Believe me, I've seriously given it some thought. I do like the Mac, and OS X has the slickest looking UI IMHO... but I also like to build my own computers. Except for my obsolete laptop, all of my computers are home built... It's been a point of pride for me to look at the machine and know I personally had a hand in its creation.
Look, this is not meant as a flame or troll, but new updates/patches are coming out every 10 minutes, and conspiracy theories keep flying around like its a tin-foil hat party. The only patch I've ever decided I had to install was the one for Win95 back in '98 because I kept getting "nuked" whenever I went into an IRC chat room. Win98 was that patch. Then one day I discovered GRC.com and realized I was leaking crap all over the web. So I put ZoneAlarm on my PC and felt relatively secure. Yes, I was one of the poor suckers that actually got the free rubber collectors' watch with my purchase of Windows ME. After much hesitation I finally decided to plunge into broadband, and felt the need for a NAT router, but still kept ZoneAlarm turned on for good measure. With the introduction of XP and the EULA I couldn't abide, I started seriously looking into the option of Linux. By this time, MS was crankin' out the updates every time a new weblog started.
Now why should I trust MicroSoft? They led me down the primrose path to endless updates that either show no noticeable effect, or cause my computer to act flakey.
Why should I trust HomeSec? I'm never going to feel secure so long as they keep throwing terror alerts in my face as an excuse to keep whittling away what's left of my civil rights.
And why should I trust the Linux community who's mainstay advice is "RTFM". I'm stuck using Lycoris until I can figure out how to get Wine to work under a better distro. (I'm sorry but some programs designed to run under MS Windows are just too cool to ignore.)
As far as I can tell, these so called updates could be trojans to give backdoor access to HomeSec so they can determine the efficacy of their scare tactics, and Linux is a twisted plot to make borderline-geeks like myself waste their time reading endless man pages trying to figure out how the damn thing works.
OK, so maybe I'm sounding a little frustrated, but all I really want is a nice little computer that does only what I tell it to do. Is that too much to ask?
KMail was there for me when I needed to escape Outlook Express in my migration from MS to Linux. It converted my 2000+ e-mails in my archive so quickly I nearly fainted. Mozilla mail isn't converting my KMail archives into Mozilla mail, so for now I'll just keep using their stand alone browser as I've become addicted to tabbed browsing.If I ever catch wind of a way to export/import KMail to Mozilla mail, I may just give it a try.
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Please don't hate me if I missed the obvious. No one as of yet has offered to help me with any of this, and I feel buried alive in man pages.
I'm sorry, but dial-up was just too painful. Thanks to broadband, I don't worry about having a bunch of $extra features$ on my phone service to make sure I don't miss a phone call, I don't have to wonder if line noise is the culprit when webpages don't load quickly, I can download iso's, mp3's, and other files greater than 5 megs without annoying disconnects, and I get the added joy of not needing to pay extra to have some webserver space because now I can run my own!
No, dial-up was fine when it was the only kid on the block, but as long as non-proprietary, always on, broadband is available in my neck of the woods, they can drop the price of dial-up to $1 a month, and I'd still have to pass...
Well, maybe if I ever needed a traveling backup...
I don't know if this will make voting secure, in fact I think it will open it up to attackers,
I think "Dubya" is going to use that flaw as his "Ace in the hole" just in case his popularity drops... It's so much more tidy than another Florida fiasco over "pregnant chads".
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It's absolutely amazing what they can do down at the NSA these days. They know what you'll be thinking before you even finish reading this page.
Not an intentional troll, I'm just sick and tired of the "I can't do it" attitude that's been forming.
I have to agree with you, but I'd get technical and say "has formed". Many people have given up on the American dream, and it's sad. If it were just a small percent of the population, I wouldn't be concerned, but at the moment it looks like the vast majority are in this "holding" pattern brought about by massive doses of FUD.
Joke's on you, I am one of those immigrant friends (originally from Brazil).
Touché! But still even you can be replaced. "Goggle-visors" could keep lower paying jobs here, but that's about all you'll ever get out of that kind of technology.
Come back to me with some tripe about how your stuck where you are, and I'll give you a couple stories from my immigrant friends.
Fine, I won't bore you with "some tripe" as you so eloquently trolled, but I didn't originally intend on growing up to work in a factory. Truth is, I took the job because it was what was available five years ago when I desperately needed to pay the bills. Since then I worked my way up high enough within the company to make more money than I could currently earn as an entry level applicant in the job of my dreams.
It's tough in every occupational field in case you haven't noticed, and for the moment my current overseers have recognized my particular abilities as being more useful to them than an "Engrish" challenged immigrant.
Being a factory worker is not a shameful occupation, but some of the smug PHB's out there delight in the concept of people toiling their lives away in miserable working conditions. "They get what they deserve, and they deserve whatever I say, because I'm the boss."
I work, pay taxes, have a mortgage, and consume like any good American should. I don't blame my employer for my position. Deep down I am appreciative for the priveledge of having a job. And one day you'll appreciate me just as much when you come looking for a place on my goggle-run assembly line because your immigrant friends have found a way to replace you.
Being a factory slave myself, I must concur. If you are left in the uneviable position of having to be the end user of such a device, it will have a particularly demoralizing effect on you. It's relentless micromanaging with no conscience what-so-ever. Don't like it? Fine. There's plenty of other people out there who are desperate enough to have a job so they can afford housing and soylent green rations.
To them you're just an endless supply of renewable resources.
There's a bit more truth here than you realize. Back in ancient times, churches hated the notion that the earth went 'round the sun, because it defied their religious beliefs. So too today, we have a religious belief in the force of gravity. But consider for a moment the possibility that gravity is not what is truly at work.
You see, we perceive gravity because things fall down. But just as the sun going around the earth would have looked exactly the same to those primatives back in medieval times, we don't see what the actual effect at work is.
Look at this in terms of mass vs. weight: Where is your best deal on purchasing a pound of hamburger: On top of a mountain, or at sea level? Most people with meager skills in physics will be able to tell you that the hamburger will weigh less on top of a mountain, so you will get more mass.
But now let's take a look at what happens as you go below sea level: There is every indication that the deeper you go beneath the earth's surface, the hamburger gets heavier. If gravity were the force at work, then wouldn't the matter above the hamburger attract it and make the mass "lighter"? But this is not the case. In fact, as one goes deeper into the earth, the mass gains weight more and more. This is a measurable fact that scientists just tend to gloss over.
So what is going on here? Why wouldn't the matter above the mass counter the matter below? Simple. Matter does not contain gravity. Gravity is but the illusion you see as the apple falls. Newton was an idiot who pointed out a scientific observation as pathetically outdated as the sun going around the earth.
The actual equation can be balenced when you are finally ready to tackle the real force at work: Space Repels. That's right. Nature doesn't abhor a vacuum in as much as that empty vacuum abhors all matter. It forces it to clump together when it can, and spread the heck out when it can't contain it all in one spot.
This is why the current equations don't work. They rely on fautly precepts that don't work on the cosmological scale.
Good luck to you people who want to tackle the equation from the right perspective... You've got a lot of Newtonian crusaders who would just love to argue ad nauseum before anything productive could ever be accomplished.
I don't usually post (first time actually), so please take it easy on me this time...
When I first bought my house I decided to try for DSL through the local telco. I told them I had a local network between the laptop and the desktop, and they said, "no prob. just get a router and talk to our tech support". So I called their tech support to see what router to buy and they replied with, "Oh no! We don't support networks!" I canceled before it ever started.
Next try was through the cable company. Naturally I had the usual line of questions, and of course the sales staff said, "We can do that!" Then (of course) the complications arose. "You and the horse you rode in on," was my reply.
I use a local 56k dial-up ISP that is so simple to set up. (I like formatting once in a while to clear out the clutter so E-Z set up is important.) When a broad band provider can make it *JUST THAT EASY* then I will reconsider.
Until that time, they can all rot while I tell my lesser computer-literate friends to avoid broad band at all costs. It's just not worth the hassle.
Slashdot Mirror
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I'm not a complete idiot; some parts are missing.
Now why should I trust MicroSoft? They led me down the primrose path to endless updates that either show no noticeable effect, or cause my computer to act flakey.
Why should I trust HomeSec? I'm never going to feel secure so long as they keep throwing terror alerts in my face as an excuse to keep whittling away what's left of my civil rights.
And why should I trust the Linux community who's mainstay advice is "RTFM". I'm stuck using Lycoris until I can figure out how to get Wine to work under a better distro. (I'm sorry but some programs designed to run under MS Windows are just too cool to ignore.)
As far as I can tell, these so called updates could be trojans to give backdoor access to HomeSec so they can determine the efficacy of their scare tactics, and Linux is a twisted plot to make borderline-geeks like myself waste their time reading endless man pages trying to figure out how the damn thing works.
OK, so maybe I'm sounding a little frustrated, but all I really want is a nice little computer that does only what I tell it to do. Is that too much to ask?
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Next stop: Insanity
--
Please don't hate me if I missed the obvious. No one as of yet has offered to help me with any of this, and I feel buried alive in man pages.
No, dial-up was fine when it was the only kid on the block, but as long as non-proprietary, always on, broadband is available in my neck of the woods, they can drop the price of dial-up to $1 a month, and I'd still have to pass...
Well, maybe if I ever needed a traveling backup...
Can you afford me now?.... Too bad! *walk a little* can you afford me now?.... Too bad! Etc...
Not mine, sorry... Just couldn't resist.
I think "Dubya" is going to use that flaw as his "Ace in the hole" just in case his popularity drops... It's so much more tidy than another Florida fiasco over "pregnant chads".
--
It's absolutely amazing what they can do down at the NSA these days. They know what you'll be thinking before you even finish reading this page.
I have to agree with you, but I'd get technical and say "has formed". Many people have given up on the American dream, and it's sad. If it were just a small percent of the population, I wouldn't be concerned, but at the moment it looks like the vast majority are in this "holding" pattern brought about by massive doses of FUD.
Joke's on you, I am one of those immigrant friends (originally from Brazil).
Touché! But still even you can be replaced. "Goggle-visors" could keep lower paying jobs here, but that's about all you'll ever get out of that kind of technology.
Fine, I won't bore you with "some tripe" as you so eloquently trolled, but I didn't originally intend on growing up to work in a factory. Truth is, I took the job because it was what was available five years ago when I desperately needed to pay the bills. Since then I worked my way up high enough within the company to make more money than I could currently earn as an entry level applicant in the job of my dreams.
It's tough in every occupational field in case you haven't noticed, and for the moment my current overseers have recognized my particular abilities as being more useful to them than an "Engrish" challenged immigrant.
Being a factory worker is not a shameful occupation, but some of the smug PHB's out there delight in the concept of people toiling their lives away in miserable working conditions. "They get what they deserve, and they deserve whatever I say, because I'm the boss."
I work, pay taxes, have a mortgage, and consume like any good American should. I don't blame my employer for my position. Deep down I am appreciative for the priveledge of having a job. And one day you'll appreciate me just as much when you come looking for a place on my goggle-run assembly line because your immigrant friends have found a way to replace you.
Being a factory slave myself, I must concur. If you are left in the uneviable position of having to be the end user of such a device, it will have a particularly demoralizing effect on you. It's relentless micromanaging with no conscience what-so-ever. Don't like it? Fine. There's plenty of other people out there who are desperate enough to have a job so they can afford housing and soylent green rations. To them you're just an endless supply of renewable resources.
You see, we perceive gravity because things fall down. But just as the sun going around the earth would have looked exactly the same to those primatives back in medieval times, we don't see what the actual effect at work is.
Look at this in terms of mass vs. weight: Where is your best deal on purchasing a pound of hamburger: On top of a mountain, or at sea level? Most people with meager skills in physics will be able to tell you that the hamburger will weigh less on top of a mountain, so you will get more mass.
But now let's take a look at what happens as you go below sea level: There is every indication that the deeper you go beneath the earth's surface, the hamburger gets heavier. If gravity were the force at work, then wouldn't the matter above the hamburger attract it and make the mass "lighter"? But this is not the case. In fact, as one goes deeper into the earth, the mass gains weight more and more. This is a measurable fact that scientists just tend to gloss over.
So what is going on here? Why wouldn't the matter above the mass counter the matter below? Simple. Matter does not contain gravity. Gravity is but the illusion you see as the apple falls. Newton was an idiot who pointed out a scientific observation as pathetically outdated as the sun going around the earth.
The actual equation can be balenced when you are finally ready to tackle the real force at work: Space Repels. That's right. Nature doesn't abhor a vacuum in as much as that empty vacuum abhors all matter. It forces it to clump together when it can, and spread the heck out when it can't contain it all in one spot.
This is why the current equations don't work. They rely on fautly precepts that don't work on the cosmological scale.
Good luck to you people who want to tackle the equation from the right perspective... You've got a lot of Newtonian crusaders who would just love to argue ad nauseum before anything productive could ever be accomplished.
I don't usually post (first time actually), so please take it easy on me this time...
When I first bought my house I decided to try for DSL through the local telco. I told them I had a local network between the laptop and the desktop, and they said, "no prob. just get a router and talk to our tech support". So I called their tech support to see what router to buy and they replied with, "Oh no! We don't support networks!" I canceled before it ever started.
Next try was through the cable company. Naturally I had the usual line of questions, and of course the sales staff said, "We can do that!" Then (of course) the complications arose. "You and the horse you rode in on," was my reply.
I use a local 56k dial-up ISP that is so simple to set up. (I like formatting once in a while to clear out the clutter so E-Z set up is important.) When a broad band provider can make it *JUST THAT EASY* then I will reconsider.
Until that time, they can all rot while I tell my lesser computer-literate friends to avoid broad band at all costs. It's just not worth the hassle.
Just my 2.