You can dismantle both if you want. I just wouldn't expect the manufacturer to tell me how it was put together and what-does-what. Sure, it would be nice, but they're certainly under no obligation to do so. It's kinda nice that AMD is playing along, but I was under the (possibly false) impression that BIOS' were mostly defined by motherboard manufacturers, not CPUs.
Of course, I'm probably wrong. If so, could someone explain how they all work together (in terms of who defines what a BIOS does or does not do). I can't imagine AMD or Intel dictating how the bios manages Realtek's onboard audio/NIC.
See, I'm not sure it's related to any of the above. It's usually an application that crashes and burns, and that takes X server down fast. It's usually a full system freeze. I don't know where the blame lies in all of this: application-in-question (such as gaim or evolution), Gnome, X.org's X server or hardware. I would imagine the hardware is the least probable.
The GFX drivers I'm using are the nvidia ones (emerge nvidia and emerge nvidia-glx, I believe, for gentoo). The card is an Asus GeForce 3 (v7700? something like that). I've also had it happen with the same drivers with my Visiontek GeForce 4 Ti4600 (tertiary and secondary computers, respectively). I've yet to give the Visiontek Radeon X800 and Athlon 64 3500+ a whirl on the Linux merry-go-round, so I can't tell you if it's just that particular instance of graphics drivers (though I've been using Gentoo for over a year and a half, and I'm sure the drivers have been updated in that time (especially since I've installed so many times)) or not related at all.
But yes, I do like XP; I use the uxtheme.dll replacement and use an extremely minimalistic theme ( http://h3lix.net/images/desktop.jpg ) so I don't have to deal with obnoxious graphics crap.:]
I've also used Fluxbox quite a bit; it takes a bit of getting used to, but it is pretty nice (especially how minimalistic it is!!!) I'd really have to sit myself down and push myself to use it for a few weeks before I could get really comfortable, and I haven't gotten around to it yet. Someday I shall, though.:]
No worries, no offense taken. But no, it isn't hardware related, as I've had it happen on multiple boxes. Also, if you haven't guessed already, I'm a gamer, so I buy the highest end hardware I can get. It takes a year or so until it becomes "Linux box" hardware, but I stopped buying anything that wasn't brand name and solid (for example, I stick with gigabyte boards because (though, at times, they are), while they may not be the very fastest, they are always extremely stable and long lasting). It isn't anything for me to drop 250$ on a motherboard. I'd rather buy one once and never have to again, until I'm ready for a full system upgrade.
I also forgot to mention Slackware in my previous list; I actually like that the most, next to Gentoo. Again, I picked Gentoo just so I could get some idea of what is going on under the hood. None of your easy-to-use distros really tell you anything. If you can't figure out how to do it with a GUI, you're essentially screwed. Sure, you can dig around for hours and hours and hours, but that's a painful, top-down approach, and I wanted to do the "bottom-up" approach - at least to an extent.
Don't get me wrong, but I've had GAIM lock up and crash Gnome and X more times than I can count. I've never had that happen under XP. I'd try KDE, but the interface is so obnoxious (to me!) and I can't seem to find a theme that makes it bearable. Sure, form follows function, but that statement still requires form to be there, after all is said and done. By I'm rambling again:]
Well, actually, I started on linux way back in the day on Caldera's Open Linux something or other. Then there was Corel. Then there was Redhat 6, then 7, then 8. Then there was SuSE. Then there was Fedora. I've had issues with all of them crashing on me:]
The reason I went with Gentoo was a: to learn as much as possible without having to track down every package under the sun AND worry about dependencies myself. I didn't use the unstable packages when installing anything (other than new gaim versions, for example). In any event...that's my background:]
Half-Life 2, being the key one. That and the mods. I'm looking forward to Day of Defeat: Source like you wouldn't believe. Brothers in Arms also tends to make my heart skip a beat after each new movie/screenshot/whatever is released (but that isn't due out for a few weeks)
I'm sorry to hear that. Gnome manages to lock my IM box up at least once a day. My Windows box hasn't been rebooted, much less crashed, in 26 days, 13 hours, and 11 minutes.
I've never had anywhere near the stability problems on Windows as I have on Linux. I can see it being more stable without any sort of GUI interface, but really, I never, ever, ever have any Windows problems.
Of course, you could chalk all that up to a: knowing what I'm doing on Windows and b: not _really_ knowing what I'm doing on Linux. Sure, I've installed Gentoo countless times, so I know stuff somewhat, but I'm nowhere near as experienced as I am with Windows.
Those Linux fanboys you speak of are the same ones that brought it from a concept in Linus' mind to the relative powerhouse it is today. Sure, it isn't the desktop to end all desktops, but look at how far something that was put together by a bunch of geeks in their parents' basements has come.
Everyone talks about the "death" of Linux that, or Microsoft "crushing" Linux. They may someday crush Redhat and SuSE and others, but they're never going to stop this "geek (r)evolution" from continuing to unfold. The only thing that could do that is something just as free and better.
I think the fanboys can be silly at times too, but lets be honest, "ever" is a very, very, very long time. Free or not, who knows? Maybe someone can come out with something better 3 years down the line. Fast, flexible, easy to use, relatively bug free - think Firefox, but an OS this time.
Then again, until I can play _all_ of my games (at least the relatively current ones) on it, I'm not switching. Although I do use Gentoo on my non-gaming systems.
I think the point he's trying to make is the majority of us get Shitty Choice A and Shitty Choice B. And then you get to sniff them both for a while and figure out which shit smells the least bad, and then you put that in office.
I could go on and on with these analogies. A flaming stick in your left eye or an acid spewing stick in your right eye. Cat hairball in your left shoe or dog vomit in your right.
Most people never get a candidate they actually believe in. They pick the best from a bad group. If you were one of the lucky ones who actually truly believed in Bush completely, then I must say, I'm jealous of your luck. But for me, Kerry was almost as bad as Bush and we had no one better to pick from. I've only been able to vote twice, but I'm seriously considering never doing it again. It's essentially pick-your-poison, and I guess I'd rather just not play that game at all.
I have some ideas, but they all revolve around a: not allowing this to be manipulated by people who want to limit free, political speech and b: getting bogged down in crazy U.N. beauracracy. Those are essentially my biggest fears. I don't care if ICANN is American or not, as long as what I say isn't being restricted and it moves with some semblance of efficiency (or at least, isn't COMPLETELY stagnant...), I'm fine with it.
Bottom line is, unless we can be sure of some things, we, as Americans, are not going to go for it. It's kind of like us demanding that the U.N. oversee and manage the BBC. I admit the analogy isn't the best, but even so, the UK would be well within their rights to say "Hey, I have a better idea, how about you go fuck yourself."
Of course I do. You, as a global observer, have no right to tell me what to do in my personal life, or with my tax money, or any other sort of internal affair. It's none of your business. Which is why it's NOT something that should be handled globally. But anything that impacts the rest of the world, it should be handled responsibly AND globally.
Maybe you should stop looking for arrogance when it isn't there. So quick to jump on an American, even though there's a logical explanation for everything he said, and none of which is arrogant.
Seriously, though, the U.N.? I'm all for internationalization, and I believe working with the global community is a very good idea, especially in the long run, but the U.N.? No. Maybe someone who has their act together. But not the U.N. As much as I get angry with my own government, at least I can rest easy at night knowing we don't pay any attention to the U.N. at all.
United Nations: 9/10 as an idea, 2/10 in implementation.
Yes, everything is cut and dry and you can NEVER look at the situation as it happened in human terms. He signed the NDA, thus he completely understood every facet of it, and then knowingly and maliciously intended to harm Apple and their ability to compete, and thus, Apple deserves a multi-hojillion dollar award and this guy deserves to rot in McDonalds for all eternity (or until he blows his head off 2 months from the award is granted)...all because we, as people, are completely incapable of looking at things from a humanely rational frame of reference (ie: taking into account human nature).
Taking into account human nature does NOT relieve him of responsibility. But it SHOULD mitigate some of the trouble he's in.
I believe that's WHY he's running around bleating like a wounded sheep. How in the hell else is he going to drum up support to pay for it? Just from reading that article, Wozniak stated he was going to donate 1000$ to the fund. By playing the scared kid (which most of us can relate to at some time or another), he's tugging on our heart strings, and through them, gaining access to our loot. Then again, I'm not so sure he's playing...but he IS getting mad exposure and, theoretically, lots of funding to help with this.
Keep in mind, as I said before in other posts, anything more than 150$ is probably too much for a college student, much less the tens of thousands of dollars it will take to retain a lawyer.
So...copyright infringement and breaking a contract is the same as baby killing and kitten slaying? O.o
(I know you were just exaggerating, I just wanted to use 'kitten slaying' in a sentence today.)
I feel sorry for the guy too. I don't want to see him think this was okay. But I'm certain that this guy is scared out of his mind. They all are. Hell, I was scared out of my mind when I got an underage drinking citation; a 150$ fine had me shitting bricks, so to speak. For 2 weeks I was hoping for death. That was 150$. I can't even imagine what 1,500$ would have been, or 15,000$, or 150,000$, or 1.5$ million dollars. I know that, financially, I would have been right out of college and working at McDonalds for the forseeable future trying to pay that off. 1500$ could be done with a semester off. 15,000$? 5-7 years. 150,000$? Never. Not in my entire life will I have 150,000$ spare money to spend.
Chances are amazingly great that, with 5-7 years off, I would never be going back to college. I'd be flipping burgers or scrubbing toilets. Being overly enthusiastic and extremely shortsighted should not result in the ruination of your entire life. What benefit are you to society if you're making minimum wage and scrubbing a toilet as opposed to making 100,000$+ a year, with about 30,000$ of that going to pay taxes? And how is getting 300$ payments a month from a guy making minimum wage for the rest of his life going to do ANYTHING to help recoup supposed losses resulting from these "damages"? It makes no sense.
Scare the shit out of him. Scare the shit out of the rest of the people who read about how absolutely terrified this kid is. Then let him go. No one is going to benefit by crushing his opportunity to be a relatively beneficial member of society and relegating him to food-stamps poor.
It's a question of importance. How often are we inundated by long, lawyer gibberish declaring one thing or another. Eventually it becomes background noise, annoying, essentially the same thing as a webpage advertisement. And, again, I don't ponder every single thing I read and try to infer the meaning (or importance) behind it every single moment - ESPECIALLY not when I'm giddy with excitement.
The point I was making wasn't that this absolves him of guilt. The point I'm making is that it is a FAR cry from divulging patient information.
Because the author wanted you to focus on THIS aspect of Pong, instead of the whole "you played it for hours and hours and then got in a fist fight with your best friend 'cos he said you were cheating even though it's fucking pong and how in hell could you cheat at pong?!" (etc, etc, etc)
Actually, he said he never read the NDA. Thus it wasn't knowingly.
And who wants to read an NDA? Some people force themselves, just like people who give themselves enemas. It's essentially masochism. If he said "I didn't read the big blinking red sentence that said 'REDISTRIBUTING IS ILLEGAL'", I would buy your theory that he's lying, but who, aside from the afore mentioned masochists, read things that begin "Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Binary Code License Agreement
for the
JAVATM 2 SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT KIT (J2SDK), STANDARD
EDITION, VERSION 1.4.2_X
SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. ("SUN") IS WILLING TO LICENSE
THE SOFTWARE IDENTIFIED BELOW TO YOU ONLY UPON THE
CONDITION THAT YOU ACCEPT ALL OF THE TERMS CONTAINED IN
THIS BINARY CODE LICENSE AGREEMENT AND SUPPLEMENTAL
LICENSE TERMS (COLLECTIVELY "AGREEMENT"). PLEASE READ
THE AGREEMENT CAREFULLY. BY DOWNLOADING OR INSTALLING
THIS SOFTWARE, YOU ACCEPT THE TERMS OF THE AGREEMENT.
INDICATE ACCEPTANCE BY SELECTING THE "ACCEPT" BUTTON AT
THE BOTTOM OF THE AGREEMENT. IF YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO
BE BOUND BY ALL THE TERMS, SELECT THE "DECLINE" BUTTON
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE AGREEMENT AND THE DOWNLOAD OR
INSTALL PROCESS WILL NOT CONTINUE..." (etc etc etc for about 82 thousand goddam pages).
I'm not saying this relieves him of responsibility, but there's a huge fucking difference between knowingly breaking a confidentiality agreement and ignorantly (and irresponsibly) breaking one. And believe me, there is no way they're going to let him be a doctor without pounding that confidentially crap into his skull.
As someone who just recently graduated, I can say that anything more than 500$ is stretching finances. And frankly, if Visa didn't cover that, I would've been fucked. I spent 4 years in college with, at most, 20$ in my bank account that wasn't spoken for by rent/electricity/food (and that food consisted solely of ramen and 2 liter bottles of "City Cola" (59 cents!))
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Gah, I just feel unclean reading that again. I need a shower.
Adium, you say? Looks like a real nice app. If I ever get myself a powerbook, I'll have to give it a whirl.
You can dismantle both if you want. I just wouldn't expect the manufacturer to tell me how it was put together and what-does-what. Sure, it would be nice, but they're certainly under no obligation to do so. It's kinda nice that AMD is playing along, but I was under the (possibly false) impression that BIOS' were mostly defined by motherboard manufacturers, not CPUs.
Of course, I'm probably wrong. If so, could someone explain how they all work together (in terms of who defines what a BIOS does or does not do). I can't imagine AMD or Intel dictating how the bios manages Realtek's onboard audio/NIC.
See, I'm not sure it's related to any of the above. It's usually an application that crashes and burns, and that takes X server down fast. It's usually a full system freeze. I don't know where the blame lies in all of this: application-in-question (such as gaim or evolution), Gnome, X.org's X server or hardware. I would imagine the hardware is the least probable.
:]
:]
The GFX drivers I'm using are the nvidia ones (emerge nvidia and emerge nvidia-glx, I believe, for gentoo). The card is an Asus GeForce 3 (v7700? something like that). I've also had it happen with the same drivers with my Visiontek GeForce 4 Ti4600 (tertiary and secondary computers, respectively). I've yet to give the Visiontek Radeon X800 and Athlon 64 3500+ a whirl on the Linux merry-go-round, so I can't tell you if it's just that particular instance of graphics drivers (though I've been using Gentoo for over a year and a half, and I'm sure the drivers have been updated in that time (especially since I've installed so many times)) or not related at all.
But yes, I do like XP; I use the uxtheme.dll replacement and use an extremely minimalistic theme ( http://h3lix.net/images/desktop.jpg ) so I don't have to deal with obnoxious graphics crap.
I've also used Fluxbox quite a bit; it takes a bit of getting used to, but it is pretty nice (especially how minimalistic it is!!!) I'd really have to sit myself down and push myself to use it for a few weeks before I could get really comfortable, and I haven't gotten around to it yet. Someday I shall, though.
No worries, no offense taken. But no, it isn't hardware related, as I've had it happen on multiple boxes. Also, if you haven't guessed already, I'm a gamer, so I buy the highest end hardware I can get. It takes a year or so until it becomes "Linux box" hardware, but I stopped buying anything that wasn't brand name and solid (for example, I stick with gigabyte boards because (though, at times, they are), while they may not be the very fastest, they are always extremely stable and long lasting). It isn't anything for me to drop 250$ on a motherboard. I'd rather buy one once and never have to again, until I'm ready for a full system upgrade.
:]
I also forgot to mention Slackware in my previous list; I actually like that the most, next to Gentoo. Again, I picked Gentoo just so I could get some idea of what is going on under the hood. None of your easy-to-use distros really tell you anything. If you can't figure out how to do it with a GUI, you're essentially screwed. Sure, you can dig around for hours and hours and hours, but that's a painful, top-down approach, and I wanted to do the "bottom-up" approach - at least to an extent.
Don't get me wrong, but I've had GAIM lock up and crash Gnome and X more times than I can count. I've never had that happen under XP. I'd try KDE, but the interface is so obnoxious (to me!) and I can't seem to find a theme that makes it bearable. Sure, form follows function, but that statement still requires form to be there, after all is said and done. By I'm rambling again
Well, actually, I started on linux way back in the day on Caldera's Open Linux something or other. Then there was Corel. Then there was Redhat 6, then 7, then 8. Then there was SuSE. Then there was Fedora. I've had issues with all of them crashing on me :]
:]
The reason I went with Gentoo was a: to learn as much as possible without having to track down every package under the sun AND worry about dependencies myself. I didn't use the unstable packages when installing anything (other than new gaim versions, for example). In any event...that's my background
Half-Life 2, being the key one. That and the mods. I'm looking forward to Day of Defeat: Source like you wouldn't believe. Brothers in Arms also tends to make my heart skip a beat after each new movie/screenshot/whatever is released (but that isn't due out for a few weeks)
Hehehe, true enough. Okay then. "I can read directions." :D
I'm sorry to hear that. Gnome manages to lock my IM box up at least once a day. My Windows box hasn't been rebooted, much less crashed, in 26 days, 13 hours, and 11 minutes.
:]
I've never had anywhere near the stability problems on Windows as I have on Linux. I can see it being more stable without any sort of GUI interface, but really, I never, ever, ever have any Windows problems.
Of course, you could chalk all that up to a: knowing what I'm doing on Windows and b: not _really_ knowing what I'm doing on Linux. Sure, I've installed Gentoo countless times, so I know stuff somewhat, but I'm nowhere near as experienced as I am with Windows.
But I ramble
Those Linux fanboys you speak of are the same ones that brought it from a concept in Linus' mind to the relative powerhouse it is today. Sure, it isn't the desktop to end all desktops, but look at how far something that was put together by a bunch of geeks in their parents' basements has come.
Everyone talks about the "death" of Linux that, or Microsoft "crushing" Linux. They may someday crush Redhat and SuSE and others, but they're never going to stop this "geek (r)evolution" from continuing to unfold. The only thing that could do that is something just as free and better.
I think the fanboys can be silly at times too, but lets be honest, "ever" is a very, very, very long time. Free or not, who knows? Maybe someone can come out with something better 3 years down the line. Fast, flexible, easy to use, relatively bug free - think Firefox, but an OS this time.
Then again, until I can play _all_ of my games (at least the relatively current ones) on it, I'm not switching. Although I do use Gentoo on my non-gaming systems.
Libel?
I'm obviously not a lawyer, I'm just guessing. But maybe that's what they're hoping for?
I think the point he's trying to make is the majority of us get Shitty Choice A and Shitty Choice B. And then you get to sniff them both for a while and figure out which shit smells the least bad, and then you put that in office.
/shrug
I could go on and on with these analogies. A flaming stick in your left eye or an acid spewing stick in your right eye. Cat hairball in your left shoe or dog vomit in your right.
Most people never get a candidate they actually believe in. They pick the best from a bad group. If you were one of the lucky ones who actually truly believed in Bush completely, then I must say, I'm jealous of your luck. But for me, Kerry was almost as bad as Bush and we had no one better to pick from. I've only been able to vote twice, but I'm seriously considering never doing it again. It's essentially pick-your-poison, and I guess I'd rather just not play that game at all.
Or maybe I'm just cynical and jaded.
I have some ideas, but they all revolve around a: not allowing this to be manipulated by people who want to limit free, political speech and b: getting bogged down in crazy U.N. beauracracy. Those are essentially my biggest fears. I don't care if ICANN is American or not, as long as what I say isn't being restricted and it moves with some semblance of efficiency (or at least, isn't COMPLETELY stagnant...), I'm fine with it.
Bottom line is, unless we can be sure of some things, we, as Americans, are not going to go for it. It's kind of like us demanding that the U.N. oversee and manage the BBC. I admit the analogy isn't the best, but even so, the UK would be well within their rights to say "Hey, I have a better idea, how about you go fuck yourself."
Of course I do. You, as a global observer, have no right to tell me what to do in my personal life, or with my tax money, or any other sort of internal affair. It's none of your business. Which is why it's NOT something that should be handled globally. But anything that impacts the rest of the world, it should be handled responsibly AND globally.
Maybe you should stop looking for arrogance when it isn't there. So quick to jump on an American, even though there's a logical explanation for everything he said, and none of which is arrogant.
Dear U.N.,
No.
Signed,
- Everyone
Seriously, though, the U.N.? I'm all for internationalization, and I believe working with the global community is a very good idea, especially in the long run, but the U.N.? No. Maybe someone who has their act together. But not the U.N. As much as I get angry with my own government, at least I can rest easy at night knowing we don't pay any attention to the U.N. at all.
United Nations: 9/10 as an idea, 2/10 in implementation.
Yes, everything is cut and dry and you can NEVER look at the situation as it happened in human terms. He signed the NDA, thus he completely understood every facet of it, and then knowingly and maliciously intended to harm Apple and their ability to compete, and thus, Apple deserves a multi-hojillion dollar award and this guy deserves to rot in McDonalds for all eternity (or until he blows his head off 2 months from the award is granted)...all because we, as people, are completely incapable of looking at things from a humanely rational frame of reference (ie: taking into account human nature).
Taking into account human nature does NOT relieve him of responsibility. But it SHOULD mitigate some of the trouble he's in.
I believe that's WHY he's running around bleating like a wounded sheep. How in the hell else is he going to drum up support to pay for it? Just from reading that article, Wozniak stated he was going to donate 1000$ to the fund. By playing the scared kid (which most of us can relate to at some time or another), he's tugging on our heart strings, and through them, gaining access to our loot. Then again, I'm not so sure he's playing...but he IS getting mad exposure and, theoretically, lots of funding to help with this.
Keep in mind, as I said before in other posts, anything more than 150$ is probably too much for a college student, much less the tens of thousands of dollars it will take to retain a lawyer.
So...copyright infringement and breaking a contract is the same as baby killing and kitten slaying? O.o
(I know you were just exaggerating, I just wanted to use 'kitten slaying' in a sentence today.)
I feel sorry for the guy too. I don't want to see him think this was okay. But I'm certain that this guy is scared out of his mind. They all are. Hell, I was scared out of my mind when I got an underage drinking citation; a 150$ fine had me shitting bricks, so to speak. For 2 weeks I was hoping for death. That was 150$. I can't even imagine what 1,500$ would have been, or 15,000$, or 150,000$, or 1.5$ million dollars. I know that, financially, I would have been right out of college and working at McDonalds for the forseeable future trying to pay that off. 1500$ could be done with a semester off. 15,000$? 5-7 years. 150,000$? Never. Not in my entire life will I have 150,000$ spare money to spend.
Chances are amazingly great that, with 5-7 years off, I would never be going back to college. I'd be flipping burgers or scrubbing toilets. Being overly enthusiastic and extremely shortsighted should not result in the ruination of your entire life. What benefit are you to society if you're making minimum wage and scrubbing a toilet as opposed to making 100,000$+ a year, with about 30,000$ of that going to pay taxes? And how is getting 300$ payments a month from a guy making minimum wage for the rest of his life going to do ANYTHING to help recoup supposed losses resulting from these "damages"? It makes no sense.
Scare the shit out of him. Scare the shit out of the rest of the people who read about how absolutely terrified this kid is. Then let him go. No one is going to benefit by crushing his opportunity to be a relatively beneficial member of society and relegating him to food-stamps poor.
It's a question of importance. How often are we inundated by long, lawyer gibberish declaring one thing or another. Eventually it becomes background noise, annoying, essentially the same thing as a webpage advertisement. And, again, I don't ponder every single thing I read and try to infer the meaning (or importance) behind it every single moment - ESPECIALLY not when I'm giddy with excitement.
The point I was making wasn't that this absolves him of guilt. The point I'm making is that it is a FAR cry from divulging patient information.
God, I hope it never gets to be a game console. I'd just as soon play a game on a console as I would go to a wedding.
Naked.
Because the author wanted you to focus on THIS aspect of Pong, instead of the whole "you played it for hours and hours and then got in a fist fight with your best friend 'cos he said you were cheating even though it's fucking pong and how in hell could you cheat at pong?!" (etc, etc, etc)
Actually, he said he never read the NDA. Thus it wasn't knowingly.
And who wants to read an NDA? Some people force themselves, just like people who give themselves enemas. It's essentially masochism. If he said "I didn't read the big blinking red sentence that said 'REDISTRIBUTING IS ILLEGAL'", I would buy your theory that he's lying, but who, aside from the afore mentioned masochists, read things that begin "Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Binary Code License Agreement
for the
JAVATM 2 SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT KIT (J2SDK), STANDARD
EDITION, VERSION 1.4.2_X
SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. ("SUN") IS WILLING TO LICENSE THE SOFTWARE IDENTIFIED BELOW TO YOU ONLY UPON THE CONDITION THAT YOU ACCEPT ALL OF THE TERMS CONTAINED IN THIS BINARY CODE LICENSE AGREEMENT AND SUPPLEMENTAL LICENSE TERMS (COLLECTIVELY "AGREEMENT"). PLEASE READ THE AGREEMENT CAREFULLY. BY DOWNLOADING OR INSTALLING THIS SOFTWARE, YOU ACCEPT THE TERMS OF THE AGREEMENT. INDICATE ACCEPTANCE BY SELECTING THE "ACCEPT" BUTTON AT THE BOTTOM OF THE AGREEMENT. IF YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO BE BOUND BY ALL THE TERMS, SELECT THE "DECLINE" BUTTON AT THE BOTTOM OF THE AGREEMENT AND THE DOWNLOAD OR INSTALL PROCESS WILL NOT CONTINUE..." (etc etc etc for about 82 thousand goddam pages).
I'm not saying this relieves him of responsibility, but there's a huge fucking difference between knowingly breaking a confidentiality agreement and ignorantly (and irresponsibly) breaking one. And believe me, there is no way they're going to let him be a doctor without pounding that confidentially crap into his skull.
As someone who just recently graduated, I can say that anything more than 500$ is stretching finances. And frankly, if Visa didn't cover that, I would've been fucked. I spent 4 years in college with, at most, 20$ in my bank account that wasn't spoken for by rent/electricity/food (and that food consisted solely of ramen and 2 liter bottles of "City Cola" (59 cents!))
Maybe should've quit while you were ahead ;x