If the key on the back of the machine was invalid, then you got a pirated copy of Windows. You should return it to where ever you bought it. I sincerely doubt that MS makes it a policy to ship out invalid CD keys. That doesn't make any sense.
This was the last straw for me. I'm pulling out my wallet and supporting the ACLU. If not for these guys, we'd be living in Nazi America, 2004. These guys fight the good fight, and they're largely above politics. Go, ACLU!
et a major PC manufacturer to start shipping some dual boot systems and see how well it fares...
It's been tried time and time again. E-Machines, Dell, etc. It's been a failure every time, and the company pulls the product. It's not gonna stick until Linux does some serious improvements for the desktop.
I agree. About all I want to listen to on the radio is Car Talk, and I can download all of those. There's really nothing compelling on the radio any more. Hell, if I want somebody else picking music for me, I use launch.com, which for $36/year, gives me unlimited, CD quality (better than radio), ad-free, DJ-free music in a ton of different formats, or as my own personal station. I think that radio's time has really come and gone.
The problem is that most Bush supporters don't know what the word "pragmatism" means. "Flip-flopping" is a 2 grade level phrase that makes it easier for the Bush supporters to understand, plus, it sounds funny! Kerry is pragmatic (look it up). Bush can't change course (ie: the disaster in Iraq), because they'd look stupider than they already do. So instead of saying "I was wrong. I made a terrible mistake. Let's fix this problem", Bush just keeps lying, saying "The war in Iraq is going great! The economy is great! Terrorism is down! Everything is great", when in reality, he needs to face up to the fuck-ups, and get shit fixed. Bush has made me, for the first time in my life, to be embarassed for being American.
False. That was the IBM-PC cloners. Even at MS's inflated profit margin, the cost of buying the OS is irrelevant compared to the cost of the hardware.
And what were people supposed to run on PC's, exactly? What good is a cheap PC with no software? The cheap PC's didn't start happening until MS DOS was popular. Other than Apple, there is no other company making a relatively cheap OS that "just works". And Apple is famous for their hardware lock-in (which is why they never got to be nearly as big as MS). So other than MS, what is there? OS/2 was a contender for a while, but that was after MS DOS and Windows had already taken off. Hell, even today, there's *STILL* no real competition. Linux *might* be a PC competitor in 5 years, but that's still a ways off. Gates was responsible for personal computing as we know it today. I'd say that's pretty important. Which would explain why Gates is the wealthiest person in the US, despite the fact that MS is a relatively new company.
No, I pay tons and tons of taxes without too much of a gripe. Where I get really pissed off is as a small business owner, in Canada, I'd be expected to have a job waiting for somebody when they got done birthing their kid. I can't imagine that damage that does to struggling small businesses. If somebody wanted to take a year haitus from work for *any* reason, there's no way I'd guarantee them a job again in the future. Just because somebody has a kid doesn't (or shouldn't) make them an exception. I desperately need to take a vacation, but I can't. Yet I'd have to give an employee a vacation if they decided to have a kid. That's crazy!
Before I get modded down to oblivion (or up, this is slashdot), look at where the real innovations come from; it isn't Microsoft, unless you count the small companies that it assimilates once they come up with something promising.
Cute Star Trek reference, but it's irrelevant. The fact is that MS brings products TO MARKET, and packages them so that they are useful. There are tons of small companies out there, but if they can't market, and if you don't know they exist, who cares? MS has made computing cheap and ubiquitous, something that no other company has come close to doing in the relatively short history of PC's. I could write the greatest piece of code on the planet while sitting in my basement, but that doesn't matter if nobody ever gets to use it.
It's called a condom. They're free. Nobody forced them to have a baby, and there's no reason that I (being a taxpayer) should have to foot the bill for his decision. I can't imagine having a kid these days. I don't know how people afford it. That's why 2 marriages, and several long term relationships later, I'm childless. Pregnancy should be penalized *more* than a disease, because it is something that that 2 people either actively decide to do, or actively decide NOT to prevent.
New Linux user... it didn't find my sound card. I have no idea how to figure out where to start on that one, so... no sound. Also, the application installer thingy was pretty lacking. It kind of worked. It didn't find the latest versions of lots of various things, and the list was very short, but it kinda' worked. Other than that, it looked and acted like every other Linux distro that I've tried (I've tried about 6 in the past few months... I'm back to Windows). It worked for the most part, but nothing to get excited about. It did the basics. Unfortunately, it was still useless to my business. Bummer.
Ah "shills" and "fanboys". Some choice words from a very eloquently articulated post on a Slashdot fan site with no facts at all attached. Brilliant! I'm convinced! That you for such a convincing argument!
I do seriously want to vote Kerry, but it seems that the best argument for doing so is that he's "not Bush".
Honestly, what else is there? Could we possibly have a president that is worse than Bush? Bush is a lying, draft-dodging, Born Again Christian, hypocritical, bigotted moron who works for large corporations.
I can't bring myself to spend $200 on a video card. Know why? BECAUSE THAT'S NUTS! Jesus christ, that's 2 car payments for me! $200 is a month's worth of groceries (easily). $200 is a lot of money, and there's no way in hell I'm gonna spend that much money on a fucking video card that will be obsolete in 3 months. You gotta be a trust fund baby. Must be nice...
What reason for moving is better than recreation? I'm not being led around by the nose because of some silly job. I'm lucky enough to be able to choose where I want to live based on hell... whatever I want. Culture, economy, legal system, etc. Would it be better if I had a job that forced me to move? How would that be smarter?
I'm not fighting the US gov't. I'm too damn old and too damn tired, and I know that I won't make any kind of difference. People more pwerful and smarter than me have been trying for longer than I've been alive. Besides, the US gov't is run by fundamentalist Christians who simply don't believe in logic and science. Trust me: you can't rationalize with religious people. They call religious science and science religion.
Until then, I have no problem with the cops picking your ass up for breaking the law.
And I have no problem if the cops arrest you for "terrorist activities" by tapping your cell phone without a warrant, and arresting you without trial. After all, it IS a law.
Sheep who mindlessly obey their government deserve to be slaughtered.
What about a business' rights? I couldn't guarantee somebody a job for a whole year and still stay in business. Besides, having a baby is somebody's choice. Why should somebody's bad decision be able to potentially ruin my business?
What will you do to keep me, successful student, productive citizen, and pot smoker, out of jail?
Dude, it's called "Canada". Myself and 2 other friends will be moving there shortly for this reason. This nation's drug laws are embarassing and puritanical. Unfortunately, John Kerry is also a big supporter of the "Drug War".
- A business owner shopping for real estate in BC.
It just seems lately they just have been coding software to be so bloated you need a faster computer to run it.
And people think that that's normal. When I buy apps, I make sure that they run well on my hardware first. My hardware being P2's, generally with 128 M of RAM. If they are unneccessarily slow, I tell the manufacturer that, and I don't buy. If some regular old, non-graphics heavy app tells me that I need faster hardware, my first reaction is "why should I buy new hardware because of your shitty programming?"
Slashdot Mirror
If the key on the back of the machine was invalid, then you got a pirated copy of Windows. You should return it to where ever you bought it. I sincerely doubt that MS makes it a policy to ship out invalid CD keys. That doesn't make any sense.
I too think NAMBLA members should be allowed to distribute literature on raping boys
If Jehova's Witnesses are allowed to harass me, then yes, absolutely they should be allowed to.
and gay men should be allowed to take my boys camping.
Are you saying that gay men are more likely to be rapists than straight men?
The right to fling dung at Christian symbols,
Absolutely. Why not?
protests that block everyone else's right to get to work
You don't have a "right to go to work quickly and easily". You DO have a right to gather and protest.
This was the last straw for me. I'm pulling out my wallet and supporting the ACLU. If not for these guys, we'd be living in Nazi America, 2004. These guys fight the good fight, and they're largely above politics. Go, ACLU!
et a major PC manufacturer to start shipping some dual boot systems and see how well it fares...
It's been tried time and time again. E-Machines, Dell, etc. It's been a failure every time, and the company pulls the product. It's not gonna stick until Linux does some serious improvements for the desktop.
It says that I have too much shit to do, and I shouldn't be posting to Slashdot if I don't even have time to check spelling.
No. Linux.
I agree. About all I want to listen to on the radio is Car Talk, and I can download all of those. There's really nothing compelling on the radio any more. Hell, if I want somebody else picking music for me, I use launch.com, which for $36/year, gives me unlimited, CD quality (better than radio), ad-free, DJ-free music in a ton of different formats, or as my own personal station. I think that radio's time has really come and gone.
The problem is that most Bush supporters don't know what the word "pragmatism" means. "Flip-flopping" is a 2 grade level phrase that makes it easier for the Bush supporters to understand, plus, it sounds funny! Kerry is pragmatic (look it up). Bush can't change course (ie: the disaster in Iraq), because they'd look stupider than they already do. So instead of saying "I was wrong. I made a terrible mistake. Let's fix this problem", Bush just keeps lying, saying "The war in Iraq is going great! The economy is great! Terrorism is down! Everything is great", when in reality, he needs to face up to the fuck-ups, and get shit fixed. Bush has made me, for the first time in my life, to be embarassed for being American.
Slashdot FAQ
False. That was the IBM-PC cloners. Even at MS's inflated profit margin, the cost of buying the OS is irrelevant compared to the cost of the hardware.
And what were people supposed to run on PC's, exactly? What good is a cheap PC with no software? The cheap PC's didn't start happening until MS DOS was popular. Other than Apple, there is no other company making a relatively cheap OS that "just works". And Apple is famous for their hardware lock-in (which is why they never got to be nearly as big as MS). So other than MS, what is there? OS/2 was a contender for a while, but that was after MS DOS and Windows had already taken off. Hell, even today, there's *STILL* no real competition. Linux *might* be a PC competitor in 5 years, but that's still a ways off. Gates was responsible for personal computing as we know it today. I'd say that's pretty important. Which would explain why Gates is the wealthiest person in the US, despite the fact that MS is a relatively new company.
No, I pay tons and tons of taxes without too much of a gripe. Where I get really pissed off is as a small business owner, in Canada, I'd be expected to have a job waiting for somebody when they got done birthing their kid. I can't imagine that damage that does to struggling small businesses. If somebody wanted to take a year haitus from work for *any* reason, there's no way I'd guarantee them a job again in the future. Just because somebody has a kid doesn't (or shouldn't) make them an exception. I desperately need to take a vacation, but I can't. Yet I'd have to give an employee a vacation if they decided to have a kid. That's crazy!
Before I get modded down to oblivion (or up, this is slashdot), look at where the real innovations come from; it isn't Microsoft, unless you count the small companies that it assimilates once they come up with something promising.
Cute Star Trek reference, but it's irrelevant. The fact is that MS brings products TO MARKET, and packages them so that they are useful. There are tons of small companies out there, but if they can't market, and if you don't know they exist, who cares? MS has made computing cheap and ubiquitous, something that no other company has come close to doing in the relatively short history of PC's. I could write the greatest piece of code on the planet while sitting in my basement, but that doesn't matter if nobody ever gets to use it.
It's called a condom. They're free. Nobody forced them to have a baby, and there's no reason that I (being a taxpayer) should have to foot the bill for his decision. I can't imagine having a kid these days. I don't know how people afford it. That's why 2 marriages, and several long term relationships later, I'm childless. Pregnancy should be penalized *more* than a disease, because it is something that that 2 people either actively decide to do, or actively decide NOT to prevent.
New Linux user... it didn't find my sound card. I have no idea how to figure out where to start on that one, so... no sound. Also, the application installer thingy was pretty lacking. It kind of worked. It didn't find the latest versions of lots of various things, and the list was very short, but it kinda' worked. Other than that, it looked and acted like every other Linux distro that I've tried (I've tried about 6 in the past few months... I'm back to Windows). It worked for the most part, but nothing to get excited about. It did the basics. Unfortunately, it was still useless to my business. Bummer.
Ah "shills" and "fanboys". Some choice words from a very eloquently articulated post on a Slashdot fan site with no facts at all attached. Brilliant! I'm convinced! That you for such a convincing argument!
I do seriously want to vote Kerry, but it seems that the best argument for doing so is that he's "not Bush".
Honestly, what else is there? Could we possibly have a president that is worse than Bush? Bush is a lying, draft-dodging, Born Again Christian, hypocritical, bigotted moron who works for large corporations.
I can't bring myself to spend $200 on a video card. Know why? BECAUSE THAT'S NUTS! Jesus christ, that's 2 car payments for me! $200 is a month's worth of groceries (easily). $200 is a lot of money, and there's no way in hell I'm gonna spend that much money on a fucking video card that will be obsolete in 3 months. You gotta be a trust fund baby. Must be nice...
What reason for moving is better than recreation? I'm not being led around by the nose because of some silly job. I'm lucky enough to be able to choose where I want to live based on hell... whatever I want. Culture, economy, legal system, etc. Would it be better if I had a job that forced me to move? How would that be smarter?
I'm not fighting the US gov't. I'm too damn old and too damn tired, and I know that I won't make any kind of difference. People more pwerful and smarter than me have been trying for longer than I've been alive. Besides, the US gov't is run by fundamentalist Christians who simply don't believe in logic and science. Trust me: you can't rationalize with religious people. They call religious science and science religion.
Until then, I have no problem with the cops picking your ass up for breaking the law.
And I have no problem if the cops arrest you for "terrorist activities" by tapping your cell phone without a warrant, and arresting you without trial. After all, it IS a law.
Sheep who mindlessly obey their government deserve to be slaughtered.
What about a business' rights? I couldn't guarantee somebody a job for a whole year and still stay in business. Besides, having a baby is somebody's choice. Why should somebody's bad decision be able to potentially ruin my business?
What will you do to keep me, successful student, productive citizen, and pot smoker, out of jail?
Dude, it's called "Canada". Myself and 2 other friends will be moving there shortly for this reason. This nation's drug laws are embarassing and puritanical. Unfortunately, John Kerry is also a big supporter of the "Drug War".
- A business owner shopping for real estate in BC.
Jealous that the rich kids get to play Doom 3 and you don't?
No, not really. I've been playing games for more than 20 years. It's just another shoot 'em up game. Nothing special there.
Actually, I'm posting this from a machine with no adapter cards screwed in, no case cover, and the hard drive duct taped to the inside of the case.
It just seems lately they just have been coding software to be so bloated you need a faster computer to run it.
And people think that that's normal. When I buy apps, I make sure that they run well on my hardware first. My hardware being P2's, generally with 128 M of RAM. If they are unneccessarily slow, I tell the manufacturer that, and I don't buy. If some regular old, non-graphics heavy app tells me that I need faster hardware, my first reaction is "why should I buy new hardware because of your shitty programming?"