If you look at it that way, maybe. But the US in general is a far, far way from socialism, even if you do count TIA as "socialist" in nature. In which case, I'd assume the police force and state schools would also be socialist.
Now if you add some fancy graphics, spinning wheels, whatever and several buttons (that all do the same thing) just to improve the looks of the machine, why does it become illegal?
If I ran a lottery, with the addition that the winner could choose to go "double or nothing" at the toss of a coin, wouldn't it be rather legally dubious, to say the least, if I used a trick coin to make sure the customer always lost if I didn't like the look of them?
Ok, so you're more likely to lose money than win it on a slot machine, but there's no reason to present a customer with a choice when the choice has no bearing on the results. That, as the article argues, is what is illegal.
I don't think anyone on/. is debating whether slot machines are inherently a waste of money, but that still doesn't mean that the makers can commit fraud.
I was going to point out that you're missing the point; the result was fixed so that no matter what button was pressed, you always lost. Press the Higher button, you lose. Go back in time and press the Lower button instead and you still lose. Obviously, the software wasn't chosing a number at all.
That's what I was going to say, when I realised that the slot machine could have chosen the same number as the one shown. True, it would have to fiddle with some possibilities, but you could legitimately get into a situation where the next random number is neither higher nor lower. If I'm correct in assuming that's how the slot machine is meant to work, of course.
Gah! More people who apparently have not read the article, or, at least, I assume not, as you seem to have missed the point.
The RNG isn't in question. I'd say the real dubiously legal stuff here is that is misleads the customer about probabilities. Take the example they give. The reel has the numbers 1 to 12 on it. It picks 10 and asks you to guess higher or lower. Now, you'd expect that the chance of a number being lower would be 3/4 and the chance of a number being higher would be 1/6. According to the article it's not, because it's predetermined whether you win or lose.
Of course slot machines are fixed to make it more likely you'll lose, but they shouldn't mislead the customer. When I play roulette I would be able to work out the odds. If they used fixed tables to make sure I lose more often, that would be illegal. There's not too much difference with that, than with these slot machines. You're asked to guess higher or lower, when in actual fact it makes no difference. The customer is deliberately misled. You could argue that it's a con.
I know it's a great/. tradition not to read the articles, but, for once, could you make an attempt?
To summerise the problem, the ROM shows that the outcome of slot machines is predetermined. In the acticle it gives an example:
"The machine has a number reel, with numbers from 1 to 12. On the reel a "10" is showing. Should you go Higher, or Lower?"
Apparently the machine doesn't pick a number at random from 1 to 12 and compares that to your guess of higher or lower. Instead it is predetermined whether you win or lose, so whichever button you press doesn't matter.
An emulator enables you to save and restore previous states, so that you can find out what would have happened. In this case, the author/s of the piece are saying that slot machines are predetermined things, at least in part.
This is probably illegal, as the machine is strongly implying that your guess will affect your chances (higher than 10 is less likely than lower than 10), which is shown to be untrue. It's almost like having a fixed dice game. In a fair game you'd expect to have 1/6 chance of winning when you roll a dice. In the above slot-machine example you'd expect a 1/6 chance of winning if you pressed Higher, and a 3/4 chance of winning if you pressed Lower, and this isn't the case.
Re: Communism just makes me sick to my stomach
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it is only a question of time until something you don't care ends up corrupted
Equally, you could maintain that it's only a matter of time before something that has been corrupted becomes pure again.
Anyway, I was just talking about the immediate effects after the revolutions, say 10 or 20 years. Maybe even a few decades, a half century tops. Not over 200 years, which is, I think, a bit much.
Re: Communism just makes me sick to my stomach
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Let's see what the OED has to say: A theory which advocates a state of society in which there should be no private ownership, all property being vested in the community and labour organized for the common benefit of all members; the professed principle being that each should work according to his capacity, and receive according to his wants.
Now, as far as I can see, it doesn't advocate killing and opressing people, or torturing those who disagree, or supressing free thought. Just because a duck is a bird and can fly, does not mean a penguin can fly because it is a bird. Communism is not inherently evil. If anything, it aspires to good.
However, I don't believe Communism really works in real life. Software is different, as you can make a copy to give to someone without it affecting you. In the real world though, people who lust for power hijack Communist ideals and corrupt them for their own purposes. Then again, there have been very very few successful revolutions that don't end up corrupted. The US did very well, but then it was fighting an essencially foreign foe, and, offhand, is the only one I can think of that worked (which speaks very well indeed of the US founding fathers, I think). Can you name any other revolutions that haven't resulted in corrupt leaders afterwards?
A communist dictatorship is still a dictatorship. There's nothing about communism that forbids free elections and a fair constitution that promotes freedom and equality.
US training is pretty good, but I think the point the parent poster was trying to make was that it's not always the best in the world. The amount of friendly fire the US forces were responsible for isn't too good a record. Some US forces are undoubtably fantastically trained, but so too are divisions like the SAS, and you have to compare like with like. Any modern military training is going to be tough.
Incidents like leaving Patriot Missile systems on without attendance, shooting at helicopters when the enemy is known to have none. In the first gulf war more British troops were killed by the US than the Iraqis. So there's at least some divisions which aren't too well trained, or else such mistakes wouldn't be made.
That would assume a pre-emptive attack. A very pre-emptive attack, in fact, as the US would have to spontaneously sneak-attack the hapless country targetted without alerting it or declaring war upon it until after the attack. Not something likely to happen, really.
The EU countries wouldn't tolerate US troops within their borders if the US was attacking a member state. So the only way the US's military bases could be of use is a Pearl Harbor type assault, carried out without warning. In addition, the country involved would have to have reasonable relations with the US to agree to have troops stationed there.
The rest of the world wouldn't be too thrilled to have the US attack a unsuspecting country in such a way, either. At the very least they'd get all US troops out of their borders just in case a similar tactic was tried on them, and probably quite a few countries, at least those in the EU, would refuse to trade with the US. That, and the increased military spending would put the US in serious financial trouble.
Such an event would, at least in the current political climate, effectively pit the US against the world.
A free income? Pardon? I take it you've never actually lived in the EU, because you, sir, are talking out of your arse.
Furthermore, bankrupt? Only Portugal exceeds the US's current budget deficit, at 3.4% in 2003 compared to around 3% for the US, so you can hardly claim the EU is having money controls unless you admit the US is in equal danger. In which case, you can hardly blame the generally higher tax rate of the EU for the problems!
In fact, France and Germany have deficits of 2.9% and 3.1% respectively, which is almost exactly that of the US. So if France and Germany's spending is not under control, and is 'madness', then the US is clearly in exactly the same position!
Since you have obviously never lived in the EU, and you obviously have no grasp for figures, I'll assume you're a troll or an ill informed moron.
The US is also suffering from "a combination of stangant economic growth, high unemployment, and the threat of deflation", and it could be argued that the EUSA is more cost efficient than NASA, who insist on using the rather cost inefficient shuttle system. The Ariane system has been quite successful commercially, and, as one poster pointed out, the Ariane 4 made up 40% of all launches at one point.
Furthermore, Galileo obviously won't be using 20 year old technology. It'll be more up to date, and it's meant to be far more accurate than the GPS system.
Since this is seems to be the only comment of your account, I'm assuming you're a troll here, but I'll continue on with my reply anyway.
Some EU countries do have vastly inflated tax rates that could come down a bit, but mostly it's a system that works well. The majority of the taxes go to health care and schooling, rather than to the unemploymed (which is hardly a desirable situation by any means). It costs an awful lot to run a national health service, but you can hardly claim it's wrong to help the injured, or to provide cheaper education to people.
And a lower birth rate isn't necessarily bad. The EU has many more people packed into a smaller area than the US, and the world's population is increasing at an undesirable rate. Less people might be better. Besides which, the current rate things are going, the EU is still going to have more people per square mile than the US for quite some time, so there's hardly a danger of depopulation.
The US is good at invading third world countries, but it hasn't ever invaded an industrialised nation on it's own, IIRC. Germany's really the only country that has had experience in that arena.
If you ignore nukes, then I doubt that the US could invade any part of Europe very easy, and it may even be impossible. Certainly it's unlikely that they could ever invade two countries. If they went after France, for instance, Germany would probably back them up and the US couldn't win against such odds.
Not that the US isn't the most powerful military player on the globe, just that invasion is considerably more difficult than defense. Especially against an enemy who's on a similar technological level.
I've heard about the theoretical systems you talk about. And while I like them, this approach being taken is not nearly anything as complete and fundamental as that. It looks like a band-aid of some sort, and it is only controling the MSHTML component (and not the entire system - via some sort of structural modifications to the kernel).
I'd be very surprised if Microsoft built a new version of their OS around a specific theoretical system. Windows seems to be more an evolution of hacks more than anything, though that's not to say systems like Linux don't have similar problems. However, whilst this system isn't really a good way of guarenteeing security, it might be better than nothing. Even a band-aid helps sometimes.
On the other hand, this is Microsoft, and it wouldn't be the first time they'd use a system to unfair competitive advantage (bundling of IE, Word Documents, OEM licenses, etc). So whatever dubious benefits this might bring, I can't see it being good for the software industry.
Now, I have a question for you... to me, my earlier posts seem rather clear. Do you think they still look ambiguous now that you understand what I meant? Or have I really done a bad job at explaining myself?
Difficult to say. They definitely could have been clearer, but whether it was clear enough or not I'm not sure. It might just have been me. 4 hours of Computer Systems Design revision kinda affects your concentration. Then again, I don't think people would have been so quick to cry troll if your arguments were more clear.
Apologies if I came off as rude before. I think I understand your point now, though I'm unfamiliar with how the user system on XP and NT works, so I'm unable to comment much on this.
From a unix point of view, and one which I'm more familiar with, you'd probably be utterly correct. Processes should run software under the priveledges of the user. That said, finer control of the processes priviledges could, perhaps, be used.
Then again, there are theoretical systems that have their priviledge system based around services, rather than users. Effectively like having a group "printer", "games" and so forth, but more pervasive, so that the entire permissions system is designed from the base up around distinct services. Perhaps Microsoft is going for this approach?
Ok, so this is about the priviledges IE has compared to the priviledges a user has? Could you clarify this? I'm not sure where you're making the distinction. Are you making a distinction?
Hmm. Looking at some other posts you seem to be saying that IE having lots of priviledges isn't a problem because- Hmm. Actually I'm not sure what your point is at all. What are you getting at? What's the problem?
Looking at quite a lot of other posts they don't seem to have completely understood you either. And what do you mean by "priviledges" anyway? I thought I knew what you meant, but reading back over your posts I don't think I do. You probably don't mean it in the traditional unix manner, since, for instance, serving web pages up as root is obviously a bad idea. Is this a Windows thing I'm unaware of? Could you provide an example as you what context you're refering to?
I was probably wrong to post my rather knee-jerk reaction post before this, but it would help if you explained your case better. Then you'd have less of a chance of people grabbing the wrong end of the stick.
So what would you have people do? Not point out the multitude of security flaws just to make sure the Microsoft Execs don't do something moronic?
Besides, if Microsoft listens to its customers, why isn't IE a small, stable, tabbed browser with pop-up blocking? Microsoft does things that will make it a profit, such as maintaining a horribly obfusicated file format just to prevent its users switching to a better word processor. I know quite a few people in businesses who regularly complain that they can't get their data out of their.doc files without opening word. I don't think anyone would complain if they opened up the.doc file format.
Microsoft isn't deaf to its customer's pleas, but it isn't going to do something if it doesn't make it a profit somewhere down the line. IE is free and popular. It's not going to become a decent browser unless it's dominate position is in immediate danger, as there's no profit in making it a good browser for the sake of its customers. DRM is probably the main reason for this integration; that, and it's cheaper solution to Mozilla, Opera and the like than building a better browser.
Equally, you could turn this around. I'd imagine more Europeans have thanked the US's involvement in WW2 than the US has thanked, for instance, Britain, for holding the Nazi's at bay.
Furthermore, if Europe did get taken over by the Nazi's (even though the UK had won the Battle of Britain and North Africa whilst the USSR was fighting them in the east, let's assume that without the US, this would magically not have happened), then who do you think would be next? It was in the US's interests to fight.
And Europians rarely complain about the US saving their butts. There's way too many other things to complain about after all. How about the US's hypocrisy when it comes to the Geneva Convention? What about the US's hypocrisy about Free Markets when it regularly puts up trade barriers (not to mention laws like the DMCA)? What about the US childishly cutting ties with countries like France and Germany, simply because they disagreed with the US over Iraq (where are those WMD anyway...)? What about the Kyoto Agreement? Then there's the darker side of American foreign policy; Greece is still pissed off at the US for that whole "let's instigate a coup" deal in 1967. Better to have a fascist dictator than a democratically elected socialist government!
No country is perfect. Countries consist of people, after all, and we all know how error-prone they are. But the US is really not a country that can take the moral high ground when talking about hypocrisy. Not that I'm saying the US is in any way worse than any country in Europe; hell, Turkey and Germany have commited genocide on a far larger scale than the US has. In fact, the US has generally very adequately represented democracy and freedom for quite a long time. But it isn't perfect, and mistakes have been made.
People should forgive such errors, and are wrong if they continue to blame the US for past mistakes. But putting on a "holier-than-thou" attitude doesn't really help people forget and forgive past disagreements.
You're missing the point. The US forces helped, perhaps even turned the tide. But it wasn't just the Americans who won the war. Without the British effort or the Eastern front, would the US have survived intact? Without the efforts of the resistance movements sabotaging the Nazi's nuclear attempts, would the US have gained nuclear weapons first?
If Britain fell, then would Nazi Germany have turned on the USSR or the US? Could the United States have won against the combined forces of Germany, Japan and the USSR?
I don't think many people object to the US saving our butts, but I don't hear many people thanking the rest of the world saving the US's butts. Consider it a mutual butt-saving, in which case it's rather unfair for one player to take all the credit for defeating the Nazi war machine, which I think is what most people complain about when it's claimed that the US saved the world.
Slashdot Mirror
It's usual for /.ers not to read the article, but this is the first time I've ever seen somebody not read the summery.
If you look at it that way, maybe. But the US in general is a far, far way from socialism, even if you do count TIA as "socialist" in nature. In which case, I'd assume the police force and state schools would also be socialist.
Now if you add some fancy graphics, spinning wheels, whatever and several buttons (that all do the same thing) just to improve the looks of the machine, why does it become illegal?
/. is debating whether slot machines are inherently a waste of money, but that still doesn't mean that the makers can commit fraud.
If I ran a lottery, with the addition that the winner could choose to go "double or nothing" at the toss of a coin, wouldn't it be rather legally dubious, to say the least, if I used a trick coin to make sure the customer always lost if I didn't like the look of them?
Ok, so you're more likely to lose money than win it on a slot machine, but there's no reason to present a customer with a choice when the choice has no bearing on the results. That, as the article argues, is what is illegal.
I don't think anyone on
So that's a 'no', then?
That was humour?
I was going to point out that you're missing the point; the result was fixed so that no matter what button was pressed, you always lost. Press the Higher button, you lose. Go back in time and press the Lower button instead and you still lose. Obviously, the software wasn't chosing a number at all.
That's what I was going to say, when I realised that the slot machine could have chosen the same number as the one shown. True, it would have to fiddle with some possibilities, but you could legitimately get into a situation where the next random number is neither higher nor lower. If I'm correct in assuming that's how the slot machine is meant to work, of course.
Gah! More people who apparently have not read the article, or, at least, I assume not, as you seem to have missed the point.
The RNG isn't in question. I'd say the real dubiously legal stuff here is that is misleads the customer about probabilities. Take the example they give. The reel has the numbers 1 to 12 on it. It picks 10 and asks you to guess higher or lower. Now, you'd expect that the chance of a number being lower would be 3/4 and the chance of a number being higher would be 1/6. According to the article it's not, because it's predetermined whether you win or lose.
Of course slot machines are fixed to make it more likely you'll lose, but they shouldn't mislead the customer. When I play roulette I would be able to work out the odds. If they used fixed tables to make sure I lose more often, that would be illegal. There's not too much difference with that, than with these slot machines. You're asked to guess higher or lower, when in actual fact it makes no difference. The customer is deliberately misled. You could argue that it's a con.
I know it's a great /. tradition not to read the articles, but, for once, could you make an attempt?
To summerise the problem, the ROM shows that the outcome of slot machines is predetermined. In the acticle it gives an example:
"The machine has a number reel, with numbers from 1 to 12. On the reel a "10" is showing. Should you go Higher, or Lower?"
Apparently the machine doesn't pick a number at random from 1 to 12 and compares that to your guess of higher or lower. Instead it is predetermined whether you win or lose, so whichever button you press doesn't matter.
An emulator enables you to save and restore previous states, so that you can find out what would have happened. In this case, the author/s of the piece are saying that slot machines are predetermined things, at least in part.
This is probably illegal, as the machine is strongly implying that your guess will affect your chances (higher than 10 is less likely than lower than 10), which is shown to be untrue. It's almost like having a fixed dice game. In a fair game you'd expect to have 1/6 chance of winning when you roll a dice. In the above slot-machine example you'd expect a 1/6 chance of winning if you pressed Higher, and a 3/4 chance of winning if you pressed Lower, and this isn't the case.
it is only a question of time until something you don't care ends up corrupted
Equally, you could maintain that it's only a matter of time before something that has been corrupted becomes pure again.
Anyway, I was just talking about the immediate effects after the revolutions, say 10 or 20 years. Maybe even a few decades, a half century tops. Not over 200 years, which is, I think, a bit much.
Let's see what the OED has to say:
A theory which advocates a state of society in which there should be no private ownership, all property being vested in the community and labour organized for the common benefit of all members; the professed principle being that each should work according to his capacity, and receive according to his wants.
Now, as far as I can see, it doesn't advocate killing and opressing people, or torturing those who disagree, or supressing free thought. Just because a duck is a bird and can fly, does not mean a penguin can fly because it is a bird. Communism is not inherently evil. If anything, it aspires to good.
However, I don't believe Communism really works in real life. Software is different, as you can make a copy to give to someone without it affecting you. In the real world though, people who lust for power hijack Communist ideals and corrupt them for their own purposes. Then again, there have been very very few successful revolutions that don't end up corrupted. The US did very well, but then it was fighting an essencially foreign foe, and, offhand, is the only one I can think of that worked (which speaks very well indeed of the US founding fathers, I think). Can you name any other revolutions that haven't resulted in corrupt leaders afterwards?
A communist dictatorship is still a dictatorship. There's nothing about communism that forbids free elections and a fair constitution that promotes freedom and equality.
US training is pretty good, but I think the point the parent poster was trying to make was that it's not always the best in the world. The amount of friendly fire the US forces were responsible for isn't too good a record. Some US forces are undoubtably fantastically trained, but so too are divisions like the SAS, and you have to compare like with like. Any modern military training is going to be tough.
Incidents like leaving Patriot Missile systems on without attendance, shooting at helicopters when the enemy is known to have none. In the first gulf war more British troops were killed by the US than the Iraqis. So there's at least some divisions which aren't too well trained, or else such mistakes wouldn't be made.
Bloody Sunday springs to mind.
Soldiers aren't trained for crowd control. Northern Ireland demonstrated that pretty well.
That would assume a pre-emptive attack. A very pre-emptive attack, in fact, as the US would have to spontaneously sneak-attack the hapless country targetted without alerting it or declaring war upon it until after the attack. Not something likely to happen, really.
The EU countries wouldn't tolerate US troops within their borders if the US was attacking a member state. So the only way the US's military bases could be of use is a Pearl Harbor type assault, carried out without warning. In addition, the country involved would have to have reasonable relations with the US to agree to have troops stationed there.
The rest of the world wouldn't be too thrilled to have the US attack a unsuspecting country in such a way, either. At the very least they'd get all US troops out of their borders just in case a similar tactic was tried on them, and probably quite a few countries, at least those in the EU, would refuse to trade with the US. That, and the increased military spending would put the US in serious financial trouble.
Such an event would, at least in the current political climate, effectively pit the US against the world.
A free income? Pardon? I take it you've never actually lived in the EU, because you, sir, are talking out of your arse.
Furthermore, bankrupt? Only Portugal exceeds the US's current budget deficit, at 3.4% in 2003 compared to around 3% for the US, so you can hardly claim the EU is having money controls unless you admit the US is in equal danger. In which case, you can hardly blame the generally higher tax rate of the EU for the problems!
In fact, France and Germany have deficits of 2.9% and 3.1% respectively, which is almost exactly that of the US. So if France and Germany's spending is not under control, and is 'madness', then the US is clearly in exactly the same position!
Since you have obviously never lived in the EU, and you obviously have no grasp for figures, I'll assume you're a troll or an ill informed moron.
The US is also suffering from "a combination of stangant economic growth, high unemployment, and the threat of deflation", and it could be argued that the EUSA is more cost efficient than NASA, who insist on using the rather cost inefficient shuttle system. The Ariane system has been quite successful commercially, and, as one poster pointed out, the Ariane 4 made up 40% of all launches at one point.
Furthermore, Galileo obviously won't be using 20 year old technology. It'll be more up to date, and it's meant to be far more accurate than the GPS system.
Since this is seems to be the only comment of your account, I'm assuming you're a troll here, but I'll continue on with my reply anyway.
Some EU countries do have vastly inflated tax rates that could come down a bit, but mostly it's a system that works well. The majority of the taxes go to health care and schooling, rather than to the unemploymed (which is hardly a desirable situation by any means). It costs an awful lot to run a national health service, but you can hardly claim it's wrong to help the injured, or to provide cheaper education to people.
And a lower birth rate isn't necessarily bad. The EU has many more people packed into a smaller area than the US, and the world's population is increasing at an undesirable rate. Less people might be better. Besides which, the current rate things are going, the EU is still going to have more people per square mile than the US for quite some time, so there's hardly a danger of depopulation.
The US is good at invading third world countries, but it hasn't ever invaded an industrialised nation on it's own, IIRC. Germany's really the only country that has had experience in that arena.
If you ignore nukes, then I doubt that the US could invade any part of Europe very easy, and it may even be impossible. Certainly it's unlikely that they could ever invade two countries. If they went after France, for instance, Germany would probably back them up and the US couldn't win against such odds.
Not that the US isn't the most powerful military player on the globe, just that invasion is considerably more difficult than defense. Especially against an enemy who's on a similar technological level.
I've heard about the theoretical systems you talk about. And while I like them, this approach being taken is not nearly anything as complete and fundamental as that. It looks like a band-aid of some sort, and it is only controling the MSHTML component (and not the entire system - via some sort of structural modifications to the kernel).
I'd be very surprised if Microsoft built a new version of their OS around a specific theoretical system. Windows seems to be more an evolution of hacks more than anything, though that's not to say systems like Linux don't have similar problems. However, whilst this system isn't really a good way of guarenteeing security, it might be better than nothing. Even a band-aid helps sometimes.
On the other hand, this is Microsoft, and it wouldn't be the first time they'd use a system to unfair competitive advantage (bundling of IE, Word Documents, OEM licenses, etc). So whatever dubious benefits this might bring, I can't see it being good for the software industry.
Now, I have a question for you... to me, my earlier posts seem rather clear. Do you think they still look ambiguous now that you understand what I meant? Or have I really done a bad job at explaining myself?
Difficult to say. They definitely could have been clearer, but whether it was clear enough or not I'm not sure. It might just have been me. 4 hours of Computer Systems Design revision kinda affects your concentration. Then again, I don't think people would have been so quick to cry troll if your arguments were more clear.
Apologies if I came off as rude before. I think I understand your point now, though I'm unfamiliar with how the user system on XP and NT works, so I'm unable to comment much on this.
From a unix point of view, and one which I'm more familiar with, you'd probably be utterly correct. Processes should run software under the priveledges of the user. That said, finer control of the processes priviledges could, perhaps, be used.
Then again, there are theoretical systems that have their priviledge system based around services, rather than users. Effectively like having a group "printer", "games" and so forth, but more pervasive, so that the entire permissions system is designed from the base up around distinct services. Perhaps Microsoft is going for this approach?
That was the only part of his post I understood :)
How does the priviledges IE has relate to the integration of IE into the OS?
Ok, so this is about the priviledges IE has compared to the priviledges a user has? Could you clarify this? I'm not sure where you're making the distinction. Are you making a distinction?
Hmm. Looking at some other posts you seem to be saying that IE having lots of priviledges isn't a problem because- Hmm. Actually I'm not sure what your point is at all. What are you getting at? What's the problem?
Looking at quite a lot of other posts they don't seem to have completely understood you either. And what do you mean by "priviledges" anyway? I thought I knew what you meant, but reading back over your posts I don't think I do. You probably don't mean it in the traditional unix manner, since, for instance, serving web pages up as root is obviously a bad idea. Is this a Windows thing I'm unaware of? Could you provide an example as you what context you're refering to?
I was probably wrong to post my rather knee-jerk reaction post before this, but it would help if you explained your case better. Then you'd have less of a chance of people grabbing the wrong end of the stick.
So what would you have people do? Not point out the multitude of security flaws just to make sure the Microsoft Execs don't do something moronic?
.doc files without opening word. I don't think anyone would complain if they opened up the .doc file format.
Besides, if Microsoft listens to its customers, why isn't IE a small, stable, tabbed browser with pop-up blocking? Microsoft does things that will make it a profit, such as maintaining a horribly obfusicated file format just to prevent its users switching to a better word processor. I know quite a few people in businesses who regularly complain that they can't get their data out of their
Microsoft isn't deaf to its customer's pleas, but it isn't going to do something if it doesn't make it a profit somewhere down the line. IE is free and popular. It's not going to become a decent browser unless it's dominate position is in immediate danger, as there's no profit in making it a good browser for the sake of its customers. DRM is probably the main reason for this integration; that, and it's cheaper solution to Mozilla, Opera and the like than building a better browser.
It's an offense to have an obscured number plate, so the only real way round this system is to get fake plates.
Ignore the trolls. That's why you should set your preferences to browse above score 0. :)
Equally, you could turn this around. I'd imagine more Europeans have thanked the US's involvement in WW2 than the US has thanked, for instance, Britain, for holding the Nazi's at bay.
Furthermore, if Europe did get taken over by the Nazi's (even though the UK had won the Battle of Britain and North Africa whilst the USSR was fighting them in the east, let's assume that without the US, this would magically not have happened), then who do you think would be next? It was in the US's interests to fight.
And Europians rarely complain about the US saving their butts. There's way too many other things to complain about after all. How about the US's hypocrisy when it comes to the Geneva Convention? What about the US's hypocrisy about Free Markets when it regularly puts up trade barriers (not to mention laws like the DMCA)? What about the US childishly cutting ties with countries like France and Germany, simply because they disagreed with the US over Iraq (where are those WMD anyway...)? What about the Kyoto Agreement? Then there's the darker side of American foreign policy; Greece is still pissed off at the US for that whole "let's instigate a coup" deal in 1967. Better to have a fascist dictator than a democratically elected socialist government!
No country is perfect. Countries consist of people, after all, and we all know how error-prone they are. But the US is really not a country that can take the moral high ground when talking about hypocrisy. Not that I'm saying the US is in any way worse than any country in Europe; hell, Turkey and Germany have commited genocide on a far larger scale than the US has. In fact, the US has generally very adequately represented democracy and freedom for quite a long time. But it isn't perfect, and mistakes have been made.
People should forgive such errors, and are wrong if they continue to blame the US for past mistakes. But putting on a "holier-than-thou" attitude doesn't really help people forget and forgive past disagreements.
You're missing the point. The US forces helped, perhaps even turned the tide. But it wasn't just the Americans who won the war. Without the British effort or the Eastern front, would the US have survived intact? Without the efforts of the resistance movements sabotaging the Nazi's nuclear attempts, would the US have gained nuclear weapons first?
If Britain fell, then would Nazi Germany have turned on the USSR or the US? Could the United States have won against the combined forces of Germany, Japan and the USSR?
I don't think many people object to the US saving our butts, but I don't hear many people thanking the rest of the world saving the US's butts. Consider it a mutual butt-saving, in which case it's rather unfair for one player to take all the credit for defeating the Nazi war machine, which I think is what most people complain about when it's claimed that the US saved the world.