There's a difference between saying that corporations tend towards evil and saying that corporations are an unwanted or unneeded evil. I believe that publicly traded corporations *are* inherently evil, willing to do *anything* they can get away with to make a profit, but I believe that they are a necessary evil.
Ok, my information regarding the "Ltd." was a little screwy. I still can't find concrete information on it, but it appears as though Wikipedia is strongly implying that (at least in the USA) it's the same as an LLC. Well, my statement still stands--a privately held LCC is not as powerful or evil as a publically traded corporation. If you think that an LLC has the same powers as an corporation, you need to go back to business school. There's a reason why every large-scale company is a Inc. instead of a Ltd. or LLC in spite of the fact that the latter two have very attractive tax benefits.
And yes, publically traded corporations do have a natural tendency towards evil, if for no other reason than shareholder obligations. A privately held *anything* isn't legally obligated to do maximize shareholder profit--public corperations are. Anything other than an Inc. tends to have a short lifespan, too... whereas Inc. can live for hundreds of years.
Regarding Canonical and the Ubuntu foundation... that statement proves nothing. Am I 100% sure of the facts? No. But the trademark means nothing... they can call it the magical cucumber distro for all I care. As long as the Ubuntu Foundation has their multi-million dollar war chest, the free Ubuntu (or magic cucumber) distribution will not fade away like Red Hat did. I highly doubt that Mark Shuttleworth or Canonical has the power to take away money they've already given to the Ubuntu Foundation. Non-profit foundations are tax shelters, and I'm pretty sure that there are laws saying you can't haphazardly take back money you've given to them for the simple reason that it would be a rather blatant example of tax evasion.
So, everything I said still basically stands. Red Hat was beholden to its shareholders in a way that that Canonical is not, and even if Canonical declared war on free Ubuntu they could not have done the damage Red Hat did when they killed Red Hat linux and replaced it with Fedora (or more importantly, the damage they could have done if they had decided to simply discontinue non-enterprise Red Hat development altogether.)
As far as I know, the Ubuntu foundation operates independently of Canonical, Ltd. Canonical could pull all support for Ubuntu in favor of Ubuntu Enterprise Edition (a la Red Hat), but free Ubuntu would live on because Canonical can't take away the Ubuntu Foundation's $10,000,000+ war chest.
You should also note the grandparent's use of the word corporate. Red Hat is indeed a publically traded corporation, while Canonical is a privately held Limited Partnership. There's a big difference between those two when it comes to legal rights, shareholder obligations, and overall evil-ness.
(4) "MySQL is free" * Only if your application which links against the client library is also GPL. Myth used to scare people away from opensource GPL code.
This is no myth. MySQL's client libraries are definitely GPL. If you link to them you must abide by the terms of the GPL. Alternatively, you can purchase a license from MySQL AB. MySQL AB spins this up so much saying that they are open source but what they really mean is that they are open so long as you are open.
No, you 'must abide by the terms of the GPL' only applies if you redistribute your linked code outside of your company. I would wager that there are quite a few cases (probably the majority) in which this is not necessary at all. This "GPL is viral" crap is so 2005--why don't you come up with some new anti-FOSS FUD to sling at us?
The (admittedly not broadly illustrated) point was that if Microsoft actually managed to stamp out all piracy, they would will encourage massive migration to OS X and Linux, thus destroying their monopolistic stranglehold on the operating system market. The profits "lost" (though as you've pointed out, they aren't really lost in any traditional sense of the term) through piracy are nothing compared to the profits they would lose if they were forced to confront real competition. Linux is free and extremely powerful for all those who care to learn it, and OS X is easy, pretty and blows Windows out of the water at everything but 3D gaming, so at this point the only thing keeping Window's massive predominance alive is momentum and Microsoft's monopolistic practices.
You forget that almost every Joe Sixpack has his friend Tim Techie who provides advice and DVD/CD-Rs filled with warez. I know I've certainly done my share of spreading pirated copies of XP to the clueless masses...
So, if Microsoft's crazy little scheme actually works, Joe installs pirated Vista and says WHAT THE HELL IS THIS, IT LOOKS LIKE CRAP and demands that Tim put it back the way it was.
Think about it. Microsoft can't afford to seriously crack down on piracy... not with the new Mactels, not when distros like Ubuntu are making such giant strides for Linux noobs everywhere. At the same time, they do want to prevent piracy of their OS from becoming (more) mainstream. Hence, they allow us the ability to pirate their core OS, while blocking all of the glitter. We might not care about the glitter (though I must say I don't understand why everyone here prefers to look at gray on gray all day. Yes, XP on default is Fischer Price, but that's a hell of a lot better on the eyes than gray on gray), but your average consumer does. Your average consumer won't give a shit about the techincal advances of Vista; they'll just want the eye candy. Your average consumer is also the least likely to want to jump ship to something that's harder, less flashy, and/or less compatible with their favorite software.
So, Microsoft is putting the squeeze on those customers they know won't jump ship by leaving out the glitter, thus reducing their incentive to pirate, while simultaneously leaving the door open for the tech-savvy (who are generally much less impressed by glitter) to pirate Vista-sans-glitter, thus reducing their incentive to jump ship to OS X or Linux.
Too bad it's all going to fail miserably. I've got $1000 that says Vista-with-glitter will be pirated within the first month. Any takers?
I don't buy it. A properly configured DSL Fluxbox desktop can be just as functional as an XP desktop. Will it be as pretty? No. But there will be all of your normal icons there to access the web, write a letter, play solitaire, etc. and program windows will have pretty much the same qualities as they do in Windows.
Not that I dont like KDE or GNOME, quite the contrary, I found them better than Windows in many ways... But they just have grown fat, I remember being able to run KDE2 on a Pentium 166 MMX with 46MB RAM! And even back then, KDE was pretty capable... much more than Windows95 for example.
Ok... then they can use KDE2! What's the problem here? "Much more capable than Windows95" is capable enough for most users. If you want a super duper pretty and easy to use OS on really crappy hardware then yes, there will be problems, but if you're willing to concede (as I'm sure most rational people are) that you must lose most of the pretty graphics and a bit of functionality in order to build a $100 laptop, you'll find that Linux offers plenty of non-obese solutions.
Porn is a trap - it feeds the pleasure centers of the brain, devalues the humanity of the person being used for that pleasure, and damages people's ability to relate to one another in a healthy way. Real relationships are not self-focused, but must have a significant component of other-focus or they don't survive.
Horseshit. I do not devalue the women I see in pornography; I admire them. I do not build up unrealistic expectations--on the contrary, I'm rather unimpressed by the make up heavy, plastic-looking so-called "perfect body" porn star image. This might be hard for you to comprehend, but I find the girls from a decent porn website like abbywinters.com to be a hell of a lot *more* human and respectable than repressed girls who pretend to have no sex drive whatsoever.
Stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain? Hell yes it does! So do Big Macs and TV and books and talking about Jesus. And believe it or not, I met a girl who likes watching decent porn just as much as I do. It doesn't distort her view of me or mine of her--I still think she's the most beautiful girl in the world; I still wouldn't trade her for anything. Us liking to watch other people naked doesn't change our desire to see each other naked. We're a monogamous couple, likely to be a married couple within the next year or two.
And sometimes we go months without watching porn--sometimes we watch it every night of the week. The is no withdrawal. You can call it a hobby if you want, but it's simply not an addiction, at least not for us. I'm sure it's addictive for some people, but one can get psychologically addicted to just about anything (TV being the most blatant example.)
What about investing that time in relating to each other, playing board games, having conversations, investing in hobbies where you build or create things, or enjoy things created or performed by others?
We do all of those things, too. Porn-watching represents a rather small fraction of our total leisure time. And it's not our fault you view this activity as being entirely worthless. We view (quality) porn as fun and uplifting, and so it *does* uplift us (as well as making us happy and more aroused.) You probably view porn as being degrading and sinful, so I don't doubt the fact that for people *like you*, watching it does genuinely lower your opinion of humanity.
My best friend is a very conservative Christian, and he was obsessed with porn, he was *addicted* to porn because he thought it was wrong. So he would binge and purge--go apeshit collecting the stuff and then all of a sudden delete and throw away it all because it was wrong, it was sinful. Wash, rinse, repeat. 99.9% of non-repressed people do not have this kind of self-destructive obsession. My friend spent so much of his waking hours worrying about porn when he could have just downloaded, jacked off, and been done with it.
Don't *add* porn, *remove* the violence!
I prefer "Make love, not war." over "Don't make war, it's just as bad as making love!"
No, the all the characters from the original trilogy (with the possible exception of Luke, at times) were very well characterized, well acted. The prequels, on the other hand, regularly make people visibly cringe--Jar Jar, whiney teen Anakin shouting "it's not fair!", Dax the four-armed alien who swoops and soars over his lines so badly I'm nearly positive the voice actor was stoned out of his head, bad romance, Vader's "Nooooooooooooooooooooooo"--so retarded it puts Luke's "Nooooooooooooo" to shame...
That said, the plot doesn't really suck (though the pacing and focus does, at least in places) and some of the allegory and pivotal scenes are very, very good indeed, especially in episode 3. Anakin's fall to the dark side was handled nearly perfectly, as was the parallel to today's pathetic "freedom fries" society, and I think it's too bad that people choose to ignore this and bring up only Vader's Noooooooooooooooo and Anakin/Padme's very short sequence of nausiating dialog.
As someone else said, I don't think you can speak for all of us--plenty of Star Wars geeks think that the prequels suck... usually it's those of us who have an ounce of objectivity. This isn't just rose-colored glasses. In the original trilogy, I think that Luke was sometimes badly acted and the Ewoks were over the top (and a rather transparent marketing ploy.) But this simply doesn't compare to the horrible new characters from the prequels and their insipid dialog...
Oh, I've got the moral courage to take a stance, alright. I take the stance that you're an enemy of all who believe that the human body isn't shameful, and sex is something to be celebrated, not repressed. Why don't you help clean up all the fucking violence and bigotry (esp. anti-gay bigotry) in our society and then we'll talk about the oh-so-terrible danger that your five year old might see a tit.
Sorry, OO IS better than MS Office. And cheaper. I don't consider having to wait an extra 5 seconds for it to load a horrible, inexcusable flaw. Once loaded, it runs just fine on a machine with as little as 256 MB of RAM. Could it stand to be slimmer? Yes. But it is the king of formats (MS Office doesn't even come close, not even when dealing with its own prior formats) and it has 99% of the functionality of MS Office sans Access, plus a few features that MS Office lacks entirely.
Seriously, I'm tired of the Open Office bashing. Have you even used OpenOffice Writer? Yeah, by today's standards it takes bloody forever to load, but that really only translates out to maybe an extra 5-10 seconds. What's 5 seconds compared to $150 and being locked into a limited set of proprietary formats? Once it loads it's runs perfectly snappy, and all but the most obscure features are present and easy to find.
The advantages are real. I've got a bunch of scripts I use to extract and insert data into OpenDocument text documents. Since it uses well-documented XML, this was actually pretty easy to do. I'm sure it's possible to do with Word's format, but I guarantee you it's a hell of a lot harder and buggier.
GIMP vs. Photoshop--conceded. (GIMP really is "good enough" for many people, though definitely not pros.) This is because there are specific features that GIMP still lacks.
But credit where credit is due--a longer load time does not negate Open Office's short-but-very-sweet list of advantages. Price is merely the most obvious advantage.
They have promised to fix all the woes of Internet users for several years now... time they did some of that, or simply hide in their cubes eating humble pie, reading the news about their stock with FF.
In no way, shape or form am I an M$ fan/apologist, but to be fair SP 2 did fix quite a few internet-related problems, especially those that relate to user stupidity/laziness. The (admittedly halfassed, but much better than nothing) firewall and automatic updates are on by default now, and automatic updates now include periodic virus removal of mass-propagating worms. I (and many others here) would argue that shitstorms like Mydoom or Sasser should have never happened in the first place, but it is still true that Microsoft has taken the steps necessary to ensure such widespread infections will (most likely) not happen again. Also, IE 7 included a popup blocker, which was another major problem people had with the web. It wasn't the first or best popup blocker, not by a long shot, but it was nonetheless a welcome solution for the hordes of people oblivious to all non-M$ solutions.
My point is that M$ is indeed answering the woes of internet users, though they're definitely taking their time about it. Seems like they wait until the last possible minute, when the viruses are becoming insane (I myself was infected within 20 minutes of a fresh XP install because I had the audacity to leave my network cable plugged in before installing a firewall) and users are flocking to Firefox (or at the very least, installing third-party popup blockers) en-masse and THEN they go, "Woah! Shit! This isn't going away on its own! Maybe we'd better do something."
This really shouldn't be acceptable, but most users don't know any better. It's up to us to inform the masses--Microsoft solutions are slow coming, and usually the least effective.
I'm talking about the visual quality of document you're able to produce. Have you ever USED a word processor to produce something that's going to have to be published, or do you just sit around opening and closing files?
OpenOffice's fonts and layout options are virtually identical to Word's--I wouldn't be surprised if Word had a few cheesy eye candy options hidden away somewhere that OO lacks, but even if it does, who the hell cares? Do you sit around messing with eye candy all day or do you use your word processor to actually write professional looking documents?
I give you that Photoshop is still significantly better than GIMP, and I give you that (3d) gaming on Linux is an exercise in frustration. For these reasons and the sake of convenience (not having to mess around with Wine if I come across a Windows-only app I must use), I do in fact have a Windows partition.
But you can cram that MS Office superiority bullshit up your ass. MS Word only has a few relatively obscure exclusive features that few people care about (with the exception of a few languages they support), and these are more then outweighed by the advantages OpenOffice.org brings to the table. OpenOffice is the king of formats. OpenOffice is actually _better_ than MS Office when it comes to opening old Word/Excel format documents, and the OpenDocument format is superior in every way to MS's formats.
browser that works with their bank's website
Firefox works just fine on my bank's website, and my mom's bank's website. I have encountered very few websites, banking or otherwise, that flat out refuse to work with Firefox. I'm sure it's very annoying when it happens, but I can count the number of times it's happened to me on one hand, and I've used Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox extensively and exclusively since its release. I think that Linux/Firefox's resistence to malware more than makes up for this maybe-once-a-year inconvenience of having to boot Windows and use IE.
Windows still has its areas where it is very clearly superior, but it's simply FUD to claim that it's superior in EVERY area. In areas such as word processing and web browsing, I would argue that we passed parity a long time ago and life is actually significantly easier with Linux--especially in regards to viruses, spyware, and updating issues (in Ubuntu, you get updates for every program on your computer simultaneously, requiring only 2 or 3 mouse clicks to download and install. Compare that to individually applying security patches to every program on your XP partition, then having to reboot.)
Assuming the hardcore porn in question isn't a particularly weird or demeaning fetish, and also assuming that the parent is careful enough not to let the child get propositioned by child molestered (i.e. no forum access) what exactly is the harm? Where does it come from and what exactly is the lasting damage?
A "true master" knows that the clit is only the beginning. My girlfriend doesn't really have what I'd consider an orgasm when I play with her clit, but she shakes like an epileptic and screams like a hyena when I hit her g-spot just right. No joke, once time we left the windows open (but the blinds closed) and I actually had a neighbor come up to me the next day and ask if those "weird animal sounds" had disturbed my sleep.
Speak for yourself, I was fascinated with sex and the human body ever since I was a toddler. Believe it or not, it is very possible for a 7 year old to get an erection over the sight of a naked woman. I've got some very clear memories...
Well let me ask you sir, are you against premarital sex, masturbation, and sexual activities in general except that which is absolutely necessary for reproduction?
Because if you're not, then you're not "well adjusted" in the eyes of those pushing the war on porn. Even though the Americans in general are prudish by Western standards, this kind of horseshit is mostly being foisted upon us by religious conservatives. Most Americans object to their kids seeing naked people. Most Americans do NOT write letters to the FCC just because their kids saw a partially-obscured nipple for a couple seconds. Yet, those people who are so uptight that they DO organize letter writing campaigns for such things are very, very good at it. I forget the name of the organization, but basically this one special interest quasi-religious group was responsible for something like 97% of all the complaints the FCC received regarding the Janet Jackson incident. FCC obscenity policy was turned on its head just to appease this small minority of uptight, anti-sex Americans.
The sad fact is that it seems as though religious conservatives are simply a lot better at organizing grassroots campaigns than secular liberals.
Btw, I grew up with easy access to internet porn too. As a result of this horrifying trauma, I actually knew all the parts of the female anatomy! The horror! I actually knew what to do with the clitoris and g-spot and I actually brought my very first (serious) girlfriend to orgasm without months or years of awkward trial and error! Plus I knew how to have safe sex... and where am I now, after being exposed to such depravity? Still in a loving monogamous relationship with that same girl, probably on our way to getting married. We even watch porn together sometimes, and believe it or not it's usually her suggestion.
It is because people like YOU (whom unfortunately represent the majority in this nation) refuse to keep any sense of perspective. Around 3,000 people died on 9/11. Now contrast that to the tens of thousands that die of car accidents and heart disease.
No, this particular issue is not worth any loss of civil liberties, period. Any train of thought that says "terrorism is inevitable, people are inherently evil, we must be given carte blanche to surveil anyone for any reason" is wrong. It must be presumed that most people are inherently good. People must have, by default, a right to privacy and that right must only be overridden under judicial oversight, i.e. a warrant.
We do not NEED to give up any more liberties because we could have a 9/11 each and every year from now on and the loss of life would be insignificant compared to our other problems. That is the brutal truth that people like you want to ignore. If you want to give up freedoms, give up your freedom to drive like a maniac without being THROWN IN JAIL FOR A FEW MONTHS (as opposed to having to pay a couple hundred dollar fine.) Within a couple years we'll save tens of thousands of lives and our lives, our happiness, our privacy will not be significantly compromised.
The other brutal truth people like you tend to gloss over is that Islamic terrorism is a direct result of our support of Israel, and that if we halted this support the threat terrorism would all but disappear (yes, there would still be domestic terrorists but these would be extremely hard to discover anyway.) That's it. No loss of liberty, no pointless creation of governmental agencies, no HALF TRILLION DOLLARS SPENT ON WARS, just stop supporting Israel. It sucks for them, it really does. I feel for them. They do not in any way deserve what's happening to them... but let's be fair now: they made their own bed, now they should lie in it. Trying to create their promised land in the middle of a bunch of muslims was a bad idea. In fact, it could very well be the number one on the list of Retarded Ideas of the Twentieth Century. No, the muslims really didn't have any more a claim on the land than they did, but that doesn't mean they couldn't use their fucking BRAINS, man. Anywhere, just ANYWHERE would have been a better choice than the Middle East. Fucking Antartica would have been a lot easier, in the long run. But no, they're God's chosen people, and these lands used to be their playground a long time ago, so they thought they'd come back and create Israel. Good for them. I hope it all works out well.
Meanwhile, we should keep our fucking distance, just as you'd keep your distance from a crazy guy trying to take on the entire LAPD with a slingshot. But no, instead we've sold the crazy guy all kinds of badass futuristic lasers and shit (yes, I know the analogy is kinda dumb, just work with me here) so that he actually stands a good chance against all of these LAPD cops whom keep trying to arrest them. Eventually they realize we're selling him all of these badass devices, so now they're coming around and terrorizing us, locking us up for no good reason and stuff. We're not fond of the LAPD. We know they're corrupt, and we feel sympathy for the guy. But in the name of everything that's holy, the answer isn't to keep on selling this crazy guy weapons because he is, in fact, crazy. There are better ways to change the world for the better than to support suicidal retards.
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There's a difference between saying that corporations tend towards evil and saying that corporations are an unwanted or unneeded evil. I believe that publicly traded corporations *are* inherently evil, willing to do *anything* they can get away with to make a profit, but I believe that they are a necessary evil.
Ok, my information regarding the "Ltd." was a little screwy. I still can't find concrete information on it, but it appears as though Wikipedia is strongly implying that (at least in the USA) it's the same as an LLC. Well, my statement still stands--a privately held LCC is not as powerful or evil as a publically traded corporation. If you think that an LLC has the same powers as an corporation, you need to go back to business school. There's a reason why every large-scale company is a Inc. instead of a Ltd. or LLC in spite of the fact that the latter two have very attractive tax benefits.
And yes, publically traded corporations do have a natural tendency towards evil, if for no other reason than shareholder obligations. A privately held *anything* isn't legally obligated to do maximize shareholder profit--public corperations are. Anything other than an Inc. tends to have a short lifespan, too... whereas Inc. can live for hundreds of years.
Regarding Canonical and the Ubuntu foundation... that statement proves nothing. Am I 100% sure of the facts? No. But the trademark means nothing... they can call it the magical cucumber distro for all I care. As long as the Ubuntu Foundation has their multi-million dollar war chest, the free Ubuntu (or magic cucumber) distribution will not fade away like Red Hat did. I highly doubt that Mark Shuttleworth or Canonical has the power to take away money they've already given to the Ubuntu Foundation. Non-profit foundations are tax shelters, and I'm pretty sure that there are laws saying you can't haphazardly take back money you've given to them for the simple reason that it would be a rather blatant example of tax evasion.
So, everything I said still basically stands. Red Hat was beholden to its shareholders in a way that that Canonical is not, and even if Canonical declared war on free Ubuntu they could not have done the damage Red Hat did when they killed Red Hat linux and replaced it with Fedora (or more importantly, the damage they could have done if they had decided to simply discontinue non-enterprise Red Hat development altogether.)
As far as I know, the Ubuntu foundation operates independently of Canonical, Ltd. Canonical could pull all support for Ubuntu in favor of Ubuntu Enterprise Edition (a la Red Hat), but free Ubuntu would live on because Canonical can't take away the Ubuntu Foundation's $10,000,000+ war chest.
You should also note the grandparent's use of the word corporate. Red Hat is indeed a publically traded corporation, while Canonical is a privately held Limited Partnership. There's a big difference between those two when it comes to legal rights, shareholder obligations, and overall evil-ness.
(4) "MySQL is free" * Only if your application which links against the client library is also GPL. Myth used to scare people away from opensource GPL code.
This is no myth. MySQL's client libraries are definitely GPL. If you link to them you must abide by the terms of the GPL. Alternatively, you can purchase a license from MySQL AB. MySQL AB spins this up so much saying that they are open source but what they really mean is that they are open so long as you are open.
No, you 'must abide by the terms of the GPL' only applies if you redistribute your linked code outside of your company. I would wager that there are quite a few cases (probably the majority) in which this is not necessary at all. This "GPL is viral" crap is so 2005--why don't you come up with some new anti-FOSS FUD to sling at us?
The (admittedly not broadly illustrated) point was that if Microsoft actually managed to stamp out all piracy, they would will encourage massive migration to OS X and Linux, thus destroying their monopolistic stranglehold on the operating system market. The profits "lost" (though as you've pointed out, they aren't really lost in any traditional sense of the term) through piracy are nothing compared to the profits they would lose if they were forced to confront real competition. Linux is free and extremely powerful for all those who care to learn it, and OS X is easy, pretty and blows Windows out of the water at everything but 3D gaming, so at this point the only thing keeping Window's massive predominance alive is momentum and Microsoft's monopolistic practices.
Yes, but surely the lack of contrast more than cancels out any advantage gained by using the color gray?
You forget that almost every Joe Sixpack has his friend Tim Techie who provides advice and DVD/CD-Rs filled with warez. I know I've certainly done my share of spreading pirated copies of XP to the clueless masses...
So, if Microsoft's crazy little scheme actually works, Joe installs pirated Vista and says WHAT THE HELL IS THIS, IT LOOKS LIKE CRAP and demands that Tim put it back the way it was.
Think about it. Microsoft can't afford to seriously crack down on piracy... not with the new Mactels, not when distros like Ubuntu are making such giant strides for Linux noobs everywhere. At the same time, they do want to prevent piracy of their OS from becoming (more) mainstream. Hence, they allow us the ability to pirate their core OS, while blocking all of the glitter. We might not care about the glitter (though I must say I don't understand why everyone here prefers to look at gray on gray all day. Yes, XP on default is Fischer Price, but that's a hell of a lot better on the eyes than gray on gray), but your average consumer does. Your average consumer won't give a shit about the techincal advances of Vista; they'll just want the eye candy. Your average consumer is also the least likely to want to jump ship to something that's harder, less flashy, and/or less compatible with their favorite software.
So, Microsoft is putting the squeeze on those customers they know won't jump ship by leaving out the glitter, thus reducing their incentive to pirate, while simultaneously leaving the door open for the tech-savvy (who are generally much less impressed by glitter) to pirate Vista-sans-glitter, thus reducing their incentive to jump ship to OS X or Linux.
Too bad it's all going to fail miserably. I've got $1000 that says Vista-with-glitter will be pirated within the first month. Any takers?
I don't buy it. A properly configured DSL Fluxbox desktop can be just as functional as an XP desktop. Will it be as pretty? No. But there will be all of your normal icons there to access the web, write a letter, play solitaire, etc. and program windows will have pretty much the same qualities as they do in Windows.
Not that I dont like KDE or GNOME, quite the contrary, I found them better than Windows in many ways... But they just have grown fat, I remember being able to run KDE2 on a Pentium 166 MMX with 46MB RAM! And even back then, KDE was pretty capable... much more than Windows95 for example.
Ok... then they can use KDE2! What's the problem here? "Much more capable than Windows95" is capable enough for most users. If you want a super duper pretty and easy to use OS on really crappy hardware then yes, there will be problems, but if you're willing to concede (as I'm sure most rational people are) that you must lose most of the pretty graphics and a bit of functionality in order to build a $100 laptop, you'll find that Linux offers plenty of non-obese solutions.
Porn is a trap - it feeds the pleasure centers of the brain, devalues the humanity of the person being used for that pleasure, and damages people's ability to relate to one another in a healthy way. Real relationships are not self-focused, but must have a significant component of other-focus or they don't survive.
Horseshit. I do not devalue the women I see in pornography; I admire them. I do not build up unrealistic expectations--on the contrary, I'm rather unimpressed by the make up heavy, plastic-looking so-called "perfect body" porn star image. This might be hard for you to comprehend, but I find the girls from a decent porn website like abbywinters.com to be a hell of a lot *more* human and respectable than repressed girls who pretend to have no sex drive whatsoever.
Stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain? Hell yes it does! So do Big Macs and TV and books and talking about Jesus. And believe it or not, I met a girl who likes watching decent porn just as much as I do. It doesn't distort her view of me or mine of her--I still think she's the most beautiful girl in the world; I still wouldn't trade her for anything. Us liking to watch other people naked doesn't change our desire to see each other naked. We're a monogamous couple, likely to be a married couple within the next year or two.
And sometimes we go months without watching porn--sometimes we watch it every night of the week. The is no withdrawal. You can call it a hobby if you want, but it's simply not an addiction, at least not for us. I'm sure it's addictive for some people, but one can get psychologically addicted to just about anything (TV being the most blatant example.)
What about investing that time in relating to each other, playing board games, having conversations, investing in hobbies where you build or create things, or enjoy things created or performed by others?
We do all of those things, too. Porn-watching represents a rather small fraction of our total leisure time. And it's not our fault you view this activity as being entirely worthless. We view (quality) porn as fun and uplifting, and so it *does* uplift us (as well as making us happy and more aroused.) You probably view porn as being degrading and sinful, so I don't doubt the fact that for people *like you*, watching it does genuinely lower your opinion of humanity.
My best friend is a very conservative Christian, and he was obsessed with porn, he was *addicted* to porn because he thought it was wrong. So he would binge and purge--go apeshit collecting the stuff and then all of a sudden delete and throw away it all because it was wrong, it was sinful. Wash, rinse, repeat. 99.9% of non-repressed people do not have this kind of self-destructive obsession. My friend spent so much of his waking hours worrying about porn when he could have just downloaded, jacked off, and been done with it.
Don't *add* porn, *remove* the violence!
I prefer "Make love, not war." over "Don't make war, it's just as bad as making love!"
No, the all the characters from the original trilogy (with the possible exception of Luke, at times) were very well characterized, well acted. The prequels, on the other hand, regularly make people visibly cringe--Jar Jar, whiney teen Anakin shouting "it's not fair!", Dax the four-armed alien who swoops and soars over his lines so badly I'm nearly positive the voice actor was stoned out of his head, bad romance, Vader's "Nooooooooooooooooooooooo"--so retarded it puts Luke's "Nooooooooooooo" to shame...
That said, the plot doesn't really suck (though the pacing and focus does, at least in places) and some of the allegory and pivotal scenes are very, very good indeed, especially in episode 3. Anakin's fall to the dark side was handled nearly perfectly, as was the parallel to today's pathetic "freedom fries" society, and I think it's too bad that people choose to ignore this and bring up only Vader's Noooooooooooooooo and Anakin/Padme's very short sequence of nausiating dialog.
As someone else said, I don't think you can speak for all of us--plenty of Star Wars geeks think that the prequels suck... usually it's those of us who have an ounce of objectivity. This isn't just rose-colored glasses. In the original trilogy, I think that Luke was sometimes badly acted and the Ewoks were over the top (and a rather transparent marketing ploy.) But this simply doesn't compare to the horrible new characters from the prequels and their insipid dialog...
Oh, I've got the moral courage to take a stance, alright. I take the stance that you're an enemy of all who believe that the human body isn't shameful, and sex is something to be celebrated, not repressed. Why don't you help clean up all the fucking violence and bigotry (esp. anti-gay bigotry) in our society and then we'll talk about the oh-so-terrible danger that your five year old might see a tit.
Sorry, OO IS better than MS Office. And cheaper. I don't consider having to wait an extra 5 seconds for it to load a horrible, inexcusable flaw. Once loaded, it runs just fine on a machine with as little as 256 MB of RAM. Could it stand to be slimmer? Yes. But it is the king of formats (MS Office doesn't even come close, not even when dealing with its own prior formats) and it has 99% of the functionality of MS Office sans Access, plus a few features that MS Office lacks entirely.
Seriously, I'm tired of the Open Office bashing. Have you even used OpenOffice Writer? Yeah, by today's standards it takes bloody forever to load, but that really only translates out to maybe an extra 5-10 seconds. What's 5 seconds compared to $150 and being locked into a limited set of proprietary formats? Once it loads it's runs perfectly snappy, and all but the most obscure features are present and easy to find.
The advantages are real. I've got a bunch of scripts I use to extract and insert data into OpenDocument text documents. Since it uses well-documented XML, this was actually pretty easy to do. I'm sure it's possible to do with Word's format, but I guarantee you it's a hell of a lot harder and buggier.
GIMP vs. Photoshop--conceded. (GIMP really is "good enough" for many people, though definitely not pros.) This is because there are specific features that GIMP still lacks.
But credit where credit is due--a longer load time does not negate Open Office's short-but-very-sweet list of advantages. Price is merely the most obvious advantage.
They have promised to fix all the woes of Internet users for several years now... time they did some of that, or simply hide in their cubes eating humble pie, reading the news about their stock with FF.
In no way, shape or form am I an M$ fan/apologist, but to be fair SP 2 did fix quite a few internet-related problems, especially those that relate to user stupidity/laziness. The (admittedly halfassed, but much better than nothing) firewall and automatic updates are on by default now, and automatic updates now include periodic virus removal of mass-propagating worms. I (and many others here) would argue that shitstorms like Mydoom or Sasser should have never happened in the first place, but it is still true that Microsoft has taken the steps necessary to ensure such widespread infections will (most likely) not happen again. Also, IE 7 included a popup blocker, which was another major problem people had with the web. It wasn't the first or best popup blocker, not by a long shot, but it was nonetheless a welcome solution for the hordes of people oblivious to all non-M$ solutions.
My point is that M$ is indeed answering the woes of internet users, though they're definitely taking their time about it. Seems like they wait until the last possible minute, when the viruses are becoming insane (I myself was infected within 20 minutes of a fresh XP install because I had the audacity to leave my network cable plugged in before installing a firewall) and users are flocking to Firefox (or at the very least, installing third-party popup blockers) en-masse and THEN they go, "Woah! Shit! This isn't going away on its own! Maybe we'd better do something."
This really shouldn't be acceptable, but most users don't know any better. It's up to us to inform the masses--Microsoft solutions are slow coming, and usually the least effective.
I'm talking about the visual quality of document you're able to produce. Have you ever USED a word processor to produce something that's going to have to be published, or do you just sit around opening and closing files?
OpenOffice's fonts and layout options are virtually identical to Word's--I wouldn't be surprised if Word had a few cheesy eye candy options hidden away somewhere that OO lacks, but even if it does, who the hell cares? Do you sit around messing with eye candy all day or do you use your word processor to actually write professional looking documents?
wtf...
I give you that Photoshop is still significantly better than GIMP, and I give you that (3d) gaming on Linux is an exercise in frustration. For these reasons and the sake of convenience (not having to mess around with Wine if I come across a Windows-only app I must use), I do in fact have a Windows partition.
But you can cram that MS Office superiority bullshit up your ass. MS Word only has a few relatively obscure exclusive features that few people care about (with the exception of a few languages they support), and these are more then outweighed by the advantages OpenOffice.org brings to the table. OpenOffice is the king of formats. OpenOffice is actually _better_ than MS Office when it comes to opening old Word/Excel format documents, and the OpenDocument format is superior in every way to MS's formats.
browser that works with their bank's website
Firefox works just fine on my bank's website, and my mom's bank's website. I have encountered very few websites, banking or otherwise, that flat out refuse to work with Firefox. I'm sure it's very annoying when it happens, but I can count the number of times it's happened to me on one hand, and I've used Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox extensively and exclusively since its release. I think that Linux/Firefox's resistence to malware more than makes up for this maybe-once-a-year inconvenience of having to boot Windows and use IE.
Windows still has its areas where it is very clearly superior, but it's simply FUD to claim that it's superior in EVERY area. In areas such as word processing and web browsing, I would argue that we passed parity a long time ago and life is actually significantly easier with Linux--especially in regards to viruses, spyware, and updating issues (in Ubuntu, you get updates for every program on your computer simultaneously, requiring only 2 or 3 mouse clicks to download and install. Compare that to individually applying security patches to every program on your XP partition, then having to reboot.)
Well all I can say to that is you are really, really living up to your name. Well done.
I figured it was, otherwise I probably would've added you to my foe list.
Assuming the hardcore porn in question isn't a particularly weird or demeaning fetish, and also assuming that the parent is careful enough not to let the child get propositioned by child molestered (i.e. no forum access) what exactly is the harm? Where does it come from and what exactly is the lasting damage?
A "true master" knows that the clit is only the beginning. My girlfriend doesn't really have what I'd consider an orgasm when I play with her clit, but she shakes like an epileptic and screams like a hyena when I hit her g-spot just right. No joke, once time we left the windows open (but the blinds closed) and I actually had a neighbor come up to me the next day and ask if those "weird animal sounds" had disturbed my sleep.
Speak for yourself, I was fascinated with sex and the human body ever since I was a toddler. Believe it or not, it is very possible for a 7 year old to get an erection over the sight of a naked woman. I've got some very clear memories...
Even if you are correct, I'd rather burn in hell than worship such an arrogant, evil deity.
Well let me ask you sir, are you against premarital sex, masturbation, and sexual activities in general except that which is absolutely necessary for reproduction?
Because if you're not, then you're not "well adjusted" in the eyes of those pushing the war on porn. Even though the Americans in general are prudish by Western standards, this kind of horseshit is mostly being foisted upon us by religious conservatives. Most Americans object to their kids seeing naked people. Most Americans do NOT write letters to the FCC just because their kids saw a partially-obscured nipple for a couple seconds. Yet, those people who are so uptight that they DO organize letter writing campaigns for such things are very, very good at it. I forget the name of the organization, but basically this one special interest quasi-religious group was responsible for something like 97% of all the complaints the FCC received regarding the Janet Jackson incident. FCC obscenity policy was turned on its head just to appease this small minority of uptight, anti-sex Americans.
The sad fact is that it seems as though religious conservatives are simply a lot better at organizing grassroots campaigns than secular liberals.
Btw, I grew up with easy access to internet porn too. As a result of this horrifying trauma, I actually knew all the parts of the female anatomy! The horror! I actually knew what to do with the clitoris and g-spot and I actually brought my very first (serious) girlfriend to orgasm without months or years of awkward trial and error! Plus I knew how to have safe sex... and where am I now, after being exposed to such depravity? Still in a loving monogamous relationship with that same girl, probably on our way to getting married. We even watch porn together sometimes, and believe it or not it's usually her suggestion.
The horror.
It is because people like YOU (whom unfortunately represent the majority in this nation) refuse to keep any sense of perspective. Around 3,000 people died on 9/11. Now contrast that to the tens of thousands that die of car accidents and heart disease.
No, this particular issue is not worth any loss of civil liberties, period. Any train of thought that says "terrorism is inevitable, people are inherently evil, we must be given carte blanche to surveil anyone for any reason" is wrong. It must be presumed that most people are inherently good. People must have, by default, a right to privacy and that right must only be overridden under judicial oversight, i.e. a warrant.
We do not NEED to give up any more liberties because we could have a 9/11 each and every year from now on and the loss of life would be insignificant compared to our other problems. That is the brutal truth that people like you want to ignore. If you want to give up freedoms, give up your freedom to drive like a maniac without being THROWN IN JAIL FOR A FEW MONTHS (as opposed to having to pay a couple hundred dollar fine.) Within a couple years we'll save tens of thousands of lives and our lives, our happiness, our privacy will not be significantly compromised.
The other brutal truth people like you tend to gloss over is that Islamic terrorism is a direct result of our support of Israel, and that if we halted this support the threat terrorism would all but disappear (yes, there would still be domestic terrorists but these would be extremely hard to discover anyway.) That's it. No loss of liberty, no pointless creation of governmental agencies, no HALF TRILLION DOLLARS SPENT ON WARS, just stop supporting Israel. It sucks for them, it really does. I feel for them. They do not in any way deserve what's happening to them... but let's be fair now: they made their own bed, now they should lie in it. Trying to create their promised land in the middle of a bunch of muslims was a bad idea. In fact, it could very well be the number one on the list of Retarded Ideas of the Twentieth Century. No, the muslims really didn't have any more a claim on the land than they did, but that doesn't mean they couldn't use their fucking BRAINS, man. Anywhere, just ANYWHERE would have been a better choice than the Middle East. Fucking Antartica would have been a lot easier, in the long run. But no, they're God's chosen people, and these lands used to be their playground a long time ago, so they thought they'd come back and create Israel. Good for them. I hope it all works out well.
Meanwhile, we should keep our fucking distance, just as you'd keep your distance from a crazy guy trying to take on the entire LAPD with a slingshot. But no, instead we've sold the crazy guy all kinds of badass futuristic lasers and shit (yes, I know the analogy is kinda dumb, just work with me here) so that he actually stands a good chance against all of these LAPD cops whom keep trying to arrest them. Eventually they realize we're selling him all of these badass devices, so now they're coming around and terrorizing us, locking us up for no good reason and stuff. We're not fond of the LAPD. We know they're corrupt, and we feel sympathy for the guy. But in the name of everything that's holy, the answer isn't to keep on selling this crazy guy weapons because he is, in fact, crazy. There are better ways to change the world for the better than to support suicidal retards.