What?! Why? If they offer you an ethical way to remove ads and provide them with payment for the service, you specifically try to avoid using it? Makes no (ethical) sense.
Ethically, why am I obligated to view their ads?
Now, I do have a rule about Adblock: I don't download anyone else's list, I build my own. And I don't block any ads that don't animate, I don't even care if it's a static flash ad. But as soon as they animate, they're gone.
It refers to the kind of games the self-declared gamers want to use a box for, rather than the kind of games the intended audience is interested in (flash games, solitaire).
Self-declared gamers don't like Doom3 or Quake4? Self-declared gamers aren't eagerly awaiting the next Unreal games? And I know plenty of self-declared gamers that liked NWN.
There's a big difference between "Won't find" and "Won't find many". One is true, one is not.
The statement is factually untrue in the sense that "the world is round" is a factually untrue statement in the context of people who believe in a flat Earth (since, to the nerd, only a mathematically perfect sphere would qualify as "round").
I'll bite -- Earth is much rounder, in that sense, than a marble or a bowling ball (ignoring the finger holes), or really any kind of ball.
In the context of this debate, however, "the world is round" can actually be debated, if only semantically, but certain facts cannot be -- for instance, if you said "There is an edge of the world, where monsters live, and ships can sail off the edge if they're not careful", you'd be undeniably wrong.
Congratulation, you have discovered that consumer report is not written for nerds with autistic tendencies.
In which case, it should not be recommending Vista.
And who the hell is it written for, then? Should I be expecting similarly "expert" advice when I want to buy a car? Because, you see, I really don't want to buy the Windows Vista of cars.
And "expert" can also refer to the ability to explain complicated stuff in terms ordinary people can understand.
I can do that, too. Without also giving bad/wrong advice. (Yes, I see that article as both bad and wrong.)
The CR columnist probably didn't want to go into bumpy territory like installing XP on an EEE PC or other unofficial things
And why not?
It's not their job to teach every monkey how to install an OS, their job is to talk about saving money and avoiding scams.
Isn't installing XP on an EEE PC a decent way to save money? Doesn't it at least deserve mention?
Who said anything about teaching them to install an OS, anyway? They certainly mention things like upgrading from XP to Vista without "teaching them" how to do it. Just mention that the option is available, and Joe will go find Greg the Geek to do it for him.
And that's completely ignoring the point that for many Joes, especially if they already have a Windows desktop, everything they want a Laptop for is easily covered by a default Linux install. Yes, I said default.
If they're going to give me advice which is as laughably wrong to those experts as this "Choosing an OS" advice is to me, I'm not buying.
I would much rather ask someone knowledgeable in that field. And if I just want a "consumer" opinion, those are all over the Internet -- CR is thus obsoleted by the "rate this product" feedback boxes on Newegg and such.
How well are other genres and ratings represented on Linux?
That's why I mentioned Neverball, Neverwinter Nights, and Wesnoth.
No genre is represented well, but even if they aren't a fan of the FPS, it's damned sloppy to ignore them, or to use such a vague term as "Sophisticated 3D games."
I'll agree that paying less (and reading some ads) is preferable to paying more (and avoiding ads), if that's all there was to it. For instance, sites that offer a subscription service to avoid ads just make me turn Adblock on.
However, independence has the implication that they are not being paid to say something. Now, some of the things CR says make me wonder if they're either paid to say it, or are complete morons. But the idea is what counts.
Today, I had a long talk with my dad about what he does. I'd been talking a lot about my new job, so I wanted to hear more about what he does. His company -- two corporations, actually, so they can legally do both stocks and commodities, but it's the same people -- they're, well, a financial company. As in, you can bring them a big pile of money, and they'll invest it, and you get to involve yourself at varying levels. One of the things that came out in that discussion was, he provides two options for payment -- either a commission, or a yearly payment.
Well, he recommends the yearly payment, even if it might (sometimes) cost a bit more. It's better for him, obviously, because the company then gets a stable income in the form of regular checks. But it also provides some assurance to the customer that there's never any motivation for a trade other than because it will benefit the customer.
That is, if there's a commission, a broker might encourage a lot more trades than the client wants or needs, because it generates commissions. If there's no commission, you'd think it encourages doing less, to avoid work, and that's partially true. But it also means that the motivation for everything they do is to make money for their customers, so they stay customers, and because of how powerful word of mouth is in that industry.
So yes, I would pay for Consumer Reports, and I'd pay more for that independence. Except that after reading their articles on various software, I'd never be able to shake the feeling that they were screwing me over with their other recommendations -- that their car recommendations, for instance, might sound as laughable to a mechanic as their software recommendations sound to me.
I thought so, too. Then I read this review of the EEE PC. I was with them right up until this bit:
For more advanced tasks, consider getting a full-fledged laptop with a dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and Windows Vista.
First, what does "more advanced tasks" actually mean? I could use an EEE PC for programming, ssh access, and, I'm sure, many other things that this reviewer has never heard of.
Second, and most important: Why the fuck are they recommending Windows Vista? I was curious, so I found this other page, with these gems:
Windows Vista offers an array of improvements over XP aside from visual enhancements, new multitasking features and simpler home-network setup....
And, of course, no mention of the downsides -- of why you'd want to keep XP. (Well, there's a sort of casual mention of "If Vista does nothing for you, you can still buy a new PC with XP", but no mention of the insane number of bugs that still exist in Vista.)
Mac OS is considered by many to be easier to learn and use than Windows, and it's more secure against online threats because it's less of a target for malware writers.
Not to bring up the old debate again, but the fact that there is a debate is worth some mention, at least, right?
Linux, a free operating system with source code anyone can modify, is most appropriate for users who aren't intimidated by technology.... The only things you won't find are sophisticated 3D games.
Doom 3 isn't sophisticated? What about the new Unreal games?
Or did they mean "sophisticated" in the artsy/intellectual sense? As in, say, Neverwinter Nights, Neverball, Wesnoth, and the like?
I'm not claiming the situation is good for Linux gaming. But to claim there are no sophisticated games for it, even if we're all willing to ignore Wine/Cedega, is factually untrue. By "factually untrue", I mean it's in the realm of 2+2=5. Even for very large values of 2, that statement is wrong, and always will be.
You'll need additional software to access other file formats such as MP3 or iTunes.
No mention that it's free and easy to download/install this software. Oh, and it does seem to support mp3s out of the box.
As for Linux, you'll need more than just a casual knowledge of operating systems, because the interface is not entirely graphical.
That's a nonsensical statement. It's "not entirely graphical" in the same way that Windows and OS X are -- I can still run cmd.exe or Terminal. If they mean that you may occasionally have to do things with the commandline, well, that's also untrue -- and they must know this, having used Ubuntu.
If all you do is Web browsing and e-mail you can probably get by, but if you use a wide variety of applications, you're better off passing on Linux.
If all you do is Web browsing and e-mail and word documents and finances and web development and education and PDF reading and listening to music and creating music and putting music on your iPod and basic camera and photo scanning/editing and CD/DVD burning and scanning/OCR and Skype and instant messaging and IRC..... *inhal
Who's Mal a copy of? Spike? Don't make me laugh -- I like Mal, but that's an insult... to Spike.
How about Inara? Are you seriously going to argue that she's Faye?
Let's try the other way... Who's Ed? Are you claiming she's River? Are you fucking serious?
Bebop doesn't have a doctor. Firefly doesn't have a dog. Bebop doesn't have Companions. Firefly doesn't have hackers. Bebop doesn't have Jayne, and no, Jet doesn't count -- he has much more depth than Jayne, and Jayne is a lot funnier. Neither is just a giant hunk of muscle; in fact, they are about as different as two giant hunks of muscle can be.
I'm going to stop here, because I'm now convinced you are just trolling, and that you didn't bother to read my post.
but it's also the most important one to leave mysterious, because that's where it gets its power.
Any other show, any other writer, and you'd be right.
But look at River. Her mystery was powerful, wasn't it? Poor, crazy little girl, what did they do to her in that hospital... slowly finding out over the series, and then, explosively, fully realized in the movie. And just as powerful, just as tragically beautiful -- her theme song in the movie is a broken, slightly out-of-tune piano.
Ask yourself: Is River any less compelling of a character, once we know what she is?
If Joss wanted to, he could do Book's past justice. I'm not saying I care either way -- I'll probably love the comics anyway -- but he could do it right.
I'm really ticked that he had to take the cliffhanger ending from Season 1 and run it into the final movie, because that was shaping up to be an awesome ongoing issue in Season 2
You should read the comics, then. Those Left Behind bridges Firefly and Serenity pretty well. If I remember, it does include Inara and Book leaving.
It's a little pointed out fact that The Firefly series is almost a 1 on 1 copy of Cowboy Bebop.
Little pointed out because it's also completely wrong. Firefly borrows from lots of things; Cowboy Bebop is one.
I'll accept it's in the same genre (subgenre?) as Bebop, but, for example, where'd Inara come from? I know Jayne was inspired by a character from Alien, for instance. And the box River was in? Taken straight out of the first episode of Outlaw Star.
What sets Firefly apart isn't that it's revolutionary at all, but that it's so well done.
Most prequels suck, I think, because there's really no reason for them. They've run out of things to do in sequels, and they're looking for another direction to expand that universe, but it doesn't work, because it kind of ruins the originals. (Example: Star Wars. It's kind of hard to watch the originals after watching the prequels, and kind of hard to watch the prequels, period.)
But think about it -- the first few minutes of Serenity were a prequel, after all. And there actually is a ton of story there, maybe written out, maybe not.
Example: What did Book do before he was a Shephard, and why does the Alliance like him so much? Where else can you find out, except in a prequel or a flashback?
How did Mal come to side with the Independents, anyhow? Why did Inara leave House Madrassa? Why was the Alliance formed?
I'd much rather have a sequel, but unlike you, I'm not ready to kill it off. I want more Firefly, because I'm convinced the show was good enough that it wouldn't jump the shark. Think about it -- would Firefly really suck as much as Star Trek did after 7 seasons?
Martial arts are for some reason the greatest power in the universe.
Ok, this one I take issue with. Did you not see the gunfights?
And River is not a weapon because she's good at martial arts. She's a weapon because she can read minds, even unconsciously -- her martial arts (and gunplay, when she has a gun) are impossibly perfect.
So the rest of your points, I could debate for quite awhile, but it's really more a matter of opinion. (Example: Everyone does not always have to say it "witty", they do because that's what real people do. Quite frequently, they say it straight: "You turn on any of my crew, you turn on me. You did it to me, Jayne.")
Do you actually know what you're talking about, or are you just talking about some web interface?
There is a huge difference between being able to ssh in as root, and having the ability (with a web interface) to "reconfigure anything you want".
Simple example: The NAS we have at work, despite being basically a hard drive in a box with an ethernet port, does allow us to ssh in as root, which lets us use it for things it was not designed for at all -- for example, we could probably run BitTorrent on the box itself.
Compare that to my Linksys router at home, where if it's not on the admin pages, I can't do it. The only way to get more software on there is to upgrade the firmware, and I can't make my own firmware (at least, not for this one, I think).
Now, I understand that some systems are even more locked down -- some really do prevent you from making your own firmware at all, whereas some people have coaxed a custom Linux to run on Linksys routers that weren't designed for it. And some, your ISP basically disallows you from ever changing anything about the router.
But by "user-modifiable", what they are asking is whether we could recompile the Linux source and load new software, a new kernel, etc onto it.
If OLPC really WERE about the kids... why would they do everything possible to prevent people from getting the Classmate?
I don't know, because as far as I can tell, they aren't. The Classmate was a last-ditch effort by Microsoft and Intel to avoid being shut out of a whole generation.
Answer me this, then: If the Classmate really was about the kids, why does it, I don't know, exist in the first place? Why not simply take all that money and donate it to OLPC, which obviously has put a lot more thought and effort into the design of the machine?
If OLPC really were about the kids, they would be happy that "teh kidz" were getting computers, no matter who provided them or what it was running.
While this is true, I'm also quite disgusted by the behavior of the people behind the Classmate.
First, Intel dismisses the XO as a "gadget". Then the come out with their own machine, much later, with much less functionality, as a "Me too!" product.
Really, it's not that I'm unhappy that kids are getting computers, but rather, that this is an opportunity for these kids to get so much more -- for any of them to build the next generation of software, say. Take the ability to press a keystroke to reveal (and edit) the source code to any application on the OLPC -- can the Classmate do that? Will it ever be able to?
If you'd like to appear less hypocritical yourself, go read those press releases, and find out what the project is actually doing.
Oh, I know. What's significant about this isn't that Microsoft calls it EcmaScript -- they have to -- but that no one else does, even when you'd think they have to.
Well, being an *US*-American does make you refer to USA as "America" which is a continent (two continents, actually);-)
True enough, although I can say I have been to South America. Except no one calls it America there, they call it South America, or they call it Peru. (Or Chile, or Brazil, or...)
As for businesses, a quick list: The Mozilla foundation, Slashdot, Google and IBM as far as I know, various small businesses (Progressive Asset Management, Scribestorm, Thaddeus Computing, local restaurants...)
I will admit, it gets harder, as often what you thought was a good company gets bought by a larger, somewhat evil company, until you have this vast corporate empire that, being run by so many people, is too schizophrenic to properly classify. But I don't think I really need more than one good example, because my point isn't that there are many corporations, or even that there are any corporations, which are not corrupt.
My point is, it sickens me to see people use the "They're a business" excuse, because what usually follows is that complacency -- I mean, we're not a business, what can we do?
Except it's still generally called JavaScript no matter where it is -- things like a standalone SpiderMonkey, for instance.
Also, it's generally called EcmaScript on HD-DVD, even though there's decent DOM2 support. (Extended, of course, but given Microsoft's investment in the format, unlikely to be extinguished.)
They were Windows NT and 2K machines on an NT domain.
There was a domain-wide policy banning students from using certain EXEs -- cmd.exe, among other things. There was also no Flash installed, and no way to install Firefox plugins. I don't remember if the policy was inclusive or exclusive.
What we did:
Portable Firefox+Flash on USB drives. Also, legacy Doom on USB drives, and really any program we wanted, so long as we were careful to, ahem, avoid the EXE restrictions, which were based entirely on filename (excluding path). I should mention that Notepad.exe is a bitchin' game... I mean a perfectly valid alternative to Word for working on our Senior Thesis.
In particular, look at "independent" groups like Swiftboat Veterans Against Kerry.
I also think that it seems extremely unlikely that any Ron Paul supporter is stupid enough to do this. Therefore, I can only assume it was done to smear him, whether or not there was any real connection to another candidate.
Slashdot Mirror
Ethically, why am I obligated to view their ads?
Now, I do have a rule about Adblock: I don't download anyone else's list, I build my own. And I don't block any ads that don't animate, I don't even care if it's a static flash ad. But as soon as they animate, they're gone.
Self-declared gamers don't like Doom3 or Quake4? Self-declared gamers aren't eagerly awaiting the next Unreal games? And I know plenty of self-declared gamers that liked NWN.
There's a big difference between "Won't find" and "Won't find many". One is true, one is not.
I'll bite -- Earth is much rounder, in that sense, than a marble or a bowling ball (ignoring the finger holes), or really any kind of ball.
In the context of this debate, however, "the world is round" can actually be debated, if only semantically, but certain facts cannot be -- for instance, if you said "There is an edge of the world, where monsters live, and ships can sail off the edge if they're not careful", you'd be undeniably wrong.
In which case, it should not be recommending Vista.
And who the hell is it written for, then? Should I be expecting similarly "expert" advice when I want to buy a car? Because, you see, I really don't want to buy the Windows Vista of cars.
I can do that, too. Without also giving bad/wrong advice. (Yes, I see that article as both bad and wrong.)
And why not?
Isn't installing XP on an EEE PC a decent way to save money? Doesn't it at least deserve mention?
Who said anything about teaching them to install an OS, anyway? They certainly mention things like upgrading from XP to Vista without "teaching them" how to do it. Just mention that the option is available, and Joe will go find Greg the Geek to do it for him.
And that's completely ignoring the point that for many Joes, especially if they already have a Windows desktop, everything they want a Laptop for is easily covered by a default Linux install. Yes, I said default.
If they're going to give me advice which is as laughably wrong to those experts as this "Choosing an OS" advice is to me, I'm not buying.
I would much rather ask someone knowledgeable in that field. And if I just want a "consumer" opinion, those are all over the Internet -- CR is thus obsoleted by the "rate this product" feedback boxes on Newegg and such.
Which also seems dead wrong.
You see, I have a much better laptop, and I'm still wanting an eeepc.
Except they recommend Vista.
That's why I mentioned Neverball, Neverwinter Nights, and Wesnoth.
No genre is represented well, but even if they aren't a fan of the FPS, it's damned sloppy to ignore them, or to use such a vague term as "Sophisticated 3D games."
I'll agree that paying less (and reading some ads) is preferable to paying more (and avoiding ads), if that's all there was to it. For instance, sites that offer a subscription service to avoid ads just make me turn Adblock on.
However, independence has the implication that they are not being paid to say something. Now, some of the things CR says make me wonder if they're either paid to say it, or are complete morons. But the idea is what counts.
Today, I had a long talk with my dad about what he does. I'd been talking a lot about my new job, so I wanted to hear more about what he does. His company -- two corporations, actually, so they can legally do both stocks and commodities, but it's the same people -- they're, well, a financial company. As in, you can bring them a big pile of money, and they'll invest it, and you get to involve yourself at varying levels. One of the things that came out in that discussion was, he provides two options for payment -- either a commission, or a yearly payment.
Well, he recommends the yearly payment, even if it might (sometimes) cost a bit more. It's better for him, obviously, because the company then gets a stable income in the form of regular checks. But it also provides some assurance to the customer that there's never any motivation for a trade other than because it will benefit the customer.
That is, if there's a commission, a broker might encourage a lot more trades than the client wants or needs, because it generates commissions. If there's no commission, you'd think it encourages doing less, to avoid work, and that's partially true. But it also means that the motivation for everything they do is to make money for their customers, so they stay customers, and because of how powerful word of mouth is in that industry.
So yes, I would pay for Consumer Reports, and I'd pay more for that independence. Except that after reading their articles on various software, I'd never be able to shake the feeling that they were screwing me over with their other recommendations -- that their car recommendations, for instance, might sound as laughable to a mechanic as their software recommendations sound to me.
I thought so, too. Then I read this review of the EEE PC. I was with them right up until this bit:
First, what does "more advanced tasks" actually mean? I could use an EEE PC for programming, ssh access, and, I'm sure, many other things that this reviewer has never heard of.
Second, and most important: Why the fuck are they recommending Windows Vista? I was curious, so I found this other page, with these gems:
And, of course, no mention of the downsides -- of why you'd want to keep XP. (Well, there's a sort of casual mention of "If Vista does nothing for you, you can still buy a new PC with XP", but no mention of the insane number of bugs that still exist in Vista.)
No, it offers four.
Not to bring up the old debate again, but the fact that there is a debate is worth some mention, at least, right?
Doom 3 isn't sophisticated? What about the new Unreal games?
Or did they mean "sophisticated" in the artsy/intellectual sense? As in, say, Neverwinter Nights, Neverball, Wesnoth, and the like?
I'm not claiming the situation is good for Linux gaming. But to claim there are no sophisticated games for it, even if we're all willing to ignore Wine/Cedega, is factually untrue. By "factually untrue", I mean it's in the realm of 2+2=5. Even for very large values of 2, that statement is wrong, and always will be.
No mention that it's free and easy to download/install this software. Oh, and it does seem to support mp3s out of the box.
That's a nonsensical statement. It's "not entirely graphical" in the same way that Windows and OS X are -- I can still run cmd.exe or Terminal. If they mean that you may occasionally have to do things with the commandline, well, that's also untrue -- and they must know this, having used Ubuntu.
If all you do is Web browsing and e-mail and word documents and finances and web development and education and PDF reading and listening to music and creating music and putting music on your iPod and basic camera and photo scanning/editing and CD/DVD burning and scanning/OCR and Skype and instant messaging and IRC..... *inhal
Who's Mal a copy of? Spike? Don't make me laugh -- I like Mal, but that's an insult... to Spike.
How about Inara? Are you seriously going to argue that she's Faye?
Let's try the other way... Who's Ed? Are you claiming she's River? Are you fucking serious?
Bebop doesn't have a doctor. Firefly doesn't have a dog. Bebop doesn't have Companions. Firefly doesn't have hackers. Bebop doesn't have Jayne, and no, Jet doesn't count -- he has much more depth than Jayne, and Jayne is a lot funnier. Neither is just a giant hunk of muscle; in fact, they are about as different as two giant hunks of muscle can be.
I'm going to stop here, because I'm now convinced you are just trolling, and that you didn't bother to read my post.
Any other show, any other writer, and you'd be right.
But look at River. Her mystery was powerful, wasn't it? Poor, crazy little girl, what did they do to her in that hospital... slowly finding out over the series, and then, explosively, fully realized in the movie. And just as powerful, just as tragically beautiful -- her theme song in the movie is a broken, slightly out-of-tune piano.
Ask yourself: Is River any less compelling of a character, once we know what she is?
If Joss wanted to, he could do Book's past justice. I'm not saying I care either way -- I'll probably love the comics anyway -- but he could do it right.
You should read the comics, then. Those Left Behind bridges Firefly and Serenity pretty well. If I remember, it does include Inara and Book leaving.
Little pointed out because it's also completely wrong. Firefly borrows from lots of things; Cowboy Bebop is one.
I'll accept it's in the same genre (subgenre?) as Bebop, but, for example, where'd Inara come from? I know Jayne was inspired by a character from Alien, for instance. And the box River was in? Taken straight out of the first episode of Outlaw Star.
What sets Firefly apart isn't that it's revolutionary at all, but that it's so well done.
Most prequels suck, I think, because there's really no reason for them. They've run out of things to do in sequels, and they're looking for another direction to expand that universe, but it doesn't work, because it kind of ruins the originals. (Example: Star Wars. It's kind of hard to watch the originals after watching the prequels, and kind of hard to watch the prequels, period.)
But think about it -- the first few minutes of Serenity were a prequel, after all. And there actually is a ton of story there, maybe written out, maybe not.
Example: What did Book do before he was a Shephard, and why does the Alliance like him so much? Where else can you find out, except in a prequel or a flashback?
How did Mal come to side with the Independents, anyhow? Why did Inara leave House Madrassa? Why was the Alliance formed?
I'd much rather have a sequel, but unlike you, I'm not ready to kill it off. I want more Firefly, because I'm convinced the show was good enough that it wouldn't jump the shark. Think about it -- would Firefly really suck as much as Star Trek did after 7 seasons?
Ok, this one I take issue with. Did you not see the gunfights?
And River is not a weapon because she's good at martial arts. She's a weapon because she can read minds, even unconsciously -- her martial arts (and gunplay, when she has a gun) are impossibly perfect.
So the rest of your points, I could debate for quite awhile, but it's really more a matter of opinion. (Example: Everyone does not always have to say it "witty", they do because that's what real people do. Quite frequently, they say it straight: "You turn on any of my crew, you turn on me. You did it to me, Jayne.")
But the bit about martial arts is pure bullshit.
Specifically, is it impossible to do Linksys -> ActionTec -> Set top -> TV?
Or maybe some Linux box which fools the router into thinking it's on the Internet, if it won't work behind a NAT.
Do you actually know what you're talking about, or are you just talking about some web interface?
There is a huge difference between being able to ssh in as root, and having the ability (with a web interface) to "reconfigure anything you want".
Simple example: The NAS we have at work, despite being basically a hard drive in a box with an ethernet port, does allow us to ssh in as root, which lets us use it for things it was not designed for at all -- for example, we could probably run BitTorrent on the box itself.
Compare that to my Linksys router at home, where if it's not on the admin pages, I can't do it. The only way to get more software on there is to upgrade the firmware, and I can't make my own firmware (at least, not for this one, I think).
Now, I understand that some systems are even more locked down -- some really do prevent you from making your own firmware at all, whereas some people have coaxed a custom Linux to run on Linksys routers that weren't designed for it. And some, your ISP basically disallows you from ever changing anything about the router.
But by "user-modifiable", what they are asking is whether we could recompile the Linux source and load new software, a new kernel, etc onto it.
I don't know, because as far as I can tell, they aren't. The Classmate was a last-ditch effort by Microsoft and Intel to avoid being shut out of a whole generation.
Answer me this, then: If the Classmate really was about the kids, why does it, I don't know, exist in the first place? Why not simply take all that money and donate it to OLPC, which obviously has put a lot more thought and effort into the design of the machine?
While this is true, I'm also quite disgusted by the behavior of the people behind the Classmate.
First, Intel dismisses the XO as a "gadget". Then the come out with their own machine, much later, with much less functionality, as a "Me too!" product.
Really, it's not that I'm unhappy that kids are getting computers, but rather, that this is an opportunity for these kids to get so much more -- for any of them to build the next generation of software, say. Take the ability to press a keystroke to reveal (and edit) the source code to any application on the OLPC -- can the Classmate do that? Will it ever be able to?
If you'd like to appear less hypocritical yourself, go read those press releases, and find out what the project is actually doing.
Oh, I know. What's significant about this isn't that Microsoft calls it EcmaScript -- they have to -- but that no one else does, even when you'd think they have to.
WHY have so many people, including so many Slashdotters, become so complacent?
True enough, although I can say I have been to South America. Except no one calls it America there, they call it South America, or they call it Peru. (Or Chile, or Brazil, or...)
As for businesses, a quick list: The Mozilla foundation, Slashdot, Google and IBM as far as I know, various small businesses (Progressive Asset Management, Scribestorm, Thaddeus Computing, local restaurants...)
I will admit, it gets harder, as often what you thought was a good company gets bought by a larger, somewhat evil company, until you have this vast corporate empire that, being run by so many people, is too schizophrenic to properly classify. But I don't think I really need more than one good example, because my point isn't that there are many corporations, or even that there are any corporations, which are not corrupt.
My point is, it sickens me to see people use the "They're a business" excuse, because what usually follows is that complacency -- I mean, we're not a business, what can we do?
Except it's still generally called JavaScript no matter where it is -- things like a standalone SpiderMonkey, for instance.
Also, it's generally called EcmaScript on HD-DVD, even though there's decent DOM2 support. (Extended, of course, but given Microsoft's investment in the format, unlikely to be extinguished.)
The only problem I have with this is the potential to completely automate the process.
But if we must have the DMCA, I'd much rather have takedown notices than outlawing circumvention.
Well, it wasn't mp3s, but...
They were Windows NT and 2K machines on an NT domain.
There was a domain-wide policy banning students from using certain EXEs -- cmd.exe, among other things. There was also no Flash installed, and no way to install Firefox plugins. I don't remember if the policy was inclusive or exclusive.
What we did:
Portable Firefox+Flash on USB drives. Also, legacy Doom on USB drives, and really any program we wanted, so long as we were careful to, ahem, avoid the EXE restrictions, which were based entirely on filename (excluding path). I should mention that Notepad.exe is a bitchin' game... I mean a perfectly valid alternative to Word for working on our Senior Thesis.
Even if he hasn't got a chance, do you care enough about any of the other candidates to bother?
At least you can get behind Ron Paul. (I think. I still have to write all these candidates and ask them about things like Net Neutrality, DMCA, etc.)
Just look at either of the Bush campaigns.
In particular, look at "independent" groups like Swiftboat Veterans Against Kerry.
I also think that it seems extremely unlikely that any Ron Paul supporter is stupid enough to do this. Therefore, I can only assume it was done to smear him, whether or not there was any real connection to another candidate.
I see your comment tagged as Funny, so maybe I'm missing the sarcasm...
I usually try with a Linux bootcd first, making appropriate image backups. If that ever fails, I'll send it to a data recovery center.