OK, I know not all Americans are narrow minded chauvinistic egoists.
My hypothesis is that the reason some people think all us USA Amercians are like that is because we send people like that to other countries because we get sick of them very fast.
Well, except for Mexico. We voluntarily go there to do things we'd never do around our neighbors!
That reminds me of some Nimda hunting I did at work. My intranet web server kept getting hit from within the intranet in a different English speaking country. I reported it to the proper company groups, but it kept on happening. Finally I tried to hack into it using remote MMC management. I don't know why, but it let me in. I was able to copy a text file to the c$ share, start the scheduling service and use the at command to run notepad and display the text file on the desktop. The text file, of course, said something along the lines of "this pc is infected with the Nimda virus; please notify your network administrator or pc tech and unplug it from the network." I did that several times over 3 days. I think it took about 5 days before I finally quit getting hits from it.
(I resisted the urge to try to remotely disinfect it since I didn't know what business function the PC served.)
I can believe people ignoring emails, but people are so paranoid about viruses that if Notepad kept popping messages on their screens I would think they'd go running screaming to their administrator begging him to save their data. Maybe I should've made the note sound sinister instead of helpful and then they'd get help?
That reminds me, I intended to check out why the hell I could administer a PC in a different country and find out if my PCs were as vulnerable. I'll put that on tomorrow's to do list.
For an amusing tale of how a popular (although not always loved) windows security guy did just that, go here. ["here" linked to GRC.com article]
I hadn't read that guy's site in a while because it's too alarmist. But I read the linked GRC article and found roughly 5-15% useful text among all of that. The IRC log was priceless; ^^boss^^ was stupid if he was surprised someone could've figured that out how to locate and connect to his IRC server. (I'm not necessarily dissing Gibson with that stament, though; he's alarmist but is fairly knowledgable although he can sound fairly stupid at points, too.)
What struck me is how much his articles read like Crocodile Hunter:
CRIKEY!! I've been DDoS'ed by SCRIPT KIDDIES' WIN9x ZOMBIES!! Lucky for me they weren't Win2k or WinXP zombies or I'd be DEAD!!
[Imagine the following text centered, large, bold and in a different color]
Soon the proliferation Win2k and WinXP will allow make the world a far more dangerous place to live!
Grandparent post: The US has around 215 million. [TVs]
Parent post:...the US has 300 million. [people]
I find that hard to believe there are fewer TVs than people in the US. I think I have about 2 million PCs in my house alone. I think you all can relate.
If I write code and place it under the GPL, then the licensees are the ones who are bound by it. I, as the licensor, am not bound by it.
I understand that. But what happens when I either modify your code and distribute it under the GPL (of course) or contribute to your source tree. Are you allowed to include my contribution if you offer your product under a more restricted license?
What if your code is 50 lines long, and 200 other contributors not in any legal partnership with you (unless the GPL forces that relationship) grow the project to 500,000 lines of code. Since it all was based on your code, do you have the option of releasing that 500,000 line project under a more restricted license?
This is one thing I haven't understood about the GPL.
The fact that 386 protected mode is backward compatible with 286 protected mode is perhaps litle known, . ..
I was going to argue with you about that compatibility but decided to look into it first. It looks like you're right. Cool!
Now that I've had time to think about it, it makes sense. The x86 series has maintained backwards opcode compatibility all along, and the main difference in protected modes is the segment size.
I had OS/2 2.1 way back when. I'm pretty sure it required a 386. That makes sense since 286 protected mode and 386 protected mode would require completely different binaries for the kernel and all application software I think.
For some reason I gave my copies of OS/2 away along with the manuals. Or maybe I sold them for cheap at Half Price Books. I wish I hadn't done that.
I believe the Embedded Linux Kernel project has ideas about porting to a 286 protected mode version (no actual effort or progress AFAIK, though, and IIRC they didn't port Linux so much as write or port another UNIX-like kernel to real mode), and it seems like I heard of a nonfree OS which can use 286 protected, but they are few and far between. Borland C++ 3.1 can compile 286 protected mode (as well as real mode and 386 protected mode); I'm not sure about other versions. (I kept that software!)
so does this mean I can print out a new processor on my inkjet?
Yes!
Unfortunately it only prints Transmetas.
Re:These drones are way too expensive
on
Droning On
·
· Score: 2
It's much cheaper to hire a pilot and use a plane, or hire a truck, and it will still be much cheaper for a long time to come.
Planes, piloted or drones, are expensive to buy and maintain so commercial airliners use them as much as possible. I'm sitting a few feet away from untold millions of dollars of spare plane parts because this business requires that the planes remain in service to make the business money.
Pilots are part of the cost and logistics issue. Pilots aren't cheap, and if a plane is flying nearly 24/7 the plane might go through 6 (2 man crew 3 times over) - 12 (3 man crew 4 times over) flight crew per day. Pilots are routinely given limo rides to expensive hotels at layover points. Pilots are an expensive part of the operation and problems that happen are usually created by the pilots.
Drones would save airlines a lot of money on pilots. Look for the cargo airlines to grab them first because passengers will not be very willing to step on a plane without a pilot. Perhaps passenger airlines might slowly and quietly use lower-paid 'pilots' in drones just to sit up front and make announcements to the passengers and make them feel safe.
The safety issue is the big question here. On one hand pilot error is the most frequent cause of accidents; on the other hand with commercial cargo or passenger drones there would be no responsible human whose life is on the line to double and triple check maintenance logs, plane condition, fuel loads and weight and balance.
The American public will probably take quite a few years to get used to the idea that flying drones are safe (if they are), so I don't expect to see this soon unless another country does it first.
Taking supplies to remote parts of Alaska, for instance. People won't have to risk their lives driving trucking convoys over frozen lakes.
Remote delivery in Alaska is largely done by small planes. These planes land on flat spaces in the bush (bush means Alaskan 'outback', 'wilderness', etc.), not airports. I believe drones could do well taking off and landing at airports but I seriously doubt they could handle short field landing on grass, snow, ice and water in places with no special equipment or even electricity. Snow landings require several touch-and-go passes with the skis to pack down the snow well enough to make a good landing/turnaround/takeoff surface. I think a drone plane would need a maintained and equipped takeoff and landing field. Even a drone helicopter could hardly be trusted due to the close proximity to tree branches at many landing sites.
There are no truck convoys over frozen lakes because there are no roads in the remote areas.
Drones to the 'larger' sites like Point Barrow might be feasible, though. Point Barrow has a lot of supply and person traffic due to the oil business and I believe has a small airport.
Re:yeah but....
on
Droning On
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
What's the cargo capacity on one of those drones? I don't think FedEx will replace its 747 with those anytime soon.
There's nothing particularly special about a small drone versus a large drone. The big planes already have autopilot for mostly straight flight and automated landing systems. Many newer large aircraft can land themselves in zero-visibility weather at properly equiped airports.
The issues I see are safety concerns and public outcry. I'm not sure where I stand on this issue; I intuitively feel that it's better to have a human at the controls, but most aviation accidents are human errors. The control systems are redundant, and almost always it's two or three human mistakes together that cause a crash. (Some of these mistakes are maintenance mistakes, though, and the drone mechanics will presumably still be human.)
And the cargo companies will probably be the first to fly drones. People are nervous about what they fly on, but cargo doesn't complain or care. And jet pilots are expensive and spoiled and bratty and demanding, generally speaking. The only roadblocks for cargo companies will be the public complaining they don't want a 200,000 lb plane falling out of the sky onto their houses.
Wouldn't work, I'm sure. Besides, they can dispose of their waste in another way.
Um, how? Portable incinerators?
Do recall that men also leave DNA samples behind, often in as many places as possible. Think....
Oops, I guess that slipped my mind. I suppose that also indicates how much sex I've had in recent memory...that and the timing of this post, 10 minutes before midnight New Year's. Then again there's the kleenex from solo DNA leavings, but can you test semen (generated alone or with friends) for evidence of drug use?
The tricking stuff actually bothers me a little more than seizing stuff the owner never wanted to see again, depending how it is done.
Yeah, I'm not sure which I dislike more, but I acknowledge there's a difference.
Did you see The Client? There, is was a juvenile, which adds extra problems of consent.
Good movie, and agreed.
The pendulum has swung strongly in the direction of the law enforcement;
I agree there, too, and it bothers me. I need to get into some research and discussions to feel the issues out thoroughly, but I was raised being fed ideals of freedom from these types of invasions of privacy, but now under the battle call of anti-terrorism the pendulum swings fast.
No, it's not a blood sample, it's trash that has blood (menstrual fluid) on it. Discarded materials are unprotected by the 4th amendment, there's no violation of privacy in their seizure. Trash is trash.
Here's a new angle: Healthy women regularly and predictably bleed on things and throw them away, but men don't unless they're VERY clumsy shavers. Is the legality of taking such a DNA sample unfair to women? Had this officer been male whould his home have been searched based upon the discarded paraphenalia alone?
Yet another angle: If you are on a city sewer system (as opposed to a septic tank), can the city legally grab your waste after you flush the toilet?
I see a difference between tricking someone into giving DNA or fingerprints with drinks in a police station (as others have mentioned) and taking it from their home, or more precisely from their curbsides. I have not thought about it enough to decide wheter either should be legal or not, but it sure feels uncomfortable to me.
Every time I read about encryption and other security technologies I have to wonder how much effort it's all worth. Mainly I compare to physical security of paper, for example.
In most businesses several people have keys to everyone's office. Think IT staff, janitorial staff, security staff, higher levels of management and facility maintenance. In my experience much of the information that might be desired by compromising computer security is readily available to many in paper form on a desk or in a filing cabinet. Okay, the filing cabinet key may not be shared by many.
Briefcases and similar carry-alongs tote a lot of confidential paper.
Encryption always worries me because it seems to easy to accidentally or forgetfully cause the data to be lost forever to everyone including the data 'owner' and his/her management.
The parent post provides some good examples of how some computer security can be used against the 'protected' user.
Well, I've sort of made my point, but I'm too tired to clarify it, so I'll stop here.
What happens when the decryption key device fails or is lost or stolen?
I'm a netadmin for some not-very-savvy users, and if I couldn't restore access to their data just by resetting their password then they are all in trouble.
This is an issue for a lot of encryption solutions, not just this one. Is there a master key list somewhere than can be used to recover encrypted files or volumes or at least recreate the encryption key device? How long would that take? (This opens another discussion over security of the master list and key-changing and reencryption procedures for lost and stolen tokens.)
And what if the device gets stolen? I have a security token that requires a PIN in conjunction with its security (both the PIN and device are needed for access), but in the case of this article the whole point seems to be to avoid entering a password or PIN.
Not to show any disrespect to those kind hearted souls who sacrifice their spare time to do a community service, but as an enduser who has paid far far more for linux distro's than I ever would have paid if I was using Windows I have a right to insist on support for ME the end user. I have purchased Redhat 7.1, Mandrake 8.2,9.0 and every Suse since 6.2. It's my opinion that the kernel developer employed by the distro's have an obligation to develop the linux kernel with me in mind.
Dude, thanks for paying for GNU/Linux.
But think about this: You paid roughly US$60 a version for: An OS, a GUI, three office suites, two professional databases (mySQL & PostgreSQL), a production-grade web server, a development suite for C, C++, Objective C, FORTRAN, Pascal (I think, or maybe there's just a Pascal->C converter), PERL, Python and God knows what other languages I forgot, a POSIX-compliant set of libraries and network daemons, IPv6 and IPsec support. Etc., etc., etc.. Try buying all that from Microsoft and it will cost you more than $60 per upgrade.
Anyway, you're not paying every contributor to the code off all the products, and you're not even paying every kernel developer. You're paying mostly packaging, warehousing and shipping plus a couple of markups and then the software package maintainers that make sure the distribution runs smoothly as packaged. If the provided app packages conflict with each other, then yeah you're entitled to support from Suse or whoever, but if you think $60 every few months entitles you to having the kernel developers reverse-engineer and scratch-write drivers for your new hardware, look them up and email them; I'm sure they'll be happy to hear from you.
By the way I like ATI for Linux; I just buy an older card that I know has good open source Linux drivers. (Yeah ATI may have some binary ones, but I know the open source ones will be around as long as my card is working.)
Those plans are just a way to make tons of money with little risk. I never never never buy them. I put them in the same category as that insurance the credit cards try to sell you to cover minimum payments if you lose your job.
I *might* consider buying one if it was a really expensive item and the cost seemed reasonable, but if I'm buying an item that expensive the manufacturer and retailer damn well better stand behind it.
I look at it this way: if I someday need the coverage those plans offer I will have saved enough by not every buying one to cover the loss. It boils down to insurance, and insurance should be bought to prevent disasters from ruining you, not to avoid any loss at all or even a moderately painful loss.
I briefly worked at a large well-known chain retailer that sold these plans. They push hard and demand a quota because it's pure money for them. No stocking (except for the paper), no returns (a separate company administers the plan and takes the calls and handles any exchange or repair) and money in the bank (an insurance company underwrites the plan and suffers any future losses).
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OK, I know not all Americans are narrow minded chauvinistic egoists.
My hypothesis is that the reason some people think all us USA Amercians are like that is because we send people like that to other countries because we get sick of them very fast.
Well, except for Mexico. We voluntarily go there to do things we'd never do around our neighbors!
They dont even have to call the customer...
[...] then email the poor sap...
That reminds me of some Nimda hunting I did at work. My intranet web server kept getting hit from within the intranet in a different English speaking country. I reported it to the proper company groups, but it kept on happening. Finally I tried to hack into it using remote MMC management. I don't know why, but it let me in. I was able to copy a text file to the c$ share, start the scheduling service and use the at command to run notepad and display the text file on the desktop. The text file, of course, said something along the lines of "this pc is infected with the Nimda virus; please notify your network administrator or pc tech and unplug it from the network." I did that several times over 3 days. I think it took about 5 days before I finally quit getting hits from it.
(I resisted the urge to try to remotely disinfect it since I didn't know what business function the PC served.)
I can believe people ignoring emails, but people are so paranoid about viruses that if Notepad kept popping messages on their screens I would think they'd go running screaming to their administrator begging him to save their data. Maybe I should've made the note sound sinister instead of helpful and then they'd get help?
That reminds me, I intended to check out why the hell I could administer a PC in a different country and find out if my PCs were as vulnerable. I'll put that on tomorrow's to do list.
I hadn't read that guy's site in a while because it's too alarmist. But I read the linked GRC article and found roughly 5-15% useful text among all of that. The IRC log was priceless; ^^boss^^ was stupid if he was surprised someone could've figured that out how to locate and connect to his IRC server. (I'm not necessarily dissing Gibson with that stament, though; he's alarmist but is fairly knowledgable although he can sound fairly stupid at points, too.)
What struck me is how much his articles read like Crocodile Hunter:
CRIKEY!! I've been DDoS'ed by SCRIPT KIDDIES' WIN9x ZOMBIES!! Lucky for me they weren't Win2k or WinXP zombies or I'd be DEAD!!
[Imagine the following text centered, large, bold and in a different color]
etc., etc..
I actually enjoy Crocodile Hunter, though.
That's what the fruit is for. You drown them. Duh.
Grandparent post: The US has around 215 million. [TVs]
...the US has 300 million. [people]
Parent post:
I find that hard to believe there are fewer TVs than people in the US. I think I have about 2 million PCs in my house alone. I think you all can relate.
Or even something say like GTA3... which very vividly portrays a modern western society. . .
. . . where they're a character that trashes and bashes western citizens and authorities.
I'd think that'd go over even better over there than here!
If I write code and place it under the GPL, then the licensees are the ones who are bound by it. I, as the licensor, am not bound by it.
I understand that. But what happens when I either modify your code and distribute it under the GPL (of course) or contribute to your source tree. Are you allowed to include my contribution if you offer your product under a more restricted license?
What if your code is 50 lines long, and 200 other contributors not in any legal partnership with you (unless the GPL forces that relationship) grow the project to 500,000 lines of code. Since it all was based on your code, do you have the option of releasing that 500,000 line project under a more restricted license?
This is one thing I haven't understood about the GPL.
The fact that 386 protected mode is backward compatible with 286 protected mode is perhaps litle known, . . .
I was going to argue with you about that compatibility but decided to look into it first. It looks like you're right. Cool!
Now that I've had time to think about it, it makes sense. The x86 series has maintained backwards opcode compatibility all along, and the main difference in protected modes is the segment size.
Everyone knows my birthday, you get more presents that way.
Remember to ask for the receipts when they give you CDs!
I had OS/2 2.1 way back when. I'm pretty sure it required a 386. That makes sense since 286 protected mode and 386 protected mode would require completely different binaries for the kernel and all application software I think.
For some reason I gave my copies of OS/2 away along with the manuals. Or maybe I sold them for cheap at Half Price Books. I wish I hadn't done that.
I believe the Embedded Linux Kernel project has ideas about porting to a 286 protected mode version (no actual effort or progress AFAIK, though, and IIRC they didn't port Linux so much as write or port another UNIX-like kernel to real mode), and it seems like I heard of a nonfree OS which can use 286 protected, but they are few and far between. Borland C++ 3.1 can compile 286 protected mode (as well as real mode and 386 protected mode); I'm not sure about other versions. (I kept that software!)
so does this mean I can print out a new processor on my inkjet?
Yes!
Unfortunately it only prints Transmetas.
It's much cheaper to hire a pilot and use a plane, or hire a truck, and it will still be much cheaper for a long time to come.
Planes, piloted or drones, are expensive to buy and maintain so commercial airliners use them as much as possible. I'm sitting a few feet away from untold millions of dollars of spare plane parts because this business requires that the planes remain in service to make the business money.
Pilots are part of the cost and logistics issue. Pilots aren't cheap, and if a plane is flying nearly 24/7 the plane might go through 6 (2 man crew 3 times over) - 12 (3 man crew 4 times over) flight crew per day. Pilots are routinely given limo rides to expensive hotels at layover points. Pilots are an expensive part of the operation and problems that happen are usually created by the pilots.
Drones would save airlines a lot of money on pilots. Look for the cargo airlines to grab them first because passengers will not be very willing to step on a plane without a pilot. Perhaps passenger airlines might slowly and quietly use lower-paid 'pilots' in drones just to sit up front and make announcements to the passengers and make them feel safe.
The safety issue is the big question here. On one hand pilot error is the most frequent cause of accidents; on the other hand with commercial cargo or passenger drones there would be no responsible human whose life is on the line to double and triple check maintenance logs, plane condition, fuel loads and weight and balance.
The American public will probably take quite a few years to get used to the idea that flying drones are safe (if they are), so I don't expect to see this soon unless another country does it first.
Taking supplies to remote parts of Alaska, for instance. People won't have to risk their lives driving trucking convoys over frozen lakes.
Remote delivery in Alaska is largely done by small planes. These planes land on flat spaces in the bush (bush means Alaskan 'outback', 'wilderness', etc.), not airports. I believe drones could do well taking off and landing at airports but I seriously doubt they could handle short field landing on grass, snow, ice and water in places with no special equipment or even electricity. Snow landings require several touch-and-go passes with the skis to pack down the snow well enough to make a good landing/turnaround/takeoff surface. I think a drone plane would need a maintained and equipped takeoff and landing field. Even a drone helicopter could hardly be trusted due to the close proximity to tree branches at many landing sites.
There are no truck convoys over frozen lakes because there are no roads in the remote areas.
Drones to the 'larger' sites like Point Barrow might be feasible, though. Point Barrow has a lot of supply and person traffic due to the oil business and I believe has a small airport.
What's the cargo capacity on one of those drones? I don't think FedEx will replace its 747 with those anytime soon.
There's nothing particularly special about a small drone versus a large drone. The big planes already have autopilot for mostly straight flight and automated landing systems. Many newer large aircraft can land themselves in zero-visibility weather at properly equiped airports.
The issues I see are safety concerns and public outcry. I'm not sure where I stand on this issue; I intuitively feel that it's better to have a human at the controls, but most aviation accidents are human errors. The control systems are redundant, and almost always it's two or three human mistakes together that cause a crash. (Some of these mistakes are maintenance mistakes, though, and the drone mechanics will presumably still be human.)
And the cargo companies will probably be the first to fly drones. People are nervous about what they fly on, but cargo doesn't complain or care. And jet pilots are expensive and spoiled and bratty and demanding, generally speaking. The only roadblocks for cargo companies will be the public complaining they don't want a 200,000 lb plane falling out of the sky onto their houses.
Equal protection? Clever!
Thanks!
Wouldn't work, I'm sure. Besides, they can dispose of their waste in another way.
Um, how? Portable incinerators?
Do recall that men also leave DNA samples behind, often in as many places as possible. Think....
Oops, I guess that slipped my mind. I suppose that also indicates how much sex I've had in recent memory...that and the timing of this post, 10 minutes before midnight New Year's. Then again there's the kleenex from solo DNA leavings, but can you test semen (generated alone or with friends) for evidence of drug use?
The tricking stuff actually bothers me a little more than seizing stuff the owner never wanted to see again, depending how it is done.
Yeah, I'm not sure which I dislike more, but I acknowledge there's a difference.
Did you see The Client? There, is was a juvenile, which adds extra problems of consent.
Good movie, and agreed.
The pendulum has swung strongly in the direction of the law enforcement;
I agree there, too, and it bothers me. I need to get into some research and discussions to feel the issues out thoroughly, but I was raised being fed ideals of freedom from these types of invasions of privacy, but now under the battle call of anti-terrorism the pendulum swings fast.
Time to grab the rum and kleenex. Happy New Year!
No, it's not a blood sample, it's trash that has blood (menstrual fluid) on it. Discarded materials are unprotected by the 4th amendment, there's no violation of privacy in their seizure. Trash is trash.
Here's a new angle: Healthy women regularly and predictably bleed on things and throw them away, but men don't unless they're VERY clumsy shavers. Is the legality of taking such a DNA sample unfair to women? Had this officer been male whould his home have been searched based upon the discarded paraphenalia alone?
Yet another angle: If you are on a city sewer system (as opposed to a septic tank), can the city legally grab your waste after you flush the toilet?
I see a difference between tricking someone into giving DNA or fingerprints with drinks in a police station (as others have mentioned) and taking it from their home, or more precisely from their curbsides. I have not thought about it enough to decide wheter either should be legal or not, but it sure feels uncomfortable to me.
(Disclaimer: USA Fortune 500 company bias)
Every time I read about encryption and other security technologies I have to wonder how much effort it's all worth. Mainly I compare to physical security of paper, for example.
In most businesses several people have keys to everyone's office. Think IT staff, janitorial staff, security staff, higher levels of management and facility maintenance. In my experience much of the information that might be desired by compromising computer security is readily available to many in paper form on a desk or in a filing cabinet. Okay, the filing cabinet key may not be shared by many.
Briefcases and similar carry-alongs tote a lot of confidential paper.
Encryption always worries me because it seems to easy to accidentally or forgetfully cause the data to be lost forever to everyone including the data 'owner' and his/her management.
The parent post provides some good examples of how some computer security can be used against the 'protected' user.
Well, I've sort of made my point, but I'm too tired to clarify it, so I'll stop here.
What happens when the decryption key device fails or is lost or stolen?
I'm a netadmin for some not-very-savvy users, and if I couldn't restore access to their data just by resetting their password then they are all in trouble.
This is an issue for a lot of encryption solutions, not just this one. Is there a master key list somewhere than can be used to recover encrypted files or volumes or at least recreate the encryption key device? How long would that take? (This opens another discussion over security of the master list and key-changing and reencryption procedures for lost and stolen tokens.)
And what if the device gets stolen? I have a security token that requires a PIN in conjunction with its security (both the PIN and device are needed for access), but in the case of this article the whole point seems to be to avoid entering a password or PIN.
Not to show any disrespect to those kind hearted souls who sacrifice their spare time to do a community service, but as an enduser who has paid far far more for linux distro's than I ever would have paid if I was using Windows I have a right to insist on support for ME the end user. I have purchased Redhat 7.1, Mandrake 8.2,9.0 and every Suse since 6.2. It's my opinion that the kernel developer employed by the distro's have an obligation to develop the linux kernel with me in mind.
Dude, thanks for paying for GNU/Linux.
But think about this: You paid roughly US$60 a version for: An OS, a GUI, three office suites, two professional databases (mySQL & PostgreSQL), a production-grade web server, a development suite for C, C++, Objective C, FORTRAN, Pascal (I think, or maybe there's just a Pascal->C converter), PERL, Python and God knows what other languages I forgot, a POSIX-compliant set of libraries and network daemons, IPv6 and IPsec support. Etc., etc., etc.. Try buying all that from Microsoft and it will cost you more than $60 per upgrade.
Anyway, you're not paying every contributor to the code off all the products, and you're not even paying every kernel developer. You're paying mostly packaging, warehousing and shipping plus a couple of markups and then the software package maintainers that make sure the distribution runs smoothly as packaged. If the provided app packages conflict with each other, then yeah you're entitled to support from Suse or whoever, but if you think $60 every few months entitles you to having the kernel developers reverse-engineer and scratch-write drivers for your new hardware, look them up and email them; I'm sure they'll be happy to hear from you.
By the way I like ATI for Linux; I just buy an older card that I know has good open source Linux drivers. (Yeah ATI may have some binary ones, but I know the open source ones will be around as long as my card is working.)
In Soviet Russia, meteors shower YOU!
It's SNOWING where I am, you insensitive clod!
Has somebody told the NetBSD folks about this one? (Read 2nd line from the top center of the link if you don't get it.)
There will be a celebration to jointly celebrate it's 50th anniversary and it's completion of calculating pi to the 4th digit.
Those plans are just a way to make tons of money with little risk. I never never never buy them. I put them in the same category as that insurance the credit cards try to sell you to cover minimum payments if you lose your job.
I *might* consider buying one if it was a really expensive item and the cost seemed reasonable, but if I'm buying an item that expensive the manufacturer and retailer damn well better stand behind it.
I look at it this way: if I someday need the coverage those plans offer I will have saved enough by not every buying one to cover the loss. It boils down to insurance, and insurance should be bought to prevent disasters from ruining you, not to avoid any loss at all or even a moderately painful loss.
I briefly worked at a large well-known chain retailer that sold these plans. They push hard and demand a quota because it's pure money for them. No stocking (except for the paper), no returns (a separate company administers the plan and takes the calls and handles any exchange or repair) and money in the bank (an insurance company underwrites the plan and suffers any future losses).
Or take the example of 2 people that pay different amounts for the same model new car. How can you resolve common scenario with your adage?
"There's a sucker born every minute"?
Oh wait, or is that "age before wisdom"?
How about "Moore's Rule of Thumb" or "Moore's Vision Statement"?