I'll have to see what actually gets put into text books to judge, as some of this could be sensationalism, but it is suggested that they intend to make slavery sound less evil than it was. To tell the truth, I don't think current school texts make it sound as evil as it TRULY was. We took/purchased human beings from the homes, tied them down in the lower decks of boats to wallow in their own shit/piss for months, and then sold them as property to a person who may or may not intend to treat them brutally. We eventually came to our senses and stopped that activity...the freed slaves were given "almost human" status where they weren't allowed to use some of the facilities that the real people got to use. It is hard to describe in words what a fucking travesty slavery was.
Next we come across the topic of evolution. People have a very large misunderstanding of the word "Theory" in terms of scientific meaning. Most creationists I have met thump the "It is just a theory" argument. They refuse to accept something which is, for all intents and purposes, backed by enough evidence that it is a fact. Even the fucking Pope said "Yeah, this evolution thing certainly looks to be the truth. Just don't go saying anything about the soul being involved in this stuff and we won't argue about it anymore. This isn't simply slanting history, this is denying people the right to learn about important, factual, scientific theories. That is frightening as hell.
I'm just going to throw an idea out there for the sake of conversation. Mind you I don't necessarily believe this.
Let's say for a moment that Bill Gates TRULY wants to help technology progress for the benefit of all mankind. Maybe he truly believes that the best way to do this is for your entire technological experience...from your Operating System, to your Office Suite, to your Database, to your development platform, to your web browser, to your search engine, to your gaming console...to be under the control of a single company. After all, if every computer in the world is pretty much the same (in terms of OS/Software) it makes it easier for the average person. They can reasonable expect to see the same thing on their work computer, home computer, and neighbors computer. Without the general public flocking to tech, much needed capital to develop new technology simply won't be there. While most of the Slashdot crowd probably would say that advancement would be more rapid with open standards, open source, and variety/competition....that is more of an educated opinion than it is a hard fact. It seems obvious but truly...there is no way to really tell if tech would be more advanced or less advanced if Microsoft never existed.
So...yeah. Your assessment is probably correct but I think an argument can be made that Gates isn't a sociopath...he just has a different opinion on what is good for the Industry.
Another thing that is worth checking out is medication given out for treatment. The pharmacists have more to do with this than doctors but both of them are somewhat responsible for making sure drug x doesn't interact wrong with drug y. I know Walgreens and other large pharmacies have computers that look at the patient's drug history and automatically compare it to a new drug and mark potential interactions. I'm sure it works most of the time but it can fail. There is also the case where most of the medications are from the same pharmacy while the new medication is straight from the hospital following surgery.
For some reason friends and family members call me for medical advice or information. Mostly I double check their meds. I actually "figured out" three cases where the drugs should not have been prescribed together. One was especially important because an antibiotic the hospital sent my mom home with after a major procedure happened to keep her crazy pills from working. She started acting batshit insane. Everyone just thought "Oh no, she's going through another episode". I got to thinking, went to google, typed in the names of her antibiotic and crazy pills and immediately found "DO NOT TAKE TOGETHER" plastered on doesn't of sites. It took me all of 3 minutes to pretty much know the two shouldn't be taken together. How nobody involved in her treatment didn't do a quick check is disturbing. And no, i don't remember the names of the medications involved. That is how little knowledge I possessed.
As far as normal diagnosis goes, I had a situation where my sister in law had, uhm, some female problems. She'd been to the doctor three times and never had it taken care of. She didn't know what to do and knew I was "good with medical stuff". She told me what her problems were. First, the years of fantasizing about a me/girlfriend/girlfriends sister threesome (we weren't married at the time) died a quick death. Second, I typed the terms into google. Every hit on the page was the same condition. It was a rare bacterial infection (not sexually transmitted...having to do with the bacterial flora) in there. She called her doctor and asked if they had tested for it. They hadn't. She went and got tested and she had the condition. They treated it. End of story. After the doctor had come back a second time with the same problem, wouldn't you take the two minutes to hit a search engine if you weren't sure? C'mon.
I'm sure there are cases where the online medical information does more harm than good. After all, I work on computers and the things people come to me trying to say can be so ridiculous...I can't image what doctors have to hear. Still, I think having a populous that is able to get information about their diagnosis and treatment from a RELIABLE source, that is great. No matter how good the doctor, pharmacist, or system put in place....there is always a chance something could slip through the cracks. That something could turn out to be fatal. If the information is out there it is something good to follow up on.
Yeah, for some reason a computer running (or some other similar noise like a box fan or air purifier) helps me sleep. I think it is because that noise is constant low, slow and steady hum and it drowns out more abrupt and sharper noises like cats getting into stuff, people on the street yelling, police sirens, my wife getting up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, or whatever else. Sleeping with nothing running where I can hear every little other noise really bugs me.
It was a small point of contention with my wife until she realized it seemed to drawn me out on the nights when I snore.
XP SP2 did seem stable, but now when I compare it to Windows 7, it was really buggy. I've been using Windows 7 since the Beta and the only time I had problems was early on with a Toshiba laptop running the 64-bit version. Toshiba eventually released a BIOS update that allegedly would solve that problem...but I had gotten rid of that laptop by that point. I did try running Vista for awhile but had all sorts of issues with it.
Compared to others around here I am not that big of a Linux fan. Don't get me wrong, I do really like Linux but I am not as vested in it as others. Back when I was using XP (SP2 and SP3) I probably was using Linux 60% of the time and XP 40% of the time. Since I became acclimated to Windows 7, I've probably shifted to 25% Linux/75% Windows (Mind you I work at a place that is almost exclusively Microsoft so that has a big impact on what OS I want to use when.) Windows 7 is responsive, sleep mode works properly, the interface is nice, it hardly ever crashes, and it doesn't have to be rebooted all the time. Right now the Windows 7 machine I am on has an uptime of 39 days. Yes, that is pretty standard for Linux but in my experience...not for XP.
I truly believe that Microsoft's newest offering is its most stable since the DOS days.
I remember having problems during the XP SP1 to XP SP2 transition, but that is long enough ago that I don't recall how severe or frequent the problems were. As recent as last week I was trying to apply SP3 to an XP SP2 box and it simply failed. I've seen this issue quite a bit every since SP3 was released. I think it is probably worth noting that many of the computers I was trying to apply SP3 to had some pretty bad malware/virus infections so I'm guessing the problems I have experienced are more of the "This computer has holes punched in its registry and system files missing" than a "SP3 really sucks" type of issue.
I dropped Cable about 8 years ago but was going to get it again two weeks ago so I can watch some basketball and baseball games....those types of things you either catch live or you don't watch. They couldn't run the cable into my living room so I told them to forget it. But that isn't the point.
I have fired up Sopcast, Justin.TV, and whatever other pirate streaming sites I have found and watched sports events on there. If I get 3-4 games out of a single broadcaster, I'll usually toss them a few bucks if they have a "Donate to help keep up the stream" fund. If I am willing to pay people to provide it for me illegally, I certainly would pay to provide it for me legally. Unfortunately in most cases (NCAA Basketball Tournament being the exception) nobody in interested in providing this.
Note: MLB does have streaming Baseball, but you can't get your local team even when they are away...so....it is useless to me. I'm not a big enough fan that I just want to watch random games.
Yeah, who defines "Porn" is the biggest problem. Some people won't consider anything but hardcore anal penetration to be porn. Some people will think exposed breasts are perfectly acceptable but an exposed vagina is not. Some people will think the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition is soft porn and should be on the xxx domain. Some people will think any girl wearing a skirt above the knees will destroy the children. Some will think the same if a woman exposes her fucking face to the public.
I'm thinking I'm in the "Breasts, Not vagina" type group but I guarantee there are enough people out there that will make a push for higher standards for a "Porn Free" site.
I don't know. Sex was pretty fun when I was a teenager, back in the days when I wasn't "Supposed To" be having sex. Now I'm a tad older, married, and the fact that I'm having sex doesn't need to be a secret. Frankly, it is a lot more fun! Of course, that has a lot to do with the quality of the other party.
Yeah, sex is supposed to get boring once you are married, but there are advantages. I'm not dealing with young women who will only get involved in one position, are against using hands, mouths, oils, toys, chocolate, whipped cream, whatever. I don't have to wonder what the other person would like me to do or if they are enjoying what we are doing. I don't have to deal with the "my parents are home, how about yours? Damn. How about your car? Your brother has it? How about in the park? It's snowing? I don't care!" type arrangements that come with taboo sex.
I had a similar experience. I got an A in organic and I didn't even show up to get the syllabus (just copied it from someone I knew in the class). I only showed up for Exams. I just happen to learn better reading books later at night. I get absolutely nothing out of listening to someone talk for an hour at 8:00 AM.
Some classes tried to force me to attend....Zoology to be exact. They had random quizzes in lecture. I tried showing up on occasion near the end of class a few times to take them but didn't do well as the quizzes had no bearing on the material! The questions were like "What did the Professor say to the kid that left 5 minutes early last class?" Seriously? If they would have even been material supplemental to the course that wouldn't appear on tests and wasn't in the textbook it would have made sense to me. This seemed like "I am the Professor and you WILL pay attention to me." type of ego stroking.
I work for a smaller manufacturing company that employs maybe 350 people. I can say without a doubt that the President of the company (I'm assuming the highest paid person) earns his keep. A customer is really pissed off and wants to talk to the man in charge? No problem. He gets transferred right to the big boss. I've been in the room when he had to take a call like that and I can tell you that I was amazed at how quickly he was able to turn the Customer's mood from exceedingly belligerent to reasonably satisfied. I'm pretty sure I couldn't have done it and if I had to deal with that sort of thing on a regular basis, I would be looking for a different job. Our President does a lot of other important things throughout the day, but his willingness to be the one to take the abuse and sometimes turn it to our advantage is something that has really impressed me.
A friend of mine is actually a cable guy and he would do it for me if I REALLY wanted it, but there are some issues in this area about "All Cable work in this area has to be done through this office." He actually got reprimanded for doing something for one of our friends that was outside "His jurisdiction"....even though it was done during his personal time. I think it has something to do with the fact that Time Warner still uses a decent amount of contractors.
Yeah, I've watched sports on myp2p.eu, Justin.TV, and various other sites. Between problems with quality, broadcasts getting shut down, broadcasters saying they will air a certain game and ending up leaving their TV on "The Food Channel" and various other problems, I figured I'd rather just watch it legit. It seems that whenever I want to see a game I spend more time hopping around channels due to some problem than I do actually watching.
I've been disconnected for...wow....about 8 years. For most of that time it was just OTA Television but more recently, Netflix, Hulu, and whatever else have all become part of my viewing habits.
The one thing that I miss is being able to watch the local baseball team. They are not on OTA television. I'm not a HUGE baseball fan but sitting down to watch a game twice a week can be enjoyable. I paid $5 for a month of MLB's streaming service. It told me that local games would be blacked out for video but they would have an audio stream. Fair enough. So I get the Away games on streaming. Nope. Away games for my local team are also blacked out. Needless to say I didn't renew my subscription. I own a damn radio.
This year, I compared how much I was paying for cable internet to how much I would have to pay for internet with HD Cable. Ok. $30 a month difference. I'm sure there are some things on History/Discovery/Others that I might want to watch in addition to sporting events. My wife thinks it is a good idea so we call the landlord to see if we can put a cable jack in the living room and then call Cable to get it installed.
A guy saunters in a few days later and says he can't get a jack there because it would require drilling. I explain that the place I rent for gave it the ok and grab my phone in case he would like to talk to them. Nope. He won't do it. He tells me he can run a cable across the floor from our existing jack, but he won't staple it down or secure it. He'll just leave it sitting there. I said Fuck it and had him leave. Looks like I won't be getting cable until I decide to buy a house....if I even want it at that point.
I have never owned a Mac. I rarely end up having a chance to mess around with them but last year two people with 12" Aluminum Powerbooks had hardware failures. I do a lot of side jobs fixing broken laptops so I've taken apart my fair share of various PC laptops. I told them I could probably help them. Both just needed the Power-In board replaced.
I was stunned by how well put together the Mac laptops felt compared to the average HP/Toshiba/Dell. Even the higher end Tecra line and the like seem like toys in comparison. I seriously considered buying a Mac Laptop after taking those two machines apart.
Just curious...what about OS X and Windows 7 makes them unusable? If you really find both of them unusable I think there might be another choice out there. I heard that you can pretty much configure it the way you want, have a choice between any number of user interfaces, and don't have to pay a cent for it. I've been told that a lot of people write a huge variety of applications for that other OS and give them away for free as well.
You quoted the parent, but didn't quote the part you were actually responding to. What did you think was going to happen?!? I followed you, but you can't expect every idiot with mod-points follow a thread unless you really spell it out for them.
I'm so confused. What are you talking about? What's a thread? Fuck it, I'm modding you down.
A good friend of mine is an Auto Mechanic (actually, now a manager of a shop) and he is routinely ignored when he suggests maintenance type stuff. People just want their car to work NOW. Some nebulous threat of their engine not lasting as long as it could doesn't phase them. This is similar to IT, where people just want to open the LoLCat pictures NOW. Some nebulous threat about getting some malware down the road usually does not phase them.
On another note, Last year I did a side job for an ex coworker of mine who is unemployed. Her computer was infested with malware. It came from some piece of software that you can play flash games through and dumps all sorts of nasty stuff through Internet Explorer. I just wiped the thing and gave it back to her. I told her not to install that game software again and I installed Firefox and told her to use that instead of IE. She was unemployed so I didn't charge her.
One week later, she calls again. Her computer is having problems. I stop by and what do you know...she INSTALLED THE SAME FUCKING GAME THING. I wiped it again, told her if she did it again I would have to charge her. A week later....SAME FUCKING THING. Unreal. Wiped again, this time I charge her. What do you know...a week later she calls and she is sobbing into the phone because she can't apply for jobs online. I go look and....seriously? AGAIN? Ok, I wipe it this time, charge her, have a seriously long chat with her...she cries about wanting to play games. I show her Yahoo games. She calls AGAIN a month later. At this point I tell her to take it somewhere else. Fuck it. I just didn't want to deal with it. I don't know if she thought I had some hidden agenda that made me not want to let her play her games, but she just wouldn't listen. Absolutely incredible.
One reason I can think of is to have a functioning 64-bit operating system to shove more RAM in. Not a big deal for most users but as CAD/3D modeling programs become larger, Engineering computers are better served by getting over the 3GB limit. The Windows 7 UAC control has gone over way better than "No, You can't install anything because I won't give you Admin Rights" in XP. Also, I have found Windows 7 to be more stable than Windows XP.
I work a smaller manufacturing business and we do not have Volume Licensing or anything like that, but every new computer we buy (new employee, replacing broken systems) we get it with Windows 7. We don't have very many of them at this point (Maybe a dozen?) but from that small sample size I've seen a lot less of random things breaking.
Out of curiosity, can you make Single Sign On work for IETab?
Here is the issue where I work. We use Sharepoint. Now, most of the Sharepoint functionality will work with Firefox, but the instant it starts asking for things like Username, Password, and Domain I have lost 90% of the users. For some reason unknown to me when I ask them what their user name and password is they start handing over home E-mail login information or I'll just get met with a blank stare. Even if the password is saved in the box after the first time they log in....they'll just change the crap randomly instead of hitting ok.
This in itself might be a hurdle we could overcome but with the barrage of "IS IT THE SAME INTERNET AS THIS ONE?" type questions added in it is just too much of a strain on my sanity. At least we have at least IE7, mostly IE8 on all of the systems. I do have to say that since IE8 came out the number of Malware/Virus infections has gone down significantly.
The same can be said of alcohol. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that alcoholism is more prominent in the United States than gambling addiction. Alcoholics cause all sorts of problems. Not being able to hold a job, being absentee parents/spouses, being verbally or physically abusive, endangering others by driving around drunk, lying and stealing for money to buy booze... Yet...alcohol is very legal and very accepted almost everywhere in the US and the government certainly enjoys the "Sin Tax" they pull from the sale of alcohol.
The problem? People like to drink. People like to smoke marijuana. People like to gamble. The vast majority of people can enjoy these things without having control of their own lives lost to their vice. This is where personal responsibility comes into play.
I enjoy gambling at times. Some nights when I am bored I'll fire up an online poker site and play in a few $5 tournaments. Maybe I'll lose a few dollars but it is something that I find to be a lot of fun. Lottery Tickets? I guess a scratch off might be kind of fun but the big "Powerball" and such offer practically zero entertainment value. How can the government justify something like Powerball being legal while something actually enjoyable like Online Poker is illegal?
People are going to gamble in some fashion regardless of the legal status of it. Prohibition taught us the same about alcohol. Keeping a ban on online gambling makes no sense to me.
Well, you can just Slipstream the drivers onto a new installation CD/Flash Drive. I'm pretty sure that Microsoft has instructions for slipstreaming on their Web Site. So it isn't like you are left high and dry without a floppy.
Most of the SATA drives up until 2006 or so will load using the standard Windows XP SP3 CD. They started cutting off support for those products after that so obviously they won't be updating the install with new drivers.
ffreeloader - I want to say first that was probably one of the most well thought out, non judgmental, heartfelt pro-life pieces of commentary that I have ever read. This is probably super dorky of me but I keep a file with the best comments I come across on Internet message boards/blogs/whatever. It doesn't have much in it but I will be adding your post to that.
That said, you and I went off into a tangent that is waaaay off topic based off a post that was already off topic. My original point was that even honorable people will not always agree on what is just or honorable. Even with your Eloquent statement you do make the statement that in some cases, such as rape, that abortion may be the lesser of two evils. I'd imagine you would probably agree that abortion is honorable in situations where the woman and fetus both have very little chance of surviving the pregnancy and delivery. There are extremists out there that would disagree with you on that point.
Your experience has told you that the person who chose to keep a child over abortion is happier than the one who made the other choice. I should have continued on about my friend, but she actually did well for herself after that time. Her problems actually compounded themselves as the guy who impregnated her left another parting gift.....herpes. The chips really seemed down for her but she ended up pulling it back together and got a good job, found a wonderful man to marry who accepted the fact that she had an STD, and now has one child with another on the way. She does have a good life. I don't know if she would have gotten there had she had that child. Instead of one child raised by a single parent with no job, she has (will have) brought 2 children into the world in a very stable and loving environment. So....my experience tells me she did do the right thing.
The point of my finishing the tale is that my "range" of what is honorable regarding abortion is just a bit wider than yours and largely based on my experiences, while as I mentioned before your "range" is a bit wider than someone who finds abortion inappropriate under any circumstance. I don't think any of us could really be considered more just than the other, and it is unlikely that we could come up with a definite answer as to which cases of abortion are not dishonorable. And this is just one topic. We could probably argue for days about any number of topics and scenarios without either of us being completely dishonorable in our views.
I consider myself Pro-Choice but not Pro-Abortion if that makes any sense. I do know a female friend of mine who had an abortion. She was in a long term relationship, was on the pill but was still paranoid enough to use a condom for sex every time (I had a short relationship with her so I can verify that). One really bad month she found out her boyfriend was fucking two chicks on the side, her company was laying off over 50% of their staff including her (Income and Insurance going bye bye), and she was pregnant. She was even willing to look past her partner's infidelity but when he found out she was jobless and pregnant he decided it wasn't worth sticking around.
At that point, a child wasn't going to simply cramp her style. She wasn't sure that she could find a place to live, much less find a place suitable for an infant. She was quite young, out of college for only 2 years, and had little savings. After brief stints staying with other friends, she ended up living in my closet (I'm not kidding. The place my wife and I were renting at the time had enormous closets...big enough to put a small mattress in) for at least 11 months out of her 20 month stretch of unemployment. She did decide on an abortion and frankly....I couldn't blame her for her decision. I really have no idea how she could have carried, birthed, and raised a child during that time.
The abortion did have a pretty big impact on her. It has been 7 years now and she will still cry about that decision. She isn't an irresponsible whore who decided that killing unborn children was an excellent form of birth control to keep from cramping her party lifestyle....she was a desperate young woman who was going through a pretty bad time of her life and didn't really have anywhere to turn for help.
Not to mention women who get pregnant after being raped. If my wife was raped and became pregnant because of it, I don't know that either of us could go through with keeping the child. Instead of being a part of her and part of me conceived by two consenting adults that love each other, the child would be a part of her and a part of some psychopath conceived under rather emotionally scarring circumstances. We are financially stable enough to raise a child and we have started to talk about having children, but I am pretty sure we would choose abortion under that type of circumstance.
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I'll have to see what actually gets put into text books to judge, as some of this could be sensationalism, but it is suggested that they intend to make slavery sound less evil than it was. To tell the truth, I don't think current school texts make it sound as evil as it TRULY was. We took/purchased human beings from the homes, tied them down in the lower decks of boats to wallow in their own shit/piss for months, and then sold them as property to a person who may or may not intend to treat them brutally. We eventually came to our senses and stopped that activity...the freed slaves were given "almost human" status where they weren't allowed to use some of the facilities that the real people got to use. It is hard to describe in words what a fucking travesty slavery was.
Next we come across the topic of evolution. People have a very large misunderstanding of the word "Theory" in terms of scientific meaning. Most creationists I have met thump the "It is just a theory" argument. They refuse to accept something which is, for all intents and purposes, backed by enough evidence that it is a fact. Even the fucking Pope said "Yeah, this evolution thing certainly looks to be the truth. Just don't go saying anything about the soul being involved in this stuff and we won't argue about it anymore. This isn't simply slanting history, this is denying people the right to learn about important, factual, scientific theories. That is frightening as hell.
I'm just going to throw an idea out there for the sake of conversation. Mind you I don't necessarily believe this.
Let's say for a moment that Bill Gates TRULY wants to help technology progress for the benefit of all mankind. Maybe he truly believes that the best way to do this is for your entire technological experience...from your Operating System, to your Office Suite, to your Database, to your development platform, to your web browser, to your search engine, to your gaming console...to be under the control of a single company. After all, if every computer in the world is pretty much the same (in terms of OS/Software) it makes it easier for the average person. They can reasonable expect to see the same thing on their work computer, home computer, and neighbors computer. Without the general public flocking to tech, much needed capital to develop new technology simply won't be there. While most of the Slashdot crowd probably would say that advancement would be more rapid with open standards, open source, and variety/competition....that is more of an educated opinion than it is a hard fact. It seems obvious but truly...there is no way to really tell if tech would be more advanced or less advanced if Microsoft never existed.
So...yeah. Your assessment is probably correct but I think an argument can be made that Gates isn't a sociopath...he just has a different opinion on what is good for the Industry.
I'm not sure if I should call you a real fucking dick or my hero. That is pretty awesome. I'll have to give it a try.
Another thing that is worth checking out is medication given out for treatment. The pharmacists have more to do with this than doctors but both of them are somewhat responsible for making sure drug x doesn't interact wrong with drug y. I know Walgreens and other large pharmacies have computers that look at the patient's drug history and automatically compare it to a new drug and mark potential interactions. I'm sure it works most of the time but it can fail. There is also the case where most of the medications are from the same pharmacy while the new medication is straight from the hospital following surgery.
For some reason friends and family members call me for medical advice or information. Mostly I double check their meds. I actually "figured out" three cases where the drugs should not have been prescribed together. One was especially important because an antibiotic the hospital sent my mom home with after a major procedure happened to keep her crazy pills from working. She started acting batshit insane. Everyone just thought "Oh no, she's going through another episode". I got to thinking, went to google, typed in the names of her antibiotic and crazy pills and immediately found "DO NOT TAKE TOGETHER" plastered on doesn't of sites. It took me all of 3 minutes to pretty much know the two shouldn't be taken together. How nobody involved in her treatment didn't do a quick check is disturbing. And no, i don't remember the names of the medications involved. That is how little knowledge I possessed.
As far as normal diagnosis goes, I had a situation where my sister in law had, uhm, some female problems. She'd been to the doctor three times and never had it taken care of. She didn't know what to do and knew I was "good with medical stuff". She told me what her problems were. First, the years of fantasizing about a me/girlfriend/girlfriends sister threesome (we weren't married at the time) died a quick death. Second, I typed the terms into google. Every hit on the page was the same condition. It was a rare bacterial infection (not sexually transmitted...having to do with the bacterial flora) in there. She called her doctor and asked if they had tested for it. They hadn't. She went and got tested and she had the condition. They treated it. End of story. After the doctor had come back a second time with the same problem, wouldn't you take the two minutes to hit a search engine if you weren't sure? C'mon.
I'm sure there are cases where the online medical information does more harm than good. After all, I work on computers and the things people come to me trying to say can be so ridiculous...I can't image what doctors have to hear. Still, I think having a populous that is able to get information about their diagnosis and treatment from a RELIABLE source, that is great. No matter how good the doctor, pharmacist, or system put in place....there is always a chance something could slip through the cracks. That something could turn out to be fatal. If the information is out there it is something good to follow up on.
Yeah, for some reason a computer running (or some other similar noise like a box fan or air purifier) helps me sleep. I think it is because that noise is constant low, slow and steady hum and it drowns out more abrupt and sharper noises like cats getting into stuff, people on the street yelling, police sirens, my wife getting up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, or whatever else. Sleeping with nothing running where I can hear every little other noise really bugs me.
It was a small point of contention with my wife until she realized it seemed to drawn me out on the nights when I snore.
XP SP2 did seem stable, but now when I compare it to Windows 7, it was really buggy. I've been using Windows 7 since the Beta and the only time I had problems was early on with a Toshiba laptop running the 64-bit version. Toshiba eventually released a BIOS update that allegedly would solve that problem...but I had gotten rid of that laptop by that point. I did try running Vista for awhile but had all sorts of issues with it.
Compared to others around here I am not that big of a Linux fan. Don't get me wrong, I do really like Linux but I am not as vested in it as others. Back when I was using XP (SP2 and SP3) I probably was using Linux 60% of the time and XP 40% of the time. Since I became acclimated to Windows 7, I've probably shifted to 25% Linux/75% Windows (Mind you I work at a place that is almost exclusively Microsoft so that has a big impact on what OS I want to use when.) Windows 7 is responsive, sleep mode works properly, the interface is nice, it hardly ever crashes, and it doesn't have to be rebooted all the time. Right now the Windows 7 machine I am on has an uptime of 39 days. Yes, that is pretty standard for Linux but in my experience...not for XP.
I truly believe that Microsoft's newest offering is its most stable since the DOS days.
I remember having problems during the XP SP1 to XP SP2 transition, but that is long enough ago that I don't recall how severe or frequent the problems were. As recent as last week I was trying to apply SP3 to an XP SP2 box and it simply failed. I've seen this issue quite a bit every since SP3 was released. I think it is probably worth noting that many of the computers I was trying to apply SP3 to had some pretty bad malware/virus infections so I'm guessing the problems I have experienced are more of the "This computer has holes punched in its registry and system files missing" than a "SP3 really sucks" type of issue.
I dropped Cable about 8 years ago but was going to get it again two weeks ago so I can watch some basketball and baseball games....those types of things you either catch live or you don't watch. They couldn't run the cable into my living room so I told them to forget it. But that isn't the point.
I have fired up Sopcast, Justin.TV, and whatever other pirate streaming sites I have found and watched sports events on there. If I get 3-4 games out of a single broadcaster, I'll usually toss them a few bucks if they have a "Donate to help keep up the stream" fund. If I am willing to pay people to provide it for me illegally, I certainly would pay to provide it for me legally. Unfortunately in most cases (NCAA Basketball Tournament being the exception) nobody in interested in providing this.
Note: MLB does have streaming Baseball, but you can't get your local team even when they are away...so....it is useless to me. I'm not a big enough fan that I just want to watch random games.
Yeah, who defines "Porn" is the biggest problem. Some people won't consider anything but hardcore anal penetration to be porn. Some people will think exposed breasts are perfectly acceptable but an exposed vagina is not. Some people will think the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition is soft porn and should be on the xxx domain. Some people will think any girl wearing a skirt above the knees will destroy the children. Some will think the same if a woman exposes her fucking face to the public.
I'm thinking I'm in the "Breasts, Not vagina" type group but I guarantee there are enough people out there that will make a push for higher standards for a "Porn Free" site.
I don't know. Sex was pretty fun when I was a teenager, back in the days when I wasn't "Supposed To" be having sex. Now I'm a tad older, married, and the fact that I'm having sex doesn't need to be a secret. Frankly, it is a lot more fun! Of course, that has a lot to do with the quality of the other party.
Yeah, sex is supposed to get boring once you are married, but there are advantages. I'm not dealing with young women who will only get involved in one position, are against using hands, mouths, oils, toys, chocolate, whipped cream, whatever. I don't have to wonder what the other person would like me to do or if they are enjoying what we are doing. I don't have to deal with the "my parents are home, how about yours? Damn. How about your car? Your brother has it? How about in the park? It's snowing? I don't care!" type arrangements that come with taboo sex.
I had a similar experience. I got an A in organic and I didn't even show up to get the syllabus (just copied it from someone I knew in the class). I only showed up for Exams. I just happen to learn better reading books later at night. I get absolutely nothing out of listening to someone talk for an hour at 8:00 AM.
Some classes tried to force me to attend....Zoology to be exact. They had random quizzes in lecture. I tried showing up on occasion near the end of class a few times to take them but didn't do well as the quizzes had no bearing on the material! The questions were like "What did the Professor say to the kid that left 5 minutes early last class?" Seriously? If they would have even been material supplemental to the course that wouldn't appear on tests and wasn't in the textbook it would have made sense to me. This seemed like "I am the Professor and you WILL pay attention to me." type of ego stroking.
I work for a smaller manufacturing company that employs maybe 350 people. I can say without a doubt that the President of the company (I'm assuming the highest paid person) earns his keep. A customer is really pissed off and wants to talk to the man in charge? No problem. He gets transferred right to the big boss. I've been in the room when he had to take a call like that and I can tell you that I was amazed at how quickly he was able to turn the Customer's mood from exceedingly belligerent to reasonably satisfied. I'm pretty sure I couldn't have done it and if I had to deal with that sort of thing on a regular basis, I would be looking for a different job. Our President does a lot of other important things throughout the day, but his willingness to be the one to take the abuse and sometimes turn it to our advantage is something that has really impressed me.
A friend of mine is actually a cable guy and he would do it for me if I REALLY wanted it, but there are some issues in this area about "All Cable work in this area has to be done through this office." He actually got reprimanded for doing something for one of our friends that was outside "His jurisdiction"....even though it was done during his personal time. I think it has something to do with the fact that Time Warner still uses a decent amount of contractors.
Yeah, I've watched sports on myp2p.eu, Justin.TV, and various other sites. Between problems with quality, broadcasts getting shut down, broadcasters saying they will air a certain game and ending up leaving their TV on "The Food Channel" and various other problems, I figured I'd rather just watch it legit. It seems that whenever I want to see a game I spend more time hopping around channels due to some problem than I do actually watching.
I've been disconnected for...wow....about 8 years. For most of that time it was just OTA Television but more recently, Netflix, Hulu, and whatever else have all become part of my viewing habits.
The one thing that I miss is being able to watch the local baseball team. They are not on OTA television. I'm not a HUGE baseball fan but sitting down to watch a game twice a week can be enjoyable. I paid $5 for a month of MLB's streaming service. It told me that local games would be blacked out for video but they would have an audio stream. Fair enough. So I get the Away games on streaming. Nope. Away games for my local team are also blacked out. Needless to say I didn't renew my subscription. I own a damn radio.
This year, I compared how much I was paying for cable internet to how much I would have to pay for internet with HD Cable. Ok. $30 a month difference. I'm sure there are some things on History/Discovery/Others that I might want to watch in addition to sporting events. My wife thinks it is a good idea so we call the landlord to see if we can put a cable jack in the living room and then call Cable to get it installed.
A guy saunters in a few days later and says he can't get a jack there because it would require drilling. I explain that the place I rent for gave it the ok and grab my phone in case he would like to talk to them. Nope. He won't do it. He tells me he can run a cable across the floor from our existing jack, but he won't staple it down or secure it. He'll just leave it sitting there. I said Fuck it and had him leave. Looks like I won't be getting cable until I decide to buy a house....if I even want it at that point.
I have never owned a Mac. I rarely end up having a chance to mess around with them but last year two people with 12" Aluminum Powerbooks had hardware failures. I do a lot of side jobs fixing broken laptops so I've taken apart my fair share of various PC laptops. I told them I could probably help them. Both just needed the Power-In board replaced.
I was stunned by how well put together the Mac laptops felt compared to the average HP/Toshiba/Dell. Even the higher end Tecra line and the like seem like toys in comparison. I seriously considered buying a Mac Laptop after taking those two machines apart.
Just curious...what about OS X and Windows 7 makes them unusable? If you really find both of them unusable I think there might be another choice out there. I heard that you can pretty much configure it the way you want, have a choice between any number of user interfaces, and don't have to pay a cent for it. I've been told that a lot of people write a huge variety of applications for that other OS and give them away for free as well.
You quoted the parent, but didn't quote the part you were actually responding to. What did you think was going to happen?!? I followed you, but you can't expect every idiot with mod-points follow a thread unless you really spell it out for them.
I'm so confused. What are you talking about? What's a thread? Fuck it, I'm modding you down.
A good friend of mine is an Auto Mechanic (actually, now a manager of a shop) and he is routinely ignored when he suggests maintenance type stuff. People just want their car to work NOW. Some nebulous threat of their engine not lasting as long as it could doesn't phase them. This is similar to IT, where people just want to open the LoLCat pictures NOW. Some nebulous threat about getting some malware down the road usually does not phase them.
On another note, Last year I did a side job for an ex coworker of mine who is unemployed. Her computer was infested with malware. It came from some piece of software that you can play flash games through and dumps all sorts of nasty stuff through Internet Explorer. I just wiped the thing and gave it back to her. I told her not to install that game software again and I installed Firefox and told her to use that instead of IE. She was unemployed so I didn't charge her.
One week later, she calls again. Her computer is having problems. I stop by and what do you know...she INSTALLED THE SAME FUCKING GAME THING. I wiped it again, told her if she did it again I would have to charge her. A week later....SAME FUCKING THING. Unreal. Wiped again, this time I charge her. What do you know...a week later she calls and she is sobbing into the phone because she can't apply for jobs online. I go look and....seriously? AGAIN? Ok, I wipe it this time, charge her, have a seriously long chat with her...she cries about wanting to play games. I show her Yahoo games. She calls AGAIN a month later. At this point I tell her to take it somewhere else. Fuck it. I just didn't want to deal with it. I don't know if she thought I had some hidden agenda that made me not want to let her play her games, but she just wouldn't listen. Absolutely incredible.
One reason I can think of is to have a functioning 64-bit operating system to shove more RAM in. Not a big deal for most users but as CAD/3D modeling programs become larger, Engineering computers are better served by getting over the 3GB limit. The Windows 7 UAC control has gone over way better than "No, You can't install anything because I won't give you Admin Rights" in XP. Also, I have found Windows 7 to be more stable than Windows XP.
I work a smaller manufacturing business and we do not have Volume Licensing or anything like that, but every new computer we buy (new employee, replacing broken systems) we get it with Windows 7. We don't have very many of them at this point (Maybe a dozen?) but from that small sample size I've seen a lot less of random things breaking.
Out of curiosity, can you make Single Sign On work for IETab?
Here is the issue where I work. We use Sharepoint. Now, most of the Sharepoint functionality will work with Firefox, but the instant it starts asking for things like Username, Password, and Domain I have lost 90% of the users. For some reason unknown to me when I ask them what their user name and password is they start handing over home E-mail login information or I'll just get met with a blank stare. Even if the password is saved in the box after the first time they log in....they'll just change the crap randomly instead of hitting ok.
This in itself might be a hurdle we could overcome but with the barrage of "IS IT THE SAME INTERNET AS THIS ONE?" type questions added in it is just too much of a strain on my sanity. At least we have at least IE7, mostly IE8 on all of the systems. I do have to say that since IE8 came out the number of Malware/Virus infections has gone down significantly.
I can't afford Tea because of the high tax on it you insensitive clod!
The same can be said of alcohol. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that alcoholism is more prominent in the United States than gambling addiction. Alcoholics cause all sorts of problems. Not being able to hold a job, being absentee parents/spouses, being verbally or physically abusive, endangering others by driving around drunk, lying and stealing for money to buy booze... Yet...alcohol is very legal and very accepted almost everywhere in the US and the government certainly enjoys the "Sin Tax" they pull from the sale of alcohol.
The problem? People like to drink. People like to smoke marijuana. People like to gamble. The vast majority of people can enjoy these things without having control of their own lives lost to their vice. This is where personal responsibility comes into play.
I enjoy gambling at times. Some nights when I am bored I'll fire up an online poker site and play in a few $5 tournaments. Maybe I'll lose a few dollars but it is something that I find to be a lot of fun. Lottery Tickets? I guess a scratch off might be kind of fun but the big "Powerball" and such offer practically zero entertainment value. How can the government justify something like Powerball being legal while something actually enjoyable like Online Poker is illegal?
People are going to gamble in some fashion regardless of the legal status of it. Prohibition taught us the same about alcohol. Keeping a ban on online gambling makes no sense to me.
Well, you can just Slipstream the drivers onto a new installation CD/Flash Drive. I'm pretty sure that Microsoft has instructions for slipstreaming on their Web Site. So it isn't like you are left high and dry without a floppy.
Most of the SATA drives up until 2006 or so will load using the standard Windows XP SP3 CD. They started cutting off support for those products after that so obviously they won't be updating the install with new drivers.
ffreeloader - I want to say first that was probably one of the most well thought out, non judgmental, heartfelt pro-life pieces of commentary that I have ever read. This is probably super dorky of me but I keep a file with the best comments I come across on Internet message boards/blogs/whatever. It doesn't have much in it but I will be adding your post to that.
That said, you and I went off into a tangent that is waaaay off topic based off a post that was already off topic. My original point was that even honorable people will not always agree on what is just or honorable. Even with your Eloquent statement you do make the statement that in some cases, such as rape, that abortion may be the lesser of two evils. I'd imagine you would probably agree that abortion is honorable in situations where the woman and fetus both have very little chance of surviving the pregnancy and delivery. There are extremists out there that would disagree with you on that point.
Your experience has told you that the person who chose to keep a child over abortion is happier than the one who made the other choice. I should have continued on about my friend, but she actually did well for herself after that time. Her problems actually compounded themselves as the guy who impregnated her left another parting gift.....herpes. The chips really seemed down for her but she ended up pulling it back together and got a good job, found a wonderful man to marry who accepted the fact that she had an STD, and now has one child with another on the way. She does have a good life. I don't know if she would have gotten there had she had that child. Instead of one child raised by a single parent with no job, she has (will have) brought 2 children into the world in a very stable and loving environment. So....my experience tells me she did do the right thing.
The point of my finishing the tale is that my "range" of what is honorable regarding abortion is just a bit wider than yours and largely based on my experiences, while as I mentioned before your "range" is a bit wider than someone who finds abortion inappropriate under any circumstance. I don't think any of us could really be considered more just than the other, and it is unlikely that we could come up with a definite answer as to which cases of abortion are not dishonorable. And this is just one topic. We could probably argue for days about any number of topics and scenarios without either of us being completely dishonorable in our views.
I consider myself Pro-Choice but not Pro-Abortion if that makes any sense. I do know a female friend of mine who had an abortion. She was in a long term relationship, was on the pill but was still paranoid enough to use a condom for sex every time (I had a short relationship with her so I can verify that). One really bad month she found out her boyfriend was fucking two chicks on the side, her company was laying off over 50% of their staff including her (Income and Insurance going bye bye), and she was pregnant. She was even willing to look past her partner's infidelity but when he found out she was jobless and pregnant he decided it wasn't worth sticking around.
At that point, a child wasn't going to simply cramp her style. She wasn't sure that she could find a place to live, much less find a place suitable for an infant. She was quite young, out of college for only 2 years, and had little savings. After brief stints staying with other friends, she ended up living in my closet (I'm not kidding. The place my wife and I were renting at the time had enormous closets...big enough to put a small mattress in) for at least 11 months out of her 20 month stretch of unemployment. She did decide on an abortion and frankly....I couldn't blame her for her decision. I really have no idea how she could have carried, birthed, and raised a child during that time.
The abortion did have a pretty big impact on her. It has been 7 years now and she will still cry about that decision. She isn't an irresponsible whore who decided that killing unborn children was an excellent form of birth control to keep from cramping her party lifestyle....she was a desperate young woman who was going through a pretty bad time of her life and didn't really have anywhere to turn for help.
Not to mention women who get pregnant after being raped. If my wife was raped and became pregnant because of it, I don't know that either of us could go through with keeping the child. Instead of being a part of her and part of me conceived by two consenting adults that love each other, the child would be a part of her and a part of some psychopath conceived under rather emotionally scarring circumstances. We are financially stable enough to raise a child and we have started to talk about having children, but I am pretty sure we would choose abortion under that type of circumstance.