had, they had worked fairly well for several years.
What did win them over was the fact that Apache could match the commercial product, and do it for free. They were moved by positive studies and positive feedback from others who had used it both within my organization and outside. The success of Apache has led to its deployment in other places now.
Time and time again, I have noticed that merely bashing the competition is unpersuasive to the unconverted. It comes off as bizarre, cult-like, or nerdy in a way that, in my own experience, turns people off. Negativity is easy. It's not what the competition can't do but what free software *can* do.
Lastly, the emotional bashing of commercial software and companies has gotten fairly old. Everyone knows (and sarcastically parodies) platform fanatics. You'll see sarcastic quips in any thread regarding, "X fanboy" with some kind of parody of their general rap:
"LOL M1CR0$L0TH W1ND0ZE!"
Minds shut because of the generalized disgust with the individual making the case, as opposed to the merits of the case itself. People generally respond to educated, positive remarks, in almost every situation where persuasion is the focus. Those already convinced or partisan on a certain issue may enjoy negativity but I don't think those who aren't convinced do.
This is why people who are politically partisan enjoy negative campaigning and sensationalistic sound-byte swipes at the opposition, but the unaligned are generally turned off by this. And when it comes to software advocacy, we are talking about the unaligned - those who don't really have a position yet. If an individual already hates Internet Explorer, great - a positive campaign to promote Firefox gives them an alternative. But if a person doesn't have any major problems with IE, or doesn't know any better, a slagging campaign is just going to come off as what people always term "zealotry." This is likely to prejudice them against alternatives on the basis of the messenger. Such ranting comes off as all heat, no light.
I've seen this happen before on Usenet and other places.
Create excitement. Create a little hype, even. That's the best way to keep minds open and get people to listen without them being distracted (or disgusted) by the disposition, personality, or motives of the advocate.
Positivity is more motivating in general, in almost all things. Negativity more often than not goes to "preaching to the converted."
I've kind of felt that this sort of thing was a problem with several high-profile free software projects. Notably, this kind of thing usually comes from the user community; you don't ordinarily see developers spending time with this.
It's too bad, too. There are a lot of great reasons to use free alternatives to commercial software. I'd like to see more positive advocacy and less bashing the competition. And not because the competition doesn't deserve to be bashed (sometimes it does), but because I think you make a better case this way. This generates positive buzz.
It would be interesting, for example, to add up the number of "You are a fanboy." and related sarcastic posts on Slashdot alone.
Some of these may be trolls, but I'm sure many people are just sick of hearing that, for example, Firefox, will cure cancer.
I use free software (almost exclusively). I'm a big fan of it. I just think there are better ways to sell a product to a general audience.
I wonder how true this would be for, say, Slashdot users as a whole as opposed to the workforce as a whole. With a few glaring exceptions (usually involving phones), technology has enabled me to prioritize work like never before. E-mail keeps a useful paper trail for tracking ongoing issues (this has saved a hell of a lot of time I'd spend taking and organizing notes). Databases and internal webs ensure that I don't have to take 10 minues slogging through piles of paper and filing cabinets to find things I need. IM and VPNs has made working remotely a breeze. My team is spread across 4 locations, and we probably work more smoothly this way than we would if we were in a noisy office.
We can take care of emergencies from home without having to drive into the office via our VPN. We can prioritize dealing with people in ways not possible when people are physically walking up to your desk when you've got ten billion things in your head you have to get down into a document. If an emergency arises, the boss can call you on your analog telephone, and have you come into the office.
Or he can page you, and have you log on from home via VPN or what have you, and fix it from there.
Which would you prefer? I refuse to believe that before there was technology, there weren't emergencies, out of hours calls, and a lot of weekend work.
I've seen articles like this before. Technology is like drugs - do your tech; just don't let it do you.
Do I work a little more out of hours? Yes. I do. From home, in my jammies. Rocking. Ripped to the tits on french-pressed triple-strength gourmet coffee that would make Poseidon weep. Like no one's business. Not only do I get work done quickly and easily on weekends or at night when I have to, I get to look horrible doing it, unshaven and in my shorts and stained t-shirt, as I generally am when at home.
If my boss is on the road, and I have a quick question, I can IM it to his cell phone and let him get to it as soon as it convenient for him. I don't have to get held up for hours or days, creating longer hours for me down the road.
Yeah, everyone likes their silence. But I'll take an occasional weekend or after hours call as opposed to last minute rushes and work frenzies because someone was unreachable for hours on end and delayed the implementaion of something. For me personally, it's been worthwhile. I'm just speaking for myself, but I can't be the only one in this boat.
People have to learn to adapt to technology, ascertain its usefulness, learn how to *configure* it for better productivity, and not latch onto something because it's a fad and "everyone has one," within the constraints of what their employer requires.
I would never, ever, want to go back to the pre-1990 workplace, personally. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I spend less time on the road, less time organizing my desk, less time trying to track down data, and less time dealing with bullshit overall than I would without my tech.
I also spend less time in the office, and, almost paradoxically, getting a lot more work done in a shorter time.
If call centers didn't pay like total shit, maybe they wouldn't be.
Low pay = High turnover = Constant inexperienced agents = Unhappy customers = Customers taking anger out on agents = High stress levels for agents (+ low pay) = High Turnover.
It's a problem, but it is fundamentally a consequence of call centers being unpleasant places to work. Beyond billing and so on, you can also toss tech support call centers - if you can even get through to one, into that category.
That being said, there are a lot of call center workers who work their asses off in spite of no support or respect from anyone. Both the call center employees and paying customers get screwed by the attitude some companies take toward customer support.
Because the problem is so widespread, if you take your business elsewhere, someone is showing up immediately to take your place, coming from some other company they're happy with.
A sad fact is that when people price out goods and services, they rarely, if ever, take into account the support they will get as a differentiator (there are exceptions; a lot of people like to use local, small businesses because often support is better and more personalized).
In terms of security, I think you have to have not only skilled agents who know scams inside and out, but agents who management listens to to make policy. Any agent in any center that handles money - billing records, etc. should be able to give feedback to their management which directly and promptly affects policies, processes, and procedures at that company. Agents know a lot that management doesn't because agents are on the "front lines," so to speak, and interact directly with customers.
In an example given whereby a company was calling a customer, and expecting those customers to hand over confidential information, agents should have been able to tell their management that this was a poor procedure and why, and management should have reacted quickly and worked out an alternative process.
Some companies do treat their agents this way; many do not. Until people refuse to patronize businesses that treat call centers as a secondary concern or barely necessary evil, these practices will continue.
In the end it's about the dollar amount people pay per month, or the $5.00 they save on this product vs. that one. It's rarely about support because most people assume they will not need support. I am certain if people could go back in time after a really bad support experience, it would definitely affect what company they went with. Hindsight is 20/20 in this way.
Blaming call center agents is completely missing the point. If agents are getting $6.00 an hour to sit on the phones, you're not going to get experienced engineers and fraud experts taking those jobs. It's that simple. Even people who take these jobs will wind up considering them McJobs, and will leave as soon as something better comes along.
It's primarily the fault of management (and cheap outsourcing), and secondarily the fault of consumers who don't care about support departments until they need them.
As an individual consumer you have no power. None. Do you really think any company cares if you cancel your service? They don't. If a *whole lot of customers* start leaving - over poor security or bad support or whatever, well, that could make a difference. The problem of course is how to coordinate this.
The bar for support is set low for a reason. And that reason is a financial one.
Civil forfeiture cases, last I looked, actually were cases against inanimate objects "...vs. one Jaguar" and so on. So the idea is perhaps not as absurd as you indicate. Civil Forfeiture is another phenomenon gone completely amok but that's fodder for a different rant.
I had a single pre-law class in college, taught by a professor who clearly loved the law while being aware of its absurdities, with a bunch of pre-law students who had a weird religious reverence for it and got into the bizarre habit of pretentiously addressing each other as "Mr. and Mrs." - these are students who were throwing up on each other on the weekend.
The more I learn about law, the less respect I have for it. God bless those who fight against the entrenched interests.
Ah well, like everyone else on the internet, I talk big. I'll get back on my knees like the rest of America when I'm done here, don't worry.
I just wish the RIAA would figure out a better way of protecting music industry revenues. Of all of the complaints and ideas I've heard, the one that makes the most sense is paying a monthly license or subscription fee of some sort. Hell, the RIAA could start its own P2P service with *everything that has ever been recorded* online in some nice format like FLAC and a search engine and so on. I think the convenience of properly tagged, properly encoded files alone would make this worth a monthly subscription fee - say, $5.00 for 20 songs, $10.00 for 100 songs, or $25.00 for all you can download.
The RIAA could then potentially use (I know this is not ideal, but maybe a worthwhile compromise) your downloading habits and so on to display targeted banner ads in the client or something, as an additional revenue stream. Additional revenues could be raised by things like offering albums pre-release for a fee or "deluxe" subscription level. There are probably like a million value-added services they could offer, from online storage lockers...everything iTunes and so on are doing (How about music videos as well?)
Is this my idea of a perfect world? No. But it seems a lot better than what's happening now. I don't begrudge the industry its profit, but the old ways of selling music just don't make much sense anymore.
And while I don't directly blame the RIAA for music piracy, really, it does have to come to terms with the amount of utter crap it's putting out. I have so many CDs from the early 90s especially that have one or two memorable songs, and the rest are self-indulgent, atonal, amelodic sludge. There are some great albums I've bought that have been worth every penny (I doubt anyone would feel ripped off after buying something like Dark Side of the Moon), but these are rare.
Obviously crap music sells and has a market (or it wouldn't be made), but it has an unintended side effect - it makes other people - people with some sense of aesthetics - jaded and angry. And for many people, this makes it easier to justify downloading music for free. I know, I've seen much ranting along these lines on just about every web forum and frankly any sympathy I may have had for the RIAA has waned dramatically as a result of this.
It's not rational - the question of the legitimacy of music piracy has zero to do with the crap offerings by the major record labels - but the phenomenon is real. No one wants to be a criminal but most psychologically healthy people - that is, people who are inherently distrustful of monolithic institutions and authority in general - can appreciate the romance of being an "outlaw," internally rationalizing music piracy as some form of civil disobedience (Civil entitlement?)
This is the rationalization so many people used back in the 1980s to steal phone calls, when calling out to boards in non-local calling areas was expensive. "It's just a big multinational oligopoly, anyway!" (Or monopoly, if you're really old school and were stealing calls pre-divestiture).
A lot of the anti-RIAA juice is at least partially a result of being disgusted at the pres
OK first, we could make all online discussions really simple if we could come up with some sort of symbol or placeholder for a few concepts which hardly need any further exposition.
(666USA666) - This would be the placeholder for "The United States is evil and I am very angry but also experiencing a vague sort of pleasure in finding another reason to hate the United States." This would not cover extended, dispassionate discourse on the problems of the United States, but rather would stand in for such things as "Loud fat Americans! I HATE ALL OF YOU! I AM EXPERICING SCHADENFREUDE AT YOUR IRAQ PROBLEMS! Also you have no culture and crappy food!"
You could put two of them together, like . This would be vaguely the equivalent of a -vv switch on your favorite command line program. You could even do it three times. We could set a threshold of, say, 5 placeholders in a row to represent, say, a fairly robust, Al Qaeda sort of hatred for the USA, and then maybe like just once would be, perhaps, the way American liberals feel about the USA.
Then we could have:
(AmericaHYUK) - This would be the predictable ugly, dumb response we have grown to love to hate from so many Americans. This could be a stand-in for the trusty old saw, "WE BAILED YER ASSES OUTTA WW2 YOU EUROFLITS!" or "LOL FREEDOM CONSTITUTION LOL," "WE'LL PUT A BOOT IN YER ASS, IT'S THE AMURRICAN WAY!" or whatever it is that Americans say when faced with the fact that most of the world doesn't regard the USA as groovy as people from the US tend to do.
This is my contribution to all debate on the internet for this week. I hereby release both placeholders into the public domain, and this ought to help out with brevity.
Alright as for the whole internet, I say we put the Netherlands in charge.
No I'm not from the Netherlands but have you noticed that for such a geographically small country, they make up 1/3rd the population of the internet (Barring most of Asia, but I can't read their character sets so I typically stay away anyway)? If I just came to earth on a spaceship and spent my time learning about humanity on the internet. I'd guess that the Netherlands was the last remaning superpower.
Also, they tend to speak fairly superb English, which makes it easy for dumb ethnocentric Amurricans like myself. They seem to have an excess of technical skill and don't make a nuisance of themselves. Plus, who has anything against the Netherlands?
I say we put the Netherlands in charge. Here's to you, Netherlands.
You think I'm being sarcastic but I'm not. I love you guys.
Like many here, I think this law will do a whole lot of nothing.
But as for the comments about Windows and its security holes, and how we should blame Microsoft, I don't agree with this either.
I don't think criminals who break into your house shouldn't be blamed because lockmakers, doormakers, or windowmakers (no relation) should have made their wares of sturdier materials.
People use Windows out of momentum and because they feel they have no choice. Microsoft would clean up its act if consumers forced them to by using other products. A variety of circumstances have largely prevented this from happening.
Mac users have felt that their experience has been better for many years, and have often wondered why anyone would choose a PC over a Mac - especially now with OS X which, they say, rocks harder than a llama with a chaingun and free calzones.
I have seen people complain about the smallest changes on their systems, including point upgrades to browsers or MSOE upgrades.
People aren't down with change, especially on things they think of as complicated devices. Those of us who read Slashdot are, I am sure, far more flexible and adventurous in this regard, but I don't think we in anyway represent consumers as a whole.
Microsoft could probably commit genocide, and people would still use Windows. They could declare themselves as a nuclear power in Redmond, and people still would use their products. Not because they are the best (a minority use them for this reason, but not, I think, most people), but because it is what they are used to, and have become used to and really don't want to learn something new, along with its attendant frustrations, hassles, and time commitment.
People use Windows because they would rather eat glass than have to re-learn a new interface or OS, because, for many, computers are a sad fact of life, as opposed to a fulfilling hobby or something they would choose to spend time using.
That being said, spyware authors are degenerates, and deserve, basically, what they get.
But here's an idea.
Corporations do not ordinarily prosecute virus writers, phishers, spyware authors, and people who crack their systems for a variety of reasons. One is the cost, and two is the embarassment of being compromised.
What if all of the major corporations and banks secretly decided to do a collectively lodge a wave of lawsuits all over the world. Coordinate with governments abroad and just do a year of scorched earth prosecutions of these folks, and promise to follow up with regular "waves" of prosecution, but not say when. In the intervening time, companies would be free to prosecute or not prosecute (or sue) who they like, but they would agree at regular intervals to time their lawsuits to make a massive public statement that they and their customers are sick of putting up with this crap.
This would probably go further as a deterrent since clearly laws and civil suits as they are undertaken now, have not had much effect.
Countries can bring economic pressure to bear on other countries which, mainly through lack of resources I imagine, do not prioritize investigating and prosecuting computer crimes.
Imagine if you rattled the cages of these degenerates in a way that produced not only actual prosecutions, but revenue to follow up with more waves at unannounced rituals? That might have a deterrent effect.
Of course, the question of whether you like the idea of governments exercising their power this way, is certainly valid.
I do not like government. I wish we did not need it at all. I am not so convinced however that since we have it, that the government should do nothing whatsoever when it comes to these kinds of crimes. These crimes have considerable consequences for many, not the least of which is the erosion of confidence in the internet in general as a valid medium of economic, intellectual, and cultural exchange.
Try as I might, I cannot think of a reason why vandals
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I am typing on a system right now using the Intel "Bad Axe" D975XBX with an E6700 Core 2 Duo.. I am not an overclocker or anything, but so far this system has been rock stable and Gentoo Linux slid onto it like butter. I only have one hard drive and don't use RAID so I haven't tested that but onboard sound, all of the drive controllers, firewire, and so on were automatically detected by Linux.
*** Make sure if you are ordering the Intel D975XBX that it has a BIOS revision of at least 204. *** I've read that anything earlier than this will not boot with a Core 2 Duo. Some of these are being sold as "Conroe ready" or similar.
So, I can definitely recommend this combination to Linux users at least. I recall reading something about a motherboard jumper having to be reset if an overclock setting doesn't work properly.
Being fairly conservative, I used memory which others reported to work in a stable manner. Obviously not the fastest memory available, but rock stable without touching anything in the BIOS:
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 675 (PC2 5400) Unbuffered (from the invoice)
You can get faster memory but this was one that several people reported to work well, and it works well for me too.
Then I used an eVGA eGeForce 7900 GT KO. FPS is something like 16751 in glxgears. There was a revision of this video card recently which fixed problems some users were having - the eVGA site has information on the right SKUs for the revised cards.
Anyway I don't represent this as the best choice for performance or price or anything, but it works really well on Linux.
And yet at some point, something *will* go wrong, just, perhaps, not as often. I hear stories about Linux geeks who get, say, their moms to convert to using some kind of Linux because they can support it remotely. Though I'm sure there are people who use Linux like this independently, I don't encounter many of them. Most Linux installs have a Linux fan to maintain them, whether that is the user or the "computer genius son."
And I really can't wrap my head around why the irrational fear of scrolling text is something that should even be given an ounce of mental bandwidth in terms of an OS's design, look or feel. People have to *get over this*. Hiding that text especially during the initial install, is a net loss. Hiding information once you have things up and running and they just "work" is maybe another thing.
Hearing a modem does not provide any substantial benefit to the experience of using a dialup connection except to the extent that, the first time you use it, I would hope the speaker would be turned on by default so you know that it is working, and so the average user knows what to expect in case things start to go wrong down the road. Once things work and you know what a proper handshake sounds like, THAT is the time to turn the modem speaker off. A better analogy would be to surpress suppress all diagnostic messages from the modem - a bad idea until you're up and running.
If people fear having information, that's unfortunate conditioning by the Microsoft way of doing things. I am not one of these people who spends a lot of time ranting about Windows, but I will say that one facet - their tendency to obscure, obfuscate, or otherwise deny diagnostic information by default (some of this can be turned on if you know where to look) has no up side that I can see.
Like many people here on Slashdot - like you perhaps, I'm basing my opinions on this from the perspective of someone who uses computers, has been a fixit tech in a computer shop in the past, and who has done phone support for users of all levels. Trying to troubleshoot remotely without easily accessible diagnostic info is a drag - especially if the user already has problems describing his problem beyond "it's broke."
Hiding scrolling text is ALWAYS evil. I don't care what Windows users are ALLEGEDLY used to and prefer. Anyone who would prefer less information than more information - especially given the possibility that something can go wrong - is not someone I want making decisions about how Linux distros work.
I've never used Ark Linux before, but the idea that somehow by castrating Linux and making it look and feel like Windows it will somehow compete with or replace Windows strikes me as highly unlikely.
Apple - which, depending on what numbers you buy into, has even a greater market share than Linux, though has barely put up any kind of substantial fight against Microsoft in terms of the number of people using it - and where the Mac *has* succeeded is in the ways it is different from Windows. I wonder how many Mac users would applaud a choice by Apple to change something in the Mac OS so as "not to scare off Windows users." Answer: almost none. Or perhaps, none. Frankly, and I'm not even a Mac user, a Mac user who took that attitude would disappoint me as someone who is at least amused by OS partisanship.
If you are going to use Linux, or FreeBSD, be ready to use a command line. Some people can get by without it because they don't do much, or have incredible luck and every upgrade works perfectly and nothing ever breaks, but frankly, the population that is served by hiding the command line is miniscule compared to those of us who appreciate - and in fact use Linux or a BSD *because* of that command line.
I'm really getting tired of this idea of making "Linux ready for the desktop" in the sense of making it flashy and "slick" like Windows. I've got no objection to making Linux look nice and function logically in terms of its GUI, but not at the expense of dumbing it down and hiding its strengths, which a lot of people want to do.
I want VERBOSE error and status messages, and as much access to the console and logs as possible. Transparency all the way down. I want this in Windows too since I'm forced to use it for work but I'm not going to get it.
The command line is what makes UNIX-like OSes what they are - to me, anyway.
I'm sick of people trying to make it Windows, or make it like Windows, or look like Windows.
I'm not particularly interested in sacrificing functionality so people who are afraid or unwilling to learn command line basics.
As for the default browser, for god's sake, can we stop pretending that it MATTERS WHAT IS INSTALLED BY DEFAULT. Can we stop pretending that the main concern about Linux is what COMPLETE COMPUTER ILLITERATES will make of it? Sheesh. INSTALL AN ALTERNATE BROWSWER IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE DEFAULT CHOICE LIKE SO MANY WINDOWS USERS DO WHEN THEY DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL FIREFOX.
Guess what? In Linux you can install what you want, change the wallpaper, and change your menus and shortcuts around. Shocker!
Macs aren't (and rightfully so) measured against Windows in terms of similarity to Windows's philosophy of design (and look and feel) and neither should Linux. By which I mean, they're not measured against it as if not being like Windows is a deficit.
The idea is to present a significant alternative to Windows which is better (verbosity of the OS is definitely a plus - how many people like the way a Windows fresh install tries to hide system folders, file extensions, and resort to other such dicketry? Not me and frankly not anyone I know, including those who have a fraction of interest in computers than I do). How many people applaud having a completely withered, pathetic command line in Windows? Not me. How many people think having everything so GUI-centric in Windows has improved peoples computing skills, overall productivity, and so forth? I'm not bashing GUIs and wizards; I'm just saying that the command line should be a transparent, well-documented alternative so if the average user wants to automate simple tasks (like rotating wallpaper hourly or something), it's clear and obvious how to do that.
The USA is probably more free than most of its foreign critics insist, and less free than those who defend it assert.
My own feeling as an American is that I am mostly free but I feel that those freedoms are under constant threat from other Americans. Seems to me that everyone on the planet lists freedom as a virtue but, if I'm being kind, we define that differently, and if I'm being less than kind, I'll say that people don't know what freedom means or what they're talking about.
I am fairly certain I would feel this way in any Western nation. What's sad is how much time we spend sniping at each other when freedom loving people the world over should unite in opposition to the excesses of all governments.
The US's increasingly authoritarian (though I think support for this has passed its peak) policies such as the Patriot Act have counterpoints - in your own UK, the Orwellian obsession of police departments and various government bodies with public cameras, which I have been reading a lot about.
Too often here the tendency is for me to point out your government's own excesses - what both of us should be doing is - presuming of course that you, like me, are alarmed by Orwellian tendencies, is to stand up for each other.
I take no pleasure whatsoever when any other country becomes less free so that I can point at it as an example of how it's not just the US has a problem. I care about everyone's freedom, because in the end, a trend toward tyranny, authoritarianism, or whatever you want to call it, will spread and affect me to some degree. When I read a story about a decline in freedom or privacy in the UK or Canada, my reaction is sympathy for the citizens of those countries, alarm that something similar may be tried here, and acknowledgement that there is an international class of people who would lord over us all if they could.
What we need is an international coalition dedicated to the considerable list of principles that people do seem to agree on, mainly:
(*) Freedom of speech. The US criminalizes pornography, the Germans criminalize Nazi-oriented speech, and so on. We need to get past the need to express our disdain for, say, Neo-Nazis, which all enlightened people feel, and start making the case for freedom of speech and expression over the right "not to be offended." My own experience is that while Americans have enshrined this at the forefront of their statement of principles, the Bill of Rights, this is a broad western concept that many people in all western nations understand and share.
(*) Freedom of conscience / religion. France's ban on headscarves in schools, though I admire the general intent of a secular state (a version of our Separation of Church and State), is draconian and a violation of a person's religious expression. If others cannot understand how regulations like this can later be used to deny the rights of atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, or any other belief system, this point should be made and discussed. On an international basis in the 21st century, we ought to have freedom of conscience - that is, freedom of religion, and freedom *from* religion. Within reason no one should be forced by governments to act against their conscience. We need to better reconcile freedom across both the religious and non-religious and what that means. I am something like a secular humanist (though my focus is more on pro-human values and less on anti-mysticism or arguing with the religious.) I find myself often siding with the religious on personal values and siding against them on public policy. This tension can be reduced I think, and I have no reason to believe that this conflict is unique to the US (though frankly, the extremely religious have more sway here than in any western nation I can think of).
(*) Enlightenment and post-enlightenment principles as regards the foundation for governments and an understanding of the world. I am willing to acknowledge that free market individualism and social democracy / democratic sociali
True enough; my comment was a dumb one :)
And one of the reasons why our government will become more and more authoritarian is because people like you simply suck dry what benefits previous generations thought for and when faced with crisis, run away like a little bitch.
Stay here and fight. Stay here and help build a resistance. Stay here and be contrarian; raise your voice and for once walk the walk rather than talk the talk if freedom actually means anything to you. Why not use your education to formulate a counter-attack on all of this? Or do you seriously believe the war against statism is lost after only a few years? You say that you're educated: Where you is your historical perspective and sence of historical time?
Nah, you'll gladly move to some other country, sip coffee and let everyone else do the work.
You pathetic coward. You're not so much "smart" as a typical example of the attitude that is at the very base of this nation's decline.
In any other universe, you are, quite simply, spoiled.
I too am college aged, and successful. I don't know exactly what to do about all of this but one thing is for certain, I'm not going to just GIVE UP after a lousy six years.
THAT is pathetic.
On second thought, seriously, leave, you'll just be in the way, and if this is how you really think, you are most definitely part of the problem.
Wouldn't want you to, you know, break a nail or something.
Good point. The HBO series "The Wire," which is about the drug war in Baltimore, covers this in a fair amount of detail. In the show, pre-paid cellphones would be used up and simply discarded, littering the streets. Of course in The Wire, they were hamstrung by the phone companies' unwillingness to respond to a warrant (to monitor these phones) in a timely manner, as well as getting a warrant at all.
In point of fact, considering how much of a story this is, we can be certain that if any terrorists were commuting by conventional means, that will cease.
The Washington Post is not ordinarily considered to be a conservative paper. I'm not really sure that its readership can be described as you suggest, though I hope you're right nonetheless.
You've seen movie advertising that gives the impression that the crap Hollywood is pumping out might actually be half-decent? Where do you live?
I, for one, am thankful for movie and television advertising as it has kept me out of theaters and away from the television set during prime time hours.
It would be nearly impossible for film & tv advertising as well as commercial advertising to keep me away from screens and out of stores more than it does now.
In particular, I appreciate the fact that trite, grafted-on, endlessly tedious (and generic) sexual and romantic relationships are emphasized, along with dumb jokes, mugging to the camera, gratuitous (and also tedious) CGI, and cheesy catch phrases.
I'd like to thank Hollywood for reducing my movie viewing habits to about one movie (in the theater) a year. This may well decline further as thus far in 2006 I have not seen any movies at all. The big communal experience everyone always assures me exists in sitting in a packed theater of loud patrons, has always been lost on me. I want complete immersion when I see a movie. I don't want to be reminded I'm sitting in a god damned suburban fire-trap with a bunch of assholes who can't shut up for 90 minutes.
In addition, assuming I'm not alone, and I know I'm not, Hollywood has done a remarkable job of increasing the viewership of foreign and independent movies. The worse it gets, and the worse they attempt to pander to the dumbest among us, the more I broaden my perspective in search of entertainment. Thanks to Sundance, IFC, Flix, and the other channels on extended cable. How happy I am not to have to endure the "Latest Hollywood Blockbusters!" I cancelled HBO, which felt good. I can just wait for the DVDs of The Wire and The Sopranos to come out, Netflix em, and be done with it.
So for me, the making of insipid movies and insipid television shows, along with the insipid advertising that accompanies them has been pretty good, actually. More money in my pocket, less for besotted Hollywood execs and the cruddy but endlessly pretty $25mil per movie movie stars.
What I have to wonder is who the hell is pirating the crap they complain about? I can't think of a movie released in the past two years that I've been even remotely curious to obtain, even in the DVD bargain bin. This, to me, is the greatest mystery of all. Who the hell is wasting DVDs and copious bandwidth on Hollywood's slop? The same people pirating Ashlee Simpson records? Good grief.
The schadenfreude I feel at Hollywood's alleged hemhorraging, nonetheless, is without bounds. I hope it results in massive bankruptcy and the decline of the greater Los Angeles area as some kind of cultural bellwether for the USA.
Now *that* is the definition of irony.
Well the only possible sympathy I have in the examples given are for fans buying REM. Nothing could make me care about what people pay for Bon Jovi or Robbie Williams.
Maybe the way to really fight back against the music industry is to stop buying crappy music, and patronize your local used CD store. The big profits, I would imagine, come from the big multiplatinum albums, of which - maybe - one out of every 20 or 30 represents quality music?
Completely subjective, I know. Smaller labels that have not slashed prices really should, and people should make the effort to seek out independent music from these labels. People should explore new genres. I have a smattering of CDs I bought right from the small labels' websites themselves, for $10.00 for a new album, which isn't bad considering what new big-name artists' CDs sell for.
As for the issue of international markets and price gouging, nothing new here, either. In any case, when it comes to music, you don't necessarily get what you pay for either in Australia or anywhere else.
When you buy a top 40 album, you buy an image created by advertisers for the most part. There are probably half a million unsigned artists the world over who make music as good as or better than what you hear on your local top 40 station. Maybe they're not good looking, or don't know how to stand like a bunch of idiots with their hair hanging down in their eyes, or don't have the bodies to slut it up real good for MTV.
There are alternatives. Someone mentioned emusic.com - that's a good place to start.
But if you're really angry because the last Madonna CD is out of your price range, well...I'm trying real hard to care, but...
The documentation *is* far-flung, poorly organized, and often out of date. One of the reasons I run Gentoo is that they have put some priority on documentation, and having it in one place, as well as specific to Gentoo. The whole saw about Gentoo being difficult or not newbie-friendly isn't really true. There are other reasons not to run Gentoo but that's not one. Why? Step by step documentation is included and pretty easy to follow.
I think documentation is seen as a boring task. I don't think the problem is insurmountable though. Improving documentation on Linux topics is something I hope to get involved in.
I live in Arizona. I get George Hamiltoned on the walk out to the mailbox :)
I have an L-shaped desk with Gorilla Racks behind each long side of it and then one perpendicular to the short edge of one side. This allows me to put the computers up on the racks themselves, preserving desk space but still within reach (the lowest shelf is just slightly higher than the desk itself. This allows me to easily run wires for any equipment I do leave on my desk, such as the phone. Also, books and other equipment (like CD-ROM drives) are easily reachable.
1 41799282&year=2005
I think with chairs, I've just gotten lucky. The chair I use is the pefect size for the desk and I rarely feel any physical fatigue even over long sessions.
I have most of my systems on the shelves oriented in such a way that the power supply fan blows toward the window, so I can easily open that up and exhaust the hot air that builds up. In addition, I have the machines which have cables I may need to unplug or switch on a regular basis on the shelf perpendicular to the short edge of the desk, so I can easily walk around behind the shelves and have full access to the back of the case.
A picture of how I did this with shelves is here:
http://www.computerrooms.org/viewer.php?pointer=1
Those Gorilla Racks are worth seeking out, by the way - I buy them at Costco and they have a capacity of something like 600 pounds per shelf (!) I never get close to this of course, but they feel steady in such a way that I don't mind piling equipment on there. The shelves can be adjusted to just about any height - you choose.
Preserving desk space is key to my own sanity since I often have books or printouts I am working from, along with my lunch, etc.
Another thing which helps is lighting. I have found that the best lighting for me is not very high above my desk. This allows my desk space to be flooded with light for reading, without diminishing the contrast of the monitor. Accordingly I use a light with a lampshade on it and have the lamp actually on my desk, at the edge.
*THANK YOU*.
Last weekend I dropped by a church rummage sale and reluctantly spent $20.00 on a used fax machine because my company won't get with the F'ing program with digital signatures. Faxes are horrible; I look forward to their complete obsolescence. That and checks. Hate them too. Whole bunch of things need to be retired.
This mirrors my thoughts exactly. Hanging pictures or painting the walls of my house does not add to their functionality at all but I have to look at them a lot. A flat white wall gets annoying to look at. So I put some paint on and hang some pictures.
I probably look at my computer more than any single wall of my house every day. I find myself occasionally staring at my monitor and zoning out completely.
I wrote a script which goes out to some Usenet newsgroups, grabs a mess of high resolution graphics from them, and saves them, once a day. Then once an hour I have my wallpaper rotate to something new. This alone has made looking at this screen for hours on end less monotonous.
That being said, obviously, some eye candy is distracting, garish, and stupid. (I am thinking of certain Windows apps which for whatever reason run as "round" windows or some non-standard shape. That really drives me nuts.)
Microsoft thinks that people want these kinds of effects, and that it will sell copies of their new OS. Probably they got this idea from looking at Macs (it's a shallow view of why people use Macs, but I've heard people make that comment before). Not much complicated there.
I graduated college before laptops were commonplace. In fact, I don't remember anyone bringing them to class (1990-1994). But man, I wish I had one at the time. I was often in a position where so much information was being delivered, and I was writing so fast, I couldn't always read my own handwriting. Beyond which, it could be painful.
I hear these responses about how they're distracting or how people don't pay attention, or the professor's ludicrous ideas about how students merely transcribe what he is saying, rather than "thinking" or "analyzing."
When I sat in class, people did crossword puzzles, read the campus paper, magazines, snacked, whatever. The other students were busy furiously scribbling down into notebooks what the professor was saying, and since you can't write nearly as fast as you can type, it was doubly exhausting and doubly attention-killing.
If you get distracted by someone's laptop, maybe you should just quit college altogether. I don't understand this idea that it's anyone's fault or responsibility but *yours* as to whether you pay attention or not. College students had better get a grip on technology and its appropriate place in life fast, because it's going to be the same challenge after college when you're in an office full of computers and other distractions and things are far more tedious and boring than most college classes are.
I've never understood why professors take attendance. If you can pass the class without showing up, that says a lot about the professor, frankly. If you fail because you don't show up, you own that too. I had great professors and I had crap ones. I was able to get an A in a class I showed up to three classes for the whole semester, Shakespeare 350 in a huge cavernous lecture hall. Did I miss out on something? It's 14 years later and I really don't think so. I read the plays - to my surprise I enjoyed them - and understood them. On a few occasions I went to the library to look at some discussions of parts I didn't understand. That was all it took.
In the end, you're paying for it anyway.
Professors are *really* idealistic if they think that class is about thinking and analyzing. Class is about grades. It's about graduating with a good GPA and being able to out-compete your fellow students for jobs. On the way, if you're lucky, and you have good professors and are in a curriculum you love, maybe you'll have some insights and epiphanies. I certainly did (mostly in history classes), but let's not kid ourselves. 99% of what I've learned I've learned in my spare time, reading what I wanted to read, because I was interested in it, not because I had to fill in some bullshit core curriculum requirement in a class I didn't care about then, and don't care about now.
To get the grades, you're going to need to know your stuff. To know the stuff, you're probably going to need good notes. If you have good notes, you'll have time later to reflect on what they mean. Most of the thinking and insight is going to come as you study, not while you're sitting there taking furious notes.
You can take better notes with a laptop. You can format them, clean them up later (and maybe in so doing, read them again and internalize the information therein). Maybe you'll be at the student center doing the cleanup, and you'll have an insight or epiphany with a mouthful of pizza.
Students should be left to their own devices in terms of what technology they use (if any), and whether or not they attend class, and how they learn. Every person is different, for one, and second, because they are paying for it. If typing furiously on a laptop isn't working, they'll know it long before the exam rolls around. Professors have huge egoes; the insight they claim to impart through the classroom experience is *usually* highly overrated (there are certainly exceptions; god bless the ones who can still enthrall).
Beyond which, there is the basic idea of learning how to positively interact with technology. This involves
Add me to the chorus of admirers. I haven't been a gamer...since Ultima IV.
,for me, it wasn't just a game - it was art; no less important to me than some of the best books I've read, and the finest movies I've seen. I can't think of anything I learned in college which was anywhere as stimlating to me, intellectually, as this game. And that says a lot for someone who hasn't been a gamer for 20 years, I think.
Even before that my attention span was too short for many RPGs, including text adventures/IF that was popular in the early 80s.
I must say though, Ultima IV consumed me for several months. Everything fell to the side - my online activities at the time, my campaign to pester my father into installing a separate phone line in the house so I could put up a BBS, and of course, my schoolwork.
I have never been so consumed by a single computer-oriented pursuit since Ultima IV: The Quest of the Avatar, on the Commodore 64.
I'm in my 30s now, and from time to time I try to explain this game to people who haven't seen it, or who can't fully understand the state of the art of computer games in the early to middle 80s, and why this was such a broad leap forward. Most of my friends are not gamers either, or if they are, enjoy what's popular now, which are deathmatch-style games. For some reason I've had a hard time explaining why this game was so, so much better...so much more, somehow...important.
By the time Ultima IV came out, I was sick to death of hack and slash / shoot-to-kill games, owing to several years of blowing quarters on arcade games like Asteroids and countless hours of wandering around my neighborhood trading Atari 2600 cartridges with friends. I was into D&D at the time, but most of the games I (pirated) just didn't have the rich immersiveness of AD&D itself. As a result of both of these I remember wishing it was ten years in the future, because by then, no doubt, computer RPGs would be approaching the detail and richness of the AD&D experience.
And then someone gave me a copy of Ultima III, which was fasincating enough to me that I saved up my paycheck from delivering the Asbury Park Press, and bought U4, which came with the aforementioned cloth map, and a medallion/talisman kind of thing.
And then I didn't see daylight for quite some time.
I haven't been interested in games at all since the end of U4 with a few isolated (but casual) exceptions - Doom, when it came out (who could have resisted that?), and now and again I'll fire up bzflag for 15 minutes at a time.
Still, U4 is major part of the patchwork of my teenage years, and still represents to me, in a word, Excellence.
I usually skip any game-related stories on Slashdot, but I had to make a comment here, because for me, U4 is really the only game that ever mattered to me, in my lifetime.
Thank you Richard Garriott for firing up my imagination, for the idea that you can make an adventure game which involved actual morality, and for creating a non-linear world that seemed impossibly large; limitless, even.
I guess
Principally I'm talking about selling free software by its merits. It's one thing to say, "X sucks, this is better." It's another to have a comparative list of features. That's a fair way of showing the differences.
Another way to promote it is to show point by point comparisons on a need assessment.
For example, "We need X, Y, and Z" in a web server.
Show how, say, Apache meets these needs, how a competing product meets these needs, and then show the bottom line cost-wise.
This latter example was actually how we introduced Apache into my project at work. There was a lot of concern about Apache because my company generally used commercial software (including web servers). Most of the people who were to make the final decision weren't particularly interested in having tried-and-true commercial solutions bashed - whatever problems commercial products had, they had worked fairly well for several years.
What did win them over was the fact that Apache could match the commercial product, and do it for free. They were moved by positive studies and positive feedback from others who had used it both within my organization and outside. The success of Apache has led to its deployment in other places now.
Time and time again, I have noticed that merely bashing the competition is unpersuasive to the unconverted. It comes off as bizarre, cult-like, or nerdy in a way that, in my own experience, turns people off. Negativity is easy. It's not what the competition can't do but what free software *can* do.
Lastly, the emotional bashing of commercial software and companies has gotten fairly old. Everyone knows (and sarcastically parodies) platform fanatics. You'll see sarcastic quips in any thread regarding, "X fanboy" with some kind of parody of their general rap:
"LOL M1CR0$L0TH W1ND0ZE!"
Minds shut because of the generalized disgust with the individual making the case, as opposed to the merits of the case itself. People generally respond to educated, positive remarks, in almost every situation where persuasion is the focus. Those already convinced or partisan on a certain issue may enjoy negativity but I don't think those who aren't convinced do.
This is why people who are politically partisan enjoy negative campaigning and sensationalistic sound-byte swipes at the opposition, but the unaligned are generally turned off by this. And when it comes to software advocacy, we are talking about the unaligned - those who don't really have a position yet. If an individual already hates Internet Explorer, great - a positive campaign to promote Firefox gives them an alternative. But if a person doesn't have any major problems with IE, or doesn't know any better, a slagging campaign is just going to come off as what people always term "zealotry." This is likely to prejudice them against alternatives on the basis of the messenger. Such ranting comes off as all heat, no light.
I've seen this happen before on Usenet and other places.
Create excitement. Create a little hype, even. That's the best way to keep minds open and get people to listen without them being distracted (or disgusted) by the disposition, personality, or motives of the advocate.
Positivity is more motivating in general, in almost all things. Negativity more often than not goes to "preaching to the converted."
I've kind of felt that this sort of thing was a problem with several high-profile free software projects. Notably, this kind of thing usually comes from the user community; you don't ordinarily see developers spending time with this.
It's too bad, too. There are a lot of great reasons to use free alternatives to commercial software. I'd like to see more positive advocacy and less bashing the competition. And not because the competition doesn't deserve to be bashed (sometimes it does), but because I think you make a better case this way. This generates positive buzz.
It would be interesting, for example, to add up the number of "You are a fanboy." and related sarcastic posts on Slashdot alone.
Some of these may be trolls, but I'm sure many people are just sick of hearing that, for example, Firefox, will cure cancer.
I use free software (almost exclusively). I'm a big fan of it. I just think there are better ways to sell a product to a general audience.
I wonder how true this would be for, say, Slashdot users as a whole as opposed to the workforce as a whole. With a few glaring exceptions (usually involving phones), technology has enabled me to prioritize work like never before. E-mail keeps a useful paper trail for tracking ongoing issues (this has saved a hell of a lot of time I'd spend taking and organizing notes). Databases and internal webs ensure that I don't have to take 10 minues slogging through piles of paper and filing cabinets to find things I need. IM and VPNs has made working remotely a breeze. My team is spread across 4 locations, and we probably work more smoothly this way than we would if we were in a noisy office.
We can take care of emergencies from home without having to drive into the office via our VPN. We can prioritize dealing with people in ways not possible when people are physically walking up to your desk when you've got ten billion things in your head you have to get down into a document. If an emergency arises, the boss can call you on your analog telephone, and have you come into the office.
Or he can page you, and have you log on from home via VPN or what have you, and fix it from there.
Which would you prefer? I refuse to believe that before there was technology, there weren't emergencies, out of hours calls, and a lot of weekend work.
I've seen articles like this before. Technology is like drugs - do your tech; just don't let it do you.
Do I work a little more out of hours? Yes. I do. From home, in my jammies. Rocking. Ripped to the tits on french-pressed triple-strength gourmet coffee that would make Poseidon weep. Like no one's business. Not only do I get work done quickly and easily on weekends or at night when I have to, I get to look horrible doing it, unshaven and in my shorts and stained t-shirt, as I generally am when at home.
If my boss is on the road, and I have a quick question, I can IM it to his cell phone and let him get to it as soon as it convenient for him. I don't have to get held up for hours or days, creating longer hours for me down the road.
Yeah, everyone likes their silence. But I'll take an occasional weekend or after hours call as opposed to last minute rushes and work frenzies because someone was unreachable for hours on end and delayed the implementaion of something. For me personally, it's been worthwhile. I'm just speaking for myself, but I can't be the only one in this boat.
People have to learn to adapt to technology, ascertain its usefulness, learn how to *configure* it for better productivity, and not latch onto something because it's a fad and "everyone has one," within the constraints of what their employer requires.
I would never, ever, want to go back to the pre-1990 workplace, personally. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I spend less time on the road, less time organizing my desk, less time trying to track down data, and less time dealing with bullshit overall than I would without my tech.
I also spend less time in the office, and, almost paradoxically, getting a lot more work done in a shorter time.
If call centers didn't pay like total shit, maybe they wouldn't be.
Low pay = High turnover = Constant inexperienced agents = Unhappy customers = Customers taking anger out on agents = High stress levels for agents (+ low pay) = High Turnover.
It's a problem, but it is fundamentally a consequence of call centers being unpleasant places to work. Beyond billing and so on, you can also toss tech support call centers - if you can even get through to one, into that category.
That being said, there are a lot of call center workers who work their asses off in spite of no support or respect from anyone. Both the call center employees and paying customers get screwed by the attitude some companies take toward customer support.
Because the problem is so widespread, if you take your business elsewhere, someone is showing up immediately to take your place, coming from some other company they're happy with.
A sad fact is that when people price out goods and services, they rarely, if ever, take into account the support they will get as a differentiator (there are exceptions; a lot of people like to use local, small businesses because often support is better and more personalized).
In terms of security, I think you have to have not only skilled agents who know scams inside and out, but agents who management listens to to make policy. Any agent in any center that handles money - billing records, etc. should be able to give feedback to their management which directly and promptly affects policies, processes, and procedures at that company. Agents know a lot that management doesn't because agents are on the "front lines," so to speak, and interact directly with customers.
In an example given whereby a company was calling a customer, and expecting those customers to hand over confidential information, agents should have been able to tell their management that this was a poor procedure and why, and management should have reacted quickly and worked out an alternative process.
Some companies do treat their agents this way; many do not. Until people refuse to patronize businesses that treat call centers as a secondary concern or barely necessary evil, these practices will continue.
In the end it's about the dollar amount people pay per month, or the $5.00 they save on this product vs. that one. It's rarely about support because most people assume they will not need support. I am certain if people could go back in time after a really bad support experience, it would definitely affect what company they went with. Hindsight is 20/20 in this way.
Blaming call center agents is completely missing the point. If agents are getting $6.00 an hour to sit on the phones, you're not going to get experienced engineers and fraud experts taking those jobs. It's that simple. Even people who take these jobs will wind up considering them McJobs, and will leave as soon as something better comes along.
It's primarily the fault of management (and cheap outsourcing), and secondarily the fault of consumers who don't care about support departments until they need them.
As an individual consumer you have no power. None. Do you really think any company cares if you cancel your service? They don't. If a *whole lot of customers* start leaving - over poor security or bad support or whatever, well, that could make a difference. The problem of course is how to coordinate this.
The bar for support is set low for a reason. And that reason is a financial one.
Civil forfeiture cases, last I looked, actually were cases against inanimate objects "...vs. one Jaguar" and so on. So the idea is perhaps not as absurd as you indicate. Civil Forfeiture is another phenomenon gone completely amok but that's fodder for a different rant.
I had a single pre-law class in college, taught by a professor who clearly loved the law while being aware of its absurdities, with a bunch of pre-law students who had a weird religious reverence for it and got into the bizarre habit of pretentiously addressing each other as "Mr. and Mrs." - these are students who were throwing up on each other on the weekend.
The more I learn about law, the less respect I have for it. God bless those who fight against the entrenched interests.
Ah well, like everyone else on the internet, I talk big. I'll get back on my knees like the rest of America when I'm done here, don't worry.
I just wish the RIAA would figure out a better way of protecting music industry revenues. Of all of the complaints and ideas I've heard, the one that makes the most sense is paying a monthly license or subscription fee of some sort. Hell, the RIAA could start its own P2P service with *everything that has ever been recorded* online in some nice format like FLAC and a search engine and so on. I think the convenience of properly tagged, properly encoded files alone would make this worth a monthly subscription fee - say, $5.00 for 20 songs, $10.00 for 100 songs, or $25.00 for all you can download.
The RIAA could then potentially use (I know this is not ideal, but maybe a worthwhile compromise) your downloading habits and so on to display targeted banner ads in the client or something, as an additional revenue stream. Additional revenues could be raised by things like offering albums pre-release for a fee or "deluxe" subscription level. There are probably like a million value-added services they could offer, from online storage lockers...everything iTunes and so on are doing (How about music videos as well?)
Is this my idea of a perfect world? No. But it seems a lot better than what's happening now. I don't begrudge the industry its profit, but the old ways of selling music just don't make much sense anymore.
And while I don't directly blame the RIAA for music piracy, really, it does have to come to terms with the amount of utter crap it's putting out. I have so many CDs from the early 90s especially that have one or two memorable songs, and the rest are self-indulgent, atonal, amelodic sludge. There are some great albums I've bought that have been worth every penny (I doubt anyone would feel ripped off after buying something like Dark Side of the Moon), but these are rare.
Obviously crap music sells and has a market (or it wouldn't be made), but it has an unintended side effect - it makes other people - people with some sense of aesthetics - jaded and angry. And for many people, this makes it easier to justify downloading music for free. I know, I've seen much ranting along these lines on just about every web forum and frankly any sympathy I may have had for the RIAA has waned dramatically as a result of this.
It's not rational - the question of the legitimacy of music piracy has zero to do with the crap offerings by the major record labels - but the phenomenon is real. No one wants to be a criminal but most psychologically healthy people - that is, people who are inherently distrustful of monolithic institutions and authority in general - can appreciate the romance of being an "outlaw," internally rationalizing music piracy as some form of civil disobedience (Civil entitlement?)
This is the rationalization so many people used back in the 1980s to steal phone calls, when calling out to boards in non-local calling areas was expensive. "It's just a big multinational oligopoly, anyway!" (Or monopoly, if you're really old school and were stealing calls pre-divestiture).
A lot of the anti-RIAA juice is at least partially a result of being disgusted at the pres
OK first, we could make all online discussions really simple if we could come up with some sort of symbol or placeholder for a few concepts which hardly need any further exposition.
(666USA666) - This would be the placeholder for "The United States is evil and I am very angry but also experiencing a vague sort of pleasure in finding another reason to hate the United States." This would not cover extended, dispassionate discourse on the problems of the United States, but rather would stand in for such things as "Loud fat Americans! I HATE ALL OF YOU! I AM EXPERICING SCHADENFREUDE AT YOUR IRAQ PROBLEMS! Also you have no culture and crappy food!"
You could put two of them together, like . This would be vaguely the equivalent of a -vv switch on your favorite command line program. You could even do it three times. We could set a threshold of, say, 5 placeholders in a row to represent, say, a fairly robust, Al Qaeda sort of hatred for the USA, and then maybe like just once would be, perhaps, the way American liberals feel about the USA.
Then we could have:
(AmericaHYUK) - This would be the predictable ugly, dumb response we have grown to love to hate from so many Americans. This could be a stand-in for the trusty old saw, "WE BAILED YER ASSES OUTTA WW2 YOU EUROFLITS!" or "LOL FREEDOM CONSTITUTION LOL," "WE'LL PUT A BOOT IN YER ASS, IT'S THE AMURRICAN WAY!" or whatever it is that Americans say when faced with the fact that most of the world doesn't regard the USA as groovy as people from the US tend to do.
This is my contribution to all debate on the internet for this week. I hereby release both placeholders into the public domain, and this ought to help out with brevity.
Alright as for the whole internet, I say we put the Netherlands in charge.
No I'm not from the Netherlands but have you noticed that for such a geographically small country, they make up 1/3rd the population of the internet (Barring most of Asia, but I can't read their character sets so I typically stay away anyway)? If I just came to earth on a spaceship and spent my time learning about humanity on the internet. I'd guess that the Netherlands was the last remaning superpower.
Also, they tend to speak fairly superb English, which makes it easy for dumb ethnocentric Amurricans like myself. They seem to have an excess of technical skill and don't make a nuisance of themselves. Plus, who has anything against the Netherlands?
I say we put the Netherlands in charge. Here's to you, Netherlands.
You think I'm being sarcastic but I'm not. I love you guys.
Like many here, I think this law will do a whole lot of nothing.
But as for the comments about Windows and its security holes, and how we should blame Microsoft, I don't agree with this either.
I don't think criminals who break into your house shouldn't be blamed because lockmakers, doormakers, or windowmakers (no relation) should have made their wares of sturdier materials.
People use Windows out of momentum and because they feel they have no choice. Microsoft would clean up its act if consumers forced them to by using other products. A variety of circumstances have largely prevented this from happening.
Mac users have felt that their experience has been better for many years, and have often wondered why anyone would choose a PC over a Mac - especially now with OS X which, they say, rocks harder than a llama with a chaingun and free calzones.
I have seen people complain about the smallest changes on their systems, including point upgrades to browsers or MSOE upgrades.
People aren't down with change, especially on things they think of as complicated devices. Those of us who read Slashdot are, I am sure, far more flexible and adventurous in this regard, but I don't think we in anyway represent consumers as a whole.
Microsoft could probably commit genocide, and people would still use Windows. They could declare themselves as a nuclear power in Redmond, and people still would use their products. Not because they are the best (a minority use them for this reason, but not, I think, most people), but because it is what they are used to, and have become used to and really don't want to learn something new, along with its attendant frustrations, hassles, and time commitment.
People use Windows because they would rather eat glass than have to re-learn a new interface or OS, because, for many, computers are a sad fact of life, as opposed to a fulfilling hobby or something they would choose to spend time using.
That being said, spyware authors are degenerates, and deserve, basically, what they get.
But here's an idea.
Corporations do not ordinarily prosecute virus writers, phishers, spyware authors, and people who crack their systems for a variety of reasons. One is the cost, and two is the embarassment of being compromised.
What if all of the major corporations and banks secretly decided to do a collectively lodge a wave of lawsuits all over the world. Coordinate with governments abroad and just do a year of scorched earth prosecutions of these folks, and promise to follow up with regular "waves" of prosecution, but not say when. In the intervening time, companies would be free to prosecute or not prosecute (or sue) who they like, but they would agree at regular intervals to time their lawsuits to make a massive public statement that they and their customers are sick of putting up with this crap.
This would probably go further as a deterrent since clearly laws and civil suits as they are undertaken now, have not had much effect.
Countries can bring economic pressure to bear on other countries which, mainly through lack of resources I imagine, do not prioritize investigating and prosecuting computer crimes.
Imagine if you rattled the cages of these degenerates in a way that produced not only actual prosecutions, but revenue to follow up with more waves at unannounced rituals? That might have a deterrent effect.
Of course, the question of whether you like the idea of governments exercising their power this way, is certainly valid.
I do not like government. I wish we did not need it at all. I am not so convinced however that since we have it, that the government should do nothing whatsoever when it comes to these kinds of crimes. These crimes have considerable consequences for many, not the least of which is the erosion of confidence in the internet in general as a valid medium of economic, intellectual, and cultural exchange.
Try as I might, I cannot think of a reason why vandals