Well, I guess it may depend on what you mean by Open Consumables. There are 3rd party ink carts available for many printers, especially Cannon and Epson. I know that Epson supports 3rd party ink carts - by that I mean that if the ink cloggs up the printer they will warrenty repair/replace it. I believe that legally all manufacturers have to do the same. Most if not all Epson printers have 3rd party ink carts available within a few months of release, and you have a large selection of manufacturers and distributers available on-line. I personally have had good experiances with both TecWorks and Monster Ink Jets for Epson printers.
Does anyone know if the ASUS V9560 Videosuite card does hardware encoding? I can't find any information on their website to indicate whether it does or does not. Also - would it be better to have the temp video files be on the system drive which is ATA 133 7200rpm 2mb cache or to my 7200rpm 8mb cache ATA100 drive that is on an IDE Expander card channel?
Ok, I'm trying out this beyond TV 3 - and I wondered if this was just my machine or what. Has anyone using it noticed that it tends to jerk every couple of minutes or so?
Or that when timeshifting(pausing live tv) after 30-40 out(with maybe a 15min original difference - to skip commercials) it just locks up on playback?
Also - can you/how do you have it skip commericals on timeshifted live tv? Or does that only work if you record the whole show and watch it later?
Also - if you've paused live tv with it, and then come back and are watching the timeshifted show, and decide you want to save part of it - record what you are currently watching - can you do that?
The record interface seems a little confusing to me, when I tried to record what I was watching instead of just recording from where I pressed the record button until I pressed stop, it popped up a box asking how long I wanted to record for.
Overall, the pausing live TV is great - and it's way more stable than my ASUS DVR 2.5 software that came with my video card, but so far it's no replacement for my VCR for quality or ease of use.
Well, I have to say something here. I still use Lotus Smartsuit millenium edition, which I don't think has been updated in 4 years. I got started with Lotus on my first PC in 1996. As far as wordprocessing software goes - it's pretty much been locked down since the early 90's anyway, what else is there to add? I certainly can't see very much that could be added to the current version of WordPro that would actually improve typing papers.
The only nusience is of course those blasted.doc filetypes. They mostly import properly - but I don't trade wordprocessing files with anyone. If they need a file, I send html or rtf in a pinch. I tell them to send me the same. If they don't - well I ignore them. And no one complains about the printouts I get from WordPro.
Wasn't there already a Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe movie? I remember seeing one on TV quite a while ago - and I think it is what got me into the books. I remeber thinking it was quite a movie at the time - late 80's.
I thought that the watch books were some of the more serious books in that series. I do think they could easily make good movies - but probably in a more animated/kids sense. Otherwise you would need to go as all out as LotR to do the special effects. Of course this is true for all fantasy really.
Two points. First why is payment by megabyte sent broken? How should that work?
Second. Freenet is a really bad way to serve webpages. It is just way less efficient and correspondentaly slower than http.
I do agree that home users should be able to run their own servers under some limitations. Basically the bandwidth equivelent to the 5mb free web space offered by the ISP. I find major benefits to running my own e-mail and FTP servers, although I never really had a problem with using the ISP's webspace for web pages - I can see if I really wanted to host a persistant page why running my own server would have the same beneifits I get from my e-mail server.
I have to disagree about Yahoo though. They managed for me(and many people I know) to morph from a "portal" to a "destination". No one I know goes to Yahoo to find another website. They go there for a service. Yahoo does E-mail, they have online games(ask highschool and college students about yahoo pool), they have the great Yahoo Groups service, which is the mailing list provider I see most nowadays for small groups. They have their briefcase(great free storage for small docs you want to have everywhere). They have movie and TV listings.
My point here is that they have lots of services that people want. Heck - Yahoo Chat. So it's not about where people are going from Yahoo, it's about why people are coming to Yahoo.
I'm not sure Yahoo has much competition anymore for the mailing list/chat/stupid online game category anymore. Most basic internet users I've talked to will point to Yahoo when I ask where they go for a chatroom. And believe me they have no idea what IRC is.
As to stock quotes - web sites with them are a dime a dozen. But you know what? If I just want a quote - off the top of my head I can think of two places. Yahoo and my Stock Broker Webpage. Which is faster if I want a quote(don't want to buy RIGHT NOW)? Yahoo. Granted this may be because Ameritrade only seems to work with IE, or a better statement is it doesn't like Opera, whereas Yahoo doesn't care. I tend to spend very little time on sites that need IE.
Wasn't windows interface - and MS word's - MDI though? Maybe I just confuse tabbed browsing with Opera's MDI though... part of which does allow tabs - and believe me many people prefer the tabbed interface or a full MDI.
Yeah, I occasionally have explorer crash for no reason, when all that's running is the desktop and associated system tray programs.
Want to hear something weirder? I use Powerquest Drive Image 6. I can restore an image(note an exact copy - delete and overwrite partition with the same exact bytes that were there when I Imaged it) two different times on the same machine and the windowsXP will behave differently. Sometimes it's as stable and when I imaged, other times it's crappy, so I'll restore the same image again, and all is good.
And totally off topic, can I say I think I just found the crappiest shittiest piece of software ever! ASUS DVR. I bought a TV Suite video card so I could watch TV on my PC. But the supplied program(upgraded to the latest version) is unreliable as hell. When I go to start it, sometimes it will crash immediately, then I'll try again to run it, and it will work fine. Then I'll try to exit it and get some error that won't go away, I'll have to task manager quit it. Or sometimes it will bluescreen XP, in which case I have to uninstall the program and reinstall it and then it's OK again for two runs or so...
Does anyone else use the ASUS 5650 GeForce FX 5600 based TV Suite card, and have any recommendations of any other programs to use to watch TV with from the component in on that?
And that's fine. What I'm saying is that if someone wants to target group X, but designs the widget for group Y, they shouldn't be sitting around scratching their heads about why group X doesn't use the widget. That's all I'm saying.
SuSE? Not unless you want to buy it. Which I don't want to do until I'm actually sure I'll be using it more that once.
I've said it before, I'm pretty techinical - probably a power user, but not a developer. I went looking for SuSE to try out now that Redhat doesn't have a user distro, and Fedora seems unlikely due to opinions I've read here.
So I go to www.suse.com. I struggle to find downloads - and I'm stymied. Where is an.iso I can download and install from cd(or from daemon tools to VMWare)?
Oh. SuSE doesn't have one for download. Ok. Well that's it. I don't have a clue how to install something that doesn't have a CD I can download. So no SuSE for me.
People will NOT use an OS they need to read instructions to install. Sorry - if you can get average people to install a different OS at ALL, they will not want to go searching for a manual on how to install it. Not when they can get a CD of windows, or Mandrake, or whatever and put it in the CD drive and start the computer. Boom install.
So I disagree that SuSE is the least hassle. I gave up on trying to install, just becasue I wanted to play with Linux, not play with installing Linux.
BTW - I had a similar problem with Debian witch is often recommended. Well, no - just I couldn't figure out how to download it at all! Something about downloading something like Bittorrent, compiling or installing or something with that, and then it will download an iso, but I think I would also need to provide ip seed nodes or somesuch to get that to work. I looked at it for 2 days, and gave up - too much trouble.
I'm sure this all makes me look patheitic, but the only Linux I've been able to install since leaving RedHat was Mandrake, and I really don't think it's the best solution - I remember Redhat being much better. I am thinking about going back to Redhat 7.1 or maybe 7.3.
And this thought process is why Linux will not take over the desktop. I don't know if this is a prevelant attitude in open source - but an average consumer doesn't want to contribute to the software - they want to USE the software. They are not looking to join a club or academic inquiry, they want to buy a computer and surf the net, type up a paper etc...
Yeah, when you have "computer people" who don't want to take the time to mess with Linux cause it is a bigger pain than windows to get to do anything, then you can understand why the average user won't use it.
I'm a pretty computer savvy person. I'm in my 4th year of college in CIS, and I have taken Sysadmin classes using Linux exclusevly. I have bulit my own computers and computers for other people. I've done networking with routers in Internetworking Classes. I've even done some programming.
Compared to the average user, I'm the person they come to when something breaks on their computer.
I loved Redhat Linux for running DNS servers in class, it was great for a mail server or FTP server. It was great for scripting. It was fast, and stable - the multiple user features were head and showlders above home windows offerings in my experiances.
I don't use Linux at home. I've tried, multiple times, multiple distros. It is simply TOO MUCH TROUBLE. I don't want to fight through dialog boxes that don't seem to do anything after I hit apply. I don't want to deal with install issues, like how do I install this today? I recently played around with mandrake 9.2 I believe. This time I didn't want to totally dual boot etc, so I was using VMWare. I don't know if this is a VMware problem, or a linux problem, but let me tell you - Windows 98 virtual machine... click on file in VM ware, and install VMware tools... bam standard windows installer in the virtual machine, and bam, done, installed. I still haven't gotten the linux script to work right. I've given up. I've since heard that maybe I don't need to install that anyway cause newer versions have automatic support for VMWare.
The point of my rant there is that until software vendors and developers come up with a clear consistant UI, with things like install programs that you can double click on in KDE and have work,I don't see linux catching on on the desktop.
The sad thing is I like to play around with linux - to keep up with what's happening, and to stay in *nix mode for servers.
But when I need to get some classwork done, like write a paper or do a spreadsheet, or when I want to play online - I use WinXP. It's just easier.
Well, the incentive is there for either people at Mandrake or Xandros or whoever actually wants to SELL Linux to people shying away from "XP Reloaded"(btw wtf? As bad as Matrix Reloaded?) or just getting away from whatever windows they have.
It also makes sense for anyone who wants to dethrone Microsoft in the desktop market - and for some reason, there are a lot of people, even on slashdot, who want to do that with Linux. To do that, they need to make a widget that makes some sense to people other than the person who programmed it. Note, this does not mean dumbed down. Check out a Human Factors book or class sometime. It's amazing how badly designed many things throughtout our world are.
I think the debate primarily is that the patriot act has not been proven to make the nation safer. I don't see how it would do so, and that's what is being addressed here. Please lay out how the patriot act has made/will make the nation safer.
I think the issue here is that you have a chance to go to a chat room or message board and say "XXX is happening, any ideas" and when someone tells you it's cause x and y software are incompatible, you have 4 choices here. You can do what you can do in windows, and call the manufactuer and ask them to fix it(good luck); you can fix it yourself(if you know how - and bonus, you can contribute that back to everyone); you can see if there is anyone who has already fixed it on the web or is willing to fix it to help you(these people do exist, though their willingness to help probably depends on the complexity of the problem); or you can pay a developer to fix it(and again contribute that back to everyone).
So with closed source you have 1 option to fix a code error, with Open source you have 4 options. Which gives an average person more chance of getting that miswritten code fixed?
I have to disagree here. I think that online support is about equal from a poweruser standpoint. By poweruser I mean someone with computer training, but does not have programming experiance nor a good understanding of compiliers.
I've found good answers regarding questions for both OS's online in about the same amount of looking, and I've also found questions that I just couldn't easily find an answer for.
The weird part is, based on some things I read today that was posted above - and things I knew before, is doesn't that whole: Our governments are becoming aware that a scared citizen doesn't question its government. Privacy and freedom are things for extremists, good citizens care about safety and nothing else. bring back scary memories of Germany in 1930 or so? I would think those old people - especially anyone who lived in Germany then, would be up in arms right now, screaming their heads off.
Of course it is possible that the wool can be pulled over people's eyes a second time - even when they have seen the trick before and had it disected for them.
This is something that always baffeled me as to why people thought it would be so hard to authinticate people. You know when you sign in to vote at a balloting place? At that time, they could give you an ID# or floppy disc with a hash on it or a CD that was unique to you. You could then take that home and use it to vote for whatever along the way to the next election.
If you didn't want it for some reason - lack of a computer - they would mark an X on that paper where you signed in, and thant hash would be deleted until next election, where you would again at the ballot location be offered a hash or key or whatever.
Which is why I NOTICE any company that provides good to great support, or an above average product. I tell everyone about them who want's my opinion on products. I am very up-front about my recommendations.
For instance, people ask me about inkjet printers. I tell them Epson. Then I list the reasons.
1. Warrenty(1 year) You do need a CC to use this - only downside I have run into.
Their warrenty covers their own mess ups, and covers you if you buy 3rd party ink and it gumms up the printhead. Their solution? Next Day Air you a replacement printer(refurbished - sorry no more new for used, but the refurbished ones work in my experiance). You UPS back the broken printer in the same box, they pay for shipping.
That is the reason I keep using Epson printers. Oh, the printers are nice - and $130 for an inkjet isn't bad. But it's the knowledge that when the inkjet messes up I can get it fixed that keeps me coming back. I've used HP, Cannon, Lexmark, Olivetti and they all eventually have problems. The ink cloggs is the most common, but sometimes the printhead dies. So I like knowing I will at least get a year or more out of an inkjet. Heck, my Lexmark lasted 3 months and died(well $10 at office max, what did I expect?)
I don't know that this fits the bill totally, but the people here often have stories similar to this one, and do talk about various company's problems(sometimes - depends on whether they work for the company or not). Tech Support Comedy
You know, what's weird about this is that I have never in real life been in a situation where if police were involved that I would not help them out to the best of my ability. I can't even think of a situation where I would not attempt to assist them - outside of my paranoind fantasy's.
If I was asked by a police officer who I was, I would tell them, and offer driver's licence or college ID or both if they wanted to see them.
The only thing is I totally am against them being able to force me or anyone to do so. I'm not sure why that is - maybe because I like being able to volunteer information or not depending on the situation...
I hope the Supreme Court finds laws like the one in Georgia to be unconstitutional.
Ok, first of all, I was not aware it was illegial to run a freenet node. So I can't see how(in the west, specifically USA) you could be arrested or charged for running one. That would be equivilent to being arrested for having a fax machine or a camera because illegial child porn may be transmitted through those.
To charge you - doesn't the government have to have some proof that you are trading, hosting, or otherwise involved with whatever they are charging you with? To me that would mean they would need to decrypt the data going in and out of your computer. Now - even if they come to you and ask for the keys - you can't give them to them, because you do not know the keys. Again, It's not illegial to not tell someone something you don't know. And this comes back to the law in the US. The government can do traffic anaylisis. That is true. I haven't seen where they can question you, search your house, arrest you or anything else based on using some LEGAL(so far) computer without anything else towards probable cause.
At least with Kazaa or whatever, the government(if they were actually interested in anaylizing all the data the hundreds of millions of home computers transfer over the internet, they could read the data(as it is not encrypted) and then arrest you for trafficing in illegial material.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I guess it may depend on what you mean by Open Consumables. There are 3rd party ink carts available for many printers, especially Cannon and Epson. I know that Epson supports 3rd party ink carts - by that I mean that if the ink cloggs up the printer they will warrenty repair/replace it. I believe that legally all manufacturers have to do the same. Most if not all Epson printers have 3rd party ink carts available within a few months of release, and you have a large selection of manufacturers and distributers available on-line. I personally have had good experiances with both TecWorks and Monster Ink Jets for Epson printers.
Does anyone know if the ASUS V9560 Videosuite card does hardware encoding? I can't find any information on their website to indicate whether it does or does not. Also - would it be better to have the temp video files be on the system drive which is ATA 133 7200rpm 2mb cache or to my 7200rpm 8mb cache ATA100 drive that is on an IDE Expander card channel?
Ok, I'm trying out this beyond TV 3 - and I wondered if this was just my machine or what. Has anyone using it noticed that it tends to jerk every couple of minutes or so?
Or that when timeshifting(pausing live tv) after 30-40 out(with maybe a 15min original difference - to skip commercials) it just locks up on playback?
Also - can you/how do you have it skip commericals on timeshifted live tv? Or does that only work if you record the whole show and watch it later?
Also - if you've paused live tv with it, and then come back and are watching the timeshifted show, and decide you want to save part of it - record what you are currently watching - can you do that?
The record interface seems a little confusing to me, when I tried to record what I was watching instead of just recording from where I pressed the record button until I pressed stop, it popped up a box asking how long I wanted to record for.
Overall, the pausing live TV is great - and it's way more stable than my ASUS DVR 2.5 software that came with my video card, but so far it's no replacement for my VCR for quality or ease of use.
Oh, well, off to buy more VHS tapes.
Well, I have to say something here. I still use Lotus Smartsuit millenium edition, which I don't think has been updated in 4 years. I got started with Lotus on my first PC in 1996. As far as wordprocessing software goes - it's pretty much been locked down since the early 90's anyway, what else is there to add? I certainly can't see very much that could be added to the current version of WordPro that would actually improve typing papers.
.doc filetypes. They mostly import properly - but I don't trade wordprocessing files with anyone. If they need a file, I send html or rtf in a pinch. I tell them to send me the same. If they don't - well I ignore them. And no one complains about the printouts I get from WordPro.
The only nusience is of course those blasted
Wasn't there already a Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe movie? I remember seeing one on TV quite a while ago - and I think it is what got me into the books. I remeber thinking it was quite a movie at the time - late 80's.
I thought that the watch books were some of the more serious books in that series. I do think they could easily make good movies - but probably in a more animated/kids sense. Otherwise you would need to go as all out as LotR to do the special effects. Of course this is true for all fantasy really.
Two points. First why is payment by megabyte sent broken? How should that work?
Second. Freenet is a really bad way to serve webpages. It is just way less efficient and correspondentaly slower than http.
I do agree that home users should be able to run their own servers under some limitations. Basically the bandwidth equivelent to the 5mb free web space offered by the ISP. I find major benefits to running my own e-mail and FTP servers, although I never really had a problem with using the ISP's webspace for web pages - I can see if I really wanted to host a persistant page why running my own server would have the same beneifits I get from my e-mail server.
I have to disagree about Yahoo though. They managed for me(and many people I know) to morph from a "portal" to a "destination". No one I know goes to Yahoo to find another website. They go there for a service. Yahoo does E-mail, they have online games(ask highschool and college students about yahoo pool), they have the great Yahoo Groups service, which is the mailing list provider I see most nowadays for small groups. They have their briefcase(great free storage for small docs you want to have everywhere). They have movie and TV listings.
My point here is that they have lots of services that people want. Heck - Yahoo Chat. So it's not about where people are going from Yahoo, it's about why people are coming to Yahoo.
I'm not sure Yahoo has much competition anymore for the mailing list/chat/stupid online game category anymore. Most basic internet users I've talked to will point to Yahoo when I ask where they go for a chatroom. And believe me they have no idea what IRC is.
As to stock quotes - web sites with them are a dime a dozen. But you know what? If I just want a quote - off the top of my head I can think of two places. Yahoo and my Stock Broker Webpage. Which is faster if I want a quote(don't want to buy RIGHT NOW)? Yahoo. Granted this may be because Ameritrade only seems to work with IE, or a better statement is it doesn't like Opera, whereas Yahoo doesn't care. I tend to spend very little time on sites that need IE.
Wasn't windows interface - and MS word's - MDI though? Maybe I just confuse tabbed browsing with Opera's MDI though... part of which does allow tabs - and believe me many people prefer the tabbed interface or a full MDI.
Yeah, I occasionally have explorer crash for no reason, when all that's running is the desktop and associated system tray programs.
Want to hear something weirder? I use Powerquest Drive Image 6. I can restore an image(note an exact copy - delete and overwrite partition with the same exact bytes that were there when I Imaged it) two different times on the same machine and the windowsXP will behave differently. Sometimes it's as stable and when I imaged, other times it's crappy, so I'll restore the same image again, and all is good.
And totally off topic, can I say I think I just found the crappiest shittiest piece of software ever! ASUS DVR. I bought a TV Suite video card so I could watch TV on my PC. But the supplied program(upgraded to the latest version) is unreliable as hell. When I go to start it, sometimes it will crash immediately, then I'll try again to run it, and it will work fine. Then I'll try to exit it and get some error that won't go away, I'll have to task manager quit it. Or sometimes it will bluescreen XP, in which case I have to uninstall the program and reinstall it and then it's OK again for two runs or so...
Does anyone else use the ASUS 5650 GeForce FX 5600 based TV Suite card, and have any recommendations of any other programs to use to watch TV with from the component in on that?
And that's fine. What I'm saying is that if someone wants to target group X, but designs the widget for group Y, they shouldn't be sitting around scratching their heads about why group X doesn't use the widget. That's all I'm saying.
SuSE? Not unless you want to buy it. Which I don't want to do until I'm actually sure I'll be using it more that once.
.iso I can download and install from cd(or from daemon tools to VMWare)?
I've said it before, I'm pretty techinical - probably a power user, but not a developer. I went looking for SuSE to try out now that Redhat doesn't have a user distro, and Fedora seems unlikely due to opinions I've read here.
So I go to www.suse.com. I struggle to find downloads - and I'm stymied. Where is an
Oh. SuSE doesn't have one for download. Ok. Well that's it. I don't have a clue how to install something that doesn't have a CD I can download. So no SuSE for me.
People will NOT use an OS they need to read instructions to install. Sorry - if you can get average people to install a different OS at ALL, they will not want to go searching for a manual on how to install it. Not when they can get a CD of windows, or Mandrake, or whatever and put it in the CD drive and start the computer. Boom install.
So I disagree that SuSE is the least hassle. I gave up on trying to install, just becasue I wanted to play with Linux, not play with installing Linux.
BTW - I had a similar problem with Debian witch is often recommended. Well, no - just I couldn't figure out how to download it at all! Something about downloading something like Bittorrent, compiling or installing or something with that, and then it will download an iso, but I think I would also need to provide ip seed nodes or somesuch to get that to work. I looked at it for 2 days, and gave up - too much trouble.
I'm sure this all makes me look patheitic, but the only Linux I've been able to install since leaving RedHat was Mandrake, and I really don't think it's the best solution - I remember Redhat being much better. I am thinking about going back to Redhat 7.1 or maybe 7.3.
And this thought process is why Linux will not take over the desktop. I don't know if this is a prevelant attitude in open source - but an average consumer doesn't want to contribute to the software - they want to USE the software. They are not looking to join a club or academic inquiry, they want to buy a computer and surf the net, type up a paper etc...
Go buy windows
Indeed.
Yeah, when you have "computer people" who don't want to take the time to mess with Linux cause it is a bigger pain than windows to get to do anything, then you can understand why the average user won't use it.
I'm a pretty computer savvy person. I'm in my 4th year of college in CIS, and I have taken Sysadmin classes using Linux exclusevly. I have bulit my own computers and computers for other people. I've done networking with routers in Internetworking Classes. I've even done some programming.
Compared to the average user, I'm the person they come to when something breaks on their computer.
I loved Redhat Linux for running DNS servers in class, it was great for a mail server or FTP server. It was great for scripting. It was fast, and stable - the multiple user features were head and showlders above home windows offerings in my experiances.
I don't use Linux at home. I've tried, multiple times, multiple distros. It is simply TOO MUCH TROUBLE. I don't want to fight through dialog boxes that don't seem to do anything after I hit apply. I don't want to deal with install issues, like how do I install this today? I recently played around with mandrake 9.2 I believe. This time I didn't want to totally dual boot etc, so I was using VMWare. I don't know if this is a VMware problem, or a linux problem, but let me tell you - Windows 98 virtual machine... click on file in VM ware, and install VMware tools... bam standard windows installer in the virtual machine, and bam, done, installed. I still haven't gotten the linux script to work right. I've given up. I've since heard that maybe I don't need to install that anyway cause newer versions have automatic support for VMWare.
The point of my rant there is that until software vendors and developers come up with a clear consistant UI, with things like install programs that you can double click on in KDE and have work,I don't see linux catching on on the desktop.
The sad thing is I like to play around with linux - to keep up with what's happening, and to stay in *nix mode for servers.
But when I need to get some classwork done, like write a paper or do a spreadsheet, or when I want to play online - I use WinXP. It's just easier.
Well, the incentive is there for either people at Mandrake or Xandros or whoever actually wants to SELL Linux to people shying away from "XP Reloaded"(btw wtf? As bad as Matrix Reloaded?) or just getting away from whatever windows they have.
It also makes sense for anyone who wants to dethrone Microsoft in the desktop market - and for some reason, there are a lot of people, even on slashdot, who want to do that with Linux. To do that, they need to make a widget that makes some sense to people other than the person who programmed it. Note, this does not mean dumbed down. Check out a Human Factors book or class sometime. It's amazing how badly designed many things throughtout our world are.
I think the debate primarily is that the patriot act has not been proven to make the nation safer. I don't see how it would do so, and that's what is being addressed here. Please lay out how the patriot act has made/will make the nation safer.
I think the issue here is that you have a chance to go to a chat room or message board and say "XXX is happening, any ideas" and when someone tells you it's cause x and y software are incompatible, you have 4 choices here. You can do what you can do in windows, and call the manufactuer and ask them to fix it(good luck); you can fix it yourself(if you know how - and bonus, you can contribute that back to everyone); you can see if there is anyone who has already fixed it on the web or is willing to fix it to help you(these people do exist, though their willingness to help probably depends on the complexity of the problem); or you can pay a developer to fix it(and again contribute that back to everyone).
So with closed source you have 1 option to fix a code error, with Open source you have 4 options. Which gives an average person more chance of getting that miswritten code fixed?
I have to disagree here. I think that online support is about equal from a poweruser standpoint. By poweruser I mean someone with computer training, but does not have programming experiance nor a good understanding of compiliers.
I've found good answers regarding questions for both OS's online in about the same amount of looking, and I've also found questions that I just couldn't easily find an answer for.
Of course, this is only my experiance YMMV.
The weird part is, based on some things I read today that was posted above - and things I knew before, is doesn't that whole :
Our governments are becoming aware that a scared citizen doesn't question its government. Privacy and freedom are things for extremists, good citizens care about safety and nothing else.
bring back scary memories of Germany in 1930 or so? I would think those old people - especially anyone who lived in Germany then, would be up in arms right now, screaming their heads off.
Of course it is possible that the wool can be pulled over people's eyes a second time - even when they have seen the trick before and had it disected for them.
This is something that always baffeled me as to why people thought it would be so hard to authinticate people. You know when you sign in to vote at a balloting place? At that time, they could give you an ID# or floppy disc with a hash on it or a CD that was unique to you. You could then take that home and use it to vote for whatever along the way to the next election.
If you didn't want it for some reason - lack of a computer - they would mark an X on that paper where you signed in, and thant hash would be deleted until next election, where you would again at the ballot location be offered a hash or key or whatever.
Which is why I NOTICE any company that provides good to great support, or an above average product. I tell everyone about them who want's my opinion on products. I am very up-front about my recommendations.
For instance, people ask me about inkjet printers. I tell them Epson. Then I list the reasons.
1. Warrenty(1 year) You do need a CC to use this - only downside I have run into.
Their warrenty covers their own mess ups, and covers you if you buy 3rd party ink and it gumms up the printhead. Their solution? Next Day Air you a replacement printer(refurbished - sorry no more new for used, but the refurbished ones work in my experiance). You UPS back the broken printer in the same box, they pay for shipping.
That is the reason I keep using Epson printers. Oh, the printers are nice - and $130 for an inkjet isn't bad. But it's the knowledge that when the inkjet messes up I can get it fixed that keeps me coming back. I've used HP, Cannon, Lexmark, Olivetti and they all eventually have problems. The ink cloggs is the most common, but sometimes the printhead dies. So I like knowing I will at least get a year or more out of an inkjet. Heck, my Lexmark lasted 3 months and died(well $10 at office max, what did I expect?)
I don't know that this fits the bill totally, but the people here often have stories similar to this one, and do talk about various company's problems(sometimes - depends on whether they work for the company or not). Tech Support Comedy
You know, what's weird about this is that I have never in real life been in a situation where if police were involved that I would not help them out to the best of my ability. I can't even think of a situation where I would not attempt to assist them - outside of my paranoind fantasy's.
If I was asked by a police officer who I was, I would tell them, and offer driver's licence or college ID or both if they wanted to see them.
The only thing is I totally am against them being able to force me or anyone to do so. I'm not sure why that is - maybe because I like being able to volunteer information or not depending on the situation...
I hope the Supreme Court finds laws like the one in Georgia to be unconstitutional.
Choosing to take part of a criminal conspiracy to piss off law enforcement and intelligence agencies
How is using a software program that is part of a network - like freenet - being part of a criminal conspiracy?
I'm not conspiring to do anything illegial on freenet. No one has contacted me to try and subvert the government.
Not that I really care. I'm going to end up deleting freenet - cause it doesn't work anyway.
Ok, first of all, I was not aware it was illegial to run a freenet node. So I can't see how(in the west, specifically USA) you could be arrested or charged for running one. That would be equivilent to being arrested for having a fax machine or a camera because illegial child porn may be transmitted through those.
To charge you - doesn't the government have to have some proof that you are trading, hosting, or otherwise involved with whatever they are charging you with? To me that would mean they would need to decrypt the data going in and out of your computer. Now - even if they come to you and ask for the keys - you can't give them to them, because you do not know the keys. Again, It's not illegial to not tell someone something you don't know. And this comes back to the law in the US. The government can do traffic anaylisis. That is true. I haven't seen where they can question you, search your house, arrest you or anything else based on using some LEGAL(so far) computer without anything else towards probable cause.
At least with Kazaa or whatever, the government(if they were actually interested in anaylizing all the data the hundreds of millions of home computers transfer over the internet, they could read the data(as it is not encrypted) and then arrest you for trafficing in illegial material.