I can think of a LOT of federal programs that should be ended (another one is AmTrak), but NA$A is one that really pisses me off because so much of what they have done is fake and it has absolutely no value.
My problem with the administration (and Congress) was that it cut NASA's funding. My problem with them is they didn't zero out Nasa's funding (and a lot of other useless agencies). Seriously, they are a waste of money.
The fact is that Windows is the largest operating system by a 15-to-1 margin over its closest competitors. We'll see if it stays that way. Vista has a lot of stuff in it to screw the user. It is also being marketed in a very incompetent way (for example: too many versions of Vista creating confusion). Plus, it is not getting good press. It would not be surprising to me if Vista fails and by fails I mean that most people will stay with XP and a larger minority moving to MacOS X or Linux resulting in marketshare loses for Microsoft.
I went to a really fun party for the launch of 10.2. I got a T-Shirt and there was food and I met some cool people and I bought a copy of Jaguar and I had a good time.
I completely agree. Apple's ads are misleading. For example, the ads they run for the iPods! For one thing, when I am using an iPod, I don't dance around like an idiot! Who does that? No one. And if they did, they wouldn't look cool.
They should only use completely truthful ads like Microsoft does. For example, "Where do you want to go today?" That's not misleading - its a question! "Join the Social" - again this is not misleading - it is an invitation to a party! You could probably show up on Microsoft's campus and they would give you a balloon or something. Try that with Apple? I don't think so.
I plug firewire disks into Macs all day long and I have never had even one system kernel panic as a result.
The only common way I get kernel panics is doing multi-threaded OpenGL programming (i.e. try to draw using OpenGL from two threads at the same time before you have the synchronization worked out properly.)
Silly Slashdot poster, everyone knows that organized crime statutes are really meant for things like jailing peaceful abortion protestors for years. LIke the ones that shoot doctors?
Or just actually install Linux. Then you don't have to take their crap at all.
Seriously, the few advantages Windows supposedly has over Linux can't be worth the threat of a license audit. Even if you're in compliance it will still cost you a bunch of time (aka. money) and stress.
Even if you switched to Linux, couldn't Microsoft still audit you anyway?
The opposite to your argument is that the government treating different types of income differently is silly, and that they should just tax it all the same. Maybe if the government would stop wasting money on stupid shit, they wouldn't even need to tax people's incomes at all.
Perhaps because that's not true. MS's PlaysForSure is, in fact, available on MP3 players not made by Microsoft Zune doesn't use PlaysForShit. You lose.
"Instead, they are setting up a situation where they want Microsoft's far more restrictive DRM model to be the only legal solution."
How is this the case when one of the options they gave Apple was licensing FairPlay to others? Because Apple isn't going to do this - not just so they can have the market in Norway. Also, why aren't they also outlawing the Zune since it also has proprietary DRM that isn't licensed to anyone??
Finally, I think that it will turn out that under EU law, Norway doesn't have the authority to do this.
I'm not saying there is an association between good behavior and wealth, merely that there exist in the world people who have children who misbehave and are either too poor or too apathetic to send their child to a private school.
Also, I think you have a very naive notion of schools if you think that that keeping kids off the streets isn't one of the purposes of a public school.
If they were outlawing DRM, I wouldn't have a problem with it. Instead, they are setting up a situation where they want Microsoft's far more restrictive DRM model to be the only legal solution.
And I don't see why simply making an XP Embedded device and allowing the user to install iTunes on it would be a problem.
The difference between fairplay and playsforsure is that fairplay *only* supports ipod This is totally untrue!! You can play fairplay music on LOTS of things that aren't the iPod. For example: Macintosh computer, Windows computers, and AppleTV, and Motorola ROKR.
Anyone could make a music player that uses XP Embedde and has iTunes loaded on it. So, your point is false. It is just that no one has done it yet, but that's not Apple's fault. They support win32 which is the widest used platform out there.
You're saying that half of all broadband users are capable of downloading a bit torrent client, running it, finding divx, installing it, and getting the movie to run... Why would you pay actual money for broadband if you didn't know how to use it?
Again, I think this is a very impractical idea. Many parents cannot afford to put their kids in private school. And many of those parents are the ones who have particularly poorly behaved children. So, the end result is that you will have kids out of school, roaming the streets committing crimes.
Umm... bullshit. Go work in a real business and tell me there aren't bullies, sadistic backstabbing co-workers, power-drunk bosses, etc. They need to handle it themselves, otherwise their whole life will be them being a victim. As an adult you have a pressure relief valve - you can exit the situation (i.e. find another job, move, find another church/club, etc.) if it gets too bad. Kids don't have this option. (Well, they do. It is called suicide.)
>Now, if an adult hits an adult, he will be tried for assault
And if an adult ridicules another adult without solid reasoning (and even sometimes with) he will be tried for defamation of character. The type of mental bullying found in schools would, in "real" life, be absolutely punishable by law, no doubts about it, any jury would most certainly convict, and any judge would be very happy to give a decently long community service sentence (I'd be guessing in the range of 20 - 100 hours) to any offender. Perhaps even a week or two in jail if they didn't get the message the first time. And, of course, a lifetime restraining order.
How come we can't do anything similar for our kids? The restraining order would be a good start. No, if someone insults you in a public forum, maybe. But if you just have a disagreement with your neighbor and he calls you a name and no one else is around, I don't think you have a case even if you caught it on tape.
As for the running around and not attending class thing, if a student wants to skip class and run around in the halls, I think we should let him/her, and call the parents. If he keeps doing it, you kick him out of the school out of noise concerns. They do that in college and it makes sense there because the students are adults.
Maybe what you are saying would make sense in high school, but how does this make sense in grade school? I appreciate your idealism, but I think what you are proposing is impractical.
I am going to say it anyway. Why can't people stop responding to spam in the first place? Is it too much to ask? If spammers made absolutely zero dollars for their efforts would they stop? Will underdog be able to escape from the burning rubble in time?Tune in next week to find out in our next exciting adventure! Spam would probably eventually stop if ALL people FOREVER quit responding in any way to it.
Prior to the twentieth century there was not advertising in the modern sense. When radio was invented there were people (like investors) who asked "why would anyone want to send a message to no one in particular?" It was a major discovery that advertising actually worked. This discovery happened because early advertising was simply announcements (such as in a newspaper to announce that a new business came into existance) and merchants found that their sales increased when they increased the amount and frequency of their announcements.
I think it would be interesting to know what the implications would be if human brains were wired in such a way that advertising didn't work.
Perhaps if we genetically engineered our children to have their brains wired so that they were immune to advertising, spam would go away eventually when there were no longer people in existance for whom it would be effective. However, this is unlikely to happen because even if we could engineer people to be immune from advertising, it would be hard to stop everyone from procreating naturally and it would take a long time for everyone else to die off.
We might also find that there were other effects of the human mind being altered in this manner.
It would probably be easier to develop a drug that would prevent spam from bothering you. (Probably if spam bothers you a lot, then becoming a heroin addict might give you bigger problems and then you wouldn't care about spam anymore - you'd be too busy trying to acquire more heroin and throwing up and stuff.)
Or we could quit using email.
One idea that I had was to create a new email protocol that doesn't have compatibility with existing email systems. Basically redesign email from the ground up. Such a new system might require that all emails me digitally signed with valid certificates that could be authenticated, etc. I put a lot of thought into it. After thinking about it carefully for a long time, I have come to a realization that such a system could not work unless the problem of zombie PCs can be solved.
As long as people are allowed to send email to anyone they want from their personal computers AND there are zombie PCs, then there will be spam. I don't think there is any way around that.
Do we really want to go to the good old days of running a computation several times and taking the average result as the answer? No, I don't want to go back to using Microsoft products.
You obviously don't live in a very cold climate. When I was growing up, I had to use jumper cables routinely in the winter. I agree with your basic point, but I think that car batteries could still stand some improvement. Don't worry. Thanks to wide spread use of cars, there won't be any cold climates much longer, so this won't be a problem.
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I can think of a LOT of federal programs that should be ended (another one is AmTrak), but NA$A is one that really pisses me off because so much of what they have done is fake and it has absolutely no value.
Because they do very little basic science - they spend most of their money on scams and publicity stunts.
I went to a really fun party for the launch of 10.2. I got a T-Shirt and there was food and I met some cool people and I bought a copy of Jaguar and I had a good time.
I completely agree. Apple's ads are misleading. For example, the ads they run for the iPods! For one thing, when I am using an iPod, I don't dance around like an idiot! Who does that? No one. And if they did, they wouldn't look cool.
They should only use completely truthful ads like Microsoft does. For example, "Where do you want to go today?" That's not misleading - its a question! "Join the Social" - again this is not misleading - it is an invitation to a party! You could probably show up on Microsoft's campus and they would give you a balloon or something. Try that with Apple? I don't think so.
I plug firewire disks into Macs all day long and I have never had even one system kernel panic as a result.
The only common way I get kernel panics is doing multi-threaded OpenGL programming (i.e. try to draw using OpenGL from two threads at the same time before you have the synchronization worked out properly.)
The last time I checked even a Commodore 64 was a Personal Computer.
Or just actually install Linux. Then you don't have to take their crap at all.
Seriously, the few advantages Windows supposedly has over Linux can't be worth the threat of a license audit. Even if you're in compliance it will still cost you a bunch of time (aka. money) and stress.
Even if you switched to Linux, couldn't Microsoft still audit you anyway?How is this the case when one of the options they gave Apple was licensing FairPlay to others? Because Apple isn't going to do this - not just so they can have the market in Norway. Also, why aren't they also outlawing the Zune since it also has proprietary DRM that isn't licensed to anyone??
Finally, I think that it will turn out that under EU law, Norway doesn't have the authority to do this.
I'm not saying there is an association between good behavior and wealth, merely that there exist in the world people who have children who misbehave and are either too poor or too apathetic to send their child to a private school.
Also, I think you have a very naive notion of schools if you think that that keeping kids off the streets isn't one of the purposes of a public school.
If they were outlawing DRM, I wouldn't have a problem with it. Instead, they are setting up a situation where they want Microsoft's far more restrictive DRM model to be the only legal solution.
And I don't see why simply making an XP Embedded device and allowing the user to install iTunes on it would be a problem.
Anyone could make a music player that uses XP Embedde and has iTunes loaded on it. So, your point is false. It is just that no one has done it yet, but that's not Apple's fault. They support win32 which is the widest used platform out there.
Again, I think this is a very impractical idea. Many parents cannot afford to put their kids in private school. And many of those parents are the ones who have particularly poorly behaved children. So, the end result is that you will have kids out of school, roaming the streets committing crimes.
And if an adult ridicules another adult without solid reasoning (and even sometimes with) he will be tried for defamation of character. The type of mental bullying found in schools would, in "real" life, be absolutely punishable by law, no doubts about it, any jury would most certainly convict, and any judge would be very happy to give a decently long community service sentence (I'd be guessing in the range of 20 - 100 hours) to any offender. Perhaps even a week or two in jail if they didn't get the message the first time. And, of course, a lifetime restraining order.
How come we can't do anything similar for our kids? The restraining order would be a good start. No, if someone insults you in a public forum, maybe. But if you just have a disagreement with your neighbor and he calls you a name and no one else is around, I don't think you have a case even if you caught it on tape.
Maybe what you are saying would make sense in high school, but how does this make sense in grade school? I appreciate your idealism, but I think what you are proposing is impractical.
Prior to the twentieth century there was not advertising in the modern sense. When radio was invented there were people (like investors) who asked "why would anyone want to send a message to no one in particular?" It was a major discovery that advertising actually worked. This discovery happened because early advertising was simply announcements (such as in a newspaper to announce that a new business came into existance) and merchants found that their sales increased when they increased the amount and frequency of their announcements.
I think it would be interesting to know what the implications would be if human brains were wired in such a way that advertising didn't work.
Perhaps if we genetically engineered our children to have their brains wired so that they were immune to advertising, spam would go away eventually when there were no longer people in existance for whom it would be effective. However, this is unlikely to happen because even if we could engineer people to be immune from advertising, it would be hard to stop everyone from procreating naturally and it would take a long time for everyone else to die off.
We might also find that there were other effects of the human mind being altered in this manner.
It would probably be easier to develop a drug that would prevent spam from bothering you. (Probably if spam bothers you a lot, then becoming a heroin addict might give you bigger problems and then you wouldn't care about spam anymore - you'd be too busy trying to acquire more heroin and throwing up and stuff.)
Or we could quit using email.
One idea that I had was to create a new email protocol that doesn't have compatibility with existing email systems. Basically redesign email from the ground up. Such a new system might require that all emails me digitally signed with valid certificates that could be authenticated, etc. I put a lot of thought into it. After thinking about it carefully for a long time, I have come to a realization that such a system could not work unless the problem of zombie PCs can be solved.
As long as people are allowed to send email to anyone they want from their personal computers AND there are zombie PCs, then there will be spam. I don't think there is any way around that.