If your company is a for-contract support company than you probably very much care that Joe came in at 9:05 and not 9:00! Your company just lost 1/12 of a chargeable hour. Multiply that by X number of late employees and it can really add up. Also realize that most of these contracts charge something like $80-$200 per man hour and have dozens if not hundreds of employees.
hat's the crux of the dispute. With a classic search warrant the police are empowered to search a specified location for a specified item. They are allowed to discover evidence related to that crime, and even other crimes carrying out a lawful search.
I agree that this is the crux of the issue. In this case the search warrant specifically stated that they could remove information pertaining to specific persons. That is a very clear statement that they are NOT allowed to remove information pertaining to others. Otherwise those other persons would be listed on the search warrant, or the warrant would have specifically stated that the agents could access stored data files. It didn't. It stated that the agents could obtain a copy of specific files for specific individuals. This is in no way ambiguous and there are several hundred cases almost identical to this one that all have the same results.
On top of that, the physical storage of computer data files makes it such that you have to take extra steps to view them. The agents didn't just look at raw 1's and 0's. They used multiple pieces of software and hardware to interact in a complex way (although easy for you and me) to access, view and then copy the data files. The third party standard is "if a cop walks into a room or opens a closet and the evidence is in plain sight." The boundary for if an item is in plain sight is very clear. Something that you have to go through any extra steps to get to is not in plain sight.
Example:
Two years ago there was a case in Portland, Oregon, involving a NBA player. The police responded to a 911 call about a fight. This fight apparently didn't happen (prank 911 call?). While the police were at the site, one of them thought they smelled marijuana. The police officer then followed his nose and pushed aside a air vent grate and pulled out a bag of marijuana . The NBA player was then arrested. Long story short, because the officer had to search for it, instead of it being in immediate view, the marijuana was not allowed as evidence and the arrest was thrown out.
As a last bit of evidence to support my claim. The statements I have made above were basically paraphrasing the Supreme Court ruling. You know, the group of people that have the job of making the final say in what a law means. There is no "getting it wrong" for them. By definition, what ever they decide is correct under the law, regardless of how others may disagree. If the disagreement is large enough then in this case a push would be made to change the statute, in this case Amendment IV of the U.S. Constitution.
My understanding is that they had a warrant to get information regarding those specific people. Instead of gathering that information they removed information unrelated to that warrant (aka coping multiple files containing unrelated information).
This would be functionally equivalent to going into a human resources office and instead of seizing the personal folders of an employee, seizing the cabinet that contains all personal folders.
Arguably the agents should have received copies of new files that were copied from the original. If this had been information contained in a database for example, (which the court considers equivalent in function to the Excel document) someone would have created a report or data dump containing only information tied to those names listed on the warrant.
The agents would NOT have been given copies of the database files or the hard drives unless the warrant specifically listed those. Again, in this last case, we have no problem because the warrant specifically stated what was acceptable to be seized. This case seems very cut and dry when you look at the broader issues involved.
Pointless evidence completely ignored before convicted murderer sentenced to death...
If we want to talk about random stuff introduced into sentencing hearings, why don't we go for the truly interesting stuff. I am sure it wouldn't be to hard to find "evidence" of aliens or the Mob-Disney connection to the JFK assassination introduced in some trial.
That is the point. Stallman founded a religion, and Torvalds gave us a tool.
No. It was Stallman who gave us the tool; the GPL. This licence is the magic ingredient that makes open source software possible. Without it, without Stallman's contribution, we'd still be stuck with mostly BSD style licences. Private companies would be mooching off and appropriating the work of FOSS programmers, people would be cynical about writing software for nothing, and we wouldn't have a fraction of the fantastic array of software we all have running on our desktops, including the Linux kernel.
We'd all be paying $500 per operating system, and our program suites would mostly consist of massively duplicated pay to use, single function programs or else expensively licensed monolithic program suites like MS Office. Programs provided by private companies with lots of scope to monopolise, little incentive to innovate, and with general contempt for their users. Ask yourself, how would you encode a CD in windows, how would you compile a program, what email client would you use if you couldn't use open source software?
This is what Richard Stallman rescued us from. Restrictive, expensive, bug ridden and often vindictive closed source software. Perhaps you do not like stances. That's fine. But you had best acknowledge that the reason you have a modern web browser to read this site with is largely down to the efforts he made probably before you were even born.
No, it is the developers that actually did the work to create software that we owe a debt to.
There are thousands of licenses for open source software (by what ever definition). The GPL is ONE of them. You remove the GPL from history then another one would have been used.
RMS and Linus have done many good things. But there accomplishments pale in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of testers, developers, maintainers and other persons working on software projects around the world. I think it would be fair to nominate Linus as a spokes man for that large body of people, that seems an ok thing to do.
President Carter helped broker NUMEROUS peace treaties, championed Habitat for Humanity, founded the Carter Center and championed scores of social issues.
Former Vice President Al Gore has become one of the worlds leaders on environmental issues.
I don't really have a comment on if Former Vice President Gore, or President Obama should have been awarded the prize. However, please point to anyone who has done more for the cause of world peace than President Carter. Please inform me who has done more for the poor and downtrodden around the world than he?
Fragile is not about loosing data, it is about loosing immediate access to data. USB drives are less resilient compared to most types of data storage.
If you are in the field and get wet then chances are, your USB drive is toast. Dust, heat or simply dropping, stepping on or loosing them because they are so small are all very common ways for them to become inoperable.
A friend of mine is in the army and stationed in Iraq. The first time he went over there he took with him one of those "survive anything" laptops. At one point he told me about the laptop falling out of the vehicle he was in. He had to take the cover off and pour about a cup of sand out of the case. It still booted up and had all of his data after this. That would be something I would consider not fragile...
Source code is a English (or human readable) language copy of a mathematical formulation. I have met a fair amount of very good programmers who had a very strong mathematical background but had very little strength when it came to writing.
Because of the mathematical background many comments were bad because they simply stated the equation (a + b = c as an example). Other times the author simply wrote a lackluster or bad English comment. In those example the CODE in question was superb.
My point, in summary, is that writing coherent and precise statements in any language is a skill. That skill is NOT needed to understand engineering or mathematics. Likewise, it is not needed to write good code.
Having said that point. Most people who write bad comments are usually not interested in the larger picture involved and seem to "cut corners" a bit to often. In my experience this leads to either bugs or a maintenance nightmare.
There is also something to be said about being a well rounded person.
CORE CRIMINAL LAW SUBJECTS: Crimes: Article 127 - Extortion
2008 (September Term)
United States v. Brown, 67 M.J. 147 (Article 127, UCMJ, prohibits the communication of threats to another person with the intention thereby to obtain anything of value or any acquittance, advantage, or immunity; the MCM explains that, unless it is clear from the circumstances, the advantage or immunity sought should be described in the specification; the MCM further explains that an intent to make a person do an act against that person's will is not, by itself, sufficient to constitute extortion).
(in this case, the specification was sufficient to state an offense of extortion under Article 127, UCMJ, in that it described the advantage that appellant sought to achieve (the participation of the victim in sexual relations) and further described the threat communicated to the victim to obtain that advantage (to expose their past sexual relationship in a manner that would harm her military career); as such, the specification was consistent with part IV, para. 54.c.(4) of the MCM, which expresses a preference for an express description of the advantage; moreover, the specification was consistent with the additional guidance in para. 54.c.(4), which states that an intent to have "a person do an act against that person's will," would not be sufficient "by itself" to constitute extortion; here, in addition to alleging that appellant sought to have the victim engage in an act against her will, the specification further alleged that appellant intended to obtain an advantage through her participation with him in sexual relations; as such, the specification did not rely solely, or "by itself," on an allegation that appellant sought to have her engage in an act against her will).
18 U.S.C. 873 : US Code - Section 873: Blackmail
Whoever, under a threat of informing, or as a consideration for
not informing, against any violation of any law of the United
States, demands or receives any money or other valuable thing,
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one
year, or both.
Neither crime requires "profit". The crimes entail forcing an outside party to take an action. There is no requirements on what those actions are in most Common Law jurisdictions other than that the victim has been coerced into them.
Here is an example of such a case within the US armed forces:
A English example would be Jean Violette's extortion conviction. In this case the victim was using the Hell's Angles name. Mr. Violette wanted him to stop using the name. You can read a bit more about this case below (or do web search):
The meat of the issue is in the passage, "...demands or receives any money or other valuable thing..." "Other valuable thing(s)" has been interpreted multiple times to include non-monetary services. For example, a politician can be blackmailed or extorted to vote a certain way. An attorney can be coerced into not prosecuting a case with due diligence (look into the history of the Mob for many such examples).
432.162. EXTORTION. A person subject to this chapter who communicates threats to another person with the intent to obtain anything of value or any acquittance, advantage, or immunity is guilty of extortion and shall be punished as a court-martial directs.
I believe this would be extortion not blackmail. Although, really, both are bad. You REALLY don't want to put your self in a position to be accused of either.
From a professional standpoint I would recommend staying away from any situation where you are making demands or threats to your boss. Such a situation will very rarely help you achieve your goals. More often it WILL damage your reputation, instead of being known as XYZ-good-thing, you will be remembered as the guy who threatened the company. Such extreme incidents have a habit of following you for years. It would be better to just leave than risk long-term damage to your reputation.
If you do want to change the situation, perhaps a less aggressive approach. Next time you are asked to install software product X, have the requester sign a statement that says they have acquired the proper license for this product (or product such a license). This removes the burden from yourself, it is reasonable. Lastly it has a subtle and non-hostile aspect of teaching others about licensing.
I would also recommend starting a license tracking system.
The basic idea here is that you don't want to assign blame. You DO want to move forward in a constructive and positive way, while still meeting your legal/moral standards. If your boss says that everything in use is ok, then don't press the point, but instead ensure that everything going forward can be documented as such.
As for the definition of blackmail, here are a couple of dictionary references (sorry no legal citations, but I am confidante that this would get you in trouble within the US Federal system.):
1. any payment extorted by intimidation, as by threats of injurious revelations or accusations.
2. the extortion of such payment: He confessed rather than suffer the dishonor of blackmail.
3. a tribute formerly exacted in the north of England and in Scotland by freebooting chiefs for protection from pillage.
-verb (used with object)
4. to extort money from (a person) by the use of threats.
5. to force or coerce into a particular action, statement, etc.: The strikers claimed they were blackmailed into signing the new contract.
Notice item number 5. To force or coerce into a particular action.
Another dictionary reference:
The crime involving a threat for purposes of compelling a person to do an act against his or her will, or for purposes of taking the person's money or property.
The term blackmail originally denoted a payment made by English persons residing along the border of Scotland to influential Scottish chieftains in exchange for protection from thieves and marauders.
In blackmail the threat might consist of physical injury to the threatened person or to someone loved by that person, or injury to a person's reputation. In some cases the victim is told that an illegal act he or she had previously committed will be exposed if the victim fails to comply with the demand.
Although blackmail is generally synonymous with extortion, some states distinguish the offenses by requiring that the former be in writing.
Blackmail is punishable by a fine, imprisonment, or both.
Notice paragraph 3. "In some cases the victim is told that an illegal act he or she had previously committed will be exposed if the victim fails to comply with the demand."
We use information like SSN and address which are not in any way secret, merely obscure, as a way to supposedly verify identity, and that's why we have so much identity theft. The reason no-one wants to post their SSN and address on Slashdot is precisely because security through obscurity sucks.
Well that and if post your SSN it really isn't obscure anymore now is it...?
>>>I placed two $1 orders on January 24th of this year, and spent another $104,000 on October 24th.
According to our idiotic U.S. law, you are guilty of hacking a computer service. It doesn't matter that you didn't actually do it - you are presumed guilty, and it's your job to prove innocence. (Kinda similar to that guy who was falsely accused of downloading child porn - he too was presumed guilty until he could prove that it was malware that did it.)
The law is not idiotic. It is also not a guilty until proven innocent issue.
Every/. reader is sure of what he did. Why? Because of what HE WROTE. He makes it very clear what he did, just because he did not jump up and down and say "I committed wire fraud," does not mean it is not obvious.
What is stupid here is that Microsoft sent a cease and desist letter to the guy that even mentioned his writing. What they should have done is sent a cease and desist letter to him requesting that he STOP STEALING FROM THEM. Instead they mentioned a secondary issue and now the story is about Microsoft censoring someone. This was a simple and stupid PR move by Microsoft.
For those of you who question if he was stealing or not? Well please point out where he says he is going to return the $2080.06 or contact Microsoft about this issue. I didn't see a mention of the author doing either of those things. What was written was that $2080.06 that he had no right to was being transferred into his account...
Again you are making assumptions. You are assuming the total cost of getting new hardware and making that work, is less than using his already owned hardware.
It takes me all of 5 minutes of *my* time to download and install DSL (for example) onto old hardware. (Granted it takes longer to run the installer and setup, but *I* don't have to be there, I can walk away.)
Using a real life example, setting up enterprise firewalls using old computers takes only a few minutes tops. That includes hauling the dead computer away and placing a new one in its place, imaging the drive, hooking up all the cabling and any other setup work that needs to be done.
We COULD go and order new hardware for this.
But instead we grab an old computer, throw an image on the drive and boot it up. Cost = $0. Time spent
I am not saying you are never right on this one. Some times it is worth it to get new hardware. But if there is no benefit, then why?
You are looking at it from a completely wrong view here.
The poster is thinking, "I have this computer, maybe it can do XYZ with it."
Your thinking, "I want to do XYZ, I need to go buy something that is very 'fast' to do that."
If what you want to do only requires a 20mph golf cart that you already have, why go PAY MONEY to buy the 45mph Gator? This guy has hardware that meets his needs (basic web browsing).
Using a real life computer systems example. My work is using 20 year old computers as firewall machines. We could buy new fancy replacements when these break. Or we could simply take another old, off-line computer and plug in an imaged hard drive. One option costs money, the other doesn't. Both methods get the exact same results.
a 486? Why on earth would you bother? Even a p3 laptop is pretty obsolete these days, but still can be had for under 30 or 40 dollars on craigslist. That would be a quantum leap above the 486 you are planning on using.
Some times you don't need anything more powerful.
Plus that $30 or $40 is still money out the door, then you have to spend time looking, finding and then getting (ie picking up) the new hardware.
If you have hardware that works, why bother upgrading?
No local control over filtering and sorting, forced to use your weird UI and editor instead of my own? "Forums" suck. And "easier to control" is not a feature.
Uhm - then why are you posting on Slashdot?
Because he hates himself and wants to exact as much pain on himself as possible...
On a more serious note, I agree with the parents parent, I much prefer mailing lists to forums.
Slashdot Mirror
If your company is a for-contract support company than you probably very much care that Joe came in at 9:05 and not 9:00! Your company just lost 1/12 of a chargeable hour. Multiply that by X number of late employees and it can really add up. Also realize that most of these contracts charge something like $80-$200 per man hour and have dozens if not hundreds of employees.
I think -1 would be more appropriate...
I agree that this is the crux of the issue. In this case the search warrant specifically stated that they could remove information pertaining to specific persons. That is a very clear statement that they are NOT allowed to remove information pertaining to others. Otherwise those other persons would be listed on the search warrant, or the warrant would have specifically stated that the agents could access stored data files. It didn't. It stated that the agents could obtain a copy of specific files for specific individuals. This is in no way ambiguous and there are several hundred cases almost identical to this one that all have the same results.
On top of that, the physical storage of computer data files makes it such that you have to take extra steps to view them. The agents didn't just look at raw 1's and 0's. They used multiple pieces of software and hardware to interact in a complex way (although easy for you and me) to access, view and then copy the data files. The third party standard is "if a cop walks into a room or opens a closet and the evidence is in plain sight." The boundary for if an item is in plain sight is very clear. Something that you have to go through any extra steps to get to is not in plain sight.
Example:
Two years ago there was a case in Portland, Oregon, involving a NBA player. The police responded to a 911 call about a fight. This fight apparently didn't happen (prank 911 call?). While the police were at the site, one of them thought they smelled marijuana. The police officer then followed his nose and pushed aside a air vent grate and pulled out a bag of marijuana . The NBA player was then arrested. Long story short, because the officer had to search for it, instead of it being in immediate view, the marijuana was not allowed as evidence and the arrest was thrown out.
As a last bit of evidence to support my claim. The statements I have made above were basically paraphrasing the Supreme Court ruling. You know, the group of people that have the job of making the final say in what a law means. There is no "getting it wrong" for them. By definition, what ever they decide is correct under the law, regardless of how others may disagree. If the disagreement is large enough then in this case a push would be made to change the statute, in this case Amendment IV of the U.S. Constitution.
My understanding is that they had a warrant to get information regarding those specific people. Instead of gathering that information they removed information unrelated to that warrant (aka coping multiple files containing unrelated information).
This would be functionally equivalent to going into a human resources office and instead of seizing the personal folders of an employee, seizing the cabinet that contains all personal folders.
Arguably the agents should have received copies of new files that were copied from the original. If this had been information contained in a database for example, (which the court considers equivalent in function to the Excel document) someone would have created a report or data dump containing only information tied to those names listed on the warrant.
The agents would NOT have been given copies of the database files or the hard drives unless the warrant specifically listed those. Again, in this last case, we have no problem because the warrant specifically stated what was acceptable to be seized. This case seems very cut and dry when you look at the broader issues involved.
Pointless evidence completely ignored before convicted murderer sentenced to death...
If we want to talk about random stuff introduced into sentencing hearings, why don't we go for the truly interesting stuff. I am sure it wouldn't be to hard to find "evidence" of aliens or the Mob-Disney connection to the JFK assassination introduced in some trial.
No. It was Stallman who gave us the tool; the GPL. This licence is the magic ingredient that makes open source software possible. Without it, without Stallman's contribution, we'd still be stuck with mostly BSD style licences. Private companies would be mooching off and appropriating the work of FOSS programmers, people would be cynical about writing software for nothing, and we wouldn't have a fraction of the fantastic array of software we all have running on our desktops, including the Linux kernel.
We'd all be paying $500 per operating system, and our program suites would mostly consist of massively duplicated pay to use, single function programs or else expensively licensed monolithic program suites like MS Office. Programs provided by private companies with lots of scope to monopolise, little incentive to innovate, and with general contempt for their users. Ask yourself, how would you encode a CD in windows, how would you compile a program, what email client would you use if you couldn't use open source software?
This is what Richard Stallman rescued us from. Restrictive, expensive, bug ridden and often vindictive closed source software. Perhaps you do not like stances. That's fine. But you had best acknowledge that the reason you have a modern web browser to read this site with is largely down to the efforts he made probably before you were even born.
No, it is the developers that actually did the work to create software that we owe a debt to.
There are thousands of licenses for open source software (by what ever definition). The GPL is ONE of them. You remove the GPL from history then another one would have been used.
RMS and Linus have done many good things. But there accomplishments pale in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of testers, developers, maintainers and other persons working on software projects around the world. I think it would be fair to nominate Linus as a spokes man for that large body of people, that seems an ok thing to do.
How many people buy Apple computers that are not Apple fanboys?
I bet if you took a cross section of NORMAL consumers and asked them, the satisfaction would go down a fair amount.
Read Normal == non Apple, Microsoft, Linux fanboy.
President Carter helped broker NUMEROUS peace treaties, championed Habitat for Humanity, founded the Carter Center and championed scores of social issues.
Former Vice President Al Gore has become one of the worlds leaders on environmental issues.
I don't really have a comment on if Former Vice President Gore, or President Obama should have been awarded the prize. However, please point to anyone who has done more for the cause of world peace than President Carter. Please inform me who has done more for the poor and downtrodden around the world than he?
Fragile is not about loosing data, it is about loosing immediate access to data. USB drives are less resilient compared to most types of data storage.
If you are in the field and get wet then chances are, your USB drive is toast. Dust, heat or simply dropping, stepping on or loosing them because they are so small are all very common ways for them to become inoperable.
A friend of mine is in the army and stationed in Iraq. The first time he went over there he took with him one of those "survive anything" laptops. At one point he told me about the laptop falling out of the vehicle he was in. He had to take the cover off and pour about a cup of sand out of the case. It still booted up and had all of his data after this. That would be something I would consider not fragile...
Actually, the "too many stupid voters" got exactly what they wanted... Sounds like voting works pretty well to me.
Source code is a English (or human readable) language copy of a mathematical formulation. I have met a fair amount of very good programmers who had a very strong mathematical background but had very little strength when it came to writing.
Because of the mathematical background many comments were bad because they simply stated the equation (a + b = c as an example). Other times the author simply wrote a lackluster or bad English comment. In those example the CODE in question was superb.
My point, in summary, is that writing coherent and precise statements in any language is a skill. That skill is NOT needed to understand engineering or mathematics. Likewise, it is not needed to write good code.
Having said that point. Most people who write bad comments are usually not interested in the larger picture involved and seem to "cut corners" a bit to often. In my experience this leads to either bugs or a maintenance nightmare.
There is also something to be said about being a well rounded person.
Neither crime requires "profit". The crimes entail forcing an outside party to take an action. There is no requirements on what those actions are in most Common Law jurisdictions other than that the victim has been coerced into them.
Here is an example of such a case within the US armed forces:
http://www.armfor.uscourts.gov/digest/IIIA55.htm
A English example would be Jean Violette's extortion conviction. In this case the victim was using the Hell's Angles name. Mr. Violette wanted him to stop using the name. You can read a bit more about this case below (or do web search):
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Crown+seeks+year+prison+sentence+Hells+Angel+convicted+extortion+weapons+offences/2188869/story.html
For the US Government (Fed.) you can find the actual statue under 18 USC Chapter 41:
http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/41
The meat of the issue is in the passage, "...demands or receives any money or other valuable thing..." "Other valuable thing(s)" has been interpreted multiple times to include non-monetary services. For example, a politician can be blackmailed or extorted to vote a certain way. An attorney can be coerced into not prosecuting a case with due diligence (look into the history of the Mob for many such examples).
Here would be I belive the relevent law in Texas:
http://law.onecle.com/texas/government/432.162.00.html
I believe this would be extortion not blackmail. Although, really, both are bad. You REALLY don't want to put your self in a position to be accused of either.
From a professional standpoint I would recommend staying away from any situation where you are making demands or threats to your boss. Such a situation will very rarely help you achieve your goals. More often it WILL damage your reputation, instead of being known as XYZ-good-thing, you will be remembered as the guy who threatened the company. Such extreme incidents have a habit of following you for years. It would be better to just leave than risk long-term damage to your reputation.
If you do want to change the situation, perhaps a less aggressive approach. Next time you are asked to install software product X, have the requester sign a statement that says they have acquired the proper license for this product (or product such a license). This removes the burden from yourself, it is reasonable. Lastly it has a subtle and non-hostile aspect of teaching others about licensing.
I would also recommend starting a license tracking system.
The basic idea here is that you don't want to assign blame. You DO want to move forward in a constructive and positive way, while still meeting your legal/moral standards. If your boss says that everything in use is ok, then don't press the point, but instead ensure that everything going forward can be documented as such.
As for the definition of blackmail, here are a couple of dictionary references (sorry no legal citations, but I am confidante that this would get you in trouble within the US Federal system.):
From dictionary.com
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/blackmail?jss=0
Notice item number 5. To force or coerce into a particular action.
Another dictionary reference:
Notice paragraph 3. "In some cases the victim is told that an illegal act he or she had previously committed will be exposed if the victim fails to comply with the demand."
600,000 of 20,000,000
there are some who would call this "three percent"
And some people would call that "nineteen percent" and others that would call it "almost all."
I shouldn't think it surprises you that "some" people suck at math, nor that "some" marketing people suck at it...
There actually is a home brew community for the 360. I toyed with some small projects for a short while. It was neat I guess.
It is a story about a technology being ruled as legally invalid. That sounds pretty much a /. type of story.
Well that and if post your SSN it really isn't obscure anymore now is it...?
The law is not idiotic. It is also not a guilty until proven innocent issue.
/. reader is sure of what he did. Why? Because of what HE WROTE. He makes it very clear what he did, just because he did not jump up and down and say "I committed wire fraud," does not mean it is not obvious.
Every
What is stupid here is that Microsoft sent a cease and desist letter to the guy that even mentioned his writing. What they should have done is sent a cease and desist letter to him requesting that he STOP STEALING FROM THEM. Instead they mentioned a secondary issue and now the story is about Microsoft censoring someone. This was a simple and stupid PR move by Microsoft.
For those of you who question if he was stealing or not? Well please point out where he says he is going to return the $2080.06 or contact Microsoft about this issue. I didn't see a mention of the author doing either of those things. What was written was that $2080.06 that he had no right to was being transferred into his account...
Your not even in the same realm of hardware.
Most of the machines are old DEC VMS machines. Also, at that point the data is not running over ethernet.
Oh and to be specific. When I say "old" computer, think, "made in the 80's."
Again you are making assumptions. You are assuming the total cost of getting new hardware and making that work, is less than using his already owned hardware.
It takes me all of 5 minutes of *my* time to download and install DSL (for example) onto old hardware. (Granted it takes longer to run the installer and setup, but *I* don't have to be there, I can walk away.)
Using a real life example, setting up enterprise firewalls using old computers takes only a few minutes tops. That includes hauling the dead computer away and placing a new one in its place, imaging the drive, hooking up all the cabling and any other setup work that needs to be done.
We COULD go and order new hardware for this.
But instead we grab an old computer, throw an image on the drive and boot it up. Cost = $0. Time spent
I am not saying you are never right on this one. Some times it is worth it to get new hardware. But if there is no benefit, then why?
You are looking at it from a completely wrong view here.
The poster is thinking, "I have this computer, maybe it can do XYZ with it."
Your thinking, "I want to do XYZ, I need to go buy something that is very 'fast' to do that."
If what you want to do only requires a 20mph golf cart that you already have, why go PAY MONEY to buy the 45mph Gator? This guy has hardware that meets his needs (basic web browsing).
Using a real life computer systems example. My work is using 20 year old computers as firewall machines. We could buy new fancy replacements when these break. Or we could simply take another old, off-line computer and plug in an imaged hard drive. One option costs money, the other doesn't. Both methods get the exact same results.
Some times you don't need anything more powerful.
Plus that $30 or $40 is still money out the door, then you have to spend time looking, finding and then getting (ie picking up) the new hardware.
If you have hardware that works, why bother upgrading?
Because he hates himself and wants to exact as much pain on himself as possible...
On a more serious note, I agree with the parents parent, I much prefer mailing lists to forums.