Geometry Wars you grind until you beat your next high score. Guitar Hero you grind on a song until you can get 5 stars. Etc. etc.
The difference here is that this isn't "grinding", this is practice.
If you play a song over and over in Guitar Hero, you get better at it, which eventually allows you to get five stars. You, the player actually get better at the game. In most MMORPGS, however, grinding is mere repitition, doing something over and over and over for experience points (or something similar), to improve the game character. The player is no better at the game, the game character is merely powered up.
Mod parent up. Another difference is that grinding is, by definition, unpleasant, and a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Contrast that with games like Guitar Hero, DrumMania, DDR, etc. where I will re-do a song which I have already fully perfected, just 'cause I enjoy that particular song so much. I already got the maximum possible score on a song. There is no external reward (i.e. there is no higher score to achieve, because I already go the highest possible score that the game will allow for that song) for doing this song again. Yet, I do it again anyway, because playing the song is itself the ends which I am trying to achieve.
After 15 years in IT, I've noticed that programmers as a lot typically cannot spell even the most basic 3-syllable words, so when you find a coder who actually spells properly get out your checkbook. Like it or not, being able to spell is a significant indication of character, especially the propensity for paying attention to detail (a trait you certainly want in a professional coder).
If you're gonna use spelling as a criteria, be sure to keep in mind that there are a several variants of English (as well as just about every other natural language in existence), and while you might not consider "favour" to be a (the?) correct spelling of "favor", the programmer you're evaluating might, and this would not detract from the "attention to detail" argument.
Microsoft has referred to their MSDN stuff as a subscription, or at least used to. I dunno, I weened myself off the redmond teat a long time ago and no longer have to deal with their crappy products.
And now that I think about it, Value is a pretty normal thing to put in the name of something. So that leaves us with Open, and if you read what the thing actually is, a slightly flexible account without exact license numbers on it, that actually makes some sense.
In other words, this is a pretty normal product name, a guy going off in a post for no reason to abuse Microsoft when there are plenty of GOOD reasons to abuse Microsoft, and an editor who really, really can't tell what is news.
Mod parent up. Microsoft has lots of subscription services, and has been going for SaaS for quite some time now. What the heck do you think that "Live" initiative (Xbox Live, Windows Live, MSN Live, Office Live, etc.) is all about? Someone who claims subscriptions are unusual for Microsoft is clearly too ignorant of Microsoft's services to make any informed criticism of those services.
Why is it that intelligent people who are otherwise fine writers keep using this 'off of' thingy? I'm not a native speaker of English, but AFAIK, it doesn't make sense. Nebu, why not drop the 'of', and simply say 'make money off these' ?
From a descriptivist point of view, because "off of" is a commonly used construction it is therefore "correct" (more precisely, there is no "correct" or "incorrect" English, only unusual versus commonplace). To my ear, "Microsoft makes money off of XBoxes" sounds better than "Microsoft makes money off XBoxes", so I will probably continue to use that construction.
As for making sense, to me, if I were unfamiliar with those constructions, the "off" (and the "off of") doesn't make much sense either: Off is the opposite of On, and both meanings {On top of the couch, Off of the couch} and {Turn on the TV, Turn off the TV} don't seem to apply to "Make money off (of) something". It seems "Off (of)" acquires its a new unique meaning when used that way. If I were unfamiliar with those constructions, I might have instead chosen to say "Microsoft makes money from Xboxes" or "Microsoft makes money via Xboxes", but that's languages for you.
To be a threat to Microsoft, you'd have to be a potential barrier to a large amount of future profits. Google is basically two things: (1) A search engine and (2) a wildcard, pouring money into almost everything. Microsoft is not strongly invested into the search area, so (1) is not a threat to it. In fact, Microsoft is more of a threat to Google in that respect, not because Microsoft is doing better than Google, but because Google is the "established champion", and Microsoft (among others, like Yahoo) are the encroachers who are trying to steal that title. As for (2), there's always a chance that Google will discover/invent the next big paradigm shift that changes everything, but then again, so can any other startup, or even maybe big companies like Apple or IBM, or hell even Microsoft themselves (the "Microsoft Surface" looks pretty sweet, for example, though I'm not sure it'll be big enough to be a paradigm shift). It's getting hit by a lightning bolt: a possibility, but not something you worry about from day to day.
OSS is a bigger threat, mainly because of free office suites, and to a lesser degree Apache. Most of Microsoft's money comes from OSes, then from Office, and then services associated around server technology like.NET, IIS, etc. Honestly, I don't think Microsoft is very worried about Linux on the desktop. I find Microsoft hard to read in terms of OS on the server side, so it's possible they may actually be *WORRIED* (e.g. managers thinking "Hey, if we don't do something, Linux'll win"), but I'm not sure. I *DO* know that Microsoft is getting anxious about their Office software, which is their second biggest cashcow. It's not any-one particular alternative that they are afraid of (e.g. OpenOffice), but that there seems to be a growing awareness of alternatives that they're worried about. I suspect they're aware that this particular type of software is about to become commoditized and are looking at appropriate strategies (e.g. moving to software-as-a-service, via that Office Live thing).
For the server side technology, Microsoft doesn't directly make money off of these (they give away.NET, IIS, etc. for free), but rather from surrounding services (e.g. certification, training, etc.) and products (e.g. Visual Studio). Note that this is the same business model that OSS software later adapted (give the software away for free, make money on the services), which is one of the reasons why I find comments about Microsoft being anti-OSS to be a form of over-simplified ignorance. Microsoft is a corporation, not a fundamentalistic ideal. If they can make more money through OSS than closed-source-software, they'll switch in a heartbeat. In the particular case of Apache vs IIS, it's like the Google scenario: Apache isn't a "threat", because Microsoft isn't strongly invested into that market -- Apache is -- and Microsoft is attempting to grow into that market, rather than to hold onto it (and they seem to be quite successful, much more so than they have been against Google: IIS adoption is growing very rapidly).
So what *ARE* Microsoft's biggest threats? Well, one of them is a little bit obvious when you look at their history, and what has caused them to lose the greatest amounts of money: Government and law. Microsoft is in a difficult position there, because their desktop business centers around pushing new and improved versions of their old product. Consumers, before they buy the next version of Windows, want to know what are the new and improved features, and if there aren't enough new and improved features, they won't spend the money to upgrade. However, if Microsoft adds too many new and improved features (e.g. by bundling a media player with their OS), they may get in trouble with certain governments (namely the British and US ones).
Software design jokes aside, Microsoft isn't dumb. They're already predicting, in the long term (10-20 years) that all of software will eventually become commoditized, and they have plans in place to move entirely in t
am sorry if I am a chemical engineer and not a EE or CS major. But if what you said is true, then the RAM usage on a perfectly new computer with Vista shouldn't used up around 500mb of RAM either, but they are. Also, if it already cache the information, then how come every time I open Firefox or Winamp, I see a clear jump in my RAM memory? What I mean is...why is it that Vista sit at idle at around ~500mb, and the moment I open firefox (which I have been using on a daily basis for months), it jump to around 650-700mb? If it is already cached, shouldn't it stay relatively constant?
I don't know about your specific system configuration, but if you're interested in learning more about how Vista uses RAM, you may be interested in http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html. They write:
In previous versions of Windows, system responsiveness could be uneven. You may have experienced sluggish behavior after booting your machine, after performing a fast user switch, or even after lunch. Although too many carbohydrates might slow you down after lunch, your computer slows down for different reasons. When you're not actively using your computer, background tasks-- including automatic backup and antivirus software scans-- take this opportunity to run when they will least disturb you. These background tasks can take space in system memory that your applications were using. After you start to use your PC again, it can take some time to reload your data into memory, slowing down performance.
SuperFetch understands which applications you use most, and preloads these applications into memory, so your system is more responsive. SuperFetch uses an intelligent prioritization scheme that understands which applications you use most often, and can even differentiate which applications you are likely to use at different times (for example, on the weekend versus during the week), so that your computer is ready to do what you want it to do. Windows Vista can also prioritize your applications over background tasks, so that when you return to your machine after leaving it idle, it's still responsive.
I know a number of businesses and private people who use Open Office every day exchanging documents with others without a hitch, whereas I have never heard of anyone who gave it up because it was huge, buggy, or had difficulty using other formats.
Seriously? Well, you have now. I tried out OpenOffice, and the word processing application just suddenly quit while I was in the middle of typing a sentence (I think maybe the 3rd sentence of the document, so I hadn't saved yet). I restarted it, and started re-typing my document from scratch and it did it again, this time in the middle of the 2nd sentence. So I gave up on it.
This is not a troll: I'm not posting anonymously, and I'm not saying OpenOffice sucks, and I don't go around telling people to avoid OpenOffice, and I'm not doing so now. I'm actually giving OO the benefit of the doubt, and assuming it's an isolated problem just on my system. I'm just letting you know that there does exist some people outthere who have given up on OpenOffice because it was too buggy for them.
After public statements from Mandriva officials implied the marketing deal is legally questionable, Microsoft said last week that it complies with international law and the law of the countries in which it operates.
Except for the US and the EU, of course, where it is a convicted monopolist.
In fact, the statement "Microsoft complies with law" is demonstrably false. The courts have spoken.
No, no, you've misunderstood. What Microsoft said was "last week we complied with international law and the law of the countries in which we operate." They made no promises about the week before that, nor the week thereafter.
Except, you're not describing what actually happened. Nor are you commenting on what I wrote. You've picked a whole different point to argue, which is unrelated to what happened.
I claim that I had commented on what you wrote. As support for this claim, I point out to you that I quoted one of the things you wrote, and directly responded to that.
As for "describing what actually happened", I never meant to imply that I was describing what "actually happened", I'm only responding to what I had quoted in my response to your post.
The Nigerian government had a contract with the supplier of the laptops to deliver the machines with Mandriva installed (the red widgets). Microsoft paid the company providing the laptops to wipe out Mandriva (the red widgets) and put on Windows (the yellow widgets), and then deliver it to their customer. The customer explicitly didn't order yellow widgets, they ordered red. [...] This is not about the customer being free to do anything they want after they have been delivered what they contracted for. This is a 3rd party bribing the supplier to change what is being delivered without consulting the customer. The customer asked for the red widgets, the suppliler was being paid to deliver yellow widgets instead by someone who wasn't the customer.
In this case, Microsoft had no legal basis to attempt to change the goods deliverable as part of the contract. They just merely tried to pay someone to alter what they'd deliver to their customer without the customer's knowledge or consent.
(shrugs) So you claim, but I don't know who you consider to be "the customer" in this scenario, and I don't know how (or if) you managed to get the contents of the actual contract to support your claim.
Either way, I'm not particularly interested in playing devil's advocate in defense of Microsoft here, since the Slashdot crowd seems to easily incorrectly assume that this means I actually approve of MS's behaviour. I was just pointing out what I perceived to be a flaw in your analogy.
So, I have a contract with you to buy 10000 widgets painted in red Du Point paint. And, 3m pays you money to paint them in a 3m yellow. Is that OK?
Yes, it's perfectly ok: I pay you whatever amount of money we agreed on, and you give me the 10'000 widgets painted in red. Fine. That's it: now our contract is fulfilled and over, and those 10'000 widgets are mine, and I can do whatever I want with them, and that includes painting them in yellow if I wanted to.
Personally, I think if you're willing to label "deleting articles that took several hundred man hours to write, and that are of interest to several thousand people on the Internet, because several thousand people, after all, is a very small minority on the Internet" as a form of "improvement", then yes, I think you can have too much improvement.
I like Vista a lot, and I don't work for Microsoft, nor am I close friends nor family with anyone who works at Microsoft. I have no idea how I can prove this to you, except to say that if you're willing to come meet me in person in Quebec, Canada, send me an e-mail. I'll let you spend a day with me at work so you can see that I don't work at Microsoft.
They targetted her, for failing to sustain the essential fundamental stereotype of women in our culture... "
Or maybe it was because she stank.
What am I saying, it must have been rampant unhindered sexism...
You snipped the part where the OP mentions that they mocked her for smelling bad, despite the fact that other guys smelled worse than she did, implying that it's expected for guys to stink, but unusual for girls to stink.
The sad fact is, people think mathematics is hard because most mathematicians are lousy at explaining it. [...]
Best example I can think of offhand is determinants? Remember those? I'll bet there's a lot of people here who went through the whole spiel with them over and over and all the while didn't have a clue what they were all about. Let me tell you what they are, or quote a better man than I on the subject. "The determinant of a matrix is an (oriented) volume of the parallelepiped whose edges are its columns." You see, that's what a determinant actually is, but most student are never taught that most essential fact. Once you get that, the rest is all just formulae around it. But most are just taught the formulae.
It takes virtually no extra effort to make both an RPM and a DEB file when you already plan on making one or the other. This isn't *porting* you app to 2 different distros, this is *packaging* you app for 2 different package managers. It's like creating a.msi installer and a.exe installer for Windows.
And most of those same people have admitted that having a.rpm and.deb is not user-friendly enough for the average home PC user, meaning any software intended for a typical user that's currently on Windows will still have to be packaged specially for each distro and sub-distro.
Again that's wrong. I've installed generic.deb files on Ubuntu 7.04, it far easier than installing anything on Windows. I've installed a generic.rpm file on Redhat, CentOS and Suse. Heck, I've even converted a generic.rpm into a.deb and installed it on Ubuntu.
How do you do it?
In Windows, I'd double click the setup.exe or setup.msi file. What does Ubuntu do that makes it easier?
As a high-functioning autistic myself, it would depend on the side-effects. I don't think such a cure could be effected without causing significant damage
I'm reminded of a quote from Eternal Sunshine: "Technically, the procedure is brain damage."
I've known a few autistic people growing up. Either through school, church, or friends. And I have to wonder. With all the support, drugs and training that goes into helping these people live 'normal' lives... what would happen if this gene therapy could cure adults? I'm well aware that this treatment is far from being used on any human, and I'm all for curing disease, so don't get me wrong. But will some one just wake up and feel 'free'? Or will it take time for them to get used to thinking 'normally'?
Maybe the answer is just as simple as 'cured'. But something tells me that it will never be that simple.
Note that some autists feel that autism is a part of their identity, and would not consider it a "disease" to be cured. Others feel that autism has caused suffering in their lives and would be happy to rid themselves of the condition.
Are the autistic people you know high-functioning enough to hold a conversation with? If so, have you considered speaking with them to learn how they each individually feel about the concept of a "cure"?
Then there are the parents (religious or not) who say "my child is special and I wouldn't want them any other way."
These people are stupid idiots that ought to be arrested for severe child abuse. Anyone who thinks this for any reason is a bad and extraordinarily selfish parent and should immediately have their children taken away from them. Anyone who would deliberately impose a curable handicap on their children should be beaten, and I'd be happy to volunteer to be the one who brings the baseball bat and takes the first few swings. I sure as hell don't think I'd be the last one, either.
I'm also confident you won't be the last one. But I'm worried you (and your peers) may be overly judging things too rashly.
I am autistic, and I don't consider my condition to be a handicap. Autism makes some parts of my life more difficult, but it makes other parts of my life easier. I imagine it's like being taller than average: some things are easier (reaching the top shelf) and some things are harder (fitting into a small car). It's hard to say whether, from a utilitarian perspective, one way is overall "better" than the other. It'd be an ideal world if it happened to balanced out perfectly so that someone with my degree of autism had exactly the same potential for joy and suffering as a neurotypical person, however I suspect the probability of that is low. I don't want you to discount the idea that perhaps my life is easier than a neurotypical person, and that my degree of autism may actually be an advantage. It's certainly a possibility.
Furthermore, the parents may be working under the (I think) reasonable assumption that there are risks to every medical treatment. There's a strong belief that autism is hereditary, and so if I have a child, I'm open to the possibility that may be born autistic. Given that my life turned out pretty good, I'd probably favour not having medical procedures done on a child, all other things being equal.
To clarify, I'm fully willing to take into account my doctor's advice and opinions. If the doctor told me "Your child is extremely autistic, and will probably require 24/7 supervision and will never learn to speak. I strongly recommend we go through with the treatment, as the risks are very minor.", then I'd probably sign whatever forms were necessary and let the autism get "cured". On the other hand, if the doctor says "Your child has some signs of high functioning autism. If untreated, he'll probably end up within the same spectrum range as you. We can apply a treatment, but there are some very minor risks. It's your call, do you want to proceed?" I'd probably respond with "No. I enjoyed my life. I think he will too."
My point was that your analogy is saying that even the thought that you could be remotely secure without anti-virus is like trying to print without a printer.
No, all I said is that complaining that Vista-without-antivirus is no better at defending against virus attacks than XP-without-antivirus is about as dumb as complaining that Vista-without-printer is no better at printing out documents than XP-without-printer.
Note that I specifically chose the wording "defend against virus attacks" as opposed to "remotely secure".
There is a huge fucking gap of security and usability between the "sound security practices" and "using a virus scanner" (The third option from the back and the second from the back on your list).
Right. But the list recommends that you do both. And so do I.
No, I made no mention of Linux or MacOSX. But if you're curious, I am of the belief that neither Linux nor MacOSX without virus protection are immune to virus. The fact that there exists viruses for Linux and MacOSX seem to support my belief.
I daresay if someone relies on defending against viruses by antivirus software, the security model is already utterly, completely broken
So how do you defend yourself against viruses? The only ways I can think of off the top of my head are:
Don't download any software, ever. In fact, don't even connect to the internet at all. Assuming the OS itself didn't come with a virus, this is the only 100% foolproof way to avoid getting a virus.
Don't download any software, ever. But allow yourself to be connect to the internet. There's a slight chance of getting a virus anyway, if someone guesses your password or otherwises hacks into your system.
Only run open source software, read all the source code, and compile it yourself (but at some point, you'd need to download a binary, to bootstrap the process, so even this is not 100% foolproof).
Only run open source software, don't read the source code yourself, but rather trust the "many eyes" that they're doing a good job of reading the code for you, and compile it yourself (same problems as above, with the additional problem of needing extra trust from those "many eyes").
Only run open source software, and don't compile yourself. Trust that the binaries that you download from sourceforge.net, for example, are virus free.
Practice skeptical computing, download various software, some of which are open source, some of which are closed source, and run an antivirus scanner.
(etc... there are more, but again, none of them will 100% guarantee freedom from virus except the first).
Only the first tactic guarantees you a virus-free experience. With everything else, there's a slight chance of getting viruses, which increases as you go down the list. For many people, the minute increase in chance of catching a virus is worth it for the added experienced gained from using a computer. It's similar to how many people eat food which is "bad for them", but tastes good. The alternative, to stick to only "known good" food, is simply too painful for most people.
But common folks, after five(5) years and millions and millions of bucks they sure could have done better than this-- really. Its not Microsoft bashing--- its true and its fair.
How could Microsoft have done better? If Microsoft had bundled antivirus software with the OS, the other antivirus software companies (McAfee, Norton, etc.) would sue Microsoft for anti-competitive practices. If Microsoft doesn't bundle antivirus software with the OS, CRN write a review saying Vista without antivirus software is no better at defending against virus attacks than XP without antivirus. That's about as dumb as saying Vista without a printer is no better at printing out documents than XP without a printer. I mean, come on, Microsoft! You had 5 years, and millions and millions of bucks. Couldn't you figure out a way to print out documents without using a printer?
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up. Another difference is that grinding is, by definition, unpleasant, and a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Contrast that with games like Guitar Hero, DrumMania, DDR, etc. where I will re-do a song which I have already fully perfected, just 'cause I enjoy that particular song so much. I already got the maximum possible score on a song. There is no external reward (i.e. there is no higher score to achieve, because I already go the highest possible score that the game will allow for that song) for doing this song again. Yet, I do it again anyway, because playing the song is itself the ends which I am trying to achieve.
If you're gonna use spelling as a criteria, be sure to keep in mind that there are a several variants of English (as well as just about every other natural language in existence), and while you might not consider "favour" to be a (the?) correct spelling of "favor", the programmer you're evaluating might, and this would not detract from the "attention to detail" argument.
From a descriptivist point of view, because "off of" is a commonly used construction it is therefore "correct" (more precisely, there is no "correct" or "incorrect" English, only unusual versus commonplace). To my ear, "Microsoft makes money off of XBoxes" sounds better than "Microsoft makes money off XBoxes", so I will probably continue to use that construction.
As for making sense, to me, if I were unfamiliar with those constructions, the "off" (and the "off of") doesn't make much sense either: Off is the opposite of On, and both meanings {On top of the couch, Off of the couch} and {Turn on the TV, Turn off the TV} don't seem to apply to "Make money off (of) something". It seems "Off (of)" acquires its a new unique meaning when used that way. If I were unfamiliar with those constructions, I might have instead chosen to say "Microsoft makes money from Xboxes" or "Microsoft makes money via Xboxes", but that's languages for you.
To be a threat to Microsoft, you'd have to be a potential barrier to a large amount of future profits. Google is basically two things: (1) A search engine and (2) a wildcard, pouring money into almost everything. Microsoft is not strongly invested into the search area, so (1) is not a threat to it. In fact, Microsoft is more of a threat to Google in that respect, not because Microsoft is doing better than Google, but because Google is the "established champion", and Microsoft (among others, like Yahoo) are the encroachers who are trying to steal that title. As for (2), there's always a chance that Google will discover/invent the next big paradigm shift that changes everything, but then again, so can any other startup, or even maybe big companies like Apple or IBM, or hell even Microsoft themselves (the "Microsoft Surface" looks pretty sweet, for example, though I'm not sure it'll be big enough to be a paradigm shift). It's getting hit by a lightning bolt: a possibility, but not something you worry about from day to day.
.NET, IIS, etc. Honestly, I don't think Microsoft is very worried about Linux on the desktop. I find Microsoft hard to read in terms of OS on the server side, so it's possible they may actually be *WORRIED* (e.g. managers thinking "Hey, if we don't do something, Linux'll win"), but I'm not sure. I *DO* know that Microsoft is getting anxious about their Office software, which is their second biggest cashcow. It's not any-one particular alternative that they are afraid of (e.g. OpenOffice), but that there seems to be a growing awareness of alternatives that they're worried about. I suspect they're aware that this particular type of software is about to become commoditized and are looking at appropriate strategies (e.g. moving to software-as-a-service, via that Office Live thing).
.NET, IIS, etc. for free), but rather from surrounding services (e.g. certification, training, etc.) and products (e.g. Visual Studio). Note that this is the same business model that OSS software later adapted (give the software away for free, make money on the services), which is one of the reasons why I find comments about Microsoft being anti-OSS to be a form of over-simplified ignorance. Microsoft is a corporation, not a fundamentalistic ideal. If they can make more money through OSS than closed-source-software, they'll switch in a heartbeat. In the particular case of Apache vs IIS, it's like the Google scenario: Apache isn't a "threat", because Microsoft isn't strongly invested into that market -- Apache is -- and Microsoft is attempting to grow into that market, rather than to hold onto it (and they seem to be quite successful, much more so than they have been against Google: IIS adoption is growing very rapidly).
OSS is a bigger threat, mainly because of free office suites, and to a lesser degree Apache. Most of Microsoft's money comes from OSes, then from Office, and then services associated around server technology like
For the server side technology, Microsoft doesn't directly make money off of these (they give away
So what *ARE* Microsoft's biggest threats? Well, one of them is a little bit obvious when you look at their history, and what has caused them to lose the greatest amounts of money: Government and law. Microsoft is in a difficult position there, because their desktop business centers around pushing new and improved versions of their old product. Consumers, before they buy the next version of Windows, want to know what are the new and improved features, and if there aren't enough new and improved features, they won't spend the money to upgrade. However, if Microsoft adds too many new and improved features (e.g. by bundling a media player with their OS), they may get in trouble with certain governments (namely the British and US ones).
Software design jokes aside, Microsoft isn't dumb. They're already predicting, in the long term (10-20 years) that all of software will eventually become commoditized, and they have plans in place to move entirely in t
I don't know about your specific system configuration, but if you're interested in learning more about how Vista uses RAM, you may be interested in http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html. They write:
Seriously? Well, you have now. I tried out OpenOffice, and the word processing application just suddenly quit while I was in the middle of typing a sentence (I think maybe the 3rd sentence of the document, so I hadn't saved yet). I restarted it, and started re-typing my document from scratch and it did it again, this time in the middle of the 2nd sentence. So I gave up on it.
This is not a troll: I'm not posting anonymously, and I'm not saying OpenOffice sucks, and I don't go around telling people to avoid OpenOffice, and I'm not doing so now. I'm actually giving OO the benefit of the doubt, and assuming it's an isolated problem just on my system. I'm just letting you know that there does exist some people outthere who have given up on OpenOffice because it was too buggy for them.
I claim that I had commented on what you wrote. As support for this claim, I point out to you that I quoted one of the things you wrote, and directly responded to that.
As for "describing what actually happened", I never meant to imply that I was describing what "actually happened", I'm only responding to what I had quoted in my response to your post.
(shrugs) So you claim, but I don't know who you consider to be "the customer" in this scenario, and I don't know how (or if) you managed to get the contents of the actual contract to support your claim.
Either way, I'm not particularly interested in playing devil's advocate in defense of Microsoft here, since the Slashdot crowd seems to easily incorrectly assume that this means I actually approve of MS's behaviour. I was just pointing out what I perceived to be a flaw in your analogy.
Actually, there does seem to be a limit to the amount of "room" available for people who want to try to fix up and improve Wikipedia (e.g. http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=14222&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a, http://www.slate.com/id/2160839/, http://www.slate.com/id/2160222/fr/rss/, etc.)
Personally, I think if you're willing to label "deleting articles that took several hundred man hours to write, and that are of interest to several thousand people on the Internet, because several thousand people, after all, is a very small minority on the Internet" as a form of "improvement", then yes, I think you can have too much improvement.
I like Vista a lot, and I don't work for Microsoft, nor am I close friends nor family with anyone who works at Microsoft. I have no idea how I can prove this to you, except to say that if you're willing to come meet me in person in Quebec, Canada, send me an e-mail. I'll let you spend a day with me at work so you can see that I don't work at Microsoft.
I'm reminded of a quote from Eternal Sunshine: "Technically, the procedure is brain damage."
Note that some autists feel that autism is a part of their identity, and would not consider it a "disease" to be cured. Others feel that autism has caused suffering in their lives and would be happy to rid themselves of the condition.
Are the autistic people you know high-functioning enough to hold a conversation with? If so, have you considered speaking with them to learn how they each individually feel about the concept of a "cure"?
I'm also confident you won't be the last one. But I'm worried you (and your peers) may be overly judging things too rashly.
I am autistic, and I don't consider my condition to be a handicap. Autism makes some parts of my life more difficult, but it makes other parts of my life easier. I imagine it's like being taller than average: some things are easier (reaching the top shelf) and some things are harder (fitting into a small car). It's hard to say whether, from a utilitarian perspective, one way is overall "better" than the other. It'd be an ideal world if it happened to balanced out perfectly so that someone with my degree of autism had exactly the same potential for joy and suffering as a neurotypical person, however I suspect the probability of that is low. I don't want you to discount the idea that perhaps my life is easier than a neurotypical person, and that my degree of autism may actually be an advantage. It's certainly a possibility.
Furthermore, the parents may be working under the (I think) reasonable assumption that there are risks to every medical treatment. There's a strong belief that autism is hereditary, and so if I have a child, I'm open to the possibility that may be born autistic. Given that my life turned out pretty good, I'd probably favour not having medical procedures done on a child, all other things being equal.
To clarify, I'm fully willing to take into account my doctor's advice and opinions. If the doctor told me "Your child is extremely autistic, and will probably require 24/7 supervision and will never learn to speak. I strongly recommend we go through with the treatment, as the risks are very minor.", then I'd probably sign whatever forms were necessary and let the autism get "cured". On the other hand, if the doctor says "Your child has some signs of high functioning autism. If untreated, he'll probably end up within the same spectrum range as you. We can apply a treatment, but there are some very minor risks. It's your call, do you want to proceed?" I'd probably respond with "No. I enjoyed my life. I think he will too."
No, all I said is that complaining that Vista-without-antivirus is no better at defending against virus attacks than XP-without-antivirus is about as dumb as complaining that Vista-without-printer is no better at printing out documents than XP-without-printer.
Note that I specifically chose the wording "defend against virus attacks" as opposed to "remotely secure".
No, I made no mention of Linux or MacOSX. But if you're curious, I am of the belief that neither Linux nor MacOSX without virus protection are immune to virus. The fact that there exists viruses for Linux and MacOSX seem to support my belief.
So how do you defend yourself against viruses? The only ways I can think of off the top of my head are:
Only the first tactic guarantees you a virus-free experience. With everything else, there's a slight chance of getting viruses, which increases as you go down the list. For many people, the minute increase in chance of catching a virus is worth it for the added experienced gained from using a computer. It's similar to how many people eat food which is "bad for them", but tastes good. The alternative, to stick to only "known good" food, is simply too painful for most people.
I'm not sure I understand exactly what this story is about. Can someone maybe post a car analogy for me?