I hear ya, but seriously, saving a receipt for a potentially critical PC component is not their responsibility...
...is what I expect their lawyers to say if you pressed them. Dang man, celebrate that some corporation somewhere is taking responsibility for someone else screwing them over. That's downright admirable in today's atmosphere and I'd guess it's the result of a smaller-than-empire businessman with some good sense.
Take what you can get sometimes is all I'm saying. I'll be makirg my future thermal paste purchases from OCZ if at all possible.
That's what spy where should do if it was part of a media player.
Yeah, but come on. Email software shouldn't propagate worms, internet browsers shouldn't comprimise total system security, and crap like WeatherBug shouldn't even exist.
I can't even fathom how one would go about reforming the spyware trade. For programs like Winamp, I usually leave the "report anonymous usage statistics" option checked so long as I don't notice anything untoward happening on my system. They provide a great program and I'll do them a favor as well. The difference is that if Winamp's usage statistics were shown to include email addresses culled from my hard drive, I'm pretty sure that the online community would hold them accountable (to whatever degree) and Nullsoft's popularity would plummet. And perhaps that's got to be the pivot around which spyware reform functions - you'll never get anything respectable out of a company that doesn't have their good name at stake. Gator/GMT/GAIN is never, ever going to be able to associate their name with ANYTHING that stands on its own as a useful or desirable application.
Your VCR/TV/TIVO reporting usage statistics is very different from spyware on your computer. Your VCR/TV/TIVO doesn't have access to your email address book, financial records, shopping habits, lifestyle preferences, reading lists, term papers, political writings, etc. etc. etc. If computer spyware were installed on "dumb" devices that weren't incorporated into every aspect of my private life, they would be little more than an annoyance in the worst possible scenario.
As the situation stands, I can't even consider my own computer a private venue unless I take the initiative to prevent and remove spyware or sniff my own network traffic. I know, I know, I'm slightly wearing a tinfoil hat, but let's be honest. Spyware isn't ethical, it isn't truthful, it's taking data ON me and taking MY data, and I really have no clue nor guarantee where they draw the line. Stealing email addresses is obviously fine with them, but will they say, "No, we don't need to gather racial/religious/political data." It's absurd to think not! It's all potential marketing data - to corporations - but it's also more sinister depending on who is buying that data. To say that spyware can be reformed is like saying that totally unregulated border crossers can be trusted to provide a particular service, but they're far too nice to smuggle drugs. It's complete self-deception to think that spyware can be transformed into something benign and useful.
Anonymous usage statistics are fine if they can be trusted. Spyware is a crime for which the law unfortunately hasn't yet been written, in my opinion. I don't believe the practice can be or should be reformed.
Spyware companies take money from one company and use their spy system to redirect your web surfing to that company's content rather than their competitors. For (completely fictitious) example, Sony pays Gator a lot of money, and when you go shopping online for an X-Box, you are bombarded with popups for Sony Playstations. Your email account will also be plagued with advertisements for Sony products. You might think, "Hey, I was just thinking about buying a game console, and now I'm spammed with ads for one!"
Of course, this is rarely done with a legitimate company like Sony, and more often with sleazy companies that shill products more akin to snake oil than well designed electronics. No offense to Sony intended by my example.
Spyware will also scan your hard drive and grab any email address it can find. If they're in your address book and the spyware can send it back to the home company, that is bankable profit. Even if THEY don't use those addresses, there is an extremely high chance that those addresses are legitimate and therefore valuable to spammers. What's more is that the spyware company can say, "Yeah, and we KNOW that this guy does a lot of online shopping and fits the demographic of 45+ year old non-techie, the perfect target for you to try to scam."
Nielsen ratings are, by comparison, a fortress of legitimacy. If you want to get involved with that, do some research or send them a letter - I really don't know. Spyware is NOT your answer. It does NOT help you - it helps the distributors.
Spyware profits by exploiting a back door in your personal privacy, not just your computer's security or efficiency. It is scum and it serves no one but those who distribute it.
I admit I had never heard of Bahai until your post. I'm extremely curious how they establish the "second most widespread religion in the world" claim, which I also found on what calls itself the official Bahai website.
And even if this serves only to bring to my attention that Bahai is a significant group - news to me - it would seem that they have no shortage of critics, judging only from the extensive list of references and links at bahai-faith.com.
I'm sure this article will be archived soon, but thanks for the conversation.
Every once in awhile I (eyeball) scan my running processes for anything unusual. Anytime I see something unusual on my system, I take note of it.
Then I go to google.com and type in the name of the unusual process or software component. I typically follow one of the first 3 results to discover if the process/component is a normal piece of the system or a virus/spyware/annoying piece of crap.
Just this week I caught something called a UCMore search bar. No idea what it is or how I got it. I happened to see it while looking at available toolbars on the Windows Taskbar. 10 minutes later it was cleaned up, all according to information I got from Google.
I actually work part time during school at a PC repair shop. I clean up viruses by hand all the time. In every case, it's the same process. Scan running processes, do 15 seconds of research to determine if they're bad, follow the directions to clean them up. It's really not a big deal.
This technique is devestated by a truly destructive virus, but my router and sensible internet practices have avoided those thus far.
This is definitely not a technique I recommend for the lay person, but I do bill at $30 an hour for my services and when people ask, "How did you know that was a virus?" that's the answer.
Then you would be wrong. Take a newer religion like the Bahai, they seem to exhibit common sense. Or to a better extreme, take Wicca, I highly doubt that Wiccans oppress women.
Try to not take this as an insult, but I personally don't consider those religions very seriously. While we'll obviously have to agree to disagree on this topic, I don't include minor religions in a discussion about history or current events. It is my opinion that doing so is terribly unproductive and very often irrelevant. I don't mean that as any sort of offense, but that's how I feel about it. As a result, most any point of debate founded on such a religion isn't going to convince me of anything.
Which isn't to say that I think you're wrong - only that I'm not a person willing to give full legitimacy and equal weight to numerically miniscule, politically weak, and historically lightweight religions. I'm not trying to be offensive, but rather calling a duck a duck.
Show me a country that still practices the Christianity that sets women below men.
It's known as the Bible Belt and it comprises a very significant portion of American voters.
You're right, Islam has a bad history with women. My point is that Muslims do not have a bad history with women BECAUSE of Islam, but rather many Arabic cultures have a bad history with women because of their cultural history. That in no way excuses the oppression of women, but it's important to understand that Islam very acutely condemns anything that brings harm to the individual or community's ability to prosper and praise God - oppressing women definitely falls into this category.
Poor American women are beaten by their Bible-loving husbands, rednecks have white supremacist bumper stickers on one side and "Jesus is my copilot" on the other, and the result is the oppression of women in a Christian context. It isn't Christianity that leads to the oppression of women, it is the result of other influences. It is precisely the same in Saudi Arabia. They may justify it with Islam, define it in terms of Islam, speak Arabic while they're doing it, but the simple fact it that Islam allows the oppression of women no more than does Christianity (and it's quite easy to argue that Islam condemns it more strongly.)
Where more minor religions fit into this doesn't really interest me - I'm only insisting that there is a relation between Islam and the oppression of women but that any attempt at establishing causation is completely and utterly false. Also, when I said, "you religious zealot fanatic you" I was not referring specifically to you, but rather abstractly to the mentality that led to chastity belts amongst Christian Europeans. That was my fault for unclear writing.
Islam has a sorid history of being oppressive towards women.
And I never denied that. Research the origin of the 'chastity belt' in the western world. Christian Crusaders were leaving their wives while they went to battle to recover the Holy Land from the devilish Muslims, so they locked their wives' vaginas in steel armor and left them for many years.
Because you never can trust a Christian woman, can you? Lock that up or you'll never know what white European was banging your lady while you were at Holy War for God Almighty, you religious zealot fanatic you.
My point: Any region/culture/nation can oppress women, every religion has oppressed their women.
There are plenty of rational reason to love or hate the USA vs. the Middle East, Whities like me vs. Folks who look differnt, Decent Americans vs. The World, the truth is that fighting a war against a major world religion is a moronic task.
Even if it's 100% accurate, actually recognizing it as such is more harmful than anything. Have some perspective! This whole world is an economic machine - nobody with a decent job, education for their kids, and a bright hope for tomorrow is scheming to sacrifice their security to attack someone else. Sure, people are also prideful, miseducated, superstitious, prejudice, or buy lottery tickets "just in case".
I'm not saying that there aren't undeniable correlations between Islam and terrorism - or black Americans and cops - or poor Americans and COPS the television show - or Latinos and tacos - Some of that is a absolutely true.
To say that it's the RESULT of that relationship can easily be 100% false. The oppression of women is rather directly discouraged by the Koran, though a certain admission of guilt about current conditions in society is present. It's hardly different than various implications in the Bible that the contemporary people favored male children or men's rights over the women.
And even if I'm 100% wrong, pointing that out and screaming it from the rooftops alienates a major segment of the world's population and doesn't do a damn thing toward solving anything. Just an observation.
PS - That was a beer inspired rant. Eh, hope you enjoyed it or "Sorry" is all I have to say.
You won't find very many women in the world so blase over such a "cultural" difference.
There are many types of idiots. For example, foolish idiots, big idiots, lovable idiots, etc. Among these many types of idiots, you are a dumb idiot.
You see, I said that the plight of women in Saudi Arabia is the result of the region's culture, not the predominant religion. Here is where your imagination flung you into fantasy land and you thought you had read something like a justification for the oppression of women. Sometimes it's fun to play make believe, but you just can't pretend that I support the violations of human rights and then wish it to be true.
Secondly, you will find women all over this world who go absolutely giddy at the thought of contributing to the de facto enslavement of countless women who work in the garment industry in the Pacific rim and elsewhere. They are thrilled to scurry into the local shopping mall and spend hard earned wages to buy the latest fashions - the profits from which ensure that women and children will continue to be exploited for fashion.
As you can see, you not only failed to reply to a post that supported the oppression of women as you intended to do, but you didn't even do a good job of illustrating where I would have been wrong if your fantasy make believe had been true. Thus I claim you are a dumb idiot.
I read a baker's dozen of half educated posts about the relationship between Saudi Arabia, Islam, and women's rights, but this one got a laugh.
I don't envy the position of women in Saudi Arabia, but I'm informed enough to know that it's primarily a cultural, not religious situation. Even the religious police are pretty much peculiar to Saudi Arabia - a nation/region, not a religion.
It feels better to toss in my two cents in response to a joke about geeks rather than half-truths about a major world religion. Thanks.
And don't know a thing about the neural feedback therapy. For what it's worth, though, I strongly urge anyone with ADHD to do anything to stay away from Ritalin.
I couldn't think of a more precise and direct analogy to A Clockwork Orange than using Ritalin to treat ADHD. It gets results - I know this from my own dramatic transformation for the very brief period I was used it. I know that parents are very often at their wits ends dealing with children that are totally uncontrollable, unable to socialize, and unable to learn in schools. I empathize with that and only wish that they would NOT consider Ritalin the "solution".
Use Ritalin as a reprieve, perhaps, or use it as a middle ground to something else. But please, do NOT discover Ritalin and think that the problem is gone. It DOES get results, it DOES have a drastic affect on the behavior of a child, and it does indeed take away a crucial part of that child's free will and individuality.
I was raised on something called the Feingold Diet which is these days dismissed as nonsense with little or no benefit. I was on that program for nearly 10 years, from ages 5 to about 15 (though it was hard to tell at the end, being that the program consisted of gradually returning to a normal diet - at ages 13 to 15 I only had to avoid super sugary junk food.) It wasn't a miracle cure like ample amounts of prescription stimulants, and I still suffered from feeling like a backseat driver in my own body at times, but I was able to cope decently with a normal public school system and have become a well adjusted adult. I think that the biggest benefit may have been the comfort it brought my parents to have a program that had SOME effect and didn't involve the highly potent drug Ritalin.
I grew up around kids that had serious ADHD and were on Ritalin - it scared the bejeezus out of me. If I split from the diet, I would have an understandable burst of hyperactivity which was more difficult for me to deal with than normal kids. If the Ritalin users skipped their dose, they were maniacs. By highschool, they were crushing them up, snorting them, and passing out. In the aftermath, they were usually unable to form a sentence without interrupting themselves. I had learned to COPE with my situation and understand that if I get little hyperactive, I'd be an obnoxious overbearing ass. These other kids were just appalling to me.
All of this has been anecdotal. I'm sure the Feingold Diet has failed for tons of people and I'm not arguing with its current status as a sham. I'm sure there are tons of people (besides doctors who profit luxuriously) who benefit from Ritalin. I know that the parents who give Ritalin to their children do so out of love. If you think there's an ounce of truth in anything I've said, I hope you will look past Ritalin and have the love to try something else.
Dude, like you've never heard of OEM Windows discs that come with that patch on the OEM disc? I'm sure there will be some turn around time before Dell & gang get into OEM copies of XP SP2, but it'll happen.
I work at a custom shop and we don't patch anything either - DUR - we install XP SP1 OEM. I'm sure we'll be using XP SP2 OEM discs before too long.
No mod points, but you've got a good point. I work in a custom PC and repair shop and I see my fair share of both eMachines and Dells. They have striking similarities. They're always packed with dust because the companies cram as many oversized parts into the tiniest space possible, they're usually low to medium quality components, and the cases are always junk. And I do mean junk.
But you're absolutely right - eMachines tells you upfront that you're buying a bargain machine, and Dell tries to unzip your pants with their teeth and while the intern whispers in your ear.. maybe that's the other way around. Anyway, hand it to Dell - they have the most expensive logo stickers in the PC business, challenged only by Alienware, and even then you have to consider volume.
It's a valid point that Athlons do not last long after a fan failure. A perfectly valid counterpoint is that any reasonably modern motherboard will detect that and power the system off to protect the processor. I really couldn't consider this topic a very significant reason for choosing one processor over another, though, since fan failure is basically harmless these days (minus the awesome term paper you were typing that wasn't saved.)
Whatever "insightfulness" the parent post contains is simply wrong. I work in a shop that sells both P4 and Athlon machines (among others) and we obviously produce a lot more profit when we sell an Intel chip because of the relatively exorbitant price.
The situation the parent post describes simply -does not happen-. If you take an Athlon out of the retail box and install it correctly, it requires no special additional parts and it will run exactly as advertised, barring a manufacturing flaw as I mentioned in my other reply. The only "special" steps necessary to make an Athlon run properly are to install it "correctly".
If that's reason enough to kick AMD in the teeth and buy Intel, suit yourself. I have installed WinXP on a P4 with a heatsink resting on the chip (but not latched down) so maybe there IS a real advantage for Intel in the "cannot install properly" crowd.
If I buy a boxed AMD processor with a heatsink, then I shouldn't need to buy another heatsink, or special "silver compound" or do ANYTHING special. The CPU should go in, with the heatsink provided, and work at the CPU clock rate advertised without any problems.
Now granted, I've only installed roughly two hundred AMD Athlons in the last six months, but every one of those worked exactly as you described. Out of the retail box, installed on the board, I use regular heat paste just to cover my ass (it's optional), attach the provided heatseak & fan, and it runs flawlessly.
I've seen a few manufacturing errors with the chips, but no more unusual than with the 200 or so Intel chips I've installed in that same period. I have never encountered a situation where an AMD chip with the provided heatsink & fan did not run at the advertised speed or voltage.
As for the 9 months, you may be interested to know that a large volume of components goes bad in the first few weeks of use. Where I assemble machines, we run a burn in test on every processor that is sold. This means that our customers rarely see a new but bad chip, however we see them often enough to not get excited when it happens. If you buy a chip from a place that doesn't do these burn in tests, then YOU have to carry the burden of dealing with a manufacturing flaw.
But anyhow, stick with Intel if you like. It's my opinion that they're overpriced and (as a graduate student in computer science) I'm convinced that HyperThreading (tm) is 85% hype and 15% feature.
The key to happiness is realizing that these friends and family don't know a thing about computers either. If a beautiful girl has a dying hard drive, it's suddenly no problem at all to recover her data onto a backup, install a new drive, format and install the OS, put on some updates and Mozilla, configure everything, track down her drivers, replace her backed up data, add your email to her address book and your IM name to her buddy list, and tell her it was no big deal.
And 5 minutes later, when an obnoxious relative needs a floppy drive replaced, just get wide eyed and say, "Gosh, I think you'll need an electrician to look at that. Better send it back to Dell and see if they can fix it."
People come to you because they're bewildered. Exploit that bewilderment.
It's an accurate observation but a misguided sentiment. I completely object to a sex offender registry because it circumvents the established, regulated, and acceptable forms of the penal system in the states.
If you feel that the time served is insufficient for sexual offenders, that's fine. Petition your law makers to have the manditory sentences increased.
These registries scream that the existing rehabilitation program is a complete and wholesale failure in the eyes of the public and the appropriate solution is to redesign that program rather than brand people with a crimson badge for the rest of their lives. That's what Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about and it was a tragic tale of inhumane society. The Nazis used a yellow star and it was one of the most horrific events in modern history. Now it's being done to people who have completed their judicially ordered rehabilitation - if they are released, then the penal system has decided that they ARE rehabilitated.
Reform the rehab, redefine the sentencing practices, but I'm of the opinion that attempts to brand a person through life after submitting to criminal rehab - physically or through public documentation - is outright unconstitutional.
And if you think I sound like some liberal or other nonsense, I would rather live nextdoor to a guy who I trust is a reformed sex offender rather than a guy I know is a sex offender because I read it on the internet. Think about it. It is 1000% better that the rehab works than to know who completed an unsuccessful rehab program.
However, FUD doesn't do anyone good, even if it's for a "good" cause...
Good point. I was incorrect about the corporate funding, as a more eloquent poster has pointed out. I hear that the recent versions of Netscape will block all popups except those from AOLTW. That this is not true for Mozilla is a significant distinction.
How many active and in the wild exploits can be found for Mozilla/Firebird? For extra credit, express that number as a percentage against the total number of internet browser exploits, the bulk of which will naturally be for Internet Explorer.
Can you post a link that demonstrates where New York Times magically produces a popup advertisement despite Firebird explicitly denying unrestricted rights to that functionality? Perhaps you have some unrelated spyware installed. I have scanned NYTimes.com in response to your post and could not produce a popup ad, very likely because the feature that generates those ads is simply disabled.
But ultimately I must agree that FUD doesn't do anyone any good. I fail to see how stating such was exactly relevant in a reply to my post, but to each his own.
Re:I've been trying my best to switch people away
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New IE Holes Discovered
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I have had success getting people onto Firebird by explaining how ActiveX exploits work and exactly how people get software like GAIN/Gator, Bonzai Buddy, NewDotNet, CometCursor, Weather Bug, Precise Time, etc., and that these programs main objective is to gather information about the computer user and return it to corporate headquarters where it is then used to generate more and more pop up advertisements for the user.
Everyone is shocked that these programs are not designed to do them a favor. They're disguisted that this is the cause of yet more pop up advertisements.
I then tell them that Mozilla/Firebird is NOT being developed with corporate dollars and therefore has the user's interests at heart. It does not include the ActiveX or thousands of other unfixed security flaws, and you will honest to God never see a pop up advertisement again in your life. The tabbed browsing, type-ahead link find, slash page search functions are all icing on the cake.
I have switched at least ten people this way, none of them are computer people. Fraternity girls, seniors, parents who just want to check their email, etc.
Also, Thunderbird is a marvelous replacement for Outlook if all you want is an email client. It usually only takes one virus infection, formatted disk, and complete reinstallation to get people off of Outlook forever and ever and ever. I would think that alone is alarming enough to people at Microsoft, but I haven't seen any indication that they're going to try to produce software that's more useful to users rather than bad guys. It's truly baffeling.
I am not a gamer and really couldn't care less about video cards. I am building a new computer for my brother for Christmas, though, and he will want to play games.
Right up front we're making a comprimise on price, budgeting
I have done my some research (that site, among others, seemed the most helpful) and I'm leaning toward the Asus V9250 or an MSI FX5200. Do keep in mind that this will be a Windows machine, as the guy is decidedly non-computer technicalish.
So sure, this is slightly off-topic - don't feel obligated to respond or moderate. If you do happen to have a good suggestion as to the best video card value under one hundred bucks, please chime in. Thanks.
That's good to know (and it is news to me.) I'm not suggesting that people at Princeton is crying over the coverage here at Slashdot, but rather that I'm sure the students would rather have their school's merits in the press (at Slashdot and elsewhere) rather than this Howard Strauss character.
It's not as though Princeton's reputation as a fine university is being seriously tarnished, but it is probably more tactful to keep the loose cannons in your own garage, if that makes sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Take what you can get sometimes is all I'm saying. I'll be makirg my future thermal paste purchases from OCZ if at all possible.
I read five hundred
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haikus; yours was the best, dude
Super Funny. End
Sub
close enough for vb
if I was sober enough to change my sig i tw oudl say "something about drinkng and mod points"
Yeah, but come on. Email software shouldn't propagate worms, internet browsers shouldn't comprimise total system security, and crap like WeatherBug shouldn't even exist.
I can't even fathom how one would go about reforming the spyware trade. For programs like Winamp, I usually leave the "report anonymous usage statistics" option checked so long as I don't notice anything untoward happening on my system. They provide a great program and I'll do them a favor as well. The difference is that if Winamp's usage statistics were shown to include email addresses culled from my hard drive, I'm pretty sure that the online community would hold them accountable (to whatever degree) and Nullsoft's popularity would plummet. And perhaps that's got to be the pivot around which spyware reform functions - you'll never get anything respectable out of a company that doesn't have their good name at stake. Gator/GMT/GAIN is never, ever going to be able to associate their name with ANYTHING that stands on its own as a useful or desirable application.
Your VCR/TV/TIVO reporting usage statistics is very different from spyware on your computer. Your VCR/TV/TIVO doesn't have access to your email address book, financial records, shopping habits, lifestyle preferences, reading lists, term papers, political writings, etc. etc. etc. If computer spyware were installed on "dumb" devices that weren't incorporated into every aspect of my private life, they would be little more than an annoyance in the worst possible scenario.
As the situation stands, I can't even consider my own computer a private venue unless I take the initiative to prevent and remove spyware or sniff my own network traffic. I know, I know, I'm slightly wearing a tinfoil hat, but let's be honest. Spyware isn't ethical, it isn't truthful, it's taking data ON me and taking MY data, and I really have no clue nor guarantee where they draw the line. Stealing email addresses is obviously fine with them, but will they say, "No, we don't need to gather racial/religious/political data." It's absurd to think not! It's all potential marketing data - to corporations - but it's also more sinister depending on who is buying that data. To say that spyware can be reformed is like saying that totally unregulated border crossers can be trusted to provide a particular service, but they're far too nice to smuggle drugs. It's complete self-deception to think that spyware can be transformed into something benign and useful.
Anonymous usage statistics are fine if they can be trusted. Spyware is a crime for which the law unfortunately hasn't yet been written, in my opinion. I don't believe the practice can be or should be reformed.
Spyware companies take money from one company and use their spy system to redirect your web surfing to that company's content rather than their competitors. For (completely fictitious) example, Sony pays Gator a lot of money, and when you go shopping online for an X-Box, you are bombarded with popups for Sony Playstations. Your email account will also be plagued with advertisements for Sony products. You might think, "Hey, I was just thinking about buying a game console, and now I'm spammed with ads for one!"
Of course, this is rarely done with a legitimate company like Sony, and more often with sleazy companies that shill products more akin to snake oil than well designed electronics. No offense to Sony intended by my example.
Spyware will also scan your hard drive and grab any email address it can find. If they're in your address book and the spyware can send it back to the home company, that is bankable profit. Even if THEY don't use those addresses, there is an extremely high chance that those addresses are legitimate and therefore valuable to spammers. What's more is that the spyware company can say, "Yeah, and we KNOW that this guy does a lot of online shopping and fits the demographic of 45+ year old non-techie, the perfect target for you to try to scam."
Nielsen ratings are, by comparison, a fortress of legitimacy. If you want to get involved with that, do some research or send them a letter - I really don't know. Spyware is NOT your answer. It does NOT help you - it helps the distributors.
Spyware profits by exploiting a back door in your personal privacy, not just your computer's security or efficiency. It is scum and it serves no one but those who distribute it.
I admit I had never heard of Bahai until your post. I'm extremely curious how they establish the "second most widespread religion in the world" claim, which I also found on what calls itself the official Bahai website.
And even if this serves only to bring to my attention that Bahai is a significant group - news to me - it would seem that they have no shortage of critics, judging only from the extensive list of references and links at bahai-faith.com.
I'm sure this article will be archived soon, but thanks for the conversation.
Every once in awhile I (eyeball) scan my running processes for anything unusual. Anytime I see something unusual on my system, I take note of it.
Then I go to google.com and type in the name of the unusual process or software component. I typically follow one of the first 3 results to discover if the process/component is a normal piece of the system or a virus/spyware/annoying piece of crap.
Just this week I caught something called a UCMore search bar. No idea what it is or how I got it. I happened to see it while looking at available toolbars on the Windows Taskbar. 10 minutes later it was cleaned up, all according to information I got from Google.
I actually work part time during school at a PC repair shop. I clean up viruses by hand all the time. In every case, it's the same process. Scan running processes, do 15 seconds of research to determine if they're bad, follow the directions to clean them up. It's really not a big deal.
This technique is devestated by a truly destructive virus, but my router and sensible internet practices have avoided those thus far.
This is definitely not a technique I recommend for the lay person, but I do bill at $30 an hour for my services and when people ask, "How did you know that was a virus?" that's the answer.
Try to not take this as an insult, but I personally don't consider those religions very seriously. While we'll obviously have to agree to disagree on this topic, I don't include minor religions in a discussion about history or current events. It is my opinion that doing so is terribly unproductive and very often irrelevant. I don't mean that as any sort of offense, but that's how I feel about it. As a result, most any point of debate founded on such a religion isn't going to convince me of anything.
Which isn't to say that I think you're wrong - only that I'm not a person willing to give full legitimacy and equal weight to numerically miniscule, politically weak, and historically lightweight religions. I'm not trying to be offensive, but rather calling a duck a duck.
Show me a country that still practices the Christianity that sets women below men.
It's known as the Bible Belt and it comprises a very significant portion of American voters.
You're right, Islam has a bad history with women. My point is that Muslims do not have a bad history with women BECAUSE of Islam, but rather many Arabic cultures have a bad history with women because of their cultural history. That in no way excuses the oppression of women, but it's important to understand that Islam very acutely condemns anything that brings harm to the individual or community's ability to prosper and praise God - oppressing women definitely falls into this category.
Poor American women are beaten by their Bible-loving husbands, rednecks have white supremacist bumper stickers on one side and "Jesus is my copilot" on the other, and the result is the oppression of women in a Christian context. It isn't Christianity that leads to the oppression of women, it is the result of other influences. It is precisely the same in Saudi Arabia. They may justify it with Islam, define it in terms of Islam, speak Arabic while they're doing it, but the simple fact it that Islam allows the oppression of women no more than does Christianity (and it's quite easy to argue that Islam condemns it more strongly.)
Where more minor religions fit into this doesn't really interest me - I'm only insisting that there is a relation between Islam and the oppression of women but that any attempt at establishing causation is completely and utterly false. Also, when I said, "you religious zealot fanatic you" I was not referring specifically to you, but rather abstractly to the mentality that led to chastity belts amongst Christian Europeans. That was my fault for unclear writing.
And I never denied that. Research the origin of the 'chastity belt' in the western world. Christian Crusaders were leaving their wives while they went to battle to recover the Holy Land from the devilish Muslims, so they locked their wives' vaginas in steel armor and left them for many years.
Because you never can trust a Christian woman, can you? Lock that up or you'll never know what white European was banging your lady while you were at Holy War for God Almighty, you religious zealot fanatic you.
My point: Any region/culture/nation can oppress women, every religion has oppressed their women.
There are plenty of rational reason to love or hate the USA vs. the Middle East, Whities like me vs. Folks who look differnt, Decent Americans vs. The World, the truth is that fighting a war against a major world religion is a moronic task.
Even if it's 100% accurate, actually recognizing it as such is more harmful than anything. Have some perspective! This whole world is an economic machine - nobody with a decent job, education for their kids, and a bright hope for tomorrow is scheming to sacrifice their security to attack someone else. Sure, people are also prideful, miseducated, superstitious, prejudice, or buy lottery tickets "just in case".
I'm not saying that there aren't undeniable correlations between Islam and terrorism - or black Americans and cops - or poor Americans and COPS the television show - or Latinos and tacos - Some of that is a absolutely true.
To say that it's the RESULT of that relationship can easily be 100% false. The oppression of women is rather directly discouraged by the Koran, though a certain admission of guilt about current conditions in society is present. It's hardly different than various implications in the Bible that the contemporary people favored male children or men's rights over the women.
And even if I'm 100% wrong, pointing that out and screaming it from the rooftops alienates a major segment of the world's population and doesn't do a damn thing toward solving anything. Just an observation.
PS - That was a beer inspired rant. Eh, hope you enjoyed it or "Sorry" is all I have to say.
No excuses, just a bad day and I was primarily upset to see your post modded 'Insightful' when it really had little to do with what I had said.
It was a simple misunderstanding but I had a bad day and apologize.
There are many types of idiots. For example, foolish idiots, big idiots, lovable idiots, etc. Among these many types of idiots, you are a dumb idiot.
You see, I said that the plight of women in Saudi Arabia is the result of the region's culture, not the predominant religion. Here is where your imagination flung you into fantasy land and you thought you had read something like a justification for the oppression of women. Sometimes it's fun to play make believe, but you just can't pretend that I support the violations of human rights and then wish it to be true.
Secondly, you will find women all over this world who go absolutely giddy at the thought of contributing to the de facto enslavement of countless women who work in the garment industry in the Pacific rim and elsewhere. They are thrilled to scurry into the local shopping mall and spend hard earned wages to buy the latest fashions - the profits from which ensure that women and children will continue to be exploited for fashion.
As you can see, you not only failed to reply to a post that supported the oppression of women as you intended to do, but you didn't even do a good job of illustrating where I would have been wrong if your fantasy make believe had been true. Thus I claim you are a dumb idiot.
I read a baker's dozen of half educated posts about the relationship between Saudi Arabia, Islam, and women's rights, but this one got a laugh.
I don't envy the position of women in Saudi Arabia, but I'm informed enough to know that it's primarily a cultural, not religious situation. Even the religious police are pretty much peculiar to Saudi Arabia - a nation/region, not a religion.
It feels better to toss in my two cents in response to a joke about geeks rather than half-truths about a major world religion. Thanks.
I couldn't think of a more precise and direct analogy to A Clockwork Orange than using Ritalin to treat ADHD. It gets results - I know this from my own dramatic transformation for the very brief period I was used it. I know that parents are very often at their wits ends dealing with children that are totally uncontrollable, unable to socialize, and unable to learn in schools. I empathize with that and only wish that they would NOT consider Ritalin the "solution".
Use Ritalin as a reprieve, perhaps, or use it as a middle ground to something else. But please, do NOT discover Ritalin and think that the problem is gone. It DOES get results, it DOES have a drastic affect on the behavior of a child, and it does indeed take away a crucial part of that child's free will and individuality.
I was raised on something called the Feingold Diet which is these days dismissed as nonsense with little or no benefit. I was on that program for nearly 10 years, from ages 5 to about 15 (though it was hard to tell at the end, being that the program consisted of gradually returning to a normal diet - at ages 13 to 15 I only had to avoid super sugary junk food.) It wasn't a miracle cure like ample amounts of prescription stimulants, and I still suffered from feeling like a backseat driver in my own body at times, but I was able to cope decently with a normal public school system and have become a well adjusted adult. I think that the biggest benefit may have been the comfort it brought my parents to have a program that had SOME effect and didn't involve the highly potent drug Ritalin.
I grew up around kids that had serious ADHD and were on Ritalin - it scared the bejeezus out of me. If I split from the diet, I would have an understandable burst of hyperactivity which was more difficult for me to deal with than normal kids. If the Ritalin users skipped their dose, they were maniacs. By highschool, they were crushing them up, snorting them, and passing out. In the aftermath, they were usually unable to form a sentence without interrupting themselves. I had learned to COPE with my situation and understand that if I get little hyperactive, I'd be an obnoxious overbearing ass. These other kids were just appalling to me.
All of this has been anecdotal. I'm sure the Feingold Diet has failed for tons of people and I'm not arguing with its current status as a sham. I'm sure there are tons of people (besides doctors who profit luxuriously) who benefit from Ritalin. I know that the parents who give Ritalin to their children do so out of love. If you think there's an ounce of truth in anything I've said, I hope you will look past Ritalin and have the love to try something else.
I work at a custom shop and we don't patch anything either - DUR - we install XP SP1 OEM. I'm sure we'll be using XP SP2 OEM discs before too long.
But you're absolutely right - eMachines tells you upfront that you're buying a bargain machine, and Dell tries to unzip your pants with their teeth and while the intern whispers in your ear.. maybe that's the other way around. Anyway, hand it to Dell - they have the most expensive logo stickers in the PC business, challenged only by Alienware, and even then you have to consider volume.
It's a valid point that Athlons do not last long after a fan failure. A perfectly valid counterpoint is that any reasonably modern motherboard will detect that and power the system off to protect the processor. I really couldn't consider this topic a very significant reason for choosing one processor over another, though, since fan failure is basically harmless these days (minus the awesome term paper you were typing that wasn't saved.)
Whatever "insightfulness" the parent post contains is simply wrong. I work in a shop that sells both P4 and Athlon machines (among others) and we obviously produce a lot more profit when we sell an Intel chip because of the relatively exorbitant price.
The situation the parent post describes simply -does not happen-. If you take an Athlon out of the retail box and install it correctly, it requires no special additional parts and it will run exactly as advertised, barring a manufacturing flaw as I mentioned in my other reply. The only "special" steps necessary to make an Athlon run properly are to install it "correctly".
If that's reason enough to kick AMD in the teeth and buy Intel, suit yourself. I have installed WinXP on a P4 with a heatsink resting on the chip (but not latched down) so maybe there IS a real advantage for Intel in the "cannot install properly" crowd.
Now granted, I've only installed roughly two hundred AMD Athlons in the last six months, but every one of those worked exactly as you described. Out of the retail box, installed on the board, I use regular heat paste just to cover my ass (it's optional), attach the provided heatseak & fan, and it runs flawlessly.
I've seen a few manufacturing errors with the chips, but no more unusual than with the 200 or so Intel chips I've installed in that same period. I have never encountered a situation where an AMD chip with the provided heatsink & fan did not run at the advertised speed or voltage.
As for the 9 months, you may be interested to know that a large volume of components goes bad in the first few weeks of use. Where I assemble machines, we run a burn in test on every processor that is sold. This means that our customers rarely see a new but bad chip, however we see them often enough to not get excited when it happens. If you buy a chip from a place that doesn't do these burn in tests, then YOU have to carry the burden of dealing with a manufacturing flaw.
But anyhow, stick with Intel if you like. It's my opinion that they're overpriced and (as a graduate student in computer science) I'm convinced that HyperThreading (tm) is 85% hype and 15% feature.
The key to happiness is realizing that these friends and family don't know a thing about computers either. If a beautiful girl has a dying hard drive, it's suddenly no problem at all to recover her data onto a backup, install a new drive, format and install the OS, put on some updates and Mozilla, configure everything, track down her drivers, replace her backed up data, add your email to her address book and your IM name to her buddy list, and tell her it was no big deal.
And 5 minutes later, when an obnoxious relative needs a floppy drive replaced, just get wide eyed and say, "Gosh, I think you'll need an electrician to look at that. Better send it back to Dell and see if they can fix it."
People come to you because they're bewildered. Exploit that bewilderment.
If you feel that the time served is insufficient for sexual offenders, that's fine. Petition your law makers to have the manditory sentences increased.
These registries scream that the existing rehabilitation program is a complete and wholesale failure in the eyes of the public and the appropriate solution is to redesign that program rather than brand people with a crimson badge for the rest of their lives. That's what Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about and it was a tragic tale of inhumane society. The Nazis used a yellow star and it was one of the most horrific events in modern history. Now it's being done to people who have completed their judicially ordered rehabilitation - if they are released, then the penal system has decided that they ARE rehabilitated.
Reform the rehab, redefine the sentencing practices, but I'm of the opinion that attempts to brand a person through life after submitting to criminal rehab - physically or through public documentation - is outright unconstitutional.
And if you think I sound like some liberal or other nonsense, I would rather live nextdoor to a guy who I trust is a reformed sex offender rather than a guy I know is a sex offender because I read it on the internet. Think about it. It is 1000% better that the rehab works than to know who completed an unsuccessful rehab program.
Good point. I was incorrect about the corporate funding, as a more eloquent poster has pointed out. I hear that the recent versions of Netscape will block all popups except those from AOLTW. That this is not true for Mozilla is a significant distinction.
How many active and in the wild exploits can be found for Mozilla/Firebird? For extra credit, express that number as a percentage against the total number of internet browser exploits, the bulk of which will naturally be for Internet Explorer.
Can you post a link that demonstrates where New York Times magically produces a popup advertisement despite Firebird explicitly denying unrestricted rights to that functionality? Perhaps you have some unrelated spyware installed. I have scanned NYTimes.com in response to your post and could not produce a popup ad, very likely because the feature that generates those ads is simply disabled.
But ultimately I must agree that FUD doesn't do anyone any good. I fail to see how stating such was exactly relevant in a reply to my post, but to each his own.
Everyone is shocked that these programs are not designed to do them a favor. They're disguisted that this is the cause of yet more pop up advertisements.
I then tell them that Mozilla/Firebird is NOT being developed with corporate dollars and therefore has the user's interests at heart. It does not include the ActiveX or thousands of other unfixed security flaws, and you will honest to God never see a pop up advertisement again in your life. The tabbed browsing, type-ahead link find, slash page search functions are all icing on the cake.
I have switched at least ten people this way, none of them are computer people. Fraternity girls, seniors, parents who just want to check their email, etc.
Also, Thunderbird is a marvelous replacement for Outlook if all you want is an email client. It usually only takes one virus infection, formatted disk, and complete reinstallation to get people off of Outlook forever and ever and ever. I would think that alone is alarming enough to people at Microsoft, but I haven't seen any indication that they're going to try to produce software that's more useful to users rather than bad guys. It's truly baffeling.
Grr, formatting ate my "budgeting less than $100".
Right up front we're making a comprimise on price, budgeting I have done my some research (that site, among others, seemed the most helpful) and I'm leaning toward the Asus V9250 or an MSI FX5200. Do keep in mind that this will be a Windows machine, as the guy is decidedly non-computer technicalish.
So sure, this is slightly off-topic - don't feel obligated to respond or moderate. If you do happen to have a good suggestion as to the best video card value under one hundred bucks, please chime in. Thanks.
It's not as though Princeton's reputation as a fine university is being seriously tarnished, but it is probably more tactful to keep the loose cannons in your own garage, if that makes sense.