1. Banks are keeping their costs down, they are not issuing hardware to all of their customers to generate one time keys.
2. Most people (more than 90%) run windows.
3. That the average user can not be sure that their computer running a Microsoft OS has NOT been compromised in some way.
4. A Linux LiveCD is able to solve the problem.
Put the CD in, reboot the computer, open Firefox, type in the URL for the bank and enter your user name and password. Simple and secure. Reboot and you are back to Windows. Nothing stored, nothing cached, and nothing saved.
When I say simple and secure. I am talking real world Joe six-pack security. If you have decided to bank online you have already given up worrying about DNS poisoning, compromised routers, man-in-the-middle attacks. If you don't want to spend the money for a Mac or a new PC just for banking, a Linux Live CD is a great choice. Not to mention you know it is secure, because you can't infect a live CD.
I am not a lawyer...but I worked for one for several years.
The definition of medical malpractice is that the care/treatment is below the standard of care for that community. So you grade the work from A to F. Only if a Doctor gets an F is it malpractice. Also note the word community. Maybe in New York City 99% of folks with hangnails live. But out in Mayberry, it is about 50%. So the standard of care is that half the people who get hangnails die. It will be much harder to successfully prove malpractice in Mayberry than in New York.
Fact: Caps or not it is very hard to get rid of quack doctors. Only 1% of malpractice cases that go to trial and are decided by jury end up finding the Doctor committed malpractice. But in those cases the awards are staggering.
Why? Because your attorney will tell you they need the medical records and then we need a doctor to go over them. The only Doctor that will do that is a hired gun. He will cost $300 an hour. Then there will be depositions with the Doctor. You will need $40,000 to $80,000 to cover the expenses it takes to get a malpractice to trial, not including the trial itself. Not many people will pony up $80,000 on the principle that a quack should be caught when the damages amount to a check for $2,000. You can forget about a lawyer taking such a case on a contingency basis. The only cases that anyone even attempt to bring to court needs to be worth $300,000 or more (not including punitive damages) to even go to court.
Translation: The cases that are lost by doctors PLUS all the out of court settlements increase the risk of practicing medicine. This makes Doctors act far more defensive than common sense or your wallet would deem necessary.
So what if Insurance costs do not go down. My $300 a month premium stays $300 a month or even goes up to $315. Still when I go to the doctor, they don't request $1000.00 worth of out-of-my-pocket tests that I don't need. That IS an improvement.
First is the cost you are referring to, the price of the insurance.
Second, with the reduced risk of lawsuits, payouts and insurance, Doctors will go into practice in specialties they are now avoiding and in locations where they are avoiding to practice. This increases competition and lowers costs. I.E. The price of specialist is likely to be cheaper if there are 4 doctors in the area practicing, each with a 1 month waiting list than when there is 1 doctor who has a 4 month waiting list.
Third, health care is overall cheaper when the specter of major lawsuits does not hang over a doctors head. I had some deadlines to meet at work and pulled a lot of overtime. In it I was not taking care of my health. Lots of junk food, little water and no exercise. To make a long story short, I started cramping because I had become constipated. Well my wife picks me up after work on the pretext of going shopping but takes me to the to the doctor. I know I needed a laxative. As it turns out the Doctor knew that as well. But the Doctor could not say it. The Doctor wanted me to run across the street to the lab, wait for 3 hours, get an x-ray, an ultrasound and a CT-scan. They wanted to run about $900 in tests so they could be "sure". It is policy to prevent lawsuits. My Doctor has no discretion in the matter. So what should have been 10 minutes and $50 bucks for the doctor to tell my wife, "Don't worry, have him take a laxative and call me in 2 days if things are not better" would have been turned into a $1000 parade and taken 4 or 5 hours just to tell me, "Everything is ok, go home and take a laxative and call me in 2 days if things are not better".
By my own estimation on regular doctor visits (not hospital stays) the savings could be from 20% to 90% on a typical visit. I am sure that will amount to an overall savings of more than 10%.
I think we need to make sure cursive does not die out. When we are without power, it may prove useful. Also how will we be able to read the letters of our ancestors?
I think we need to make sure Cuneiform does not die out. When all we have is clay, it may prove useful.
I think we need to make sure Sanskrit does not die out. We may need a to write with a larger alphabet than we currently use.
I also think we need to keep buggy whips, rotary phones, VCR's, 8-track and large microwave ovens around as well.
We should also make our own thread, chew animal hides to make our clothing and render tallow to make candles.
Do you think Steve Balmer would say that Microsoft sees Linux as more of a threat than Mac OS X if it was not true? They list Linux as the biggest threat to their business behind "Pirated Copies of Windows".
I would remember that Microsoft funds lots of studies. Anytime one of them turns up good Linux info and bad Windows information it is just killed and never sees the light of day. Microsoft has a good idea of how many Linux machines out there, no matter how they publicly spin the numbers. They know what the studies say, they know what their customers are running. They know when their large customers drop Windows because they have moved services over to Linux.
If things are bad enough that Microsoft running their own numbers say that there are more desktop Linux installs out there than Mac OS and that they are a bigger threat to their business, I believe them. I have known for years this would come. No monopoly can stand forever and the computer industry is still to young and disruptive for anyone to stay on top for to long.
I run 100% Linux at home. I do clean installs every 6 months. I do all my work from a non- privileged account.
All I was saying was that if the government was going to play wack-a-mole with me if they thought my connection was NOT secure, I would NOT be running Microsoft Windows.
Because even if you run Firefox, even if you run antivirus, even if you are careful what sites you visit and how you click on pop-ups to dismiss them. All that means is you are using best tactics available today. I would not want to bet that in the next 6 months someone won't find another way to produce a drive-by-download where your computer is co-opted or your data is hijacked from visiting a hacked website.
Not that such a thing could never happen on a Mac or on Linux. But the current track record in real world use for the last decade yields: 0 Exploits for Mac. 0 Exploits for Linux, 100's for Microsoft Windows. Wake me up when a default installs of Ubuntu start get fubar-ed.
I know if I had to secure my Internet connection I would have to switch to Linux. Not that Linux is perfect. I just know that I can't secure a windows computer that is used for browsing the Internet.
These are simply rootkitted servers and they appear to have been done manually. The unique aspect of this is that it seems to be coordinated, so the MS astroturf team has decided to call it a "botnet".
The more important question is how were they linux servers rooted. What I care about is how at risk my linux servers are.
They're essentially playing Russian roulette by using any commercial software for which the BSA might stage some sort of "raid" based on some complaint from a disgruntled former employee.
Sir that is a half-truth
The truth is a competitor or disgruntled customer could also turn you in. All they have to do is sound like they know what they are talking about.
Ya know? I was at that there factory dropping off some parts, while I was standing there in the front office someone said "Hey Charlie, I need a copy of office for this machine". Yup plain as day I saw Charlie hand him a CD with "Office 2003" written on it with a magic marker. Yes sir ree bob, yes I did. I was just being friendly and I asked them if that was legal and they said, "who cares, everyone does it". Now Mr. that just aint right, I had to give yer 800 number a call and tell ya all about it.
But I won't contribute my unpaid time to a project unless I know there is 100% chance that it can be forked if the maintainers want to do something different with it.
If you support users on Multiple OS's is is a pain.
2000/XP find add/remove and click on it. Vista ???? what is it called again ????
To do support you have to know what the text is labeled, what other text is around it, other icons and visual cues. Either that or you have to have 3 computers or a computer with 2 VMs.
There are plenty of people out there over the phone you cant tell to bring up the control panel and type "add" in the search box. They will be in their web browser or something looking at Bing by that point, as soon as you say "search" they will leave the control panel and go to Internet Explorer.
What does not suck about it. It was designed for something with a screen resolution of 640x300. Rewritten from the ground up with an API that was to resemble the Win32 API. With stupid limits like no current directory.
Microsoft then decides that it wants to each Palm's lunch. So now we change it to run on 320x240 devices and drop the whole mouse API. We also borrow some API stuff from the Win32/98 side of the family. Some API stuff from the WinNT side of the family.
Then Microsoft decides it wants to be a smart phone vendor. So they add the mouse API back in. But create a NEW one. Why not use the one that would make things MORE compatible with the Win32 code base?
Now Microsoft finds that it MUST do everything it can to try and be an iPhone wannabe. So now it sucks at the mini-handheld HPC stuff. it sucks at being a Palm Replacement, it sucks at being a mobile phone (ask anyone who has had to reboot their phone to be able to take a call. WTF), it sucks at being an iPhone and now they want it to suck at being 1024x600 netbook.
Beware, the stink of death is on this thing. There is a reason it is called WinCE.
But Microsoft (and our co-sponsors, Intel and Hewlett-Packard) went further and have agreed that our patents essential to implementing C# and CLI will be available on a "royalty-free and otherwise RAND" basis for this purpose
They say you can get the license "royalty-free". Try to actually obtain the license. I don't care if the reality is that after being in court 2 years and spending a million dollars proves that Microsoft would have to cough up the license. Until someone with deep pockets goes to court and wins. Microsoft has the ability to take any open-source project to court for violating it's patents. With no money to defend itself the small project will lose. That is the reality.
When you can produce an actual covenant not to sue OR show how an open source project can actually obtain the royalty-free license there is still a danger. Since Microsoft is a convicted monopolist who is known for stealing, swindling and bullying small guys. I want some something more substantial than a quote that Microsoft is willing to provide a license but no one has actually been able to obtain one.
I call the bluff. To run moonlight you need mono. Microsoft holds ALL the pattens on the dotNET programming environment. When you can show me an app that runs on Mono that Microsoft gives one of those royalty free licenses to, then come talk to me.
I am an old Forth programmer so I don't mind building my own stuff. However, I would appreciate some actual "proof" that I won't get sued. A supporter of Mono saying that "Microsoft would not dare get into a patent war over dotNET with open source comapnies" just does not cut it for me as proof.
The problem with both the DOJ and EU is it is always to late.
In 1994-1996 when Netscape, Dr DOS, WordPerfect, Novell, etc were getting their fudge packed by Microsoft, nothing was being done. Then in sweeps the DOJ in the late 90's and by the time anything is done in 2002....all of those companies that were wronged are out of business. Or had dropped those products or are in a different business.
You could slap them on the wrist for killing the competition half a decade ago. You could totally ignore the competition they were killing now in a different way. You could enrich the government with fines from Microsoft. What you could not do, is make the other companies that were harmed "right" again.
If the EU lets Microsoft unbundled. Then they just offer OEMs advertising money and discounts (all in backroom deals) to ONLY bundle IE. The problem is the screwed up position MS has put everyone in by abusing their monopoly power. The marketplace has not decided IE was the best browser. OEMs will not be deciding on the best browser on their own, they will be twisted to use IE only. That leaves the poor choice of bundling multiple web browsers. Making the government decide which browsers do or don't go into Windows is a poor choice. But not as poor as letting Microsoft decide.
Also there is currently no support for visualizations. So good-bye milkdrop.
As near as i can tell. The only way to get anything to that can run Milkdrop on Jaunty is to load xbmc.
Someone like "Amazon" or "Apple" should provide Movies for the space missions. It is great PR. Each astronaut picks 5 movies or so, which get loaded onto the laptop. It saves NASA and the taxpayers money, because you don't have to pay for the fuel to lift the DVDs. Someone has made sure the software to view the movies is on the Laptop in whatever OS they are using. And who ever pulls off this PR stunt pays 1 or 2 bucks in royalties to the studios.
It is simple. O/S 2 had the IBM "Stink of Death" on it which is why Windows 95 won and O/S 2 lost.
Vista has the Microsoft ME "Stink of Death" on it. You can't really change what people think of it now. There is death, there are taxes. There is Vista sucking.
Microsoft screwed the pooch on it. They wasted 3 years working on longhorn and had to scrap it all. They spent 3 more years putting Vista together. Microsoft decided it HAD to release it in 3 years. So ready or not, it hit the market 3 years later.
There were clearly issues with it that needed to be ironed out. The same complaint that Linux had to live with. It runs perfectly for you on hardware YYY but for me on XXX it totally sucks.
You can lament all you want, but if people want to treat their computer as an appliance, and use it as such, then they'll go to those providers that offer something at least resembling that to them.
I can treat my car the same way. Never worry about putting air in the tire or changing the oil. I will have to buy a new car every year. What matters though is I get to treat it like an appliance. Those are the same windows users that either buy a new computer every 6 to 12 months or live with 10 minute boot up times due to all of the spyware on their machine.
The problem is that if you treat your computer like an appliance it won' run for very long. No matter what Microsoft says, that is the truth. A Mac does better. But it is still the same deal. If you don't learn how to take care of your computer and intend to treat it like an appliance, it will soon be junked up. Anyone telling you differently is trying to tell you something.
Sure, its laziness, but we're all lazy. Sometimes we want a computer to act like a device that just works, without hassle, at all.
It is a lie. Repeat after me. "A Computer is NOT an appliance".
Some things are not inherently simple. A blender is simple, a toaster is simple. A telecsope is NOT simple. You have to adjust where you are pointing it and the focus, know about lenses.
Things are moving along. Compare an SLR camera from 20 years ago to a push and click digital camera of today. There are still things to learn but the simple "point and click" "appliance" camera of today is a very powerful camera.
Microsoft has done everyone a diservice by saying that a computer IS an appliance. Take any group of hardware and add $200 of Microsoft products and you will have a working system. Easy to use and secure.
Everyeone wants to do word processing, but they don't want to lean how their OS stores files...so they can't find what they saved an hour from now. Everyone wants to send email, but they don't know how to read an error message that tells them why their email could not be delivered.
Short of running a kiosk, we are not anywhere near the "appliance" stage of PC computing. Anyone saying otherwise should be swiftly kicked in the balls. Even if he is a geek with funny haircut and wears glasses.
Fuzzy logic. I Had typed 4th generation and then realized that great-great grandfather came from Ireland and his generation did not count. So I replaced 4 with 3. Funny how the brain compensates. I have read it out loud several times and always say "3rd".
I am also lacking in white guilt. None of my ansestors ever oppresed them. MY ancestors were being oppresed by the British after Lincoln freed the slaves in this country. Did any of them come over and free my people? Nope.
I know the score. I also know I would rather be a black person cut off from welfare and who has NO education AND a drug adiction problem than to be born in the lower caste in India. Or a pesant farmer in China.
Despite the fact there are some people who are outright racist in America. Some who are a bit edgy about Minorities. There are plenty of oprotunties and plenty of people who don't care what you look like. The internet helps with this. I work from home and no one knows my sex or age or skin color or religon.
How can she tell the difference between me reading them at the library or me pirating them?
Truth be known. If I can't read it on a PC or on my old Palm handled, I don't read it. Unless her material ie easy to get online. I won't read her. All of her works just die to me.
If a tree falls in the woods and no-one hears it did it happen? If an author writes a book and it can't outlast a short sighted copyright, will it ever be read again?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes the title says it all.
We need to keep it simple people.
Facts:
1. Banks are keeping their costs down, they are not issuing hardware to all of their customers to generate one time keys.
2. Most people (more than 90%) run windows.
3. That the average user can not be sure that their computer running a Microsoft OS has NOT been compromised in some way.
4. A Linux LiveCD is able to solve the problem.
Put the CD in, reboot the computer, open Firefox, type in the URL for the bank and enter your user name and password. Simple and secure. Reboot and you are back to Windows. Nothing stored, nothing cached, and nothing saved.
When I say simple and secure. I am talking real world Joe six-pack security. If you have decided to bank online you have already given up worrying about DNS poisoning, compromised routers, man-in-the-middle attacks. If you don't want to spend the money for a Mac or a new PC just for banking, a Linux Live CD is a great choice. Not to mention you know it is secure, because you can't infect a live CD.
I am not a lawyer...but I worked for one for several years.
The definition of medical malpractice is that the care/treatment is below the standard of care for that community. So you grade the work from A to F. Only if a Doctor gets an F is it malpractice. Also note the word community. Maybe in New York City 99% of folks with hangnails live. But out in Mayberry, it is about 50%. So the standard of care is that half the people who get hangnails die. It will be much harder to successfully prove malpractice in Mayberry than in New York.
Fact: Caps or not it is very hard to get rid of quack doctors. Only 1% of malpractice cases that go to trial and are decided by jury end up finding the Doctor committed malpractice. But in those cases the awards are staggering.
Why? Because your attorney will tell you they need the medical records and then we need a doctor to go over them. The only Doctor that will do that is a hired gun. He will cost $300 an hour. Then there will be depositions with the Doctor. You will need $40,000 to $80,000 to cover the expenses it takes to get a malpractice to trial, not including the trial itself. Not many people will pony up $80,000 on the principle that a quack should be caught when the damages amount to a check for $2,000. You can forget about a lawyer taking such a case on a contingency basis. The only cases that anyone even attempt to bring to court needs to be worth $300,000 or more (not including punitive damages) to even go to court.
Translation: The cases that are lost by doctors PLUS all the out of court settlements increase the risk of practicing medicine. This makes Doctors act far more defensive than common sense or your wallet would deem necessary.
So what if Insurance costs do not go down. My $300 a month premium stays $300 a month or even goes up to $315. Still when I go to the doctor, they don't request $1000.00 worth of out-of-my-pocket tests that I don't need. That IS an improvement.
It will have a bigger effect than that.
First is the cost you are referring to, the price of the insurance.
Second, with the reduced risk of lawsuits, payouts and insurance, Doctors will go into practice in specialties they are now avoiding and in locations where they are avoiding to practice. This increases competition and lowers costs. I.E. The price of specialist is likely to be cheaper if there are 4 doctors in the area practicing, each with a 1 month waiting list than when there is 1 doctor who has a 4 month waiting list.
Third, health care is overall cheaper when the specter of major lawsuits does not hang over a doctors head. I had some deadlines to meet at work and pulled a lot of overtime. In it I was not taking care of my health. Lots of junk food, little water and no exercise. To make a long story short, I started cramping because I had become constipated. Well my wife picks me up after work on the pretext of going shopping but takes me to the to the doctor. I know I needed a laxative. As it turns out the Doctor knew that as well. But the Doctor could not say it. The Doctor wanted me to run across the street to the lab, wait for 3 hours, get an x-ray, an ultrasound and a CT-scan. They wanted to run about $900 in tests so they could be "sure". It is policy to prevent lawsuits. My Doctor has no discretion in the matter. So what should have been 10 minutes and $50 bucks for the doctor to tell my wife, "Don't worry, have him take a laxative and call me in 2 days if things are not better" would have been turned into a $1000 parade and taken 4 or 5 hours just to tell me, "Everything is ok, go home and take a laxative and call me in 2 days if things are not better".
By my own estimation on regular doctor visits (not hospital stays) the savings could be from 20% to 90% on a typical visit. I am sure that will amount to an overall savings of more than 10%.
No. Because they actually want people to watch the videos. Videos on Youtube at least have to possibility that people will watch them.
Videos on VideoBling or whatever they would call it has zero potential for being viewed.
Fact: Sometimes Microsoft has to rely on competitors to get the job done.
I think we need to make sure cursive does not die out. When we are without power, it may prove useful. Also how will we be able to read the letters of our ancestors?
I think we need to make sure Cuneiform does not die out. When all we have is clay, it may prove useful.
I think we need to make sure Sanskrit does not die out. We may need a to write with a larger alphabet than we currently use.
I also think we need to keep buggy whips, rotary phones, VCR's, 8-track and large microwave ovens around as well.
We should also make our own thread, chew animal hides to make our clothing and render tallow to make candles.
Do you think Steve Balmer would say that Microsoft sees Linux as more of a threat than Mac OS X if it was not true? They list Linux as the biggest threat to their business behind "Pirated Copies of Windows".
I would remember that Microsoft funds lots of studies. Anytime one of them turns up good Linux info and bad Windows information it is just killed and never sees the light of day. Microsoft has a good idea of how many Linux machines out there, no matter how they publicly spin the numbers. They know what the studies say, they know what their customers are running. They know when their large customers drop Windows because they have moved services over to Linux.
If things are bad enough that Microsoft running their own numbers say that there are more desktop Linux installs out there than Mac OS and that they are a bigger threat to their business, I believe them. I have known for years this would come. No monopoly can stand forever and the computer industry is still to young and disruptive for anyone to stay on top for to long.
I run 100% Linux at home. I do clean installs every 6 months. I do all my work from a non- privileged account.
All I was saying was that if the government was going to play wack-a-mole with me if they thought my connection was NOT secure, I would NOT be running Microsoft Windows.
Because even if you run Firefox, even if you run antivirus, even if you are careful what sites you visit and how you click on pop-ups to dismiss them. All that means is you are using best tactics available today. I would not want to bet that in the next 6 months someone won't find another way to produce a drive-by-download where your computer is co-opted or your data is hijacked from visiting a hacked website.
Not that such a thing could never happen on a Mac or on Linux. But the current track record in real world use for the last decade yields: 0 Exploits for Mac. 0 Exploits for Linux, 100's for Microsoft Windows. Wake me up when a default installs of Ubuntu start get fubar-ed.
I know if I had to secure my Internet connection I would have to switch to Linux. Not that Linux is perfect. I just know that I can't secure a windows computer that is used for browsing the Internet.
The more important question is how were they linux servers rooted. What I care about is how at risk my linux servers are.
Sir that is a half-truth
The truth is a competitor or disgruntled customer could also turn you in. All they have to do is sound like they know what they are talking about.
Ya know? I was at that there factory dropping off some parts, while I was standing there in the front office someone said "Hey Charlie, I need a copy of office for this machine". Yup plain as day I saw Charlie hand him a CD with "Office 2003" written on it with a magic marker. Yes sir ree bob, yes I did. I was just being friendly and I asked them if that was legal and they said, "who cares, everyone does it". Now Mr. that just aint right, I had to give yer 800 number a call and tell ya all about it.
I am not a software zealot.
But I won't contribute my unpaid time to a project unless I know there is 100% chance that it can be forked if the maintainers want to do something different with it.
If you support users on Multiple OS's is is a pain.
2000/XP find add/remove and click on it.
Vista ???? what is it called again ????
To do support you have to know what the text is labeled, what other text is around it, other icons and visual cues. Either that or you have to have 3 computers or a computer with 2 VMs.
There are plenty of people out there over the phone you cant tell to bring up the control panel and type "add" in the search box. They will be in their web browser or something looking at Bing by that point, as soon as you say "search" they will leave the control panel and go to Internet Explorer.
Not suck? Seriously...
What does not suck about it. It was designed for something with a screen resolution of 640x300. Rewritten from the ground up with an API that was to resemble the Win32 API. With stupid limits like no current directory.
Microsoft then decides that it wants to each Palm's lunch. So now we change it to run on 320x240 devices and drop the whole mouse API. We also borrow some API stuff from the Win32/98 side of the family. Some API stuff from the WinNT side of the family.
Then Microsoft decides it wants to be a smart phone vendor. So they add the mouse API back in. But create a NEW one. Why not use the one that would make things MORE compatible with the Win32 code base?
Now Microsoft finds that it MUST do everything it can to try and be an iPhone wannabe. So now it sucks at the mini-handheld HPC stuff. it sucks at being a Palm Replacement, it sucks at being a mobile phone (ask anyone who has had to reboot their phone to be able to take a call. WTF), it sucks at being an iPhone and now they want it to suck at being 1024x600 netbook.
Beware, the stink of death is on this thing. There is a reason it is called WinCE.
To quote from the post you mentioned
They say you can get the license "royalty-free". Try to actually obtain the license. I don't care if the reality is that after being in court 2 years and spending a million dollars proves that Microsoft would have to cough up the license. Until someone with deep pockets goes to court and wins. Microsoft has the ability to take any open-source project to court for violating it's patents. With no money to defend itself the small project will lose. That is the reality.
When you can produce an actual covenant not to sue OR show how an open source project can actually obtain the royalty-free license there is still a danger. Since Microsoft is a convicted monopolist who is known for stealing, swindling and bullying small guys. I want some something more substantial than a quote that Microsoft is willing to provide a license but no one has actually been able to obtain one.
I call the bluff. To run moonlight you need mono. Microsoft holds ALL the pattens on the dotNET programming environment. When you can show me an app that runs on Mono that Microsoft gives one of those royalty free licenses to, then come talk to me.
I am an old Forth programmer so I don't mind building my own stuff. However, I would appreciate some actual "proof" that I won't get sued. A supporter of Mono saying that "Microsoft would not dare get into a patent war over dotNET with open source comapnies" just does not cut it for me as proof.
The problem with both the DOJ and EU is it is always to late.
In 1994-1996 when Netscape, Dr DOS, WordPerfect, Novell, etc were getting their fudge packed by Microsoft, nothing was being done. Then in sweeps the DOJ in the late 90's and by the time anything is done in 2002....all of those companies that were wronged are out of business. Or had dropped those products or are in a different business.
You could slap them on the wrist for killing the competition half a decade ago. You could totally ignore the competition they were killing now in a different way. You could enrich the government with fines from Microsoft. What you could not do, is make the other companies that were harmed "right" again.
If the EU lets Microsoft unbundled. Then they just offer OEMs advertising money and discounts (all in backroom deals) to ONLY bundle IE. The problem is the screwed up position MS has put everyone in by abusing their monopoly power. The marketplace has not decided IE was the best browser. OEMs will not be deciding on the best browser on their own, they will be twisted to use IE only. That leaves the poor choice of bundling multiple web browsers. Making the government decide which browsers do or don't go into Windows is a poor choice. But not as poor as letting Microsoft decide.
Also there is currently no support for visualizations. So good-bye milkdrop. As near as i can tell. The only way to get anything to that can run Milkdrop on Jaunty is to load xbmc.
Someone like "Amazon" or "Apple" should provide Movies for the space missions. It is great PR. Each astronaut picks 5 movies or so, which get loaded onto the laptop. It saves NASA and the taxpayers money, because you don't have to pay for the fuel to lift the DVDs. Someone has made sure the software to view the movies is on the Laptop in whatever OS they are using. And who ever pulls off this PR stunt pays 1 or 2 bucks in royalties to the studios.
It sounds like a win-win to everyone involved.
It is simple. O/S 2 had the IBM "Stink of Death" on it which is why Windows 95 won and O/S 2 lost.
Vista has the Microsoft ME "Stink of Death" on it. You can't really change what people think of it now. There is death, there are taxes. There is Vista sucking.
Microsoft screwed the pooch on it. They wasted 3 years working on longhorn and had to scrap it all. They spent 3 more years putting Vista together. Microsoft decided it HAD to release it in 3 years. So ready or not, it hit the market 3 years later.
There were clearly issues with it that needed to be ironed out. The same complaint that Linux had to live with. It runs perfectly for you on hardware YYY but for me on XXX it totally sucks.
I can treat my car the same way. Never worry about putting air in the tire or changing the oil. I will have to buy a new car every year. What matters though is I get to treat it like an appliance. Those are the same windows users that either buy a new computer every 6 to 12 months or live with 10 minute boot up times due to all of the spyware on their machine.
The problem is that if you treat your computer like an appliance it won' run for very long. No matter what Microsoft says, that is the truth. A Mac does better. But it is still the same deal. If you don't learn how to take care of your computer and intend to treat it like an appliance, it will soon be junked up. Anyone telling you differently is trying to tell you something.
It is a lie. Repeat after me. "A Computer is NOT an appliance".
Some things are not inherently simple. A blender is simple, a toaster is simple. A telecsope is NOT simple. You have to adjust where you are pointing it and the focus, know about lenses.
Things are moving along. Compare an SLR camera from 20 years ago to a push and click digital camera of today. There are still things to learn but the simple "point and click" "appliance" camera of today is a very powerful camera.
Microsoft has done everyone a diservice by saying that a computer IS an appliance. Take any group of hardware and add $200 of Microsoft products and you will have a working system. Easy to use and secure.
Everyeone wants to do word processing, but they don't want to lean how their OS stores files...so they can't find what they saved an hour from now. Everyone wants to send email, but they don't know how to read an error message that tells them why their email could not be delivered.
Short of running a kiosk, we are not anywhere near the "appliance" stage of PC computing. Anyone saying otherwise should be swiftly kicked in the balls. Even if he is a geek with funny haircut and wears glasses.
Fuzzy logic. I Had typed 4th generation and then realized that great-great grandfather came from Ireland and his generation did not count. So I replaced 4 with 3. Funny how the brain compensates. I have read it out loud several times and always say "3rd".
As a 3th generation Irish American I agree.
I am also lacking in white guilt. None of my ansestors ever oppresed them. MY ancestors were being oppresed by the British after Lincoln freed the slaves in this country. Did any of them come over and free my people? Nope.
I know the score. I also know I would rather be a black person cut off from welfare and who has NO education AND a drug adiction problem than to be born in the lower caste in India. Or a pesant farmer in China.
Despite the fact there are some people who are outright racist in America. Some who are a bit edgy about Minorities. There are plenty of oprotunties and plenty of people who don't care what you look like. The internet helps with this. I work from home and no one knows my sex or age or skin color or religon.
Penny Arcade already has this covered
How can she tell the difference between me reading them at the library or me pirating them?
Truth be known. If I can't read it on a PC or on my old Palm handled, I don't read it. Unless her material ie easy to get online. I won't read her. All of her works just die to me.
If a tree falls in the woods and no-one hears it did it happen? If an author writes a book and it can't outlast a short sighted copyright, will it ever be read again?