One large one is the human nature of stupid and weasely people. Not of all people. The essentials of communism (arguably just extreme socialism) has existed many many times throughout human society: Very small nations, Native American tribes, Mormons were originally so communal it was damn near communist. The one thing in common they all had with eachother? They were small, very small. When it's small enough that when you're lazy you see somebody else starve, you're less likely to abuse the system. When living off the system is as easy as stealing cable, and you don't see any immediate downfalls, you'll see a lot more people want to cheat. This is the main reason why Communism on a large-nation scale has always had to be enforced with extreme control over people.
That reason, or the lack of its presence in OSS communities, is why OSS is so successful. OSS is like a dream community, everyone works hard to benefit eachother -- most people selflessly so. The fact that most true OSS people never see any financial benefits for it, and if they quit would lose nothing, is why it doesn't face weasely and stupid human nature ruining it.
Even people who claim that communism is absolutely evil will usually admit that the idea behind it is as beautiful as John Lenin's "Imagine" -- it's just in reality it never turns out that well. Well guess what, in the OSS community, it turned out that well. The people who its success are hurting are trying to tie the word communism to it so they can form negative preconceived notions based on Stalinist "communism".
Finally I'd just like to say that no I don't think OSS is communist, but I think it is a wonderful huge community where everyone is out for the benefit of others. That is the best part of the idea behind communism (and socialism for that matter) and that's why they get tied together.
They're slightly more expensive than a Dell, but not by any great amount. When you consider how much faster they run, and their performance, it is hard to recommend a non-apple laptop to anyone who isn't an MS addict. Their desktop hardware is a little insane, but their laptops are well priced IMO.
This coming from a person who has never owned an apple (aside from my ipod) and who spent last year working tech help for my university and repaired hundreds of laptops from all brands (but apple) for people.
Is being undersaid. This is his DIRECT boss. Do you realize the damage done if employees were allowed to start what amounts to 100% spying on their bosses? I mean this is somewhat redundant as others have said it, but let's think about it. What if this guy, in his spying had found out the following week he was going to be fired. On top of uncovering the fact that his boss is getting paid more to do nothing, he now has to deal with one week he's fired. That's enough to motivate a LOT of people to do real harm to a system. What if even more, he found out that one of his co-workers was going to be fired? He could let him know and be relatively free of any guilt of what his coworker does with his time. Or somebody is getting paid more than somebody else.
There is an extreme amount of sensitive information that he should NOT be exposed to simply to help fight laziness. Especially working for the government. The government is very picky about who they grant access to to see certain things, do you know how terrifying it must be to them that a sysadmin can install a program to take snapshots so easily? What if this guys boss was cleared for somewhat sensitive information that nobody else was supposed to see?
And lastly, people have been ridiculous here in saying that this guy couldn't expect any privacy because when logging on it says things can be recorded. This is true, but it does NOT give an employee the right to record them. That is meant for someone who can safely be exposed to sensitive information, not as signing away your rights for anybody who works there to spy on you.
a troll. I'll give you a hint -- it's not having an opinion that you disagree with.
I stated facts, mac's are NOT the biggest choice for either CS or corporations. PC's are in NO way the desktop for fools, like the post I replied to supposed. I gave my personal experience to back this up. Please tell me how ANYTHING I said can be considered troll? Or let me guess, you're posting from a mac.
First, almost all of the stuff you listed is dated usefulness. Then you kind of made my point by saying that most mainframe work is done by linux clusters now -- and that mac's are simply used for desktop. Then to quote you:
And let's not even go to the "special" science programs and projects that were developed 1st on the Mac and then ported to the PC once they were working correctly:
Mathmatica
LabView
PGP (yep Zimmerman did it on a Mac laptop at CU Boulder)
The Human Genome project was solved by banks of Macs.
Key idea, THEY WERE PORTED. My entire argument is based on COST VS VALUE, not solely value. Apparently my thesis comment didn't make that clear enough. Mac's cost a ton to make the desktop standard, where as x86's are dirt cheap. If all the processing is going to be done on linux clusters, and all the programs have been ported to PC, why spend the money to use a mac? And I still stand by my original statement that they aren't heavily used in the broad sense that you propose. You found a very very thin slice of the market that YEARS ago the mac's had a math calculation advantage on, but today, does it still exist? Not from my experience, and unlike you who worked in a university a many years ago, I worked in one last year. All of our chemistry lab-interface equipment was (to my disgust) running windows 2k. Not sure what we did our number crunching on, but I think we both know it was either a Cray or a cluster (and we don't have a mac cluster, though I'm aware they exist). And before you slam my school for chemistry, we're a top 15 school for chemistry whose chair was named "most brilliant chemist in the world" by popular science last year.
I just got modded troll by somebody -- whoever it is ought to be ashamed. Mine is a serious post stating facts and my opinion. Instead of misusing your modpoints why don't you reply so that you can actually learn something.
I was actually trying to point out some irony. This guy bashes people who are hard nosed, and Einstein was one of them. I'm willing to bet this guy wouldn't have put Einstein in that group of people that refuse to give up on their idea even in the face of evidence that points the other way.
What do Macs do for Science and Engineering that would justify spending the money on them? They're great for desktop users but they're simply not designed to be "special" for science and engineering. Right now top 40 CS school is split between x86's running redhat and sun machine's. Starting next fall they are probably going to be phasing out the sun's for either more redhat machines OR FreeBSD (yep...really looks like *BSD is dying for all you haters).
And perhaps you should rethink your entire logic about those educational discounts, dell offers them too, that completely negates your point. I worked for a university tech support program, and we could get a half dozen dells for the price of a single mac -- even with the discount.
Finally, on top of working for my university tech support (a school of near 40,000 students) who did have a few macs solely for the sake of troubleshooting for students with macs, I've worked for one of the top 3 financial software makers in the world (give you a hint, either SAP, Oracle or Peoplesoft), and one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the country in their IT dept. I've not once, note even ONCE, seen a mac. So get off your high horse about real companies use macs. It's entirely preference.
I have lots of on-the-job experience. I work with lots of people who are 35 and over, a ton in fact. Most of them are irreplacable. I work for a company that produces a very complex product, and actually knowing the product and how to write it in their proprietary language itself makes you VERY valuable. On top of that there are CONTRACTS with your employer, so that if you do get laid off you will get paid for a year or so.
Do I believe I am perfectly unique in my abilities? Absolutely not. But what I do know is that the honing of my skills is quite unique, my particular subsets of skills to my main professional skills are also quite good. Do I feel untouchable? Of course not. But I do know that my boss, my bosses boss, and my bosses bosses boss all like me -- and in the business world that's a big part of keeping your job. The only point you made that negates that would be is if my company went under, which unions aren't going to do much for anyway. Your training theory isn't sound by any means, there are many ways to train without a union. For instance a temp agency will train you and pay you while you're looking for a new full time job.
Finally I have read LOTS of slashdot complaints. You know the one thing I've noticed about those slashdotters? They want to be paid what they were before the bubble burst, they all have a dilbert "I'm smarter than those idiot management" mentality, and they openly admit they don't have the "bull shittin" skills but refuse to learn them. Well guess what, if you don't want to play the game of getting a job the way it's played, then you're not going to get a job. As for people becoming valueless at a certain age and getting laid off, that's funny. I have 4 family members in that age group right now, they're constantly turning down headhunter job offers to go to other company's, mainly because they're so happy with the respect and security of their current job. huh. Sounds like you picked some bad companies...
By the time I'm 35, I can guarantee you that I will be of value to the point where they won't want to fire me with my experience. At my current age I'm already about there, and I'm quite a ways away from 35. I know as long as I work hard and don't screw up, I'll be fine.
The type of firings that unions protect you from in our current day world is almost solely firing from incompetence. They don't really add any protection for those who are competent; in fact those who are competent use their weight to keep the incompetent on. By the time you're 35, you should have acquired so much experience that you are VERY in demand, making supply and demand work very favorably for you. Go check out job listings, most want 3-5 years experience, if you have 15 years experience, you are perfectly fine.
Supply and demand still governs the large majority of our workers in this country; there are many unionized workers, but not nearly as many as those who seem to be doing perfectly fine settling down without unions. That's a ridiculous logical fallacy of yours to attempt to say that security is required for a family, and unions provide security, so you must have unions for a family. Wrong. You must have security for a family, and there are MANY ways to attain it without butchering our economy.
Because in a society where supply and demand are truly working, the value of a worker will be set by the demand for him. In such, if there are too many workers, they will not get paid like they wish, but if they unionize then that doesn't mean that all the workers will get paid more, what it means is that many workers won't get jobs, because the same amount of money has to go to less people. In the end is it truly profitable that now the government has to take more taxes off of your union job so that it can give money to those who currently can't get a job? Unions kill supply and demand, and kill jobs. On top of that Unions offer security to a point where they can foster laziness. Sometimes it's good to have fear for one's job (it certainly makes me work harder, and in turn I usually get rewarded for that hard work). Though there is one indeniable fact, if you can join a union: do it. All economists that I've had to study agree on this. If you're purely out for your own good, and you can join a union, you will indeniably profit from being in one.
is it Apple's fault that you have much higher taxes? I can understand that you'd want the exact same price as us (maybe what, 70 euro's cheaper?), but to have a cheaper ipod solely because you have higher taxes and lower income is impossible. Maybe in a 3rd world country where the economy isn't so globalized, but if your idea came about next thing you would know european countries would be by far outselling the US in iPod's -- and mysteriously there'd be thousands up on ebay that were sold in europe.... Hell many wouldn't even take that step, I have family in Europe, I'd have them go to a shop and by one for me and send it over.
A law student recently told me that when testing for the bar, one of the more popular questions to test your ethics is to ask if you've ever downloaded music illegally. If you say yes, you're cooked. Since GWU is in DC I'm going to take a wild guess and say they have a law school. If that law students story really was true, this could keep every half intelligent law student from perjuring themselves as their first act of BECOMING a lawyer;)
He's not talking about trick down, he's talking about money growth through investment. If you invest 10 dollars, and there's a minimum hold of $1 for the bank, it can loan 9 back out. That 9 is deposited back in the bank, now they have to hold 90c and can loan 8.10 back out. The eventual effect is that the money grows VERY fast. Many more people have more money to work with, lots more investment and production.
You give it to the government, they spend it -- poorly on something that is HORRIBLE for the economy (like Unionized workers). Then it's done. In our society there seems to be some crazy notion that leaving your money sitting in the bank is going to stagnate our economy, which is only true if no investment is taking place at all. In truth the more money sitting in the bank (theoretically, government regulation can change this) the lower the interest rate is, and the more appealing it is to invest.
The fair use clause covers copies. Here is a summary of fair use as currently set out in law I got off a googled page:
# Purpose and Character of the Use -- If it is for non-profit or educational purposes, it may be fair; if it is for commercial gain it may be unfair.
# Amount and Substantiality of the Portion Used -- Must not be too large compared to the copyrighted work as a whole.
# Effect of the Use on the Copyrighted Work -- Must not harm the potential market for, or value of, the work.
Archival copies are fair use, they do not damage the market at all (YOU BOUGHT THE PRODUCT, the fact that you don't want to have to buy it again if the media it's stored on gets a scratch is your right).
Here's the main thing, they're trying to double-screw us here. They're charging us $18 for 3 cents of plastic by claiming that we're buying the intellect property on the plastic, and then at the same time they're trying to make it impossible for us to use that intellectual property (which we've already purchased) in more than one place -- limiting it to PHYSICAL limitations. They must choose, is this a physical product? If so charge what it physically costs. Is it an IP product? If so then let us use our IP however we want once we buy it.
Been using konqueror with it for 18 months. I may have set identification to fake IE initially though...can't remember...but I didn't think so. I switched to firefox a month ago and it works fine now (as you stated).
Most of the time it's easier to install software for me than even having to track down a setup.exe off the internet. If I want to install via binary (what a windows exe file is) I simply type:
pkg_add -r programname
and it downloads it, all the dependant programs, and installs them all automatically.
To install via source code, I simply go to the ports directory, which is organized by subject (net, devel, www, etc), then browse to the software folder I want to install and type:
make install
it compiles, does everything itself, you're done once it's done compiling the software works. That sounds a hell of a lot easier than tracking down software on the net and sorting through endless freeware junk. Hell it's easier than tracking down a CD in my CD-folder. Certainly easier than going to best buy and paying money for software;)
There are factories in Isreal and a few Asian countries. All it takes is 1 chip for a weapon. I mean honestly this is ridiculous, how could they ever expect to keep enough chips out so that they couldn't put a few on weapons?
But the point remains. Being made in Asia and Isreal is certainly not going to make it difficult for anybody to get their hands on these things. It just seems like a ridiculous law, since it's not even preventing anybody from getting them. If you've managed to get Uranium...a P4 is not going to be difficult to find.
Why would they bother to get these chips from us here at the US for expensive US prices when I'm sure they could get them for dirt cheap stolen from the factories in where they're made.
There is no interface to just blatantly let software attach itself to firefox, you can install plugins, but a page has to call a certain type of plugin for it to be used.
Javascript nor Java would cause any type of vulnerability, since the bank pages would not be running either. Applet's have very little power to begin with, so you'd have to download and run a java program for it to even think about keylogging and sending.
So no, not all browsers are weak and just not targeted, IE is just an incredibly insecure POS. I worked for 9 months at a university tech-help center where the VAST majority of our time (we're talking 90% of a multimillion tech help budget) was spent on cleaning spyware from IE. I answered a hundred or so calls on a shift, every few weeks I'd get a call from a mac user....almost always because exchange wasn't configured right on their mac. And yes, I run FireFox on FreeBSD....
When there's no competition, M$ can get away with this crap. Let's face it, even with this 99% of people won't switch from IE, solely because they don't even realize they have a choice anymore. If there was actual competition in the industry (aside from nerds who run firefox), then this crap would NOT be allowed by M$, because it would mean certain death for any share of the browser market they held.
For one, do you really think they were giving people refunds for these charges? Maybe Canada has some consumer protection laws or something, but from my dealings with scummy utility companies in the US, I know I'd pay every penny for a hijacked modem.
Then on top of that, this seems such a small fix. What happens when the new virus out sets it up to call, say, Russia or China. Can't exactly block those countries. Yes yes I didn't RTFA so I'm not sure if these countries have significance more than I know...
Slashdot Mirror
One large one is the human nature of stupid and weasely people. Not of all people. The essentials of communism (arguably just extreme socialism) has existed many many times throughout human society: Very small nations, Native American tribes, Mormons were originally so communal it was damn near communist. The one thing in common they all had with eachother? They were small, very small. When it's small enough that when you're lazy you see somebody else starve, you're less likely to abuse the system. When living off the system is as easy as stealing cable, and you don't see any immediate downfalls, you'll see a lot more people want to cheat. This is the main reason why Communism on a large-nation scale has always had to be enforced with extreme control over people.
That reason, or the lack of its presence in OSS communities, is why OSS is so successful. OSS is like a dream community, everyone works hard to benefit eachother -- most people selflessly so. The fact that most true OSS people never see any financial benefits for it, and if they quit would lose nothing, is why it doesn't face weasely and stupid human nature ruining it.
Even people who claim that communism is absolutely evil will usually admit that the idea behind it is as beautiful as John Lenin's "Imagine" -- it's just in reality it never turns out that well. Well guess what, in the OSS community, it turned out that well. The people who its success are hurting are trying to tie the word communism to it so they can form negative preconceived notions based on Stalinist "communism".
Finally I'd just like to say that no I don't think OSS is communist, but I think it is a wonderful huge community where everyone is out for the benefit of others. That is the best part of the idea behind communism (and socialism for that matter) and that's why they get tied together.
They're slightly more expensive than a Dell, but not by any great amount. When you consider how much faster they run, and their performance, it is hard to recommend a non-apple laptop to anyone who isn't an MS addict. Their desktop hardware is a little insane, but their laptops are well priced IMO.
This coming from a person who has never owned an apple (aside from my ipod) and who spent last year working tech help for my university and repaired hundreds of laptops from all brands (but apple) for people.
There is an extreme amount of sensitive information that he should NOT be exposed to simply to help fight laziness. Especially working for the government. The government is very picky about who they grant access to to see certain things, do you know how terrifying it must be to them that a sysadmin can install a program to take snapshots so easily? What if this guys boss was cleared for somewhat sensitive information that nobody else was supposed to see?
And lastly, people have been ridiculous here in saying that this guy couldn't expect any privacy because when logging on it says things can be recorded. This is true, but it does NOT give an employee the right to record them. That is meant for someone who can safely be exposed to sensitive information, not as signing away your rights for anybody who works there to spy on you.
a troll. I'll give you a hint -- it's not having an opinion that you disagree with.
I stated facts, mac's are NOT the biggest choice for either CS or corporations. PC's are in NO way the desktop for fools, like the post I replied to supposed. I gave my personal experience to back this up. Please tell me how ANYTHING I said can be considered troll? Or let me guess, you're posting from a mac.
First, almost all of the stuff you listed is dated usefulness. Then you kind of made my point by saying that most mainframe work is done by linux clusters now -- and that mac's are simply used for desktop. Then to quote you:
And let's not even go to the "special" science programs and projects that were developed 1st on the Mac and then ported to the PC once they were working correctly:
Mathmatica
LabView
PGP (yep Zimmerman did it on a Mac laptop at CU Boulder)
The Human Genome project was solved by banks of Macs.
Key idea, THEY WERE PORTED. My entire argument is based on COST VS VALUE, not solely value. Apparently my thesis comment didn't make that clear enough. Mac's cost a ton to make the desktop standard, where as x86's are dirt cheap. If all the processing is going to be done on linux clusters, and all the programs have been ported to PC, why spend the money to use a mac? And I still stand by my original statement that they aren't heavily used in the broad sense that you propose. You found a very very thin slice of the market that YEARS ago the mac's had a math calculation advantage on, but today, does it still exist? Not from my experience, and unlike you who worked in a university a many years ago, I worked in one last year. All of our chemistry lab-interface equipment was (to my disgust) running windows 2k. Not sure what we did our number crunching on, but I think we both know it was either a Cray or a cluster (and we don't have a mac cluster, though I'm aware they exist). And before you slam my school for chemistry, we're a top 15 school for chemistry whose chair was named "most brilliant chemist in the world" by popular science last year.
I just got modded troll by somebody -- whoever it is ought to be ashamed. Mine is a serious post stating facts and my opinion. Instead of misusing your modpoints why don't you reply so that you can actually learn something.
I was actually trying to point out some irony. This guy bashes people who are hard nosed, and Einstein was one of them. I'm willing to bet this guy wouldn't have put Einstein in that group of people that refuse to give up on their idea even in the face of evidence that points the other way.
You missed my point! I will readily admit that OSX is every bit and more powerful than BSD right now.
My point was, the gain in power does not even come CLOSE to making up for the difference in price. Re-read my thesis statement:
What do Macs do for Science and Engineering that would justify spending the money on them?
Wasted the good part of his later life trying to disprove theories that are pretty much known to be true today.
What do Macs do for Science and Engineering that would justify spending the money on them? They're great for desktop users but they're simply not designed to be "special" for science and engineering. Right now top 40 CS school is split between x86's running redhat and sun machine's. Starting next fall they are probably going to be phasing out the sun's for either more redhat machines OR FreeBSD (yep...really looks like *BSD is dying for all you haters).
And perhaps you should rethink your entire logic about those educational discounts, dell offers them too, that completely negates your point. I worked for a university tech support program, and we could get a half dozen dells for the price of a single mac -- even with the discount.
Finally, on top of working for my university tech support (a school of near 40,000 students) who did have a few macs solely for the sake of troubleshooting for students with macs, I've worked for one of the top 3 financial software makers in the world (give you a hint, either SAP, Oracle or Peoplesoft), and one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the country in their IT dept. I've not once, note even ONCE, seen a mac. So get off your high horse about real companies use macs. It's entirely preference.
I have lots of on-the-job experience. I work with lots of people who are 35 and over, a ton in fact. Most of them are irreplacable. I work for a company that produces a very complex product, and actually knowing the product and how to write it in their proprietary language itself makes you VERY valuable. On top of that there are CONTRACTS with your employer, so that if you do get laid off you will get paid for a year or so.
Do I believe I am perfectly unique in my abilities? Absolutely not. But what I do know is that the honing of my skills is quite unique, my particular subsets of skills to my main professional skills are also quite good. Do I feel untouchable? Of course not. But I do know that my boss, my bosses boss, and my bosses bosses boss all like me -- and in the business world that's a big part of keeping your job. The only point you made that negates that would be is if my company went under, which unions aren't going to do much for anyway. Your training theory isn't sound by any means, there are many ways to train without a union. For instance a temp agency will train you and pay you while you're looking for a new full time job.
Finally I have read LOTS of slashdot complaints. You know the one thing I've noticed about those slashdotters? They want to be paid what they were before the bubble burst, they all have a dilbert "I'm smarter than those idiot management" mentality, and they openly admit they don't have the "bull shittin" skills but refuse to learn them. Well guess what, if you don't want to play the game of getting a job the way it's played, then you're not going to get a job. As for people becoming valueless at a certain age and getting laid off, that's funny. I have 4 family members in that age group right now, they're constantly turning down headhunter job offers to go to other company's, mainly because they're so happy with the respect and security of their current job. huh. Sounds like you picked some bad companies...
By the time I'm 35, I can guarantee you that I will be of value to the point where they won't want to fire me with my experience. At my current age I'm already about there, and I'm quite a ways away from 35. I know as long as I work hard and don't screw up, I'll be fine.
The type of firings that unions protect you from in our current day world is almost solely firing from incompetence. They don't really add any protection for those who are competent; in fact those who are competent use their weight to keep the incompetent on. By the time you're 35, you should have acquired so much experience that you are VERY in demand, making supply and demand work very favorably for you. Go check out job listings, most want 3-5 years experience, if you have 15 years experience, you are perfectly fine.
Supply and demand still governs the large majority of our workers in this country; there are many unionized workers, but not nearly as many as those who seem to be doing perfectly fine settling down without unions. That's a ridiculous logical fallacy of yours to attempt to say that security is required for a family, and unions provide security, so you must have unions for a family. Wrong. You must have security for a family, and there are MANY ways to attain it without butchering our economy.
Because in a society where supply and demand are truly working, the value of a worker will be set by the demand for him. In such, if there are too many workers, they will not get paid like they wish, but if they unionize then that doesn't mean that all the workers will get paid more, what it means is that many workers won't get jobs, because the same amount of money has to go to less people. In the end is it truly profitable that now the government has to take more taxes off of your union job so that it can give money to those who currently can't get a job? Unions kill supply and demand, and kill jobs. On top of that Unions offer security to a point where they can foster laziness. Sometimes it's good to have fear for one's job (it certainly makes me work harder, and in turn I usually get rewarded for that hard work). Though there is one indeniable fact, if you can join a union: do it. All economists that I've had to study agree on this. If you're purely out for your own good, and you can join a union, you will indeniably profit from being in one.
is it Apple's fault that you have much higher taxes? I can understand that you'd want the exact same price as us (maybe what, 70 euro's cheaper?), but to have a cheaper ipod solely because you have higher taxes and lower income is impossible. Maybe in a 3rd world country where the economy isn't so globalized, but if your idea came about next thing you would know european countries would be by far outselling the US in iPod's -- and mysteriously there'd be thousands up on ebay that were sold in europe.... Hell many wouldn't even take that step, I have family in Europe, I'd have them go to a shop and by one for me and send it over.
Law Schools?
;)
A law student recently told me that when testing for the bar, one of the more popular questions to test your ethics is to ask if you've ever downloaded music illegally. If you say yes, you're cooked. Since GWU is in DC I'm going to take a wild guess and say they have a law school. If that law students story really was true, this could keep every half intelligent law student from perjuring themselves as their first act of BECOMING a lawyer
He's not talking about trick down, he's talking about money growth through investment. If you invest 10 dollars, and there's a minimum hold of $1 for the bank, it can loan 9 back out. That 9 is deposited back in the bank, now they have to hold 90c and can loan 8.10 back out. The eventual effect is that the money grows VERY fast. Many more people have more money to work with, lots more investment and production.
You give it to the government, they spend it -- poorly on something that is HORRIBLE for the economy (like Unionized workers). Then it's done. In our society there seems to be some crazy notion that leaving your money sitting in the bank is going to stagnate our economy, which is only true if no investment is taking place at all. In truth the more money sitting in the bank (theoretically, government regulation can change this) the lower the interest rate is, and the more appealing it is to invest.
# Purpose and Character of the Use -- If it is for non-profit or educational purposes, it may be fair; if it is for commercial gain it may be unfair.
# Amount and Substantiality of the Portion Used -- Must not be too large compared to the copyrighted work as a whole.
# Effect of the Use on the Copyrighted Work -- Must not harm the potential market for, or value of, the work.
Archival copies are fair use, they do not damage the market at all (YOU BOUGHT THE PRODUCT, the fact that you don't want to have to buy it again if the media it's stored on gets a scratch is your right).
Here's the main thing, they're trying to double-screw us here. They're charging us $18 for 3 cents of plastic by claiming that we're buying the intellect property on the plastic, and then at the same time they're trying to make it impossible for us to use that intellectual property (which we've already purchased) in more than one place -- limiting it to PHYSICAL limitations. They must choose, is this a physical product? If so charge what it physically costs. Is it an IP product? If so then let us use our IP however we want once we buy it.
Been using konqueror with it for 18 months. I may have set identification to fake IE initially though...can't remember...but I didn't think so. I switched to firefox a month ago and it works fine now (as you stated).
Most of the time it's easier to install software for me than even having to track down a setup.exe off the internet. If I want to install via binary (what a windows exe file is) I simply type:
;)
pkg_add -r programname
and it downloads it, all the dependant programs, and installs them all automatically.
To install via source code, I simply go to the ports directory, which is organized by subject (net, devel, www, etc), then browse to the software folder I want to install and type:
make install
it compiles, does everything itself, you're done once it's done compiling the software works. That sounds a hell of a lot easier than tracking down software on the net and sorting through endless freeware junk. Hell it's easier than tracking down a CD in my CD-folder. Certainly easier than going to best buy and paying money for software
There are factories in Isreal and a few Asian countries. All it takes is 1 chip for a weapon. I mean honestly this is ridiculous, how could they ever expect to keep enough chips out so that they couldn't put a few on weapons?
But the point remains. Being made in Asia and Isreal is certainly not going to make it difficult for anybody to get their hands on these things. It just seems like a ridiculous law, since it's not even preventing anybody from getting them. If you've managed to get Uranium...a P4 is not going to be difficult to find.
Why would they bother to get these chips from us here at the US for expensive US prices when I'm sure they could get them for dirt cheap stolen from the factories in where they're made.
There is no interface to just blatantly let software attach itself to firefox, you can install plugins, but a page has to call a certain type of plugin for it to be used.
Javascript nor Java would cause any type of vulnerability, since the bank pages would not be running either. Applet's have very little power to begin with, so you'd have to download and run a java program for it to even think about keylogging and sending.
So no, not all browsers are weak and just not targeted, IE is just an incredibly insecure POS. I worked for 9 months at a university tech-help center where the VAST majority of our time (we're talking 90% of a multimillion tech help budget) was spent on cleaning spyware from IE. I answered a hundred or so calls on a shift, every few weeks I'd get a call from a mac user....almost always because exchange wasn't configured right on their mac. And yes, I run FireFox on FreeBSD....
netscape.
When there's no competition, M$ can get away with this crap. Let's face it, even with this 99% of people won't switch from IE, solely because they don't even realize they have a choice anymore. If there was actual competition in the industry (aside from nerds who run firefox), then this crap would NOT be allowed by M$, because it would mean certain death for any share of the browser market they held.
For one, do you really think they were giving people refunds for these charges? Maybe Canada has some consumer protection laws or something, but from my dealings with scummy utility companies in the US, I know I'd pay every penny for a hijacked modem.
Then on top of that, this seems such a small fix. What happens when the new virus out sets it up to call, say, Russia or China. Can't exactly block those countries. Yes yes I didn't RTFA so I'm not sure if these countries have significance more than I know...