So lets see here: we have cellphones that catch fire; we have iPods that can explode; we have Dell and Sony and Apple laptops that catch fire -- the problem seems to cover a wide variety of battery operated consumer products.
It took the TSA/DHS nearly 3 years after the British would-be bomber, Richard Reed, to get around to banning butane lighters on commercial aircraft. Anyone willing to take a bet on just how long it will take for the TSA/DHS to ban all battery operated consumer products from commercial aircraft?
The whole paranoia about aircraft safety will not subside until after the TSA/DHS has all commercial aircraft passengers disrobing, with only paper (drafty) hospital gowns and paper slippers being permitted.
but only if you don't count MSFT's newly discovered profit center -- charging users a subscription fee to get updated virus signatures (new MS-AV) and OS (and Apps?) security patches. At that point, F/OSS rules!
The software giants are speaking out of both sides of their mouths. The surest way to push workers out of any particular career path is to force wages and job advancement down through outsourcing. No student wants to get locked into a career path that will no longer pay off the student loans quicker than a home mortgage. The pressure to outsource offshore and onshore began long before the drop in collegiate IT enrollment. Industry has embraced both globalization and the doublespeak propaganda required to justify it. I don't see this as anything more than a publicity campaign meant to mollify the public and pressure the Congress into opening the immigration tap full bore for L1-A and H1-B visas.
NAFTA was begun as a means of providing some economic stability to Mexico, but Congress never incorporated the adjunct legislation to "level the playing field" -- factors like health care, pension plans, and environmental sensitivities were dropped for the almighty buck. Current globalization efforts are designed to force wages of production workers (including IT) into a downward spiral -- it means a fatter paycheck and bonus plan for the captains of industry, our new overlords.
This is also why the current regime in power in the USA will not fund national security issues related to illegal immigration and border security. The mythical undocumented migrant worker is now running IT departments, working in hospitals and medical centers, working construction trades, and may even be that policeman on your neighborhood beat.
The issue is not supply and demand, at least not in the classical sense. It is employers who demand not to pay more than the absolute minimum to stay in business, regardless of legal issues.
Way too complicated a process for me (and messy, besides).
Silly-Putty (the kid's toy) makes a wonderfully detailed image of a fingerprint, and a flexible mold. Formed around 40 - 50% of the underside of the finger, and carefully removed, this form is ready for filling with silicon rubber. Allow the silicon rubber to cure fully, and you're good to go. The mold will self-destruct, but is easily removed from the casting.
Note: There are a lot of different colored silicon rubber available, so you could use a that to differentiate between various identities.
Ahhh! MSFT's Ballmer is already claiming victory over Google, and will do so under MSFT's new "Five Year Plan". Sounds like an old fashioned Soviet "marketing" blitz to me. No doubt Ballmer believes that incorporating internet search capabilities directly into the OS will kill off the competition. (Hey, it has worked a few times.)
As if that same monopolistic mindset hasn't done wonders for the security of their OSes already (thanks to MSIE).
MSFT: (Convicted) monopolist software company that is the jack of all (software) trades, and masters of none.
MSFT: Where do you want your computer to get hijacked to today? (And by whom?)
Since when did Mozilla version numbering roll backwards? The current version of Mozilla is 1.77, which is the closest competition to Netscape 8.0. Let's not compare apples and oranges, shall we?
Oh wait! Now I must wait for a new project to fork Mozilla, since it is now abandonware. AINARP (IANA Real Programmer), but the fact is that Mozilla would be a much better product with the following items included:
(1) ability to use a patching system, instead of requiring a full new download,
(2) ability to use but one rendering engine in memory for all modules, and
(3) ability to sync email between platform specific versions of Mozilla.
Having a common email client cross-platform was an advantage that Mozilla offered but now abandoned. Until some project adopts Mozilla (the real one), there will be a place for Netscape.
"China, except for small altercations with Taiwan and Japan, seems to be taking the 'speak softly and carry a big stick' approach. I agree that any move towards weaponization of space would be matched by them."
Oh, really?
Sounds like revisionist history to me; what about: Mongolia, Korea, Tibet, India, Laos, Taiwan, and Nepal?
As far as any new efforts by the USA to militarize space, what makes you think this is anything other than seeking "permission" after the fact? It's being made public now only because the military will not be able to conceal the amount of funding needed for this new initiative from the Congress.
I am inclined to agree with you about where the USA really needs to spend its money for better long term security. But the current regime in power has been far too busy pissing away taxpayer dollars on foreign (and failing) military adventures, and now the full scale miltarization of space. Our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will be paying for the assinine profligate spending the neo-cons in power have been stuffing into their corporate contributors' pockets.
I would say that you are "spot on target" with that assessment. If you look at the timeline of:
(1) PRC adopts own, more secure WiFi (2) PRC views MSFT OS source code (3) PRC embraces "Red Dragon" Linux (4) PRC slams door on foreign software
The PRC was ushered into the WTO with open arms, no doubt with Western software companies hoping that the PRC would crack down on software piracy. The standard MSFT mantra about their source code being available for review by big companies and governments is always shackled by NDAs. Which is probably why you will never hear anything in the press about just what the PRC found in MSFT source
code that they didn't like.
Actually, no virus will be needed. Just shoot down the lead "bird", and the rest will fly in formation smack into the ground. Wish that shooting ducks was that easy, although it wouldn't be "sporting".
So sorry -- I don't have a Mac Mini that I can provide some subjective data on. I do, however, have a Mac Powerbook which I replaced the OEM drive in.
The OEM drive was a Fujitsu 5400 RPM 60 GB disk. I replaced it with a Hitachi 7200 RPM 60 GB disk. The replacement disk has the same/similar power saving features as the OEM, so the PBK firmware and the OS (10.3.9) have good control. I have experienced a noticable improvement in the speed of loading applications, as well as spooling large files to disk. (The Hitachi drive has a far larger onboard cache that helps a lot.) I have lost about 15 minutes worth of battery time when untethered from an AC mains source. Over all, excepting the high cost premium charged for the 7200 RPM drive, my upgrade has been a net plus.
A very large part of Bush's derived and perceived power comes fronm the neo-con stranglehold on each and every part of the Executive branch. Those that do not "talk the Bush talk" or "walk the Bush walk" have been squeezed out of positions of authority. Changes in Federal law under Bush make whistleblowers subject to criminal charges (or even swallowed up in the machinery of the USA Patriot Act (I). Every dapartment has been well-coached on what the official regime positions are, and the penalties of non-compliance.
Microsoft delayed their anti-monopoly trial until a new regime (Bush) came to power. Call it a change of "venue", if you will. MSFT went from having their proverbial head on a chopping block (with the breakup of MSFT a very real possibility) to MSFT basically writing their own punishment (a light-hearted smack on the wrist). The Clinton administration very quickly (and rudely) awoke the major IT companies which were apolitical and not given to making campaign contributions to the danger of not having an inside track with whichever regime was in power.
In the USA at least, MSFT has a green light to do any damn thing they please. MSFT's deep pockets demand as much respect from the Dubya regime as does their market position. They even share similar tactics in their Borg-like propaganda efforts.
Elliot Spitzer, the NY State AG, has no cause to get involved in Microsoft's latest (MS-AV) profit center. If you carefully read Microsoft's EULA (and I know that as a slashdotter you always do), no software that Microsoft writes and distributes is "suitable for any particular purpose".
MSFT has, in fact, fully complied with the FTC regulations regarding the making of false claims, or of false advertising. Their software is gold-plated crap, and they are quite willing to acknowledge that in their EULAs. MSFT's "last best hope" for both monopolistic lock-in AND OS security has been their "Palladium" initiative, in which the onus for computer system security is passed over to the hardware/BIOS vendors.
The entire extent to which MSFT is willing to accept some modicum of responsibility is the $5.00 USD "refund" they are willing to make for each provable (in a court of law?) loss of data that their OS and/or Apps might cause. Do not expect MSFT to abandon their EULA TOS for their MS-AV product, whatever subscription-based profit center strategy they adopt for their AV signature or security patch "service", or any other gold-plated crap they decide to faun off on their much abused customer base. Gold-plated crap is, after all, still crap.
MSFT has just decided to parlay the shrinking worldwide customer base of their vulnerable software into yet another revenue stream. The worst that Elliot Spitzer could do as NY AG is force MSFT to print the entire EULA on the outside of their software packaging.
The MPAA is working on shooting themselves in the foot. The jury is stil out on whether the Broadcast Flag will become reality for HDTV, since the MPAA is now working through Congress instead of the FCC. Without the ability to time-shift HDTV programming, the MPAA will likely discover that their audience (and revenue stream) will be shrinking, not expanding. But once the Broadcast Flag becomes reality (I have great faith in the organized prostitutes called Congress), it will be very hard to rewind history. The MPAA will discover that it was a 12 gage shotgun that they used to shoot themselves in the foot.
It would seem that industrialized Western society is bent upon devolution, with the widespread adoption of a religion, and the construction of a social safety net designed to protect the weakest of the species.
Not to fear! The neo-con regime currently in power in the USA which claims to be "compassionate conservative" is in the process of dismantling the social safety net. Their continued destruction of the middle class is designed to preserve the power of the "Alphas" that control government and industry, at the expense of the far larger number of "Ewoks" needed to support them in the style to which they have become accustomed. Their creed of "creationism" is evolving into the creed of "intelligent design" based not on a supreme being but of the neo-con think tanks from which all their constructs and legislation derive. All other ethos that they lay claim to are but a smokescreen designed to garner temporary alliances they require as they consolidate their power.
The "Morlocks" are winning the evolutionary battle.
HP support, at least for anything other than servers (corporate market), blows big chunks.
An HP laptop (shipped with Win95) that I bought has had recurring memory issues -- neither the BIOS not the OS would recognise any add-in memory, only the memory soldered into the mobo.
The first time it went back, they replaced the add-in memory card AND re-installed the OS (Win95) -- I lost all my personal data.
The second time I sent the laptop back, I had replaced the internal hard disk with one that dual-booted WinNT and Linux. Not only did they not fix the memory recognition problem, but they sent back a little note that they could not/would not support their hardware running an "unapproved" OS.
This laptop is now my OpenBSD platform, which runs okay with the reduced amount of memory available. When it came time to buy a new laptop, I bought an Apple Powerbook and have never regretted it.
As far as I care, HP can ship (or not) any OS on any hardware they want. It will not matter to me because I will never buy any HP crap again. (But then, I also have resolved to never again buy any computer that is encumbered with the MSFT "tax", either.)
Of course it does sound like a waste of money -- you obviously have not been properly re-programmed yet. The judge will likely sentence you to another 40 hours worth of taxpayer supported regime generated television propaganda, under the auspices of the US Patriot Act (I & II).
Does it strike no one else here on slashdot as peculiar beyond the pale that so much effort and money is being expended on spying on the American public, in lou of sealing our borders against terrorist infiltrators, inspecting all incoming shipboard and air cargo, and keeping our National Guard troops here protecting the homeland?
Or, for that matter, that the USA adopted a policy of pre-emptive warfare against a dictator that had already been kicked to the curb (but had a lot of oil), instead of a madman halfway around the globe already armed with ballistic missiles and a penchant for bravado about building WMD?
It would seem to me that anyone not already caught up in either the grab at the Federal war funds, unbridled jingoistic patriotism, or as part of the neo-con movement focused on paving the way for the second coming, would have some rather serious doubts about the common sense and honesty of purpose of the current, ethically challenged regime in power.
I hate to quote a very old tome, but guns do not kill people - people kill people. When they do, they use whatever means are available at the time to commit their crime......everything from an insane mother drowning her children, to a violent ex-con using a potato peeler to stab little 10 year old girls, to an irate housewife running over her husband with the family SUV.
A firearm is nothing more than a tool, albeit a tool with limited uses. Statistics have shown a direct corelation between a government's poitical will to enforce their pre-existing laws against violent criminal behavior, liberalization of gun laws to allow honest citizens to protect themselves with firearms, and a remarkable reduction in the number of violent crimes committed against those same citizens. Criminals bent upon violent acts of crime seem to prefer victums that do not have the ability to defend themselves -- they make those crimes easier to commit with a probability of fewer negative consequences for the criminal.
but that's the reason to visit porn sites and download images and videos. How cool is that? All terrorist plans, calendars, instructions for everything from bullets to bombs to WMD are all neatly encrypted and hidden through the use of steganography. And communications back up the chain of command can be done through much lower bandwidth SPAM.
So when the neo-con Big brothers come knocking at the door to sift through your porn collection, it's really just a continuation of the fight against terrorism. No, really! It really doesn't have anything to do with the hypocritical religious fundamentalists trying to regulate your bedroom, honestly.
Netcraft HAS confirmed it -- democracy IS dead in America. The government of, by, and for the people as envisioned by the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights WAS a "republican" "democracy".
It is no mere coincidence that Dubya's grandfather (Prescott) was a closet Nazi, and they say that the genetic imprint passes most closely between children and grandparents. Shortly after 9-11, Dubya claimed "If you are not for me, you are for the terrorists." The current regime in power has propagandized to take us to war, intimidated the press and his political opposition, has propagandized to dismantle the social safety net, and is working on turning the USA into a theocracy. It is becoming difficult to discern real differences between the religious fundamentalist fascist terrorists and the religious fundamentalist Dubya neo-cons. Saudi Arabian Wahhabists/Royals must feel like proud parents at the birth of their new American offspring.
The USA has gone from being a democratic republic to being a Democratic Republic. After Dubya is finished renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of Peace, the USA will more appropriately be called the Peoples Democratic Republic of the United States of North America, but it will have fully adopted (Corporate) National Socialism.
If India has some CEO/CTO/CFO types to spare, the USA could sure make use of them. We have far too many greedy, lying, thieving, morally challenged corporate officer types here that could stand to spend some time in a "moral values re-education facility"^H^H^H prison.
Not to mention that working at 1/10th the price of our current corporate overlords would be great for corporate morale, the shareholders, and the bottom line.
It sure sounds like this guy is on the up-and-up. When the full details are disclosed, I may (just maybe) forced to buy a new Intel system with HT -- imagine the possibilities!
Got some problem with pesky DRM? No problem! Run that nefarious application on the Intel HT box, and walk away with the keys. Sweet!
(Just need to make sure that that MSFT "Palladium" crap is turned off in the BIOS first, right?)
Too bad the title of your submission doesn't quite match your submitted content.
Vendor lock-in, planned obsolescence, forced upgrades, and orphaned software drive up the TCO far beyond the TCO of FOSS, including IT support. Of course, many of these points are glossed over in vendor financed TCO studies (eg. MSFT). One cannot help but examine the (bad) experiences of only one MSFT-centric IT support company, like EDS, to draw the conclusion that Murphy's Law is alive and well. While the inadvertent crashing of 60,000 MSFT desktops at British Health Services due to patching errors might be overlooked as mere human error, the fact remains that it was easy to do and hard to recover from.
Coming from both a MSFT support and unix support background, I can atest that it is far easier to support various unix flavors (desktop & server) than it is to support the various MSFT OS flavors. Those that stand resolutely on one side of the OS divide or the other will have problems dealing with anything on the other side.
Small organizations can benefit from FOSS due to initial cost, as well as requiring a far smaller IT support staff. Large organizations also benefit from FOSS due to the factors of planned obsolescence and forced upgrades, which often also require replacing hardware. EDS (sorry, but you guys are a good example) is nearly 2 years behind schedule in upgrading the US Marine Corp computers, largely due to trying to preserve data and legacy software on new MSFT OSes and hardware.
These are issues that would not have been as severe with a FOSS platform to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
So lets see here: we have cellphones that catch fire; we have iPods that can explode; we have Dell and Sony and Apple laptops that catch fire -- the problem seems to cover a wide variety of battery operated consumer products.
It took the TSA/DHS nearly 3 years after the British would-be bomber, Richard Reed, to get around to banning butane lighters on commercial aircraft. Anyone willing to take a bet on just how long it will take for the TSA/DHS to ban all battery operated consumer products from commercial aircraft?
The whole paranoia about aircraft safety will not subside until after the TSA/DHS has all commercial aircraft passengers disrobing, with only paper (drafty) hospital gowns and paper slippers being permitted.
but only if you don't count MSFT's newly discovered profit center -- charging users a subscription fee to get updated virus signatures (new MS-AV) and OS (and Apps?) security patches. At that point, F/OSS rules!
Whattcha smokin'?
The software giants are speaking out of both sides of their mouths. The surest way to push workers out of any particular career path is to force wages and job advancement down through outsourcing. No student wants to get locked into a career path that will no longer pay off the student loans quicker than a home mortgage. The pressure to outsource offshore and onshore began long before the drop in collegiate IT enrollment. Industry has embraced both globalization and the doublespeak propaganda required to justify it. I don't see this as anything more than a publicity campaign meant to mollify the public and pressure the Congress into opening the immigration tap full bore for L1-A and H1-B visas.
NAFTA was begun as a means of providing some economic stability to Mexico, but Congress never incorporated the adjunct legislation to "level the playing field" -- factors like health care, pension plans, and environmental sensitivities were dropped for the almighty buck. Current globalization efforts are designed to force wages of production workers (including IT) into a downward spiral -- it means a fatter paycheck and bonus plan for the captains of industry, our new overlords.
This is also why the current regime in power in the USA will not fund national security issues related to illegal immigration and border security. The mythical undocumented migrant worker is now running IT departments, working in hospitals and medical centers, working construction trades, and may even be that policeman on your neighborhood beat.
The issue is not supply and demand, at least not in the classical sense. It is employers who demand not to pay more than the absolute minimum to stay in business, regardless of legal issues.
Way too complicated a process for me (and messy, besides).
Silly-Putty (the kid's toy) makes a wonderfully detailed image of a fingerprint, and a flexible mold. Formed around 40 - 50% of the underside of the finger, and carefully removed, this form is ready for filling with silicon rubber. Allow the silicon rubber to cure fully, and you're good to go. The mold will self-destruct, but is easily removed from the casting.
Note: There are a lot of different colored silicon rubber available, so you could use a that to differentiate between various identities.
Ahhh! MSFT's Ballmer is already claiming victory over Google, and will do so under MSFT's new "Five Year Plan". Sounds like an old fashioned Soviet "marketing" blitz to me. No doubt Ballmer believes that incorporating internet search capabilities directly into the OS will kill off the competition. (Hey, it has worked a few times.)
As if that same monopolistic mindset hasn't done wonders for the security of their OSes already (thanks to MSIE).
MSFT: (Convicted) monopolist software company that is the jack of all (software) trades, and masters of none.
MSFT: Where do you want your computer to get hijacked to today? (And by whom?)
Since when did Mozilla version numbering roll backwards? The current version of Mozilla is 1.77, which is the closest competition to Netscape 8.0. Let's not compare apples and oranges, shall we?
Oh wait! Now I must wait for a new project to fork Mozilla, since it is now abandonware. AINARP (IANA Real Programmer), but the fact is that Mozilla would be a much better product with the following items included:
(1) ability to use a patching system, instead of requiring a full new download,
(2) ability to use but one rendering engine in memory for all modules, and
(3) ability to sync email between platform specific versions of Mozilla.
Having a common email client cross-platform was an advantage that Mozilla offered but now abandoned. Until some project adopts Mozilla (the real one), there will be a place for Netscape.
Long live Netscape!
"China, except for small altercations with Taiwan and Japan, seems to be taking the 'speak softly and carry a big stick' approach. I agree that any move towards weaponization of space would be matched by them."
Oh, really?
Sounds like revisionist history to me; what about: Mongolia, Korea, Tibet, India, Laos, Taiwan, and Nepal?
As far as any new efforts by the USA to militarize space, what makes you think this is anything other than seeking "permission" after the fact? It's being made public now only because the military will not be able to conceal the amount of funding needed for this new initiative from the Congress.
I am inclined to agree with you about where the USA really needs to spend its money for better long term security. But the current regime in power has been far too busy pissing away taxpayer dollars on foreign (and failing) military adventures, and now the full scale miltarization of space. Our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will be paying for the assinine profligate spending the neo-cons in power have been stuffing into their corporate contributors' pockets.
I would say that you are "spot on target" with
that assessment. If you look at the timeline of:
(1) PRC adopts own, more secure WiFi
(2) PRC views MSFT OS source code
(3) PRC embraces "Red Dragon" Linux
(4) PRC slams door on foreign software
The PRC was ushered into the WTO with open arms,
no doubt with Western software companies hoping
that the PRC would crack down on software piracy.
The standard MSFT mantra about their source code
being available for review by big companies and
governments is always shackled by NDAs. Which is
probably why you will never hear anything in the
press about just what the PRC found in MSFT source
code that they didn't like.
All sarcasm aside, apparently you have stepped through a rift in the time-space continuum from an alternate universe.
(And thus proving the "String Theorum"... )
When yoe do go back to your home universe, please take me with you.
WTF!
I'm still trying to figure out how to completely remove IE, other than re-formating the disk and installing an alternative OS.
Actually, no virus will be needed. Just shoot down the lead "bird", and the rest will fly in formation smack into the ground. Wish that shooting ducks was that easy, although it wouldn't be "sporting".
So sorry -- I don't have a Mac Mini that I can provide some subjective data on. I do, however,
have a Mac Powerbook which I replaced the OEM drive in.
The OEM drive was a Fujitsu 5400 RPM 60 GB disk. I replaced it with a Hitachi 7200 RPM 60 GB disk. The replacement disk has the same/similar power saving features as the OEM, so the PBK firmware and the OS (10.3.9) have good control. I have experienced a noticable improvement in the speed of loading applications, as well as spooling large files to disk. (The Hitachi drive has a far larger onboard cache that helps a lot.) I have lost about 15 minutes worth of battery time when untethered from an AC mains source. Over all, excepting the high cost premium charged for the 7200 RPM drive, my upgrade has been a net plus.
Just my $00.02 worth...
Not a Bush FTC?
A very large part of Bush's derived and perceived power comes fronm the neo-con stranglehold on each and every part of the Executive branch. Those that do not "talk the Bush talk" or "walk the Bush walk" have been squeezed out of positions of authority. Changes in Federal law under Bush make whistleblowers subject to criminal charges (or even swallowed up in the machinery of the USA Patriot Act (I). Every dapartment has been well-coached on what the official regime positions are, and the penalties of non-compliance.
Microsoft delayed their anti-monopoly trial until a new regime (Bush) came to power. Call it a change of "venue", if you will. MSFT went from having their proverbial head on a chopping block (with the breakup of MSFT a very real possibility) to MSFT basically writing their own punishment (a light-hearted smack on the wrist). The Clinton administration very quickly (and rudely) awoke the major IT companies which were apolitical and not given to making campaign contributions to the danger of not having an inside track with whichever regime was in power.
In the USA at least, MSFT has a green light to do any damn thing they please. MSFT's deep pockets demand as much respect from the Dubya regime as does their market position. They even share similar tactics in their Borg-like propaganda efforts.
Elliot Spitzer, the NY State AG, has no cause to get involved in Microsoft's latest (MS-AV) profit center. If you carefully read Microsoft's EULA (and I know that as a slashdotter you always do), no software that Microsoft writes and distributes is "suitable for any particular purpose".
MSFT has, in fact, fully complied with the FTC regulations regarding the making of false claims, or of false advertising. Their software is gold-plated crap, and they are quite willing to acknowledge that in their EULAs. MSFT's "last best hope" for both monopolistic lock-in AND OS security has been their "Palladium" initiative, in which the onus for computer system security is passed over to the hardware/BIOS vendors.
The entire extent to which MSFT is willing to accept some modicum of responsibility is the $5.00 USD "refund" they are willing to make for each provable (in a court of law?) loss of data that their OS and/or Apps might cause. Do not expect MSFT to abandon their EULA TOS for their MS-AV product, whatever subscription-based profit center strategy they adopt for their AV signature or security patch "service", or any other gold-plated crap they decide to faun off on their much abused customer base. Gold-plated crap is, after all, still crap.
MSFT has just decided to parlay the shrinking worldwide customer base of their vulnerable software into yet another revenue stream. The worst that Elliot Spitzer could do as NY AG is force MSFT to print the entire EULA on the outside of their software packaging.
Not quite!
The MPAA is working on shooting themselves in the foot. The jury is stil out on whether the Broadcast Flag will become reality for HDTV, since the MPAA is now working through Congress instead of the FCC. Without the ability to time-shift HDTV programming, the MPAA will likely discover that their audience (and revenue stream) will be shrinking, not expanding. But once the Broadcast Flag becomes reality (I have great faith in the organized prostitutes called Congress), it will be very hard to rewind history. The MPAA will discover that it was a 12 gage shotgun that they used to shoot themselves in the foot.
Which will also negate the need for more bandwidth so sorely lacking in the USA. Nothing quite like killing two birds with one stone.
Amen!
It would seem that industrialized Western society is bent upon devolution, with the widespread adoption of a religion, and the construction of a social safety net designed to protect the weakest of the species.
Not to fear! The neo-con regime currently in power in the USA which claims to be "compassionate conservative" is in the process of dismantling the social safety net. Their continued destruction of the middle class is designed to preserve the power of the "Alphas" that control government and industry, at the expense of the far larger number of "Ewoks" needed to support them in the style to which they have become accustomed. Their creed of "creationism" is evolving into the creed of "intelligent design" based not on a supreme being but of the neo-con think tanks from which all their constructs and legislation derive. All other ethos that they lay claim to are but a smokescreen designed to garner temporary alliances they require as they consolidate their power.
The "Morlocks" are winning the evolutionary battle.
HP support, at least for anything other than servers (corporate market), blows big chunks.
An HP laptop (shipped with Win95) that I bought has had recurring memory issues -- neither the BIOS not the OS would recognise any add-in memory, only the memory soldered into the mobo.
The first time it went back, they replaced the add-in memory card AND re-installed the OS (Win95) -- I lost all my personal data.
The second time I sent the laptop back, I had replaced the internal hard disk with one that dual-booted WinNT and Linux. Not only did they not fix the memory recognition problem, but they sent back a little note that they could not/would not support their hardware running an "unapproved" OS.
This laptop is now my OpenBSD platform, which runs okay with the reduced amount of memory available.
When it came time to buy a new laptop, I bought an Apple Powerbook and have never regretted it.
As far as I care, HP can ship (or not) any OS on any hardware they want. It will not matter to me because I will never buy any HP crap again. (But then, I also have resolved to never again buy any computer that is encumbered with the MSFT "tax", either.)
Of course it does sound like a waste of money -- you obviously have not been properly re-programmed yet. The judge will likely sentence you to another 40 hours worth of taxpayer supported regime generated television propaganda, under the auspices of the US Patriot Act (I & II).
Does it strike no one else here on slashdot as peculiar beyond the pale that so much effort and money is being expended on spying on the American public, in lou of sealing our borders against terrorist infiltrators, inspecting all incoming shipboard and air cargo, and keeping our National Guard troops here protecting the homeland?
Or, for that matter, that the USA adopted a policy of pre-emptive warfare against a dictator that had already been kicked to the curb (but had a lot of oil), instead of a madman halfway around the globe already armed with ballistic missiles and a penchant for bravado about building WMD?
It would seem to me that anyone not already caught up in either the grab at the Federal war funds, unbridled jingoistic patriotism, or as part of the neo-con movement focused on paving the way for the second coming, would have some rather serious doubts about the common sense and honesty of purpose of the current, ethically challenged regime in power.
Or maybe it really is only me...
I hate to quote a very old tome, but guns do not kill people - people kill people. When they do, they use whatever means are available at the time to commit their crime... ...everything from an insane mother drowning her children, to a violent ex-con using a potato peeler to stab little 10 year old girls, to an irate housewife running over her husband with the family SUV.
A firearm is nothing more than a tool, albeit a tool with limited uses. Statistics have shown a direct corelation between a government's poitical will to enforce their pre-existing laws against violent criminal behavior, liberalization of gun laws to allow honest citizens to protect themselves with firearms, and a remarkable reduction in the number of violent crimes committed against those same citizens. Criminals bent upon violent acts of crime seem to prefer victums that do not have the ability to defend themselves -- they make those crimes easier to commit with a probability of fewer negative consequences for the criminal.
but that's the reason to visit porn sites and
download images and videos. How cool is that?
All terrorist plans, calendars, instructions for
everything from bullets to bombs to WMD are all
neatly encrypted and hidden through the use of
steganography. And communications back up the
chain of command can be done through much lower
bandwidth SPAM.
So when the neo-con Big brothers come knocking
at the door to sift through your porn collection,
it's really just a continuation of the fight against
terrorism. No, really! It really doesn't have
anything to do with the hypocritical religious
fundamentalists trying to regulate your bedroom,
honestly.
Netcraft HAS confirmed it -- democracy IS dead
in America. The government of, by, and for the
people as envisioned by the US Constitution and
the Bill of Rights WAS a "republican" "democracy".
It is no mere coincidence that Dubya's grandfather
(Prescott) was a closet Nazi, and they say that
the genetic imprint passes most closely between
children and grandparents. Shortly after 9-11,
Dubya claimed "If you are not for me, you are
for the terrorists." The current regime in power
has propagandized to take us to war, intimidated
the press and his political opposition, has propagandized
to dismantle the social safety net, and is working
on turning the USA into a theocracy. It is becoming
difficult to discern real differences between the
religious fundamentalist fascist terrorists and
the religious fundamentalist Dubya neo-cons.
Saudi Arabian Wahhabists/Royals must feel like
proud parents at the birth of their new American
offspring.
The USA has gone from being a democratic republic
to being a Democratic Republic. After Dubya is
finished renaming the Department of Defense to
the Department of Peace, the USA will more appropriately
be called the Peoples Democratic Republic of the
United States of North America, but it will have
fully adopted (Corporate) National Socialism.
The ironies abound.
Great!
If India has some CEO/CTO/CFO types to spare,
the USA could sure make use of them. We have
far too many greedy, lying, thieving, morally
challenged corporate officer types here that
could stand to spend some time in a "moral values
re-education facility"^H^H^H prison.
Not to mention that working at 1/10th the price
of our current corporate overlords would be
great for corporate morale, the shareholders, and
the bottom line.
Damn, Sam!
It sure sounds like this guy is on the up-and-up. When the full details are disclosed, I may (just maybe) forced to buy a new Intel system with HT -- imagine the possibilities!
Got some problem with pesky DRM? No problem! Run that nefarious application on the Intel HT box, and walk away with the keys. Sweet!
(Just need to make sure that that MSFT "Palladium" crap is turned off in the BIOS first, right?)
Too bad the title of your submission doesn't quite match your submitted content.
Vendor lock-in, planned obsolescence, forced upgrades, and orphaned software drive up the TCO far beyond the TCO of FOSS, including IT support. Of course, many of these points are glossed over in vendor financed TCO studies (eg. MSFT). One cannot help but examine the (bad) experiences of only one MSFT-centric IT support company, like EDS, to draw the conclusion that Murphy's Law is alive and well. While the inadvertent crashing of 60,000 MSFT desktops at British Health Services due to patching errors might be overlooked as mere human error, the fact remains that it was easy to do and hard to recover from.
Coming from both a MSFT support and unix support background, I can atest that it is far easier to support various unix flavors (desktop & server) than it is to support the various MSFT OS flavors. Those that stand resolutely on one side of the OS divide or the other will have problems dealing with anything on the other side.
Small organizations can benefit from FOSS due to initial cost, as well as requiring a far smaller IT support staff. Large organizations also benefit from FOSS due to the factors of planned obsolescence and forced upgrades, which often also require replacing hardware. EDS (sorry, but you guys are a good example) is nearly 2 years behind schedule in upgrading the US Marine Corp computers, largely due to trying to preserve data and legacy software on new MSFT OSes and hardware.
These are issues that would not have been as severe with a FOSS platform to begin with.
Just my depreciating $00.02 worth...