Heh, so if advertising were eliminated, the Internet would contain only research, reference materials, and personal/individual home pages? Like it was intended to be in the first place?
Unfortunately, no, they can still litigate to harass and irritate -- remember, it costs each party to participate (the Plaintiff has to pay the filing costs and such, but both sides have to pay their own lawyers).
It won't get far if they take on a medium-to-large business, but they can still hassle small shops enough to be a problem. No, this didn't reach the litigation here and likely won't, but it's not cheap to defend against a civil suit. Think "a few thousand dollars" just to have a lawyer say "sure, I'll take the case" and a good $20-$30k more if it actually goes to trial.
I really hate to point out the obvious, but couldn't a legitimate reason for desiring anonymity simply be "I can't afford the litigation that would come from this litigious windbag if he knew who I was?"
I'm not a big fan of "if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear" reasoning, especially used like this. You damn well *do* have something to fear: you can be completely right, speaking nothing but truth and exposing a genuine fraud, con, or scam, and get sued into the stone age by the very people you're exposing, and *lose* just because you don't have the cash on hand to hire a competent lawyer to defend you (and the ACLU/EFF don't pick up just every little case).
The anonymous blogger here may or may not be an actual attorney (maybe it's meant to throw people off the trail, or maybe it's real); it doesn't much matter. The content of the blogger's message has so far turned out to be accurate (third parties have validated it).
Preventing causing issues among individual clients that:
Run on platforms that can't handle files larger than 2GB or 4GB
Run on platforms that set ridiculously low limits on simultaneous open file handles
Avoiding storing metadata for over 500,000 files inside the actual.torrent file (a client can reasonably handle a few (or even a few hundred) files being tracked individually in a torrent; half a million? That's a lot of pain waiting for just about any client not specifically written to handle gigantic torrents like that)
There are limits, even in the mighty BitTorrent protocol. You can't reasonably sling 500,000+ files around without archiving them somehow.
They need to either get this right and kill no one in the first few HUNDRED launches of the vehicle (if it's not superseded by then) or convince people that if we do incur a few deaths they are the price that has to be paid.
They've succeeded completely in the second count there -- in 120 launches, 14 human lives have been lost in two accidents (one on launch, one during reentry). Hundreds of humans have taken over a hundred trips into space on the shuttle, and the vehicle has killed only a handful of them.
That's encryption between client and server. Mail still gets sent in-the-clear, in plaintext. GMail does not (sadly) implement any PPK encryption.
I'd love to have that integrated right in GMail (verifying signatures, handling encryption/decryption) but the only (reasonably) secure way to actually do it is to shove all the encryption parts into the client-side part of the interface. GMail could store public keys so that the server could do signature verification, while the client-side piece (that never sends the private key (protected by passphrase or not) to the server) handles actual encryption/decryption/signing tasks. It'd probably be a bit on the slow side but that probably doesn't matter a huge amount for simple text messages.
Even then you'd still be trusting Google to send you a reliable, secure client that can't be tricked into giving up private keys, and that their *own* servers can't ever "trick" the client side piece into sending private keys.
The only alternative is to use GMail (and any of the other webmails, or really any mail server) as transport only, and just do encryption/decryption/signatures/verifies offline. That's *safest*, but it's a pain in the arse for most people:)
I know, I know, don't feed the trolls... sigh. I digress.
As I said, for software support. Let's face facts, there is tons of software that is not on Linux that people want. How much longer is the Linux community going to ignore this fact? That's why I a main machine that runs Windows and a machine I play around with that has Linux.
This just isn't true anymore. There are tools that run exclusively on Linux and tools that run exclusively on Windows, but the gap is much narrower now than it was ten years ago, and the "Linux community" isn't ignoring that fact -- that's why there is still lots of Linux application development going on, or did you somehow miss it all?
You may "play" with Linux, but I do all (read: 100%) of my income-earning work on a Linux desktop. There are many others like me.
He might *know* somebody... or the machine may be purchased as a gift for somebody, *by* somebody who has the machine and knowledge.
Won't the target "community" be, you know, a *community*, that exchanges knowledge and tools as needed? I would most certainly help any friend or acquaintance who asked me about installing a new OS on a dirt-cheap computer they'd just gotten their paws on.
Doing stuff like this (i.e. helping each other out) would definitely help bring a return of the old "shareware" gatherings wherein people exchanged floppies full of stuff. Those install-fests might see a resurgence, too. They're fun, and they bring actual communities together.
Oh joy. The computer, which has grown in complexity (both in hardware designs and in the software they can run) by orders of magnitude, is now in the same class as the toaster, whose evolution has largely stalled over the last 50 years (apart from some clever folks adding LCDs and countdown timers to the really spiffy ones).
My toaster can't take firmware updates or software updates. My toaster can be "hacked," after a fashion, if I am capable of opening it safely, changing the parts (the heating elements, the springs, the timers, etc.) and closing it back up, but it will never do more than toast bread (or set my house on fire).
Meanwhile, my computer has four parts in it that have field-replaceable firmware that control how they behave at the hardware level (motherboard, hard drives, DVD burner). It has more than a dozen internal ports that can be connected to quite literally thousands of different kinds of devices, all built/designed by different manufacturers (the SATA ports talk to storage devices; the PCI/AGP slots talk to networking, storage, communication, and video controllers; the USB ports talk to scanners, printers, cameras, storage devices, network devices, muxers, communication controllers, video cards, capture cards, etc.), and permits all of them to talk to the CPU and/or memory over a shared bus (sometimes with provisions to guarantee some or all of the bus' bandwidth or to guarantee certain minimum timing performance).
All of that hardware somehow cooperates when power is first applied to the system, and manages to load one of many different types of bootloaders, each with different capabilities of finding (and loading/executing) kernels from different filesystems, from different operating systems. These operating systems, in turn, load drivers to make the hardware do more than boot, and permit the users to run quite literally millions of different applications and programs, sometimes simultaneously (and sometimes with multiple users simultaneously). More advanced ones permit all these things while letting remote users do it over whatever network it's connected to.
But you're right -- it's just as "simple" as my fucking toaster. After all, I plug it in and it "just goes," doesn't it?
Be ignorant. Hate the "arrogant" people who make the "magic boxes" work so you can type your letters, spew your vitriol, and play back your porn. Mock the "geeks" that are perfectly willing to write the software themselves to drive the hardware they want to use when the original manufacturer won't (or can't). Support, with open arms and open wallet, the people and companies that seek nothing but profit while manipulating the market to squeeze out competitors who actually publish specs so their gear can be used anywhere.
It's not 1990 anymore, you're right. It's 2007. Stuff *is* supposed to be easier and "just work." And honestly, it *would* be that way if companies didn't selfishly guard their supposed "trade secrets." If things were actually open and cooperative, we wouldn't even be ranting about this stuff.
The trouble with regarding computers as mere "appliances" is that it implies that they're commodities. They're *not*. They *should* be, but they aren't. Yes, they're composed of interchangeable parts and software, but it doesn't all work well together. You can find (or deduce) the schematics of your toaster with a single afternoon's effort. Good luck just "conjuring" accurate information about programming a modern Broadcom wireless chipset in a month, much less a day or a week, unless you work for Broadcom.
99.9% of the human race *does* think like you think. While you're busy banging on the glorified toasters because the magic smoke leaked out, the "arrogant little shits" will still have gear that works because they knew what gear to buy:)
I hate to agree with a so-called "troll" here but he really does have a point -- I lived in his "hell" for a month on this HP/Compaq notebook that came with Vista. When it spontaneously uninstalled its own hard drive controller driver last week, rendering itself unbootable (ironically, the bootloader could bootstrap the kernel, but mysteriously then the kernel instantly forgot how to talk to the disks -- the only repair option available? Blow it all away and reload the factory image), I removed Vista entirely and stuck Ubuntu 7.10 on this thing. I've been happy every since:)
Things run faster, are more stable, and I have more useful tools and software here. OpenGL (3D stuff) works great, I can still run all the apps I use (since they're cross-platform anyway:)), and I get my work done much faster. Strangely, I'm even getting *much* better battery life out of the internal battery on the laptop *and* on the external battery I use to extend the internal battery's life. Bluetooth *never* worked right in Vista, yet I'm tethered to a Windows Mobile 6-based phone wirelessly (via Bluetooth) for its Internet Connection Sharing right now to post this.
I think I'll take this idea offered by the original article here and go bug HP for a refund for Vista (or, if they won't do that, mebbe an "upgrade" to XP... not that I'd use it:)).
I think this might do more good than that -- these people could otherwise not afford any computer at all, meaning that sure, right now, they're unlikely to run out and buy a Windows-based machine. However, they now own a computer anyway, running Linux. Now they're getting used to it, learning to like it, and when it comes time to get another machine down the road (maybe when their lives are put back together a bit better), they'll be interested in keeping the platform they're used to (meaning they're a *new* market of up-and-coming customers, who won't be trained to seek out the latest Microsoft dreck).
The assumption is that anyone shopping there is aware of that policy and plans to abide by it, or else they wouldn't be shopping there. So, when someone seeks to avoid having his receipt inspected, it's likely for nefarious reasons.
The problem here is that's still a presumption of guilt without proof. "No, I don't want to be searched" is not an indicator of "nefarious" thinking (at least, it's not a good or "legal" one). The assumption that "anyone there is aware of that policy" is a faulty one. Who honestly walks into a store and watches the exit carefully as they walk in to see whether they "inspect receipts" or not? Whether a store "hides" that they do it or not is irrelevant; they don't get to detain everyone that refuses to hand over a receipt. As others have said here, a store's agent has to witness a theft or have CCTV footage of the same. I do go out of my way to look for this behavior and I try to avoid these places, but hey, sometimes when there's a good deal, it's worth risking a confrontation (because I still refuse all such "inspection" requests).
I'm stunned that we, as a society, have been even partially "trained" to obediently stop at the exit to "pass inspection." I (and many others like me) make it a point to refuse searches for any reason, from a police officer or otherwise. If I'm willing to tell an officer "no, you may not" if he asks to search my person, my vehicle, or my home, what chance does a store grunt have?:)
To stores that push this "inspection" nonsense, I say "bunk." I paid for my stuff. It's in a bag with your store's logo on it, because your cashier used your cash registers to charge my card (or accept my cash) to pay you for the stuff I've just purchased. Our transaction is done. I'm not interested in "proving" any further that it's paid for. Fix your system. Don't hassle me on my way out. I'm not your problem anyway (since I'm actually paying for stuff).
Folks sometimes raise the issue of membership clubs that make "mandatory receipt inspections" a part of the membership terms, but even that's a wash. The most the store can do is revoke your membership if you refuse to "comply." They don't gain "magic police powers" just because they let you into their club.
You're absolutely right though in that these stores are not ignorant of the law here. Some of their underpaid minions might well be, but the stores know where the lines are. If CC has any brains whatsoever in this one, they'll offer this guy a nice, humble apology, along with a nice & shiny high-value gift card (or a check) to go with it. The officer actually citing the guy for a silly charge like "obstructing an officer" (or whatever phrasing they actually used) is an obvious "uh, I can't find anything to actually charge you with, but you were a jerk, so n'yah!" That's probably gonna cost the city/state a bit of cash, too, sadly.
What's so hard about comprehending the remarkably simple premise the grandparent offers? If you don't spend more than you make, you don't need any damned credit. If your apartment/house/whatever costs $600 a month, your other bills are $200 a month, and you make $1,400 a month, then *duh* you don't really need to borrow any money for much of anything, now do you?
You go on and on about all the little bits of "reality" the GP is ignoring, but you're not bothering to verify any of *your* claims either.
The GP is completely and entirely right: if you never borrowed any money to start with and you're just living comfortably, saving what you can for as long as you can, by the time you get to a point where you need to buy something really big (like a house), you might already have enough cash on hand to just flat-out buy it, but if not, you've got more than enough cash for a down payment to make a mortgage company approve your loan application.
And like another poster here said, if you've got 20% to put down on a home, you'll get approved for a mortgage no matter how crappy your credit is.
It really sounds like you want to blame this thrifty guy for all the nation's ills. Many of the "victims" of the circumstances you describe (from the government, burying itself ever-further into debt, to the people stuck in upside-down mortgages now) got there by *borrowing money they shouldn't have spent*.
How can you be so obtuse? The best part is how you suggest he must be "hiding something"... he's not, you dolt. He just didn't blow as much money as lots of other people have:) Be bitter and jealous if you want, but "earn more than you spend, save what you don't spend" is a perfectly valid/legitimate saving strategy.
Good grief -- this is probably the single best response to the whole damned problem I've ever heard. The person initially deprived of the revenue that would have been generated had the thief not stolen anything gets the money they deserved, plus punitive damages.
Leaves room in the prisons for *actual* criminals, too:)
It's been noted that we are so inundated with advertising that whether we want it to or not, it *does* have an effect over time. Even making an active choice not to buy something advertised in an obnoxious way, we are still consciously (and provably) aware of specific brands. Brand recognition, even among people who don't buy that brand, helps the brand out -- if someone mentioned the brand, and you know what they're talking about without having to ask for clarification, the person mentioning the brand can just go right on talking like a shill. If you have to stop someone to ask "uh, what is 'foo'?" there's at least a chance they'll stop to wonder why the hell *they* know what it is.
The only way to stop advertising is to become educated about it. Learn to recognize every ad in every form; train yourself to be aware of as much of it as you can, to adjust your behavior accordingly. Make sure to teach *others* the same skills. I still say "soda" -- I never say "that name brand" -- and I refuse to use trademarks when describing common things even when someone thinks I'm weird for doing it.
As for this forced-ads crap, I'll just do with it what I did to TV and movies in general. I quit watching them. I've done a lot more reading these last few years than ever before, and I love it:)
Hehehe. Yeah, that'd be a lot of fun, actually. I'd love to watch somebody bust out a trumpet and start playing in a cell phone user's ear. The ensuing battle would be seriously funny stuff -- first the cell phone user would get indignant about the noise (an irony if I've ever seen one), then the trumpeter would pause long enough to toss an insult, then fists would fly. There'd already be at least two flight attendants wondering who on the staff will get sued if one of them starts laughing, being very careful not to actually get involved until someone draws blood.
Then some uninvolved guy who's been sitting there chuckling at the idiots fighting about their beloved noises would get thunked by accident, then he'd stand up and lay them both out cold with a clothesline shot or a couple good right hooks, apologize to the flight attendants and passengers for hitting the assholes, get lots of applause, and go back about his business.
Yeah, people will be rude with their cell phones. Bring earplugs. If you can't handle earplugs, bring noise-canceling headphones. If you can't handle noise-canceling headphones, stick your fingers in your ears or learn to !@#$ing adapt. Obviously you'd have discovered your intense dislike/incompatibility with earplugs and headphones so you should be prepared for dealing with the consequences of that deficiency by now.
People who can't stand earplugs or noise cancelers are equivalent to people who go to concerts, stand by the big speaker stacks, then whine that the music's too loud. You're going to be around other people for a while when you get on an airplane. Please make a note of it, and please learn to deal with it. You'll live longer and have fewer heart problems. I promise.:)
Why the hell don't they just unpack the updates during the next boot up? Hell, even if it's one of those "Please wait while Windows installs updates..." and reboots again when it's done, what good is it to wreck a running environment/session? If replacing some component will knock the house of cards over, why not just change the deck as the machine's starting up the next time?
Of course, everyone has a big book of cocktail recipes at home.
Well, the aspiring bartenders, at least...
Smart individuals don't work behind bars, and the day a barman needs to bring recipe books to work in case the computer goes down is the day the world has gone mad.
Cool. The world's gone mad, as the parent is describing precisely this.
Actually, you can get game time a *lot* cheaper; it's $14.95 a month, or you can grab a game time code off eBay (I paid $38 for three months of game time).
The cool part is if you do subscribe (by paying them directly or by getting a game code), they still let you have the first 14 days free (they don't cancel/kill the free time you have left when you become a paying member).
The rest of your post is great, and spot-on, but I do have a question about the nuclear argument: environmentalists may not have the deepest pockets, but they have succeeded in stopping new nuclear power plant contruction dead in its tracks in the US. We haven't commissioned a new nuclear power plant (to my knowledge; I'd love to be wrong on this one, so let me know if I missed something) since the seventies, have we?
Because as the article suggests, it may be a functionality problem in the Intel hardware that the Microsoft driver exposes. Sure, Apple's not using Microsoft's drivers, but suppose their own work accidentally stumbles into this and starts grinding through those shiny new Mac batteries. What happens then? More accusations of FUD as batteries start going flat sooner than they're supposed to?
My girlfriend, who's currently applying for financial aid of various sorts to attend college locally here (I believe she's been accepted at the universities she's applied at; she's just waiting for financial aid), proudly told me today how she's looking forward to the $40 in FREE CASH she's getting from Dell.
When I asked her "huh? They're sending you free money?" she replied "yeah, they called and said they'd send me a $40 rebate if I bought a three-year warranty on my new computer!"
Naturally, she financed the warranty on her Dell charge account.
I asked her questions like "how much was it?" and "what service guarantees do they offer?" She knew how much it was ($108, apparently), but couldn't answer any of the others. Do they send a tech to her house to fix the machine when it breaks? Can she get help for non-Windows, non-Dell software problems (i.e. will they support QuickBooks mysteriously not starting one day)? Will they advance-ship replacement parts to her so she can send back the broken unit in the replacement's packaging at no cost to her?
She literally jumped at the notion of having $40 of real cash in her hands whilst a $108 charge gets put on an account she's "already paying every month anyway."
Sigh. Best part was how she got mad at me for asking all those questions. Heh.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, so if advertising were eliminated, the Internet would contain only research, reference materials, and personal/individual home pages? Like it was intended to be in the first place?
I fail to see the problem...
Unfortunately, no, they can still litigate to harass and irritate -- remember, it costs each party to participate (the Plaintiff has to pay the filing costs and such, but both sides have to pay their own lawyers).
It won't get far if they take on a medium-to-large business, but they can still hassle small shops enough to be a problem. No, this didn't reach the litigation here and likely won't, but it's not cheap to defend against a civil suit. Think "a few thousand dollars" just to have a lawyer say "sure, I'll take the case" and a good $20-$30k more if it actually goes to trial.
... that don't actually hit every year ... and don't really do a hell of a lot of damage on average ...
I really hate to point out the obvious, but couldn't a legitimate reason for desiring anonymity simply be "I can't afford the litigation that would come from this litigious windbag if he knew who I was?"
I'm not a big fan of "if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear" reasoning, especially used like this. You damn well *do* have something to fear: you can be completely right, speaking nothing but truth and exposing a genuine fraud, con, or scam, and get sued into the stone age by the very people you're exposing, and *lose* just because you don't have the cash on hand to hire a competent lawyer to defend you (and the ACLU/EFF don't pick up just every little case).
The anonymous blogger here may or may not be an actual attorney (maybe it's meant to throw people off the trail, or maybe it's real); it doesn't much matter. The content of the blogger's message has so far turned out to be accurate (third parties have validated it).
Heh, so it's just plain broken, without even the excuse of "it's for DRM, suckers!" to help explain it? That's neat.
- Preventing causing issues among individual clients that:
- Run on platforms that can't handle files larger than 2GB or 4GB
- Run on platforms that set ridiculously low limits on simultaneous open file handles
- Avoiding storing metadata for over 500,000 files inside the actual
.torrent file (a client can reasonably handle a few (or even a few hundred) files being tracked individually in a torrent; half a million? That's a lot of pain waiting for just about any client not specifically written to handle gigantic torrents like that)
There are limits, even in the mighty BitTorrent protocol. You can't reasonably sling 500,000+ files around without archiving them somehow.Hehehehe. Looks like it worked perfectly to me, Anonymous Coward :)
They've succeeded completely in the second count there -- in 120 launches, 14 human lives have been lost in two accidents (one on launch, one during reentry). Hundreds of humans have taken over a hundred trips into space on the shuttle, and the vehicle has killed only a handful of them.
That's encryption between client and server. Mail still gets sent in-the-clear, in plaintext. GMail does not (sadly) implement any PPK encryption.
:)
I'd love to have that integrated right in GMail (verifying signatures, handling encryption/decryption) but the only (reasonably) secure way to actually do it is to shove all the encryption parts into the client-side part of the interface. GMail could store public keys so that the server could do signature verification, while the client-side piece (that never sends the private key (protected by passphrase or not) to the server) handles actual encryption/decryption/signing tasks. It'd probably be a bit on the slow side but that probably doesn't matter a huge amount for simple text messages.
Even then you'd still be trusting Google to send you a reliable, secure client that can't be tricked into giving up private keys, and that their *own* servers can't ever "trick" the client side piece into sending private keys.
The only alternative is to use GMail (and any of the other webmails, or really any mail server) as transport only, and just do encryption/decryption/signatures/verifies offline. That's *safest*, but it's a pain in the arse for most people
This just isn't true anymore. There are tools that run exclusively on Linux and tools that run exclusively on Windows, but the gap is much narrower now than it was ten years ago, and the "Linux community" isn't ignoring that fact -- that's why there is still lots of Linux application development going on, or did you somehow miss it all?
You may "play" with Linux, but I do all (read: 100%) of my income-earning work on a Linux desktop. There are many others like me.
He might *know* somebody ... or the machine may be purchased as a gift for somebody, *by* somebody who has the machine and knowledge.
:)
Won't the target "community" be, you know, a *community*, that exchanges knowledge and tools as needed? I would most certainly help any friend or acquaintance who asked me about installing a new OS on a dirt-cheap computer they'd just gotten their paws on.
Doing stuff like this (i.e. helping each other out) would definitely help bring a return of the old "shareware" gatherings wherein people exchanged floppies full of stuff. Those install-fests might see a resurgence, too. They're fun, and they bring actual communities together.
Not a bad thing.
Oh joy. The computer, which has grown in complexity (both in hardware designs and in the software they can run) by orders of magnitude, is now in the same class as the toaster, whose evolution has largely stalled over the last 50 years (apart from some clever folks adding LCDs and countdown timers to the really spiffy ones).
:)
My toaster can't take firmware updates or software updates. My toaster can be "hacked," after a fashion, if I am capable of opening it safely, changing the parts (the heating elements, the springs, the timers, etc.) and closing it back up, but it will never do more than toast bread (or set my house on fire).
Meanwhile, my computer has four parts in it that have field-replaceable firmware that control how they behave at the hardware level (motherboard, hard drives, DVD burner). It has more than a dozen internal ports that can be connected to quite literally thousands of different kinds of devices, all built/designed by different manufacturers (the SATA ports talk to storage devices; the PCI/AGP slots talk to networking, storage, communication, and video controllers; the USB ports talk to scanners, printers, cameras, storage devices, network devices, muxers, communication controllers, video cards, capture cards, etc.), and permits all of them to talk to the CPU and/or memory over a shared bus (sometimes with provisions to guarantee some or all of the bus' bandwidth or to guarantee certain minimum timing performance).
All of that hardware somehow cooperates when power is first applied to the system, and manages to load one of many different types of bootloaders, each with different capabilities of finding (and loading/executing) kernels from different filesystems, from different operating systems. These operating systems, in turn, load drivers to make the hardware do more than boot, and permit the users to run quite literally millions of different applications and programs, sometimes simultaneously (and sometimes with multiple users simultaneously). More advanced ones permit all these things while letting remote users do it over whatever network it's connected to.
But you're right -- it's just as "simple" as my fucking toaster. After all, I plug it in and it "just goes," doesn't it?
Be ignorant. Hate the "arrogant" people who make the "magic boxes" work so you can type your letters, spew your vitriol, and play back your porn. Mock the "geeks" that are perfectly willing to write the software themselves to drive the hardware they want to use when the original manufacturer won't (or can't). Support, with open arms and open wallet, the people and companies that seek nothing but profit while manipulating the market to squeeze out competitors who actually publish specs so their gear can be used anywhere.
It's not 1990 anymore, you're right. It's 2007. Stuff *is* supposed to be easier and "just work." And honestly, it *would* be that way if companies didn't selfishly guard their supposed "trade secrets." If things were actually open and cooperative, we wouldn't even be ranting about this stuff.
The trouble with regarding computers as mere "appliances" is that it implies that they're commodities. They're *not*. They *should* be, but they aren't. Yes, they're composed of interchangeable parts and software, but it doesn't all work well together. You can find (or deduce) the schematics of your toaster with a single afternoon's effort. Good luck just "conjuring" accurate information about programming a modern Broadcom wireless chipset in a month, much less a day or a week, unless you work for Broadcom.
99.9% of the human race *does* think like you think. While you're busy banging on the glorified toasters because the magic smoke leaked out, the "arrogant little shits" will still have gear that works because they knew what gear to buy
I hate to agree with a so-called "troll" here but he really does have a point -- I lived in his "hell" for a month on this HP/Compaq notebook that came with Vista. When it spontaneously uninstalled its own hard drive controller driver last week, rendering itself unbootable (ironically, the bootloader could bootstrap the kernel, but mysteriously then the kernel instantly forgot how to talk to the disks -- the only repair option available? Blow it all away and reload the factory image), I removed Vista entirely and stuck Ubuntu 7.10 on this thing. I've been happy every since :)
Things run faster, are more stable, and I have more useful tools and software here. OpenGL (3D stuff) works great, I can still run all the apps I use (since they're cross-platform anyway :)), and I get my work done much faster. Strangely, I'm even getting *much* better battery life out of the internal battery on the laptop *and* on the external battery I use to extend the internal battery's life. Bluetooth *never* worked right in Vista, yet I'm tethered to a Windows Mobile 6-based phone wirelessly (via Bluetooth) for its Internet Connection Sharing right now to post this.
I think I'll take this idea offered by the original article here and go bug HP for a refund for Vista (or, if they won't do that, mebbe an "upgrade" to XP ... not that I'd use it :)).
I think this might do more good than that -- these people could otherwise not afford any computer at all, meaning that sure, right now, they're unlikely to run out and buy a Windows-based machine. However, they now own a computer anyway, running Linux. Now they're getting used to it, learning to like it, and when it comes time to get another machine down the road (maybe when their lives are put back together a bit better), they'll be interested in keeping the platform they're used to (meaning they're a *new* market of up-and-coming customers, who won't be trained to seek out the latest Microsoft dreck).
The problem here is that's still a presumption of guilt without proof. "No, I don't want to be searched" is not an indicator of "nefarious" thinking (at least, it's not a good or "legal" one). The assumption that "anyone there is aware of that policy" is a faulty one. Who honestly walks into a store and watches the exit carefully as they walk in to see whether they "inspect receipts" or not? Whether a store "hides" that they do it or not is irrelevant; they don't get to detain everyone that refuses to hand over a receipt. As others have said here, a store's agent has to witness a theft or have CCTV footage of the same. I do go out of my way to look for this behavior and I try to avoid these places, but hey, sometimes when there's a good deal, it's worth risking a confrontation (because I still refuse all such "inspection" requests).
I'm stunned that we, as a society, have been even partially "trained" to obediently stop at the exit to "pass inspection." I (and many others like me) make it a point to refuse searches for any reason, from a police officer or otherwise. If I'm willing to tell an officer "no, you may not" if he asks to search my person, my vehicle, or my home, what chance does a store grunt have? :)
To stores that push this "inspection" nonsense, I say "bunk." I paid for my stuff. It's in a bag with your store's logo on it, because your cashier used your cash registers to charge my card (or accept my cash) to pay you for the stuff I've just purchased. Our transaction is done. I'm not interested in "proving" any further that it's paid for. Fix your system. Don't hassle me on my way out. I'm not your problem anyway (since I'm actually paying for stuff).
Folks sometimes raise the issue of membership clubs that make "mandatory receipt inspections" a part of the membership terms, but even that's a wash. The most the store can do is revoke your membership if you refuse to "comply." They don't gain "magic police powers" just because they let you into their club.
You're absolutely right though in that these stores are not ignorant of the law here. Some of their underpaid minions might well be, but the stores know where the lines are. If CC has any brains whatsoever in this one, they'll offer this guy a nice, humble apology, along with a nice & shiny high-value gift card (or a check) to go with it. The officer actually citing the guy for a silly charge like "obstructing an officer" (or whatever phrasing they actually used) is an obvious "uh, I can't find anything to actually charge you with, but you were a jerk, so n'yah!" That's probably gonna cost the city/state a bit of cash, too, sadly.
Wow, you're a bitter little one, aren't you?
... he's not, you dolt. He just didn't blow as much money as lots of other people have :) Be bitter and jealous if you want, but "earn more than you spend, save what you don't spend" is a perfectly valid/legitimate saving strategy.
What's so hard about comprehending the remarkably simple premise the grandparent offers? If you don't spend more than you make, you don't need any damned credit. If your apartment/house/whatever costs $600 a month, your other bills are $200 a month, and you make $1,400 a month, then *duh* you don't really need to borrow any money for much of anything, now do you?
You go on and on about all the little bits of "reality" the GP is ignoring, but you're not bothering to verify any of *your* claims either.
The GP is completely and entirely right: if you never borrowed any money to start with and you're just living comfortably, saving what you can for as long as you can, by the time you get to a point where you need to buy something really big (like a house), you might already have enough cash on hand to just flat-out buy it, but if not, you've got more than enough cash for a down payment to make a mortgage company approve your loan application.
And like another poster here said, if you've got 20% to put down on a home, you'll get approved for a mortgage no matter how crappy your credit is.
It really sounds like you want to blame this thrifty guy for all the nation's ills. Many of the "victims" of the circumstances you describe (from the government, burying itself ever-further into debt, to the people stuck in upside-down mortgages now) got there by *borrowing money they shouldn't have spent*.
How can you be so obtuse? The best part is how you suggest he must be "hiding something"
Good grief -- this is probably the single best response to the whole damned problem I've ever heard. The person initially deprived of the revenue that would have been generated had the thief not stolen anything gets the money they deserved, plus punitive damages.
:)
Leaves room in the prisons for *actual* criminals, too
Well done!
It's been noted that we are so inundated with advertising that whether we want it to or not, it *does* have an effect over time. Even making an active choice not to buy something advertised in an obnoxious way, we are still consciously (and provably) aware of specific brands. Brand recognition, even among people who don't buy that brand, helps the brand out -- if someone mentioned the brand, and you know what they're talking about without having to ask for clarification, the person mentioning the brand can just go right on talking like a shill. If you have to stop someone to ask "uh, what is 'foo'?" there's at least a chance they'll stop to wonder why the hell *they* know what it is.
:)
The only way to stop advertising is to become educated about it. Learn to recognize every ad in every form; train yourself to be aware of as much of it as you can, to adjust your behavior accordingly. Make sure to teach *others* the same skills. I still say "soda" -- I never say "that name brand" -- and I refuse to use trademarks when describing common things even when someone thinks I'm weird for doing it.
As for this forced-ads crap, I'll just do with it what I did to TV and movies in general. I quit watching them. I've done a lot more reading these last few years than ever before, and I love it
Hehehe. Yeah, that'd be a lot of fun, actually. I'd love to watch somebody bust out a trumpet and start playing in a cell phone user's ear. The ensuing battle would be seriously funny stuff -- first the cell phone user would get indignant about the noise (an irony if I've ever seen one), then the trumpeter would pause long enough to toss an insult, then fists would fly. There'd already be at least two flight attendants wondering who on the staff will get sued if one of them starts laughing, being very careful not to actually get involved until someone draws blood.
:)
Then some uninvolved guy who's been sitting there chuckling at the idiots fighting about their beloved noises would get thunked by accident, then he'd stand up and lay them both out cold with a clothesline shot or a couple good right hooks, apologize to the flight attendants and passengers for hitting the assholes, get lots of applause, and go back about his business.
Yeah, people will be rude with their cell phones. Bring earplugs. If you can't handle earplugs, bring noise-canceling headphones. If you can't handle noise-canceling headphones, stick your fingers in your ears or learn to !@#$ing adapt. Obviously you'd have discovered your intense dislike/incompatibility with earplugs and headphones so you should be prepared for dealing with the consequences of that deficiency by now.
People who can't stand earplugs or noise cancelers are equivalent to people who go to concerts, stand by the big speaker stacks, then whine that the music's too loud. You're going to be around other people for a while when you get on an airplane. Please make a note of it, and please learn to deal with it. You'll live longer and have fewer heart problems. I promise.
Why the hell don't they just unpack the updates during the next boot up? Hell, even if it's one of those "Please wait while Windows installs updates..." and reboots again when it's done, what good is it to wreck a running environment/session? If replacing some component will knock the house of cards over, why not just change the deck as the machine's starting up the next time?
Well, the aspiring bartenders, at least...
Cool. The world's gone mad, as the parent is describing precisely this.
Actually, you can get game time a *lot* cheaper; it's $14.95 a month, or you can grab a game time code off eBay (I paid $38 for three months of game time). The cool part is if you do subscribe (by paying them directly or by getting a game code), they still let you have the first 14 days free (they don't cancel/kill the free time you have left when you become a paying member).
The rest of your post is great, and spot-on, but I do have a question about the nuclear argument: environmentalists may not have the deepest pockets, but they have succeeded in stopping new nuclear power plant contruction dead in its tracks in the US. We haven't commissioned a new nuclear power plant (to my knowledge; I'd love to be wrong on this one, so let me know if I missed something) since the seventies, have we?
Because as the article suggests, it may be a functionality problem in the Intel hardware that the Microsoft driver exposes. Sure, Apple's not using Microsoft's drivers, but suppose their own work accidentally stumbles into this and starts grinding through those shiny new Mac batteries. What happens then? More accusations of FUD as batteries start going flat sooner than they're supposed to?
My girlfriend, who's currently applying for financial aid of various sorts to attend college locally here (I believe she's been accepted at the universities she's applied at; she's just waiting for financial aid), proudly told me today how she's looking forward to the $40 in FREE CASH she's getting from Dell.
When I asked her "huh? They're sending you free money?" she replied "yeah, they called and said they'd send me a $40 rebate if I bought a three-year warranty on my new computer!"
Naturally, she financed the warranty on her Dell charge account.
I asked her questions like "how much was it?" and "what service guarantees do they offer?" She knew how much it was ($108, apparently), but couldn't answer any of the others. Do they send a tech to her house to fix the machine when it breaks? Can she get help for non-Windows, non-Dell software problems (i.e. will they support QuickBooks mysteriously not starting one day)? Will they advance-ship replacement parts to her so she can send back the broken unit in the replacement's packaging at no cost to her?
She literally jumped at the notion of having $40 of real cash in her hands whilst a $108 charge gets put on an account she's "already paying every month anyway."
Sigh. Best part was how she got mad at me for asking all those questions. Heh.