It amazes me that, after all these years, Slashdot editors still apparently do not do any research before they post the stories.
You seem to be under the false impression that Slashdot is a news site. Unfortunately, this is a common mistake.
Slashdot is a discussion site. The articles are merely a seed -- a relatively unimportant seed, as evidenced by the number of people who don't read them. This is why I personally think they should do away with the "off-topic" mod. Whatever we, the slashdottians, decide to talk about is the topic.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics for 2005... indicate a per capita occurrence of rape of 0.5 per 1,000, for those over the age of 12, both genders.
The rates in that chart change from year to year, yet you picked the second lowest year in the list (lowest was 0.4, highest was 2.8) and based your calculations on a consistent 0.5 across 81 years.
Still, even if your calculation was valid, you completely miss the fact that this statistic is for rape. The original statistic that you quoted was for sexual assault, which is more than just rape. In fact, at the bottom of the page you linked to is the following notice:
Rape does not include sexual assault.
Using the lowest available numbers (0.5 in a set ranging from 0.4 to 2.8) for a subset of criminal activities (rape excluding sexual assault) victimizing a subset of the population (age 12 and up) to discredit a statistic regarding a larger set of criminal activities (sexual assault) over an entire lifetime (including the pre-age 12 years) is, to say the least, not very convincing.
And saying that they're "underreported" is often an excuse to pick a number out of a hat to give the situation an appearance of widespread occurrence.
Or, perhaps, it's simply the truth, stated to show that the numbers provided only show the minimum rate of occurrence.
Reminds me of the myth that "1 in 4" women are victims of sexual assault.
It's interesting (or perhaps insightful) that merely claiming that another statistic is a myth, without backing it up with even the slightest hint of evidence, is moderated (at the time of this posting) "Score: 4, Insightful".
It's difficult to know how many women are victims of sexual assault, since sexual assaults are a notoriously under-reported crime. However, most comprehensive studies (in North America, at least) indicate values ranging from as high as 1 in 3 to as low as 1 in 6. The "myth" of 1 in 4 is actually pretty realistic.
You didn't provide any links to back up your claim, so I won't either. Let's see how the mods respond.
We're trying to bash Microsoft here. Stop being so damned reasonable!
I'm sorry. My bad.
Vista is teh sux0rz! I've never used it, but it's the worst piece of sh*t OS I've never used! My brother's cousin's nephew's boyfriend installed Vista SP2 three months ago and it blew up his computer and killed everyone on the block! And Bill Gates eats puppies!
Read the article next time. The release next month is for general public, that does not mean it is not available.
Fair enough. However, all they've actually stopped is the automatic update. I'm not on a Vista machine right now so I can't confirm this, but suspending the automatic update usually means it's still available as an option, as this problem only applies to a small subset of users. So, those MSDN subscribers who are desperate to install SP1 can still do so. Plus, another poster has pointed out that it actually is possible to install SP1 without first installing this update. I haven't tried it myself, so take that with a grain of salt.
Either way, this article is not actually about SP1, and SP1 is not available to the general public, but is still available to MSDN subscribers who really want to install it. It has not been "stopped".
If you cannot install this update because MS has pulled it, how can you install SP1?
You can't, whether you install this update or not, because SP1 has not been released yet. It's scheduled for release next month.
SP1 is stopped for now.
SP1 has not even started yet. This is yet another/. article seemingly about SP1 which actually isn't about SP1 becuase SP1 hasn't even been released. This is about a prerequisite to SP1.
Actually, this would also be true of Eclipse on a Windows PC, especially Windows laptops, which also sleep. However, the company I work for forces a reboot of all workstations every night at midnight. Otherwise I'd just leave Eclipse running all year round as well.
Oh, and by the way: BSODs? Seriously? Dude, the 90's are over. Your Windows-bashing is sounding a little obsolete.:)
If you start comparing features, Eclipse probably comes out ahead, but not by as much as you might think.
Do you seriously think that Eclipse is only a little more feature-rich than Firefox? Given that Firefox is a 6 MB download and Eclipse is a 126 MB download (that doesn't even include the JVM), you've just accused the Eclipse developers of an absolutely horrendous amount of bloat. I mean, sure, file size isn't a perfect measure of features, but do you even know what Eclipse does? The thing is absolutely overflowing with functionality.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the Firefox developers haven't done a better job of managing memory than the Eclipse developers. I'm just stunned that you would think Firefox has even 1/10th the number of features of a tool like Eclipse.
I was with you right up til you launched Explorer. What's wrong with Mozilla?!??!
Windows Explorer, not Internet Explorer. I already launched my web browser earlier in the sentence, and that browser is Firefox. Although I do also launch an instance of IE to access my Outlook Web Access account, since it doesn't work nearly as well in Firefox.
If it takes 15 seconds to page in all the stuff I need to run the program, this app is *how* big now?
The thing is, when it comes to something like a web browser, I want it to do one thing and do that one thing well: render web pages. Therefore, if it takes 15 seconds to start, I, too, get a little concerned about how much crap is crammed into it.
However, with an IDE, I want features, and lots of them. In fact, the first thing I do with a fresh Eclipse install is download a pile of plugins, because I want even more features than it already has. Therefore, I expect it to take a while to boot, because if it doesn't, it's probably lacking a lot of what I want.
More like about 20-30 seconds. But still, so what?
I launch Eclipse at the start of my work day, at the same time that I'm launching my browser, my email client, and an instance of Explorer, and getting started on checking my email. By the time I'm done doing all that, Eclipse has long since finished loading and initializing. I never need to launch it again for the remainder of the day.
Fast startup time is a concern on something like a web browser or file editor, which you're likely going to launch repeatedly throughout the day, but not an IDE.
in the 80s the joystick was THE way to control things
Pfft! Only if you're too young to have used a paddle.
Re:You suggest Linux and say Vista has no problem?
on
Hostile ta Vista, Baby
·
· Score: 1
I could have food in my other hand. Or... (etc)
This whole paragraph is ridiculous. The functionality is there. If you're using your computer with only one hand, then your productivity will suffer. That's not Microsoft's fault. As for the disability options, that's what accessibility features are for.
The article addres~1 this: breadc~1 become less usable as direct~1 names grow longer. One could use MS-DOS style 8 charac~1 folder names, but I thought Micros~1 introdu~1 long file names in Windows 95 for a reason.
The breadcrumbs only become a problem with really, really long directory names (not just > 8 chars). Even then, there is a solution (as mentioned in other posts -- I'm not going to bother repeating it here).
I knew that. But how does one fix a dain-bramaged IT department?
I don't know. But it's still not Microsoft's fault that your IT department won't give you the tools you need to do your job. Talk to your manager.
So you agree that Windows Vista is unsuitable in a situation that will likely become widespread over the next few years. If Edubuntu is a better solution than Vista, this means Vista has a problem.
Actually, as someone else pointed out, I was wrong about the licensing. Whatever was already on the computer can stay on the computer. So, if it was running Vista before, then it can continue to run Vista, and if it was running something else, it can continue to run that. So, what's your point, exactly?
No it wasn't. It's just not installed by default. Control Panel -> Programs -> Turn Windows features on or off -> Windows Features -> Telnet Client.
Same goes for the Up button. It's obviously reduced value for a number of people on this thread, at the "added value" of a tiny bit of screen real estate. It's not about real estate, it's just a different interface that provides more functionality. The old button only let you go up one level, now you can go up multiple levels with a single click. They moved it from one place to another on the same screen, and made it do more for you. That sounds like adding value to me. Just because you have to get used to a new way of doing things doesn't mean they've reduced value. You have all the same functionality, plus more. Sure, there are some issues in the relatively rare case of extremely long directory names (you have to click the little ">>" button and then select from the drop-down), but even in those cases the functionality is still there.
That, I haven't noticed. Therefore, MS was right to remove it, and I'll argue that you should change your habits. You're arguing that moving the functionality from one part of the screen to another is a reduction of value, and then claiming that removing functionality entirely was the right thing to do. Remarkable.
In any case, "arbitrary" changes *are* a reduction of value... In most cases they're actually not arbitrary, even if they seem that way to you and me. Again, the new breadcrumbs provides additional navigational functionality that wasn't actually there before, while still providing the functionality that you previously had, just with a new interface. Even my complaint (the horizontal scrollbar) was the result of user experience research that shows that most people hate scrolling horizontally. I have no problem with that. My only complaint is that they don't provide the option to put the functionality back for those of us who do use it.
Vista has a lot of problems, but people keep getting hung up on the most trivial details simply because they're resistant to change.
Did you even read the article (guess: no)? - when you've got directory names that are half or more the length of the address bar, the breadcrumbs are useless.
Yes I did. When the directory name is longer than the address bar, a little "<<" appears next to it. Try clicking that. Or, better yet, don't use such long directory names (but that's just me being picky -- I like my directory names short and to the point, or, if I really feel the need to use a long directory name to be descriptive, I create a symlink to it with a short-and-to-the-point name).
It seems that there are a lot of arbitrary changes that add no value whatsoever, and reduce value for a significant number of users.
I agree that the changes seem arbitrary, but disagree that they reduce value. It's just a new system to get used to. Any new system seems less productive than the old one that you're used to. The only area where I genuinely agree that they reduced value was in eliminating the horizontal scrollbar in Explorer and putting in that stupid jump-around-all-over-the-place-trying-to-anticipate-my-next-move auto-scroll.
If you press "ALT" the File / Edit / View menus show up in IE and Windows Explorer. It actually works well, hiding the bars when they aren't used gives you more screen space. That's a lot of hand motion from the mouse to the Alt key and back, especially on a desktop PC.
What, do you only have one hand? Personally, my left hand is always on the keyboard even when my right hand is navigating around with the mouse. Everything is accomplished much quicker when you combine the two (ex. to access the properties of a file, right click on file, hit "r" key instead of moving the mouse down through the list to find "Properties").
Up button is gone, but if you have a side button on your mouse that will take you up one level in Windows Explorer. How many laptop PCs have such a button? How many mice bundled with desktop PCs have such a button? I'd guess not many.
There are other ways to do this that don't require specific hardware. Google "Vista breadcrumbs". It takes 30 seconds to get used to it, but it's perfectly effective.
Telnet is dead, long live SSH. Like he said, it's easy to install telnet if you need it. Unless your dain-bramaged IT department won't install it on your computer despite that you need it to do your job.
That's a problem with your dain-bramaged IT department.
I have no complaints about speed but I have 2GB of memory. I think those with 1GB or less probably have legitimate complaints.
So once Windows XP is no longer available, what should schools that routinely get in-kind donations of old hardware use?
It seems to me the licensing prohibits you from including the OS when giving the PC away anyway. So, either you're willing to violate the terms of the license, in which case go ahead and put an old copy of XP on it, or you're not and just go with Linux.
There are legitimate complaints about Vista. These aren't them.
I was wondering if anyone was going to be brave enough to admit to liking Vista. I've been using it for 3 or 4 months now since I bought a laptop with it pre-installed, and although I have criticisms of it, overall I think the anti-Vista hype is outrageously overblown.
The problems I have with it have nothing to do with UAC, DRM, or anything else that all the people who've never actually tried it yet know they hate it always complain about. My problems are that it doesn't recognize my USB flash drive (not a huge deal since I don't really use it much), it has a few minor UI annoyances (elimination of the horizontal scrollbar in Windows Explorer's folder list, to name one), and I have to reset my display settings every time I power it up (this is apparently a common problem using a secondary external monitor with a laptop).
These are annoyances, but not nearly enough to hate it as much as Slashdottians seem to do. The most annoying is the dual monitor display issue, but on the other hand I can't get my Ubuntu desktop to work with dual monitors at all (admittedly I haven't tried hard, but my two attempts so far both failed miserably).
The only real problem with Vista is that, as good as it is, it's no better than XP. So, while I have no problem using it on a new computer that didn't previously have XP, I would never pay to upgrade an XP box to Vista.
Problem #4: The cost of getting government involved is always greater than the amount of capitol paid out by the system.
This is already being done with the levy on blank media. It's managed by SOCAN, which is an industry organization, not the government. Most likely this levy would simply be managed the same way, so the startup and ongoing administrative costs would be relatively small.
Problem #1: There is always someone judging which band/group/artists get into the system, and who gets left out.
It would most likely be handled by SOCAN, just like the existing blank media levy. That means all you have to do to not get left out is become a SOCAN member (it's free).
Problem #2: Whoever collects the money has an automatic monopoly. No competition means the monopoly can take a bigger cut of the profits.
Again, SOCAN would most likely handle this. They're a non-profit collective. Of course, they take enough to cover administrative costs, but they've been handling royalties for the Canadian music industry since 1925 (in their current form as well as their predecessors, CAPAC and PROCAN). I haven't heard anyone in the industry, whether big or small, complain about SOCAN skimming too much from the royalties collected (and yes, I am in the industry). This initiative wouldn't change anyone's opinion of SOCAN.
Problem #3: This creates a problem for new or up-and-coming groups. They often get their exposure by offering their music, or samples of it, for free. Fewer people will hear them when the cost is the same as more established groups.
I'm not sure I'm following that argument. Right now the cost is the same for all groups (ie. it's free to illegally download any Canadian artist, whether it's Celine Dion or The Dudes). This just puts an extra $5 on your general internet bill, and removes the illegality of all those "free" downloads.
Having said all that, as both a recording musician and an internet user, I'm not really a fan of this. I pay enough for my internet connection, and I don't personally use P2P networks to obtain music illegally, so I really don't want to pay an extra $5/month so others can. The idea is a good start, but it needs some work.
That's funny. I visited them and didn't see a thing. But then again my adblock filter has "media.fastclick.net/*" included.
My AdBlock filter doesn't have anything in it, plus I have popups enabled, and I too haven't been able to find this ad. Either they've already done something about it, or it's nearly as prevalent as TFA makes it sound.
I'd also like to add that TFA says "and by running this ad, Snopes, which is highly reputable, is providing an implied endorsement of the product." Seriously? Does anyone out there actually place any value at all on the choice of ads displayed on an otherwise free website? I don't honestly believe that the Mikkelson's endorse, or, for that matter, are even aware of the majority of the ads that are served on their site. They most likely get their ads through a third-party that just rotates various ads and sends them a cheque.
"I know the basics of the difference between copyright and trademark rules. Knowing that difference, I've noticed that many businesses (apparently) deliberately confuse and entangle the ideas..."
Agreed.
C&D letters are generally worded in a way to confuse non-legally trained individuals, and to intimidate. Lawyers are all too good at doing that. The first thing to do if you get one is to show it to another lawyer to find out what it's really saying.
"If I get a cease-and-desist letter, I can't make a copy and send it to my lawyer. That's bullshit and you know it."
No one will sue you for giving a copy to your attorney. Posting it on the web for the entire world to see, however, is a slightly different ball of wax.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't want your OS to become the dominant OS in the PC market, yes.
You seem to be under the false impression that Slashdot is a news site. Unfortunately, this is a common mistake.
Slashdot is a discussion site. The articles are merely a seed -- a relatively unimportant seed, as evidenced by the number of people who don't read them. This is why I personally think they should do away with the "off-topic" mod. Whatever we, the slashdottians, decide to talk about is the topic.
The rates in that chart change from year to year, yet you picked the second lowest year in the list (lowest was 0.4, highest was 2.8) and based your calculations on a consistent 0.5 across 81 years.
Still, even if your calculation was valid, you completely miss the fact that this statistic is for rape. The original statistic that you quoted was for sexual assault, which is more than just rape. In fact, at the bottom of the page you linked to is the following notice:
Rape does not include sexual assault.Using the lowest available numbers (0.5 in a set ranging from 0.4 to 2.8) for a subset of criminal activities (rape excluding sexual assault) victimizing a subset of the population (age 12 and up) to discredit a statistic regarding a larger set of criminal activities (sexual assault) over an entire lifetime (including the pre-age 12 years) is, to say the least, not very convincing.
And saying that they're "underreported" is often an excuse to pick a number out of a hat to give the situation an appearance of widespread occurrence.Or, perhaps, it's simply the truth, stated to show that the numbers provided only show the minimum rate of occurrence.
It's interesting (or perhaps insightful) that merely claiming that another statistic is a myth, without backing it up with even the slightest hint of evidence, is moderated (at the time of this posting) "Score: 4, Insightful".
It's difficult to know how many women are victims of sexual assault, since sexual assaults are a notoriously under-reported crime. However, most comprehensive studies (in North America, at least) indicate values ranging from as high as 1 in 3 to as low as 1 in 6. The "myth" of 1 in 4 is actually pretty realistic.
You didn't provide any links to back up your claim, so I won't either. Let's see how the mods respond.
If he had had a lawyer, he would have:
a) Been awarded a lot more money
b) Stuck the defendants with attorney's fees
Or, quite possibly....
c) Lost, like he did the previous time.
There's a couple prisons just outside of Winnipeg. That's pretty much the middle of nowhere. As cold as Siberia and nowhere to run to except Regina.
I'm sorry. My bad.
Vista is teh sux0rz! I've never used it, but it's the worst piece of sh*t OS I've never used! My brother's cousin's nephew's boyfriend installed Vista SP2 three months ago and it blew up his computer and killed everyone on the block! And Bill Gates eats puppies!
Fair enough. However, all they've actually stopped is the automatic update. I'm not on a Vista machine right now so I can't confirm this, but suspending the automatic update usually means it's still available as an option, as this problem only applies to a small subset of users. So, those MSDN subscribers who are desperate to install SP1 can still do so. Plus, another poster has pointed out that it actually is possible to install SP1 without first installing this update. I haven't tried it myself, so take that with a grain of salt.
Either way, this article is not actually about SP1, and SP1 is not available to the general public, but is still available to MSDN subscribers who really want to install it. It has not been "stopped".
You can't, whether you install this update or not, because SP1 has not been released yet. It's scheduled for release next month.
SP1 is stopped for now.SP1 has not even started yet. This is yet another /. article seemingly about SP1 which actually isn't about SP1 becuase SP1 hasn't even been released. This is about a prerequisite to SP1.
Actually, this would also be true of Eclipse on a Windows PC, especially Windows laptops, which also sleep. However, the company I work for forces a reboot of all workstations every night at midnight. Otherwise I'd just leave Eclipse running all year round as well.
Oh, and by the way: BSODs? Seriously? Dude, the 90's are over. Your Windows-bashing is sounding a little obsolete. :)
Do you seriously think that Eclipse is only a little more feature-rich than Firefox? Given that Firefox is a 6 MB download and Eclipse is a 126 MB download (that doesn't even include the JVM), you've just accused the Eclipse developers of an absolutely horrendous amount of bloat. I mean, sure, file size isn't a perfect measure of features, but do you even know what Eclipse does? The thing is absolutely overflowing with functionality.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the Firefox developers haven't done a better job of managing memory than the Eclipse developers. I'm just stunned that you would think Firefox has even 1/10th the number of features of a tool like Eclipse.
Windows Explorer, not Internet Explorer. I already launched my web browser earlier in the sentence, and that browser is Firefox. Although I do also launch an instance of IE to access my Outlook Web Access account, since it doesn't work nearly as well in Firefox.
The thing is, when it comes to something like a web browser, I want it to do one thing and do that one thing well: render web pages. Therefore, if it takes 15 seconds to start, I, too, get a little concerned about how much crap is crammed into it.
However, with an IDE, I want features, and lots of them. In fact, the first thing I do with a fresh Eclipse install is download a pile of plugins, because I want even more features than it already has. Therefore, I expect it to take a while to boot, because if it doesn't, it's probably lacking a lot of what I want.
More like about 20-30 seconds. But still, so what?
I launch Eclipse at the start of my work day, at the same time that I'm launching my browser, my email client, and an instance of Explorer, and getting started on checking my email. By the time I'm done doing all that, Eclipse has long since finished loading and initializing. I never need to launch it again for the remainder of the day.
Fast startup time is a concern on something like a web browser or file editor, which you're likely going to launch repeatedly throughout the day, but not an IDE.
Pfft! Only if you're too young to have used a paddle.
This whole paragraph is ridiculous. The functionality is there. If you're using your computer with only one hand, then your productivity will suffer. That's not Microsoft's fault. As for the disability options, that's what accessibility features are for.
The article addres~1 this: breadc~1 become less usable as direct~1 names grow longer. One could use MS-DOS style 8 charac~1 folder names, but I thought Micros~1 introdu~1 long file names in Windows 95 for a reason.The breadcrumbs only become a problem with really, really long directory names (not just > 8 chars). Even then, there is a solution (as mentioned in other posts -- I'm not going to bother repeating it here).
I knew that. But how does one fix a dain-bramaged IT department?I don't know. But it's still not Microsoft's fault that your IT department won't give you the tools you need to do your job. Talk to your manager.
So you agree that Windows Vista is unsuitable in a situation that will likely become widespread over the next few years. If Edubuntu is a better solution than Vista, this means Vista has a problem.Actually, as someone else pointed out, I was wrong about the licensing. Whatever was already on the computer can stay on the computer. So, if it was running Vista before, then it can continue to run Vista, and if it was running something else, it can continue to run that. So, what's your point, exactly?
No it wasn't. It's just not installed by default. Control Panel -> Programs -> Turn Windows features on or off -> Windows Features -> Telnet Client.
Same goes for the Up button. It's obviously reduced value for a number of people on this thread, at the "added value" of a tiny bit of screen real estate. It's not about real estate, it's just a different interface that provides more functionality. The old button only let you go up one level, now you can go up multiple levels with a single click. They moved it from one place to another on the same screen, and made it do more for you. That sounds like adding value to me. Just because you have to get used to a new way of doing things doesn't mean they've reduced value. You have all the same functionality, plus more. Sure, there are some issues in the relatively rare case of extremely long directory names (you have to click the little ">>" button and then select from the drop-down), but even in those cases the functionality is still there. That, I haven't noticed. Therefore, MS was right to remove it, and I'll argue that you should change your habits. You're arguing that moving the functionality from one part of the screen to another is a reduction of value, and then claiming that removing functionality entirely was the right thing to do. Remarkable. In any case, "arbitrary" changes *are* a reduction of value... In most cases they're actually not arbitrary, even if they seem that way to you and me. Again, the new breadcrumbs provides additional navigational functionality that wasn't actually there before, while still providing the functionality that you previously had, just with a new interface. Even my complaint (the horizontal scrollbar) was the result of user experience research that shows that most people hate scrolling horizontally. I have no problem with that. My only complaint is that they don't provide the option to put the functionality back for those of us who do use it.Vista has a lot of problems, but people keep getting hung up on the most trivial details simply because they're resistant to change.
Yes I did. When the directory name is longer than the address bar, a little "<<" appears next to it. Try clicking that. Or, better yet, don't use such long directory names (but that's just me being picky -- I like my directory names short and to the point, or, if I really feel the need to use a long directory name to be descriptive, I create a symlink to it with a short-and-to-the-point name).
It seems that there are a lot of arbitrary changes that add no value whatsoever, and reduce value for a significant number of users.I agree that the changes seem arbitrary, but disagree that they reduce value. It's just a new system to get used to. Any new system seems less productive than the old one that you're used to. The only area where I genuinely agree that they reduced value was in eliminating the horizontal scrollbar in Explorer and putting in that stupid jump-around-all-over-the-place-trying-to-anticipate-my-next-move auto-scroll.
What, do you only have one hand? Personally, my left hand is always on the keyboard even when my right hand is navigating around with the mouse. Everything is accomplished much quicker when you combine the two (ex. to access the properties of a file, right click on file, hit "r" key instead of moving the mouse down through the list to find "Properties").
Up button is gone, but if you have a side button on your mouse that will take you up one level in Windows Explorer. How many laptop PCs have such a button? How many mice bundled with desktop PCs have such a button? I'd guess not many.There are other ways to do this that don't require specific hardware. Google "Vista breadcrumbs". It takes 30 seconds to get used to it, but it's perfectly effective.
Telnet is dead, long live SSH. Like he said, it's easy to install telnet if you need it. Unless your dain-bramaged IT department won't install it on your computer despite that you need it to do your job.That's a problem with your dain-bramaged IT department.
I have no complaints about speed but I have 2GB of memory. I think those with 1GB or less probably have legitimate complaints. So once Windows XP is no longer available, what should schools that routinely get in-kind donations of old hardware use?It seems to me the licensing prohibits you from including the OS when giving the PC away anyway. So, either you're willing to violate the terms of the license, in which case go ahead and put an old copy of XP on it, or you're not and just go with Linux.
There are legitimate complaints about Vista. These aren't them.
I was wondering if anyone was going to be brave enough to admit to liking Vista. I've been using it for 3 or 4 months now since I bought a laptop with it pre-installed, and although I have criticisms of it, overall I think the anti-Vista hype is outrageously overblown.
The problems I have with it have nothing to do with UAC, DRM, or anything else that all the people who've never actually tried it yet know they hate it always complain about. My problems are that it doesn't recognize my USB flash drive (not a huge deal since I don't really use it much), it has a few minor UI annoyances (elimination of the horizontal scrollbar in Windows Explorer's folder list, to name one), and I have to reset my display settings every time I power it up (this is apparently a common problem using a secondary external monitor with a laptop).
These are annoyances, but not nearly enough to hate it as much as Slashdottians seem to do. The most annoying is the dual monitor display issue, but on the other hand I can't get my Ubuntu desktop to work with dual monitors at all (admittedly I haven't tried hard, but my two attempts so far both failed miserably).
The only real problem with Vista is that, as good as it is, it's no better than XP. So, while I have no problem using it on a new computer that didn't previously have XP, I would never pay to upgrade an XP box to Vista.
This is already being done with the levy on blank media. It's managed by SOCAN, which is an industry organization, not the government. Most likely this levy would simply be managed the same way, so the startup and ongoing administrative costs would be relatively small.
It would most likely be handled by SOCAN, just like the existing blank media levy. That means all you have to do to not get left out is become a SOCAN member (it's free).
Problem #2: Whoever collects the money has an automatic monopoly. No competition means the monopoly can take a bigger cut of the profits.Again, SOCAN would most likely handle this. They're a non-profit collective. Of course, they take enough to cover administrative costs, but they've been handling royalties for the Canadian music industry since 1925 (in their current form as well as their predecessors, CAPAC and PROCAN). I haven't heard anyone in the industry, whether big or small, complain about SOCAN skimming too much from the royalties collected (and yes, I am in the industry). This initiative wouldn't change anyone's opinion of SOCAN.
Problem #3: This creates a problem for new or up-and-coming groups. They often get their exposure by offering their music, or samples of it, for free. Fewer people will hear them when the cost is the same as more established groups.I'm not sure I'm following that argument. Right now the cost is the same for all groups (ie. it's free to illegally download any Canadian artist, whether it's Celine Dion or The Dudes). This just puts an extra $5 on your general internet bill, and removes the illegality of all those "free" downloads.
Having said all that, as both a recording musician and an internet user, I'm not really a fan of this. I pay enough for my internet connection, and I don't personally use P2P networks to obtain music illegally, so I really don't want to pay an extra $5/month so others can. The idea is a good start, but it needs some work.
My AdBlock filter doesn't have anything in it, plus I have popups enabled, and I too haven't been able to find this ad. Either they've already done something about it, or it's nearly as prevalent as TFA makes it sound.
I'd also like to add that TFA says "and by running this ad, Snopes, which is highly reputable, is providing an implied endorsement of the product." Seriously? Does anyone out there actually place any value at all on the choice of ads displayed on an otherwise free website? I don't honestly believe that the Mikkelson's endorse, or, for that matter, are even aware of the majority of the ads that are served on their site. They most likely get their ads through a third-party that just rotates various ads and sends them a cheque.
"I know the basics of the difference between copyright and trademark rules. Knowing that difference, I've noticed that many businesses (apparently) deliberately confuse and entangle the ideas..."
Agreed.
C&D letters are generally worded in a way to confuse non-legally trained individuals, and to intimidate. Lawyers are all too good at doing that. The first thing to do if you get one is to show it to another lawyer to find out what it's really saying.
"If I get a cease-and-desist letter, I can't make a copy and send it to my lawyer. That's bullshit and you know it."
No one will sue you for giving a copy to your attorney. Posting it on the web for the entire world to see, however, is a slightly different ball of wax.