Ahhh, well said. Your first post about this was a little abrasive (and apparently modded down) but I understand your side of things much better now. However, I still disagree with you to a point. The Nobel Prizes are an international issue. For something like this I think seeing points of view from Obama's home country (US) AS WELL as other countries is quite helpful. Right now in the States you have a lot of people who absolutely love Obama, and a decent amount of people (obviously the staunch conservatives) who think he is the Anti-Christ who plans on canceling the next Presidential Election to declare the First American Empire a la Chancellor Palpatine. I have a hard time talking Obama with most of the people I know because half of them end up calling me a "God Damned Socialist Hippy" and the other half end up calling me an "Idiotic Backwards thinking Right Wing nutjob." because I maintain a pretty neutral stance (And no, "He's better than Bush" doesn't cut it.) I think outside sources can give us a slightly different perspective by being on the outside looking in.
One thing I have noticed is that casual users often get roped into purchasing a copy of Office 200x with new computers. Most recently I have seen a lot of Legit Office 2003/2007 Basic, Small Business, and PROFESSIONAL on home computers. In other words, not even the reasonably priced "Home and Student" version. The kinds of people I have seen drop $350 on Pro are usually typing documents in word, MAYBE using a spreadsheet to keep track of something very simple, and possibly occasional use of Powerpoint if they have kids in school or are taking classes themselves. Obviously Open Office would work well, but if this "Demo With Ads" that does not expire is preloaded perhaps they won't fall for the upsell. Best Buy is never going to recommend Open Office, but hopefully a few of their sales people will listen to what someone intends to do with their computer and agree the free version is good enough. Unlikely, but still...
Most of the Headhunters I went to asked if they could tweak my resume. Most of them added things that were (at best) stretching the truth. Some of them did do some things (formatting, wording) that I liked which I integrated into my permanent resume. A few times after not looking into their changes enough I got called into interviews and had them ask about my experience with . Those moments were quite embaressing and needless to say I did not land those positions. I'd call the Headhunter and tell them not to have that on my resume and they would say "I thought you knew Java. OH! Javascript! I'm sorry. I thought they were the same" or something of the like. Ugh.
The last headhunter I dealt with got me a job in about two days. I was hurting for a job and was pretty darn happy at the speed in which he got me into his office, got me in to see the client, and got me employed. It was going to pay $37/hour. Nice. I went to my first week on the job, liked the environment, and generally got along fairly well with the people. My first check was a live check (until they got direct deposit set up) and I eagerly awaited it, as I was getting pretty low on money. I opened it and....wow. What did I claim on my taxes for it to be this low? Hmmmm, taxes don't seem that out of whack. Maybe I didn't get paid for the entire week yet. No, all my hours are on there. What is this? Hourly rate....$21.00.
I called the Headhunter and him and his secretary both "Clearly Remembered" that he said Twenty One and would not have said Thirty Seven. He told me I could ask the company I was working for if they wanted to pay me more, but he guessed that would upset them at this point. I cursed at myself for making a handshake agreement, sent out some more resumes, but went back to work. After a month of being there my boss sat me down to ask me what I thought of the place. I was doing a really nice job and they were really happy with me. I told him that I liked the company and figured I'd just throw out the information about the headhunter and my salary. He just about hit the roof. He grabbed the contract out of his file cabinet, called the headhunter, and asked him about my pay. Apparently he had a written contract indicating how much the Headhunter would be payed and how much the employee would pay. Those numbers were more in line with what I had expected. By the next week after some phone calls between my employer and the Head Hunter, I was out of my contract and hired on as a "permanent" employee at $37/hour but with no health benefits until I had a year with the company. I was really pleased at how the company went to bat for me despite being there for only a month. I'm in my fourth year with them now.;)
Just out of curiosity, what News Sources do you find reliable and relatively unbiased? I'm an American and find it pretty easy to recognize the BBC as one of the best news organizations in the world...
Seriously, I hate when they release that many patches at once. I'd rather have all Windows one day, all Office a few days later or something. Two of the more recent big patch days, I had Windows problems (Made some computers slow to a crawl) and Office (Your software is illegal..what? They are all legit copies) problems on different computers strewn throughout the office. 16 people all demanding of me that they need to get their work done RIGHT NOW is rough to deal with. Of course, I could stagger the computers which get updated...but that isn't the point.;)
Who gets off on Columbus Day, anyway? My wife and a friend of mine are both (public) teachers. They don't have off on Monday. My mother in law works at a bank (Not a teller...in fact...I'm not quite sure what she does but it is some normal operations thing) and she doesn't have off. If at least some Banks and Public Schools are in session, who has off? Postal Workers?
It is easily the least advertised of the Federal Holiday's. Memorial and Labor Day? I Always hear about them as a large number of businesses are closed. Martin Luther King Day? There are ads for TV Specials on MLK and other civil rights leaders. Veterans Day? I at least hear people mention it and Radio Hosts will mention taking time to "Remember our Veterans of all wars". Columbus Day? I'd be shocked if I hear anyone even mention that it is Columbus Day.
I myself have not been hounded (I'm actually using the Windows 7 RC Dual Booting Kubuntu on my "Main Production" laptop) but I have noticed an inordinate amount of WGA on XP machines. At least 8 different friends/family members have asked me "Why is this WGA thing always coming up" in the last six months. These are reasonably competent users who are all running whatever OEM version of Windows came installed on their boxes. One friend of mine happened to have it come up 4 times in that span while I was at his house. He had me watch him click through it to make sure he did it right. It keeps coming back. I have no idea why.
None of them have anything to hide but they are starting to feel a little spooked by it. "Does Microsoft think I stole this software or what?" is a common question regarding it. Two of them have at least considered trying Linux out solely because of the feeling that they are being watched too closely. Two users are a drop in the bucket but I think my anecdote is a bit telling in regards to what type of effects their stupid WGA is having.
I've found it to be an unstable mess on the two machines I've attempted to run it on. Actually, the problems were probably driver related but that doesn't make it any less of a problem, seeing as how I tried drivers from the manufacturer and ones included on the Windows 7 Disc.
Full Disclosure: I am a "Libertarian". I don't really like to be pigeonholed into one of a handful of names for political parties but "Libertarian" right now best describes most of my philosophies.
That said, a lot of the other Libertarians I have met have views that really disturb me, particularily involving "social services". Most Libertarians are against social services because they don't feel they should be forced to pay for helping others and that it should be done through private donations and the like. It sounds reasonable, it really does.....but few of the Libertarians I have encountered have taken the step forward to donate time or money to any types of charitable causes or organizations. I myself get out and get a bit active. One of the things I do in my spare time is cobble together still useful PC's (Pentium IV or better) and install them for children with parents who don't have the means to provide them with one. I've done 17 of them in the past few years (I also continue to support them...at no cost of course). Doesn't sound like much but if everyone that complained about the government "stealing their money to give to worthless slugs" actually did pitch in to help the less fortunate in their communities perhaps we could get greatly reduce the need for Government sponsored programs. Giving alms directly to the poor is a much more cost effective (And rewarding, I may add from my own experience) option for distributing wealth. Until people step up and actually DO IT, it is not even remotely a viable option.
I don't know if this holds true for all Mac laptops, but I recently replaced a DC-IN board on a couple year old Mac Laptop. I was amazed as how much aluminum was inside, as I had only really taken apart cheap PC Laptops in the last 6 or so years. It gives the Laptop a more robust frame and feels like it is just made better.
I would recommend avoiding Tokien, at least the Hobbit/LoTR books. I'd imagine that this class is an elective. If a kid decides to take a Sci-Fi/Fantasy elective in school it is likely that they have at least a passing interest in those genres and LoTR seems to be the most common launch point for kids getting into Fantasy. Having the kids read and discuss books that they probably have already read, discussed, AND watched the movies probably isn't going to teach them much. Try to introduce them to some great pieces of Sci-Fi fantasy that the majority of them probably cannot quote line for line.
I'm reasonably sure I could set this up with group policies in about the same amount of time as it would take to set up my personal computer. I'm not sure, but I might also be able to make these changes and apply them to the "Default User" profile on an image (I would assume a 200 desktop environment is using some imaging software) to make the settings I Preferred the defaults for new user accounts when their profiles are set up on the machine.
I used a Windows Vista and thought it felt too slow, with too many blue screens (64-bit version though) for a corporate environment. From what I've experienced thus far with Windows 7, I think I will be comfortable with it in a business setting. We'll see what the final release looks like, though.
I actually think that any entity (Your group of friends, your city, your county, your state) can print it's own money. However, if you are selling goods to the public you must ALSO accept United States Currency and must be able to trade between the two freely back and forth as long as the money is backed by the dollar.
At least one Massachusettes town (Southern Berkshire) prints and circulates its own money. It supposedly helps local business flourish in a way I don't understand. Basically you go to the Bank, exchange $90 US Dollars for $100 Berkshires and can spend those Berkshires in place of Dollars at any participating business. And no, I'm not making this up. A quick search for Southern Berkshire may shed more light on this, if you are interested.
Lying is worse, easily. Anyone can make a bad decision based on some information that they had at the time. People of all ages, backgrounds, and levels of intellect do things based on information they have. A lot of the times, everything works out. Some of the time, it doesn't. Mistakes can be made. We are all only human. Deceiving a person or entire population is disgusting. I really don't know for sure if we were lied to about Iraq or not, call me naive, whatever...but I'd feel a lot better knowing we acted on what we thought was good information and were simply wrong.
Sadly, in my experience people seem to lie their asses off about even the most mundane of things. If that behavior is pretty much par for the course in our society, you grow to expect and almost accept it from our leaders. Some stupid examples..... Back when I was doing tech support, I'd constantly have users from the bottom to upper management lie to me about why their computer was in the current state. "No, my laptop just stopped working. No, I didn't dump anything on the keyboard. That sticky stuff all over the thing? I have no idea what that is." "My Computer is doing wacky stuff. Nope. I didn't visit www.pornandmalware.biz since you told me not to. Why is it in my history? It probably is from way back or something." Just tell the fricking truth.
What are these humongous icons and doo-dads that you speak of? The task bar icons? Go to taskbar, right click, properties, "use Small Icons". Desktop Icons? Right Click on Desktop, View, Small Icons. Excessive junk on the start menu? Right click on start menu, properties, customize, turn the stuff off. "Widgets" or whatever they want to put on your desktop? I'm not exactly sure. My Windows 7 install has them turned off. Spurious animations? Turn off Windows Aero.
I'm not trying to be a jerk, but it's quite clear you either never actually tried using Windows 7 or you installed it, LOLed at the default settings, and declared it as crap. I'm guessing you are at a skill level of at least moderate, probably advanced in terms of computer related stuff...so changing the look of the desktop to suit your needs does not seem like a very daunting task. What desktop manager have you used in the past where you didn't do anything to change it's appearance from the default install? Windows XP? OSX? KDE? I had to tweak all of those to my liking as well.
Bash Windows 7 if you want, but Bash it for important things.... don't bash it for default superficial settings that would take a one time investment of 10 minutes to make look the way you want.
The EU, America, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and others I think can be trusted.
The key part of that phrase is "I think" can be trusted. I knew FAR too many people (more than a few of whom are usually reasonably intelligent) who honestly just wanted "To Nuke their asses" after 9/11. People I know != People with the responsibility of making such a decision. How many more terrorists attacks would it take to start seeing a larger segment of the population pushing the idea? 1, 2, 5, 10, thousands?
Mr. OrangeTide....I admit it. You caught me embellishing.;) In my defense, The price is still cheaper than going to the local Barnes and Noble and if I have decided to grab a particular book I usually don't go to the used book store in my area. It takes some digging around and is a big time crap shoot in terms of getting what I want. Basically, it is one of those time/money tradeoffs.
I would like to say that I wasn't suggesting anything about Amazon's delivery though. I have not even looked at a Kindle or the like yet because I may be tempted to drop the money to get one. I'd like to see the price come down a little before I consider it so I find it easier to steer clear lest I fall victim to one of my all too frequent fairly high dollar impulse buys.
You can no longer have "quick launch" buttons, you can only "pin" items to the taskbar (and they're HUGE), and then they slide around like crazy depending on the order in which you launch things.
Right click on taskbar
Hover on "Toolbars"
Click "Links"
Add Quick Launch Items, unpin items from the task bar if you choose
I believe this is what you are looking for. The functionality is still there.
Fixed it for you. I honestly did not know that IE6 still held the highest share of the market. IE7/IE8 aren't great, but they are a heck of a lot better than IE6.
Then again, they should be concerned over Vista's performance. If people's games run like shit on Vista and they hear something about this Ubuntu thing with some "Wine" running their games, they just might go ahead and try it. Maybe their games still run like shit but they think the rest of the experience is awesome. Then they are in a situation where it runs like Shit on Vista, runs like Shit on Ubuntu, but Ubuntu is a better overall platform for other things.
Ensuring that the gaming (and overall) experience in Windows as good as possible should be their goal. For most people, if their computer works well almost all the time they are not going to even consider switching to a different OS. Make it painful, bloated, Malware infested, and slow and you'll have people getting curious about the alternatives.
One advantage of pirating a book is the "I want to read something right now." I read a lot and tend to keep my personal library of real books well stocked, but on occasion it will be 9:00 PM when any bookstore reasonably close is closed/will close shortly and I get a hankering for a specific book. Right now, I'll buy an Ebook copy. Frankly, I find myself doing this more and more as Ebook copies are often 1/2 to 1/3 the price at a book store. That and I am starting to have issues of physical space to keep those physical books. If the book I was going to buy in an Ebook format is not available (I'd say 50% of the time), I hit the torrents, where I usually find it. Now of course I could hit the torrents for all of my books but I would really rather have the author profit from my enjoyment of their work.
I prefer physical books but I have adapted quite well to reading on my computer.
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The Windows 7 CD certainly weighs a couple of grams and is guaranteed to blow. I don't see what your gripe is...
So uhm, did you put your copy up as a "Buy it Now" or as an Auction on Ebay? ;)
Ahhh, well said. Your first post about this was a little abrasive (and apparently modded down) but I understand your side of things much better now. However, I still disagree with you to a point. The Nobel Prizes are an international issue. For something like this I think seeing points of view from Obama's home country (US) AS WELL as other countries is quite helpful. Right now in the States you have a lot of people who absolutely love Obama, and a decent amount of people (obviously the staunch conservatives) who think he is the Anti-Christ who plans on canceling the next Presidential Election to declare the First American Empire a la Chancellor Palpatine. I have a hard time talking Obama with most of the people I know because half of them end up calling me a "God Damned Socialist Hippy" and the other half end up calling me an "Idiotic Backwards thinking Right Wing nutjob." because I maintain a pretty neutral stance (And no, "He's better than Bush" doesn't cut it.) I think outside sources can give us a slightly different perspective by being on the outside looking in.
One thing I have noticed is that casual users often get roped into purchasing a copy of Office 200x with new computers. Most recently I have seen a lot of Legit Office 2003/2007 Basic, Small Business, and PROFESSIONAL on home computers. In other words, not even the reasonably priced "Home and Student" version. The kinds of people I have seen drop $350 on Pro are usually typing documents in word, MAYBE using a spreadsheet to keep track of something very simple, and possibly occasional use of Powerpoint if they have kids in school or are taking classes themselves. Obviously Open Office would work well, but if this "Demo With Ads" that does not expire is preloaded perhaps they won't fall for the upsell. Best Buy is never going to recommend Open Office, but hopefully a few of their sales people will listen to what someone intends to do with their computer and agree the free version is good enough. Unlikely, but still...
I see you are writing an E-Mail that involves bragging to multiple friends about your new "Hummer H2" vehicle.
Would you like help with...
Locating Male Enhancement Pills on the Internet?
Getting a list of Psychoanalysts in your area?
Being connected with the your areas hottest singles?
Purchasing a copy of Microsoft 2010 UUUULTIMATE?
Most of the Headhunters I went to asked if they could tweak my resume. Most of them added things that were (at best) stretching the truth. Some of them did do some things (formatting, wording) that I liked which I integrated into my permanent resume. A few times after not looking into their changes enough I got called into interviews and had them ask about my experience with . Those moments were quite embaressing and needless to say I did not land those positions. I'd call the Headhunter and tell them not to have that on my resume and they would say "I thought you knew Java. OH! Javascript! I'm sorry. I thought they were the same" or something of the like. Ugh.
The last headhunter I dealt with got me a job in about two days. I was hurting for a job and was pretty darn happy at the speed in which he got me into his office, got me in to see the client, and got me employed. It was going to pay $37/hour. Nice. I went to my first week on the job, liked the environment, and generally got along fairly well with the people. My first check was a live check (until they got direct deposit set up) and I eagerly awaited it, as I was getting pretty low on money. I opened it and....wow. What did I claim on my taxes for it to be this low? Hmmmm, taxes don't seem that out of whack. Maybe I didn't get paid for the entire week yet. No, all my hours are on there. What is this? Hourly rate....$21.00.
I called the Headhunter and him and his secretary both "Clearly Remembered" that he said Twenty One and would not have said Thirty Seven. He told me I could ask the company I was working for if they wanted to pay me more, but he guessed that would upset them at this point. I cursed at myself for making a handshake agreement, sent out some more resumes, but went back to work. After a month of being there my boss sat me down to ask me what I thought of the place. I was doing a really nice job and they were really happy with me. I told him that I liked the company and figured I'd just throw out the information about the headhunter and my salary. He just about hit the roof. He grabbed the contract out of his file cabinet, called the headhunter, and asked him about my pay. Apparently he had a written contract indicating how much the Headhunter would be payed and how much the employee would pay. Those numbers were more in line with what I had expected. By the next week after some phone calls between my employer and the Head Hunter, I was out of my contract and hired on as a "permanent" employee at $37/hour but with no health benefits until I had a year with the company. I was really pleased at how the company went to bat for me despite being there for only a month. I'm in my fourth year with them now. ;)
Just out of curiosity, what News Sources do you find reliable and relatively unbiased? I'm an American and find it pretty easy to recognize the BBC as one of the best news organizations in the world...
Seriously, I hate when they release that many patches at once. I'd rather have all Windows one day, all Office a few days later or something. Two of the more recent big patch days, I had Windows problems (Made some computers slow to a crawl) and Office (Your software is illegal..what? They are all legit copies) problems on different computers strewn throughout the office. 16 people all demanding of me that they need to get their work done RIGHT NOW is rough to deal with. Of course, I could stagger the computers which get updated...but that isn't the point. ;)
Who gets off on Columbus Day, anyway? My wife and a friend of mine are both (public) teachers. They don't have off on Monday. My mother in law works at a bank (Not a teller...in fact...I'm not quite sure what she does but it is some normal operations thing) and she doesn't have off. If at least some Banks and Public Schools are in session, who has off? Postal Workers?
It is easily the least advertised of the Federal Holiday's. Memorial and Labor Day? I Always hear about them as a large number of businesses are closed. Martin Luther King Day? There are ads for TV Specials on MLK and other civil rights leaders. Veterans Day? I at least hear people mention it and Radio Hosts will mention taking time to "Remember our Veterans of all wars". Columbus Day? I'd be shocked if I hear anyone even mention that it is Columbus Day.
I myself have not been hounded (I'm actually using the Windows 7 RC Dual Booting Kubuntu on my "Main Production" laptop) but I have noticed an inordinate amount of WGA on XP machines. At least 8 different friends/family members have asked me "Why is this WGA thing always coming up" in the last six months. These are reasonably competent users who are all running whatever OEM version of Windows came installed on their boxes. One friend of mine happened to have it come up 4 times in that span while I was at his house. He had me watch him click through it to make sure he did it right. It keeps coming back. I have no idea why.
None of them have anything to hide but they are starting to feel a little spooked by it. "Does Microsoft think I stole this software or what?" is a common question regarding it. Two of them have at least considered trying Linux out solely because of the feeling that they are being watched too closely. Two users are a drop in the bucket but I think my anecdote is a bit telling in regards to what type of effects their stupid WGA is having.
I've found it to be an unstable mess on the two machines I've attempted to run it on. Actually, the problems were probably driver related but that doesn't make it any less of a problem, seeing as how I tried drivers from the manufacturer and ones included on the Windows 7 Disc.
Full Disclosure: I am a "Libertarian". I don't really like to be pigeonholed into one of a handful of names for political parties but "Libertarian" right now best describes most of my philosophies.
That said, a lot of the other Libertarians I have met have views that really disturb me, particularily involving "social services". Most Libertarians are against social services because they don't feel they should be forced to pay for helping others and that it should be done through private donations and the like. It sounds reasonable, it really does.....but few of the Libertarians I have encountered have taken the step forward to donate time or money to any types of charitable causes or organizations. I myself get out and get a bit active. One of the things I do in my spare time is cobble together still useful PC's (Pentium IV or better) and install them for children with parents who don't have the means to provide them with one. I've done 17 of them in the past few years (I also continue to support them...at no cost of course). Doesn't sound like much but if everyone that complained about the government "stealing their money to give to worthless slugs" actually did pitch in to help the less fortunate in their communities perhaps we could get greatly reduce the need for Government sponsored programs. Giving alms directly to the poor is a much more cost effective (And rewarding, I may add from my own experience) option for distributing wealth. Until people step up and actually DO IT, it is not even remotely a viable option.
I don't know if this holds true for all Mac laptops, but I recently replaced a DC-IN board on a couple year old Mac Laptop. I was amazed as how much aluminum was inside, as I had only really taken apart cheap PC Laptops in the last 6 or so years. It gives the Laptop a more robust frame and feels like it is just made better.
I wish my PC laptops were like that.
I would recommend avoiding Tokien, at least the Hobbit/LoTR books. I'd imagine that this class is an elective. If a kid decides to take a Sci-Fi/Fantasy elective in school it is likely that they have at least a passing interest in those genres and LoTR seems to be the most common launch point for kids getting into Fantasy. Having the kids read and discuss books that they probably have already read, discussed, AND watched the movies probably isn't going to teach them much. Try to introduce them to some great pieces of Sci-Fi fantasy that the majority of them probably cannot quote line for line.
I'm reasonably sure I could set this up with group policies in about the same amount of time as it would take to set up my personal computer. I'm not sure, but I might also be able to make these changes and apply them to the "Default User" profile on an image (I would assume a 200 desktop environment is using some imaging software) to make the settings I Preferred the defaults for new user accounts when their profiles are set up on the machine.
I used a Windows Vista and thought it felt too slow, with too many blue screens (64-bit version though) for a corporate environment. From what I've experienced thus far with Windows 7, I think I will be comfortable with it in a business setting. We'll see what the final release looks like, though.
I'm thinking more like 640. That should be enough for anybody. ;)
I actually think that any entity (Your group of friends, your city, your county, your state) can print it's own money. However, if you are selling goods to the public you must ALSO accept United States Currency and must be able to trade between the two freely back and forth as long as the money is backed by the dollar.
At least one Massachusettes town (Southern Berkshire) prints and circulates its own money. It supposedly helps local business flourish in a way I don't understand. Basically you go to the Bank, exchange $90 US Dollars for $100 Berkshires and can spend those Berkshires in place of Dollars at any participating business. And no, I'm not making this up. A quick search for Southern Berkshire may shed more light on this, if you are interested.
Lying is worse, easily. Anyone can make a bad decision based on some information that they had at the time. People of all ages, backgrounds, and levels of intellect do things based on information they have. A lot of the times, everything works out. Some of the time, it doesn't. Mistakes can be made. We are all only human. Deceiving a person or entire population is disgusting. I really don't know for sure if we were lied to about Iraq or not, call me naive, whatever...but I'd feel a lot better knowing we acted on what we thought was good information and were simply wrong.
Sadly, in my experience people seem to lie their asses off about even the most mundane of things. If that behavior is pretty much par for the course in our society, you grow to expect and almost accept it from our leaders. Some stupid examples..... Back when I was doing tech support, I'd constantly have users from the bottom to upper management lie to me about why their computer was in the current state. "No, my laptop just stopped working. No, I didn't dump anything on the keyboard. That sticky stuff all over the thing? I have no idea what that is." "My Computer is doing wacky stuff. Nope. I didn't visit www.pornandmalware.biz since you told me not to. Why is it in my history? It probably is from way back or something." Just tell the fricking truth.
What are these humongous icons and doo-dads that you speak of? The task bar icons? Go to taskbar, right click, properties, "use Small Icons". Desktop Icons? Right Click on Desktop, View, Small Icons. Excessive junk on the start menu? Right click on start menu, properties, customize, turn the stuff off. "Widgets" or whatever they want to put on your desktop? I'm not exactly sure. My Windows 7 install has them turned off. Spurious animations? Turn off Windows Aero.
I'm not trying to be a jerk, but it's quite clear you either never actually tried using Windows 7 or you installed it, LOLed at the default settings, and declared it as crap. I'm guessing you are at a skill level of at least moderate, probably advanced in terms of computer related stuff...so changing the look of the desktop to suit your needs does not seem like a very daunting task. What desktop manager have you used in the past where you didn't do anything to change it's appearance from the default install? Windows XP? OSX? KDE? I had to tweak all of those to my liking as well.
Bash Windows 7 if you want, but Bash it for important things.... don't bash it for default superficial settings that would take a one time investment of 10 minutes to make look the way you want.
The EU, America, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and others I think can be trusted.
The key part of that phrase is "I think" can be trusted. I knew FAR too many people (more than a few of whom are usually reasonably intelligent) who honestly just wanted "To Nuke their asses" after 9/11. People I know != People with the responsibility of making such a decision. How many more terrorists attacks would it take to start seeing a larger segment of the population pushing the idea? 1, 2, 5, 10, thousands?
Mr. OrangeTide....I admit it. You caught me embellishing. ;) In my defense, The price is still cheaper than going to the local Barnes and Noble and if I have decided to grab a particular book I usually don't go to the used book store in my area. It takes some digging around and is a big time crap shoot in terms of getting what I want. Basically, it is one of those time/money tradeoffs.
I would like to say that I wasn't suggesting anything about Amazon's delivery though. I have not even looked at a Kindle or the like yet because I may be tempted to drop the money to get one. I'd like to see the price come down a little before I consider it so I find it easier to steer clear lest I fall victim to one of my all too frequent fairly high dollar impulse buys.
You can no longer have "quick launch" buttons, you can only "pin" items to the taskbar (and they're HUGE), and then they slide around like crazy depending on the order in which you launch things.
Right click on taskbar
Hover on "Toolbars"
Click "Links"
Add Quick Launch Items, unpin items from the task bar if you choose
I believe this is what you are looking for. The functionality is still there.
The version graph is pretty frightening too
Fixed it for you. I honestly did not know that IE6 still held the highest share of the market. IE7/IE8 aren't great, but they are a heck of a lot better than IE6.
Then again, they should be concerned over Vista's performance. If people's games run like shit on Vista and they hear something about this Ubuntu thing with some "Wine" running their games, they just might go ahead and try it. Maybe their games still run like shit but they think the rest of the experience is awesome. Then they are in a situation where it runs like Shit on Vista, runs like Shit on Ubuntu, but Ubuntu is a better overall platform for other things.
Ensuring that the gaming (and overall) experience in Windows as good as possible should be their goal. For most people, if their computer works well almost all the time they are not going to even consider switching to a different OS. Make it painful, bloated, Malware infested, and slow and you'll have people getting curious about the alternatives.
One advantage of pirating a book is the "I want to read something right now." I read a lot and tend to keep my personal library of real books well stocked, but on occasion it will be 9:00 PM when any bookstore reasonably close is closed/will close shortly and I get a hankering for a specific book. Right now, I'll buy an Ebook copy. Frankly, I find myself doing this more and more as Ebook copies are often 1/2 to 1/3 the price at a book store. That and I am starting to have issues of physical space to keep those physical books. If the book I was going to buy in an Ebook format is not available (I'd say 50% of the time), I hit the torrents, where I usually find it. Now of course I could hit the torrents for all of my books but I would really rather have the author profit from my enjoyment of their work.
I prefer physical books but I have adapted quite well to reading on my computer.