Naturally Linux Genuine Advantage is open source, and not to be outdone by Microsoft platform hackers a hack is available to auto-certify LGA without actually contacting the LGA server.
Many of them trying to keep afloat the bastardized zombie of a legacy project begun in DOS and ported to Win 3.1, Win32, Win64,.NET, Sun Java, MSJava, Sun Java again and Vista. None of them with Microsoft's preferred and undocumented internal APIs for any of those systems. Many of them with no clue how to write good code, managed by non-programmers who can't tell. Each of them insisting that each revision has slain their sacred cow. So many of them that any patch no matter how trivial breaks some critical application for some enterprise somewhere.
Working against a system that has to be so locked down a non-admin can't save a shortcut on the desktop, and still isn't secure.
They've built their house upon the sand and act surprised that it falls on them frequently. It's like a physical comedy where the same stupid ladder gag gets the laughs no matter how many times the audience has seen it.
Vista published in 2007 vulnerable to the functional equivalent of Comet Cursor, published in 1995. That's rich humor there, boy.
--- making a mint rolling back Vista "upgrades": priceless.
Over the next fifty years or so the conversion of much northern real estate from arctic tundra to arable land may offset population growth to some degree.
So, was it math you majored in, or history? Your reasoning is sound.
The problem is that given a choice between a human-led organization capable of enforcing population control or the otherwise unavoidable famine and resource wars, I favor the latter and I believe most others do too. My offspring are less likely to thrive in the former environment and less likely to reach their human potential.
I still hold on to hope for the power of genius in the face of dire need. Perhaps when the crisis is closer... there is some time yet.
I do agree with your post, though -- at some level, we're no more than bacteria in a dish. We will reproduce to consume all available resources and then evolve to compete for the effluent of prior generations until there is nothing left. Or we'll escape the dish. Or both.
Outside of an election year, there just isn't that much effluent in the US. Imagine, if you will, that your daily commute requires 3 gallons of ethanol. Are you going to generate enough effluent in one day to feed the algae required to generate that? I though not.
Non-food cellulose is an option, but frankly that stuff is already being used now -- plowed back under, ground into cattle feed, a bunch of other uses.
Extracting nitrogen from the air might be an amplifier. What are the long term effects of that, I wonder.
An algae farm large enough to support the automotive fuel needs of the US completely would require a set of ponds the size of New Mexico. A prerequisite for the ponds is that they be at least 10-15 meters deep, flushable to the sea (not far inland), on a site with good heavy transportation infrastructure. For a pilot project New Orleans is an ideal site.
He's not a saint, but he got the job done and he didn't break the law. In a country where you can serve on the DC city council while in prison for buying crack cocaine from a prostitute on national TV, run for mayor of DC shortly therafter, and win, he's a cut above the common politician. I'll take him for governor over the idiot that wants to waste billions of taxpayer dollars building a freeway in a tunnel in loamy soil on a waterfront that's going to be under water itself in fifty years, any day. I'll agree with the other poster -- he likes attention. He's more Ralph Nader than Thomas Jefferson, but we're lucky to have him.
More was made of his pathetic salary than should have been, and that was a hatchet job. It was nothing less than an attempt to derail the tax revolt by assailing the character of the primary figure. It failed in that, but your post proves it succeeded in reducing his effectiveness moving forward. That's a shame.
I want to know: Where is your disgust for the Attorney General that argued before the state supreme court in favor of the citizen's constitutional right to be unfairly taxed against his will, not once but three times running? Amnesia? Apathy?
The man saved his neighbors billions of dollars in egregiously unfair taxes, in the face of great personal peril. That he received a pittance for doing so to defray a small part of the personal loss it cost him when the state dragged the campaign into a third revisiting of the people's will is not a significant part of the story. That it was spun into some huge ethical lapse worthy of Watergate style coverage was indeed a hatchet job. That the vast resources of the State and the Press were brought to bear in a fruitless attempt to find some way to silence him and destroy his just cause is a significant part of this story because it reveals the dangers he faced bravely.
Tim Eyman is a hero -- the quality of citizen you could never hope to be, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
The limitless resources of the State were used to vilify Mr. Eyman, with the tacit participation of Seattle's notoriously liberal media. It was only when the legislature was faced with the prospect of growing "boot the rascals out" campaign that they reversed course on this tax and escaped being evicted from the statehouse by the narrowest margin ever.
It was too late to rescue what was widely held and by the government admitted to be one of the most regressive taxes in the country. It was not too late to make an object lesson of this citizen activist. Mr. Eyman suffered considerable risk in changing the system -- every aspect of his operation and his life were examined with the finest scrutiny in many attempts to have him stripped of all his worldly goods, imprisoned, and branded a criminal for life.
The entire experience illustrates the tyrrany of democracy: given enough time, any government becomes a threat to liberty.
In Washington State the sale of packaged liquor is a state monopoly, with certain rare exceptions. All profits on these sales go directly to the state. For the most part, the liquor stores sell liquor only (and state-run lottery products) and so a mixed drink requires multiple stores to assemble. In almost all cases the selection available is not as broad as you would find in any other state, and pricing is high. Liquor stores are closed on Sunday, and operating hours on days they are open are not what you would see in another state.
The liquor profits are a form of tax, so this may be marginally on topic.
Is the man who sweeps the warehouse in the MidWest not my Brother also? Is the UPS driver not my neighbor? Is there a way I can choose products where I know all the people involved got a living wage, and not break the benefit of the commerce by making it impossible for me to afford? Does the clerk at your local store make more than the ones at mine? Mine are poor. Do your neigbors not invest their retirement funds in large companies that make these transactions? Is it not a benefit to encourage businesses to compete in the field of supply chain efficiency?
My understanding of hard drives far exceeds the level of maintenance a reasonable person would consider worthwhile. If you require guidance in this area, I can appreciate your willingness to pay a premium for it.
And this "hard drive" you speak of... is it not made in Asia by robots and packaged by enslaved children? When you're done with it, will you ship this toxic component to your local landfill or will you "recycle" it by having it shipped back to asia, where it will be dismantled and strewn across farmers fields for the lead to leach into the groundwater?
The advantage goes to the virtual store. Physical stores have a host of problems that cost a great deal of money that online stores simply do not have. The biggest one that I can think of is:
Looks like Washington-staters won't be able to fib on their tax returns about internet purchases, starting in 2008.
The state has no income tax so for the most part state residents don't file returns. There is a form(PDF) people fill out if they bought things online or out of state but if you were going to lie on that form you wouldn't fill it out at all. Far fewer than 1% of Washington residents fill out this form.
Back when car tabs on a big RV cost more than $5,000/yr it was quite common to go to a neighboring state to buy the thing, which cost the state a great deal of money in lost sales tax. To recover this lost tax an enforcement program was begun, and several people were prosecuted and fined up to the full value of the vehicle. This raised public awareness of the tax to the point where a series of initiatives was passed to make the registration tabs on all vehicles a flat $30. A series of (IIRC) three initiatives was required because each initiative that was overwhelmingly passed was immediately opposed by the government, the courts, and the attorney general's office. It was turning into a parody of democratic principles. They even did a hatchet job on reputation of the citizen who started and pushed the $30 car tab movement, Tim Eyman. Eventually though they got the idea that the people weren't going to tolerate this tax any more and even though the AG had the initiatives that passed declared unconstitutional the legislature reduced the tax to $30 anyway.
Immediately after this Seattle and some other jurisdictions passed new add-on taxes for vehicles but called them by a new name. At present the taxes on vehicle registrations are still much more reasonable even in the worst case. The struggle on this issue in Washington continues and likely will not end.
There is currently a movement to install a personal income tax in Washington in the name of fairness. It is likely to get a lot of press, but no traction. The only way this would get popular support was if it was promised to lower other taxes also and the people of Washington know that would be a flat lie. Besides, several of the wealthiest business people in the world live in Washington and they can afford to have a state income tax quietly killed.
FTA:
The main sticking point revolved around a change the law makes on where sales tax goes when it is collected. Under current law, the jurisdiction where a product originates receives the sales tax. That doesn't help the state, if the product originates with an out-of-state Internet company.
Under the measure, the jurisdiction where the product is delivered would get the tax.
The change benefits some cities and towns, but hurts others. To solve this problem, the measure calls for mitigation, in which jurisdictions that lose money would receive payments from the state.
This "mitigation" sounds like a way for some bureaucrat to increase the "fairness" to his friends and family. That's going to end well.
I have customers that are still using MS Office 97, purchased almost ten years ago. Why? Because for them, it still works just fine.
It still works fine because, despite what everyone is trying to sell you, methods of creating and dealing with "documents" haven't changed in many years. The feature list wars were over a decade ago, and everybody won.
Unfortunately for you and software vendors, until they get you to buy it by subscription they have to reengineer the whole thing every few years to get you to buy it again or they go out of business. That and engineered incompatibility are the only things driving the MSOffice profit train.
Backhaul is much less than last mile and you know it. I know folks that get fttp gigabit access and well over 100Mbps bandwidth from their local electricity coop for about $75/mo. This is not in the heart of some metropolis, but in farming country. Their Internet is faster than local disk. It's no wonder the big comms companies got a law passed preventing everyone else from going muni broadband.
That, and there's many times more dark fiber out there than lit fiber.
The infrastructure is more than capable of handling many times the traffic it currently has. This is nothing but network providers trying to convince people that bandwidth is precious so they will pay more for it.
An artificial shortage.
The standard comcast service is capable of >50Mbps. They just don't give it to you because they want to charge more for "business" service.
# Application availability - more developers target Windows and eventually a lot of people want to run some niche software that does not work without Windows
Apps available in Linux are capable of all the work that needs to be done. That they don't trap you into supporting an old unobtanium DOS 5.0 machine until it wheezes its last and brings down your enterprise for lack of replacement is not a drawback. Try the sourceforge link at the top of the page.
# hardware vendors - If you run Windows you have more hardware choices and likely get a machine that meets your needs more cheaply than a Mac or Linux, as a result. (How many choices for Linux laptops do you have where everything works?)
Linux supports more devices than any other operating system ever. Multiple vendors offer and support laptops at reasonable prices.
# Package manager - Windows has a pretty lame software install/uninstall manager, but it is still better than nothing and is the king for supporting commercial, closed source developers.
Permissions for the Windows package manager allow any installer to install absolutely anything, including a root kit. This is not desirable behavior in a package manager.
# Antivirus/phishing features - OS X and Linux don't have a lot of need, but this is still not a bad precaution
Having an ecosystem that supports competing malware/antimalware solutions is not an advantage, not on my planet.
# Remote desktop features - have clients for more platforms than OS X's comparable feature, and is better than Linux for a few tasks, but worse for others.
Better in some ways, worse in others, advantage Windows? Huh? Did I read that right?
# Wider support for third party devices, everyone makes a Windows driver, not everyone makes an OS X or Linux driver
Second time for this old troll.
# Easier to find unofficial support from random people you know
You know the wrong people. This is changing fast, and is probably already better than you think.
# Indexed searching is useable by default
locate works for me. I don't know what the gui dependent use, but I'm sure there's something.
In short, all of your "windows advantages" are either old info or just plain wrong. Maybe it's time to get current?
Since there haven't been any real advancements in Microsoft software in several years, this is no change at all. Unless you consider the savings. Why would a government consider that?
A new desktop theme is not an operating systems revolution.
We should be grateful bureaucracy is so inefficient. Can you imagine how intrusive government could be with the wealth we give them, if only they spent it well?
Slashdot Mirror
But of course it's available if you do want it.
Naturally Linux Genuine Advantage is open source, and not to be outdone by Microsoft platform hackers a hack is available to auto-certify LGA without actually contacting the LGA server.
Developers, developers, developers
Many of them trying to keep afloat the bastardized zombie of a legacy project begun in DOS and ported to Win 3.1, Win32, Win64, .NET, Sun Java, MSJava, Sun Java again and Vista. None of them with Microsoft's preferred and undocumented internal APIs for any of those systems. Many of them with no clue how to write good code, managed by non-programmers who can't tell. Each of them insisting that each revision has slain their sacred cow. So many of them that any patch no matter how trivial breaks some critical application for some enterprise somewhere.
Working against a system that has to be so locked down a non-admin can't save a shortcut on the desktop, and still isn't secure.
They've built their house upon the sand and act surprised that it falls on them frequently. It's like a physical comedy where the same stupid ladder gag gets the laughs no matter how many times the audience has seen it.
Vista published in 2007 vulnerable to the functional equivalent of Comet Cursor, published in 1995. That's rich humor there, boy.
--- making a mint rolling back Vista "upgrades": priceless.
Over the next fifty years or so the conversion of much northern real estate from arctic tundra to arable land may offset population growth to some degree.
So, was it math you majored in, or history? Your reasoning is sound.
The problem is that given a choice between a human-led organization capable of enforcing population control or the otherwise unavoidable famine and resource wars, I favor the latter and I believe most others do too. My offspring are less likely to thrive in the former environment and less likely to reach their human potential.
I still hold on to hope for the power of genius in the face of dire need. Perhaps when the crisis is closer... there is some time yet.
I do agree with your post, though -- at some level, we're no more than bacteria in a dish. We will reproduce to consume all available resources and then evolve to compete for the effluent of prior generations until there is nothing left. Or we'll escape the dish. Or both.
Outside of an election year, there just isn't that much effluent in the US. Imagine, if you will, that your daily commute requires 3 gallons of ethanol. Are you going to generate enough effluent in one day to feed the algae required to generate that? I though not.
Non-food cellulose is an option, but frankly that stuff is already being used now -- plowed back under, ground into cattle feed, a bunch of other uses.
Extracting nitrogen from the air might be an amplifier. What are the long term effects of that, I wonder.
An algae farm large enough to support the automotive fuel needs of the US completely would require a set of ponds the size of New Mexico. A prerequisite for the ponds is that they be at least 10-15 meters deep, flushable to the sea (not far inland), on a site with good heavy transportation infrastructure. For a pilot project New Orleans is an ideal site.
This evolution would bring together the legendary speed of postgresql with the phenomenal consistency and standards compliance of MySQL.
Which is to say, it's completely backward -- a fusion of the worst of each.
Oh, the lameness of it. All I can post is 'ditto'.
Years ago.
Yes, there were problems. They were fixed. All good now. Faster is better. Lower watts is better. Denser is better. Now let's work on cheaper.
He's not a saint, but he got the job done and he didn't break the law. In a country where you can serve on the DC city council while in prison for buying crack cocaine from a prostitute on national TV, run for mayor of DC shortly therafter, and win, he's a cut above the common politician. I'll take him for governor over the idiot that wants to waste billions of taxpayer dollars building a freeway in a tunnel in loamy soil on a waterfront that's going to be under water itself in fifty years, any day. I'll agree with the other poster -- he likes attention. He's more Ralph Nader than Thomas Jefferson, but we're lucky to have him.
More was made of his pathetic salary than should have been, and that was a hatchet job. It was nothing less than an attempt to derail the tax revolt by assailing the character of the primary figure. It failed in that, but your post proves it succeeded in reducing his effectiveness moving forward. That's a shame.
I want to know: Where is your disgust for the Attorney General that argued before the state supreme court in favor of the citizen's constitutional right to be unfairly taxed against his will, not once but three times running? Amnesia? Apathy?
The man saved his neighbors billions of dollars in egregiously unfair taxes, in the face of great personal peril. That he received a pittance for doing so to defray a small part of the personal loss it cost him when the state dragged the campaign into a third revisiting of the people's will is not a significant part of the story. That it was spun into some huge ethical lapse worthy of Watergate style coverage was indeed a hatchet job. That the vast resources of the State and the Press were brought to bear in a fruitless attempt to find some way to silence him and destroy his just cause is a significant part of this story because it reveals the dangers he faced bravely.
Tim Eyman is a hero -- the quality of citizen you could never hope to be, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
The limitless resources of the State were used to vilify Mr. Eyman, with the tacit participation of Seattle's notoriously liberal media. It was only when the legislature was faced with the prospect of growing "boot the rascals out" campaign that they reversed course on this tax and escaped being evicted from the statehouse by the narrowest margin ever.
It was too late to rescue what was widely held and by the government admitted to be one of the most regressive taxes in the country. It was not too late to make an object lesson of this citizen activist. Mr. Eyman suffered considerable risk in changing the system -- every aspect of his operation and his life were examined with the finest scrutiny in many attempts to have him stripped of all his worldly goods, imprisoned, and branded a criminal for life.
The entire experience illustrates the tyrrany of democracy: given enough time, any government becomes a threat to liberty.
In Washington State the sale of packaged liquor is a state monopoly, with certain rare exceptions. All profits on these sales go directly to the state. For the most part, the liquor stores sell liquor only (and state-run lottery products) and so a mixed drink requires multiple stores to assemble. In almost all cases the selection available is not as broad as you would find in any other state, and pricing is high. Liquor stores are closed on Sunday, and operating hours on days they are open are not what you would see in another state.
The liquor profits are a form of tax, so this may be marginally on topic.
Is the man who sweeps the warehouse in the MidWest not my Brother also? Is the UPS driver not my neighbor? Is there a way I can choose products where I know all the people involved got a living wage, and not break the benefit of the commerce by making it impossible for me to afford? Does the clerk at your local store make more than the ones at mine? Mine are poor. Do your neigbors not invest their retirement funds in large companies that make these transactions? Is it not a benefit to encourage businesses to compete in the field of supply chain efficiency?
My understanding of hard drives far exceeds the level of maintenance a reasonable person would consider worthwhile. If you require guidance in this area, I can appreciate your willingness to pay a premium for it.
And this "hard drive" you speak of... is it not made in Asia by robots and packaged by enslaved children? When you're done with it, will you ship this toxic component to your local landfill or will you "recycle" it by having it shipped back to asia, where it will be dismantled and strewn across farmers fields for the lead to leach into the groundwater?
I don't see the karma here.
The advantage goes to the virtual store. Physical stores have a host of problems that cost a great deal of money that online stores simply do not have. The biggest one that I can think of is:
They close.
The state has no income tax so for the most part state residents don't file returns. There is a form(PDF) people fill out if they bought things online or out of state but if you were going to lie on that form you wouldn't fill it out at all. Far fewer than 1% of Washington residents fill out this form.
Back when car tabs on a big RV cost more than $5,000/yr it was quite common to go to a neighboring state to buy the thing, which cost the state a great deal of money in lost sales tax. To recover this lost tax an enforcement program was begun, and several people were prosecuted and fined up to the full value of the vehicle. This raised public awareness of the tax to the point where a series of initiatives was passed to make the registration tabs on all vehicles a flat $30. A series of (IIRC) three initiatives was required because each initiative that was overwhelmingly passed was immediately opposed by the government, the courts, and the attorney general's office. It was turning into a parody of democratic principles. They even did a hatchet job on reputation of the citizen who started and pushed the $30 car tab movement, Tim Eyman. Eventually though they got the idea that the people weren't going to tolerate this tax any more and even though the AG had the initiatives that passed declared unconstitutional the legislature reduced the tax to $30 anyway.
Immediately after this Seattle and some other jurisdictions passed new add-on taxes for vehicles but called them by a new name. At present the taxes on vehicle registrations are still much more reasonable even in the worst case. The struggle on this issue in Washington continues and likely will not end.
There is currently a movement to install a personal income tax in Washington in the name of fairness. It is likely to get a lot of press, but no traction. The only way this would get popular support was if it was promised to lower other taxes also and the people of Washington know that would be a flat lie. Besides, several of the wealthiest business people in the world live in Washington and they can afford to have a state income tax quietly killed.
FTA:
This "mitigation" sounds like a way for some bureaucrat to increase the "fairness" to his friends and family. That's going to end well.
version 2.
It still works fine because, despite what everyone is trying to sell you, methods of creating and dealing with "documents" haven't changed in many years. The feature list wars were over a decade ago, and everybody won.
Unfortunately for you and software vendors, until they get you to buy it by subscription they have to reengineer the whole thing every few years to get you to buy it again or they go out of business. That and engineered incompatibility are the only things driving the MSOffice profit train.
Get off the train to crazytown. Use OO.o already.
That, and there's many times more dark fiber out there than lit fiber.
It's all lies. Bandwidth is not precious.
An artificial shortage.
The standard comcast service is capable of >50Mbps. They just don't give it to you because they want to charge more for "business" service.
Apps available in Linux are capable of all the work that needs to be done. That they don't trap you into supporting an old unobtanium DOS 5.0 machine until it wheezes its last and brings down your enterprise for lack of replacement is not a drawback. Try the sourceforge link at the top of the page.
Linux supports more devices than any other operating system ever. Multiple vendors offer and support laptops at reasonable prices.
Permissions for the Windows package manager allow any installer to install absolutely anything, including a root kit. This is not desirable behavior in a package manager.
Having an ecosystem that supports competing malware/antimalware solutions is not an advantage, not on my planet.
Better in some ways, worse in others, advantage Windows? Huh? Did I read that right?
Second time for this old troll.
You know the wrong people. This is changing fast, and is probably already better than you think.
locate works for me. I don't know what the gui dependent use, but I'm sure there's something.
In short, all of your "windows advantages" are either old info or just plain wrong. Maybe it's time to get current?
A new desktop theme is not an operating systems revolution.
We should be grateful bureaucracy is so inefficient. Can you imagine how intrusive government could be with the wealth we give them, if only they spent it well?
To get as much bad data into their database as we can.
Yer smart.
If we could, the Spam buying morons would drink it and log off.
<idea>...