...because to be a police state you need to have high visibility of police roaming the streets and in Britain you are lucky if you ever see a uniformed police officer these days.
The fact is that solving crimes in Britain has become purely about statistics and pretty graphs, not about protecting the populace against crime.
This is why our roads are lined with speed cameras - because someone driving 7 mph over the speed limit can be considered as having committed a crime and, when they are caught, that's another crime solved by the police.
The DNA database is just another excuse to actually putting more police on the streets - it has nothing to do with civil liberties, it's just because our inept politicians are just interested in producing pretty graphs and having police in offices filling in forms rather than patrolling our streets.
The Amiga was taken down, not because there was not enough demand for it, but because it was too efficient.
Rubbish! The Amiga was a far superior machine to the IBM PC but Commodore/Escom/Gateway/Amiga Inc. did not have a single clue as to how to market it and expand it correctly. It was their total lack of incompetence that caused its death.
Amiga users (and I know because I was one of them once) were the most loyal bunch of users there could possibly be, a bunch of people who remained loyal for years despite being continually f*cked in the arse by unfulfilled promises by David Pleasance and whomever else controlled the Amiga name over the years.
The fact is: the CD is dead. It's dying because CDs are long format and inherited the interest in long playing music from the LP and 78rpm "Albums". People today have the attention span of gnats, and are too distracted by the gazillion different toys to just sit and listen to music.
I don't accept that peoples' attention spans have changed at all - you talk about XBox and games, for example, and kids these days can sit playing these things for entire days.
Plus (in the UK at least) you never need to look very far to see shops selling reasonable hifi (Richer Sounds for example) who seem to be doing quite nicely. I don't think the CD is dead because audiophiles simply won't turn to downloadable music if CDs disappear - they just won't buy music any more. (I have around 1000 CD albums, including lots of Yes and Tangerine Dream, and I have more than enough music to last me the rest of my life - even though recently I've got into artists like Radiohead & The Answer as a result of being able to buy their CDs.)
I think it is just down to the quality and type of music these days. iPods are not designed as devices to sit and *REALLY* listen to music, they are there to make music a distraction or something going on in the background - consequently, listening to "Tales From Topographic Oceans" or "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" on an iPod is pretty much a pointless exercise as these are albums that *DEMAND* your full attention to appreciate them fully.
Music is simply about giving yourself the time to enjoy it - sometimes you do need to sit listening to a reasonable hifi set up in a comfortable chair and do *NOTHING* else to get the full enjoyment from it.
To me, music is very important, more so than TV, movies or games. I research it well, I look for the best CD prices and I'll occasionally do an illegal download to sample an album I will probably end up buying anyway (otherwise I ditch the MP3s). That way, I'm never ripped off for CDs, I consider them great value for money and will happilly keep buying them.
If anything, because a lot of stuff I listen to isn't particularly mainstream, it makes it more fun hunting good stuff down and its a bigger thrill when you discover a new piece of fantastic music.
Today's plastic pop/hip hop/dance music leaves me cold - but apart from that I don't really care about it because it's doing me no harm personally; like you said already, there's plenty of good music if you go look for it.
Why does a cheap PC have anything to do with this?
You can have a $40,000 16-Core Gigaglops laptop but if you're the average dumbshit user that runs Windows without regularly running and updating Windows/virus checker/spyware checker, you're still going to need that restore CD some time soon.
And in your lengthy answer, you've completely dodged my original question.
I made no comparisons between any commercial and free software offerings so quite why you have thrown this argument back, I have no idea.
What I did ask you was what gives you the right to comment on free software when, by your own admission, you quite clearly use very little (or none) of it.
Part of being a good advocate for a cause like free software is having the maturity to be intellectually honest.
With all respect, not one of your machines appears to run any free software - so what right do you have telling free software advocates how they should behave?
Microsoft has created an OS monoculture and many Open Source OS users *RIGHTFULLY* feel aggrieved that this monoculture has made it uneconomical for software makers to produce games for any OS other than Windows.
And if Linux users like me feel hacked off about it then we've every right to voice that.
You are sat there on your corpulent backside feeling pretty damned clever because you're so "l337" running your pirated XP. Yet you don't seem to realise that it's your total selfishness that gives the bean-counters at Microsoft the justification they need to inflict WGA and DRM on the honest users, making their lives a misery.
You have absolutely nothing to be proud of. You're quite clearly too weak-charactered to demonstrate the courage of your convictions and choose a truly free OS, perhaps you are just too stupid to ever be able to grasp the workings of Linux. I simultaneously loathe and pity you...
And no, I'm not an MS fanboi. I use Linux for just about everything bar gaming now, for which I have a valid Windows XP license. But it's total DICKHEADS like you that give WGA, DRM, the MPAA and RIAA the excuse they need to make life HELL for honest users.
It will work out of the box and you won't have to spend hours recompiling the kernel etc. to get it to work.
Please stop being a moron & keep your stupid mouth shut over a subject you clearly know nothing about.
All of the Linux distros deemed suitable for Linux newbies (Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSE, etc. etc.) have just about every hardware driver there is compiled as a kernel module. Consequently, provided your hardware is supported by the Linux kernel (which these days is pretty much most common hardware), then the kernel will find it and load the driver. Sure, over and above that you may need to configure an application to use that hardware correctly, no different to configuring ATI/nVidia drivers (for example) in Windows.
Yes, Linux does have its faults but demonstrate you at least have an inkling of understanding about it by actually knowing what you are talking about - you've quite clearly never used it so zip it and you may actually learn something.
Even better... how about NOT pirating and NOT buying it.
How about NOT giving them the excuse they need to put on copy protection in the first place - after all, if there's NO piracy, why would they need SecuRom?
How about NOT thinking of yourself as some "Robin Hood" type character fighting the cause of the common man? How about realising that as a software pirate, you're JUST AS BAD as the makers of DRM technology because what YOU DO affects me, the honest user.
And finally, how about demonstrating some RESTRAINT and SELF CONTROL, accepting that this is ONLY A BLOODY COMPUTER GAME and telling the developers to SHOVE their DRM-ed piece of crap where the SUN DOESN'T SHINE until they start respecting the normal users.
I bought Bioshock today. I've played it for a full 3 hours. And that is all the more that it will be played.
This is just phoney posturing on your part. Why should the game developer give a damn about you now? They have your money, you've bought the game, they've won.
How about returning it as "not fit for purpose" and getting your money back? Standing in the store you bought it from, not moving until a manager gives you a refund.
I have to admit that I have never been a fashion follower or a person who allies himself to any brand - my view on a computer is that it is a tool, albeit a tool that can be used for entertainment, and therefore just has to do a job as efficiently as possible. This is why, on my Linux machines, you'll never see me using 3D desktops like Compiz, for example, because that stuff just burns up CPU cycles for the sake of eye candy - likewise, when I use XP, the GUI is stripped back to the Windows 2000 classic desktop for the same reasons. (Actually, in reality, I cannot comprehend how anyone can use the default XP GUI, it is utter rubbish.)
Therefore, in my view, an OS does not need a "personality", it just has to do a job - sure, I'm going to arrange the desktop, icons, menus, etc. with some personalisation to suit the way I work but beyond that, nothing. I've got good tools I use both in Linux and XP and as long as I can get to them quickly and interoperate between them.
I don't have hostility towards Mac users per se, I do not understand anyone who goes around ramming their personal possessions down other peoples throats - whether it's a new car, designer clothing or a Mac. I'd much rather these people just got on with enjoying what they have because *THEY* like them, rather than expecting *US* to also.
Personally, being in my mid 40s, I waved goodbye to the "Fashion Bus" over a decade ago and really couldn't give a toss about brand names - plus I've got this far through life without owning an Apple product to probably never owning one.
Despite all of that, the recent advertising campaign of "Mac vs the PC", where the Mac is a hip young dude and the Windows PC is the stuffy guy in the shirt and tie does have a spark of truth in it.
Look at the cool places where all the kids "hang out" on the Internet these days - iTunes, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace - and nowhere will you see Microsoft mentioned. When all said and done, Microsoft just isn't cool.
Therefore, if Microsoft can partner with something that *IS* hip with the hoopy frood teenagers, like MTV, then it goes some way to kicking off that stuffy old man image Microsoft has with the kids. This breakdown of partnership will therefore hurt Microsoft's image more than it will MTV's.
However, what do I know? Whenever I've mistakenly tuned into MTV they're either playing an Avril Lavigne or Metallica video or talking to one of those nice masked chaps from "Slipknot"...
Maybe one day MTV will have an "Old Duffer's Video Night" when the likes of myself will be treated to videos starring Tucky Buzzard, The Groundhogs, Fuzzy Duck, Jethro Tull or Uriah Heep - in which case give me a shout.
Until then, I'll just be over here polishing the zimmer frame.
Elitist Mac user drones on about how wonderful his Mac is, other elitist Mac users mod him up. Like we've not seen that before.
Just to put things into perspective a little, I'm 44 years of age, I've been in telecoms and IT support/consultancy for 24 of those years over here in the UK and I haven't the slightest idea how good/bad a Mac is because I've never owned one Apple product, let alone a Mac. I've used just about every popular flavour of UNIX over the years, all the MS-DOSes and Windows and now use Windows XP and a few varieties of Linux - but I simply have never needed a Mac and probably never will.
I am in constant touch with IT people but I can honestly say that I have only seen *TWO* people using Macs *EVER* - one was an American delivering a training course to me a couple of years ago, the other time was about six months ago when a posey student type was doing his best to display his silver Apple logo to the clientele of a Starbucks in my home town.
Sure, the Mac penetration may be bigger in the U.S. and if it's your "weapon of choice" then good luck to you. But over here in the UK and Europe, Macs are by far a minority product - in my experience used by people who feel the need to stand out from the crowd and not use Windows but cannot be bothered to put in some effort learning technical skills to be able to tackle Linux.
So let's stop with the Apple advertising - you use a Mac, you're an Apple fanboi, we know this, end of story.
I'm sure if you handed her an iPhone and asked her to do multi-touch typing...
That wouldn't be suitable in a hospital.
In hospital, patients are not normally given a designer coffee table replete with African tribal carving ornament on which to store their Apple products.
Slashdot Mirror
Not like me now on my Linux box drinking a nice pint of British Real Ale... mmmmm!
Nothing, repeat N-O-T-H-I-N-G, justifies the mindless killing of innocent people.
Actually, it's spelt "Cthulhu"... whoops! There goes my sanity... wibble...
Now how about some of you Muslims out there do the same? Then just maybe we might all have a chance of getting on that little bit better.
The fact is that solving crimes in Britain has become purely about statistics and pretty graphs, not about protecting the populace against crime.
This is why our roads are lined with speed cameras - because someone driving 7 mph over the speed limit can be considered as having committed a crime and, when they are caught, that's another crime solved by the police.
The DNA database is just another excuse to actually putting more police on the streets - it has nothing to do with civil liberties, it's just because our inept politicians are just interested in producing pretty graphs and having police in offices filling in forms rather than patrolling our streets.
Rubbish! The Amiga was a far superior machine to the IBM PC but Commodore/Escom/Gateway/Amiga Inc. did not have a single clue as to how to market it and expand it correctly. It was their total lack of incompetence that caused its death.
Amiga users (and I know because I was one of them once) were the most loyal bunch of users there could possibly be, a bunch of people who remained loyal for years despite being continually f*cked in the arse by unfulfilled promises by David Pleasance and whomever else controlled the Amiga name over the years.
If WGA or other Microsoft activities are p*ssing you off as a user, then have some strength of conviction and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
Just stop with the continual whining about it...
I don't accept that peoples' attention spans have changed at all - you talk about XBox and games, for example, and kids these days can sit playing these things for entire days.
Plus (in the UK at least) you never need to look very far to see shops selling reasonable hifi (Richer Sounds for example) who seem to be doing quite nicely. I don't think the CD is dead because audiophiles simply won't turn to downloadable music if CDs disappear - they just won't buy music any more. (I have around 1000 CD albums, including lots of Yes and Tangerine Dream, and I have more than enough music to last me the rest of my life - even though recently I've got into artists like Radiohead & The Answer as a result of being able to buy their CDs.)
I think it is just down to the quality and type of music these days. iPods are not designed as devices to sit and *REALLY* listen to music, they are there to make music a distraction or something going on in the background - consequently, listening to "Tales From Topographic Oceans" or "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" on an iPod is pretty much a pointless exercise as these are albums that *DEMAND* your full attention to appreciate them fully.
Music is simply about giving yourself the time to enjoy it - sometimes you do need to sit listening to a reasonable hifi set up in a comfortable chair and do *NOTHING* else to get the full enjoyment from it.
To me, music is very important, more so than TV, movies or games. I research it well, I look for the best CD prices and I'll occasionally do an illegal download to sample an album I will probably end up buying anyway (otherwise I ditch the MP3s). That way, I'm never ripped off for CDs, I consider them great value for money and will happilly keep buying them.
If anything, because a lot of stuff I listen to isn't particularly mainstream, it makes it more fun hunting good stuff down and its a bigger thrill when you discover a new piece of fantastic music.
Today's plastic pop/hip hop/dance music leaves me cold - but apart from that I don't really care about it because it's doing me no harm personally; like you said already, there's plenty of good music if you go look for it.
You can have a $40,000 16-Core Gigaglops laptop but if you're the average dumbshit user that runs Windows without regularly running and updating Windows/virus checker/spyware checker, you're still going to need that restore CD some time soon.
And if Best Buy/PC World/Whomever have taken this opportunity to crowbar more money out of you, then good luck to them.
"A fool and his money are easily parted."
I made no comparisons between any commercial and free software offerings so quite why you have thrown this argument back, I have no idea.
What I did ask you was what gives you the right to comment on free software when, by your own admission, you quite clearly use very little (or none) of it.
With all respect, not one of your machines appears to run any free software - so what right do you have telling free software advocates how they should behave?
Microsoft has created an OS monoculture and many Open Source OS users *RIGHTFULLY* feel aggrieved that this monoculture has made it uneconomical for software makers to produce games for any OS other than Windows.
And if Linux users like me feel hacked off about it then we've every right to voice that.
And Sony gave Michael Jackson a recording contract - that's another reason to hate Sony.
As far as I'm concerned, XP runs some great games - why do I give a stuff how many apps can use the graphics hardware at once?
You are sat there on your corpulent backside feeling pretty damned clever because you're so "l337" running your pirated XP. Yet you don't seem to realise that it's your total selfishness that gives the bean-counters at Microsoft the justification they need to inflict WGA and DRM on the honest users, making their lives a misery.
You have absolutely nothing to be proud of. You're quite clearly too weak-charactered to demonstrate the courage of your convictions and choose a truly free OS, perhaps you are just too stupid to ever be able to grasp the workings of Linux. I simultaneously loathe and pity you...
And no, I'm not an MS fanboi. I use Linux for just about everything bar gaming now, for which I have a valid Windows XP license. But it's total DICKHEADS like you that give WGA, DRM, the MPAA and RIAA the excuse they need to make life HELL for honest users.
Grow up, idiot, and get a life.
Please stop being a moron & keep your stupid mouth shut over a subject you clearly know nothing about.
All of the Linux distros deemed suitable for Linux newbies (Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSE, etc. etc.) have just about every hardware driver there is compiled as a kernel module. Consequently, provided your hardware is supported by the Linux kernel (which these days is pretty much most common hardware), then the kernel will find it and load the driver. Sure, over and above that you may need to configure an application to use that hardware correctly, no different to configuring ATI/nVidia drivers (for example) in Windows.
Yes, Linux does have its faults but demonstrate you at least have an inkling of understanding about it by actually knowing what you are talking about - you've quite clearly never used it so zip it and you may actually learn something.
How about NOT giving them the excuse they need to put on copy protection in the first place - after all, if there's NO piracy, why would they need SecuRom?
How about NOT thinking of yourself as some "Robin Hood" type character fighting the cause of the common man? How about realising that as a software pirate, you're JUST AS BAD as the makers of DRM technology because what YOU DO affects me, the honest user.
And finally, how about demonstrating some RESTRAINT and SELF CONTROL, accepting that this is ONLY A BLOODY COMPUTER GAME and telling the developers to SHOVE their DRM-ed piece of crap where the SUN DOESN'T SHINE until they start respecting the normal users.
STUPID ASS PIRATES!!!!!
This is just phoney posturing on your part. Why should the game developer give a damn about you now? They have your money, you've bought the game, they've won.
How about returning it as "not fit for purpose" and getting your money back? Standing in the store you bought it from, not moving until a manager gives you a refund.
Otherwise, it's just words from you...
Fantastic game, great company, very helpful whenever I've contacted them for any reason.
Please DON'T pirate Stardock's software - they do value their customers.
Therefore, in my view, an OS does not need a "personality", it just has to do a job - sure, I'm going to arrange the desktop, icons, menus, etc. with some personalisation to suit the way I work but beyond that, nothing. I've got good tools I use both in Linux and XP and as long as I can get to them quickly and interoperate between them.
I don't have hostility towards Mac users per se, I do not understand anyone who goes around ramming their personal possessions down other peoples throats - whether it's a new car, designer clothing or a Mac. I'd much rather these people just got on with enjoying what they have because *THEY* like them, rather than expecting *US* to also.
Nuh... Ballmer's too busy running the company to star in any adverts.
Despite all of that, the recent advertising campaign of "Mac vs the PC", where the Mac is a hip young dude and the Windows PC is the stuffy guy in the shirt and tie does have a spark of truth in it.
Look at the cool places where all the kids "hang out" on the Internet these days - iTunes, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace - and nowhere will you see Microsoft mentioned. When all said and done, Microsoft just isn't cool.
Therefore, if Microsoft can partner with something that *IS* hip with the hoopy frood teenagers, like MTV, then it goes some way to kicking off that stuffy old man image Microsoft has with the kids. This breakdown of partnership will therefore hurt Microsoft's image more than it will MTV's.
However, what do I know? Whenever I've mistakenly tuned into MTV they're either playing an Avril Lavigne or Metallica video or talking to one of those nice masked chaps from "Slipknot"...
Maybe one day MTV will have an "Old Duffer's Video Night" when the likes of myself will be treated to videos starring Tucky Buzzard, The Groundhogs, Fuzzy Duck, Jethro Tull or Uriah Heep - in which case give me a shout.
Until then, I'll just be over here polishing the zimmer frame.
I resent that comparison!
Count Dracula *STOPS* sucking blood when he has had his fill!
Elitist Mac user drones on about how wonderful his Mac is, other elitist Mac users mod him up. Like we've not seen that before.
Just to put things into perspective a little, I'm 44 years of age, I've been in telecoms and IT support/consultancy for 24 of those years over here in the UK and I haven't the slightest idea how good/bad a Mac is because I've never owned one Apple product, let alone a Mac. I've used just about every popular flavour of UNIX over the years, all the MS-DOSes and Windows and now use Windows XP and a few varieties of Linux - but I simply have never needed a Mac and probably never will.
I am in constant touch with IT people but I can honestly say that I have only seen *TWO* people using Macs *EVER* - one was an American delivering a training course to me a couple of years ago, the other time was about six months ago when a posey student type was doing his best to display his silver Apple logo to the clientele of a Starbucks in my home town.
Sure, the Mac penetration may be bigger in the U.S. and if it's your "weapon of choice" then good luck to you. But over here in the UK and Europe, Macs are by far a minority product - in my experience used by people who feel the need to stand out from the crowd and not use Windows but cannot be bothered to put in some effort learning technical skills to be able to tackle Linux.
So let's stop with the Apple advertising - you use a Mac, you're an Apple fanboi, we know this, end of story.
That wouldn't be suitable in a hospital.
In hospital, patients are not normally given a designer coffee table replete with African tribal carving ornament on which to store their Apple products.