It is time that manufacturers start building an OOB IPMI port into their devices. Many servers these days come with this capability. its usually implemented as a stand alone ethernet port. I have setup the SOL (Serial Over Lan) feature and it works great.
On HP servers there is the HP ILO (integrated Lights Out) management port that allows the same thing. I configure it so i can SSH to the management port then from the menu establish a serial connection to the console that way.
What about holding the executives responsible for egregious behavior. Instead of just levying a fine
how about locking up the execs when the company knowingly breaks the law. If corporations are people then how about they go to Jail when they break the law just like "non-corporation people".
The problem is that companies do unscrupulous things in the absence of regulation. Monsanto and PCPs for instance. Do we really want companies pumping toxic crap into our ground water? What about pumping black soot into the sky? How about using melamine in milk to maximize profits? What about all the snake oil stuff that got sold to the public in the 1920s? with the lack of regulation. back then people had all kinds of
radioactive products back then. No regulation. Look at china today. Look at Bejing. Where they had to take drastic measures to cut smog for the Olympics. The don't use catalytic converters over there. Look at all the companies that know they are selling unsafe products due to internal research yet still chose to sell the product because profits come first. I think its the sleazy players in the marketplace that forces regulators to step in. If the market players had any ethics there would be no need to regulate.
This is a horrible development and I am not sure if anyone but Microsoft understands the scope of the damage that they are doing to FOSS here. I call on the FSF, OSDL/Linux Foundation and others to SPEAK UP! on this and do something about it. I wonder if people like Linus even cares about this?
Microsoft has won. Open Source/Free Sofware as we know it will never be the same. They have effectively put a cost on any serious use of Linux in the marketplace. "You open source folks are free to tinker but any serious deployments or projects will have to pay us the Microsoft tax." This will effectively slow the rate of adoption of Linux/GNU in the marketplace. And why do i think they won? Because the FOSS community is just sitting back burying their heads and doing nothing about this. HELLO LINUS!!, ODSL, FSF, SAMBA, Microsoft is making money on your back in the most egregious manner while continuing to spread fear in the marketplace. Are you going to continue to bury your collective heads in the sand or are you going to do something about this extortion racket that Microsoft is running behind your backs? If the community does nothing then Microsoft wins. This is terrible. What a nightmare.
Imagine Joe Sixpack accidentally closing the iPhone-UI, and then being confused? Confusion and complexity are the things Apple wanted to avoid!
Like I said I'm sure Apple can do this an elegant way. Apple is skilled at putting complexity in the hands of Joe Sixpack.
I'm glad you are not the one deciding these things. What you suggested sounds like a fucking train-wreck.
Of course slapped together without any thought it would be but if Apple researched it and implemented it in a sane way it would be a great product. They could have used a low end Intel core2 VT architecture.
Simple way to fix this problem? Give the user a choice when they turn the bloody thing on.
Here is how i envision it would work.
When u boot up, OS-X starts up then loads the IPhoneOS as an app or virtualized automatically.
When you want to go to FULL OS mode you simple close the IPhoneOS app. Then
you're back at a full OS-X desktop. I am sure Apple can do this in an elegant way.
Or just use some kind of bootcamp technology to faciltate both OSes on the thing
They can even sell this as an option to power users. That way grandma/grandpa doesn't
need OS-X so they get the plain IPhoneOS version and I can get the OSX+IPhoneOS version
at an additional cost.
This is not that hard for a company like Apple. They really dropped the ball here.
As a former Sony fanboi I have to say that if the 3D TVs are made by Sony then I _won't_ be buying one. If its a premium pay channel i won't be patronizing it. I am done with Sony and their shenanigans. They are malicious to their customers, They are rabid RIAA/MPAA attack dogs, And they lobby clueless US politicians relentlessly to criminalize normal behavior. And now they want to close the analog hole, intoduce DRM broadcast flags, etc. etc. FUCK Sony. They are ruthless bastards.
A look at the cost of some imagers. Note that there is a difference between thermal imagers and heat seekers. etc.
http://www.opticsplanet.net/heat-seekers-termal-imagers.html The start at about $3900.00 and go up from there.
A decent one that the cops will purchase with your tax dollars is about $14,000-$40,000 each. And cops love to
spend your money on these fancy toys and go out of their way to justify why they need such extravagant equipment.
... right after TomTom tried to sue them for using navigation software to give directions. In the end, they both settled, and TomTom, the aggressor, didn't get its payday.
And yet, Microsoft is somehow the bad guy in this. Yep. This is definitely Slashdot.
AMEN. Dan Lyons is a buffoon of the highest degree. Right up there with Rob Enderle, and Maureen O'Gara. These clowns will say anything to make Microsoft look good in any situation. How in the world did he get a job at Newsweek is beyond me. He used to be at Forbes spreading anti open source propoganda. Calling people who use open source and free software freetards and the like. His trying to equally blame Google for the fight that MS and Google are in is ridiculous. MS started this fight by trying to kill Google's search business. Google has retaliated with great products and will continue to do so.
Well you are the same guy who thinks Glen Beck is great. So I don't see much credibility in your post really. And anyone going to Fox while knowing how much they lie and spread propaganda and gin up their own rallies, create their own news etc. well they are just looking for loons to confirm their beliefs and FOX does that every well actually. I hope Murdoch de-indexes from Google. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
This is only a fraction of their egregious behavior. I am sure you know how to use Google. Try it some time. You will find a lot more eye opening info on the ruthless, vicious, unethical mobsters
that are Microsoft executives.
I used to defend them back when I was young and ignorant to their marketplace behavior. I have learned a lot over the years. These people are slime.
As far as i4i goes. I think all sofware patents are bad. What makes software so special that it needs the protections of copyright and the patent system? Should music be patented too? How about story concepts in books? The i4i patent on using a standard is ridiculous. Even though they have an actual product based on this patent. I hope i4i loses this suit because they are patenting sofware and methods of using a standard. It still does not take away from the fact that Microsoft reaps what they sow.
Ugh. If this was Google defending their patent portfolio (like the idiotic patent they just took out on their homepage) I bet we'd have all the corporate flavour of the week groupies heralding their courageousness in fighting patent trolls. But because it's Microsoft, we have idiots like parent poster saying they should abandon the lawsuit and instead seek to reform the patent system.
When are people going to grow up and look at the world with at least at attempt at objectivity?
Hey, goon. Where have you been all these years when Microsoft have been abusing its customers, Its competitors, and the marketplace? Microsoft accuses competitors of violating its crappy patents. And refuses to identify said patents to the people they are accusing of stealing the so called "intellectual Property" Instead it is running an extortion/protection racket going around to companies behind the scenes telling them to pay Microsoft for LINUX CODE. People had busted their ass to create GNU/LInux based operating systems and MS thinks its ok to go EXTORT companies for code they have nothing to do with. They LIE in the marketplace about competitors products. They funneled money to SCO to keep their lawsuit going against Linux. They commissioned false studies claiming their product is superior. They are LIARS and totaly untrustworthy. They have BRIBED officials in international standards bodies along with egregiously stacking voting panels in their favor. They are slimy mobsters.
So you see goon? They reaped what they sew. And no one but goons like you are sympathetic to them because they are slime.
My experience with an Antifeature is brought to you by The Hewlett Packard Co. (HP) and their wonderful PSC1350z printer. You see I have this printer connected to an ubuntu PC and shared with samba. Other ubuntu and fedora PCs on the network can print to this just fine. The ubuntu PCs find it automatically thru cups sharing. The windows PCs need the driver installed which of course is not on the samba pc where the printer is shared from.. So I go to HP's website and download the driver. Its a rather large 40MB package. I install the HP printer driver in windows and it prompts me to plug the printer directly into the PC. Of course the printer is shared on another PC thru samba. There is an option to continue without plugging the printer in so I select that. The HP printer driver install completes. I then go to the add printers in windows and the PSC1350z does *not* show up in the list of available HP printers to chose from. I click have disk and point it to the extracted HP printer driver files. Windows informs me that there is no driver availabe in this folder. I go look at the extracted driver files. and manually drill down into the folders trying to get windows to find the proper inf file to install the driver. NO LUCK. I call HP. They inform me that sharing on that printer is *not supported* and that I must purchase a more expensive model with network support.
So I think the word "Antifeature" is spot on in this situation. What The Hewlett Packard Co. (HP) has done is to pay developers to design the driver install and packaging in such a way that windows cannot recognize
the driver files when extracted and the drivers wont install unless the printer is physically connected to the computer. They charged me for this antifeature.
Needless to say we are no longer going to be recommending HP printers of any type to our customers. Which incidentally was the only brand we recommended and installed due to its excellent Linux support.
I agree. People should be free to chose what they want. Please make sure that when you chose Windows 7 with your freedom of choice you chose to PAY Microsoft for it. And Oh please also *pay* for MS-Office if that is what you chose. Lots of people willfully submit themselves by choice to a steady helping of brainwashing from that supposedly "fair and balanced" news channel thats their choice. We are all free to make whatever choices we want. Just make sure you *pay* for what you chose to use.
IBM was. I remember the IBM ads about linux (Linux the new kid on the block is growing... ) on CNN all the time. At one time almost ever break i would see the little Linux kid. And in magazines and
in banner ads right here on slashdot back in the day. Right up until SCO filed a lawsuit against them for allegedly supporting and promoting linux. The ADs with the
little linux boy from IBM disappeared. I always looked forward to the progression of those ads as the boy grows up. Too bad SCO suit probably quelled all public linux promotion from IBM.
Oh? u mean like the morphing of the IMAP standard to Exchange which is still IMAP according to Microsoft.
EMBRACE = Create exchange based on IMAP
EXTEND = Replace the standard Trash and Sent folders with Deleted Items and Sent Items to break the protocol.
EXTEND = Break Outlook compatibilty with IMAP with the above changes and failure to move deleted items to trash when using standard IMAP and OUTLOOK.
EXTINGUISH = If you impement our modifications of IMAP know as Exchange then you are violating our patents.
No it will not hinder the results. The goal of the project is not to evaluate the security of said 1million operating systems. The goal is to get the 1 million systems to be functional enough so as to be able to run a functional contained botnet. Basically u want the lowest common denominator (security-wise) as the base for all systems so as to easily infect them. The problem with WINE is that there is some code to mitigate SOME worm infections that would otherwise infect Windows. So they would have to remove this bit of code to make it easy to infect it. Also some worms do not run in wine as it is so they would have to massage it there too. Basically all they need is to have the 1million systems easily infected and compatible enough to run the code they need to run.
I seem to remember just recently an article about some US Military robot that can scrounge for food, organic matter all on its own and can even refuel itself if there is no organic matter with diesel, gas, alcohol, or just basic vegetation. The thing supposedly is completely "autonomous" So with this tech I'm not sure how the hell u shut down the infrastructure if it doesnt need one to survive in our environment. Then you combine that with some tech like this and a nervous system like THIS and who knows what they can accomplish in our lifetime.
Altering genes through breeding is not the same thing as using a gene gun to blast genes from a bacterium into random parts of the soybean and corn genome. This is what Monsanto does. How is that the same as altering through breeding? Can you get a gene from a bacterium into a crop genome initially thru breeding?
I have migrated several clueless windows users to Linux and I can say from real world experience that anyone can use Linux if all they do is browse the web. The problem comes in when people expect to do what they are able to do on windows and they cannot.
This Christmas season the unexpected rared it's ugly head. My Neighbor got an Ipod and she tried to load Itunes to get her cds on her Ipod. No go. She had to call me and I had to dig into forums to get it going with Songbird. Songbird kicks ass BTW. Another user calls me up saying their daughter just gave them a digital picture frame. So they can see their grandkids. Guess what? they tried to load the software that came with it. When that didn't work they were lost and stuck. Another user called me up with a Garmin GPS that they could not update and another with a TomTom GPS that will not update on Ubuntu. Then I have one lady that brought home a perfectly good Lexmark laser printer from work. They bought a new printer and gave her that one for free. Well it won't work on her PClinuxOS. I can tell users till I am blue in the face to do their research before they get hardware for the Linux PCs but I can't control the presents and gifts that others buy them. This is a BIG problem. I keep getting asked "Why won't iTunes work on Linux? It works on windows?" On the flip side, a nursing home near me got 8 PCs donated to them. I got there to install them and they had pirated versions of WinXP with a message "This version of windows is not genuine" etc. I told them to buy WinXP pro for 8 computers at $199.00 each plus AV etc. They balked at the price tag so I put Ubuntu on all the the PCs. They called me 2 months later. They had 2 more WinXP PCs donated to them. But they had Legit versions of XP on them and were pretty clean of crapware so I told them I'll just connect the PCs as is and I did. They called me back a month later complaining about the 2 windows PCs. What was the complaint? The residents "Old people" did not want to use the windows PCs because they were already used to the Ubuntu PCs and said "It was too hard" compared to Ubuntu "Icons were too small" "Cannot zoom desktop"(compiz zoom feature) etc etc. The list went on and on. The elderly residents just could not go from Ubuntu to windows after using it for just 2 months. No one would go near the windows PCs. so I had to go back and wipe perfectly legitimate versions of XP of the 2 boxes and put Linux on those too.
Slashdot Mirror
what are the better technologies to accomplish the same goal without having to rely on antiquated hardware implementations?
OOB IPMI SOL.
It is time that manufacturers start building an OOB IPMI port into their devices. Many servers these days come with this capability. its usually implemented as a stand alone ethernet port. I have setup the SOL (Serial Over Lan) feature and it works great.
On HP servers there is the HP ILO (integrated Lights Out) management port that allows the same thing. I configure it so i can SSH to the management port then from the menu establish a serial connection to the console that way.
What about holding the executives responsible for egregious behavior. Instead of just levying a fine how about locking up the execs when the company knowingly breaks the law. If corporations are people then how about they go to Jail when they break the law just like "non-corporation people".
Crushed under the weight of regulations,
The problem is that companies do unscrupulous things in the absence of regulation. Monsanto and PCPs for instance. Do we really want companies pumping toxic crap into our ground water? What about pumping black soot into the sky? How about using melamine in milk to maximize profits? What about all the snake oil stuff that got sold to the public in the 1920s? with the lack of regulation. back then people had all kinds of radioactive products back then. No regulation. Look at china today. Look at Bejing. Where they had to take drastic measures to cut smog for the Olympics. The don't use catalytic converters over there. Look at all the companies that know they are selling unsafe products due to internal research yet still chose to sell the product because profits come first. I think its the sleazy players in the marketplace that forces regulators to step in. If the market players had any ethics there would be no need to regulate.
Hence my point. Pay to play. Which is exactly where Microsoft wants us. This just sux all around.
This is a horrible development and I am not sure if anyone but Microsoft understands the scope of the damage that they are doing to FOSS here. I call on the FSF, OSDL/Linux Foundation and others to SPEAK UP! on this and do something about it. I wonder if people like Linus even cares about this?
Microsoft has won. Open Source/Free Sofware as we know it will never be the same. They have effectively put a cost on any serious use of Linux in the marketplace. "You open source folks are free to tinker but any serious deployments or projects will have to pay us the Microsoft tax." This will effectively slow the rate of adoption of Linux/GNU in the marketplace. And why do i think they won? Because the FOSS community is just sitting back burying their heads and doing nothing about this. HELLO LINUS!!, ODSL, FSF, SAMBA, Microsoft is making money on your back in the most egregious manner while continuing to spread fear in the marketplace. Are you going to continue to bury your collective heads in the sand or are you going to do something about this extortion racket that Microsoft is running behind your backs? If the community does nothing then Microsoft wins. This is terrible. What a nightmare.
Imagine Joe Sixpack accidentally closing the iPhone-UI, and then being confused? Confusion and complexity are the things Apple wanted to avoid!
Like I said I'm sure Apple can do this an elegant way. Apple is skilled at putting complexity in the hands of Joe Sixpack.
I'm glad you are not the one deciding these things. What you suggested sounds like a fucking train-wreck.
Of course slapped together without any thought it would be but if Apple researched it and implemented it in a sane way it would be a great product. They could have used a low end Intel core2 VT architecture.
Simple way to fix this problem? Give the user a choice when they turn the bloody thing on. Here is how i envision it would work. When u boot up, OS-X starts up then loads the IPhoneOS as an app or virtualized automatically. When you want to go to FULL OS mode you simple close the IPhoneOS app. Then you're back at a full OS-X desktop. I am sure Apple can do this in an elegant way. Or just use some kind of bootcamp technology to faciltate both OSes on the thing They can even sell this as an option to power users. That way grandma/grandpa doesn't need OS-X so they get the plain IPhoneOS version and I can get the OSX+IPhoneOS version at an additional cost. This is not that hard for a company like Apple. They really dropped the ball here.
Not sure about that. Take a look at this and there is this
As a former Sony fanboi I have to say that if the 3D TVs are made by Sony then I _won't_ be buying one. If its a premium pay channel i won't be patronizing it. I am done with Sony and their shenanigans. They are malicious to their customers, They are rabid RIAA/MPAA attack dogs, And they lobby clueless US politicians relentlessly to criminalize normal behavior. And now they want to close the analog hole, intoduce DRM broadcast flags, etc. etc. FUCK Sony. They are ruthless bastards.
A look at the cost of some imagers. Note that there is a difference between thermal imagers and heat seekers. etc. http://www.opticsplanet.net/heat-seekers-termal-imagers.html The start at about $3900.00 and go up from there. A decent one that the cops will purchase with your tax dollars is about $14,000-$40,000 each. And cops love to spend your money on these fancy toys and go out of their way to justify why they need such extravagant equipment.
... right after TomTom tried to sue them for using navigation software to give directions. In the end, they both settled, and TomTom, the aggressor, didn't get its payday. And yet, Microsoft is somehow the bad guy in this. Yep. This is definitely Slashdot.
Citation needed please
AMEN. Dan Lyons is a buffoon of the highest degree. Right up there with Rob Enderle, and Maureen O'Gara. These clowns will say anything to make Microsoft look good in any situation. How in the world did he get a job at Newsweek is beyond me. He used to be at Forbes spreading anti open source propoganda. Calling people who use open source and free software freetards and the like. His trying to equally blame Google for the fight that MS and Google are in is ridiculous. MS started this fight by trying to kill Google's search business. Google has retaliated with great products and will continue to do so.
Well you are the same guy who thinks Glen Beck is great. So I don't see much credibility in your post really. And anyone going to Fox while knowing how much they lie and spread propaganda and gin up their own rallies, create their own news etc. well they are just looking for loons to confirm their beliefs and FOX does that every well actually. I hope Murdoch de-indexes from Google. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Xenophobes is correct, unfortunately. We are not even a melting pot. More like a partitioned salad dish. Everyone goes to their own corner.
This is only a fraction of their egregious behavior. I am sure you know how to use Google. Try it some time. You will find a lot more eye opening info on the ruthless, vicious, unethical mobsters that are Microsoft executives.
I used to defend them back when I was young and ignorant to their marketplace behavior. I have learned a lot over the years. These people are slime.
As far as i4i goes. I think all sofware patents are bad. What makes software so special that it needs the protections of copyright and the patent system? Should music be patented too? How about story concepts in books? The i4i patent on using a standard is ridiculous. Even though they have an actual product based on this patent. I hope i4i loses this suit because they are patenting sofware and methods of using a standard. It still does not take away from the fact that Microsoft reaps what they sow.
Ugh. If this was Google defending their patent portfolio (like the idiotic patent they just took out on their homepage) I bet we'd have all the corporate flavour of the week groupies heralding their courageousness in fighting patent trolls. But because it's Microsoft, we have idiots like parent poster saying they should abandon the lawsuit and instead seek to reform the patent system.
When are people going to grow up and look at the world with at least at attempt at objectivity?
Hey, goon. Where have you been all these years when Microsoft have been abusing its customers, Its competitors, and the marketplace? Microsoft accuses competitors of violating its crappy patents. And refuses to identify said patents to the people they are accusing of stealing the so called "intellectual Property" Instead it is running an extortion/protection racket going around to companies behind the scenes telling them to pay Microsoft for LINUX CODE. People had busted their ass to create GNU/LInux based operating systems and MS thinks its ok to go EXTORT companies for code they have nothing to do with. They LIE in the marketplace about competitors products. They funneled money to SCO to keep their lawsuit going against Linux. They commissioned false studies claiming their product is superior. They are LIARS and totaly untrustworthy. They have BRIBED officials in international standards bodies along with egregiously stacking voting panels in their favor. They are slimy mobsters.
So you see goon? They reaped what they sew. And no one but goons like you are sympathetic to them because they are slime.
My experience with an Antifeature is brought to you by The Hewlett Packard Co. (HP) and their wonderful PSC1350z printer. You see I have this printer connected to an ubuntu PC and shared with samba. Other ubuntu and fedora PCs on the network can print to this just fine. The ubuntu PCs find it automatically thru cups sharing. The windows PCs need the driver installed which of course is not on the samba pc where the printer is shared from.. So I go to HP's website and download the driver. Its a rather large 40MB package. I install the HP printer driver in windows and it prompts me to plug the printer directly into the PC. Of course the printer is shared on another PC thru samba. There is an option to continue without plugging the printer in so I select that. The HP printer driver install completes. I then go to the add printers in windows and the PSC1350z does *not* show up in the list of available HP printers to chose from. I click have disk and point it to the extracted HP printer driver files. Windows informs me that there is no driver availabe in this folder. I go look at the extracted driver files. and manually drill down into the folders trying to get windows to find the proper inf file to install the driver. NO LUCK. I call HP. They inform me that sharing on that printer is *not supported* and that I must purchase a more expensive model with network support.
So I think the word "Antifeature" is spot on in this situation. What The Hewlett Packard Co. (HP) has done is to pay developers to design the driver install and packaging in such a way that windows cannot recognize the driver files when extracted and the drivers wont install unless the printer is physically connected to the computer. They charged me for this antifeature.
Needless to say we are no longer going to be recommending HP printers of any type to our customers. Which incidentally was the only brand we recommended and installed due to its excellent Linux support.
I agree. People should be free to chose what they want. Please make sure that when you chose Windows 7 with your freedom of choice you chose to PAY Microsoft for it. And Oh please also *pay* for MS-Office if that is what you chose. Lots of people willfully submit themselves by choice to a steady helping of brainwashing from that supposedly "fair and balanced" news channel thats their choice. We are all free to make whatever choices we want. Just make sure you *pay* for what you chose to use.
IBM was. I remember the IBM ads about linux (Linux the new kid on the block is growing... ) on CNN all the time. At one time almost ever break i would see the little Linux kid. And in magazines and in banner ads right here on slashdot back in the day. Right up until SCO filed a lawsuit against them for allegedly supporting and promoting linux. The ADs with the little linux boy from IBM disappeared. I always looked forward to the progression of those ads as the boy grows up. Too bad SCO suit probably quelled all public linux promotion from IBM.
Oh? u mean like the morphing of the IMAP standard to Exchange which is still IMAP according to Microsoft.
EMBRACE = Create exchange based on IMAP
EXTEND = Replace the standard Trash and Sent folders with Deleted Items and Sent Items to break the protocol. EXTEND = Break Outlook compatibilty with IMAP with the above changes and failure to move deleted items to trash when using standard IMAP and OUTLOOK.
EXTINGUISH = If you impement our modifications of IMAP know as Exchange then you are violating our patents.
No it will not hinder the results. The goal of the project is not to evaluate the security of said 1million operating systems. The goal is to get the 1 million systems to be functional enough so as to be able to run a functional contained botnet. Basically u want the lowest common denominator (security-wise) as the base for all systems so as to easily infect them. The problem with WINE is that there is some code to mitigate SOME worm infections that would otherwise infect Windows. So they would have to remove this bit of code to make it easy to infect it. Also some worms do not run in wine as it is so they would have to massage it there too. Basically all they need is to have the 1million systems easily infected and compatible enough to run the code they need to run.
I seem to remember just recently an article about some US Military robot that can scrounge for food, organic matter all on its own and can even refuel itself if there is no organic matter with diesel, gas, alcohol, or just basic vegetation. The thing supposedly is completely "autonomous" So with this tech I'm not sure how the hell u shut down the infrastructure if it doesnt need one to survive in our environment. Then you combine that with some tech like this and a nervous system like THIS and who knows what they can accomplish in our lifetime.
Altering genes through breeding is not the same thing as using a gene gun to blast genes from a bacterium into random parts of the soybean and corn genome. This is what Monsanto does. How is that the same as altering through breeding? Can you get a gene from a bacterium into a crop genome initially thru breeding?
I have migrated several clueless windows users to Linux and I can say from real world experience that anyone can use Linux if all they do is browse the web. The problem comes in when people expect to do what they are able to do on windows and they cannot. This Christmas season the unexpected rared it's ugly head. My Neighbor got an Ipod and she tried to load Itunes to get her cds on her Ipod. No go. She had to call me and I had to dig into forums to get it going with Songbird. Songbird kicks ass BTW. Another user calls me up saying their daughter just gave them a digital picture frame. So they can see their grandkids. Guess what? they tried to load the software that came with it. When that didn't work they were lost and stuck. Another user called me up with a Garmin GPS that they could not update and another with a TomTom GPS that will not update on Ubuntu. Then I have one lady that brought home a perfectly good Lexmark laser printer from work. They bought a new printer and gave her that one for free. Well it won't work on her PClinuxOS. I can tell users till I am blue in the face to do their research before they get hardware for the Linux PCs but I can't control the presents and gifts that others buy them. This is a BIG problem. I keep getting asked "Why won't iTunes work on Linux? It works on windows?" On the flip side, a nursing home near me got 8 PCs donated to them. I got there to install them and they had pirated versions of WinXP with a message "This version of windows is not genuine" etc. I told them to buy WinXP pro for 8 computers at $199.00 each plus AV etc. They balked at the price tag so I put Ubuntu on all the the PCs. They called me 2 months later. They had 2 more WinXP PCs donated to them. But they had Legit versions of XP on them and were pretty clean of crapware so I told them I'll just connect the PCs as is and I did. They called me back a month later complaining about the 2 windows PCs. What was the complaint? The residents "Old people" did not want to use the windows PCs because they were already used to the Ubuntu PCs and said "It was too hard" compared to Ubuntu "Icons were too small" "Cannot zoom desktop"(compiz zoom feature) etc etc. The list went on and on. The elderly residents just could not go from Ubuntu to windows after using it for just 2 months. No one would go near the windows PCs. so I had to go back and wipe perfectly legitimate versions of XP of the 2 boxes and put Linux on those too.