Do what I do. I keep a list of all the spam emails I get. Occasionally - when I'm in a funky mood, I'll take this list of spammer email addresses and throw it through a script using wget that effectively takes the spammer email address and opts it. The way I look at it spammer should pal together so I'm just helping spammer A get spammer B's email address!;-)
If I took the time to proofread, I'd spot the errors. But commenting on Slashdot, just isn't that important to me and I couldn't care less about the grammatical errors as long as the underlying message gets across.
Great! So then you obviously have no qualms with us thinking you're a dumbass. I mean you said it right there - it's not important to you. Therefore it's clear you don't care enough what sort of impression you leave so we are free to make any impression we want. Therefore I declear you're a dumbass!
Yes, ideally, folks should save for their own retirement. However, practically, most people except the most hardcore libertarians are against deciding you should starve to death because you ended up with insufficient cash when it came time to retire. What do you do for folks that lose their money through theft? They get to starve because they were unlucky?
Tell ya what. You can help those people if you think you should. I promise that I won't stop you!
What I hear you say? There won't be enough people who think like you to help such people? So let me get this straight, you're saying that your ideas won't be popular enough? That most people will not want to help out those less fortunate?!? Well damn what does that mean... Let me see.... Ah yes it means, nimrod, that people do not agree with your premise and thus you propose to steal (IOW take by force and threat of incarceration) their money to implement your desires!!! How the fuck dare you impose your will on us!!!
Here's the deal, if what you're proposing is an agreed upon (enough) idea that people will naturally agree with you and participate in your charity then they will do so without governmental force. And if they don't agree with you then you have no right making them do your bidding!
Many of the "problems" with Social Security come when people think of it as a govt. mandated retirement fund. Yes, when looked at in that light, the costs are high and the returns poor (although the requirement to invest only in T-Bills was a stroke of genius; if the trust fund were in private investments I can only imagine the pork-barreled SNAFU that would be.)
Ah, clueless dude - it is a government mandated retirement fund!!! So then, look at it in the light of what it is - not what it ain't.
However, Social Security was not conceived as a retirement program, it was conceived as an anti-poverty program for the elderly and unable to work. Looked at in that light, it makes a lot more sense: we (the citizens of the U.S.) achieve a jointly decided on societal goal of trying to keep penniless elderly and disabled fellow citizens from literally starving to death due to hunger.
See above. First off, it is a retirement program. Secondly if your "jointly decided on societal goal" is that popular then surely it could achieve its results by voluntary contributions by those who agree with the plan. And those of us that don't agree would be free to not participate and to live our lives the way we see fit. In the end, wasn't America supposed to be about freedom and not slavery?
There are real problems with Social Security as it currently exists, but its very existence is not one of them.
The real problem is from idiots like you who don't think things out thoroughly and have no qualms enslaving otherwise free people with their favorite idea of how to save the world using other people's money.
I drove 280 miles today (central NY to upstate) and it took me 3.5 hours, meaning I traveled an average speed of 80mph for the journey. Even at an average of 65mph (the proper speed limit) the journey would take 4.3 hours.
4 hours is a far cry from 10 hours traveling.
What are you talking about? Your average person is not traveling 4.3 hours every day. Indeed even you didn't travel 4.3 hours every day. and I severally doubt you averaged 80mph. Hook up a meter to your car. Stopping for gas and/or eating, pissing or whatever tanks your average. You probably averaged less than 50mph. Trust me.
While gas (and money) is a commodity that I would save by traveling with an automobile than ran on an alternative fuel source, there is a negative cost, an exchange of time. I save money, but I lose time. If you calculate how much I get paid an hour and convert the lost hours to dollars, it's more cost efficient for me to take a gas powered car over 4 hours than an electric car for 10 hours.
The Tesla can easily keep up with your silly assed car. The only time wasters is if you have to recharge, which is generally done at night when you aren't billing any of those precious and expensive billable hours anyway!
Even if the electric (or alternative fuel source) cars are cheaper to run and operate, time must also be factored in as a commodity, and weighed accordingly. But if these cars continue to run at considerably slower speeds than gas fueled cars I don't see many people shifting to them.
Yes, with the key word here being "weighed". Comparing a long haul drive is not a fair comparison at all and it's not what you usually do. Most people drive 30 miles a day on average. You need to weigh for that heavily. Many people drive cars that are way underpowered compared to a Tesla. You sound like an idiot who doesn't know the first thing about what you are talking about!
Boxee is making it easy for people to watch Internet videos on your TV. That is what is scaring the content providers. They DO NOT want you to link (physically or mentally) your TV with free internet based video. Because then you might realize you don't need to pay for your expensive cable subscription when you can just wait a day and watch it on Hulu when you want to.
If you wish me to believe that then you need to provide a plausible explanation of why the content providers are afraid. You have not done that. The content providers make money by advertisements - not by cable subscriptions. Therefore the more eyes they can get watching the ads the better for them. The more users who will use their large screen HDTVs and not be confined to a small laptop somewhere the more eyes on the money making ads. Therefore your statement above is implausible at best.
Also, I've already given up my cable subscription. Indeed, this is bleeding edge right now and only early adopters are doing this. These early adopters are geeks who are by and large pissed off with crappy service from over-priced cable companies. They aren't dumb and realize that this is a way to dump their cable companies. IOW they already realize this! What Boxee does is not really different then what PlayOn does. Yet Boxee gets blocked and PlayOn doesn't. Why? You haven't addressed that issue. But I will below.
Boxee just accesses Hulu's site and displays the video, they don't take out the commercials or anything. The content providers just don't want you using Hulu on your actual TV.
And here's the real difference. Being Open Source, there's nothing that stops people from making something to zap the commercials or indeed steal and even redistribute the content! Get that? The content!!! Stealing content! Now that would piss off a content provider. Zapping commercials! Now that would piss of any business who derives profit from having commercials viewed. With PlayOn, being closed source, the content providers feel a bit more safe that zapping commercials and stealing content will be prohibited - or at least not easily reverse engineered.
What I describe above is not all that difficult to arrive at yet I'm constantly amazed that people seem to much rather grab on to some odd excuse about how the big bad media wants you to use a teeny weeny screen. Makes no sense whatsoever!
Linux, and for that matter all OS'es have always had trouble with sound.
Maybe on your systems but on my various Windows boxes sound has never been a problem.
PulseAudio is supposed to once and for all end this and make it similar to X in that Pulse Audio can hook up any audio app and any soundcard, even over the network, and mix them together.
I know, understand and like X and it's ability to do remote displaying of applications. However I can count on 1 hand how many times I've had the need to produce a sound on another system...
But trust me, once you get it working and you are the kind of person who has 2-3 PC's and can never remember which desktop is actually hooked up to a speaker set but just want to play music it is a very nice system.
Don't cha just love it when a techie invents a weird situation to justify a feature. I've never had any confusion as to which set of speakers are hooked to which PC! And 99.999% of the people don't either.
Being serious for a moment, a large part of the problem with Linux - at least in the "getting more people to adopt it" sense (chicken and egg) - is the fact that Linux developers/proponents tend to be unable to understand that while something is "not their fault", it is still their problem.
Well said!
...The reality, though, is that it is a barrier to entry, and therefore it is their problem.
Herein lies the problem. There is no Linux company. There are many. And nobody's selling this stuff (open software, remember?). Therefore there is no driving force causing them to care about the goal of overcoming the barrier to entry. Programmers generally are by nature not marketing oriented. They believe that they can simply persuade you to adopt Linux simply because they like it. They try to bully you into accepting it's superior position because they view themselves as superior to you WRT computers. They also go to length to conjure up the "Microsoft is the evil empire" image therefore "Linux is not the evil empire".
But end users are just interested in getting things done. So while some might try to adopt Linux most will give up in frustration.
I am a developer, computer user and professional of decades of computer use and work in the field. I use Windows, Linux and Unix. I run Linux at home - in fact I run a web server and email server from home. I'm a sysadmin so I know my way around the command line, sudo, the whole nine years.
I'm just now trying to replace Windows as my desktop at home. Let me tell you - it ain't easy! Even for a pro. In particular trying to set up Boxee to handle media services and getting my sound card and video driver to work properly has been an exercise in frustration. Hacking, hacking, hacking I can and will do. But I pity the poor mortal who is faced with such a challenge.
Windows? Download PlayOn, double click install, answer a few questions and configure your username/password and your good to go. THAT is essentially the difference in a nutshell!
Bullshit! The post office gets paid to deliver that junk. Without that they'd be losing even more money. I've asked them. No such form exists. I asked various postal employees and they all say "You can't stop it. To do so would be the death of the USPS - period, end of story". You sir are proliferating a lie.
I don't think it's any mystery why Hulu is "screwing around with" Boxee users: Hulu's content providers don't want Hulu to be viewable on a TV and, thus (in their sad confused minds) compete with their television programming. Yes, it's stupid, but I don't see how this is Hulu's fault. They're getting jerked around by the content providers just like the rest of us.
It's so stupid in fact that it doesn't make any sense! Why would Hulu care what size screen the viewer is viewing program material? Answer is: They wouldn't and that's why your theory it stupid. In fact, Hulu would want the end user to be as comfortable as possible so that they will continue to use Hulu. Think man! Think!
The problem with Boxee is it's open sourceness and that people can then steal program material and/or re-program Boxee to skip commercials. With PlayOn you don't have that so Hulu doesn't bother them.
Again, think man! Think! Boxee only works on Linux and Mac (and I have yet to get it to work!) - a tiny percentage of the systems out there. PlayOn runs on Windows, is easy to set up and configure and just works. Again, if it were as you say then they'd be going after PlayOn not Boxee.
Having signed up for PlayOn (http://themediamall.com) and using Hulu and other services for my TV and dropping my cable company, I too noticed that AdBlock when used on Hulu would cause Hulu to display message saying it couldn't get the ad and waste 30 seconds of your time telling you to turn off adblockers. Luckily I could turn off adblock on the hulu.com site entirely. I too do mind their short ads and want IPTV to succeed.
Nobody's ever been able to explain me this: If I'm a person who wishes to block ads then by default I'm a person who is not gonna be buying your silly products merely because you spam me with your ad. IOW I'm not gonna see your ad then walk blindly down the street to your store like a zombie say "Must by product XYZ...". Instead I will desire a product and then research it and then I will purchase.
What I'm saying is I'm already a consumer your not getting through to with your ads. As such, does it really matter if I block them? I'm not gonna be affected by them to start with. Of what use is it to waste my time with your ads? Why not bother the people who will be using your ads to purchase things? Those are the people who will not go through the effort to block them in the first place!
In other words the Banks are using tax payer money to pay off their debts. Lovely.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist but all of this is highly suspicious.
It's not suspicious at all. Indeed wouldn't you think it prudent for a business to pay off its debts first and remain solvent instead of wildly spending money and putting the business at risk. Of what good is a bank which hands out all the money as loans and then has shut its doors anyway?
Well that's the hope - that they figure it out. And that they figure out to match what you intended to say. However how many people fail to do either? That's the rub!
It wasn't just that he admitted that it was his laptop; he actually opened the Z drive for the border agent who then saw evidence of child pornography. This is like you standing at your door and saying, "Of course you can come in and search my house, officer." Once you've done that, you can't really take the 5th with regard to the illegal items they find in that search.
And before someone raises the issue, the decision should come down differently if the illegal goods were found in your roommates room and you had no way of knowing that he possessed these items.
The answer to this is simple: "Gee I forgot the password". Done. Next issue...
Why? What specifically is valuable about people who know me? How does who I know affect how well I can do my job?
Surely you jest! I don't know about you but my professional references and friends not only present a picture of who I am, but they are the people who I call upon to sometimes help me with professional problems. There's been more than one time where I've referred a friend or asked a friend for help on a particular work related issue. Maybe you should get some better friends?
Again, how exactly does who I know affect how competent I am at my job?
And if the answer is "it doesn't, but they might want to know anyway" - why isn't it possible that they might decide *not* to hire me, based on the people I know?
Certainly who you know reflects on you and most people will not put on their resume or on linkedin, their enemies or people who would not recommend you at all. You know employers, and fellow employees, hire not only a machine who will do the job but a person that all of your coworkers will have to live with? Which would you want to work with, a person with no social skills, can't get along with others and who is introverted but good at what he does or somebody who's outgoing, friendly, has shown a track record of working and succeeding with others? Me, I'd prefer the latter. People work together and having somebody who's good at what he does but is a total isolationist/loner is now what I'd call a good potential employee.
That said I've never understood the total paranoid attitude of the OP. I refuse to live my life hiding from others - I participate in life.
MS doesn't have a monopoly. You are free to use another OS. Many of us do. MS has competition already. MS does make efforts to interoperate. If you don't see that then you are just refusing to see clearly.
Not to belittle this development, but the majority of web users get confused about old and simple features such as bookmarking.
The majority of web users will never go anywhere. Are you suggesting that we follow them? By definition, as a/.'er, you're not part of the majority. Listen if they do not wish to learn that's their problem. Progress moves foward.
Isn't introducing this sophisticated interface a bit too much? It's great if you're used to bash or similar stuff, but unless this thing really works with natural language (it doesn't) then it's just a glorified command prompt.
Glorious command prompt. That's glorious!
Ever use search keywords? I do. Have one for perl, one for php, one for mysql. I simply type in "perl Tk" or "php ldap". Wham, I'm taken directly to the site I'm interested in, searched for the string and my answer is right there! This is essentially want Ubiquity also does. I can do Control-Space and type "map " and wham I'm there. Why would this be a problem for you? AFAICT it's pretty darn lightweight and pretty darn useful. If you wish to be like the mindless masses then simply move along an ignore it.
Now if I can just find perl, php and mysql Ubiquity commands...
It feels like you are invoking the fallacy that most of us think we are above average. Most people aren't significantly above average.
On average, 1/2 are and 1/2 aren't. Sure most people think they are but usually in their heart of hearts they know if they are or not. Another way to tell is if you have a specialty that is in demand. If so you should be getting well compensated for it already so you'll be in the upper income brackets. Said differently, if you think you're "above average" but you're making below average then the chances are good that your valuation of yourself is off.
Layoffs tend to be a way to get rid of a lot of the sub-average to average performers.
You are telling this to the people who just got laid off!! So if they were laid off and looking for work, you are essentially telling them that they are probably on the lower side of average. And yet "if they are well above average they will have no trouble finding work". This doesn't bode well.
Oh so I see. We should tell them what they want to hear rather than the truth? Seems to me, for anybody worth anything, realizing that you are not as valuable as you can be is exactly what is needed in order to do something about it! Ever hear: "Step one is recognizing you have a problem"?
Plus you can typically hire one of them to do the work of 3 or 4 of the people you just fired.
So these people are both head and shoulders above average, and are willing to do the work of a small team to boot? Oh and they'll accept the same wages of the semi-morons he replaced too?
Nobody said the latter. Good people cost. And yes, often just doing a little bit more than the standard, largely apathetic work that many people do is 3 or 4 times more productive.
Yes these mythological creatures will always have jobs.
Technically, yes, you are right, Microsoft lays of 5000 people, and the top few percent will land new jobs right away.
Do you have any advice for the other 80-90%? Those are the ones that need it. The top 5-10% probably won't be unemployed long enough to have to start dipping into their savings anyway.
Stop whimpering and blaming everybody besides yourself for where in life you have ended up. Your life's journey is in your own hands - not others.
Realize that the most likely reason you got laid off is that you weren't considered as valuable as you thought you were. You might be pretty valuable but you failed to show your boss that you were.
Do an honest assessment of where you can improve in your field or whether this particular field is really for you.
Get additional training for yourself if necessary. Yes Virgina, it's time to go back to school. The world moves forward and you didn't.
Seek employment to bolster your career.
Learn to advertise yourself. ABC! Always Be Closing.
MS's revenue stream will increasingly become the annual license fee.
What "annual license fee"? I bought Windows XP in 2001 and that's the last time MS got any money out of me for Windows XP. I've been using it for 8 years now and have not given MS another dime for using it. So then, where's the "annual license fee" I was supposed to be paying?
There are a LOT of people (probably the *majority* of people) out there who have no idea what a "google search" is.
Poppycock! I mean damn, George Bush knows what a Google search is. If he knows it everybody knows it!
Stated differently, people who don't know what I Google search is I am concerned about as much as people who would see to it to get that much in a fuss as to tip over a candy machine for committing the ungodly sin of not properly dispensing the $0.60 candy bar and thus causing their own death! I say - don't worry about them!
Slashdot Mirror
It's a different hack but the result is building a 64-bit of Boxee: http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=7497
Do what I do. I keep a list of all the spam emails I get. Occasionally - when I'm in a funky mood, I'll take this list of spammer email addresses and throw it through a script using wget that effectively takes the spammer email address and opts it. The way I look at it spammer should pal together so I'm just helping spammer A get spammer B's email address! ;-)
How about a menu that you can drag and drop things around like you can in XP? I mean geeze!
Great! So then you obviously have no qualms with us thinking you're a dumbass. I mean you said it right there - it's not important to you. Therefore it's clear you don't care enough what sort of impression you leave so we are free to make any impression we want. Therefore I declear you're a dumbass!
Tell ya what. You can help those people if you think you should. I promise that I won't stop you!
What I hear you say? There won't be enough people who think like you to help such people? So let me get this straight, you're saying that your ideas won't be popular enough? That most people will not want to help out those less fortunate?!? Well damn what does that mean... Let me see.... Ah yes it means, nimrod, that people do not agree with your premise and thus you propose to steal (IOW take by force and threat of incarceration) their money to implement your desires!!! How the fuck dare you impose your will on us!!!
Here's the deal, if what you're proposing is an agreed upon (enough) idea that people will naturally agree with you and participate in your charity then they will do so without governmental force. And if they don't agree with you then you have no right making them do your bidding!
Ah, clueless dude - it is a government mandated retirement fund!!! So then, look at it in the light of what it is - not what it ain't.
See above. First off, it is a retirement program. Secondly if your "jointly decided on societal goal" is that popular then surely it could achieve its results by voluntary contributions by those who agree with the plan. And those of us that don't agree would be free to not participate and to live our lives the way we see fit. In the end, wasn't America supposed to be about freedom and not slavery?
The real problem is from idiots like you who don't think things out thoroughly and have no qualms enslaving otherwise free people with their favorite idea of how to save the world using other people's money.
... for a whole myriad of good reasons....
What are you talking about? Your average person is not traveling 4.3 hours every day. Indeed even you didn't travel 4.3 hours every day. and I severally doubt you averaged 80mph. Hook up a meter to your car. Stopping for gas and/or eating, pissing or whatever tanks your average. You probably averaged less than 50mph. Trust me.
The Tesla can easily keep up with your silly assed car. The only time wasters is if you have to recharge, which is generally done at night when you aren't billing any of those precious and expensive billable hours anyway!
Yes, with the key word here being "weighed". Comparing a long haul drive is not a fair comparison at all and it's not what you usually do. Most people drive 30 miles a day on average. You need to weigh for that heavily. Many people drive cars that are way underpowered compared to a Tesla. You sound like an idiot who doesn't know the first thing about what you are talking about!
If you wish me to believe that then you need to provide a plausible explanation of why the content providers are afraid. You have not done that. The content providers make money by advertisements - not by cable subscriptions. Therefore the more eyes they can get watching the ads the better for them. The more users who will use their large screen HDTVs and not be confined to a small laptop somewhere the more eyes on the money making ads. Therefore your statement above is implausible at best.
Also, I've already given up my cable subscription. Indeed, this is bleeding edge right now and only early adopters are doing this. These early adopters are geeks who are by and large pissed off with crappy service from over-priced cable companies. They aren't dumb and realize that this is a way to dump their cable companies. IOW they already realize this! What Boxee does is not really different then what PlayOn does. Yet Boxee gets blocked and PlayOn doesn't. Why? You haven't addressed that issue. But I will below.
And here's the real difference. Being Open Source, there's nothing that stops people from making something to zap the commercials or indeed steal and even redistribute the content! Get that? The content!!! Stealing content! Now that would piss off a content provider. Zapping commercials! Now that would piss of any business who derives profit from having commercials viewed. With PlayOn, being closed source, the content providers feel a bit more safe that zapping commercials and stealing content will be prohibited - or at least not easily reverse engineered.
What I describe above is not all that difficult to arrive at yet I'm constantly amazed that people seem to much rather grab on to some odd excuse about how the big bad media wants you to use a teeny weeny screen. Makes no sense whatsoever!
Maybe on your systems but on my various Windows boxes sound has never been a problem.
I know, understand and like X and it's ability to do remote displaying of applications. However I can count on 1 hand how many times I've had the need to produce a sound on another system...
Don't cha just love it when a techie invents a weird situation to justify a feature. I've never had any confusion as to which set of speakers are hooked to which PC! And 99.999% of the people don't either.
Well said!
Herein lies the problem. There is no Linux company. There are many. And nobody's selling this stuff (open software, remember?). Therefore there is no driving force causing them to care about the goal of overcoming the barrier to entry. Programmers generally are by nature not marketing oriented. They believe that they can simply persuade you to adopt Linux simply because they like it. They try to bully you into accepting it's superior position because they view themselves as superior to you WRT computers. They also go to length to conjure up the "Microsoft is the evil empire" image therefore "Linux is not the evil empire".
But end users are just interested in getting things done. So while some might try to adopt Linux most will give up in frustration.
I am a developer, computer user and professional of decades of computer use and work in the field. I use Windows, Linux and Unix. I run Linux at home - in fact I run a web server and email server from home. I'm a sysadmin so I know my way around the command line, sudo, the whole nine years.
I'm just now trying to replace Windows as my desktop at home. Let me tell you - it ain't easy! Even for a pro. In particular trying to set up Boxee to handle media services and getting my sound card and video driver to work properly has been an exercise in frustration. Hacking, hacking, hacking I can and will do. But I pity the poor mortal who is faced with such a challenge.
Windows? Download PlayOn, double click install, answer a few questions and configure your username/password and your good to go. THAT is essentially the difference in a nutshell!
Bullshit! The post office gets paid to deliver that junk. Without that they'd be losing even more money. I've asked them. No such form exists. I asked various postal employees and they all say "You can't stop it. To do so would be the death of the USPS - period, end of story". You sir are proliferating a lie.
It's so stupid in fact that it doesn't make any sense! Why would Hulu care what size screen the viewer is viewing program material? Answer is: They wouldn't and that's why your theory it stupid. In fact, Hulu would want the end user to be as comfortable as possible so that they will continue to use Hulu. Think man! Think!
The problem with Boxee is it's open sourceness and that people can then steal program material and/or re-program Boxee to skip commercials. With PlayOn you don't have that so Hulu doesn't bother them.
Again, think man! Think! Boxee only works on Linux and Mac (and I have yet to get it to work!) - a tiny percentage of the systems out there. PlayOn runs on Windows, is easy to set up and configure and just works. Again, if it were as you say then they'd be going after PlayOn not Boxee.
Having signed up for PlayOn (http://themediamall.com) and using Hulu and other services for my TV and dropping my cable company, I too noticed that AdBlock when used on Hulu would cause Hulu to display message saying it couldn't get the ad and waste 30 seconds of your time telling you to turn off adblockers. Luckily I could turn off adblock on the hulu.com site entirely. I too do mind their short ads and want IPTV to succeed.
Nobody's ever been able to explain me this: If I'm a person who wishes to block ads then by default I'm a person who is not gonna be buying your silly products merely because you spam me with your ad. IOW I'm not gonna see your ad then walk blindly down the street to your store like a zombie say "Must by product XYZ...". Instead I will desire a product and then research it and then I will purchase. What I'm saying is I'm already a consumer your not getting through to with your ads. As such, does it really matter if I block them? I'm not gonna be affected by them to start with. Of what use is it to waste my time with your ads? Why not bother the people who will be using your ads to purchase things? Those are the people who will not go through the effort to block them in the first place!
It's not suspicious at all. Indeed wouldn't you think it prudent for a business to pay off its debts first and remain solvent instead of wildly spending money and putting the business at risk. Of what good is a bank which hands out all the money as loans and then has shut its doors anyway?
Well that's the hope - that they figure it out. And that they figure out to match what you intended to say. However how many people fail to do either? That's the rub!
Actually I did notice. Gas prices were at ~$5/gallon. Now they are $2. You're theory stated above is at odds with reality.
This has got my vote for the stupidest response ever! What the hell?
It wasn't just that he admitted that it was his laptop; he actually opened the Z drive for the border agent who then saw evidence of child pornography. This is like you standing at your door and saying, "Of course you can come in and search my house, officer." Once you've done that, you can't really take the 5th with regard to the illegal items they find in that search.
And before someone raises the issue, the decision should come down differently if the illegal goods were found in your roommates room and you had no way of knowing that he possessed these items.
The answer to this is simple: "Gee I forgot the password". Done. Next issue...
Surely you jest! I don't know about you but my professional references and friends not only present a picture of who I am, but they are the people who I call upon to sometimes help me with professional problems. There's been more than one time where I've referred a friend or asked a friend for help on a particular work related issue. Maybe you should get some better friends?
Certainly who you know reflects on you and most people will not put on their resume or on linkedin, their enemies or people who would not recommend you at all. You know employers, and fellow employees, hire not only a machine who will do the job but a person that all of your coworkers will have to live with? Which would you want to work with, a person with no social skills, can't get along with others and who is introverted but good at what he does or somebody who's outgoing, friendly, has shown a track record of working and succeeding with others? Me, I'd prefer the latter. People work together and having somebody who's good at what he does but is a total isolationist/loner is now what I'd call a good potential employee. That said I've never understood the total paranoid attitude of the OP. I refuse to live my life hiding from others - I participate in life.
MS doesn't have a monopoly. You are free to use another OS. Many of us do. MS has competition already. MS does make efforts to interoperate. If you don't see that then you are just refusing to see clearly.
The majority of web users will never go anywhere. Are you suggesting that we follow them? By definition, as a /.'er, you're not part of the majority. Listen if they do not wish to learn that's their problem. Progress moves foward.
Glorious command prompt. That's glorious! Ever use search keywords? I do. Have one for perl, one for php, one for mysql. I simply type in "perl Tk" or "php ldap". Wham, I'm taken directly to the site I'm interested in, searched for the string and my answer is right there! This is essentially want Ubiquity also does. I can do Control-Space and type "map " and wham I'm there. Why would this be a problem for you? AFAICT it's pretty darn lightweight and pretty darn useful. If you wish to be like the mindless masses then simply move along an ignore it. Now if I can just find perl, php and mysql Ubiquity commands...
On average, 1/2 are and 1/2 aren't. Sure most people think they are but usually in their heart of hearts they know if they are or not. Another way to tell is if you have a specialty that is in demand. If so you should be getting well compensated for it already so you'll be in the upper income brackets. Said differently, if you think you're "above average" but you're making below average then the chances are good that your valuation of yourself is off.
Oh so I see. We should tell them what they want to hear rather than the truth? Seems to me, for anybody worth anything, realizing that you are not as valuable as you can be is exactly what is needed in order to do something about it! Ever hear: "Step one is recognizing you have a problem"?
Nobody said the latter. Good people cost. And yes, often just doing a little bit more than the standard, largely apathetic work that many people do is 3 or 4 times more productive.
What "annual license fee"? I bought Windows XP in 2001 and that's the last time MS got any money out of me for Windows XP. I've been using it for 8 years now and have not given MS another dime for using it. So then, where's the "annual license fee" I was supposed to be paying?
Poppycock! I mean damn, George Bush knows what a Google search is. If he knows it everybody knows it! Stated differently, people who don't know what I Google search is I am concerned about as much as people who would see to it to get that much in a fuss as to tip over a candy machine for committing the ungodly sin of not properly dispensing the $0.60 candy bar and thus causing their own death! I say - don't worry about them!