I asked those idiots at Dell about Linux in 2001 and they gave me the rudest reaction imagineable. I still wouldn't buy their garbage. Forget Linux for a moment... ever try to run anything on a Dell (well, a laptop in my case) that they did not ship with it? Like say a different version of Windows? Good luck there.
I bought my Dell in 2001 and was forced to swallow XP Home. I wanted to run Win2K and Linux as I was developing server apps and needed 2K server. Guess what... my laptop did not "support" Win2K, whatever that means. ATI's driver's never worked on it. Dell's answer? "Tough luck". I should use XP... that's what they said.
Freaking idiots. Yeah. Me too. For buying one.
I like how greedy (mostly US) companies and entities make assumptions about things in the world (as if US laws even apply outside of the US -- I am in Canada and I find it quite funny whenever a US lawmaker acts like the laws he is trying to pass will ever be enforced upon the 5.5 billion people on this planet who don't fall under US jurisdiction. Oh wait... Iraq is not part of the US and they are under US jurisdiction. How incorrect of me.
But anyways, so what if some people with iPods are consuming pirated music? What about those that are not? Are they going to screw over all those who have legitimate music with this tax, or do they have some ingenious way to only punish the bad people? By putting a piracy tax, are they basically saying "Ok... since we can beat some of the pirates, we are just going to get paid anyways by charging for the hardware... then it is all ok."? If that's what they are saying, would they be inviting current non-pirates who eventually do get screwed with this piracy tax to just go ahead and pirate music then? Perhaps people will reason the tax makes piracy ok?
It is amusing how industries screw over one group of consumers of a product due to the acts of another group. In Canada, there was (I am not sure if there still is) a HUGE tax imposed on every blank CD bought in this country. The tax was a fixed amount, and with the really low prices of cds, the tax was often more than the price of the CD! And why? Because it was believed these CD's were being used to pirate... stuff. Mostly music I presume. And what about all those people using CD's for data backups or for industrial use? Tough luck you say? Yeah... free country, my ass.
How about the Internet connection pirates use to download pirated stuff off the Internet with. Should that be taxed as well for piracy? How about the computer you bought to copy your MP3's? Is that to be taxed? What about the freaking car you drove in down to the mall to buy that iPod? It is technically also an accessory to the "crime" of piracy.
Fact is... this all sounds like lunacy. You can't punish all the users of a given technology just because a group of people (not all people) have found a way to use that technology illegally. I think most of you slashdotters will find at least one illegal way to use practically every product you ever consume on a daily basis.
I agree. Severe penalties should be awarded for such breaches of security. But why do you want to punish the hacker? It is his nature to commit such deeds. Yeah... rapists should be punished... and ok... hackers ought to be too. But quite frankly, it is impractical to take the approach of reprimanding the hacker and therefore assuming that security is ensured. The real problem is we have a huge amount of systems out there running very insecure operating systems. I will not name them, but the list is obvious.
Consider a prison. You got bars... you got cells. There are criminals being held... assumably they are guilty, and these guys, by their very nature, do bad things, as do hackers, for whatever reason. But if these inmates were to "breach" security by breaking out (analagous to a hacker breaking into a secure system) and then going out and killing someone (analagous to a hacker stealing data or destroying data), who is the bigger criminal here... the criminal who is pre-determined to be a criminal by his very nature, or the flaming jack-a** that designed the prison (analagous to insecure system)? If you buy a canoe and go out into a lake and the damn things starts to leak and let the water in, are you going to drain the lake and beat up the water, or find the idiot who made the canoe and punish him somehow?
I expect some interesting responses to my perspective.
Regards.
I agree, Raging Guppy.
I have worked with C and C++ software in Linux, OS/2, and Windows environments for the longest time. I can appreciate the fact the author is trying to push... that C/C++, by their nature, allow the possibility for memory corruption and overruns that can be potential security breaches. I will remind you that Linux servers are used extensively and just as much as Microsoft servers in many cases, if not more. These servers are not vulnerable to the problsm that exist on the Microsoft platform. Microsoft has had YEARS to straighten out IE, but has failed to... in fact, the software gets worse as time goes on. It seems analogous to an old canoe with holes that keep popping up because of rotting wood... for how long can you keep patching it till all you have are patches keeping it together? While writing this, I got 3 IE popups come out of nowhere! I am not even using IE, nor have I ever, in the past 1 year. I use firefox, exclusively. Why is this firefox program already super-ceding my wildest (albeit lowered) expectations of IE? Why is Microsoft not improving on things that have existed as problems over the course of 3 or more different OS revisions? These are but many of the myriad of unanswered questions that Microsoft executives always avoid answering somehow.
Check out this URL:
http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/default.mspx?disp laylang=en
Genuine Microsoft software ensures that you get world-class reliability???
You gotta be kidding me? Arguably, they make this claim by comparing their OS to others, who provide far less than world-class reliability...
If not... what the heck are they on?
Well...
I think ThinkGeek.com is pretty good for geek specific stuff. Of course, he is probably a normal guy, so he might just like some of the stuff on CupidGear.com as well. ThinkGeek has lots of geek-specific toys, although I don't know how much might be Valentines-Specific. CupidGear has lots of Love and Valentines related stuff, but then, it is not really geek specific. Both probably have Fedex shipping, if you are running late on this.
Hope that helps.
Incidentally... stfu with the term "America". It was an idiot who decided to call the US of A, America, and it is a bunch of ignoramuses who continue that stupid tradition.
Perhaps Mexicans should just call their country, Earth?
1.
Yeah.. and how many of those "Americans" you have described (ie: minorities) are really considered Americans? Let's see... the Blacks were enslaved... they still get 2nd class treatment in parts of the US. Asians have been mistreated all the time (remember head taxes?) More specifically, let's not forget the ridiculous treatment of Japanese "Americans" people in WW2. And then... there is the recent crap... all the mistreatment and resentment toward anybody who even looks like an Arab... the Indian guy (a Sikh) who was shot and killed in Texas because some moron thought he was an Arab (and even if he was, why was he shot), and the detainment of people at airports, etc... the list goes on...
All I can say is... only in America. Don't use the existence of visible minories to strengthen your argument that you people are globally aware... let's see how many people NOT from those groups of minorities, know anything about the world outside their backyard.
You know something... you're probably right. Indians certainly don't have the right to complain about American democracy, because American democracy is actually quite respectable in my Canuck opinion...
Of course, let's conveniently ignore that the wrong man is in the White House right now, despite this glorious democratic system, but I digress.
On a tangent, and quite frankly, what difference does it make, how screwed up a country might be? What is annoying about the US is their desire to get into the business of other countries... have they ever heard of the term "mind you own freaking business"?
"Somewhat"??? Give me a break... You guys have the right to claim you are the most elitist, ethnocentric, and might I add, globally ignorant people on earth, looking at developed nations (it would not exactly be fair to compare developed nations' peoples to people from some 3rd world underdeveloped country where people may simply not have had the opportunity to learn things, even if they had a desire and will to).
I agree with your logic about the dog analogy... I too would be wary of dogs if I were bitten by one. At the same time, why do you taunt dogs and then complain about it when they bite you? This is totally off-topic, but American Foreign Policy is pure CRAP. You piss people off in other countries... and you know these people have no military means to defend or enforce their "ways" and principles... these people will resort to whatever means necessary to protect their way of life. I ain't no American history expert, but most "patriots" during the American Revolution were arguably terrorists too, in the eyes of the "law".
History is written by those who win wars.
It's a real problem... myself included... in the "slashdot" community for people to take things way too literally, and not realize the sarcasm... but I agree with you.
What... not USA? Hmm... where could that possibly be? I wasn't aware there are actually other countries out there! Canada? Oh... I thought it was a state...
Oh yeah... the home of the "Toronto Blue Jays" is Alabama...
Is this paper going to be proprietary, only for use in MS-created iLoo toilets? How will they ensure compliance and introduce incompability for those of us who try to use "non-standard" products?
Slashdot Mirror
I asked those idiots at Dell about Linux in 2001 and they gave me the rudest reaction imagineable. I still wouldn't buy their garbage. Forget Linux for a moment... ever try to run anything on a Dell (well, a laptop in my case) that they did not ship with it? Like say a different version of Windows? Good luck there. I bought my Dell in 2001 and was forced to swallow XP Home. I wanted to run Win2K and Linux as I was developing server apps and needed 2K server. Guess what... my laptop did not "support" Win2K, whatever that means. ATI's driver's never worked on it. Dell's answer? "Tough luck". I should use XP... that's what they said. Freaking idiots. Yeah. Me too. For buying one.
I like how greedy (mostly US) companies and entities make assumptions about things in the world (as if US laws even apply outside of the US -- I am in Canada and I find it quite funny whenever a US lawmaker acts like the laws he is trying to pass will ever be enforced upon the 5.5 billion people on this planet who don't fall under US jurisdiction. Oh wait... Iraq is not part of the US and they are under US jurisdiction. How incorrect of me. But anyways, so what if some people with iPods are consuming pirated music? What about those that are not? Are they going to screw over all those who have legitimate music with this tax, or do they have some ingenious way to only punish the bad people? By putting a piracy tax, are they basically saying "Ok... since we can beat some of the pirates, we are just going to get paid anyways by charging for the hardware... then it is all ok."? If that's what they are saying, would they be inviting current non-pirates who eventually do get screwed with this piracy tax to just go ahead and pirate music then? Perhaps people will reason the tax makes piracy ok? It is amusing how industries screw over one group of consumers of a product due to the acts of another group. In Canada, there was (I am not sure if there still is) a HUGE tax imposed on every blank CD bought in this country. The tax was a fixed amount, and with the really low prices of cds, the tax was often more than the price of the CD! And why? Because it was believed these CD's were being used to pirate... stuff. Mostly music I presume. And what about all those people using CD's for data backups or for industrial use? Tough luck you say? Yeah... free country, my ass. How about the Internet connection pirates use to download pirated stuff off the Internet with. Should that be taxed as well for piracy? How about the computer you bought to copy your MP3's? Is that to be taxed? What about the freaking car you drove in down to the mall to buy that iPod? It is technically also an accessory to the "crime" of piracy. Fact is... this all sounds like lunacy. You can't punish all the users of a given technology just because a group of people (not all people) have found a way to use that technology illegally. I think most of you slashdotters will find at least one illegal way to use practically every product you ever consume on a daily basis.
I agree. Severe penalties should be awarded for such breaches of security. But why do you want to punish the hacker? It is his nature to commit such deeds. Yeah... rapists should be punished... and ok... hackers ought to be too. But quite frankly, it is impractical to take the approach of reprimanding the hacker and therefore assuming that security is ensured. The real problem is we have a huge amount of systems out there running very insecure operating systems. I will not name them, but the list is obvious. Consider a prison. You got bars... you got cells. There are criminals being held... assumably they are guilty, and these guys, by their very nature, do bad things, as do hackers, for whatever reason. But if these inmates were to "breach" security by breaking out (analagous to a hacker breaking into a secure system) and then going out and killing someone (analagous to a hacker stealing data or destroying data), who is the bigger criminal here... the criminal who is pre-determined to be a criminal by his very nature, or the flaming jack-a** that designed the prison (analagous to insecure system)? If you buy a canoe and go out into a lake and the damn things starts to leak and let the water in, are you going to drain the lake and beat up the water, or find the idiot who made the canoe and punish him somehow? I expect some interesting responses to my perspective. Regards.
I agree, Raging Guppy. I have worked with C and C++ software in Linux, OS/2, and Windows environments for the longest time. I can appreciate the fact the author is trying to push... that C/C++, by their nature, allow the possibility for memory corruption and overruns that can be potential security breaches. I will remind you that Linux servers are used extensively and just as much as Microsoft servers in many cases, if not more. These servers are not vulnerable to the problsm that exist on the Microsoft platform. Microsoft has had YEARS to straighten out IE, but has failed to... in fact, the software gets worse as time goes on. It seems analogous to an old canoe with holes that keep popping up because of rotting wood... for how long can you keep patching it till all you have are patches keeping it together? While writing this, I got 3 IE popups come out of nowhere! I am not even using IE, nor have I ever, in the past 1 year. I use firefox, exclusively. Why is this firefox program already super-ceding my wildest (albeit lowered) expectations of IE? Why is Microsoft not improving on things that have existed as problems over the course of 3 or more different OS revisions? These are but many of the myriad of unanswered questions that Microsoft executives always avoid answering somehow.
Check out this URL: http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/default.mspx?disp laylang=en
Genuine Microsoft software ensures that you get world-class reliability???
You gotta be kidding me? Arguably, they make this claim by comparing their OS to others, who provide far less than world-class reliability...
If not... what the heck are they on?
Well... I think ThinkGeek.com is pretty good for geek specific stuff. Of course, he is probably a normal guy, so he might just like some of the stuff on CupidGear.com as well. ThinkGeek has lots of geek-specific toys, although I don't know how much might be Valentines-Specific. CupidGear has lots of Love and Valentines related stuff, but then, it is not really geek specific. Both probably have Fedex shipping, if you are running late on this. Hope that helps.
Incidentally... stfu with the term "America". It was an idiot who decided to call the US of A, America, and it is a bunch of ignoramuses who continue that stupid tradition. Perhaps Mexicans should just call their country, Earth?
1. Yeah.. and how many of those "Americans" you have described (ie: minorities) are really considered Americans? Let's see... the Blacks were enslaved... they still get 2nd class treatment in parts of the US. Asians have been mistreated all the time (remember head taxes?) More specifically, let's not forget the ridiculous treatment of Japanese "Americans" people in WW2. And then... there is the recent crap... all the mistreatment and resentment toward anybody who even looks like an Arab... the Indian guy (a Sikh) who was shot and killed in Texas because some moron thought he was an Arab (and even if he was, why was he shot), and the detainment of people at airports, etc... the list goes on... All I can say is... only in America. Don't use the existence of visible minories to strengthen your argument that you people are globally aware... let's see how many people NOT from those groups of minorities, know anything about the world outside their backyard.
You know something... you're probably right. Indians certainly don't have the right to complain about American democracy, because American democracy is actually quite respectable in my Canuck opinion... Of course, let's conveniently ignore that the wrong man is in the White House right now, despite this glorious democratic system, but I digress. On a tangent, and quite frankly, what difference does it make, how screwed up a country might be? What is annoying about the US is their desire to get into the business of other countries... have they ever heard of the term "mind you own freaking business"?
Just how are the BJP racists?
"Somewhat"??? Give me a break... You guys have the right to claim you are the most elitist, ethnocentric, and might I add, globally ignorant people on earth, looking at developed nations (it would not exactly be fair to compare developed nations' peoples to people from some 3rd world underdeveloped country where people may simply not have had the opportunity to learn things, even if they had a desire and will to). I agree with your logic about the dog analogy... I too would be wary of dogs if I were bitten by one. At the same time, why do you taunt dogs and then complain about it when they bite you? This is totally off-topic, but American Foreign Policy is pure CRAP. You piss people off in other countries... and you know these people have no military means to defend or enforce their "ways" and principles... these people will resort to whatever means necessary to protect their way of life. I ain't no American history expert, but most "patriots" during the American Revolution were arguably terrorists too, in the eyes of the "law". History is written by those who win wars.
It's a real problem... myself included... in the "slashdot" community for people to take things way too literally, and not realize the sarcasm... but I agree with you.
What... not USA? Hmm... where could that possibly be? I wasn't aware there are actually other countries out there! Canada? Oh... I thought it was a state... Oh yeah... the home of the "Toronto Blue Jays" is Alabama...
Uh... that's Indian Institute of Technology, NOT International etc...
Is this paper going to be proprietary, only for use in MS-created iLoo toilets? How will they ensure compliance and introduce incompability for those of us who try to use "non-standard" products?