I'd counter with the RFC for HTTP. The protocol is designed to provide content located in a designated directory structure on the file system. Anything located in that file structure that isn't specifically covered with a password is supposed to be available to any browser. And as for someone saying that it wasn't provided in an index or referrer page, I'd compare it to large college textbooks or anthologies that don't have every single entry itemized in a table of contents or index, and how published content (which I believe the Web has been acknowledged as) would compare.
Fact of the matter is that this audio clip was put in a place that was easily found and was obviously placed there intentionally. If it wasn't there intentionally, the webmaster is responsible through negligence, not the opponent's campaign.
Oh, there's also the little matter of it being posted on the government's web site, which is supposed to belong to every resident of California...
Based on how the equipment in Arizona works, I suggest the following:
If one has a voter registration card then the voter should be able in this technological era to go to any balloting site and with the card have the appropriate PAPER ballot generated on the spot. If they're not at the normal for that precinct then their ballot, after being optically scanned is fed into a seperately collated output bin so that it can be sent to the proper storage bin later. This allows people to vote for their district regardless of where they happen to physically go to cast. I also suggest that anyone over hte age of 18 who is a citizen be able to vote so long as they can get to a polling place, and that everyone that has any kind of government-issued ID is automatically registered simply by obtaining that ID. This eliminates people being disenfranchised on account of name confusion with convicted felons, which was a documented problem in Florida in 2000. It also ensures that every American Gets The Right To Vote and doesn't infringe on anyone. Yeah, some won't like convicted felons voting, but if they've been released from prison and are part of the civilian population then they've been released back to society and therefore should be let to vote, in my humble opinion.
The more complex the voting system gets the worse the process gets. Yeah, it's labor-intensive to physically count ballots, but we must maintain a paper record of all voting activities in case the electronic count doesn't work. The optical-scan ballots allow for that, and still give us the near-instant return that we like without compromising the ability to audit or recount.
It's funny, really. My dad was a computer programmer by profession before I was born, but we didn't even have a home computer until I was eight and had been exposed to them in school. As a young kid I played tee-ball, soccer, and volley ball, played with Legos, Construx, Hot Wheels, Tonka Trucks, etc, and was fairly limited in the TV that I was allowed to watch for some time. Eventually I graduated into slightly more mature cartoons and television shows like Perfect Strangers, and slowly evolved away from Hot Wheels and Tonka Trucks into car models and model rocketry, and eventually into computers.
We never had cable TV, except for one month when we moved and the previous owners' cable hadn't yet been disconnected. I remember that the month after that was very difficult as we had started to gravitate toward TV a lot more than we were before, and readjusting was hard.
Today I don't even have an antenna, let alone cable TV. And while I collect movies (and have more than 300 on Laserdisc, and about 100 more on DVD and VHS) I don't just let random crap come broadcasting into my home. I self-censor because I have better things to do with my time than sit there and watch TV for several hours a night.
Choose what you're going to experience, don't just passively sit there and let others choose it for you.
That's because they have to run as a member of the Administrators group in order to do fairly mundane tasks like install software or make use of otherwise-mundane consumer hardware.
I've had accounts on POSIX-compliant systems for years. I've found that with only user-level access I'm quite able to compile or install applications for my own user account in my own home directory without much difficulty, and still maintain the system integrity. As long as Microsoft holds on to the registry they'll never achieve such.
Okay, I'll agree with the, "...a hardware vendor shouldn't be allowed to lock you into using their approved software." argument, but offer a different idea. How about a vendor allows anything to run but only warrantys their specific software? Having dealt with large vendors and working for a large organization, I can tell you that we specifically like standardization because it means that a small staff (15 or so) can take care of 30,000 machines over about 100 sites. If I'm a vendor with thousands of customers running something specialized, I don't want them making changes that make the support difficult-to-impossible.
I can understand some merits, but I can also understand some demerits...
There's an expression that idiots don't understand
on
When Wikipedia Fails
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
and that is, "consider the source." If someone is dumb enough to believe uncorroborated reports without any kind of consideration for the fact that the reporter could be wrong, lying, misinformed, or promoting an agenda then they get what they get.
The Internet is a great resource. Wikipedia has been very good for helping me find new things to be interested in, but it's not the end solution. If anything it's the beginning and the beginning only. I use Wikipedia to find out that I want to learn more about a subject, and from there, once I have had a chance to consult or read from true experts then I can make my judgement.
It's like anything else. It's a little bit of creativity, a little bit of business savvy, work, and time. For those of us who are too lazy to go through this route to make our way there are 9-5 jobs. There are those whose job is solely to buy wholesale and sell retail, and they've been there since the day of the trader with his horse-drawn cart rolling into town. eBay just tweaks the rules a bit.
I don't personally want to use something that could leave me high-and-dry if something goes awry, and I'm too lazy to research aspects that mitigate the risks. So, I don't eBay. I work a state-level IT job. Not a lot of reward, but not a lot of risk either, and I don't have to worry about stability.
My brother worked at Best Buy for many, many years. The grandparent's post is mostly correct. He'd get peripherals for almost nothing, and even some large appliances like refridgerators that had a massive markup were discounted heavily when he bought them. Some things were weird as how the employee discount worked, like DVDs, CDs, and other stuff that had special conditions, but *most* computer parts and computers themselves fell into the nice discount category, as did televisions, VCRs, DVD players, Receivers, and the like. After awhile they started making employees pay with plastic to try to stop them from buying things on behalf of friends, but I'm sure that it didn't totally curtail that...
He saw the writing on the wall when Geek Squad was coming, and he got himself transferred out of computer service and into the warehouse, where he unloaded trucks and helped customers with bulky purchases. Best, they somehow didn't drop his pay when he transferred, they actually gave him a small raise. He did it while going through college.
Wow. Just. Wow.
Do they think that this helps businesses? I'd avoid the area like the plague unless I absolutely had to drive through there, and since there are convenience stores, Holiday Inn Expresses, and strip-malls all over the place that would be really easy to do. If I were a driver trying to go through there I'd not want to stop because of the fear of having trouble getting back on the road again, and I'd only get annoyed with the traffic problems and congestion that's been created.
In the Phoenix area there's a place where the city of Scottsdale designated for commercial, at the intersection of Scottsdale Road and Shea Blvd. It's such a congested mess that they had to build bypass roads that go around the intersection if anyone wants to get through. Consequently I don't go to Scottsdale much, that road (and much of the rest of it) is just a mess.
...with pitting Windows XP against all of the UNIces and other Network Operating Systems. I mean, HPUX really isn't tailored to end users, and Windows XP isn't a server-grade OS. Windows Server 2003 is at least marketted to servers...
I was expecting something more like the Eric Levenez's UNIX Timeline.
That still doesn't prevent IE from being on there and being used for shell calls. It also doesn't change the fact that many Microsoft products don't call for an external browser window, they call for an IE window, even if IE isn't set to the default browser. All it takes is visiting one malware-enabled site with ActiveX on and the machine is compromised.
Honestly at this point I probably wouldn't care nearly as much, IF Microsoft's browser was secure, robust, and standards compliant. Unfortunately it's zero for three.
It may not be part of the Kernel, but it's an irremovable part of the Shell. It also has the ability to connect in to the service level via ActiveX, which allows it to go WAY too low level. So, while yes, it is not part of the Kernel, it has the ability to compromise the computer down to just about that far, and I find that unacceptable.
If I could *not* install IE when I install Windows then I might not have such a problem with all of this. Thing is, I'm not given that option. Microsoft doesn't provide an equivalent of the Windows 95/Windows NT4 shell anymore, and they didn't design the interface to make it easy for a user to replace the shell entirely. Yes, I know that there have been alternate shells for Windows at times, but other than Litestep have any of these made any headway? Do any of these even still exist?
...before they are told to just take a print-screen of the document, page by page, then use a graphics program to install the black boxes over words, then import each image as a page into their PDF creator...
Wouldn't be more efficient to use it to drive a turbine? Granted it might take some work to get the turbine up to speed, but a starter motor could get it spinning enough for the gas pressure to continue to drive it. It could then drive a flywheel or hybrid-style electric generator to power a bank of batteries, and subsequently wheels...
I'd like to see turbine engines tried again. In the seventies when Chrysler got rid of their turbine project it was driving the car through mechanical means. Now they could instead hook it up to a hybrid electric motor/transmission to keep the turbine at its most efficient RPM, and charge batteries and use regen braking to add more power...
I'm remembering a science fiction novel that featured those, and I think that it was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were another one of his works like The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. It's been awhile since I've read anything of his.
What really irks me about IE, especially since they started bundling, is how they've managed to get dime-a-dozen web developers to heavily rely on ActiveX, leaving us with a basic browser with a bunch of extensions that only break compatibility and allow for exploits.
I've never seen a website requiring ActiveX that couldn't be done a better, browser-independent way.
Slashdot itself is an example of a robust website used by a LOT of people on a daily basis with expected 99.99% uptime and never losing any data, and it manages to work on lynx on an 80x25 text-mode console with no client-side ANYTHING other than page rendering and form submission.
"They go on about how IE is "part of the OS", when it's really not all that different from KHTML et al - it's just a GUI component that's used by a variety of apps that are bundled with the distribution."
I can install a basic GNU environment with a Linux kernel, installing no GUI at all.
I can install X (whatever variety I feel like) and use a WM like TWM, or FVWM, or Afterstep, or Enlightenment, that don't have web components.
I can install Gnome, and use Galeon or not as my choice (so long as Mozilla is available for rendering).
I can install KDE, which does have some tie-in to its browser for basic stuff, but I don't have to use it and I can minimise the amount of interface that it gives me, as well as install another browser (Mozilla, Galeon, Opera) BY DEFAULT when installing KDE and set that browser as the default, from a fresh, brand new install.
I can install Gnome and KDE both, pick Gnome as my windowmanager, and use Konqueror for my web browser.
I can install KDE and Gnome both, pick KDE as my windowmanager, and use Galeon for my web browser as long as Mozilla is on there.
"in fact I can't think of a single GUI desktop environment today that doesn't include one"
TWM
FVWM
Afterstep
Enlightenment
Gnome and all of its windowmanagers (Galeon requires Mozilla!)
Yeah, I know that TWM and FVWM are old, before you go ranting about that. They're still functional program launchers though, and if I'm using an old host or XDMCP over a slow link then I'll switch to a lightweight WM.
Apparently you haven't installed Linux recently, or you've installed some really-specifically-tailored distribution, as every major distribution that I've used (Debian, Slackware, Red Hat, SuSE) allows the installer to pick what they get or else just gives them ALL in the default configuration. The very fact that I can choose to install Konqueror, Galeon, Mozilla, or Firefox when installing Linux gives me choice. I can even choose to use lynx or elinks. So, your original reply does qualify handily as 'troll'.
Oh, and the whole 'free' thing makes a bit of a difference too, as they're not profiting on my usage, in fact, if anything they're at a disadvantage since bandwidth and server space has to be paid for in order for me to download the product from them in the first place. Unlike Uncle Bill's company...
... is exactly what drove me away from Microsoft in the first place. Specifically, Windows 95 "C" where the IE installer started and couldn't be cancelled through a normal dialog box (but could be 'End Task'ed), despite the fact that it was a piece of shit. Yes, Netscape was king of the non-standard extension back in those days, but their abuses pale compared to Microsoft's ActiveX in the late nineties through today, and with the massive vulnerability that ActiveX poses Microsoft should face a class-action lawsuit for negligence in their product design resulting in expensive and time-consuming repairs to computers on a regular basis. Furthermore, it was a travesty that despite Microsoft's Anti-trust ruling they weren't forced to remove Internet Explorer from the OS or weren't forced to include third-party web browsers in the same fashion that they were forced to include third-party connection suites like Compuserve, Prodigy, and America Online in addition to their own MSN.
Mozilla should continue to grow, and advanced users should continue to push to make sure that it is implemented, so long as it remains a better tool for the job than the default (Internet Explorer).
I really feel sorry for the poultry, grilling, and general cooking forum members too......as well as all of us who have a general positive opinion for such things...
For some reason I'm thinking that precedent from MPAA vs 2600 Magazine might be a contributor, as they were successfully barred from even linking to DeCSS, even though they were no longer hosting it. And at that point, there was no ruling on the legality of DeCSS, either...
I know, there are some differences, but still, I don't think that referencing something should necessarily be a crime. I'm sure that there are exceptions, where people are being made victims by directing others to certain places, but this just seems extreme.
Actually, to a small extent I do. If the OS allows the user too much power over the OS itself then the whole machine goes down. I used HP X-terminals when I was in college, and they were never down. The HPUX server in each respective cluster just ran and ran and ran, even though users could compile their own code, install their own applications, print, and mount preconfigured remote filesystems.
I tried a fork-bomb once, didn't do much besides disconnect my controlling terminal. People had enough room to put whatever browser they wanted (Netscape was modern at the time), and I had programs for IRC, instant messaging, and the like. The only thing that I really couldn't do was play audio, since these terminals weren't equipped with sound chipsets. Had they been, it would have been possible to set X up to forward sound to the machines just as well as video.
So, as long as Microsoft continues to take shortcuts in order to do things rather than go through the right channels then I will continue to blame them for a certain amount of social engineering allowing people to get users to do things that will compromise the whole machine rather than just the user's personal data.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd counter with the RFC for HTTP. The protocol is designed to provide content located in a designated directory structure on the file system. Anything located in that file structure that isn't specifically covered with a password is supposed to be available to any browser. And as for someone saying that it wasn't provided in an index or referrer page, I'd compare it to large college textbooks or anthologies that don't have every single entry itemized in a table of contents or index, and how published content (which I believe the Web has been acknowledged as) would compare.
Fact of the matter is that this audio clip was put in a place that was easily found and was obviously placed there intentionally. If it wasn't there intentionally, the webmaster is responsible through negligence, not the opponent's campaign.
Oh, there's also the little matter of it being posted on the government's web site, which is supposed to belong to every resident of California...
...and I'm outright amazed.
Based on how the equipment in Arizona works, I suggest the following: If one has a voter registration card then the voter should be able in this technological era to go to any balloting site and with the card have the appropriate PAPER ballot generated on the spot. If they're not at the normal for that precinct then their ballot, after being optically scanned is fed into a seperately collated output bin so that it can be sent to the proper storage bin later. This allows people to vote for their district regardless of where they happen to physically go to cast. I also suggest that anyone over hte age of 18 who is a citizen be able to vote so long as they can get to a polling place, and that everyone that has any kind of government-issued ID is automatically registered simply by obtaining that ID. This eliminates people being disenfranchised on account of name confusion with convicted felons, which was a documented problem in Florida in 2000. It also ensures that every American Gets The Right To Vote and doesn't infringe on anyone. Yeah, some won't like convicted felons voting, but if they've been released from prison and are part of the civilian population then they've been released back to society and therefore should be let to vote, in my humble opinion.
The more complex the voting system gets the worse the process gets. Yeah, it's labor-intensive to physically count ballots, but we must maintain a paper record of all voting activities in case the electronic count doesn't work. The optical-scan ballots allow for that, and still give us the near-instant return that we like without compromising the ability to audit or recount.
It's funny, really. My dad was a computer programmer by profession before I was born, but we didn't even have a home computer until I was eight and had been exposed to them in school. As a young kid I played tee-ball, soccer, and volley ball, played with Legos, Construx, Hot Wheels, Tonka Trucks, etc, and was fairly limited in the TV that I was allowed to watch for some time. Eventually I graduated into slightly more mature cartoons and television shows like Perfect Strangers, and slowly evolved away from Hot Wheels and Tonka Trucks into car models and model rocketry, and eventually into computers.
We never had cable TV, except for one month when we moved and the previous owners' cable hadn't yet been disconnected. I remember that the month after that was very difficult as we had started to gravitate toward TV a lot more than we were before, and readjusting was hard.
Today I don't even have an antenna, let alone cable TV. And while I collect movies (and have more than 300 on Laserdisc, and about 100 more on DVD and VHS) I don't just let random crap come broadcasting into my home. I self-censor because I have better things to do with my time than sit there and watch TV for several hours a night.
Choose what you're going to experience, don't just passively sit there and let others choose it for you.
That's because they have to run as a member of the Administrators group in order to do fairly mundane tasks like install software or make use of otherwise-mundane consumer hardware.
I've had accounts on POSIX-compliant systems for years. I've found that with only user-level access I'm quite able to compile or install applications for my own user account in my own home directory without much difficulty, and still maintain the system integrity. As long as Microsoft holds on to the registry they'll never achieve such.
Okay, I'll agree with the, "...a hardware vendor shouldn't be allowed to lock you into using their approved software." argument, but offer a different idea. How about a vendor allows anything to run but only warrantys their specific software? Having dealt with large vendors and working for a large organization, I can tell you that we specifically like standardization because it means that a small staff (15 or so) can take care of 30,000 machines over about 100 sites. If I'm a vendor with thousands of customers running something specialized, I don't want them making changes that make the support difficult-to-impossible.
I can understand some merits, but I can also understand some demerits...
and that is, "consider the source." If someone is dumb enough to believe uncorroborated reports without any kind of consideration for the fact that the reporter could be wrong, lying, misinformed, or promoting an agenda then they get what they get.
The Internet is a great resource. Wikipedia has been very good for helping me find new things to be interested in, but it's not the end solution. If anything it's the beginning and the beginning only. I use Wikipedia to find out that I want to learn more about a subject, and from there, once I have had a chance to consult or read from true experts then I can make my judgement.
It's like anything else. It's a little bit of creativity, a little bit of business savvy, work, and time. For those of us who are too lazy to go through this route to make our way there are 9-5 jobs. There are those whose job is solely to buy wholesale and sell retail, and they've been there since the day of the trader with his horse-drawn cart rolling into town. eBay just tweaks the rules a bit.
I don't personally want to use something that could leave me high-and-dry if something goes awry, and I'm too lazy to research aspects that mitigate the risks. So, I don't eBay. I work a state-level IT job. Not a lot of reward, but not a lot of risk either, and I don't have to worry about stability.
My brother worked at Best Buy for many, many years. The grandparent's post is mostly correct. He'd get peripherals for almost nothing, and even some large appliances like refridgerators that had a massive markup were discounted heavily when he bought them. Some things were weird as how the employee discount worked, like DVDs, CDs, and other stuff that had special conditions, but *most* computer parts and computers themselves fell into the nice discount category, as did televisions, VCRs, DVD players, Receivers, and the like. After awhile they started making employees pay with plastic to try to stop them from buying things on behalf of friends, but I'm sure that it didn't totally curtail that...
He saw the writing on the wall when Geek Squad was coming, and he got himself transferred out of computer service and into the warehouse, where he unloaded trucks and helped customers with bulky purchases. Best, they somehow didn't drop his pay when he transferred, they actually gave him a small raise. He did it while going through college.
Wow. Just. Wow. Do they think that this helps businesses? I'd avoid the area like the plague unless I absolutely had to drive through there, and since there are convenience stores, Holiday Inn Expresses, and strip-malls all over the place that would be really easy to do. If I were a driver trying to go through there I'd not want to stop because of the fear of having trouble getting back on the road again, and I'd only get annoyed with the traffic problems and congestion that's been created. In the Phoenix area there's a place where the city of Scottsdale designated for commercial, at the intersection of Scottsdale Road and Shea Blvd. It's such a congested mess that they had to build bypass roads that go around the intersection if anyone wants to get through. Consequently I don't go to Scottsdale much, that road (and much of the rest of it) is just a mess.
...with pitting Windows XP against all of the UNIces and other Network Operating Systems. I mean, HPUX really isn't tailored to end users, and Windows XP isn't a server-grade OS. Windows Server 2003 is at least marketted to servers...
I was expecting something more like the Eric Levenez's UNIX Timeline.
That still doesn't prevent IE from being on there and being used for shell calls. It also doesn't change the fact that many Microsoft products don't call for an external browser window, they call for an IE window, even if IE isn't set to the default browser. All it takes is visiting one malware-enabled site with ActiveX on and the machine is compromised.
Honestly at this point I probably wouldn't care nearly as much, IF Microsoft's browser was secure, robust, and standards compliant. Unfortunately it's zero for three.
It may not be part of the Kernel, but it's an irremovable part of the Shell. It also has the ability to connect in to the service level via ActiveX, which allows it to go WAY too low level. So, while yes, it is not part of the Kernel, it has the ability to compromise the computer down to just about that far, and I find that unacceptable.
If I could *not* install IE when I install Windows then I might not have such a problem with all of this. Thing is, I'm not given that option. Microsoft doesn't provide an equivalent of the Windows 95/Windows NT4 shell anymore, and they didn't design the interface to make it easy for a user to replace the shell entirely. Yes, I know that there have been alternate shells for Windows at times, but other than Litestep have any of these made any headway? Do any of these even still exist?
...before they are told to just take a print-screen of the document, page by page, then use a graphics program to install the black boxes over words, then import each image as a page into their PDF creator...
Wouldn't be more efficient to use it to drive a turbine? Granted it might take some work to get the turbine up to speed, but a starter motor could get it spinning enough for the gas pressure to continue to drive it. It could then drive a flywheel or hybrid-style electric generator to power a bank of batteries, and subsequently wheels...
I'd like to see turbine engines tried again. In the seventies when Chrysler got rid of their turbine project it was driving the car through mechanical means. Now they could instead hook it up to a hybrid electric motor/transmission to keep the turbine at its most efficient RPM, and charge batteries and use regen braking to add more power...
"Nothing about laptops, it's all for cellphones. So don't worry about those body parts. Prepare for ultra super-duper cellphones next year!"
What if I like my cellphone on Vibrate and in a certain place, huh?
I'm remembering a science fiction novel that featured those, and I think that it was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were another one of his works like The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. It's been awhile since I've read anything of his.
What really irks me about IE, especially since they started bundling, is how they've managed to get dime-a-dozen web developers to heavily rely on ActiveX, leaving us with a basic browser with a bunch of extensions that only break compatibility and allow for exploits.
I've never seen a website requiring ActiveX that couldn't be done a better, browser-independent way.
Slashdot itself is an example of a robust website used by a LOT of people on a daily basis with expected 99.99% uptime and never losing any data, and it manages to work on lynx on an 80x25 text-mode console with no client-side ANYTHING other than page rendering and form submission.
- TWM
- FVWM
- Afterstep
- Enlightenment
- Gnome and all of its windowmanagers (Galeon requires Mozilla!)
Yeah, I know that TWM and FVWM are old, before you go ranting about that. They're still functional program launchers though, and if I'm using an old host or XDMCP over a slow link then I'll switch to a lightweight WM.Apparently you haven't installed Linux recently, or you've installed some really-specifically-tailored distribution, as every major distribution that I've used (Debian, Slackware, Red Hat, SuSE) allows the installer to pick what they get or else just gives them ALL in the default configuration. The very fact that I can choose to install Konqueror, Galeon, Mozilla, or Firefox when installing Linux gives me choice. I can even choose to use lynx or elinks. So, your original reply does qualify handily as 'troll'.
Oh, and the whole 'free' thing makes a bit of a difference too, as they're not profiting on my usage, in fact, if anything they're at a disadvantage since bandwidth and server space has to be paid for in order for me to download the product from them in the first place. Unlike Uncle Bill's company...
... is exactly what drove me away from Microsoft in the first place. Specifically, Windows 95 "C" where the IE installer started and couldn't be cancelled through a normal dialog box (but could be 'End Task'ed), despite the fact that it was a piece of shit. Yes, Netscape was king of the non-standard extension back in those days, but their abuses pale compared to Microsoft's ActiveX in the late nineties through today, and with the massive vulnerability that ActiveX poses Microsoft should face a class-action lawsuit for negligence in their product design resulting in expensive and time-consuming repairs to computers on a regular basis. Furthermore, it was a travesty that despite Microsoft's Anti-trust ruling they weren't forced to remove Internet Explorer from the OS or weren't forced to include third-party web browsers in the same fashion that they were forced to include third-party connection suites like Compuserve, Prodigy, and America Online in addition to their own MSN.
Mozilla should continue to grow, and advanced users should continue to push to make sure that it is implemented, so long as it remains a better tool for the job than the default (Internet Explorer).
I really feel sorry for the poultry, grilling, and general cooking forum members too... ...as well as all of us who have a general positive opinion for such things...
For some reason I'm thinking that precedent from MPAA vs 2600 Magazine might be a contributor, as they were successfully barred from even linking to DeCSS, even though they were no longer hosting it. And at that point, there was no ruling on the legality of DeCSS, either...
I know, there are some differences, but still, I don't think that referencing something should necessarily be a crime. I'm sure that there are exceptions, where people are being made victims by directing others to certain places, but this just seems extreme.
Just register your club card to some fake name and always pay cash.
I'm sure that they're wondering who the hell "Oliver Clozoff" is, and why he or she is buying Mentos and Diet Coke at the same time...
Actually, to a small extent I do. If the OS allows the user too much power over the OS itself then the whole machine goes down. I used HP X-terminals when I was in college, and they were never down. The HPUX server in each respective cluster just ran and ran and ran, even though users could compile their own code, install their own applications, print, and mount preconfigured remote filesystems.
I tried a fork-bomb once, didn't do much besides disconnect my controlling terminal. People had enough room to put whatever browser they wanted (Netscape was modern at the time), and I had programs for IRC, instant messaging, and the like. The only thing that I really couldn't do was play audio, since these terminals weren't equipped with sound chipsets. Had they been, it would have been possible to set X up to forward sound to the machines just as well as video.
So, as long as Microsoft continues to take shortcuts in order to do things rather than go through the right channels then I will continue to blame them for a certain amount of social engineering allowing people to get users to do things that will compromise the whole machine rather than just the user's personal data.