I had an ad online looking for a roomate. My ex, who knew the site I posted on, crafted up a fake persona on the roommate site, and answered my ad. As the room was taken, she then proceeded to chat me up using the fake identity and the knowledge of my personal interests etc.
After stringing it along for awhile, she indicated that she "wouldn't be moving so soon after all", but invited me to a fairly cool party in a city several hours away (Victoria).
I was suspicious, though I didn't suspect my ex , but rather thought that perhaps some friends that I knew to be in Victoria were planning a joke. I was bored, so I decided to check it out. I half-expected to arrive and find all my buddies waiting for a big "surprise", and half expected that perhaps there was a real party. Turned out the address itself was bogus (darn you mapquest, you said it existed) and a waste of time.
So then I traced the IP's on the email back to the wireless of the local college, which gave me some suspicions of the sender. I managed to determine that the password on the sender's hotmail account was my ex's birthday.
So my point? Well, it's pretty freaky to know that somebody will go to *that* much trouble to mess with you, even when you're an adult. As a techie type of guy, I've regularly met friends from both online and off, but it's put a pretty big damper on my trust of those online. It's one thing to know that when you meet a person they might be a little exaggerated in personal details, and another to realize you've befriended somebody who's just a troll created to get into your head.
My story ended (I hope), when I talked to the police. They weren't actually able to do much about the whole internet thing (though it seems like stalking to me), but they were able to deal with the fact that she was calling me about 15-20x in an hour, and often masking her phone # from my call display. The threat of criminal harassment charges and deportation (she was a student from overseas) tuned her down a bit, and I moved from that city not that long after.
This girl's story ended when she got too attached to her stalker, and was given a directive to end her own life. Was she too impressionable? Perhaps. It seems like it's fairly easily a case of stalking/harassment to me. Throw in the age and I'm sure that other things crop up.
As mentioned elsewhere, if this were an adult male and a young woman, they'd most likely have gone after this even more heavily.
I don't agree with trumped-up charges, but what happens when there are many things that are a half-fit, but don't quite match the modern world? The problem is that laws don't always keep up with technology, and unfortunately the technology is not well understood (which leads to vague and easily abused laws). Perhaps there needs to be a meter that distinguishes minor online "harassment" such a posting insults on usenet from creating a fake identity to target and damage a specific person.
Nowadays I think that the best meter for that is still the same as before. A judge, and/or a jury. Unfortunately, they're both (especially a jury) still influenced strongly by emotion and doublespeak, but the justice system is still one of our best ways of making a strong impression about what is not acceptable in today's society.
I'm an adult, I can deal with this shit. A 13-year-old girl, already an outcast, could use a little help or protection.
It's not just democracy, but this judge deserve real kudos for having the backbone to admit his error. Too often we here of those in power who realize they have made a mistake, and cover it up in lies or denial (often making worse mistakes in the process).
Rather than just referring to him as "the judge in Capitol V Thomas", his name is "Judge Michael Davis." If anyone happens to know him, I'd say that it's about time to congratulate him for being man enough to step up and make this admission.
For example, look at the recent shenannigans with Bell and those subletting their monopolized line-system. The regulating bodies basically just said that Bell is doing nothing wrong by throttling or otherwise screwing with the traffic of the 3rd-party ISP's customers, because there's no proof it will cause lost business.
Hello! The ISP's cannot provide the indicated level of services due to the interference of a third party. Screw loss of business, that's a pretty major way of screwing the customers, who now have absolutely zero choice for ISP's who aren't handing it to them up the tailpipe (Rogers, the non-DSL ISP, also throttles). So is it fair that customers aren't "leaving" because they're getting equally screwed elsewhere?
When I last spent time in Aus, I was amazed by how closely they kept tabs on their politicians and policies. North America in general could learn a lot from them in that regard.
Actually, I believe that in there have already been cases where people in sexual predator or identity-theft cases have been banned from using the 'net.
This is after a real trial which ascertains guilt though, as opposed to the whim of an ISP/label.
Feel free to start up a campaign donation for me, because I doubt that myself or any of those who actually give a damn are going to be able to run for election.
There was a story, it just wasn't mandatory and not overly immersive. Collecting the various datacorder chips and playing back the video/audio entries actually gives a lot of insite as to what happened in the story... but it's not really a very interactive or convenient was of doing so.
I believe that there were several different tests done by "Reader's Digest" and various other magazines. One was to drop a cellphone(or in others, a wallet, etc) in a public location, and see whom collects it and if they try to return it.
Several people kept the phone. Some, when approached, vehemently denied acquiring it (though they were on camera doing so). Many of those who acted this way were at the least middle-class citizens, and in a good portion of the cases semi-upper-class or even rather rich citizens.
The poorer people, on the other hand, actually put forth the effort to returning the phone/wallet/etc. The RD crew would ask why they didn't keep it. I remember that the refrain from the poorer citizens was pretty much the same: "I may be poor, but I'm honest, I want my children to be honest, and even having no money I still have my self-respect."
Sometimes poor leads to desperation, and terrible things happen. But in groups, being poor often seems to lead to a policy of community-support, and watching out for your fellows.
If I become rich, I think I'd have a joy in life by visiting "poor" places, and engaging in random acts of generosity. Unfortunately, that mentality means I'll probably never become rich, unless I win the lottery or something to that effect.
This is just IMHO of course, but. Doom 3 was actually quite good, it just wasn't anything really new or exciting (except for the flashy graphics, of course). The original doom - though similar to previous sprite-based FPS's - was quite an innovation in many ways, especially from the perspective of multi-player fun.
Doom3 was fairly repetitive, but - if you go back - so were the originals... people just weren't worn out from the deluge of a gazillion other FPS games. The storyline wasn't actually bad either. If you actually followed all the little videos and stuff, it was quite interesting, and would have made a heck of a better movie than the POS the came out with "The Rock."
Now at the same time as Doom3, Half Life 2 was out and about. Despite being overused a bit, the physics engine made *that* particular game a bit of something new, and the missions themselves: though also tedious at parts, are also fairly interactive. And the gravity gun... well, the BFG was a fun innovation back in the doom days, the gravity gun was a more modern innovation in gameplay from a weapons perspective.
HL2 was also fairly nice on older hardware. Doom3 could be run on an older PC, but tuned down quite a bit in terms of graphics, etc.
So was it a bad game, no? Did it do as well as the competition, no quite. Is there hope for the future, hell, why not?
What else is there to a movie, really, other than a good script and acting? As many have mentioned, all the SFX in the world aren't going to make a turd shine.
That being said, I've watched the original, and while the acting is obviously quite amateur in places, and the script a bit corny, it all fits together nicely. Certainly when you consider the origins of the movie, it does quite well. I'd still say the acting was better than Mannikan Skywalker, and the script better than "The Hulk" or many other movies out there.
Sometimes, it's both. More often it's the latter, but sometimes getting caught doing something stupid, and paying the PR penalty for it, makes you realize that perhaps your goals have departed a bit from your original expectations.
$800?
$300 for an EeePC. And there are others like OLPC. Sure, you might not see a lot of cubans joining into games of Quake or GTA4 online, but they can still do a lot for less than $800.b
Details! I'd love to hear more about how you did this, and I'm sure that many others on here would equally appreciate any hints/information/etc you can offer.
It may be marked as funny, but I find it fairly true that India is definitely a country where the "more-in-less" concept seems to fit. I have a room for rent in my condo, and recently got an email from an family that is moving here and wanted to rent my room (not a small room, but it's still only a single room in a 3bdrm/1bthrm condo) for the parents and their child. When it comes to space and comfort VS saving bucks, the common mentality seems to go with the latter.
I'd imagine that the packed human-conditions may very well affect an overall thinking of how to best-fit as much possible into a small space. A lot of other highly-populated countries seem to be very good at miniaturization for similar purposes.
Last time I caught the news, I heard that there was a group in Texas that got in big trouble for this.
I'd suggest that you find a girlfriend that's already been compiled elsewhere. If importing from certain countries (Thailand/Brazil/etc), you may want to ensure that the girlfriend is also compatible with your architecture and that you have complementary - rather than matching - peripherals.
I blew up my 64-bit system recently (motherboard died), but previous to that it was Debian.
Install required a --force-architecture and having the ia32libs installed, but other than that it worked fine. I'm not sure if the GUI frontend allows you to force-install 32-bit apps though.
A lot of people in the comments of the linked article are complaining/debating about the "cuteness" meter. I think it could be a rather fun feature. Have something that looks at-first-glance like a "cute, cuddly widdle kitten", but with an geiger/aliens-style secondary mouth or perhaps some freaky tentacles hidden away for unsuspecting victims.
I wonder if creatures will be able to "mate" in the game. It would be rather fun to copy somebody's cutesy creature, but add a few surprises and then chomp on unsuspecting victims when they come by.
I know this has flaws; how do we keep everybody from peeking into the backups
Encyption, with the keys put in a special location only available under special orders, and to be passed on to the presidential successor?
Or just have them done by a neutral third-party... unfortunately when politics and money are involved, neutral (and being trustworthy enough not to leak the data to a third-party) is a pretty hard thing to find.
Perhaps an arrangement with another country? Maybe the US/Canadian governments can arrange a backup-sharing plan with some form of encryption to discourage snooping.
Well, my thoughts would be that it's because neither the customers nor the insurance agency would have enough knowledge to discriminate.
However, let's say that customers can get themselves tested to see their predispositions, and find that they're about 90% predisposed to having a certain (expensive ailment). With that knowledge, they follow the odds, and go out to purchase pricey healthcare. The healthcare company can't deny them based on the same knowledge, so the playing field is a bit uneven.
Of course, saying that this will destroy private insurance is just hyperbole. Chances are the most people aren't going to bother getting genetically tested for predisposition to such health issues. Moreover, plenty of people already know their if they have a "family history" of things such as cancer, heart attacks, or other such things, so it's not really going to change the status quo that much.
So genetic testing might change things a bit, but (at least IMHO), not *that* much, or at least not anytime soon.
In most cases, it seems to depend on the impact upon the business. It takes about 5 seconds to card somebody who might be underage. Installing and running dubious software into your place of business is a different matter. Similarly, the issues of government-mandated-logging tends to run into situations where to do so becomes a prohibitively-high addition to the business's margins.
I'm a Canadian, and I've heard of any number of incidents where border guards (ours, and the US's) have been known to confiscate property such as laptops etc.
The parent definitely raises a good point about just how long/deep they're allowed to search. Another question I would have is, are the airports allowed to search, or can they just take your laptop outright (like the border guards have been known to).
Overall, this whole thing happen is ludicrous. Bags and other articles are generally searched for the protection of other passengers on the plane, a laptop poses no such danger. Although there are cases where searches also uncover smuggling, etc, there is a limit to how far one can reasonably search, and/or how long it will take, whereas with a laptop there aren't any real such boundaries.
Moreover, the story indicates that the initial pictures found were of adults, but prompted the further search in which alleged underage material was found. Sounds like a easy thing to plant, rather than end up embarrassed that you were digging up pics of some guy with his wife.
One thing I've been thinking about. FTL travel doesn't guarantee they'll make it here. We run into plenty of stuff here right in our own solar-system/planet/backyard that ends up being rather fatal, so why should the universe-at-large be any different? I'm sure there are plenty of ways to die, from singular, to collective, to whole-fricking-species death.
So not only do they have to make it here, they have to do so safely.
Now to add to that, any species that manages to do so is going to have a fairly hefty survival instinct. That means they're likely either going to be your option-1, or:
3) Careful, somewhat paranoid, and probably smart enough to do some from-the-distance observation for a really long time, rather than jumping into interaction with a race with a penchant for making pretty much any new technology into a weapon.
Because yeah, I'm sure that there are scary things out there in the universe, but I'm not entirely sure that others might not regards us humans as one of them...
Well, I'm not a PETA member, and I'm a happy meat-eater, but as far as "happiness" or "misery" I'd say that humans definitely aren't the only species with a monopoly on these emotions. Several pets I've had have definitely expressed happiness (they're glad to see me when I've been away awhile), or loneliness+depression (my former pet rat was very upset when her cage-mate died, and I had a pet rabbit with similar issues).
What evidence do you have that humans are more capable of misery than animals?
If Vista didn't suck, you'd have no reason to complain...
That's a pretty big "if" right there. If Vista didn't suck, I'm sure some of the anti-MS zealots would still complain, but there would be a lot more of us (myself included) that would be willing to move off of XP.
As it is, the choices are:
a) XP: Doesn't run things like DX10, newer hardware, and support is being curtailed
b) Vista: Make powerful machines run like crud, and base-level machines cause you to reminisce fondly of your old 386. Extra, useless cruft. Familiar menus relocated for no apparent reason.
c) Alternate OS (Linux, etc) Learning curve (for some). Doesn't run all software that the above may run. Doesn't run all hardware. Less (but growing) industry support/recognition
None of these are exactly a perfect choice... I would have been happy with a Vista/Linux dual-boot if not for the suckitude of Vista.
Slashdot Mirror
I had an ad online looking for a roomate. My ex, who knew the site I posted on, crafted up a fake persona on the roommate site, and answered my ad. As the room was taken, she then proceeded to chat me up using the fake identity and the knowledge of my personal interests etc.
After stringing it along for awhile, she indicated that she "wouldn't be moving so soon after all", but invited me to a fairly cool party in a city several hours away (Victoria).
I was suspicious, though I didn't suspect my ex , but rather thought that perhaps some friends that I knew to be in Victoria were planning a joke. I was bored, so I decided to check it out. I half-expected to arrive and find all my buddies waiting for a big "surprise", and half expected that perhaps there was a real party. Turned out the address itself was bogus (darn you mapquest, you said it existed) and a waste of time.
So then I traced the IP's on the email back to the wireless of the local college, which gave me some suspicions of the sender. I managed to determine that the password on the sender's hotmail account was my ex's birthday.
So my point? Well, it's pretty freaky to know that somebody will go to *that* much trouble to mess with you, even when you're an adult. As a techie type of guy, I've regularly met friends from both online and off, but it's put a pretty big damper on my trust of those online. It's one thing to know that when you meet a person they might be a little exaggerated in personal details, and another to realize you've befriended somebody who's just a troll created to get into your head.
My story ended (I hope), when I talked to the police. They weren't actually able to do much about the whole internet thing (though it seems like stalking to me), but they were able to deal with the fact that she was calling me about 15-20x in an hour, and often masking her phone # from my call display. The threat of criminal harassment charges and deportation (she was a student from overseas) tuned her down a bit, and I moved from that city not that long after.
This girl's story ended when she got too attached to her stalker, and was given a directive to end her own life. Was she too impressionable? Perhaps. It seems like it's fairly easily a case of stalking/harassment to me. Throw in the age and I'm sure that other things crop up.
As mentioned elsewhere, if this were an adult male and a young woman, they'd most likely have gone after this even more heavily.
I don't agree with trumped-up charges, but what happens when there are many things that are a half-fit, but don't quite match the modern world? The problem is that laws don't always keep up with technology, and unfortunately the technology is not well understood (which leads to vague and easily abused laws). Perhaps there needs to be a meter that distinguishes minor online "harassment" such a posting insults on usenet from creating a fake identity to target and damage a specific person.
Nowadays I think that the best meter for that is still the same as before. A judge, and/or a jury. Unfortunately, they're both (especially a jury) still influenced strongly by emotion and doublespeak, but the justice system is still one of our best ways of making a strong impression about what is not acceptable in today's society.
I'm an adult, I can deal with this shit. A 13-year-old girl, already an outcast, could use a little help or protection.
And, IMHO, in a lot of ways the Star-Wars prequels had good trailers too, it was the stilted acting and thin plot that disappointed in the end.
It's not just democracy, but this judge deserve real kudos for having the backbone to admit his error. Too often we here of those in power who realize they have made a mistake, and cover it up in lies or denial (often making worse mistakes in the process).
Rather than just referring to him as "the judge in Capitol V Thomas", his name is "Judge Michael Davis." If anyone happens to know him, I'd say that it's about time to congratulate him for being man enough to step up and make this admission.
For example, look at the recent shenannigans with Bell and those subletting their monopolized line-system. The regulating bodies basically just said that Bell is doing nothing wrong by throttling or otherwise screwing with the traffic of the 3rd-party ISP's customers, because there's no proof it will cause lost business.
Hello! The ISP's cannot provide the indicated level of services due to the interference of a third party. Screw loss of business, that's a pretty major way of screwing the customers, who now have absolutely zero choice for ISP's who aren't handing it to them up the tailpipe (Rogers, the non-DSL ISP, also throttles). So is it fair that customers aren't "leaving" because they're getting equally screwed elsewhere?
When I last spent time in Aus, I was amazed by how closely they kept tabs on their politicians and policies. North America in general could learn a lot from them in that regard.
Actually, I believe that in there have already been cases where people in sexual predator or identity-theft cases have been banned from using the 'net.
This is after a real trial which ascertains guilt though, as opposed to the whim of an ISP/label.
Feel free to start up a campaign donation for me, because I doubt that myself or any of those who actually give a damn are going to be able to run for election.
There was a story, it just wasn't mandatory and not overly immersive. Collecting the various datacorder chips and playing back the video/audio entries actually gives a lot of insite as to what happened in the story... but it's not really a very interactive or convenient was of doing so.
I believe that there were several different tests done by "Reader's Digest" and various other magazines. One was to drop a cellphone(or in others, a wallet, etc) in a public location, and see whom collects it and if they try to return it.
Several people kept the phone. Some, when approached, vehemently denied acquiring it (though they were on camera doing so). Many of those who acted this way were at the least middle-class citizens, and in a good portion of the cases semi-upper-class or even rather rich citizens.
The poorer people, on the other hand, actually put forth the effort to returning the phone/wallet/etc. The RD crew would ask why they didn't keep it. I remember that the refrain from the poorer citizens was pretty much the same: "I may be poor, but I'm honest, I want my children to be honest, and even having no money I still have my self-respect."
Sometimes poor leads to desperation, and terrible things happen. But in groups, being poor often seems to lead to a policy of community-support, and watching out for your fellows.
If I become rich, I think I'd have a joy in life by visiting "poor" places, and engaging in random acts of generosity. Unfortunately, that mentality means I'll probably never become rich, unless I win the lottery or something to that effect.
This is just IMHO of course, but. Doom 3 was actually quite good, it just wasn't anything really new or exciting (except for the flashy graphics, of course). The original doom - though similar to previous sprite-based FPS's - was quite an innovation in many ways, especially from the perspective of multi-player fun.
Doom3 was fairly repetitive, but - if you go back - so were the originals... people just weren't worn out from the deluge of a gazillion other FPS games. The storyline wasn't actually bad either. If you actually followed all the little videos and stuff, it was quite interesting, and would have made a heck of a better movie than the POS the came out with "The Rock."
Now at the same time as Doom3, Half Life 2 was out and about. Despite being overused a bit, the physics engine made *that* particular game a bit of something new, and the missions themselves: though also tedious at parts, are also fairly interactive. And the gravity gun... well, the BFG was a fun innovation back in the doom days, the gravity gun was a more modern innovation in gameplay from a weapons perspective.
HL2 was also fairly nice on older hardware. Doom3 could be run on an older PC, but tuned down quite a bit in terms of graphics, etc.
So was it a bad game, no? Did it do as well as the competition, no quite. Is there hope for the future, hell, why not?
What else is there to a movie, really, other than a good script and acting? As many have mentioned, all the SFX in the world aren't going to make a turd shine.
That being said, I've watched the original, and while the acting is obviously quite amateur in places, and the script a bit corny, it all fits together nicely. Certainly when you consider the origins of the movie, it does quite well. I'd still say the acting was better than Mannikan Skywalker, and the script better than "The Hulk" or many other movies out there.
Sometimes, it's both. More often it's the latter, but sometimes getting caught doing something stupid, and paying the PR penalty for it, makes you realize that perhaps your goals have departed a bit from your original expectations.
$800? $300 for an EeePC. And there are others like OLPC. Sure, you might not see a lot of cubans joining into games of Quake or GTA4 online, but they can still do a lot for less than $800.b
An AC has already asked, but I'll chime in too.
Details! I'd love to hear more about how you did this, and I'm sure that many others on here would equally appreciate any hints/information/etc you can offer.
It may be marked as funny, but I find it fairly true that India is definitely a country where the "more-in-less" concept seems to fit. I have a room for rent in my condo, and recently got an email from an family that is moving here and wanted to rent my room (not a small room, but it's still only a single room in a 3bdrm/1bthrm condo) for the parents and their child. When it comes to space and comfort VS saving bucks, the common mentality seems to go with the latter.
I'd imagine that the packed human-conditions may very well affect an overall thinking of how to best-fit as much possible into a small space. A lot of other highly-populated countries seem to be very good at miniaturization for similar purposes.
Last time I caught the news, I heard that there was a group in Texas that got in big trouble for this.
I'd suggest that you find a girlfriend that's already been compiled elsewhere. If importing from certain countries (Thailand/Brazil/etc), you may want to ensure that the girlfriend is also compatible with your architecture and that you have complementary - rather than matching - peripherals.
I blew up my 64-bit system recently (motherboard died), but previous to that it was Debian.
Install required a --force-architecture and having the ia32libs installed, but other than that it worked fine. I'm not sure if the GUI frontend allows you to force-install 32-bit apps though.
A lot of people in the comments of the linked article are complaining/debating about the "cuteness" meter. I think it could be a rather fun feature. Have something that looks at-first-glance like a "cute, cuddly widdle kitten", but with an geiger/aliens-style secondary mouth or perhaps some freaky tentacles hidden away for unsuspecting victims.
I wonder if creatures will be able to "mate" in the game. It would be rather fun to copy somebody's cutesy creature, but add a few surprises and then chomp on unsuspecting victims when they come by.
I know this has flaws; how do we keep everybody from peeking into the backups
Encyption, with the keys put in a special location only available under special orders, and to be passed on to the presidential successor?
Or just have them done by a neutral third-party... unfortunately when politics and money are involved, neutral (and being trustworthy enough not to leak the data to a third-party) is a pretty hard thing to find.
Perhaps an arrangement with another country? Maybe the US/Canadian governments can arrange a backup-sharing plan with some form of encryption to discourage snooping.
Well, my thoughts would be that it's because neither the customers nor the insurance agency would have enough knowledge to discriminate.
However, let's say that customers can get themselves tested to see their predispositions, and find that they're about 90% predisposed to having a certain (expensive ailment). With that knowledge, they follow the odds, and go out to purchase pricey healthcare. The healthcare company can't deny them based on the same knowledge, so the playing field is a bit uneven.
Of course, saying that this will destroy private insurance is just hyperbole. Chances are the most people aren't going to bother getting genetically tested for predisposition to such health issues. Moreover, plenty of people already know their if they have a "family history" of things such as cancer, heart attacks, or other such things, so it's not really going to change the status quo that much.
So genetic testing might change things a bit, but (at least IMHO), not *that* much, or at least not anytime soon.
In most cases, it seems to depend on the impact upon the business. It takes about 5 seconds to card somebody who might be underage. Installing and running dubious software into your place of business is a different matter. Similarly, the issues of government-mandated-logging tends to run into situations where to do so becomes a prohibitively-high addition to the business's margins.
How about we start with the whitehouse? Remember all those missing emails?
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, after all.
I'm a Canadian, and I've heard of any number of incidents where border guards (ours, and the US's) have been known to confiscate property such as laptops etc.
The parent definitely raises a good point about just how long/deep they're allowed to search. Another question I would have is, are the airports allowed to search, or can they just take your laptop outright (like the border guards have been known to).
Overall, this whole thing happen is ludicrous. Bags and other articles are generally searched for the protection of other passengers on the plane, a laptop poses no such danger. Although there are cases where searches also uncover smuggling, etc, there is a limit to how far one can reasonably search, and/or how long it will take, whereas with a laptop there aren't any real such boundaries.
Moreover, the story indicates that the initial pictures found were of adults, but prompted the further search in which alleged underage material was found. Sounds like a easy thing to plant, rather than end up embarrassed that you were digging up pics of some guy with his wife.
One thing I've been thinking about. FTL travel doesn't guarantee they'll make it here. We run into plenty of stuff here right in our own solar-system/planet/backyard that ends up being rather fatal, so why should the universe-at-large be any different? I'm sure there are plenty of ways to die, from singular, to collective, to whole-fricking-species death.
So not only do they have to make it here, they have to do so safely.
Now to add to that, any species that manages to do so is going to have a fairly hefty survival instinct. That means they're likely either going to be your option-1, or:
3) Careful, somewhat paranoid, and probably smart enough to do some from-the-distance observation for a really long time, rather than jumping into interaction with a race with a penchant for making pretty much any new technology into a weapon.
Because yeah, I'm sure that there are scary things out there in the universe, but I'm not entirely sure that others might not regards us humans as one of them...
Well, I'm not a PETA member, and I'm a happy meat-eater, but as far as "happiness" or "misery" I'd say that humans definitely aren't the only species with a monopoly on these emotions. Several pets I've had have definitely expressed happiness (they're glad to see me when I've been away awhile), or loneliness+depression (my former pet rat was very upset when her cage-mate died, and I had a pet rabbit with similar issues).
What evidence do you have that humans are more capable of misery than animals?
If Vista didn't suck, you'd have no reason to complain...
That's a pretty big "if" right there. If Vista didn't suck, I'm sure some of the anti-MS zealots would still complain, but there would be a lot more of us (myself included) that would be willing to move off of XP.
As it is, the choices are:
a) XP: Doesn't run things like DX10, newer hardware, and support is being curtailed
b) Vista: Make powerful machines run like crud, and base-level machines cause you to reminisce fondly of your old 386. Extra, useless cruft. Familiar menus relocated for no apparent reason.
c) Alternate OS (Linux, etc) Learning curve (for some). Doesn't run all software that the above may run. Doesn't run all hardware. Less (but growing) industry support/recognition
None of these are exactly a perfect choice... I would have been happy with a Vista/Linux dual-boot if not for the suckitude of Vista.