If all travelers simply chose another mode of transportation
Now just explain to me how I can achieve this and I will happily comply. Any time train or driving is a viable option (i.e., up to 6-7 hours drive) I will, of course, take that option. Even if it costs more. But unfortunately I have to draw the line at 18+hr driving trips.
If only they had at least one airline that flew using the 90s security... I bet that airline would have plenty of business. But at the moment TSA is a monopoly that cannot be avoided. Can't vote with your dollars against a monopoly of a non-luxury good. Almost the same with internet (no phone line here, so only one non-optional choice).
I have to admit that I'm not terribly concerned by al-Awlaki's assassination.
You should be.
Kill an American citizen without a trial: That's terrible and we can't stop talking about it. Kill a citizen of another country: It doesn't even warrant comment or concern.
You are drawing your own, unwarranted conclusions. Those of us that disagree are equally concerned about both events. The only difference is that they represent a disturbing progression. First, US drones targeted non-citizen (accused) "terrorists" and even used that as some sort of justifications (these are evil terrorists from another country!). Now, US drones can and do target citizen (accused) "terrorists". I can only assume that the rate of assassinations will increase, gradually moving on to people whom even you might be concerned about.
It's obvious that he was a soldier in a war against the United States.
Uhm... What war? Do you mean the "war on terror"? The one that hasn't really been declared, doesn't have any clear sides or battlefields? I have an idea -- why don't we start killing all those soldiers in the (drug) war against the United States. I mean, by your logic, all those drug users are "soldiers in the war against the United States". Some of the drug dealers even kill US citizens (I am pretty sure a lot more people die shot by drug dealers than from terrorists attacks). Also, maybe we want to start taking on all those soldiers in the "war on poverty".
An extraordinary success powered by creativity and (significantly) a lack of greed on his part. Win win win.
It's almost like we don't need the middlemen. Hm.
It's almost like you don't know what you are talking about. These kind of examples float around all the time, but they prove nothing. This kind of stunt is easy to pull for someone already famous, but impossible for a new/unknown artist.
Now you can make an argument that people should stay local with smaller audiences. You can make an argument that we need a different middleman that charges reasonable fees for their work. There are many valid points -- but saying "look, he just posted his video and made craploads of money, why can't everyone do it" is not one of those valid points.
If the cost of a product is higher than the cost of reproducing and distributing that product yourself, the cost of the product is obviously set too high.
I am as anti-copyright-abuse as most here, but this has to be the stupidest thing I saw in this discussion. Do you think that music/movies/games/etc products are found in the forest before they are sold? What makes you think that the cost of the product should cover the "cost of reproducing and distributing" that product and nothing else? It does cost some money to create the product
Now if the costs were set to a more reasonable level (to cover cost of initial production, reproducing and distributing plus epsilon) and if all the artists were paid a reasonable amount (instead of the current rampant cheating) and if the DRM had been throttled back (so that games/DVDs were useable once again), then maybe people would start buying. Ah, a man can dream...
Never fear, there's still the Paul-messiah to believe in! I'm convinced he would never let messy political realities factor into his political decisions...
You jest, but maybe that is his problem. While I think he is quite a loon, he has two important things going for him: 1) His opinions are pretty much always the same, while most politicians dynamically adjust their opinion to their audience (sometimes several times, going back and forth). 2) He actually tends to act according to what he says. That rules out the candidates who do not suffer as much from problem #1. It is sad that he is clearly the only candidate who even comes close to meeting conditions #1 and #2 and perhaps that's part of the reason everyone consider him a lunatic. Politicians are supposed to say what you want to hear (rather than their opinion) and then do what they wanted to do (rather than what they promised to).
Ok, get off the high-horse for a second and tell me what is wrong with possessing child pornography? And before anyone breaks out the pitchforks, "possessing child pornography" invariably includes actresses that look younger than they actually are and often times drawn under-age or computer-simulated pictures (i.e., no children involved). Also, it tends to include parent's picture of their 3-year old children in the bathtub. And, finally, my favorite -- if you are 17, it is typically (state to state, long story, but often) ok for you to have sex with another 17-year old. However, if you happen to take a picture, you are now in possession of child pornography.
Perhaps, you meant to narrow it down to a significantly reduced subset of cases? Or, better yet, focus on finding people who harm children by producing child pornography?
If there were a mobile app that was candidate-specific and allowed you to send a high-voltage charge to the rump of the candidate the app was dedicated to, it would sell like hotcakes.
You joke, but an app that allowed people to make (or withdraw) regular donations based on how their candidate was doing could be a good thing indeed. Of course that would also require limiting donations from any single source to some small amount.
Oh yeah, who wants to drive to and from work EVERY day. With 2% failure rate, you can expect 8 failures-to-drive a year.
I mean, seriously, 98% is a good rate, but putting it on something one uses every day is just an accident waiting to happen.
Plus you won't be able to lend your car easily.
Have fun getting only 100k or less of your retirement account back:)
Retirement accounts were not protected by FDIC insurance, since they are invested in various mutual funds and such. Most people have lost a significant fraction of their 401k despite any bailouts. Unlike financial sector salaries, I don't think 401K accounts have rebounded much, either.
Oh, and delisional Tea Partiers who are retired or unemployed yet somehow believe they'll be making a million bucks a year ANY DAY NOW.
I think you forgot to mention one more detail that is important. The tax is marginal - you are taxed on income above 1 million! That is, anyone making 1 million a year will be unaffected by it and anyone making 1,000,100 will pay $2.5 (or $3.5, dollars, I forget) extra taxes. You have to make well over (i.e. several) a million to care.
Some sites even have pages that are entirely blank if Javascript is turned off.
I could tolerate that if it stopped at that. So many sites have a blank (nearly-blank) webpage after I allow javascript from this domain. It should at least be easy to guess which 2-3 sites from the list of 10 java-script desiring websites actually need to run java script for the original site to load!
Can't websites automatically detect connection speed the first time a client visits, and store a cookie so that us slow people get a nice, simple website?
Ooooh, ooooh, I have a better idea! Can't website ditch the f**cking crap they now use (reaching 1MB average?) and just re-do their site as a nice, simple website that you describe?
I will never understand why any website would have a legitimate need for background music. Or an interactive (a-la-DVD opening screen) navigation with 1-second delay and buzzing sounds. And don't get me started on pages with 2-3 video clips playing, sometimes with sound (not every computer I use has blockers installed). So many pages take a couple of second to load on a reasonably fast broadband. Often stopping for 10 seconds because some 3-rd party website is lagging behind.
Oh, and they should get off my lawn, too.
There is purists and there is purists. I feel that there were a large number of changes that were made -- some of them were quite justified (skipping Tom Bombadil, leaving out Scouring of Shire, replacing Glorfindel with Arwen/Liv Tylor to simplify the plot). However, there was a shocking number of things that were added for no reason whatsoever (the stupid elephant battle, Faramir capturing and dragging along Frodo for a while and then releasing him for no new reasons, Aragorn dragged off by a Warg, Aragorn swaying to Eowyn instead of Arwen, etc).
I, personally, am upset by the latter changes. I understand cutting out pieces of a long book to make a good movie. I understand simplifying the story by getting rid of some characters (since the list of characters in Tolkien books goes on and on). However, if the movie is well over 3 hours, why do they feel the need to add plotlines that were completely made up, involved out-of-character behavior and were generally pointless?
Ok, you don't seem to be a troll, so let's continue
Any idiot could figure out what vulnerable sites are if they did a lot of surveying and went looking to figure out where things are, what isn't sufficiently guarded, etc, but that kind of recon is going to draw attention.
Maybe you and I differ on definition of "vulnerable site". Are you talking about poorly defended military bases? Because to me obvious vulnerable sites are bus/train stations. Any tall building during business hours, most of them aren't guarded. Also, since ridiculous TSA security was introduced, any long line of people waiting to be scanned or inappropriately groped in the airport presents a sensitive target with no safeguards. Should I keep listing? All of those can be reconned without drawing attention
I can see the reason why someone wouldn't want word to get out that something bad happened and wouldn't mind it being kept quite so long as if it did see the light of day
Oh, I can see the reason alright. I just thought that classifying things to hide them is not permitted, at least in theory. So you are basically ok with classifying things as long as someone decided that the information is best hidden, regardless of whether the information in question meets the definition of "classified"? That may be the source of our disagreement.
a) punish those who should have been punished, b) punish those whose responsibility it was to punish those in category A and c) measures should be developed to protect against how the problem occurred in the first place.
I believe we observe part-C happening right now. Except for the government/military the problem is that the leak had occurred and that they may need to do part-A and part-B. And now that Manning had been held in a solitary over a year while occasionally stripped nude and woken up every few minutes under the guise of "suicide watch", it may be a while until the next leaker. Do you really, honestly think that any effort has been put into part-A and part-B of your plan above? If I saw that happening, I may be more inclined to believe that someone is trying to do the right thing. All I see is Manning being punished to prevent the next leak of inappropriately classified documents
Do you really want nukes in the hands of a regime that now knows that everyone around them doesn't like them
I think they already knew that:)
What about any sources that may have been compromised and killed for doing what they felt was the right thing?
You are talking hypothetical. What about the third world war that could have been caused by the leaks? I have no doubt that if there was such a killed source then it would have been public by now. Granted, there could be unknown damage, so I am not dismissing your point. However, I don't believe there has been easily traceable direct damage. If there has been, it would be publicized by now (I imagine that revealing the name of the already killed source would not violate secrecy).
lesson learned, don't upload stolen movies... he uploaded it so it could be downloaded by others
There is one more lesson we have learned. The world is full of assholes who seem to agree with this punishment!
So you do think that 1 year in federal prison after being hunted by FBI is an appropriate punishment for buying a bootleg movie and uploading it? Really? If he at least stole the copy during his employment - there would be a breach of trust/contract violation (why, yes, I read TFA). But he bought and uploaded a bootleg movie.
Only in a cruel asshole world is 1 year in prison plus another year of limited computer access an appropriate punishment for uploading/sharing a movie he didn't even steal. We can argue about some fines (he's not right or anything), but the punishment is very clearly out of proportion. And those cheering it on are part of the problem!
Yes, because heroes leak information on what the government considers sensitive sites that could be vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
Any idiot could figure this out. There are too many sensitive sites, most of which cannot well protected. You sound like a shill.
I hate corruption and abuse as much as anyone, but that doesn't even make the beginning of an excuse for the vast majority of the type of information that was leaked.
Interestingly, some people (even you) recognize that some of the information was leaked for a good cause and should not have been classified in the first place. Do you feel that people who classified information on purpose to hide corruption need to be punished as well? Or just the leakers?
. Arguably doing some small amount of good (in the wrong way) does not make up for the huge amount of inexcusable, irresponsible harm which was done.
Citation please. I think you got the situation in reverse. The leaks have certainly done some good. There is plenty of evidence. In contrast, even the official US reports have trouble identifying and proving actual (huge) amount of inexcusable and irresponsible harm. It isn't clear that the leaks actually directly harmed anyone. The material in question was low-priority classifies stuff.
I am heartened by the overwhelming list of experts and public figures who have come out against these bills. However I can't help but feel that the Senators and Representatives who are debating it will never know. Slashdot's catalog of evidence against SOPA and PROTECTIP may as well be invisible to them.
Donate money to EFF or ACLU. I am sure at least one of them is working against this crap. I can't think of another way to make a difference - writing letters certainly does nothing (other than getting a canned response, "thank you for supporting us", regardless of what YOU wrote)
Oh, right. Because Windows will just oh so happily mount an ext4-formatted USB drive?
No-one who cares about interoperability would use a proprietary filesystem like NTFS on a USB drive. Or, at least, they wouldn't go whining about how no other computer can read it.
Sorry, one more point as I seem to have gone off the topic in my previous response
The original article in question is about usability not interoperability. So if Linux did not support NTFS, that would be one thing. However, Linux has proved itself less usable because something that could be done in Linux failed to work automatically and could not be done in GUI, forcing me to resort to CLI fixes.
Simple day-to-day tasks should not force users into CLI resolution.
Oh, right. Because Windows will just oh so happily mount an ext4-formatted USB drive?
No-one who cares about interoperability would use a proprietary filesystem like NTFS on a USB drive. Or, at least, they wouldn't go whining about how no other computer can read it.
No, I imagine Windows would not mount ext4-drive. This is where Linux users begin to depart from reality, you see. You can pretend that Windows == Linux, but in reality, Windows/NTFS drives hold the majority. So one option is to pretend that they don't and wait until the world eventually corrects itself and another option is to recognize that to be usable you have to deal with NTFS for now. Otherwise Linux will remain marginally useful. Pointing to Windows as being nearly equally bad is not productive.
Case in point -- the drive in question was not mine - it was brought to me by a friend. He didn't even know what file format his drive used. I am sure he'd be really excited if I had to tell him that he needs to acquire Linux and reformat the drive to ext4 before I can get the files from him (and that since he can't use ext4 on his Windows machine, this is really a reasonable situation).
Why is that? Of all the drive problems I've ever had, from failures to DOAs to Linux incompatibility issues, the one manufacturer that has stood out as being the most reliable is in fact Western Digital. Why do you distrust WD?
Because other people may have had a different experience? I had a pretty bad failure of a WD hard-drive around the 2nd year of its purchase. All of this is anecdotal, of course, but I firmly believe that there is a correlation between average failures and average warranties. Afterall, if WD drives failed rarely, why not extend a warranty? Again, anecdotally, I have had several hard drives fail (WD, Maxtor, etc) with 1-year warranty and have not seen Seagate/Samsung (with 3+ year warranty) fail yet.
If there is anything I learned - to be safe, you want to use RAID
Windows does not score very well in usability tests - generally worse than Linux. Last I heard 7 scores better than Gnome 3, but I don't follow these things closely.
Really? I'd be interested to see their metrics
If they consider things like a) flash drive recognition/use, b) any USB device (most notably wireless cards) and generally driver support, they may have to revise the results
Note that I am not blaming anyone here. I am aware that drive issues have to with manufacturers not providing proper drivers. I am talking about the end user result only. Although I struggle to understand why my relatively fresh SuSe installation forced me to manually mount an external hard drive a few days ago. I eventually figured it out (through guesswork of which/dev/sd? is the device in question), but Windows tends to "just recognize" a flash drive.
I'm not sure Windows's usability is that good, though I can believe it'd beat out some of the Linux desktop environments (at least for a certain class of users).
Oh, my, I always get a sense that I am talking with someone from another planet when I hear that. Almost any solution in Linux involves command line. Have you ever tried to install drivers for hardware on linux? I once tried to get a wireless (USB) card to attach to my desktop. In Windows, I think the driver was included (or I may have looked up/downloaded it). Linux boards have first suggested that I validate that my hardware will support the card in question (the recommendation is to check before you buy). Then I found honest suggestions involving recompiling the kernel with modprobe. Bottom line is that I eventually gave up.
Just one example. I can give many more
Yes, many people successfully use Linux. Yes, Windows has many flaws. But I am regularly stumped by software installation/driver configuration/multi-monitor support in Linux. These are things that I have been using in Windows for about 7-8 years now, all the way from Windows 2000 (of which I am very fond).
You can moderate me into oblivion now.
Slashdot Mirror
Now just explain to me how I can achieve this and I will happily comply. Any time train or driving is a viable option (i.e., up to 6-7 hours drive) I will, of course, take that option. Even if it costs more. But unfortunately I have to draw the line at 18+hr driving trips.
If only they had at least one airline that flew using the 90s security... I bet that airline would have plenty of business. But at the moment TSA is a monopoly that cannot be avoided. Can't vote with your dollars against a monopoly of a non-luxury good. Almost the same with internet (no phone line here, so only one non-optional choice).
You should be.
Kill an American citizen without a trial: That's terrible and we can't stop talking about it. Kill a citizen of another country: It doesn't even warrant comment or concern.
You are drawing your own, unwarranted conclusions. Those of us that disagree are equally concerned about both events. The only difference is that they represent a disturbing progression. First, US drones targeted non-citizen (accused) "terrorists" and even used that as some sort of justifications (these are evil terrorists from another country!). Now, US drones can and do target citizen (accused) "terrorists". I can only assume that the rate of assassinations will increase, gradually moving on to people whom even you might be concerned about.
It's obvious that he was a soldier in a war against the United States.
Uhm... What war? Do you mean the "war on terror"? The one that hasn't really been declared, doesn't have any clear sides or battlefields? I have an idea -- why don't we start killing all those soldiers in the (drug) war against the United States. I mean, by your logic, all those drug users are "soldiers in the war against the United States". Some of the drug dealers even kill US citizens (I am pretty sure a lot more people die shot by drug dealers than from terrorists attacks). Also, maybe we want to start taking on all those soldiers in the "war on poverty".
It's almost like we don't need the middlemen. Hm.
It's almost like you don't know what you are talking about. These kind of examples float around all the time, but they prove nothing. This kind of stunt is easy to pull for someone already famous, but impossible for a new/unknown artist.
Now you can make an argument that people should stay local with smaller audiences. You can make an argument that we need a different middleman that charges reasonable fees for their work. There are many valid points -- but saying "look, he just posted his video and made craploads of money, why can't everyone do it" is not one of those valid points.
Hardly. I no longer pirate software, but for several completely different reasons
I am as anti-copyright-abuse as most here, but this has to be the stupidest thing I saw in this discussion. Do you think that music/movies/games/etc products are found in the forest before they are sold? What makes you think that the cost of the product should cover the "cost of reproducing and distributing" that product and nothing else? It does cost some money to create the product
Now if the costs were set to a more reasonable level (to cover cost of initial production, reproducing and distributing plus epsilon) and if all the artists were paid a reasonable amount (instead of the current rampant cheating) and if the DRM had been throttled back (so that games/DVDs were useable once again), then maybe people would start buying. Ah, a man can dream...
You jest, but maybe that is his problem. While I think he is quite a loon, he has two important things going for him: 1) His opinions are pretty much always the same, while most politicians dynamically adjust their opinion to their audience (sometimes several times, going back and forth). 2) He actually tends to act according to what he says. That rules out the candidates who do not suffer as much from problem #1.
It is sad that he is clearly the only candidate who even comes close to meeting conditions #1 and #2 and perhaps that's part of the reason everyone consider him a lunatic. Politicians are supposed to say what you want to hear (rather than their opinion) and then do what they wanted to do (rather than what they promised to).
Ok, get off the high-horse for a second and tell me what is wrong with possessing child pornography? And before anyone breaks out the pitchforks, "possessing child pornography" invariably includes actresses that look younger than they actually are and often times drawn under-age or computer-simulated pictures (i.e., no children involved). Also, it tends to include parent's picture of their 3-year old children in the bathtub. And, finally, my favorite -- if you are 17, it is typically (state to state, long story, but often) ok for you to have sex with another 17-year old. However, if you happen to take a picture, you are now in possession of child pornography.
Perhaps, you meant to narrow it down to a significantly reduced subset of cases? Or, better yet, focus on finding people who harm children by producing child pornography?
You joke, but an app that allowed people to make (or withdraw) regular donations based on how their candidate was doing could be a good thing indeed. Of course that would also require limiting donations from any single source to some small amount.
Also, while the fundamental concern is solid, one could point to many other (who sound less insane) people who have been trying to warn us about this.
Oh yeah, who wants to drive to and from work EVERY day. With 2% failure rate, you can expect 8 failures-to-drive a year.
I mean, seriously, 98% is a good rate, but putting it on something one uses every day is just an accident waiting to happen.
Plus you won't be able to lend your car easily.
Retirement accounts were not protected by FDIC insurance, since they are invested in various mutual funds and such. Most people have lost a significant fraction of their 401k despite any bailouts. Unlike financial sector salaries, I don't think 401K accounts have rebounded much, either.
I think you forgot to mention one more detail that is important. The tax is marginal - you are taxed on income above 1 million! That is, anyone making 1 million a year will be unaffected by it and anyone making 1,000,100 will pay $2.5 (or $3.5, dollars, I forget) extra taxes. You have to make well over (i.e. several) a million to care.
I could tolerate that if it stopped at that. So many sites have a blank (nearly-blank) webpage after I allow javascript from this domain. It should at least be easy to guess which 2-3 sites from the list of 10 java-script desiring websites actually need to run java script for the original site to load!
Ooooh, ooooh, I have a better idea! Can't website ditch the f**cking crap they now use (reaching 1MB average?) and just re-do their site as a nice, simple website that you describe?
I will never understand why any website would have a legitimate need for background music. Or an interactive (a-la-DVD opening screen) navigation with 1-second delay and buzzing sounds. And don't get me started on pages with 2-3 video clips playing, sometimes with sound (not every computer I use has blockers installed). So many pages take a couple of second to load on a reasonably fast broadband. Often stopping for 10 seconds because some 3-rd party website is lagging behind.
Oh, and they should get off my lawn, too.
There is purists and there is purists. I feel that there were a large number of changes that were made -- some of them were quite justified (skipping Tom Bombadil, leaving out Scouring of Shire, replacing Glorfindel with Arwen/Liv Tylor to simplify the plot). However, there was a shocking number of things that were added for no reason whatsoever (the stupid elephant battle, Faramir capturing and dragging along Frodo for a while and then releasing him for no new reasons, Aragorn dragged off by a Warg, Aragorn swaying to Eowyn instead of Arwen, etc).
I, personally, am upset by the latter changes. I understand cutting out pieces of a long book to make a good movie. I understand simplifying the story by getting rid of some characters (since the list of characters in Tolkien books goes on and on). However, if the movie is well over 3 hours, why do they feel the need to add plotlines that were completely made up, involved out-of-character behavior and were generally pointless?
Any idiot could figure out what vulnerable sites are if they did a lot of surveying and went looking to figure out where things are, what isn't sufficiently guarded, etc, but that kind of recon is going to draw attention.
Maybe you and I differ on definition of "vulnerable site". Are you talking about poorly defended military bases? Because to me obvious vulnerable sites are bus/train stations. Any tall building during business hours, most of them aren't guarded. Also, since ridiculous TSA security was introduced, any long line of people waiting to be scanned or inappropriately groped in the airport presents a sensitive target with no safeguards. Should I keep listing? All of those can be reconned without drawing attention
I can see the reason why someone wouldn't want word to get out that something bad happened and wouldn't mind it being kept quite so long as if it did see the light of day
Oh, I can see the reason alright. I just thought that classifying things to hide them is not permitted, at least in theory. So you are basically ok with classifying things as long as someone decided that the information is best hidden, regardless of whether the information in question meets the definition of "classified"? That may be the source of our disagreement.
a) punish those who should have been punished, b) punish those whose responsibility it was to punish those in category A and c) measures should be developed to protect against how the problem occurred in the first place.
I believe we observe part-C happening right now. Except for the government/military the problem is that the leak had occurred and that they may need to do part-A and part-B. And now that Manning had been held in a solitary over a year while occasionally stripped nude and woken up every few minutes under the guise of "suicide watch", it may be a while until the next leaker. Do you really, honestly think that any effort has been put into part-A and part-B of your plan above? If I saw that happening, I may be more inclined to believe that someone is trying to do the right thing. All I see is Manning being punished to prevent the next leak of inappropriately classified documents
Do you really want nukes in the hands of a regime that now knows that everyone around them doesn't like them
I think they already knew that :)
What about any sources that may have been compromised and killed for doing what they felt was the right thing?
You are talking hypothetical. What about the third world war that could have been caused by the leaks? I have no doubt that if there was such a killed source then it would have been public by now. Granted, there could be unknown damage, so I am not dismissing your point. However, I don't believe there has been easily traceable direct damage. If there has been, it would be publicized by now (I imagine that revealing the name of the already killed source would not violate secrecy).
There is one more lesson we have learned. The world is full of assholes who seem to agree with this punishment!
So you do think that 1 year in federal prison after being hunted by FBI is an appropriate punishment for buying a bootleg movie and uploading it? Really? If he at least stole the copy during his employment - there would be a breach of trust/contract violation (why, yes, I read TFA). But he bought and uploaded a bootleg movie.
Only in a cruel asshole world is 1 year in prison plus another year of limited computer access an appropriate punishment for uploading/sharing a movie he didn't even steal. We can argue about some fines (he's not right or anything), but the punishment is very clearly out of proportion. And those cheering it on are part of the problem!
Any idiot could figure this out. There are too many sensitive sites, most of which cannot well protected. You sound like a shill.
I hate corruption and abuse as much as anyone, but that doesn't even make the beginning of an excuse for the vast majority of the type of information that was leaked.
Interestingly, some people (even you) recognize that some of the information was leaked for a good cause and should not have been classified in the first place. Do you feel that people who classified information on purpose to hide corruption need to be punished as well? Or just the leakers?
. Arguably doing some small amount of good (in the wrong way) does not make up for the huge amount of inexcusable, irresponsible harm which was done.
Citation please. I think you got the situation in reverse. The leaks have certainly done some good. There is plenty of evidence. In contrast, even the official US reports have trouble identifying and proving actual (huge) amount of inexcusable and irresponsible harm. It isn't clear that the leaks actually directly harmed anyone. The material in question was low-priority classifies stuff.
No.
We email to people who wouldn't know PGP from ABC
Donate money to EFF or ACLU. I am sure at least one of them is working against this crap. I can't think of another way to make a difference - writing letters certainly does nothing (other than getting a canned response, "thank you for supporting us", regardless of what YOU wrote)
Sorry, one more point as I seem to have gone off the topic in my previous response
The original article in question is about usability not interoperability. So if Linux did not support NTFS, that would be one thing. However, Linux has proved itself less usable because something that could be done in Linux failed to work automatically and could not be done in GUI, forcing me to resort to CLI fixes.
Simple day-to-day tasks should not force users into CLI resolution.
No, I imagine Windows would not mount ext4-drive. This is where Linux users begin to depart from reality, you see. You can pretend that Windows == Linux, but in reality, Windows/NTFS drives hold the majority. So one option is to pretend that they don't and wait until the world eventually corrects itself and another option is to recognize that to be usable you have to deal with NTFS for now. Otherwise Linux will remain marginally useful. Pointing to Windows as being nearly equally bad is not productive.
Case in point -- the drive in question was not mine - it was brought to me by a friend. He didn't even know what file format his drive used. I am sure he'd be really excited if I had to tell him that he needs to acquire Linux and reformat the drive to ext4 before I can get the files from him (and that since he can't use ext4 on his Windows machine, this is really a reasonable situation).
Because other people may have had a different experience? I had a pretty bad failure of a WD hard-drive around the 2nd year of its purchase. All of this is anecdotal, of course, but I firmly believe that there is a correlation between average failures and average warranties. Afterall, if WD drives failed rarely, why not extend a warranty? Again, anecdotally, I have had several hard drives fail (WD, Maxtor, etc) with 1-year warranty and have not seen Seagate/Samsung (with 3+ year warranty) fail yet.
If there is anything I learned - to be safe, you want to use RAID
Really? I'd be interested to see their metrics /dev/sd? is the device in question), but Windows tends to "just recognize" a flash drive.
If they consider things like a) flash drive recognition/use, b) any USB device (most notably wireless cards) and generally driver support, they may have to revise the results
Note that I am not blaming anyone here. I am aware that drive issues have to with manufacturers not providing proper drivers. I am talking about the end user result only. Although I struggle to understand why my relatively fresh SuSe installation forced me to manually mount an external hard drive a few days ago. I eventually figured it out (through guesswork of which
Oh, my, I always get a sense that I am talking with someone from another planet when I hear that. Almost any solution in Linux involves command line. Have you ever tried to install drivers for hardware on linux? I once tried to get a wireless (USB) card to attach to my desktop. In Windows, I think the driver was included (or I may have looked up/downloaded it). Linux boards have first suggested that I validate that my hardware will support the card in question (the recommendation is to check before you buy). Then I found honest suggestions involving recompiling the kernel with modprobe. Bottom line is that I eventually gave up.
Just one example. I can give many more
Yes, many people successfully use Linux. Yes, Windows has many flaws. But I am regularly stumped by software installation/driver configuration/multi-monitor support in Linux. These are things that I have been using in Windows for about 7-8 years now, all the way from Windows 2000 (of which I am very fond).
You can moderate me into oblivion now.