Are you that self-centered? Fine. We, as in you and I and the Linux community, obviously have closed source drivers availalble now, and which many (other than yourself) are using.
You say this as if all of the drivers were to become closed source. But you obviously have closed source drivers now, even though most of them are not.
So the situation already exists, and the hypothetical worse case doesn't.
"Either this app is not critical, or management is foolish for depending on one person for a critical app."
How many businesses can afford to have a fully qualified individual on staff for every single piece of "critical" hardware and software they use?
How about hiring a automobile mechanic full-time just in case the company car breaks? A telcom engineer just in case the boss breaks his phone? A HP and Dell and Apple guy just in case a server or desktop goes down?
Maybe in a ideal world this would happen, but since NO company has an infinite number of resources, most hire what they need (or can afford) and contract out the rest.
"I would concluded, that there are some really nifty ideas - like running your car on used cooking oil, which are fun to read, but fall far short of contributing substantially to the energy needs of a civilization."
First, too many of these post comit the "there can be only one" fallacy, as if there's one and only one possible solution, and then go to point out the shortcomings that occur when you do. My take on it is that we need hydrogen... and solar, and nuclear, and geothermal, and biodesiel, and whatever else we can find.
Heck, if we (the US) just spent 1/10th the amount we spent annually on "defense" or energy related R&D we'd SOLVE these frigging problems.
Bu oil vapor is. Why do you think oil companies go to such great lengths to ensure that no ignition sources are around? Or as to why air is flushed from commercial tanks and replaced with nitrogen?
And I really want to see you execute your "drop a match and the pool of gasoline will extinguish it theory". Perhaps with you standing in the pool, since you're so sure of your point? But you do mention the vapors, and it's those that will ignite before the falling match even touches the pool.
And while your water-is-scarce argument doesn hold some water [sic], have you given any thought as to just how much water we'd actually need? And how low that percentage is as compared to, say, watering the grass?
Or, for that matter, what happens to hydrogen when it burns?
"Many exploits work just fine through NAT if you're actually using the machine to surf the web or read email, and way too many people seem to not understand this."
Or connect to a torrent server. Watch the number of attacks on your PC's FW skyrocket the instant you run BT and connect to a tracker. Lot's of hackers run torrent servers just to mine the connection information and find new, unprotected computers to attack.
"Duh. M$ is leveraging their desktop operating system monopoly to gain an advantage (cross-subsidizing from their monopoly) in console gaming. That may be illegal."
What company on the planet DOESN'T use existing sales dollars to create and subsidize new products?
You claim to have had one (and I quote) one problem, which others claim not to have have seen, and you've also "never" had Windows offer you a a half-dozen "Critical" updates for uninstalled software and/or hardware?
I can believe the former occurred, but the later? Someone's misrepresenting something somewhere...
1) Select the update and hit the delete key. 2) Select Ignore Update from the Update menu. 3) Have clicked on the Software Update Help menu to find out how to deal with the situation. 4) Asked a Genius how to deal with it. 5) Looked it up on the support site. 6) Continue to whine about it, as you seem to enjoy doing.
No one is claiming the Mac is perfect. But the bottom line is that once the problem occurred there was a good five different ways to handle the situation, and you somehow managed to ignore all of them...
"They have to convince me to spend $129 on a minor version upgrade somehow..."
Apple doesn't want to give up the "OS X" moniker. It's cool. So they bump the sub-version number instead.
Would you be happier with "OS XV"? At any rate, you pay for the new features and functionality, and not for which side of a decimal point they decide to increment.
Finally, IIRC, you can't easily open a control panel and change "Control-W" from "Close Window" to "backwards-kill-word" like you can in KDE and GNOME. Apple has a lot of fanbois... but when it comes right down to having a usable computing environment...
Go to "System Prferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts", and you can add or redefine any application's keyboard shortcuts. I mean, just in case you're on a Mac sometime and want a "usable computing environment".
And it would appear that Apple isn't the only system with fanbois...
So? My plates are registered to a VIN. They READ the plate and lookup the matching VIN. They then check the VIN on your car. If they don't match they go to jail.
Slashdot Mirror
"So if you want to oppose this, bring up this "benefit". You'll immediately have a rush of machine politicians to vote against the whole I.D. scheme."
Nope. They already voted for it. (Actually, they approved a "must-pass" military spending bill to which the "National ID Card" act was appended.)
Besides, the ability to manipulate the vote has already been assured in the form of "no-record" electronic voting machines...
"... so much we don't think that abuses of power should or can be curbed."
More the later, I think. So if abuse will occur, then I'd prefer their ability to do so to be as limited as possible.
So? Is that twenty dollar bill in your pocket "real" or not? And you can prove this... how?
Gordon Brown is planning a tax on thinking, regardless of the fact that he has yet to find a way to implement it.
Anyone alive has the ability to think, ergo, everyone alive is taxable.
Now, let's talk about that cemetery full of dead people...
Are you that self-centered? Fine. We, as in you and I and the Linux community, obviously have closed source drivers availalble now, and which many (other than yourself) are using.
Feel better?
You say this as if all of the drivers were to become closed source. But you obviously have closed source drivers now, even though most of them are not.
So the situation already exists, and the hypothetical worse case doesn't.
"Either this app is not critical, or management is foolish for depending on one person for a critical app."
How many businesses can afford to have a fully qualified individual on staff for every single piece of "critical" hardware and software they use?
How about hiring a automobile mechanic full-time just in case the company car breaks? A telcom engineer just in case the boss breaks his phone? A HP and Dell and Apple guy just in case a server or desktop goes down?
Maybe in a ideal world this would happen, but since NO company has an infinite number of resources, most hire what they need (or can afford) and contract out the rest.
Ditto. If most people were to take the energy they spend telling you why something CAN'T be done, and instead spend it on figuring how to do it....
Sigh. Wishful thinking, I'm afraid.
"I would concluded, that there are some really nifty ideas - like running your car on used cooking oil, which are fun to read, but fall far short of contributing substantially to the energy needs of a civilization."
First, too many of these post comit the "there can be only one" fallacy, as if there's one and only one possible solution, and then go to point out the shortcomings that occur when you do. My take on it is that we need hydrogen... and solar, and nuclear, and geothermal, and biodesiel, and whatever else we can find.
Heck, if we (the US) just spent 1/10th the amount we spent annually on "defense" or energy related R&D we'd SOLVE these frigging problems.
"Last I checked oil was not explosive."
Bu oil vapor is. Why do you think oil companies go to such great lengths to ensure that no ignition sources are around? Or as to why air is flushed from commercial tanks and replaced with nitrogen?
And I really want to see you execute your "drop a match and the pool of gasoline will extinguish it theory". Perhaps with you standing in the pool, since you're so sure of your point? But you do mention the vapors, and it's those that will ignite before the falling match even touches the pool.
And while your water-is-scarce argument doesn hold some water [sic], have you given any thought as to just how much water we'd actually need? And how low that percentage is as compared to, say, watering the grass?
Or, for that matter, what happens to hydrogen when it burns?
such as NOT having the password of "god" for the root account
Is it time for the obligatory 1-2-3-4-5 luggage joke?
"Many exploits work just fine through NAT if you're actually using the machine to surf the web or read email, and way too many people seem to not understand this."
Or connect to a torrent server. Watch the number of attacks on your PC's FW skyrocket the instant you run BT and connect to a tracker. Lot's of hackers run torrent servers just to mine the connection information and find new, unprotected computers to attack.
Jumping in, the Qwest DSL modem (Cisco) we received for home use was preconfigured to automatically put us on an internal NAT w/DHCP running.
So yes, evidence exists.
"Duh. M$ is leveraging their desktop operating system monopoly to gain an advantage (cross-subsidizing from their monopoly) in console gaming. That may be illegal."
What company on the planet DOESN'T use existing sales dollars to create and subsidize new products?
DUH.
I suspect you've already had one too many.... ;)
I got for the make-any-window-a-floating-window option. Makes it easy to watch TV shows and DVDs while I'm working.
You claim to have had one (and I quote) one problem, which others claim not to have have seen, and you've also "never" had Windows offer you a a half-dozen "Critical" updates for uninstalled software and/or hardware?
I can believe the former occurred, but the later? Someone's misrepresenting something somewhere...
If you really want it get WindowShade from Unsanity. You can roll up windows, make them transparent, make any window float, etc..
http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/wsx
You could...
1) Select the update and hit the delete key.
2) Select Ignore Update from the Update menu.
3) Have clicked on the Software Update Help menu to find out how to deal with the situation.
4) Asked a Genius how to deal with it.
5) Looked it up on the support site.
6) Continue to whine about it, as you seem to enjoy doing.
No one is claiming the Mac is perfect. But the bottom line is that once the problem occurred there was a good five different ways to handle the situation, and you somehow managed to ignore all of them...
"They have to convince me to spend $129 on a minor version upgrade somehow..."
Apple doesn't want to give up the "OS X" moniker. It's cool. So they bump the sub-version number instead.
Would you be happier with "OS XV"? At any rate, you pay for the new features and functionality, and not for which side of a decimal point they decide to increment.
Command-R in the Finder is "Show Original". There is no "refresh" option.
Finally, IIRC, you can't easily open a control panel and change "Control-W" from "Close Window" to "backwards-kill-word" like you can in KDE and GNOME. Apple has a lot of fanbois ... but when it comes right down to having a usable computing environment...
Go to "System Prferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts", and you can add or redefine any application's keyboard shortcuts. I mean, just in case you're on a Mac sometime and want a "usable computing environment".
And it would appear that Apple isn't the only system with fanbois...
"It's very much a Mac program. Native fonts, copy-and-paste, printing, Aqua interface..."
You mean other than, apparently, not using the men bar?
"Virtual weapons aren't actually weapons."
Tell that to my rootkit...
So? My plates are registered to a VIN. They READ the plate and lookup the matching VIN. They then check the VIN on your car. If they don't match they go to jail.
So what did the RFID gain me again?