It's not a shame that HK was returned to its rightful owner.
The China that HK was a part of was Imperial China. This country does not exist any more. It's just as true, and just as irrelevant to say that the Communists stole China from its "rightful" owner, the Emperor.
And we're not talking about real estate, but 6 million people who were delivered to the rule of a government that many had risked their lives to escape from when they came to Hong Kong, of their own free will.
Genghis Khan ruled China by force, no one liked him
One thing I have to agree with, he wasn't even Chinese. However, Mao Zedong was, he did kill upwards of 50 million in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, when of course people were risking their lives to escape in to Hong Kong.
The British gave China their land to prevent this from happening, for the sake of all those living in Hong Kong,
No, this was so the UK could get trade concessions from China. The people of Hong Kong were given no thought or care. The "guarantees"for HK peopel's rights in the "Basic Law" (handover treaty) have been steadily broken and weakened. Most recently by the ruling out of elections in 2007, though the Basic Law allowed this.
July 1st, the anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to the Chinese, draws citywide protests, which the Chinese have cleverly embraced and encouraged residents to do the same, as a celebration of national pride, unity, and patriotism.
What?? The Chinese, by which I assume you mean the Beijing government and their appointees in HK, did their best to downplay and discourage attendance, but knowing that being too heavy handed would not go down well, especially in the world press, had to let it proceed.
But what you don't mention and is the important thing is "Kwoloon". Kwoloon is a penisula (sp?) which is part of China given to the British after the Boxer Rebellion in 1898 for 99 years.
It's "Kowloon" (and "peninsula"). HK Island was ceded in 1842, the southern part of Kowloon, up to Boundary Street, was added in 1858 in perpetuity. The rest, the "New Territories" was under the 99-year lease from 1898. Actually, the majority of the population still lives in the "perpetually British" part.
The problem is, that Hong Kong's existence is and always has been as a an entrepot for China trade. Even during the Cultural Revolution this role continued. Once Margaret Thatcher had rather stupidly opened the subject of extending the lease, which Deng Xiao Ping was apparently quite willing to allow to continue by default, it was impossible for China to lose face and allow this. And now they have many ports that do direct trade with the ret of the world, Hong Kong's role was not essential. Not to mention that HK doens't have enough fresh water for its population and buys it from China.
The whole legal basis for the treaties is moot, anyway, as they were signed with the Chinese Imperial government, and there have been two revolutions since then. Not to mention the fact that the 6 million inhabitants of Hong Kong, many born under British rule, were given no say at all in their fate, and though some were allowed British passports, the UK government was terrified of a Yellow Horde of refugees and severely limited the number.
The democracy march on July 1st, supposedly a celebration of the handover, had between 350-500,000 people, perhaps a tenth of the poulation. The aim is toshow Beijing that we aren't happy with the idiot businessman they put in charge, that we do want to elect our own leaders.
I've NEVER seen goback actually be useful in restoring any machine
We had it at our office, used it for 8 months. It was very useful at recovering fronm user errors, or uninstalling crap. Obviously, not going to be of much help with a hard disk failure. YMMV.
The best was a sushi-internet-cafe in Hong Kong. The staff were confused, having never had anyone come in before who wanted to only use the internet and not eat sushi, so they didn't charge us
There are a bunch of free Internet terminals (usually locked down somewhat to run IE only, though you often find some sittng there with blue screens) set up in shopping malls, MTR stations and the like in HK. Usually jammed with Filipinas checking their Hotmail. Also the Pacific Coffee cafes have free terminals, theoretically for the use of customers, but they don't regulate it. I used to go there to snoop on my boss's email, just to make sure there was no possible trackback.
Have a look at Uganda Connect for examples of a Swiss group that is already doing this. JUst send the laptop to them, wit all the original software and docs, let them put it to the best use.
Uconnect goes back to 1996 when they brought their first container of [mostly 386] recycled computers to Uganda that were configured to connect to the Internet [running Windows 95]. At the Uconnect [education ministry headquarters] demonstration schools computer lab students and teachers may attend a one-week Network Training Workshop (NTW) during which local volunteers instruct them in networking basics. NTW trainees learn how to install their schools' computer labs local area networks (LANs) themselves, providing staff and students with a profound sense of ownership and confidence in maintaining and troubleshooting their LAN.
they're not, but most laptops came with windows, so I'd say it's probably licensed for at least 95
He said "a 4-year-old" laptop. So it should have come with 98 or ME.
Anyway, don't give a moment's thought to "licensing". Is anyone on Uganda going to care? Just use whatever's best, and make at least two backup CDs to restore the system. (Even if it only works 80% of the time, that's enough.) One excellent, though not free, "rollback" program is "GoBack" which can undo just about anything. It uses a large hidden part of the disk to continuously keep backups for every change made.
And even if it doesn't, doesn't MS have a right to design an inferior operating system?
If it wasn't forcing it on 95% of customers. As we all know, and was proven in court, MS used its market dominace to wipe out competition, and that's why there is a perceived lack of choice.
Yes, it's possible for anyone to download a Linux ISO and install anything they want. But it's almost impossible to find a non-MS system on the shelf, for Granny to have delivered.
doesn't consider Internet Explorer a seperate program. She just considers it part of the computer.
I've read accounts of others who've dealt with this by installing Mozilla and changing its icon to IE's. Users at the level just don't notice.
However, the estate holders of Charlie Chaplain's old films, for instance, are not releasing the silent versions of many of his famous movies to DVD, only the ones with actual sound, voices, etc. This is because they feel that it holds closest to his own aspirations, as Chaplain was a huge advocate of sound in movies. Though there would be a sizeable market for the silent ones, the family wants to hold on to the original artist's ideal.
I don't know where you heard this. Just go for instance to this page if you want to buy DVDs of any Chaplin movie, including silents going back to 1914. "Warner Home Video, released in September 2003, these editions are what all Chaplin enthusiasts have been waiting for and constitute what has become the definitive Chaplin collection on DVD and video. The film rights were licensed to Martin Karmitz (MK2) by the Chaplin estate..." This includes silent classics like The Gold Rush and The Kid. Later it goes on to discuss rights: "As far as Charlie's films go all the Keystone, Essanays and Mutuals are in the public domain as Chaplin never controlled the rights. After that they fall in to the copyright of Roy Export Company Establishment (RECE). First Nationals that exist without Charlie's own musical scores are public domain, otherwise they are owned by RECE. Any companies that have put together their own presentations of these public domain films almost certainly control the rights to the film in that form."
The existence of a "standard" operating system actually does help many people who otherwise would never touch a computer.
Arguable. People can use more than one kind of radio, televsion, car, etc, etc. People now cope with more than one kind of game console.
Grandma has an easier time using a computer if it all is integrated into one product, not as a collection of different products
Same argument; and several alternative browsers can closely mimic IE's interface if that's what you want. Anyway, my six-year-old daughter can cope with Opera at home and IE at school. As for integration; a browser SHOULD NOT be integrated into the OS, aside from that, whatever happens under the hood (which is important, the impossible uninstall problem) as far as grandma is concerned she clicks on an icon (IE, Opera, Firefox, etc) and up comes the browser. Same with an email link if she wants to send money to Nigeria. The problem now is that in some cases, no matter what preferences you have, IE still pops up.
"We all know this is true: IE is a buggy, insecure, dangerous piece of software, and the source of many of the headaches that security pros have to endure (I'm not even going to go into its poor support for Web standards; let that be a rant for another day). Yes, I know Microsoft patches holes as they are found. Great. But far too many are found. And yes, I know that Microsoft has promised that it has changed its ways, and that it will now focus on "Trustworthy Computing." But I've heard too many of Microsoft's promises and seen the results too many times. You know, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Who's shamed when it's "fool me the 432nd time"? Who's the fool? We're security pros, and we know the score. It's time. It's time to tell our users, our clients, our associates, our families, and our friends to abandon Internet Explorer."
This was linked from Coolio's a porn link site, where people have a lot of experience with state-of-the-art browser exploits, and where the advice is "turn off everything, or get another browser".
Yes, it would have been possible for someone else (such as Apple) to take MS's place (and I said "...without MS or someone else rising and taking MS's place") but then we would be complaining about Apple's monopoly or IBM's monopoly or HP's monopoly.
Why does it inevitably have to be a monopoly? (A bit like the argument that if you could travel back in time to kill Hitler, you shouldn't because someone worse might take his place.) Anyway, I was taking issue with the idea that without MS PCs would not have become usable. which you seem to have recanted somewhat.
But does that mean we should force MS to make IE harder to use so that Mozilla or Opera can compete? Force grandma to download and install her own browser
Unbundling IE doesn't mean that Grandma (we've moved a step back from your mother, I see) has to install one herself. It means that OEMs can bundle in different browsers should they choose to. It also means you could uninstall IE completely at any time later, and not have parts of it come back from the dead when it's vulnerabilities are activated by viruses or other malware, even if you never use IE from choice.
Re:The Platform is not the Technology
on
Apple Delays New iMac
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That is moronic, and yet oddly it is used by school districts all the time to put a Windows monoculture in place. Think about it: what system could possibly be used that isn't totally outdated by the time kids graduate in 5 years?
I learnt on Unix Sustem V at University in about 1980. Most of that is still applicable, in Linux and other work-alikes. Just don't have to wait overnight for my 20-line SQL job to run as in the olden times. Yay for the *nix monoculture.
What happens when I want to make my digital video camera work? What happens when I want my MP3 player to work? And please don't point me to half-assed SF.net projects, give me something a typical history major could use.
Why does a history major need to use a digitakl camera or play MP3s? (For coursework, that is. If for fun, let them buy their own toys.)
" As for "making PCs popular with the public"; that was initially Apple, later IBM. "
They made computers available to the public, not popular.
Apple (as in Apple II) and then even more so the first IBM PCs were immensely popular. I suppose it depends on how you define "popular". Obviously, as hardware has come down 90% in cost and increased in power by orders of magnitude, we're in a different era now. But hardware was the key factor, there's nothing magical about MS's software.
MS made an operating system that was designed with an eye to those who have never touched a computer before, something I can't say about Linux.
Not Linux (though of course there are Lindpows et al), but how about Apple Mac OS? Or IBM's OS/2, rather geekier, but still better and easier to use than anything MS had till Win 95. Also perhaps GEM's Desktop, BeOS, and many others pushed out of the market, not on merit by by thuggery.
Don't get me wrong, I love the OS and use it 99.9% of the time, but I would put my mom on a computer running Fedora Core 2.
Perhaps you're too young to remember when offices ran on DOS. People learnt how to do their work just as well, and in many cases I think, more effciently than today's over-decorated interfaces. There are lot's of DOS GUIs (Norton Commander, and so on) that gave a usable interface. Modern Linuxes can easily be focused on the tasks at hand, unlike Windows which allows users to hang themselves with a mouseclick.
"At least as good software"? Yes, we probably could have gotten "good" software without MS or someone else rising and taking MS's place. But I contend without MS software wouldn't have become as accessible and popular in the home.
Windows 3.1 was fine in the home, for word procesing and such. But it's gotten radically worse since all these Windows PCs started to get on the Net with hte kludges that were added to the OS to make that posible.
We already have Apple to show that better, more usable software not only could have, but does, exist without MS. Unfortunately, Gates is just a better businessman than Jobs. If you've seen Pirates of Silicon Valley a couple of lines sum it up:
Jobs: 'Our product is better. We make better stuff.'
Gates: 'You don't get it, do you? It doesn't matter.'
>Most obvious is the reduced innovation from their predatory application of their monopoly status.
I disagree. MS, like them or not, played a big part in making PCs popular with the general public, most of whom are not knowledgeable enough to run an OS like Linux. Whats more, by having such a huge competitor, rival companies are forced to increase innovation, not decrease it.
Bacause of MS's leaning on PC manufacturers, it was suicide for any of them to even offer alternative OSs. That was what the first case against MS was about. Famous examples: OS/2, BeOS. After seeing what happened to them, who would invest money in even trying? No one. Linux is only able to challenge at all because it's supported by a community, not a company. As for "making PCs popular with the public"; that was initially Apple, later IBM. MS takes a lot of credit for things that it didn't create, just because their marketing and OEM deals make them the most visible. I rather doubt that we wouldn't have at least as good software without MS.
So how much could spam be reduced by people shutting down their PCs overnight/when they're at work? Even if you haven't got a malware- infested machine you money too so the only downside is the wait for the PC to boot - 1-2 minutes for my machines. Never mind the emissions reduction.
With a DSL ethernet modem, when I go away from the machine for a while, and certainly at night, I just power the modem off. Saves a little energy, and it does seem to get hot. More importantly though it means the PC isn't dealing with a stream of probes, or worse emitting crap if it was somehow infected (never happened yet though, I have Windows with a firewall and anti-virus). When I come back I turn it on and it's online in a few seconds, about the same time it takes the PC to wake up from low-power mode. Also, the indicator lights on the modem would I expect give me a hint of unusual or unexpected traffic either way.
But I suppose those who spend all day queuing P2P downloads wouldn't want to do this.
Though here is the issue that I have with that: Isn't it still the creator's right to decide who gets to see their work and under what conditions?
Of course, it's still illegal. The argument is against the bullshit "loss of billions" statements brought out to support the draconian anti-copying laws. But I don't agree that the "creator's rights" are, or should be, so powerful; the public has "fair use" rights too once something is published, which as often discussed here are being wound back at the media lobby groups' bequest.
Are you saying that if a person that was planning on sneaking into a theatre for free is prevented from doing so, they will likely buy a ticket and go in... However, if a person that was planning on downloading and watching a movie for free is prevented from doing so, there is little chance that they would rent it or go see it in the theatre?
I'm not the poster you were replying to... but I would say that it is on the whole true. The reason being that a camcorder video downloaded and viewed on a monitor is a much inferior experience to watching a movie in a cinema, and also inferior to watching a DVD on TV. (Once the screener dupes come out, we have a different product, but I'm talking here just about camcorders). I think these are mostly used as previews. So basically cinema sales might be reduced if the movie is really crap, but otherwise it might help to bring paying customers in. People still bought 45 singles even after they'd heard the whole song on the radio innumerable times.
Copyright violation (Hence singing Happy Birthday with wierd lyrics in restaurants)
This must be a joke. Or do people actually believe the police will be called or a lawyer will send you a summons if you sing "Happy Birthday" in public? I think a judg would no t be sypathetic if such a case was brougt before him, regardless of the letter of the law.
The problem is that the worst these people are setting themselves up outside of US jurisdiction, so that FTC and company just can't get to them.
I don't think so. As the guy from Spamhaus says, the FTC et al know who the sapmmers are, most of them are American, resident in America. Yet they dpo nothing to stop them. Just look at the ROKSO list Here are names and addresses of 180 of the world's worst spammers, 140 of who are Americans. It's lack of will, not lack of evidence. The direct marketing lobbies have made sure that spamming will not be stopped. If any value was put on the resources these people waste, the FBI's Most Wanted would all be spammers. But because they just look at it individually, it's seen a nickel and dime.
Perhaps a method like using a sample of the data in the spreadsheet, doing what you want; these operations are recorded and translated to some database langauge and run on the large dataset? Like Photoshop's (using that metaphor again) preview when you use a filter. Something like this doesn't seem too hard to my naive understanding, as long as you limited the functions you use, at least to start with.
They removed English from the OS for piracy concerns.
Do you have a source for this information?
I found this article that says: "Windows XP Starter Edition will be available in Thailand by September and Malaysia late this year, a Microsoft spokesman told Bloomberg news agency yesterday." In Malaysia, the national language Bahasa uses the Roman alphabet. Many of the Chinese and Indian minorities speak better English than Bahasa. So English is essential in Malaysia; even if they've tried to cripple it the Malaysian XP should be useable by an English speaker.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course not, They drive Mercedes.
It's not a shame that HK was returned to its rightful owner.
The China that HK was a part of was Imperial China. This country does not exist any more. It's just as true, and just as irrelevant to say that the Communists stole China from its "rightful" owner, the Emperor.
And we're not talking about real estate, but 6 million people who were delivered to the rule of a government that many had risked their lives to escape from when they came to Hong Kong, of their own free will.
Genghis Khan ruled China by force, no one liked him
One thing I have to agree with, he wasn't even Chinese. However, Mao Zedong was, he did kill upwards of 50 million in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, when of course people were risking their lives to escape in to Hong Kong.
No, this was so the UK could get trade concessions from China. The people of Hong Kong were given no thought or care. The "guarantees"for HK peopel's rights in the "Basic Law" (handover treaty) have been steadily broken and weakened. Most recently by the ruling out of elections in 2007, though the Basic Law allowed this.
July 1st, the anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to the Chinese, draws citywide protests, which the Chinese have cleverly embraced and encouraged residents to do the same, as a celebration of national pride, unity, and patriotism.
What?? The Chinese, by which I assume you mean the Beijing government and their appointees in HK, did their best to downplay and discourage attendance, but knowing that being too heavy handed would not go down well, especially in the world press, had to let it proceed.
It's "Kowloon" (and "peninsula"). HK Island was ceded in 1842, the southern part of Kowloon, up to Boundary Street, was added in 1858 in perpetuity. The rest, the "New Territories" was under the 99-year lease from 1898. Actually, the majority of the population still lives in the "perpetually British" part.
The problem is, that Hong Kong's existence is and always has been as a an entrepot for China trade. Even during the Cultural Revolution this role continued. Once Margaret Thatcher had rather stupidly opened the subject of extending the lease, which Deng Xiao Ping was apparently quite willing to allow to continue by default, it was impossible for China to lose face and allow this. And now they have many ports that do direct trade with the ret of the world, Hong Kong's role was not essential. Not to mention that HK doens't have enough fresh water for its population and buys it from China.
The whole legal basis for the treaties is moot, anyway, as they were signed with the Chinese Imperial government, and there have been two revolutions since then. Not to mention the fact that the 6 million inhabitants of Hong Kong, many born under British rule, were given no say at all in their fate, and though some were allowed British passports, the UK government was terrified of a Yellow Horde of refugees and severely limited the number.
The democracy march on July 1st, supposedly a celebration of the handover, had between 350-500,000 people, perhaps a tenth of the poulation. The aim is toshow Beijing that we aren't happy with the idiot businessman they put in charge, that we do want to elect our own leaders.
We had it at our office, used it for 8 months. It was very useful at recovering fronm user errors, or uninstalling crap. Obviously, not going to be of much help with a hard disk failure. YMMV.
There are a bunch of free Internet terminals (usually locked down somewhat to run IE only, though you often find some sittng there with blue screens) set up in shopping malls, MTR stations and the like in HK. Usually jammed with Filipinas checking their Hotmail. Also the Pacific Coffee cafes have free terminals, theoretically for the use of customers, but they don't regulate it. I used to go there to snoop on my boss's email, just to make sure there was no possible trackback.
He said "a 4-year-old" laptop. So it should have come with 98 or ME.
Anyway, don't give a moment's thought to "licensing". Is anyone on Uganda going to care? Just use whatever's best, and make at least two backup CDs to restore the system. (Even if it only works 80% of the time, that's enough.) One excellent, though not free, "rollback" program is "GoBack" which can undo just about anything. It uses a large hidden part of the disk to continuously keep backups for every change made.
If it wasn't forcing it on 95% of customers. As we all know, and was proven in court, MS used its market dominace to wipe out competition, and that's why there is a perceived lack of choice.
Yes, it's possible for anyone to download a Linux ISO and install anything they want. But it's almost impossible to find a non-MS system on the shelf, for Granny to have delivered.
doesn't consider Internet Explorer a seperate program. She just considers it part of the computer.
I've read accounts of others who've dealt with this by installing Mozilla and changing its icon to IE's. Users at the level just don't notice.
I don't know where you heard this. Just go for instance to this page if you want to buy DVDs of any Chaplin movie, including silents going back to 1914. "Warner Home Video, released in September 2003, these editions are what all Chaplin enthusiasts have been waiting for and constitute what has become the definitive Chaplin collection on DVD and video. The film rights were licensed to Martin Karmitz (MK2) by the Chaplin estate..." This includes silent classics like The Gold Rush and The Kid. Later it goes on to discuss rights: "As far as Charlie's films go all the Keystone, Essanays and Mutuals are in the public domain as Chaplin never controlled the rights. After that they fall in to the copyright of Roy Export Company Establishment (RECE). First Nationals that exist without Charlie's own musical scores are public domain, otherwise they are owned by RECE. Any companies that have put together their own presentations of these public domain films almost certainly control the rights to the film in that form."
Arguable. People can use more than one kind of radio, televsion, car, etc, etc. People now cope with more than one kind of game console.
Grandma has an easier time using a computer if it all is integrated into one product, not as a collection of different products
Same argument; and several alternative browsers can closely mimic IE's interface if that's what you want. Anyway, my six-year-old daughter can cope with Opera at home and IE at school. As for integration; a browser SHOULD NOT be integrated into the OS, aside from that, whatever happens under the hood (which is important, the impossible uninstall problem) as far as grandma is concerned she clicks on an icon (IE, Opera, Firefox, etc) and up comes the browser. Same with an email link if she wants to send money to Nigeria. The problem now is that in some cases, no matter what preferences you have, IE still pops up.
The issue is with the rest of the population.
Of course, which is why Bill has a monopoly.
securityfocus.com
This was linked from Coolio's a porn link site, where people have a lot of experience with state-of-the-art browser exploits, and where the advice is "turn off everything, or get another browser".Why does it inevitably have to be a monopoly? (A bit like the argument that if you could travel back in time to kill Hitler, you shouldn't because someone worse might take his place.) Anyway, I was taking issue with the idea that without MS PCs would not have become usable. which you seem to have recanted somewhat.
But does that mean we should force MS to make IE harder to use so that Mozilla or Opera can compete? Force grandma to download and install her own browser
Unbundling IE doesn't mean that Grandma (we've moved a step back from your mother, I see) has to install one herself. It means that OEMs can bundle in different browsers should they choose to. It also means you could uninstall IE completely at any time later, and not have parts of it come back from the dead when it's vulnerabilities are activated by viruses or other malware, even if you never use IE from choice.
I learnt on Unix Sustem V at University in about 1980. Most of that is still applicable, in Linux and other work-alikes. Just don't have to wait overnight for my 20-line SQL job to run as in the olden times. Yay for the *nix monoculture.
Why does a history major need to use a digitakl camera or play MP3s? (For coursework, that is. If for fun, let them buy their own toys.)
They made computers available to the public, not popular.
Apple (as in Apple II) and then even more so the first IBM PCs were immensely popular. I suppose it depends on how you define "popular". Obviously, as hardware has come down 90% in cost and increased in power by orders of magnitude, we're in a different era now. But hardware was the key factor, there's nothing magical about MS's software.
MS made an operating system that was designed with an eye to those who have never touched a computer before, something I can't say about Linux.
Not Linux (though of course there are Lindpows et al), but how about Apple Mac OS? Or IBM's OS/2, rather geekier, but still better and easier to use than anything MS had till Win 95. Also perhaps GEM's Desktop, BeOS, and many others pushed out of the market, not on merit by by thuggery.
Don't get me wrong, I love the OS and use it 99.9% of the time, but I would put my mom on a computer running Fedora Core 2.
Perhaps you're too young to remember when offices ran on DOS. People learnt how to do their work just as well, and in many cases I think, more effciently than today's over-decorated interfaces. There are lot's of DOS GUIs (Norton Commander, and so on) that gave a usable interface. Modern Linuxes can easily be focused on the tasks at hand, unlike Windows which allows users to hang themselves with a mouseclick.
"At least as good software"? Yes, we probably could have gotten "good" software without MS or someone else rising and taking MS's place. But I contend without MS software wouldn't have become as accessible and popular in the home.
Windows 3.1 was fine in the home, for word procesing and such. But it's gotten radically worse since all these Windows PCs started to get on the Net with hte kludges that were added to the OS to make that posible. We already have Apple to show that better, more usable software not only could have, but does, exist without MS. Unfortunately, Gates is just a better businessman than Jobs. If you've seen Pirates of Silicon Valley a couple of lines sum it up:
Jobs: 'Our product is better. We make better stuff.'
Gates: 'You don't get it, do you? It doesn't matter.'
I disagree. MS, like them or not, played a big part in making PCs popular with the general public, most of whom are not knowledgeable enough to run an OS like Linux. Whats more, by having such a huge competitor, rival companies are forced to increase innovation, not decrease it.
Bacause of MS's leaning on PC manufacturers, it was suicide for any of them to even offer alternative OSs. That was what the first case against MS was about. Famous examples: OS/2, BeOS. After seeing what happened to them, who would invest money in even trying? No one. Linux is only able to challenge at all because it's supported by a community, not a company. As for "making PCs popular with the public"; that was initially Apple, later IBM. MS takes a lot of credit for things that it didn't create, just because their marketing and OEM deals make them the most visible. I rather doubt that we wouldn't have at least as good software without MS.
Turn them in. If they're really just clueless, they'll get a warning and a slap on the wrist.
That's nice but what happens when their competitor(s) get into the act and start sending spam under their name?
The competitors get in deep deep shit -- fraud, at least. But if they're competing penis-cream sellers, who cares?
With a DSL ethernet modem, when I go away from the machine for a while, and certainly at night, I just power the modem off. Saves a little energy, and it does seem to get hot. More importantly though it means the PC isn't dealing with a stream of probes, or worse emitting crap if it was somehow infected (never happened yet though, I have Windows with a firewall and anti-virus). When I come back I turn it on and it's online in a few seconds, about the same time it takes the PC to wake up from low-power mode. Also, the indicator lights on the modem would I expect give me a hint of unusual or unexpected traffic either way.
But I suppose those who spend all day queuing P2P downloads wouldn't want to do this.
Of course, it's still illegal. The argument is against the bullshit "loss of billions" statements brought out to support the draconian anti-copying laws. But I don't agree that the "creator's rights" are, or should be, so powerful; the public has "fair use" rights too once something is published, which as often discussed here are being wound back at the media lobby groups' bequest.
I'm not the poster you were replying to ... but I would say that it is on the whole true. The reason being that a camcorder video downloaded and viewed on a monitor is a much inferior experience to watching a movie in a cinema, and also inferior to watching a DVD on TV. (Once the screener dupes come out, we have a different product, but I'm talking here just about camcorders). I think these are mostly used as previews. So basically cinema sales might be reduced if the movie is really crap, but otherwise it might help to bring paying customers in. People still bought 45 singles even after they'd heard the whole song on the radio innumerable times.
This must be a joke. Or do people actually believe the police will be called or a lawyer will send you a summons if you sing "Happy Birthday" in public? I think a judg would no t be sypathetic if such a case was brougt before him, regardless of the letter of the law.
I don't think so. As the guy from Spamhaus says, the FTC et al know who the sapmmers are, most of them are American, resident in America. Yet they dpo nothing to stop them. Just look at the ROKSO list Here are names and addresses of 180 of the world's worst spammers, 140 of who are Americans. It's lack of will, not lack of evidence. The direct marketing lobbies have made sure that spamming will not be stopped. If any value was put on the resources these people waste, the FBI's Most Wanted would all be spammers. But because they just look at it individually, it's seen a nickel and dime.
Perhaps a method like using a sample of the data in the spreadsheet, doing what you want; these operations are recorded and translated to some database langauge and run on the large dataset? Like Photoshop's (using that metaphor again) preview when you use a filter. Something like this doesn't seem too hard to my naive understanding, as long as you limited the functions you use, at least to start with.
Do you have a source for this information?
I found this article that says: "Windows XP Starter Edition will be available in Thailand by September and Malaysia late this year, a Microsoft spokesman told Bloomberg news agency yesterday." In Malaysia, the national language Bahasa uses the Roman alphabet. Many of the Chinese and Indian minorities speak better English than Bahasa. So English is essential in Malaysia; even if they've tried to cripple it the Malaysian XP should be useable by an English speaker.