I believe that this post may help explain some things about linux. It's the best post I've ever run across to help people who are trying to switch to linux. Hell, it even made me rethink why I run it.
I think I'm immune because I run linux, don't run as root, don't install random shit on my computer, don't visit many sketchy websites, and don't have any outgoing traffic I didn't initiate.
Unless, of course, EVERYTHING is compromised, from my linux system to my firewall to my linux-based router. And if that's the case, yes, I'm part of the problem.
But more than likely, my grandmother with the unpatched Win 98 machine is part of the problem. Part of the easy-to-obtain, easy-to-keep problem.
Hell, if I had a fair bit of outgoing traffic, at bare minimum the blinkenlight of my router would tip me off. But as I sit here, it's steady. I get an IM, it lights up. I hit preview, it lights up. But unless I had this box somewhere under my bed, and the router in a closet, and never checked any logs, and ALSO visited either bad sites, or opened malicious things, I'd be surprised to find it compromised.
Of course, your point would be more valid if it wasn't a link to a blog article by someone whofanaticallywritesabout microsoft products.
You're just as bad as an Official Microsoft FUD Machine. At bare minimum, site a decent source for your crap.
Because if they had, they wouldn't draw attention to this security issue with an easily identified worm. At least, if I were them, I wouldn't call attention to my rootkit like that.
More than likely, it was some low-payed worked who was given a few weeks wages by someone looking for a quick buck, not some super-skilled haxor out for world domination.
"Stop letting people use the bandwith we sold them!" It's even worse than this! It's, "Make the BBC pay for the bandwith that we already sold to our customers."
Which, of course, means, "Subsidize our cost across the entire population, regardless of whether they use our service, because it's their collective TV licence fees which pay for the BBC."
Nice, isn't it? They missell a service, then charge THE ENTIRE COUNTRY for it, rather than just up the rates for their customers.
Streaming DVD quality video over the internet is already beyond the ability of a large number of households. Streaming HD content would be impossible. Even downloading it ahead of time might require fetching it hours or even days ahead of time.
Even on a very fat pipe, there is no guarantee that you'll be able to stream consistently from beginning to end if watching a movie. The host has to be able to upload at a sick speed, and there has to be no network hitches or asshole lying, cheating, filtering, throttling companies in between you and the host.
I collapse them like so many Vegas high-rises. But I know what you mean - when you're eight layers deep, and realize that it's all crap, it takes a bit to scroll up the the offending G-G-G-G-P thread and minimize it.
I can see where a little link on the right of the comment topic bar used to collapse the whole thread would be potentially useful. Like for all the people wading their way through this thread.:)
The NDS has had its ups and downs, I'll agree. There have been times when it didn't work quite right on different versions of Firefox on different platforms.
However, I think in the last week or so it's gone from clunky to pretty useful. This iteration seems especially smooth. The new ability to clearly see (via the gray boxes) what parts of the thread you're trying to minimize is really helpful. And I have to say, in-line commenting is nice as well. All in all, it's not nearly as rough as it used to be. I think I might actually like this better than the old system.
Having clicked the "I am willing to help test Slashdot's New Discussion System." link some time ago, I've been making good use of the feature where clicking on a comment title collapses or expands the thread it's in. That wouldn't be what you're looking for, is it?
And when we played such games as undergraduates, EVERYONE knew they were going on. Because they were well advertised, the participants were numerous and very visible, and we routinely either were asked wtf we were doing, or cheated by asking non-participants if they had seen the opponents.
You'd have to be a first-class dumbass to mistake a nerf gun being used as part of a campus-wide game for "the real thing". Hell, at my school even SECURITY knew when we were doing something like this, and generally laughed about it. Because kids playing a campus-wide game were not getting into trouble in all the various ways they normally would.
While I can agree that there aren't many non-competitive parts of an industry, consider this scenario:
Company A has a program to turn off 50% of the unused lights in their building. Company B has a program to turn off 50% of the unused lights in their building. But Program A and Program B are not the same, nor do they turn off the same lights. Combining those programs (eg, open sourcing w/ gpl) might yield both a 75% savings in electricity.
Now the CFO has a difficult decision to make. Is it worth the extra 25% savings if your competitor also will get this? Tough decision, but not that tough, since the extra $$ will help increase your profit margin, and potentially your stock. It's an even easier decision if your mutual competitor Company C is NOT participating.
At the same time, there's nothing to say that one can't leverage open sourcing code in fields outside of programming. You can use such altruism for social, political, and financial gain, if "spun" correctly. Taking your example, I can easily see a large company saying to the electric company, "We don't *need* to release this code, but if you give us a discount on power, we'll GPL it so other companies can use it." Here, not only does the company get the benefit of the code, but also a benefit for releasing it. That makes financial sense, and still leaves them one-up on their competitors. Plus it can be spun to make them look more environmentally friendly. I bet there is a lot of in-house code which could be spun this way.
And if there's one thing that most companies are good at, it's spin. All it will take is an increased realization that you can benefit from releasing code, if you look beyond "code = product = direct $$ value". And this is what Red Hat seems to be working on.
I know this now. Did you somehow miss the part about "a time in my youth"? How about the part about it being a large dog? When one is 17 and bombing around at 11pm with a couple of friends on board and a couple more behind in another car, safe, responsible driving is not usually on tap.
And besides - the worst I could do is clip a tree on that road at that time of night. I grew up in rural nowhere, and to be frank, it would have been worse to hit the dog. As it was, the best thing to do was what I did. If I had hit the tree, the owner probably wouldn't have been that pissed. $20 says the owner of the dog knew my dad, since everybody does. And it was a BIG dog. Plenty big enough to wreck the car.
As a former astronomer, that is patently obvious. However, humanity goes like moths to the lights. It is really hard to teach the average citizen that cutting the luminosity by 80% but tripling the number of lights will make an area much more safe. There is some bizarre connection between bright and safe, when "uniformly lit" would be far, far more safe, regardless of the brightness.
I'm reminded of a time in my youth, when I was traveling by car with a group of friends. One road out of town has intense streetlights, spaced some distance apart. The darkness between them is amazing. As I blew down the road, definitely "under the speed limit" should any adult have asked, I came across a large, black dog, midway between two streetlights. I swerved across the road, onto the shoulder, and narrowly missed a mailbox and a tree. My friends behind me in another car had no idea what I was doing, until they also almost hit the dog.
No matter how bright they make those streetlights, until there is *uniform* brightness, there will be danger. I wish I knew how to clearly point this out to people.
A former astronomy professor of mine loves to intentionally confuse correlation and causation by pointing to studies which show that places with more lights have more crime. He does this to suggest that less lights would reduce crime, and benefit astronomy. The rest of us refuse with him to acknowledge that the mid-west US into the Rocky mts and Alaska were the biggest component of the "no lights and no crime" (and nobody living there) data.
Actually, I go and buy a laser printer. Why? It's a better product, costs less to operate, and isn't completely designed to screw me over as a customer. Even though I print a in bulk a few times a year, I probably spend, on average, about $25 a year printing. Yet there's enough money in that for companies to make home laser printers.
I'll do the same thing with LED lights, and I bet the same will happen.
I don't know that that makes any real sense at all. It will be harder, and take more materials to make the 1-year bulb. We already have LED lights which far surpass that. If you can sell that bulb for $15, then someone else can sell the 10 year bulb for the same or less price. Excluding some govt sponsored (or ignored) monopoly. And even then, never ignore Chinese manufacturing. We already have knock-off iPhones and iPods - hard to believe that some foreign company won't sell "LED knockoffs" without the death code. This already happens with inkjet cartridges on occasion.
All it takes is 1 company not to do this, and the rest of those who do are screwed. When you buy a "bulb" every 6 months, you'll ask me what kind I buy when I tell you that I've bought one in my entire life.
Additionally, a lot of people are looking at LEDs like regular lights. They are not. They can be flexible, shock resistant, and sealed tight. They are ideal for putting light in places where we've never been able to put bulbs before. In floors. In counters. In sinks. In walkways. In door frames. As desk surfaces. You can make your slightly raised door sills out of a low-brightness LED so that they are visible to people going through. These aren't things you will ever want to replace. While very energy efficient, I think that large-scale LED production will significantly change how we light things, and those changes will necessitate "bulbs" that never burn out.
Of course, there will still be LED "bulbs" shaped like light bulbs, which fit into a standard socket. And I'm sure that some brilliant company will do as you say, and program in death. But the strips of "TruSun Dimmable"(tm) LEDs you have installed around the perimeter of your room when you re-do the ceiling won't have this "feature". They will be there for your grandkids to see.
Thank you. No, really. The more people who hear this and who actually understand it the better.
I will never, EVER understand how the following counts as "stealing wireless access":
1) I broadcast my SSID. (Here's a wireless connection world! LOOK OVER HERE FOR IT!!!) 2) User asks, "Can I connect?" (IP address requested.) 3) I say, "Sure you can connect." (IP address loaned.) 4) YOU STEAL MY WIRELESS!!!!!!!
Ok, I guess I should do it as a car analogy:
1) I put out a sign, "I will let you borrow my car." 2) You ask, "Can I borrow your car?" 3) I say, "Yes, and here are the keys." 4) YOU STOLE MY CAR!!!!!
There is no difference. If you think there is a difference, you are either stupid or ignorant, or trying to apologize for someone else who is either stupid or ignorant.
If someone hacked into my wireless and used it, that's a crime. If someone stole my car, that's a crime. If someone asked to borrow my wireless and I let them, or my car and I let them, that's not a crime. If I'm either so socially ignorant or technically ignorant that I don't understand what I'm doing, then I need to suck it up when people do what I am INVITING them to do. And the rest of society should backhand me for complaining about it.
"Could" and "Would" are two very different things.
I could listen to internet radio (well, that's now in debate, but I used to be able to) for weeks, for free, and not hear anything I would want to purchase. Likewise, I could download a few GBs of mp3 files, listen for a few weeks, and not hear anything I would want to purchase. In neither case has the artist "lost" a sale.
The whole "1 download = 1 lost sale" argument is very, very flawed in this sense. Yes, if I pulled 3 albums over bittorrent, I "could" pay for them. But if I "would" pay for them, I...well...would. A sale is only lost when I find and download something that I would ordinarily purchase, but decide that the internet price of "free" is more appealing.
I have downloaded a fair bit of music from the internet. Mostly pretty niche stuff, that not a lot of people are into. Not the stuff carried at my local music store, that's for sure. A lot of it I couldn't hear anywhere, yet WOULDN'T purchase without hearing. This was exploratory downloading. No sales were lost, as I wouldn't have purchased it. Yet I now own all 6-8 or so CDs of a particular band in that set, BECAUSE of that exposure. The rest of the bands? Don't listen to the mp3s, haven't bought any CDs. No sales lost due to that downloading, sales actually GAINED for one band because of it. Now I suppose you could tell me that it's somehow my duty to buy everything, THEN decide what I like, but I'm a weirdo who wants to spend my money only on things I want.
Back in the day, before I was completely wise to the amount of malware infused warez in the world, I downloaded some cracked commercial games and played them. Generally, they would hold my interest for a couple of weeks, and then get deleted to free up space. Once in awhile, I'd find a good one, and without fail I'd purchase it. Would I have purchased any of them without the opportunity to try them first? Probably not. Spending $40 on a game is hard to justify after getting burned a couple of times in a row on shitty games. Trying first allowed me to spend my money on what was worth it, supporting the people who's efforts I appreciated. Once again, rather than losing sales, the free downloads gained sales, and that money went to people who produced something I appreciated.
I've come to realize that companies being slimy is the reason I am this way. Companies who slipped me a turd covered with gold foil at the same price as a decent product are the reason I insist on trying first. Now I don't know if I'm somehow weird or unique in this regard, but giving me something to try for free is the best way to get money out of me. I'll pay for stuff that's worth it. But I don't trust companies to give me a product that's worth paying for 90% of the time.
In my experience, for many users (definitely not all, and certainly not those who rely on proprietary software) Linux does what it needs to do out of the box far better than windows. In the last year or two, the default install of Ubuntu has become very slick and very functional.
If it needs some tweaking, a good deal of that material can be found, downloaded, and installed from one place on the computer. The last XP reinstall I did pissed me off to no end as I needed to download drivers from 5-6 different websites to get basic functionality. Even my plain old USB memory stick, which plugs and plays in most linux distros needed about 4-5 steps and 2 min to get working under windows.
I won't deny that some hardware is near impossible to get working under Linux. But I'll happily work around that for the ease of install and ease of "just working" that you get with Linux when you have supported hardware.
Under Windows, it will all probably work, once you find the website, download and install new drivers, and probably reboot. This holds true for almost all hardware. Windows fans will say, "Damn right - you can always find a working driver somewhere on the internet." Linux fans will say, "If I pick supported hardware, it works. Period. What's this driver on the internet stuff?"
That's what makes Linux killer for me. It works. It does the job I need it to, and it doesn't get in the way. If something does go wrong, there are actual diagnostic utilities (decently detailed logs, etc) built into the system.
And therein lies the problem. I try to game in Linux, but even Linux ports make it hard to do at times. I've fought for ages to get a useful bit of duplexing working under Linux. My prime fight was with TeamSpeak2 and UT2k4. TeamSpeak2 requires direct hardware access. It refuses to work with anything but/dev/dsp. UT2k4 uses OSS for the sound. My crappy-but-faithful headset is analog, my speakers are digital, and I can't get my USB headset to mix properly.
I've tried a dozen configurations, but never was able to find what I really wanted: Duplexing for the USB headset, and the ability to switch to speakers quickly and easily. I ended up getting the analog headset to work, but it took ages, and swapping to speakers takes a minute or two to fiddle with.
I run a bunch of stuff under Wine. Warcraft3 runs great. However, I can't get it to duplex with TeamSpeak so I can chat with friends while playing. Dawn of War runs great for a bit, then locks the entire machine up. I have no idea what that's all about. Ventrilo hates me if I try to run it under Wine.
The one bright spot are ID games, which run fantastically well. I've bought everything from Quake3 onward because of this. The Unreal series used to be good, but UT3 has been out for more than 3 months, and there's no Linux port. The Linux server is finally starting to be useful after a few patches. Once there's a Linux port, I'll buy it. But I would have spent $60 for it on release day if it shipped with the Linux port. Now I'm more likely to pay $30-$40 for it, whenever the port is out.
I used to buy about a game a month. Since switching to Linux, that's tricked off to about 3-4 a year. I personally would buy more games if they had a default Linux port. I refuse to put windows on my main (beefy) machine, so my gaming is limited to an older machine with XP. That then limits what I can run on it, and leaves me with 2 choices: Linux port or works well in Wine, or 1+ years old and will run on the backup machine.
I'm sure I'm nowhere near the only person who feels this way.
While but a small number of sales, the people I game with (12 or so, tops) have not (other than 2-3 initial purchases) made the jump from UT2k4 to UT3. Why?
No Linux or Mac ports
No initial Linux server
Severely downgraded server app (No webadmin, no ability to ban by CD key, limited functionality mapvote, repeated server crashes, bugs in the beta which were reported, but not fixed on release, etc.)
While we've been playing UT for 8 years or so, this is by far the WORST release we've ever seen. With the last server patch, things are starting to look up. But the hardware requirements are so high, and UT2k4 works so well, that we're still not making the jump as a group. (You pointed out the content difference, which is HUGE as well.)
UT3, for the most part, has been a half-assed piece of dog crap. And that's coming from a group of people who have played UT as a primary FPS for 8 years.
The only reason PC gaming is "dead" is that UT3 was complete shit. Had Epic actually released a stable, full-functioning game, they'd be rolling in the money, and "PC gaming" would be "alive and well". Releasing such a blatantly unfinished game vs the other FPSes that came out around that time was really, REALLY stupid. That being said, we're planning to make the switch in another 3-6 months, once the major issues get fixed.
You ask them which browser they use and they will say "I don't know. I just click on the blue 'e'." despite the fact that the title bar says "Internet Explorer" 100% of the time the application is open.
To be fair, for those people, IE probably doesn't say Internet Explorer at the top while they have it open. And if it does due to some strange quirk of the several varieties of spyware/rebranding crashing, it's probably covered with a toolbar, dancing snake, or some other shit.
The people you are referring to probably don't get the same browser twice, so just knowing what the icon looks like is probably the best you can hope for.
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I believe that this post may help explain some things about linux. It's the best post I've ever run across to help people who are trying to switch to linux. Hell, it even made me rethink why I run it.
I think I'm immune because I run linux, don't run as root, don't install random shit on my computer, don't visit many sketchy websites, and don't have any outgoing traffic I didn't initiate.
Unless, of course, EVERYTHING is compromised, from my linux system to my firewall to my linux-based router. And if that's the case, yes, I'm part of the problem.
But more than likely, my grandmother with the unpatched Win 98 machine is part of the problem. Part of the easy-to-obtain, easy-to-keep problem.
Hell, if I had a fair bit of outgoing traffic, at bare minimum the blinkenlight of my router would tip me off. But as I sit here, it's steady. I get an IM, it lights up. I hit preview, it lights up. But unless I had this box somewhere under my bed, and the router in a closet, and never checked any logs, and ALSO visited either bad sites, or opened malicious things, I'd be surprised to find it compromised.
Of course, your point would be more valid if it wasn't a link to a blog article by someone who fanatically writes about microsoft products.
You're just as bad as an Official Microsoft FUD Machine. At bare minimum, site a decent source for your crap.
Because if they had, they wouldn't draw attention to this security issue with an easily identified worm. At least, if I were them, I wouldn't call attention to my rootkit like that.
More than likely, it was some low-payed worked who was given a few weeks wages by someone looking for a quick buck, not some super-skilled haxor out for world domination.
Which, of course, means, "Subsidize our cost across the entire population, regardless of whether they use our service, because it's their collective TV licence fees which pay for the BBC."
Nice, isn't it? They missell a service, then charge THE ENTIRE COUNTRY for it, rather than just up the rates for their customers.
Streaming DVD quality video over the internet is already beyond the ability of a large number of households. Streaming HD content would be impossible. Even downloading it ahead of time might require fetching it hours or even days ahead of time.
Even on a very fat pipe, there is no guarantee that you'll be able to stream consistently from beginning to end if watching a movie. The host has to be able to upload at a sick speed, and there has to be no network hitches or asshole lying, cheating, filtering, throttling companies in between you and the host.
I collapse them like so many Vegas high-rises. But I know what you mean - when you're eight layers deep, and realize that it's all crap, it takes a bit to scroll up the the offending G-G-G-G-P thread and minimize it.
:)
I can see where a little link on the right of the comment topic bar used to collapse the whole thread would be potentially useful. Like for all the people wading their way through this thread.
The NDS has had its ups and downs, I'll agree. There have been times when it didn't work quite right on different versions of Firefox on different platforms.
However, I think in the last week or so it's gone from clunky to pretty useful. This iteration seems especially smooth. The new ability to clearly see (via the gray boxes) what parts of the thread you're trying to minimize is really helpful. And I have to say, in-line commenting is nice as well. All in all, it's not nearly as rough as it used to be. I think I might actually like this better than the old system.
Having clicked the "I am willing to help test Slashdot's New Discussion System." link some time ago, I've been making good use of the feature where clicking on a comment title collapses or expands the thread it's in. That wouldn't be what you're looking for, is it?
Rather than ignore the user input, have the prompt after the user selects "N" say:
You chose Now.
Starting countdown: NOW!
10...
Yes.
And when we played such games as undergraduates, EVERYONE knew they were going on. Because they were well advertised, the participants were numerous and very visible, and we routinely either were asked wtf we were doing, or cheated by asking non-participants if they had seen the opponents.
You'd have to be a first-class dumbass to mistake a nerf gun being used as part of a campus-wide game for "the real thing". Hell, at my school even SECURITY knew when we were doing something like this, and generally laughed about it. Because kids playing a campus-wide game were not getting into trouble in all the various ways they normally would.
While I can agree that there aren't many non-competitive parts of an industry, consider this scenario:
Company A has a program to turn off 50% of the unused lights in their building. Company B has a program to turn off 50% of the unused lights in their building. But Program A and Program B are not the same, nor do they turn off the same lights. Combining those programs (eg, open sourcing w/ gpl) might yield both a 75% savings in electricity.
Now the CFO has a difficult decision to make. Is it worth the extra 25% savings if your competitor also will get this? Tough decision, but not that tough, since the extra $$ will help increase your profit margin, and potentially your stock. It's an even easier decision if your mutual competitor Company C is NOT participating.
At the same time, there's nothing to say that one can't leverage open sourcing code in fields outside of programming. You can use such altruism for social, political, and financial gain, if "spun" correctly. Taking your example, I can easily see a large company saying to the electric company, "We don't *need* to release this code, but if you give us a discount on power, we'll GPL it so other companies can use it." Here, not only does the company get the benefit of the code, but also a benefit for releasing it. That makes financial sense, and still leaves them one-up on their competitors. Plus it can be spun to make them look more environmentally friendly. I bet there is a lot of in-house code which could be spun this way.
And if there's one thing that most companies are good at, it's spin. All it will take is an increased realization that you can benefit from releasing code, if you look beyond "code = product = direct $$ value". And this is what Red Hat seems to be working on.
Thanks mom! Did you make dinner for me too?
I know this now. Did you somehow miss the part about "a time in my youth"? How about the part about it being a large dog? When one is 17 and bombing around at 11pm with a couple of friends on board and a couple more behind in another car, safe, responsible driving is not usually on tap.
And besides - the worst I could do is clip a tree on that road at that time of night. I grew up in rural nowhere, and to be frank, it would have been worse to hit the dog. As it was, the best thing to do was what I did. If I had hit the tree, the owner probably wouldn't have been that pissed. $20 says the owner of the dog knew my dad, since everybody does. And it was a BIG dog. Plenty big enough to wreck the car.
As a former astronomer, that is patently obvious. However, humanity goes like moths to the lights. It is really hard to teach the average citizen that cutting the luminosity by 80% but tripling the number of lights will make an area much more safe. There is some bizarre connection between bright and safe, when "uniformly lit" would be far, far more safe, regardless of the brightness.
I'm reminded of a time in my youth, when I was traveling by car with a group of friends. One road out of town has intense streetlights, spaced some distance apart. The darkness between them is amazing. As I blew down the road, definitely "under the speed limit" should any adult have asked, I came across a large, black dog, midway between two streetlights. I swerved across the road, onto the shoulder, and narrowly missed a mailbox and a tree. My friends behind me in another car had no idea what I was doing, until they also almost hit the dog.
No matter how bright they make those streetlights, until there is *uniform* brightness, there will be danger. I wish I knew how to clearly point this out to people.
A former astronomy professor of mine loves to intentionally confuse correlation and causation by pointing to studies which show that places with more lights have more crime. He does this to suggest that less lights would reduce crime, and benefit astronomy. The rest of us refuse with him to acknowledge that the mid-west US into the Rocky mts and Alaska were the biggest component of the "no lights and no crime" (and nobody living there) data.
Actually, there is one major difficulty: Thermal expansion.
Actually, I go and buy a laser printer. Why? It's a better product, costs less to operate, and isn't completely designed to screw me over as a customer. Even though I print a in bulk a few times a year, I probably spend, on average, about $25 a year printing. Yet there's enough money in that for companies to make home laser printers.
I'll do the same thing with LED lights, and I bet the same will happen.
I don't know that that makes any real sense at all. It will be harder, and take more materials to make the 1-year bulb. We already have LED lights which far surpass that. If you can sell that bulb for $15, then someone else can sell the 10 year bulb for the same or less price. Excluding some govt sponsored (or ignored) monopoly. And even then, never ignore Chinese manufacturing. We already have knock-off iPhones and iPods - hard to believe that some foreign company won't sell "LED knockoffs" without the death code. This already happens with inkjet cartridges on occasion.
All it takes is 1 company not to do this, and the rest of those who do are screwed. When you buy a "bulb" every 6 months, you'll ask me what kind I buy when I tell you that I've bought one in my entire life.
Additionally, a lot of people are looking at LEDs like regular lights. They are not. They can be flexible, shock resistant, and sealed tight. They are ideal for putting light in places where we've never been able to put bulbs before. In floors. In counters. In sinks. In walkways. In door frames. As desk surfaces. You can make your slightly raised door sills out of a low-brightness LED so that they are visible to people going through. These aren't things you will ever want to replace. While very energy efficient, I think that large-scale LED production will significantly change how we light things, and those changes will necessitate "bulbs" that never burn out.
Of course, there will still be LED "bulbs" shaped like light bulbs, which fit into a standard socket. And I'm sure that some brilliant company will do as you say, and program in death. But the strips of "TruSun Dimmable"(tm) LEDs you have installed around the perimeter of your room when you re-do the ceiling won't have this "feature". They will be there for your grandkids to see.
Thank you. No, really. The more people who hear this and who actually understand it the better.
I will never, EVER understand how the following counts as "stealing wireless access":
1) I broadcast my SSID. (Here's a wireless connection world! LOOK OVER HERE FOR IT!!!)
2) User asks, "Can I connect?" (IP address requested.)
3) I say, "Sure you can connect." (IP address loaned.)
4) YOU STEAL MY WIRELESS!!!!!!!
Ok, I guess I should do it as a car analogy:
1) I put out a sign, "I will let you borrow my car."
2) You ask, "Can I borrow your car?"
3) I say, "Yes, and here are the keys."
4) YOU STOLE MY CAR!!!!!
There is no difference. If you think there is a difference, you are either stupid or ignorant, or trying to apologize for someone else who is either stupid or ignorant.
If someone hacked into my wireless and used it, that's a crime. If someone stole my car, that's a crime. If someone asked to borrow my wireless and I let them, or my car and I let them, that's not a crime. If I'm either so socially ignorant or technically ignorant that I don't understand what I'm doing, then I need to suck it up when people do what I am INVITING them to do. And the rest of society should backhand me for complaining about it.
"Could" and "Would" are two very different things.
I could listen to internet radio (well, that's now in debate, but I used to be able to) for weeks, for free, and not hear anything I would want to purchase. Likewise, I could download a few GBs of mp3 files, listen for a few weeks, and not hear anything I would want to purchase. In neither case has the artist "lost" a sale.
The whole "1 download = 1 lost sale" argument is very, very flawed in this sense. Yes, if I pulled 3 albums over bittorrent, I "could" pay for them. But if I "would" pay for them, I...well...would. A sale is only lost when I find and download something that I would ordinarily purchase, but decide that the internet price of "free" is more appealing.
I have downloaded a fair bit of music from the internet. Mostly pretty niche stuff, that not a lot of people are into. Not the stuff carried at my local music store, that's for sure. A lot of it I couldn't hear anywhere, yet WOULDN'T purchase without hearing. This was exploratory downloading. No sales were lost, as I wouldn't have purchased it. Yet I now own all 6-8 or so CDs of a particular band in that set, BECAUSE of that exposure. The rest of the bands? Don't listen to the mp3s, haven't bought any CDs. No sales lost due to that downloading, sales actually GAINED for one band because of it. Now I suppose you could tell me that it's somehow my duty to buy everything, THEN decide what I like, but I'm a weirdo who wants to spend my money only on things I want.
Back in the day, before I was completely wise to the amount of malware infused warez in the world, I downloaded some cracked commercial games and played them. Generally, they would hold my interest for a couple of weeks, and then get deleted to free up space. Once in awhile, I'd find a good one, and without fail I'd purchase it. Would I have purchased any of them without the opportunity to try them first? Probably not. Spending $40 on a game is hard to justify after getting burned a couple of times in a row on shitty games. Trying first allowed me to spend my money on what was worth it, supporting the people who's efforts I appreciated. Once again, rather than losing sales, the free downloads gained sales, and that money went to people who produced something I appreciated.
I've come to realize that companies being slimy is the reason I am this way. Companies who slipped me a turd covered with gold foil at the same price as a decent product are the reason I insist on trying first. Now I don't know if I'm somehow weird or unique in this regard, but giving me something to try for free is the best way to get money out of me. I'll pay for stuff that's worth it. But I don't trust companies to give me a product that's worth paying for 90% of the time.
In my experience, for many users (definitely not all, and certainly not those who rely on proprietary software) Linux does what it needs to do out of the box far better than windows. In the last year or two, the default install of Ubuntu has become very slick and very functional.
If it needs some tweaking, a good deal of that material can be found, downloaded, and installed from one place on the computer. The last XP reinstall I did pissed me off to no end as I needed to download drivers from 5-6 different websites to get basic functionality. Even my plain old USB memory stick, which plugs and plays in most linux distros needed about 4-5 steps and 2 min to get working under windows.
I won't deny that some hardware is near impossible to get working under Linux. But I'll happily work around that for the ease of install and ease of "just working" that you get with Linux when you have supported hardware.
Under Windows, it will all probably work, once you find the website, download and install new drivers, and probably reboot. This holds true for almost all hardware. Windows fans will say, "Damn right - you can always find a working driver somewhere on the internet." Linux fans will say, "If I pick supported hardware, it works. Period. What's this driver on the internet stuff?"
That's what makes Linux killer for me. It works. It does the job I need it to, and it doesn't get in the way. If something does go wrong, there are actual diagnostic utilities (decently detailed logs, etc) built into the system.
AND it's free. That never hurts
And therein lies the problem. I try to game in Linux, but even Linux ports make it hard to do at times. I've fought for ages to get a useful bit of duplexing working under Linux. My prime fight was with TeamSpeak2 and UT2k4. TeamSpeak2 requires direct hardware access. It refuses to work with anything but /dev/dsp. UT2k4 uses OSS for the sound. My crappy-but-faithful headset is analog, my speakers are digital, and I can't get my USB headset to mix properly.
I've tried a dozen configurations, but never was able to find what I really wanted: Duplexing for the USB headset, and the ability to switch to speakers quickly and easily. I ended up getting the analog headset to work, but it took ages, and swapping to speakers takes a minute or two to fiddle with.
I run a bunch of stuff under Wine. Warcraft3 runs great. However, I can't get it to duplex with TeamSpeak so I can chat with friends while playing. Dawn of War runs great for a bit, then locks the entire machine up. I have no idea what that's all about. Ventrilo hates me if I try to run it under Wine.
The one bright spot are ID games, which run fantastically well. I've bought everything from Quake3 onward because of this. The Unreal series used to be good, but UT3 has been out for more than 3 months, and there's no Linux port. The Linux server is finally starting to be useful after a few patches. Once there's a Linux port, I'll buy it. But I would have spent $60 for it on release day if it shipped with the Linux port. Now I'm more likely to pay $30-$40 for it, whenever the port is out.
I used to buy about a game a month. Since switching to Linux, that's tricked off to about 3-4 a year. I personally would buy more games if they had a default Linux port. I refuse to put windows on my main (beefy) machine, so my gaming is limited to an older machine with XP. That then limits what I can run on it, and leaves me with 2 choices: Linux port or works well in Wine, or 1+ years old and will run on the backup machine.
I'm sure I'm nowhere near the only person who feels this way.
While but a small number of sales, the people I game with (12 or so, tops) have not (other than 2-3 initial purchases) made the jump from UT2k4 to UT3. Why?
No Linux or Mac ports
No initial Linux server
Severely downgraded server app (No webadmin, no ability to ban by CD key, limited functionality mapvote, repeated server crashes, bugs in the beta which were reported, but not fixed on release, etc.)
While we've been playing UT for 8 years or so, this is by far the WORST release we've ever seen. With the last server patch, things are starting to look up. But the hardware requirements are so high, and UT2k4 works so well, that we're still not making the jump as a group. (You pointed out the content difference, which is HUGE as well.)
UT3, for the most part, has been a half-assed piece of dog crap. And that's coming from a group of people who have played UT as a primary FPS for 8 years.
The only reason PC gaming is "dead" is that UT3 was complete shit. Had Epic actually released a stable, full-functioning game, they'd be rolling in the money, and "PC gaming" would be "alive and well". Releasing such a blatantly unfinished game vs the other FPSes that came out around that time was really, REALLY stupid. That being said, we're planning to make the switch in another 3-6 months, once the major issues get fixed.
To be fair, for those people, IE probably doesn't say Internet Explorer at the top while they have it open. And if it does due to some strange quirk of the several varieties of spyware/rebranding crashing, it's probably covered with a toolbar, dancing snake, or some other shit.
The people you are referring to probably don't get the same browser twice, so just knowing what the icon looks like is probably the best you can hope for.
And least there be any doubt that she's a woman, note that after getting married, she's continued to expand, at an ever-increasing rate.