And with regard to diet soda specifically, there is no even alleged effect of aspartame or sodium benzoate - no matter how crackpot - that is worse than the proven health effects of drinking all the empty calories in a non-diet soda. Obesity directly kills hundreds of thousands of people every single year, yet we are constantly looking for ways to mentally justify continuing on that path. "All these chemicals are dangerous!" No, what's dangerous is being fat. So if you are (unjustifiably) worried about diet soda, your alternative is to drink 100% juice or water. Going back to drinking regular soda instead of diet because you're worried about your health just makes you a hypocrite - or an idiot.
Actually, it's widely known that aspartame causes carbohydrate cravings. Repeat after me: "Diet soda also makes you fat."
So, really it boils down to: soda makes you fat. Diet or not, it all makes you fat. Diet has the added bonus of possibly causing allergic reactions to the myriad of extra chemicals involved in its composition and production (above and beyond what's already involved in regular soda!).
But many people enjoy drinking soda. So you have the choice of "get fat", or "get fat and have a reaction to some whacked-out chemical", and neither one of those is particularly appealing. So drink regular soda, but drink less of it. That's your middle ground. Moderation is key.
Unfortunately, that theory falls apart in January in areas north of 35 degrees latitude. When there's anywhere from a skim of frost to an inch of ice on the window, turning on the compressor is exactly the worst thing to do. Most obviously, it fights the heater by chilling the air (needlessly, it's already bloody cold). Less obviously, it provides NO help in clearing the windshield, since there's already no humidity in the already-freaking-cold air.
Now, "nicer" cars might have the extra fifty-cents-worth of parts needed to disengage the compressor when it's below the A/C setpoint outside, but for some reason, cheap cars don't have that, despite the apparently low cost of the feature.
Again, "defog" is not the same as "defrost". If you need defog, then great. Turn on your compressor yourself. If you need defrost, you don't want the compressor coming on automatically.
I still stand by my original statement. It's a stupid anti-feature.
You act as if configuration is different from permission. It is not, and it never will be.
Locking a door is not configuration. Having a router with authentication on it (much like your limited "just plugged it in" explanation) is not configuration.
Configuration is intent. It requires that you perform the act of configuring it, thus you cannot configure something without knowing it. If this guy had said "I didn't know he could do that, yeah, I'm pissed that he didn't buy coffee and just sponged my connection!" then I would've said this was trespassing. But the coffee shop owner didn't do that. He clearly intended for this to be used as it was being used. That's configuration, and it's also intent. Intent is a very human thing, and its direct relationship to a mechanical configuration eludes your poor, tired, beleaguered mind.
There's nothing anti-social or self-interested about this. Perhaps you should try thinking clearly yourself.
I have yet to see a car with a properly designed climate control panel.
Gripe #1: Most of them map non-mutually-exclusive options to a dial that forces one or more options to be mutually exclusive. Why can't I have air blowing from floor vents, dash vents, and the windshield vents all at the same time? Because the designers were too stupid. Functionally, it might lower airflow over the heat coil, but proper duct and coil sizing and damper design can fix that. The engineers were just lazy and/or the UI guy needed to be fired for incompetence. And it's "industry standard" to do it the wrong way now.
Gripe #2: Things that shouldn't be automatic are. Why does my compressor come on when I open the vents on the windshield? Defog? Ok, but what if I want to defrost? That works better with the compressor off. But some moron from California, Texas, and/or Florida (or somewhere similarly hot and humid) decided that it should always be that way, even though it screws things up in 90% of the rest of the USA, to say nothing of other parts of the world.
Vehicle climate controls should be something like this. Fan speed [-----|----] (could be a rotary knob, but needs to be a 0-10 scale) Temp. [-----|----]
There was always a distinction between Jews and proselytes. That much is recorded in the Bible.
The funny thing is, the Bible says that "born" Jews won't necessarily get to occupy the holy land, only "chosen" "Jews" will. And that Jehovah God does the choosing. And he chooses those who want to follow him, "born" or "made" is an inconsequential difference. Heck, "Jew" or "non-Jew" is an inconsequential difference. Only obedience to God matters.
Funnier still is when you tell a Jew that and he flinches at the mere mention of God's name. Like he's going to strike them down for hearing someone else use that name as a legitimate reference to him. Better yet is when you explain to them what his name means and why it means that. "Jehovah" is the anglicized spelling and pronunciation for YHWH, which comes from the words "ye hawah", which translates rougly to "He causes to become." Not only is he the creator, he has a will, and he can make it happen. He will create or cause whatever is needed to ensure that his will becomes reality. Truly almighty.
I just love to freak out a Jew with that info... they go into all sorts of doublespeak to get you to stop speaking so they don't get struck down. Hilarious. And I've never once seen anyone struck down...
Speaking as one who attended a US school and learned US history there, they place most of the blame for wiping out the indians on the railroad companies. Yes, the US government helped. But at the request of the railroads, which were the equivalent of today's greedy telecoms. The US government has always grabbed its ankles for its corporate masters.
The N64's controller was the only one that made console FPSes worth playing. All others have sucked large donkey balls in comparison.
For some reason, everyone got some dumb-assed idea that running should be an analog function and that looking around should tie up your only other thumb. This is simply not the case.
Using the N64's controller, I would typically run with the c-buttons (using my index finger to hit either the top one or the R button, and my "shooting thumb" for the other C buttons and the A/B buttons) and look with the analog stick. I never needed 3 hands, nor did I need to use the virtually useless D-pad or L button that the 3rd hand would've controlled.
I think the N64's controller was just fine. It was just a "dual mode" pad. There was "analog mode" and "digital mode", with different hand placements for each.
When was the last time you saw a house with a sign like that on it?
We call them "welcome mats". I don't know what they call them in the whacked out pedant-land you come from, though.
confusing permission in the machine sense with permission in the human sense
If the cafe owner intended otherwise, he should not have assigned a machine to stand watch at his network's "door".
doubt the owner of the cafe gave the router any such instructions - more likely they just plugged it in
He gave the machine instructions to do its job by plugging it in. It's job is to authenticate users and assign access methods upon request.
the code running on that box has no concept of "I"
Actually, it does. Network-wise, it keeps track of its own identity and gives that identity out as a reference to authenticated users to use as a gateway. It's express purpose for existence is to act as a gateway and gatekeeper, thus if the gateway was not intended to operate as it did, it should not exist in the situation in which it was placed.
A more accurate description would be, "if the button is pushed then the door will open". Hence, the unlocked door.
No, what I said was as accurate as could be stated without going into more detail about how routers and gateways work. It indeed performs more than just a blind "allow access" function.
You, sir, lack both technical and social insight. Technically, the router gives access to anyone who gives it acceptable identification. What is acceptable is defined by the owner and operator of the router. The router is merely a mechanical agent doing exactly as its owner and operator instructed. It carries out its owner's will. Period. If the owner's will (as expressed to the router) changes, then the router changes. If the owner does not know how to express his will to the router (read: configure it to deny access), then he needs to unplug the router and find one that he can work with.
It's not a matter of anthropomorphizing routers. It's a matter of assigning responsibility over equipment designed for access control. It's not trespassing if you give someone a key (or set up a machine explicitly for that purpose outside your door).
Your argument falls apart completely with the "automatic door" example I gave you in my original post. In that instance, we're talking about a literal door on a literal building. A device controls building access. If the access device, while working properly and not bypassed or "tricked", allows access to the building for someone who passes all of your qualifications for entry, they legally have permission to enter. Period.
And your entire mindset ignores the facts of this particular case, where the cafe owner explicitly stated that he didn't know that what the guy was doing was illegal. Note that he didn't say that he didn't know the guy was doing it. Note that he apparently has taken no steps to prevent such access (thus making access a matter of willful consent). He didn't even complain. Now why is this a problem?
I took 3 years of piano lessons when I was in my early teens. Much of that was music theory training and a weekly practice regimen. I've been out of that routine for so long, I guess I've started to take the music theory stuff for granted (I've used it for far more than just playing piano).
It's worthwhile to note, also, that I can't read notes in real-time. Reading notes is a pain in the ass, honestly. Just play what you feel and you'll be happier. That's mostly why I gave up on piano lessons. That, and I preferred to spend my free time playing games on my Super Nintendo. (Yeah, it's been a while...)
I'm pretty sure that all routers purchased new from the store come with an instruction manual (dead-tree or electronic) and a setup wizard that will guide you through that process manually or automatically.
Dumb is not a valid excuse anymore. Not on this topic, and not for the last 4 or 5 years.
Now, what we have is a House, protected by a Door with a button and a sign. The sign says, "Push the button and I'll open the door if you meet my criteria." The button causes the Door to be opened if you meet the criteria set forth by the owner of the House and the Door.
You walk up to the House, read the sign and push the button. The Door opens to allow you into the House.
Is it trespassing? No. The button is a machine tasked with carrying out the owner's directions. It's interesting to note that replacing a button with a motion sensor gives you the very same automatic doors that most retail stores have. It is not trespassing.
So change the nouns around. Is it trespassing if a router gives you access to a network according to the owner's directions? Answer: No it is not.
It takes considerably less practice (IMO) to play piano well (or at least well enough to hear a recognizable tune). And GH is more like playing piano than playing guitar. The only difference is the strum-bar triggering when the note is played rather than playing it when you hit the key. Other than that, those five fret buttons make for a really dinky piano keyboard.
If someone would invent a keyboard that you play like a guitar (not those dumbass keyboard-guitar things from the 80's, though!) it would probably work about like GH, and it would induce a lot more people to play "a real instrument". Keys on the neck, trigger on the body, pitch-bend (up *and* down would be nice) on the body, and you could even do things like auto-chord, auto-5th, auto-3rd, etc. I'd buy that.
It's not false advertising when you're basing your suit on the wording of a configuration option in a preference pane. It's false... configuration option naming? I guess.. maybe...
Is it "false advertising" when Windows says "True Color" in the Display control panel, too? No? Then someone is a whiny bitch and needs to shut their pie hole.
It may sound like a Yogi Berra-ism, but really, if it isn't advertising, it isn't advertising.
It wouldn't be difficult to release your music under a subversive license that destroys SoundExchange upon their collection for any playback of your song.
"This song is hereby released free of restriction on playback, broadcast, or copying. No royalties are to be imposed upon the playback, broadcast, or copying of this song. In order to establish royalty-collection rights for this song and obtain written consent thereto, please pay $ to . Failure to establish royalty-collection rights prior to collecting royalties constitutes willful disregard for this license, and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
Then check in with SoundExchange periodically to see if they have any ill-gotten gains for you.
There's a 50/50 chance that this will stop the MAFIAA and their cronies at SoundExchange.
Anecdotes aren't data, I know, but I have a story about a friend of mine (an older guy, 70-ish). He's not a tech-savvy guy, but he's been a "joe user" kind of guy for probably 15-20 years now. He doesn't care how it works, really, but he'll sit and listen to a semi-technical description of things while you fix his system occasionally. And by occasionally, I mean once every couple of years when a hardware component is going on the fritz. He knows the various external components of a computer and knows that a monitor isn't a computer and a computer isn't a hard drive. He generally knows what a print/save/open dialog looks like (standard OS stuff). He isn't a complete newbie, but he's no power user, either.
He recently bought a new Dell laptop. It came with MS Office 2003 preloaded. He used it for emails, typing up documents, all the usual stuff. Then the trial expired. PANIC! He called me up in a panic and said that he couldn't get to any of his documents, that Office had expired and he didn't have the money to buy a $300 software bundle (I think it was Small Business Edition, which is Word/Excel/Outlook and some minor crap). I guided him to the OpenOffice.org site and got the download started. I told him to call me back if there were any installation or other issues with how it worked.
He told me a few days later that there were a few things he had to get used to, some stuff named differently, odd default settings in various dialogs and tools, etc. But other than that, to him, OO.o is free-as-in-I-don't-have-to-pay-for-Office-ever-aga in. And it does everything he expected it to do when I told him it would replace Office.
I've recommended Ubuntu to him a few times, but his wife likes playing those stupid Popcap-style games she gets from Yahoo and similar places. They only work in Windows and I don't think Wine is gonna be simple enough (ever!) for either of them to understand.
His main complaint is that Intel is "dumping", that is, selling them below cost (and more importantly, below the OLPC's price) just to get a foothold on what could grow into a really nice monopoly somday.
Intel with $$$ vs. a non-profit group with no $$$... that's just poor sportsmanship. Intel needs to back off.
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Actually, it's widely known that aspartame causes carbohydrate cravings. Repeat after me: "Diet soda also makes you fat."
So, really it boils down to: soda makes you fat. Diet or not, it all makes you fat. Diet has the added bonus of possibly causing allergic reactions to the myriad of extra chemicals involved in its composition and production (above and beyond what's already involved in regular soda!).
But many people enjoy drinking soda. So you have the choice of "get fat", or "get fat and have a reaction to some whacked-out chemical", and neither one of those is particularly appealing. So drink regular soda, but drink less of it. That's your middle ground. Moderation is key.
"I thought I told you never to call me on this wall!"
The pro-MySQL "guy" can't pee standing up, either. "He" is a she.
The anti-MySQL guy is Canadian, though, so he probably doesn't pee standing up either. Lots of beer -> floor -> bladder evacuation. I kid, I kid...
There's nothing better than a nice wiener-warmer.
Perhaps I shouldn't talk about warming wieners in the same post as "flaming on"... Ah, what the hell...
Flame on!
Yeah. They'll be really cheesed.
Unfortunately, that theory falls apart in January in areas north of 35 degrees latitude. When there's anywhere from a skim of frost to an inch of ice on the window, turning on the compressor is exactly the worst thing to do. Most obviously, it fights the heater by chilling the air (needlessly, it's already bloody cold). Less obviously, it provides NO help in clearing the windshield, since there's already no humidity in the already-freaking-cold air.
Now, "nicer" cars might have the extra fifty-cents-worth of parts needed to disengage the compressor when it's below the A/C setpoint outside, but for some reason, cheap cars don't have that, despite the apparently low cost of the feature.
Again, "defog" is not the same as "defrost". If you need defog, then great. Turn on your compressor yourself. If you need defrost, you don't want the compressor coming on automatically.
I still stand by my original statement. It's a stupid anti-feature.
You act as if configuration is different from permission. It is not, and it never will be.
Locking a door is not configuration. Having a router with authentication on it (much like your limited "just plugged it in" explanation) is not configuration.
Configuration is intent. It requires that you perform the act of configuring it, thus you cannot configure something without knowing it. If this guy had said "I didn't know he could do that, yeah, I'm pissed that he didn't buy coffee and just sponged my connection!" then I would've said this was trespassing. But the coffee shop owner didn't do that. He clearly intended for this to be used as it was being used. That's configuration, and it's also intent. Intent is a very human thing, and its direct relationship to a mechanical configuration eludes your poor, tired, beleaguered mind.
There's nothing anti-social or self-interested about this. Perhaps you should try thinking clearly yourself.
I have yet to see a car with a properly designed climate control panel.
Gripe #1: Most of them map non-mutually-exclusive options to a dial that forces one or more options to be mutually exclusive. Why can't I have air blowing from floor vents, dash vents, and the windshield vents all at the same time? Because the designers were too stupid. Functionally, it might lower airflow over the heat coil, but proper duct and coil sizing and damper design can fix that. The engineers were just lazy and/or the UI guy needed to be fired for incompetence. And it's "industry standard" to do it the wrong way now.
Gripe #2: Things that shouldn't be automatic are. Why does my compressor come on when I open the vents on the windshield? Defog? Ok, but what if I want to defrost? That works better with the compressor off. But some moron from California, Texas, and/or Florida (or somewhere similarly hot and humid) decided that it should always be that way, even though it screws things up in 90% of the rest of the USA, to say nothing of other parts of the world.
Vehicle climate controls should be something like this.
Fan speed [-----|----] (could be a rotary knob, but needs to be a 0-10 scale)
Temp. [-----|----]
Floor [x]
Dashboard [x]
Windshield [x]
A/C [x]
Recirc. [x]
Rear Def. [x]
Auto-temp [x]
Alas, logical design is probably too much to ask.
Wait, wait... Now there's a Jewluminati? Next thing you know we'll see a movie called Knishinal Treasure.
There was always a distinction between Jews and proselytes. That much is recorded in the Bible.
The funny thing is, the Bible says that "born" Jews won't necessarily get to occupy the holy land, only "chosen" "Jews" will. And that Jehovah God does the choosing. And he chooses those who want to follow him, "born" or "made" is an inconsequential difference. Heck, "Jew" or "non-Jew" is an inconsequential difference. Only obedience to God matters.
Funnier still is when you tell a Jew that and he flinches at the mere mention of God's name. Like he's going to strike them down for hearing someone else use that name as a legitimate reference to him. Better yet is when you explain to them what his name means and why it means that. "Jehovah" is the anglicized spelling and pronunciation for YHWH, which comes from the words "ye hawah", which translates rougly to "He causes to become." Not only is he the creator, he has a will, and he can make it happen. He will create or cause whatever is needed to ensure that his will becomes reality. Truly almighty.
I just love to freak out a Jew with that info... they go into all sorts of doublespeak to get you to stop speaking so they don't get struck down. Hilarious. And I've never once seen anyone struck down...
Speaking as one who attended a US school and learned US history there, they place most of the blame for wiping out the indians on the railroad companies. Yes, the US government helped. But at the request of the railroads, which were the equivalent of today's greedy telecoms. The US government has always grabbed its ankles for its corporate masters.
Actually, Hitler was quoted as saying that he was going to exterminate Jehovah's Witnesses, too.
Oddly enough, JW's were the only group given the opportunity to sign a paper denouncing their faith and walk away. Very few of them did it.
The N64's controller was the only one that made console FPSes worth playing. All others have sucked large donkey balls in comparison.
For some reason, everyone got some dumb-assed idea that running should be an analog function and that looking around should tie up your only other thumb. This is simply not the case.
Using the N64's controller, I would typically run with the c-buttons (using my index finger to hit either the top one or the R button, and my "shooting thumb" for the other C buttons and the A/B buttons) and look with the analog stick. I never needed 3 hands, nor did I need to use the virtually useless D-pad or L button that the 3rd hand would've controlled.
I think the N64's controller was just fine. It was just a "dual mode" pad. There was "analog mode" and "digital mode", with different hand placements for each.
When was the last time you saw a house with a sign like that on it?
We call them "welcome mats". I don't know what they call them in the whacked out pedant-land you come from, though.
confusing permission in the machine sense with permission in the human sense
If the cafe owner intended otherwise, he should not have assigned a machine to stand watch at his network's "door".
doubt the owner of the cafe gave the router any such instructions - more likely they just plugged it in
He gave the machine instructions to do its job by plugging it in. It's job is to authenticate users and assign access methods upon request.
the code running on that box has no concept of "I"
Actually, it does. Network-wise, it keeps track of its own identity and gives that identity out as a reference to authenticated users to use as a gateway. It's express purpose for existence is to act as a gateway and gatekeeper, thus if the gateway was not intended to operate as it did, it should not exist in the situation in which it was placed.
A more accurate description would be, "if the button is pushed then the door will open". Hence, the unlocked door.
No, what I said was as accurate as could be stated without going into more detail about how routers and gateways work. It indeed performs more than just a blind "allow access" function.
You, sir, lack both technical and social insight. Technically, the router gives access to anyone who gives it acceptable identification. What is acceptable is defined by the owner and operator of the router. The router is merely a mechanical agent doing exactly as its owner and operator instructed. It carries out its owner's will. Period. If the owner's will (as expressed to the router) changes, then the router changes. If the owner does not know how to express his will to the router (read: configure it to deny access), then he needs to unplug the router and find one that he can work with.
It's not a matter of anthropomorphizing routers. It's a matter of assigning responsibility over equipment designed for access control. It's not trespassing if you give someone a key (or set up a machine explicitly for that purpose outside your door).
Your argument falls apart completely with the "automatic door" example I gave you in my original post. In that instance, we're talking about a literal door on a literal building. A device controls building access. If the access device, while working properly and not bypassed or "tricked", allows access to the building for someone who passes all of your qualifications for entry, they legally have permission to enter. Period.
And your entire mindset ignores the facts of this particular case, where the cafe owner explicitly stated that he didn't know that what the guy was doing was illegal. Note that he didn't say that he didn't know the guy was doing it. Note that he apparently has taken no steps to prevent such access (thus making access a matter of willful consent). He didn't even complain. Now why is this a problem?
I took 3 years of piano lessons when I was in my early teens. Much of that was music theory training and a weekly practice regimen. I've been out of that routine for so long, I guess I've started to take the music theory stuff for granted (I've used it for far more than just playing piano).
It's worthwhile to note, also, that I can't read notes in real-time. Reading notes is a pain in the ass, honestly. Just play what you feel and you'll be happier. That's mostly why I gave up on piano lessons. That, and I preferred to spend my free time playing games on my Super Nintendo. (Yeah, it's been a while...)
And I bet the law gets a lot of bad press and goes away, too. That would indeed be justice well-served.
I'm pretty sure that all routers purchased new from the store come with an instruction manual (dead-tree or electronic) and a setup wizard that will guide you through that process manually or automatically.
Dumb is not a valid excuse anymore. Not on this topic, and not for the last 4 or 5 years.
Let's take your "house" analogy a bit further.
First, we identify the players in this game.
You = You.
Network = House.
Router = Door.
Now, what we have is a House, protected by a Door with a button and a sign. The sign says, "Push the button and I'll open the door if you meet my criteria." The button causes the Door to be opened if you meet the criteria set forth by the owner of the House and the Door.
You walk up to the House, read the sign and push the button. The Door opens to allow you into the House.
Is it trespassing? No. The button is a machine tasked with carrying out the owner's directions. It's interesting to note that replacing a button with a motion sensor gives you the very same automatic doors that most retail stores have. It is not trespassing.
So change the nouns around. Is it trespassing if a router gives you access to a network according to the owner's directions? Answer: No it is not.
It takes considerably less practice (IMO) to play piano well (or at least well enough to hear a recognizable tune). And GH is more like playing piano than playing guitar. The only difference is the strum-bar triggering when the note is played rather than playing it when you hit the key. Other than that, those five fret buttons make for a really dinky piano keyboard.
If someone would invent a keyboard that you play like a guitar (not those dumbass keyboard-guitar things from the 80's, though!) it would probably work about like GH, and it would induce a lot more people to play "a real instrument". Keys on the neck, trigger on the body, pitch-bend (up *and* down would be nice) on the body, and you could even do things like auto-chord, auto-5th, auto-3rd, etc. I'd buy that.
It's not false advertising when you're basing your suit on the wording of a configuration option in a preference pane. It's false... configuration option naming? I guess.. maybe...
Is it "false advertising" when Windows says "True Color" in the Display control panel, too? No? Then someone is a whiny bitch and needs to shut their pie hole.
It may sound like a Yogi Berra-ism, but really, if it isn't advertising, it isn't advertising.
Make that:
It wouldn't be difficult to release your music under a subversive license that destroys SoundExchange upon their collection for any playback of your song.
"This song is hereby released free of restriction on playback, broadcast, or copying. No royalties are to be imposed upon the playback, broadcast, or copying of this song. In order to establish royalty-collection rights for this song and obtain written consent thereto, please pay $ to . Failure to establish royalty-collection rights prior to collecting royalties constitutes willful disregard for this license, and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
Then check in with SoundExchange periodically to see if they have any ill-gotten gains for you.
There's a 50/50 chance that this will stop the MAFIAA and their cronies at SoundExchange.
And around 180R for those of us who prefer a logical, yet higher-integral-accuracy temperature measurement.
Anecdotes aren't data, I know, but I have a story about a friend of mine (an older guy, 70-ish). He's not a tech-savvy guy, but he's been a "joe user" kind of guy for probably 15-20 years now. He doesn't care how it works, really, but he'll sit and listen to a semi-technical description of things while you fix his system occasionally. And by occasionally, I mean once every couple of years when a hardware component is going on the fritz. He knows the various external components of a computer and knows that a monitor isn't a computer and a computer isn't a hard drive. He generally knows what a print/save/open dialog looks like (standard OS stuff). He isn't a complete newbie, but he's no power user, either.
a in. And it does everything he expected it to do when I told him it would replace Office.
He recently bought a new Dell laptop. It came with MS Office 2003 preloaded. He used it for emails, typing up documents, all the usual stuff. Then the trial expired. PANIC! He called me up in a panic and said that he couldn't get to any of his documents, that Office had expired and he didn't have the money to buy a $300 software bundle (I think it was Small Business Edition, which is Word/Excel/Outlook and some minor crap). I guided him to the OpenOffice.org site and got the download started. I told him to call me back if there were any installation or other issues with how it worked.
He told me a few days later that there were a few things he had to get used to, some stuff named differently, odd default settings in various dialogs and tools, etc. But other than that, to him, OO.o is free-as-in-I-don't-have-to-pay-for-Office-ever-ag
I've recommended Ubuntu to him a few times, but his wife likes playing those stupid Popcap-style games she gets from Yahoo and similar places. They only work in Windows and I don't think Wine is gonna be simple enough (ever!) for either of them to understand.
His main complaint is that Intel is "dumping", that is, selling them below cost (and more importantly, below the OLPC's price) just to get a foothold on what could grow into a really nice monopoly somday.
Intel with $$$ vs. a non-profit group with no $$$... that's just poor sportsmanship. Intel needs to back off.