I think it's a hidden blessing that salaries aren't grossly overdone with Ph.D.'s because you weed out those who are in it just for the money and you're left with the people that truly care for what they are doing.
This is the kind of logic that keeps teachers underpaid.
So let me get this straight? If someone really cares about what they're doing, then what they're getting paid doesn't matter? That's a bunch of....ahem, I mean, that's not very realistic, especially if you can't live off what you make.
I had a job working at the front desk of the hotel. Not exactly brain surgery, but a little more complex than one might believe. It's like being a juggler of emotions, personalities, wants and needs. I was good at it and I loved it.
I grew up, it didn't pay enough. I don't work there anymore. It's that plain and simple.
Someone here suggested a way to separate "the wheat from the chaff". The way to do that is really simple. Keep the salaries low for beginners and make the rewards GREATER for those who prove their dedication and hard work instead of barely keeping up with so called "cost of living" raises and meagre compensation in the long term.
But Mexican consumers say record companies could learn a thing or two from pirates, who provide entertainment that's fast, cheap, reliable and customized. Bootleggers have been known to provide special orders and speedy delivery to rival anything from the studios......The shadow industry has likewise become a major employer, providing jobs to tens of thousands of itinerant vendors who oppose any attempts to squelch their livelihoods. Mexican artists are wary of complaining too forcefully, lest they be perceived as greedy and indifferent to their struggling fans. Meanwhile, organized crime and corrupt cops are profiting handsomely from the trade.
************* This has nothing to do with downloads and everything to do with CD pirating which could be done by anyone.
It also seems that the bootleggers in this scenario are providing exactly the music people want, with a speed and efficiency the "industry" can't match.
Sounds like the real "industry" needs to step up their game and lower their prices to something near what people can afford. Or start paying the cops more than the bootleggers pay them.
Movies are made for people like me. We laugh in the right places, cry for no apparent reason, and we know that Mary Jane constantly has a bad hair day in this movie because she's no longer a high school student being supported by mom and dad, but a struggling actress moving on up, finally making ends meet and who's also suffering from a bad case of Spidey-love.
I don't notice when Spidey's rips and tears move from shoulder to shoulder. I turn a blind eye when the CGI gets cheesey and pretend I'm watching a live action comic book (uh, I am right?).
I think this movie is a chick flick. We'll explain away everything, even the obvious flaws, and we're the ones who leave with hollow feeling in our bellies in sympathy with the emotional and physical ass-kicking Peter Parker takes in this movie.
I loved it, plain and simple. For the most part, they suspended my disbelief. A few CGI blips and the fact that Spidey's identity is now the worst kept secret in the universe, notwithstanding, I felt I got a pretty good bang for my buck(s).
My advice: save the criticism for movies that really, really suck. This movie rocks.
I have had my hotmail account since 1996. It's one of the free ones with a tiny bit of storage that keeps shrinking because they REFUSE to filter out the spam.
I cannot believe that after all this time I still get the same crap OVER AND OVER because they have no idea it's spam.
So let me get this straight? They can't control their own shit, but they expect Joe Schmoe from Idaho to be able to control the amount of spam they can't?
for the value gamer; the ones who wait until PS2 games are re-released as "Classics" with the red boarder and sell for $20 (instead of $50)- these are the people who will pick up older games and play them on their modern system.
Cheap skates of the world, Unite!
How is being a cheapskate to wait until you can actually afford something to buy it?
Don't get me wrong, I thought your comment was funny and all, but it also got me thinking.
Everyone can't afford to run out and buy a $50+ game the second it comes out. Some people HAVE to wait until it becomes "classic" with the red border. These are the people who don't pirate CD's and buy their MP3's legally and actually follow the "rules".
Some people are actually honest and simply wait until prices drop. So it's fair to them that when they finally can afford the newer console that what games they had wait forever and a day to buy for the old console can't be played anymore?
Geesh, isn't M$ in our pockets deep enough already?
Even a Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day
on
Meet Joe Blog
·
· Score: 1
From the article:
Unfortunately, there's a downside to this populist sentiment -- that is, innocent casualties bloodied by a medium that trades in rumor, gossip and speculation without accountability.
Blogs can be a great way of communicating, but they can keep people apart too. If I read only those of my choice, precisely tuned to my political biases and you read only yours, we could end up a nation of political solipsists, vacuum sealed in our private feedback loops, never exposed to new arguments, never having to listen to a single word we disagree with.
That bit about "feedback loops" reminds me of the continuous ticker at the bottom of every bloody new program now and also the fact that every half hour the same "news" items are repeated again, same copy, same photos, same everything. How is this "news" after several hours of soundbites and no in depth information?
He also doesn't seem to realize that his warning about blogs ruining people on thin or no evidence, shoddy reporting, spreading rumor as fact, or even bandying about biased information applies to the mainstream media as well.
At any rate, I tend to find that "even a broken clock is right twice a day" whether it's from a blog, mainstream news or just plain rumor.
No one has ever been able to answer this question for me: "Why is file sharing illegal?"
I just googled this question, quotes and all, and only got one search result.
Now this is google we're talking about here. You'd think that with all the hoopla about the RIAA, MPAA, and lawsuits and debates that people would have answered this question a dozen times over.
Is my question too simple or is there simply no real answer?
I had visions of you going over one page business letters laughing maniacally over small format changes. "Should I use italics or should I use bold? Italics. Bold. Italics. Bold."
But I guess I can see and even agree with your point over inconsistencies in long documents. I've seen it, but I should know better than to think all people are meticulous enough to pay attention to small details.
I use it mostly for amusement to look at the documents that I receive from other people and see the inane and repetitious page formatting marks that they set, unset, reset, and move. It gives me a sense of how much extra trouble everyone else has constructing a document when their problems could be solved if they would plan their page formatting ahead of time.
Poor guy. I can't believe you've wasted all that time looking at people's formatting changes and feeling all superior about it too. That's so sad.
Word Processing, to me, means that I don't have to plan formatting in advance. I've formatted enough documents in my lifetime that I'm pretty sure I understand the basic format for most business documents and there are enough reference books or cheat sheets for ones I don't use that often and when absolute formality is required.
Of course, even if I have an idea of what I want my formatting to be like, ideas can change while creating a document and this embodies the whole idea of word processing; that any and all changes can be done on the fly. It's sort of like putting a picture up against a wall and then finding that you like it somewhere different; or maybe the bulleted points would do better elsewhere. Same concept.
Which doesn't mean my thought processes are muddled. It means that the software is doing what I want it to do; Allowing me to make changes as I see fit, when I see fit, even mid- document.
See, I didn't even have to plan this post in advance. I just typed what I thought and changed it where I thought it needed to be changed.
Years before I made my first tinfoil hat, someone showed me an article about a tracking device for pets.
It was placed under the skin and if the pet was ever lost it could be located. I was so naive, I never once thought anything like this would ever be used to find human beings.
So now here we are, just over a decade later and people think it's a good idea to track their kids using computers.
If your kids aren't big enough to understand the words "check in" and "meet up area" they shouldn't be away from you in the first place.
After the collapse of MP3.com, a lot of artists went on to cut out the middle man, and now sell their own music from their own sites.
The same support systems that existed for MP3.com still exist for independent artists doing their own thing. The same message boards, same chats, same artists, pushing and supporting each other's music. But now instead of passing on the latest MP3 scam, they share the information that helps others to build their own sites and sell their music directly to their audience.
We had an MP3 site. We made a nice bit of cash while they were doing pay-for-play, which immediately stopped when people were frauding the hell out of them. My favorite, which wasn't exactly fraud, but was a great idea was "if you play this song, you'll get a long porn movie after the song". We never resorted to this, but we did get quite a bit of free porn this way.
This actually worked, but needless to say, MP3's charts weren't always the way to find the best music. Pushing your own site is a lot harder, but we've found ways to do it, and we average about 50 - 100 downloads, per artist, per day on our site. Even more after our artists perform at a local show. All it took was a few flyers on the college campuses in our hometown and some car mags bought cheap from Vista Print. (All our artists have one for Nattytown and one for themselves; so simple, so easy).
It may not sound like a lot, but everyone can't make iTunes money, and we know we're not going to do it with unknown artists. But it's more money than they were making sitting on undistributed cd's. And even if it's a dollar a day, that's $1 we didn't have the day before.
If we can do it (and believe me, hubby and I are only step removed from being Joe & Jill end user), then anyone can. Of course we are hoping that one of our artists will "blow up", but I think we have more of chance doing that our own way (and we're still making money meanwhile) than by using an MP3 spin off.
I doubt we'll go that route again. Why should we spend $99 for their service when we can upload music to our own site for free?
Sites like Buy A Beat.com and our own Nattytown.com, don't need MP3, their clones, or their copies, or "partners" any more. I hope other people wake up and don't get sucked into using a remake of MP3's crappy service when even the worst of sites can keep their money with a little bit of effort.
This generation seems to like their music that way, and according to one of the authorities in the article, it's because they are likely 'brain damaged' and have lower attention spans. Ouch."
This is a bunch of crap.
Having an iPod is like making my iLife into and iMovie. It's the soundtrack of my iWorld.
I remember going to a matinee quite some ime ago. I carried in a large purse containing sandwiches, fries, and drinks (yes, it was a big ass purse).
We got stopped by security (this wasn't too long after 9/11, maybe a month), they inspected the bag for weapons or bootlegging equipment. They saw the food clearly and let us go into the theatre with it, no problem.
For this violation of my civil liberty I got to enjoy my burger while watching the movie. I've carried my own food ever since and not once has anyone in the theatre ever objected.
So let's say the guy freaks out just before impact, he's repeatedly mashing on the brake, misses and hits the gas, then impact.
Last five seconds shows he revved up to 157 mph so that must be what caused the crash, right?
What I'm saying is, I wonder if it's possible for the data to be interpreted more than one way. In a case like this, it's easy to want the guy to fry. I'm just playing devil's advocate here because I personally think that if he's guilty (and gosh he appears to be) he should be locked up for a long time. 18 months is just not long enough.
But I suppose that's why we have a constitution, due process and concepts like innocent until proven guilty; to try to make an honest effort to prove guilt and come up with appropriate punishments; to keep people like me from making snap judgements off little evidence, getting a rope and hanging guys like that.
Memo from VirtualMDA
on
Paid To Spam
·
· Score: 2, Funny
From: Prez TO: Logistics Staff RE: TEST PHASE/ FRAUD
Finding morons who think they'll get away with spamming their family, friends, and neighbors is no problem.
Issue: those who will find a way around the system with successful results that we haven't even thought of yet. Test phase provided some unexpected results in regards to fraud and you numbskulls better way to conteract this.
Come up with something fast!
Prez
To: Prez From: Logistics RE: TEST PHASE/ FRAUD
We have assmebled a special IT team working on this issue. Our team will be of no additional cost to our company. They are a volunteer, international team, working 24/7, for the sheer delight of exploring our new brand of technology. What's more, with minimal information, they will soon provide us with enough ground level feedback to foresee any possible avenues of fraud and/or minimize any such activity. Some of them will even sign up or the service themselves just to "test" it.
The situation is under control sir.
*giggle from the IT team over the memo after they hit SEND*
The slashdot folk will find out about us soon enough. They'll figure out all the possible ways anyone could possibly think of for fraud, and post their answers, theories, and countless possibilities for us to go over whenever we get a sec. Let's go to lunch!:)
Who the hell do people think they are to make demands on my personal recreation time? That's 90% of open source -- people programming for fun.
If it's so much fun, then making it user-friendly should be that much more of thrill, not an extra chore.
Apathy on who's part? The end user who doesn't know any better, or the people who withold their knowledge, all the while upset that more people don't switch to another OS?
I know it's unthinkable in a community like slashdot, but so many here, unlike yourself, don't seem to realize that there are far too many end users who don't realize that they do have options beyond Windows. They simply don't know that another OS is out there. They may not even know what an OS is. And the few who do may have some vague recollection of Apple, but for the most part, so many believe that the only thing they can have on their computer is Windows, Office, and IE (oh, I'm sorry, I forgot, IE and Windows are not separate things).
The magnitude of this problem alone is enough to make anyone weep. But then I read so many selfish posts here that assume that "people should know better" or "anyone who doesn't know any better doesn't deserve a choice".
So harsh and so unrealistic. The key to any revolution is education. And teaching takes work, dedication, patience, and a willingness to help people who don't know as much as you.
If change doesn't come fast enough, then it's the apathy towards educating the end user instead of writing them off as "Joe Six Pack who can't or won't learn" that keeps us stagnant.
Are you claiming that google has hijacked your DNS services so you can't reach yahoo, altavista, lycos, or msn for a search engine?
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is that I find more sites use google for searching their own sites. Also, until recently Yahoo was using google for their own search results and they are not the only search engine to do so.
I'm pretty sure your 99.9% of websites was one of those made up on the spot statistics but I'm 100% sure that you need to get your head out of your ass.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's a hidden blessing that salaries aren't grossly overdone with Ph.D.'s because you weed out those who are in it just for the money and you're left with the people that truly care for what they are doing.
This is the kind of logic that keeps teachers underpaid.
So let me get this straight? If someone really cares about what they're doing, then what they're getting paid doesn't matter? That's a bunch of....ahem, I mean, that's not very realistic, especially if you can't live off what you make.
I had a job working at the front desk of the hotel. Not exactly brain surgery, but a little more complex than one might believe. It's like being a juggler of emotions, personalities, wants and needs. I was good at it and I loved it.
I grew up, it didn't pay enough. I don't work there anymore. It's that plain and simple.
Someone here suggested a way to separate "the wheat from the chaff". The way to do that is really simple. Keep the salaries low for beginners and make the rewards GREATER for those who prove their dedication and hard work instead of barely keeping up with so called "cost of living" raises and meagre compensation in the long term.
Check out this bit from the Duchess of Ettiquette that explains why the invention of the telephone is rude in and of itself.
But Mexican consumers say record companies could learn a thing or two from pirates, who provide entertainment that's fast, cheap, reliable and customized. Bootleggers have been known to provide special orders and speedy delivery to rival anything from the studios... ...The shadow industry has likewise become a major employer, providing jobs to tens of thousands of itinerant vendors who oppose any attempts to squelch their livelihoods. Mexican artists are wary of complaining too forcefully, lest they be perceived as greedy and indifferent to their struggling fans. Meanwhile, organized crime and corrupt cops are profiting handsomely from the trade.
*************
This has nothing to do with downloads and everything to do with CD pirating which could be done by anyone.
It also seems that the bootleggers in this scenario are providing exactly the music people want, with a speed and efficiency the "industry" can't match.
Sounds like the real "industry" needs to step up their game and lower their prices to something near what people can afford. Or start paying the cops more than the bootleggers pay them.
I am so glad I am an every day movie goer.
Movies are made for people like me. We laugh in the right places, cry for no apparent reason, and we know that Mary Jane constantly has a bad hair day in this movie because she's no longer a high school student being supported by mom and dad, but a struggling actress moving on up, finally making ends meet and who's also suffering from a bad case of Spidey-love.
I don't notice when Spidey's rips and tears move from shoulder to shoulder. I turn a blind eye when the CGI gets cheesey and pretend I'm watching a live action comic book (uh, I am right?).
I think this movie is a chick flick. We'll explain away everything, even the obvious flaws, and we're the ones who leave with hollow feeling in our bellies in sympathy with the emotional and physical ass-kicking Peter Parker takes in this movie.
I loved it, plain and simple. For the most part, they suspended my disbelief. A few CGI blips and the fact that Spidey's identity is now the worst kept secret in the universe, notwithstanding, I felt I got a pretty good bang for my buck(s).
My advice: save the criticism for movies that really, really suck. This movie rocks.
By the same token, I have voicmail with my LEC. Does this mean they can listen to all my voicemail now and it's legal?
Hotmail and MSN can seriously kiss my ass.
I have had my hotmail account since 1996. It's one of the free ones with a tiny bit of storage that keeps shrinking because they REFUSE to filter out the spam.
I cannot believe that after all this time I still get the same crap OVER AND OVER because they have no idea it's spam.
So let me get this straight? They can't control their own shit, but they expect Joe Schmoe from Idaho to be able to control the amount of spam they can't?
I hate M$. I hate M$. I hate M$.
for the value gamer; the ones who wait until PS2 games are re-released as "Classics" with the red boarder and sell for $20 (instead of $50)- these are the people who will pick up older games and play them on their modern system.
Cheap skates of the world, Unite!
How is being a cheapskate to wait until you can actually afford something to buy it?
Don't get me wrong, I thought your comment was funny and all, but it also got me thinking.
Everyone can't afford to run out and buy a $50+ game the second it comes out. Some people HAVE to wait until it becomes "classic" with the red border. These are the people who don't pirate CD's and buy their MP3's legally and actually follow the "rules".
Some people are actually honest and simply wait until prices drop. So it's fair to them that when they finally can afford the newer console that what games they had wait forever and a day to buy for the old console can't be played anymore?
Geesh, isn't M$ in our pockets deep enough already?
From the article:
Unfortunately, there's a downside to this populist sentiment -- that is, innocent casualties bloodied by a medium that trades in rumor, gossip and speculation without accountability.
Blogs can be a great way of communicating, but they can keep people apart too. If I read only those of my choice, precisely tuned to my political biases and you read only yours, we could end up a nation of political solipsists, vacuum sealed in our private feedback loops, never exposed to new arguments, never having to listen to a single word we disagree with.
That bit about "feedback loops" reminds me of the continuous ticker at the bottom of every bloody new program now and also the fact that every half hour the same "news" items are repeated again, same copy, same photos, same everything. How is this "news" after several hours of soundbites and no in depth information?
He also doesn't seem to realize that his warning about blogs ruining people on thin or no evidence, shoddy reporting, spreading rumor as fact, or even bandying about biased information applies to the mainstream media as well.
At any rate, I tend to find that "even a broken clock is right twice a day" whether it's from a blog, mainstream news or just plain rumor.
And my mother said I could never really be a space cowboy.
...I was getting all happy about new sybian technology.
No one has ever been able to answer this question for me: "Why is file sharing illegal?"
I just googled this question, quotes and all, and only got one search result.
Now this is google we're talking about here. You'd think that with all the hoopla about the RIAA, MPAA, and lawsuits and debates that people would have answered this question a dozen times over.
Is my question too simple or is there simply no real answer?
Now I feel silly.
I had visions of you going over one page business letters laughing maniacally over small format changes. "Should I use italics or should I use bold? Italics. Bold. Italics. Bold."
But I guess I can see and even agree with your point over inconsistencies in long documents. I've seen it, but I should know better than to think all people are meticulous enough to pay attention to small details.
That's why God made admins.
I use it mostly for amusement to look at the documents that I receive from other people and see the inane and repetitious page formatting marks that they set, unset, reset, and move. It gives me a sense of how much extra trouble everyone else has constructing a document when their problems could be solved if they would plan their page formatting ahead of time.
Poor guy. I can't believe you've wasted all that time looking at people's formatting changes and feeling all superior about it too. That's so sad.
Word Processing, to me, means that I don't have to plan formatting in advance. I've formatted enough documents in my lifetime that I'm pretty sure I understand the basic format for most business documents and there are enough reference books or cheat sheets for ones I don't use that often and when absolute formality is required.
Of course, even if I have an idea of what I want my formatting to be like, ideas can change while creating a document and this embodies the whole idea of word processing; that any and all changes can be done on the fly. It's sort of like putting a picture up against a wall and then finding that you like it somewhere different; or maybe the bulleted points would do better elsewhere. Same concept.
Which doesn't mean my thought processes are muddled. It means that the software is doing what I want it to do; Allowing me to make changes as I see fit, when I see fit, even mid- document.
See, I didn't even have to plan this post in advance. I just typed what I thought and changed it where I thought it needed to be changed.
Wow.
Can I sue google now? If you google my screen name I get a stupid article about a chandalier that does text messaging...
Years before I made my first tinfoil hat, someone showed me an article about a tracking device for pets.
It was placed under the skin and if the pet was ever lost it could be located. I was so naive, I never once thought anything like this would ever be used to find human beings.
So now here we are, just over a decade later and people think it's a good idea to track their kids using computers.
If your kids aren't big enough to understand the words "check in" and "meet up area" they shouldn't be away from you in the first place.
Which one are you? Blunkett or Ashcroft?
After the collapse of MP3.com, a lot of artists went on to cut out the middle man, and now sell their own music from their own sites.
The same support systems that existed for MP3.com still exist for independent artists doing their own thing. The same message boards, same chats, same artists, pushing and supporting each other's music. But now instead of passing on the latest MP3 scam, they share the information that helps others to build their own sites and sell their music directly to their audience.
We had an MP3 site. We made a nice bit of cash while they were doing pay-for-play, which immediately stopped when people were frauding the hell out of them. My favorite, which wasn't exactly fraud, but was a great idea was "if you play this song, you'll get a long porn movie after the song". We never resorted to this, but we did get quite a bit of free porn this way.
This actually worked, but needless to say, MP3's charts weren't always the way to find the best music. Pushing your own site is a lot harder, but we've found ways to do it, and we average about 50 - 100 downloads, per artist, per day on our site. Even more after our artists perform at a local show. All it took was a few flyers on the college campuses in our hometown and some car mags bought cheap from Vista Print. (All our artists have one for Nattytown and one for themselves; so simple, so easy).
It may not sound like a lot, but everyone can't make iTunes money, and we know we're not going to do it with unknown artists. But it's more money than they were making sitting on undistributed cd's. And even if it's a dollar a day, that's $1 we didn't have the day before.
If we can do it (and believe me, hubby and I are only step removed from being Joe & Jill end user), then anyone can. Of course we are hoping that one of our artists will "blow up", but I think we have more of chance doing that our own way (and we're still making money meanwhile) than by using an MP3 spin off.
I doubt we'll go that route again. Why should we spend $99 for their service when we can upload music to our own site for free?
Sites like Buy A Beat.com and our own Nattytown.com, don't need MP3, their clones, or their copies, or "partners" any more. I hope other people wake up and don't get sucked into using a remake of MP3's crappy service when even the worst of sites can keep their money with a little bit of effort.
This generation seems to like their music that way, and according to one of the authorities in the article, it's because they are likely 'brain damaged' and have lower attention spans. Ouch."
This is a bunch of crap.
Having an iPod is like making my iLife into and iMovie. It's the soundtrack of my iWorld.
I remember going to a matinee quite some ime ago. I carried in a large purse containing sandwiches, fries, and drinks (yes, it was a big ass purse).
We got stopped by security (this wasn't too long after 9/11, maybe a month), they inspected the bag for weapons or bootlegging equipment. They saw the food clearly and let us go into the theatre with it, no problem.
For this violation of my civil liberty I got to enjoy my burger while watching the movie. I've carried my own food ever since and not once has anyone in the theatre ever objected.
So let's say the guy freaks out just before impact, he's repeatedly mashing on the brake, misses and hits the gas, then impact.
Last five seconds shows he revved up to 157 mph so that must be what caused the crash, right?
What I'm saying is, I wonder if it's possible for the data to be interpreted more than one way. In a case like this, it's easy to want the guy to fry. I'm just playing devil's advocate here because I personally think that if he's guilty (and gosh he appears to be) he should be locked up for a long time. 18 months is just not long enough.
But I suppose that's why we have a constitution, due process and concepts like innocent until proven guilty; to try to make an honest effort to prove guilt and come up with appropriate punishments; to keep people like me from making snap judgements off little evidence, getting a rope and hanging guys like that.
From: Prez
:)
TO: Logistics Staff
RE: TEST PHASE/ FRAUD
Finding morons who think they'll get away with spamming their family, friends, and neighbors is no problem.
Issue: those who will find a way around the system with successful results that we haven't even thought of yet. Test phase provided some unexpected results in regards to fraud and you numbskulls better way to conteract this.
Come up with something fast!
Prez
To: Prez
From: Logistics
RE: TEST PHASE/ FRAUD
We have assmebled a special IT team working on this issue. Our team will be of no additional cost to our company. They are a volunteer, international team, working 24/7, for the sheer delight of exploring our new brand of technology. What's more, with minimal information, they will soon provide us with enough ground level feedback to foresee any possible avenues of fraud and/or minimize any such activity. Some of them will even sign up or the service themselves just to "test" it.
The situation is under control sir.
*giggle from the IT team over the memo after they hit SEND*
The slashdot folk will find out about us soon enough. They'll figure out all the possible ways anyone could possibly think of for fraud, and post their answers, theories, and countless possibilities for us to go over whenever we get a sec. Let's go to lunch!
Who the hell do people think they are to make demands on my personal recreation time? That's 90% of open source -- people programming for fun. If it's so much fun, then making it user-friendly should be that much more of thrill, not an extra chore.
Apathy seems to be the victor.
Apathy on who's part? The end user who doesn't know any better, or the people who withold their knowledge, all the while upset that more people don't switch to another OS?
I know it's unthinkable in a community like slashdot, but so many here, unlike yourself, don't seem to realize that there are far too many end users who don't realize that they do have options beyond Windows. They simply don't know that another OS is out there. They may not even know what an OS is. And the few who do may have some vague recollection of Apple, but for the most part, so many believe that the only thing they can have on their computer is Windows, Office, and IE (oh, I'm sorry, I forgot, IE and Windows are not separate things).
The magnitude of this problem alone is enough to make anyone weep. But then I read so many selfish posts here that assume that "people should know better" or "anyone who doesn't know any better doesn't deserve a choice".
So harsh and so unrealistic. The key to any revolution is education. And teaching takes work, dedication, patience, and a willingness to help people who don't know as much as you.
If change doesn't come fast enough, then it's the apathy towards educating the end user instead of writing them off as "Joe Six Pack who can't or won't learn" that keeps us stagnant.
It's hardly evil to build a product so good that everyone wants to use it
Crack, heroin, ecstasy. Yeah, sometimes it can be evil to create something "so good" that everyone wants to use it.
Flawed logic rates +2 these days?
Are you claiming that google has hijacked your DNS services so you can't reach yahoo, altavista, lycos, or msn for a search engine?
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is that I find more sites use google for searching their own sites. Also, until recently Yahoo was using google for their own search results and they are not the only search engine to do so.
I'm pretty sure your 99.9% of websites was one of those made up on the spot statistics but I'm 100% sure that you need to get your head out of your ass.