Until I see "fatwas" or whatever they're called from the Islamic leadership or some other strong condemnation of these rioter's actions who call themselves Muslims, I will think that the Islamic people in this world condone the rioter's and terrorist's actions. End of story.
Not too many of the US papers have bothered to mention it, but muslim religious leaders as well as the heads of state of several predominantly muslim nations have spoken out against the violence, saying that while the cartoons are blasphemous and wrong, people should be tolerant and protest those who commit such sacrilege peacefully as the Qua-ran teaches.
Man, you've got a serious case of identifying with the violator here. On a certain September 11th, we (the US) were invaded by foreigners from another continent with another religion who killed many of us.
Yes, and those foreigners died. They were flying the planes. Then that was used as an excuse to invade a completely different country, one which was actually quite hostile to the organization involved. You do know Hussein was hunting them because they wanted to overthrow him too, right?
They distribute videos of our men being beheaded - worse than rape.
Yup, invading soldiers being executed. You act as though we did not kill hundreds of times as many of their soldiers and plenty of non-combatants as well. And why were we there again, killing these people? Why are we there now? They had nothing to do with Sept. 11. Aside from living in a country near where many of the hijackers were from (not even the same country) and being members of the same religion. They were not involved.
Of course all of this is completely beside the point. You're not even trying to look at things from the perspective of a person who lives in a muslim, middle-eastern country. They see invading people from around the world with a different religion attacking, killing, taking over, and mocking their religion. You don't expect them to react with hostility?
So if no one can find the cartoons, who gives a fuck? Why do they care so much?
The cartoons are easy to find. They were republished by other European news agencies who were duped into thinking they were genuine. It is the publishing itself, however, which is sacrilegious to them. You might as well say, sure someone yelled "I'm gonna shoot you right now nigger" but it turned out to not have been a KKK member at all so why did they react violently against our rally?
Actually, I'm pretty sure that if they did, our police forces would put a stop to it - unlike their police forces.
I doubt the police would be able to stop widespread rioting or violence. They have not done so in the past during numerous race riots. The truth of the matter is, you can't or don't want to understand the situation these people are in and why they have acted they way they have. You don't want to understand that they are just people who are frightened and angry with good reason, and much of that reason is the fault of the US. The truth is, the US has done a lot of harm, while most of the citizens have been completely mislead about what is going on and why. Most americans don't know and don't really care and would rather be prejudiced against all muslims and middle easterners and assume they are some sort of inferior, irrational people than face up to the truth that they are just people the same as any other. And when our bombs kill a son or daughter, brother or sister, or parent it makes people hate us. It makes people hate you, for being a christian american, just as many americans hate the Iranians for being muslim middle easterners. They think you personally are a violent war monger who thinks it is right to blow up their children, steal their wealth, and denigrate their religion. You see all muslims as mad bombers. They see all christians as mass murdering sexual assaulters. Hopefully they are as wrong as you are.
Some religion had this saying in one of it's principal works. It was something along the lines of, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." I take it you've never acted rashly out of fear or anger, especially while subjected to both terrible violence and mockery of your beliefs?
And anyone who would make excuses for it has their head up their ass and doesn't see that making excuses for violence is the reason we have so much violence.
I specifically did not excuse violence, but you're wrong. The reason we have so much violence is lack of understanding, caring, and empathy. The reason we have so much violence is lack of forgiving. If you don't understand what drives a person to violence and hate then you will never stop it. A bomb kills a child whose brother shoots a soldier whose parent endorses a war. A man plants a bomb which kills another man whose child plants another bomb that kills a child. If you don't understand why people act, how can you expect to end violence? If you drive a man to violence with violence and then act stop the violence with yet more violence, how can you expect to succeed?
The only thing these violent protests have accomplished is to make Muslims look like jackholes to people who can't tell the difference between extremists and honest Muslims.
And you're fundamentally failing to understand. "Extremists" are just people, like any other, driven by emotions and reasons. Villainizing them and dehumanizing them is failing to understand the real problem. That extremist may be an angry man whose son was senselessly killed by an american bomb. He thinks you are the extremist for giving money to the army and not doing everything in your power to protest flying around the world to murder his son. Maybe he thinks the only appropriate use for violence is to stop violence, just as you do; but he believes only by doing as much damage to the US as possible can he stop all of the US from murdering more of his people. Only by killing many people will it be driven home that people in his country are dying at our hands, for greed and power.
Now I'm not saying your point of view is valid and I'm not saying his is. What I'm saying is that unless you are willing to empathize and understand the perspectives of others, it will not end.
Art depecting things that would be considered highly offensive is nothing new. Crosses in jars of urine, collages of the Virgin Mary made up of porno images, etc. But I don't see Christians rioting in the street, setting things on fire, and calling for people to die over these things, do you?
I certainly have heard the last one. Maybe you haven't watched enough televangelists. There are plenty of violent christians who would gladly beat an artist to death for making such a thing. Maybe that is why they are always shown in large art shows in trendy, civilized places like New York, rather than in small town Texas. Hell, over the course of history christians have killed and tortured at least as many people in the name of their religion as muslims have.
The situation for christians in the US, however, is not even close to the same. These are people who are living in fear of the new christian crusades. They have relatives who were bombed and cousins who were shot in the head. They have recently seen photos of the invading christians raping their people and heard stories of much, much worse. They are understandable frightened and angry and if you don't expect some of them to act on that anger then you don't understand people at all.
Please.... No matter how offensive something might be, no matter what they may have tried, nothing gives someone the right to resort to violence because they dislike what someone else said.
With this I agree. These people are acting out of hatred and anger and fear and while I understand it, I don't condone it.
IMO, the whole muslim world is WAYYYYY too sensitive about this issue. I find it ironic when they insult the jewish and christian religions in their cartoons it's all good, but when someone else does something similar it's the end of the world!
First, it is not "the muslim world" it is particular individuals. Second, christians are not currently the subject of what must seem to them (and many objective observers) as a crusade where their countries are invaded by foreigners from another continent with another religion who kill them, mock their religion, sell off all their resources and land, and print pictures of their men being raped. Second, they are being purposely manipulated into this action by people with a political interest in things, as the three most offensive cartoons (like the one showing a dog fucking mohammed) were never printed in any newspaper that anyone can find and seem to have been made or disseminated by european muslims to aggravate the situation.
If you honestly think a bunch of scared and angry hicks from texas would not attack a foreign embassy in response to published cartoons of jesus having intercourse with a pig, if they felt threatened and thought it likely they would be conquered by invading muslims in the near future then you don't understand people in general (and probably have never watched the 700 club).
You're wrong about the economy marketing. Hybrids tend to be expensive, government handouts notwithstandings.
Perhaps you're not understanding the difference between "marketing a hybrid engine as a economy feature" and "a hybrid engine being an economy feature." In any case I know four people with hybrid cars. They all drive to work in a medium sized town (public transit is workable for some here, but not all). Three of them are computer geeks and one is a young, idealistic, hippy type. Two of the former who explained their purchase said that the subsidy from the feds and the state combined with their opinion that oil prices were on the rise made it a reasonable financial decision. Also they liked the added range in a state with long empty stretches of highway.
who are too misinformed and ignorant1 to realize a hybrid does nothing for mother nature, unless you drive it in the city.
Hybrids get greatly increased mileage for the first dozen miles of so, no matter what the driving environment. You can argue about the energy that went into production versus the gas saved or something, but to characterize anyone who buys one as "misinformed and ignorant1[sic]" is pompous in the extreme.
Have you ever seen the movie, "Red Dawn?" It tackles this very issue, with Americans as the terrorists. The Basic plot is the Russians invade and grab a huge chunk of the US, which they occupy. Then as the Russian army kills rebels and dissidents the local hicks wage a hit and run war against them, planting bombs and trying to stay alive in the mountains. Every time the Russians execute some locals, the resistance grows, just as it always does in countries around the world under the same circumstances.
The movie is very patriotic and I think they play stars and stripes when Patrick Swayze finally bites it.
The point the game was trying to make, which you seem to have totally missed, is that the only difference between a terrorist and a heroic freedom fighter is who is printing the newspaper. Dropping bombs and shooting suspected terrorists is not going to solve anything, it is just going to make more people want to fight; people the US government then labels as "terrorists." There is no better way to make people hate you so much that they are willing to die just to get some sort of revenge, than killing their wife and children and brothers and leaving them with nothing to lose. It is only racist if you assume that will only happen with people of a given race, which is patently not so. If the Russians invaded and killed my family, blew up my home, and basically made life unbearable, I'd probably be picking them off with a high powered rifle right now. That does not make me prejudiced against white Americans.
There would be outrage, but there wouldn't be any of the violence and murder that is occuring now. Any religion that will go nuts over a cartoon but not the murder (by them) of innocent people (not of their religion or even their version of their "faith") is a pathetic excuse for anyone that calls themsleves "children of God".
Your problem is that you are ascribing motives to a religion, not to people who happen to be members of that religion. I fully support free speech and the right to print cartoons of anything you want. I condemn anyone who reacts violently to the expression of another. At the same time, however, I understand their reactions and I would expect them. Violence is the product of anger and fear. Anger is basically the primal instinct to remove a threat to ones person by destroying that threat. Fear easily turns to anger, they are linked.
Picture this, Canada, and several central american countries are invaded and conquered by predominantly muslim countries who scorn their "wrong" religion and set about building large military bases in these lands to "keep the peace" while selling off all the valuable resources to foreign investors. There are large, well reported cases of rape, murder and sacrilege in these countries under their new rulers and the quality of life is in the shitter. They have backed up sewers, scant food, erratic electricity, constant bombings, etc. The majority of the people there are filled with hate over their dead family members, wives, children and brothers who were killed by foreign bombs. Many flee to neighboring Mexico and the USA, brining with them stories of all this horror. No one seems to have a large enough army to stop the seemingly religious invasions.
Now the same muslim countries, with their occupying forces next door, start talking about an invasion of mexico, who is not doing things they way they would like, even though mexico signed a treaty a decade ago, specifically granting them the right to do what they are doing. Everyone in the US and Mexico knows it is just a pretext, because they want an excuse to invade as soon as they have enough man power.
Now picture into this environment, pakistan prints up a series of sacrilegious cartoons not only mocking christianity, but parroting the excuses the Muslim countries gave for invading Canada in the first place. How do you expect people in say, Kentucky would react? What actions would you expect the frightened locals and refugees would take regarding the Pakistani embassy in Kentucky? Some would call for boycott of Pakistani goods. Others would hop in their rusty Chevys and go shoot out the windows with shotguns. And if you think it is tragic that these same Kentuckians would not react equally strongly when they heard about a bunch of Muslim children being killed, you're right it is tragic. But that does not mean you would not hear Bob down at the bar muttering about how they deserved it and they should just get the hell out of America while he's chugging his Coors.
Again, there's no excuse for acting like animals.
That is exactly what is happening. People are acting out of anger and fear, just like animals do. It is unethical, but also completely understandable. And just as I would not condemn christianity based upon the actions of some angry, frightened hicks from Kentucky, neither would i condemn the muslim religion and its adherents based upon the actions of a few radicals. I actually have some fundamental, philosophical objections to beliefs taught by the muslim religion. I also agree with a lot of the teachings as well.
The important thing I think you should remember in all of this is that you need to understand why people act the way they do and also to avoid prejudging others based upon actions you have seen performed by people of the same race, religion, country, or sex. Burning flags is fine, it is as much of an expression as cartoons are. Attacking others, however, is not fine, but anyone who did not expect it based upon the current situation and human nature is fundamentally misunderstanding one or more aspects of the world and mankind.
Yeah...but, it looks like CRAP. Can't they make these 'green' cars look nice and sporty?
They hit the economy car segment first, because that is where is is marketable as a gas saving feature. For sports cars, however, you'll be seeing hybrids very soon from a number of different manufacturers and they will be very, very fast to accelerate off the line, given the benefits of stable power at the low end of the spectrum. Toyota and Mitsubishi's concept demos this year seemed particularly nice.
So a wet behind the ears 24 year old opens his mouth and puts his foot in it at work as well as over-stepping his boundaries in his 2nd or so job as an adult. So what?
So this is one data point out of many. Bush has appointed people from his campaign, who are lobbyists for an industry, and old friends to important government positions. When those people screw it up due to their inexperience, fringe religious beliefs, and conflicting interest who are we supposed to blame? This is just one more reason not to trust Bush as a leader and not to trust that the government is doing its job properly.
More particularly, this is just one more example to illustrate that the Bush administration has repeatedly tried to undermine the progress of science and education. When a large group of Nobel winning scientists from around the world feel it is necessary to band together and make a public statement that an administration is purposely trying to mislead the world with regard to scientific discoveries and is appointing incompetent and unqualified persons to major positions based solely on their willingness to undermine the scientific process I think it is time to actually consider what is happening. What you are missing is, this is not an isolated incident, this is one data point in a demonstrable pattern of behavior.
I'm not convinced that *nix systems are actually that much more secure than Windows systems. In fact I have a feeling that *nix system probably have more holes than Windows systems. The difference is that there are far fewer people looking at breaking *nix systems and there is a greater diversity of systems.
You're wrong in many ways. First, I suspect their are more security researchers and more incidental security holes discovered in *nix than in Windows. The reason for this is that no one who wants a really secure system is even going to consider Windows as the base OS. Also, the installed base of security people and technically proficient people on *nix is much higher. Combine that with an open source OS and you get a lot of bug reports and fixes and people considering security, whereas on Windows a bug is "just another security hole" and they don't bother. If I find a potential local privilege escalation on Linux or OS X I report it. If I find one in windows I don't even bother adding it to the list of hundreds of published unpatched escalation exploits.
Have you ever talked to Windows employees? Probably 80-90% of the potential security holes they find are not even investigated because of time. On most *nix most bugs are found by external individuals, or in open collaboration. This motivates them to fix all of them. Since the source to Windows is closed, they have no such motivation.
No one would argue that Windows vulnerabilities are harder to find than in open source code, but don't confuse that with thinking that there are fewer of them. Finally, I think you're confusing the massive worm infestations with the number of potential vulnerabilities. Huge numbers of Windows machines are compromised in an automated fashion because the architecture is crap. Local services run on the network and unneeded services run by default. Most systems are older versions without even a default firewall. Huge numbers of these machines are out there making propagation easy as pie.
I wouldn't be supprised if we saw a serious Linux worm sometime this year simply because Linux is starting to get a bit of an installed base.
We probably will, when vendors (Linspire anyone?) start shipping systems that are fundamentally bone-headed in their approach to security and those systems become widespread.
*nix systems are generally much more secure by default and most users never change the default settings. Users should not have to "secure their OS' they should just have to worry about doing things that potentially make it insecure. That is pretty much that case with most Linux distributions today.
I hate the idea personally. You'd feel like you were in a shop all of the time you're looking for things on the net - a problem I already feel to some extent.
Personally, I love the potential results of this. If I'm going to have ads on Web pages, I'd much rather that they were ads for things I might actually buy. What bothers me is the implications of such consolidated power and information gathering. I have a lot of trust in Google due to their culture and history, but I don't trust the company that Google will be in twenty years and I don't trust that much information about me and power over my purchasing to be given to any one entity.
Good user interface design means not just creating an inteface that "makes sense," it's also creating an interface that works the way the user expects it to work. If over 90% of your users are used to the way Photoshop does function X, then you sure as hell better implement function X the way Photoshop does.
I'm going to have to add my voice to those disagreeing with you. I'm a regular photoshop user, an occasional gimp user, and I've spent a lot of time studying UI design. The fact of the matter is, while having a UI that is very similar to photoshop makes it more learnable to switchers, it is neither a good long-term strategy, nor all that important. Photoshop's UI is pretty average. It is usable, but has plenty of failings and I often find myself wishing that the UI was not in my way for some trivial task. It is also only middle of the road for learn-ability. I've instructed a number of others in using image editors and photoshop is just not very intuitive.
Gimp, on the other hand, is abysmal in both categories. It breaks UI conventions left and right and took me a long time to learn. Instructing others in its use turns into a commiseration over how bad the UI is. The designers obviously don't have any budget to do a proper usability study and it shows. They also do not seem to have even tried a half-assed usability study with their friends and relatives.
Gimp is a project not a product and this is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is free and it is customizable, but unless it gets some real backing I don't see it as any threat to photoshop's market.
One thing I'd like to mention. Right now is the best time to put a big dent in photoshop's market. I don't expect we'll see photoshop running smoothly on OS X-Intel machines for well over a year. Photoshop is a slow dinosaur, especially on OS X (the platform of choice for most graphics professionals). Their code is old, and does not take advantage of the features of OS X for reasons of maintaining the same feature set on a certain outdated OS. Right now is the time for a competitor to grab a big chunk of the market with an innovative new graphics program that does what most users want, but better and faster and cheaper.
For those of you who are as disappointed with the gimp as I am, try looking at krita on Linux. It may be more what you are looking for once it matures a little.
Assign every virus an ID number. Then, people could search a CENTRAL database by typing in the ID number
They did that. Its called the CME, or Common Malware Enumeration number. Blackworm was long ago numbered CME-24. The problem is the press does not generally include this number in their press releases and instead uses one of the many names different companies come up with. Also, most end-user anti-virus programs haven't bothered to include CME's in the user visible parts of their applications.
Well, I live within minutes of two major universities. One has a few macs here and there and one has as many macs as PCs. The latter is a very, very big school. At my own alma mater, we probably had more Sun machines than macs, although we had a several labs of each, and at least and as many PC labs as macs. Heck, we even had a lab full of Next machines. I wonder if they are still there? It all depends upon the university.
you should have no problem finding 64 bit drivers for most modern hardware
I've heard the same complaint from a sysadmin, a photographer, and a security expert. Brand new hardware does not have drivers for Win64, even in one case when they claim they do on their Website. Also, both an image processing program and two databases that either will not run, or crash unacceptably often when running 64-bit, but run just fine on 32 bit.
Linux is beside the point, since the question was specifically about Windows. Maybe you have not had any problems with your subset of hardware and software, but all three of the people I know (people with a pretty good clue I might add) have had serious problems and abandoned 64 bit Windows. Providing links to some drivers does not really do anything to convince me that I won't run into the same problems. In any case, I see no advantage for running 64 bit Windows on a laptop for anything I might want to do. If a single thread is using more than 4Gb, I should probably be running it on a server.
When mentioning nVidia, he was talking about Turion systems, not Centrino systems.
Umm, sure, the part where he said, "the Intel GPUs the Centrino Duo notebooks usually use are very poor" should have tipped me off to the fact that he was talking about Turion systems. You can get the same video cards in either system and claiming Centrino Duo's should be avoided because the nVidia cards in the Turion are better is just plain wrong. He tried supporting his statement with an untrue example. Get a clue mister coward.
It can't run 64-bit Windows Vista and the Intel GPUs the Centrino Duo notebooks usually use are very poor.
Nothing can run 64-bit Windows because the existing versions suck so badly with driver and software incompatibilities. No one I know with a 64 bit processor is running a 64 bit version of Windows on it anymore. Everyone has given up and switched back. Vista will support 32 bit for longer than most laptops will last and I don't see any reason why someone would switch in the foreseeable future for their laptop.
As for graphics, what the hell are you talking about? There are a handful of Centrino Duo machines for sale right now and looking at the selection I see both ATI and nVidia graphics cards in them. Acers ship with ATI and Sony with nVidia.
Do you enjoy misleading people by making crap like this up, or are you just very misinformed?
Is allofmp3.com downloading actually legal in the US? It doesn't say on the site, and I know the site only corresponds to Russian law. But if this is legal, this is quite a service.
Downloading anything in the US is probably legal. As far as I know no one has ever been convicted of downloading copyrighted works. All cases you hear in the news about illegal music downloads say in the actual article that they were using a program that also provides the music for upload. It is possible downloading is illegal, but I've not seen a single court case that has upheld that opinion.
As for allofmp3.com, they won their court case in the U.S. due to our reciprocal copyright agreement with Russia. The Russian authorities declined to further investigate them in Russia, since the Russian equivalent of the RIAA confirmed they had a license and they saw no indication of any wrongdoing. Thus far they have weathered all legal attacks and I would not hesitate to purchase music from them out of fear of legal repercussions.
Note, I am not a lawyer. This is just my opinion based upon what I have read.
They set a high price to appeal to a particular type of customer.
Yeah, just think about the sentence for a bit. They are charging money for entrance to a market, because people entering that market want them to? They are erecting an artificial barrier to entry, using their existing monopoly. That is illegal.
A correct analogy would be with a chemical manufacturer who sells chemicals by ton to other businesses, but won't sell small quantities to individuals because that's not the business they choose to be in.
An even more correct analogy would be the only supplier of chemical storage bins (a monopoly) has partnered with suppliers of a particular chemical and decided to charge an extra fee to anyone who wants to sell that chemical. It is an artificial barrier to new companies moving into the market of selling that chemical. It is unethical and illegal.
So... exactly who is the market for the new Intel products?...It seems like none of the apps that high-end Apple users actually use aren't going to be out for quite some time.
You mean somebody still believes the hype that Apple users are mostly graphic artists these days? I know a lot of people including a few who are artists that use macs. Most mac users I know, however, are programmers and scientists. Another large number are non-power users who basically use the Web, e-mail, and some word processing. More people I know are concerned about Mathematica or their personal favorite terminal application running nicely than photoshop. I'm sure there are a lot of graphics people who are pissed about the delay, but I doubt they are a significant number to affect the sales results. I've seen this exact same thing happen several times on the Mac platform and developers never learn. A major niche application developer announces they won't be supporting new hardware for a year or more. Two years later they actually get a version out the door and find half their customers have moved on to a more nimble competitor's application and they just aren't all that interested in switching back. Adobe just announced, "hey anyone who can throw together something nice that actually uses all the built in CoreImage technology that already does half what our product does is free to muscle in and steal our customers." Brilliant!
I wouldn't call it a Microsoft insecurity issue, but a stupid user issue.
I disagree. Stupid users can be the weak link, but at this point, they aren't there yet. A whole lot could be done to mitigate these types of viruses by the OS that is not done. Give the users good tools and if they still screw up you can complain.
The user has to install it for it to work, the user actually has to be involved and allow it onto their box.
This is true, but most Windows OS's don't do a reasonable job of distinguishing data and programs. Even those that do, use very poorly designed UI's to do so.
The same type issue can be had for a Linux box and you don't even have to be a root user to be affected; someone emails you unknown app and like these windows dumbasses you run it can wack all of the Openoffice documents you have been using to write your disertation for the past year is gone.
Perhaps for some brain-dead Linux distros this is true. In general, however, Linux makes it a lot harder to disguise programs as data (no hidden extensions). They also require the user to explicitly make a downloaded program executable (no double click and it runs). Also, most Linux machines have a workable non-admin account and use it as a default. This means the virus cannot disable the virus protection, as this one does. Finally, a few more secure Linux distributions run programs in virtual servers, requiring the user to explicitly grant it the ability to modify the user's files.
A stupid user is stupid user
And yet, that stupid user running the average Linux or OS X distribution would not have had a problem.
Windows needs to be fixed. It is under siege and still does not implement security even as good as most Linux or OS X boxes. What they should be doing is implementing better security, not worse. When a user gets a program via e-mail, the attachment should be labeled as such, explicitly. To run any new application the user should have to explicitly agree. This does not mean give them an OK/Cancel dialogue. The UI throws so many techno-babble OK/Cancel dialogues at the average user they are conditioned to click OK to everything. They should be given real choices like "I trust this program, run it" and "Don't run this program." Even when run, the program should default to executing in a sandbox environment, with no access to the internet or to read/write any user-space files. It should be able to read necessary system files, but not write them. It should not be able to change existing DLLs. If the program tries to do any of these things, the user should be informed in plain English and given the opportunity to enable the program to do so. Think, "This program wants to read your e-mail address book (allow it to read your addresses)(Don't let it read your addresses). This program wants to access the internet in a way normally used by mail programs (allow it to send e-mail)(prevent it from sending e-mail)." Windows should install a non-admin account by default and use that as the user's normal login account, thus an additional password would be required to disable the anti-virus.
All of these abilities can be set up today with existing OS's and a company the size of MS should be able to have them working in a few month's time. It is easy to blame the user, but the user has to work with the tools he has. Sure maybe they clicked "OK" but they've already had to click it 50 times today just to do their normal work. After a while, you can't expect everyone to pay attention. I call upon MS to write a more secure OS, with a workable GUI. Until they do so, I call upon everyone here to stop cutting them slack for what "dumb users" do. They are not the weak link here. Not yet, by a long shot. You should not have to be a computer expert to use a tool designed for non-experts. Both Current and older versions of Windows need a lot of work. After it is done, then user education is needed, but until that time it is just not going to work.
Actually, LightTable is the exception. They announced they will have a beta of it available shortly. Now if only Apple would release a competitor to Photoshop, Illustrator, and Framemaker maybe they'd come out with new versions of those products as well.
But it IS a free market issue. The network meets and exceeds what the government paid to subsidize, even WITH the bandwidth being witheld for IPTV.
Networks are basically common carriers. That is to say, they are granted all of the benefits I listed above under the conditions that they are impartial and do not favor any one party. In this case they are giving services they run preferential treatment on the network. Verizon's service will run faster with a higher QoS than competitors. That is not being impartial. And before you argue that this is a special part of the network, and those criteria do not apply, make certain you know for a fact that this is not running over any of those subsidized networks, government granted right-of-ways. Also, make certain that their common carrier freedom from prosecution does not apply to content on this special network.
I have 4 ISP's available through Brighthouse, including RoadRunner (the one I use). And very soon I will have both Verizon and Brighthouse as options for my cable TV, and of course there's always satelite. These changes are bringing MORE choice, not less.
In a few areas there are choices, but in the majority of the US people only have access to one set of lines, and the only way they can get an alternate service is by that service provider renting the lines from the one with the local monopoly. That relies upon them granting equal access to use their lines to all parties. That is exactly what Verizon does not want to do. They want to provide unequal access, which is a violation of the principals under which they have been granted a lot of extraordinary benefits. This is not a free market. It is a heavily regulated industry where providers have taken a lot of benefits for just a few restrictions. Their violation of those few restrictions is unacceptable.
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Until I see "fatwas" or whatever they're called from the Islamic leadership or some other strong condemnation of these rioter's actions who call themselves Muslims, I will think that the Islamic people in this world condone the rioter's and terrorist's actions. End of story.
Not too many of the US papers have bothered to mention it, but muslim religious leaders as well as the heads of state of several predominantly muslim nations have spoken out against the violence, saying that while the cartoons are blasphemous and wrong, people should be tolerant and protest those who commit such sacrilege peacefully as the Qua-ran teaches.
Man, you've got a serious case of identifying with the violator here. On a certain September 11th, we (the US) were invaded by foreigners from another continent with another religion who killed many of us.
Yes, and those foreigners died. They were flying the planes. Then that was used as an excuse to invade a completely different country, one which was actually quite hostile to the organization involved. You do know Hussein was hunting them because they wanted to overthrow him too, right?
They distribute videos of our men being beheaded - worse than rape.
Yup, invading soldiers being executed. You act as though we did not kill hundreds of times as many of their soldiers and plenty of non-combatants as well. And why were we there again, killing these people? Why are we there now? They had nothing to do with Sept. 11. Aside from living in a country near where many of the hijackers were from (not even the same country) and being members of the same religion. They were not involved.
Of course all of this is completely beside the point. You're not even trying to look at things from the perspective of a person who lives in a muslim, middle-eastern country. They see invading people from around the world with a different religion attacking, killing, taking over, and mocking their religion. You don't expect them to react with hostility?
So if no one can find the cartoons, who gives a fuck? Why do they care so much?
The cartoons are easy to find. They were republished by other European news agencies who were duped into thinking they were genuine. It is the publishing itself, however, which is sacrilegious to them. You might as well say, sure someone yelled "I'm gonna shoot you right now nigger" but it turned out to not have been a KKK member at all so why did they react violently against our rally?
Actually, I'm pretty sure that if they did, our police forces would put a stop to it - unlike their police forces.
I doubt the police would be able to stop widespread rioting or violence. They have not done so in the past during numerous race riots. The truth of the matter is, you can't or don't want to understand the situation these people are in and why they have acted they way they have. You don't want to understand that they are just people who are frightened and angry with good reason, and much of that reason is the fault of the US. The truth is, the US has done a lot of harm, while most of the citizens have been completely mislead about what is going on and why. Most americans don't know and don't really care and would rather be prejudiced against all muslims and middle easterners and assume they are some sort of inferior, irrational people than face up to the truth that they are just people the same as any other. And when our bombs kill a son or daughter, brother or sister, or parent it makes people hate us. It makes people hate you, for being a christian american, just as many americans hate the Iranians for being muslim middle easterners. They think you personally are a violent war monger who thinks it is right to blow up their children, steal their wealth, and denigrate their religion. You see all muslims as mad bombers. They see all christians as mass murdering sexual assaulters. Hopefully they are as wrong as you are.
It is also completely indefensible.
Some religion had this saying in one of it's principal works. It was something along the lines of, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." I take it you've never acted rashly out of fear or anger, especially while subjected to both terrible violence and mockery of your beliefs?
And anyone who would make excuses for it has their head up their ass and doesn't see that making excuses for violence is the reason we have so much violence.
I specifically did not excuse violence, but you're wrong. The reason we have so much violence is lack of understanding, caring, and empathy. The reason we have so much violence is lack of forgiving. If you don't understand what drives a person to violence and hate then you will never stop it. A bomb kills a child whose brother shoots a soldier whose parent endorses a war. A man plants a bomb which kills another man whose child plants another bomb that kills a child. If you don't understand why people act, how can you expect to end violence? If you drive a man to violence with violence and then act stop the violence with yet more violence, how can you expect to succeed?
The only thing these violent protests have accomplished is to make Muslims look like jackholes to people who can't tell the difference between extremists and honest Muslims.
And you're fundamentally failing to understand. "Extremists" are just people, like any other, driven by emotions and reasons. Villainizing them and dehumanizing them is failing to understand the real problem. That extremist may be an angry man whose son was senselessly killed by an american bomb. He thinks you are the extremist for giving money to the army and not doing everything in your power to protest flying around the world to murder his son. Maybe he thinks the only appropriate use for violence is to stop violence, just as you do; but he believes only by doing as much damage to the US as possible can he stop all of the US from murdering more of his people. Only by killing many people will it be driven home that people in his country are dying at our hands, for greed and power.
Now I'm not saying your point of view is valid and I'm not saying his is. What I'm saying is that unless you are willing to empathize and understand the perspectives of others, it will not end.
Art depecting things that would be considered highly offensive is nothing new. Crosses in jars of urine, collages of the Virgin Mary made up of porno images, etc. But I don't see Christians rioting in the street, setting things on fire, and calling for people to die over these things, do you?
I certainly have heard the last one. Maybe you haven't watched enough televangelists. There are plenty of violent christians who would gladly beat an artist to death for making such a thing. Maybe that is why they are always shown in large art shows in trendy, civilized places like New York, rather than in small town Texas. Hell, over the course of history christians have killed and tortured at least as many people in the name of their religion as muslims have.
The situation for christians in the US, however, is not even close to the same. These are people who are living in fear of the new christian crusades. They have relatives who were bombed and cousins who were shot in the head. They have recently seen photos of the invading christians raping their people and heard stories of much, much worse. They are understandable frightened and angry and if you don't expect some of them to act on that anger then you don't understand people at all.
Please.... No matter how offensive something might be, no matter what they may have tried, nothing gives someone the right to resort to violence because they dislike what someone else said.
With this I agree. These people are acting out of hatred and anger and fear and while I understand it, I don't condone it.
IMO, the whole muslim world is WAYYYYY too sensitive about this issue. I find it ironic when they insult the jewish and christian religions in their cartoons it's all good, but when someone else does something similar it's the end of the world!
First, it is not "the muslim world" it is particular individuals. Second, christians are not currently the subject of what must seem to them (and many objective observers) as a crusade where their countries are invaded by foreigners from another continent with another religion who kill them, mock their religion, sell off all their resources and land, and print pictures of their men being raped. Second, they are being purposely manipulated into this action by people with a political interest in things, as the three most offensive cartoons (like the one showing a dog fucking mohammed) were never printed in any newspaper that anyone can find and seem to have been made or disseminated by european muslims to aggravate the situation.
If you honestly think a bunch of scared and angry hicks from texas would not attack a foreign embassy in response to published cartoons of jesus having intercourse with a pig, if they felt threatened and thought it likely they would be conquered by invading muslims in the near future then you don't understand people in general (and probably have never watched the 700 club).
You're wrong about the economy marketing. Hybrids tend to be expensive, government handouts notwithstandings.
Perhaps you're not understanding the difference between "marketing a hybrid engine as a economy feature" and "a hybrid engine being an economy feature." In any case I know four people with hybrid cars. They all drive to work in a medium sized town (public transit is workable for some here, but not all). Three of them are computer geeks and one is a young, idealistic, hippy type. Two of the former who explained their purchase said that the subsidy from the feds and the state combined with their opinion that oil prices were on the rise made it a reasonable financial decision. Also they liked the added range in a state with long empty stretches of highway.
who are too misinformed and ignorant1 to realize a hybrid does nothing for mother nature, unless you drive it in the city.
Hybrids get greatly increased mileage for the first dozen miles of so, no matter what the driving environment. You can argue about the energy that went into production versus the gas saved or something, but to characterize anyone who buys one as "misinformed and ignorant1[sic]" is pompous in the extreme.
Have you ever seen the movie, "Red Dawn?" It tackles this very issue, with Americans as the terrorists. The Basic plot is the Russians invade and grab a huge chunk of the US, which they occupy. Then as the Russian army kills rebels and dissidents the local hicks wage a hit and run war against them, planting bombs and trying to stay alive in the mountains. Every time the Russians execute some locals, the resistance grows, just as it always does in countries around the world under the same circumstances.
The movie is very patriotic and I think they play stars and stripes when Patrick Swayze finally bites it.
The point the game was trying to make, which you seem to have totally missed, is that the only difference between a terrorist and a heroic freedom fighter is who is printing the newspaper. Dropping bombs and shooting suspected terrorists is not going to solve anything, it is just going to make more people want to fight; people the US government then labels as "terrorists." There is no better way to make people hate you so much that they are willing to die just to get some sort of revenge, than killing their wife and children and brothers and leaving them with nothing to lose. It is only racist if you assume that will only happen with people of a given race, which is patently not so. If the Russians invaded and killed my family, blew up my home, and basically made life unbearable, I'd probably be picking them off with a high powered rifle right now. That does not make me prejudiced against white Americans.
There would be outrage, but there wouldn't be any of the violence and murder that is occuring now. Any religion that will go nuts over a cartoon but not the murder (by them) of innocent people (not of their religion or even their version of their "faith") is a pathetic excuse for anyone that calls themsleves "children of God".
Your problem is that you are ascribing motives to a religion, not to people who happen to be members of that religion. I fully support free speech and the right to print cartoons of anything you want. I condemn anyone who reacts violently to the expression of another. At the same time, however, I understand their reactions and I would expect them. Violence is the product of anger and fear. Anger is basically the primal instinct to remove a threat to ones person by destroying that threat. Fear easily turns to anger, they are linked.
Picture this, Canada, and several central american countries are invaded and conquered by predominantly muslim countries who scorn their "wrong" religion and set about building large military bases in these lands to "keep the peace" while selling off all the valuable resources to foreign investors. There are large, well reported cases of rape, murder and sacrilege in these countries under their new rulers and the quality of life is in the shitter. They have backed up sewers, scant food, erratic electricity, constant bombings, etc. The majority of the people there are filled with hate over their dead family members, wives, children and brothers who were killed by foreign bombs. Many flee to neighboring Mexico and the USA, brining with them stories of all this horror. No one seems to have a large enough army to stop the seemingly religious invasions.
Now the same muslim countries, with their occupying forces next door, start talking about an invasion of mexico, who is not doing things they way they would like, even though mexico signed a treaty a decade ago, specifically granting them the right to do what they are doing. Everyone in the US and Mexico knows it is just a pretext, because they want an excuse to invade as soon as they have enough man power.
Now picture into this environment, pakistan prints up a series of sacrilegious cartoons not only mocking christianity, but parroting the excuses the Muslim countries gave for invading Canada in the first place. How do you expect people in say, Kentucky would react? What actions would you expect the frightened locals and refugees would take regarding the Pakistani embassy in Kentucky? Some would call for boycott of Pakistani goods. Others would hop in their rusty Chevys and go shoot out the windows with shotguns. And if you think it is tragic that these same Kentuckians would not react equally strongly when they heard about a bunch of Muslim children being killed, you're right it is tragic. But that does not mean you would not hear Bob down at the bar muttering about how they deserved it and they should just get the hell out of America while he's chugging his Coors.
Again, there's no excuse for acting like animals.
That is exactly what is happening. People are acting out of anger and fear, just like animals do. It is unethical, but also completely understandable. And just as I would not condemn christianity based upon the actions of some angry, frightened hicks from Kentucky, neither would i condemn the muslim religion and its adherents based upon the actions of a few radicals. I actually have some fundamental, philosophical objections to beliefs taught by the muslim religion. I also agree with a lot of the teachings as well.
The important thing I think you should remember in all of this is that you need to understand why people act the way they do and also to avoid prejudging others based upon actions you have seen performed by people of the same race, religion, country, or sex. Burning flags is fine, it is as much of an expression as cartoons are. Attacking others, however, is not fine, but anyone who did not expect it based upon the current situation and human nature is fundamentally misunderstanding one or more aspects of the world and mankind.
Yeah...but, it looks like CRAP. Can't they make these 'green' cars look nice and sporty?
They hit the economy car segment first, because that is where is is marketable as a gas saving feature. For sports cars, however, you'll be seeing hybrids very soon from a number of different manufacturers and they will be very, very fast to accelerate off the line, given the benefits of stable power at the low end of the spectrum. Toyota and Mitsubishi's concept demos this year seemed particularly nice.
So a wet behind the ears 24 year old opens his mouth and puts his foot in it at work as well as over-stepping his boundaries in his 2nd or so job as an adult. So what?
So this is one data point out of many. Bush has appointed people from his campaign, who are lobbyists for an industry, and old friends to important government positions. When those people screw it up due to their inexperience, fringe religious beliefs, and conflicting interest who are we supposed to blame? This is just one more reason not to trust Bush as a leader and not to trust that the government is doing its job properly.
More particularly, this is just one more example to illustrate that the Bush administration has repeatedly tried to undermine the progress of science and education. When a large group of Nobel winning scientists from around the world feel it is necessary to band together and make a public statement that an administration is purposely trying to mislead the world with regard to scientific discoveries and is appointing incompetent and unqualified persons to major positions based solely on their willingness to undermine the scientific process I think it is time to actually consider what is happening. What you are missing is, this is not an isolated incident, this is one data point in a demonstrable pattern of behavior.
I'm not convinced that *nix systems are actually that much more secure than Windows systems. In fact I have a feeling that *nix system probably have more holes than Windows systems. The difference is that there are far fewer people looking at breaking *nix systems and there is a greater diversity of systems.
You're wrong in many ways. First, I suspect their are more security researchers and more incidental security holes discovered in *nix than in Windows. The reason for this is that no one who wants a really secure system is even going to consider Windows as the base OS. Also, the installed base of security people and technically proficient people on *nix is much higher. Combine that with an open source OS and you get a lot of bug reports and fixes and people considering security, whereas on Windows a bug is "just another security hole" and they don't bother. If I find a potential local privilege escalation on Linux or OS X I report it. If I find one in windows I don't even bother adding it to the list of hundreds of published unpatched escalation exploits.
Have you ever talked to Windows employees? Probably 80-90% of the potential security holes they find are not even investigated because of time. On most *nix most bugs are found by external individuals, or in open collaboration. This motivates them to fix all of them. Since the source to Windows is closed, they have no such motivation.
No one would argue that Windows vulnerabilities are harder to find than in open source code, but don't confuse that with thinking that there are fewer of them. Finally, I think you're confusing the massive worm infestations with the number of potential vulnerabilities. Huge numbers of Windows machines are compromised in an automated fashion because the architecture is crap. Local services run on the network and unneeded services run by default. Most systems are older versions without even a default firewall. Huge numbers of these machines are out there making propagation easy as pie.
I wouldn't be supprised if we saw a serious Linux worm sometime this year simply because Linux is starting to get a bit of an installed base.
We probably will, when vendors (Linspire anyone?) start shipping systems that are fundamentally bone-headed in their approach to security and those systems become widespread.
*nix systems are generally much more secure by default and most users never change the default settings. Users should not have to "secure their OS' they should just have to worry about doing things that potentially make it insecure. That is pretty much that case with most Linux distributions today.
I hate the idea personally. You'd feel like you were in a shop all of the time you're looking for things on the net - a problem I already feel to some extent.
Personally, I love the potential results of this. If I'm going to have ads on Web pages, I'd much rather that they were ads for things I might actually buy. What bothers me is the implications of such consolidated power and information gathering. I have a lot of trust in Google due to their culture and history, but I don't trust the company that Google will be in twenty years and I don't trust that much information about me and power over my purchasing to be given to any one entity.
Good user interface design means not just creating an inteface that "makes sense," it's also creating an interface that works the way the user expects it to work. If over 90% of your users are used to the way Photoshop does function X, then you sure as hell better implement function X the way Photoshop does.
I'm going to have to add my voice to those disagreeing with you. I'm a regular photoshop user, an occasional gimp user, and I've spent a lot of time studying UI design. The fact of the matter is, while having a UI that is very similar to photoshop makes it more learnable to switchers, it is neither a good long-term strategy, nor all that important. Photoshop's UI is pretty average. It is usable, but has plenty of failings and I often find myself wishing that the UI was not in my way for some trivial task. It is also only middle of the road for learn-ability. I've instructed a number of others in using image editors and photoshop is just not very intuitive.
Gimp, on the other hand, is abysmal in both categories. It breaks UI conventions left and right and took me a long time to learn. Instructing others in its use turns into a commiseration over how bad the UI is. The designers obviously don't have any budget to do a proper usability study and it shows. They also do not seem to have even tried a half-assed usability study with their friends and relatives.
Gimp is a project not a product and this is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is free and it is customizable, but unless it gets some real backing I don't see it as any threat to photoshop's market.
One thing I'd like to mention. Right now is the best time to put a big dent in photoshop's market. I don't expect we'll see photoshop running smoothly on OS X-Intel machines for well over a year. Photoshop is a slow dinosaur, especially on OS X (the platform of choice for most graphics professionals). Their code is old, and does not take advantage of the features of OS X for reasons of maintaining the same feature set on a certain outdated OS. Right now is the time for a competitor to grab a big chunk of the market with an innovative new graphics program that does what most users want, but better and faster and cheaper.
For those of you who are as disappointed with the gimp as I am, try looking at krita on Linux. It may be more what you are looking for once it matures a little.
Assign every virus an ID number. Then, people could search a CENTRAL database by typing in the ID number
They did that. Its called the CME, or Common Malware Enumeration number. Blackworm was long ago numbered CME-24. The problem is the press does not generally include this number in their press releases and instead uses one of the many names different companies come up with. Also, most end-user anti-virus programs haven't bothered to include CME's in the user visible parts of their applications.
Well, I live within minutes of two major universities. One has a few macs here and there and one has as many macs as PCs. The latter is a very, very big school. At my own alma mater, we probably had more Sun machines than macs, although we had a several labs of each, and at least and as many PC labs as macs. Heck, we even had a lab full of Next machines. I wonder if they are still there? It all depends upon the university.
you should have no problem finding 64 bit drivers for most modern hardware
I've heard the same complaint from a sysadmin, a photographer, and a security expert. Brand new hardware does not have drivers for Win64, even in one case when they claim they do on their Website. Also, both an image processing program and two databases that either will not run, or crash unacceptably often when running 64-bit, but run just fine on 32 bit.
Linux is beside the point, since the question was specifically about Windows. Maybe you have not had any problems with your subset of hardware and software, but all three of the people I know (people with a pretty good clue I might add) have had serious problems and abandoned 64 bit Windows. Providing links to some drivers does not really do anything to convince me that I won't run into the same problems. In any case, I see no advantage for running 64 bit Windows on a laptop for anything I might want to do. If a single thread is using more than 4Gb, I should probably be running it on a server.
When mentioning nVidia, he was talking about Turion systems, not Centrino systems.
Umm, sure, the part where he said, "the Intel GPUs the Centrino Duo notebooks usually use are very poor" should have tipped me off to the fact that he was talking about Turion systems. You can get the same video cards in either system and claiming Centrino Duo's should be avoided because the nVidia cards in the Turion are better is just plain wrong. He tried supporting his statement with an untrue example. Get a clue mister coward.
It can't run 64-bit Windows Vista and the Intel GPUs the Centrino Duo notebooks usually use are very poor.
Nothing can run 64-bit Windows because the existing versions suck so badly with driver and software incompatibilities. No one I know with a 64 bit processor is running a 64 bit version of Windows on it anymore. Everyone has given up and switched back. Vista will support 32 bit for longer than most laptops will last and I don't see any reason why someone would switch in the foreseeable future for their laptop.
As for graphics, what the hell are you talking about? There are a handful of Centrino Duo machines for sale right now and looking at the selection I see both ATI and nVidia graphics cards in them. Acers ship with ATI and Sony with nVidia.
Do you enjoy misleading people by making crap like this up, or are you just very misinformed?
Is allofmp3.com downloading actually legal in the US? It doesn't say on the site, and I know the site only corresponds to Russian law. But if this is legal, this is quite a service.
Downloading anything in the US is probably legal. As far as I know no one has ever been convicted of downloading copyrighted works. All cases you hear in the news about illegal music downloads say in the actual article that they were using a program that also provides the music for upload. It is possible downloading is illegal, but I've not seen a single court case that has upheld that opinion.
As for allofmp3.com, they won their court case in the U.S. due to our reciprocal copyright agreement with Russia. The Russian authorities declined to further investigate them in Russia, since the Russian equivalent of the RIAA confirmed they had a license and they saw no indication of any wrongdoing. Thus far they have weathered all legal attacks and I would not hesitate to purchase music from them out of fear of legal repercussions.
Note, I am not a lawyer. This is just my opinion based upon what I have read.
They set a high price to appeal to a particular type of customer.
Yeah, just think about the sentence for a bit. They are charging money for entrance to a market, because people entering that market want them to? They are erecting an artificial barrier to entry, using their existing monopoly. That is illegal.
A correct analogy would be with a chemical manufacturer who sells chemicals by ton to other businesses, but won't sell small quantities to individuals because that's not the business they choose to be in.
An even more correct analogy would be the only supplier of chemical storage bins (a monopoly) has partnered with suppliers of a particular chemical and decided to charge an extra fee to anyone who wants to sell that chemical. It is an artificial barrier to new companies moving into the market of selling that chemical. It is unethical and illegal.
So... exactly who is the market for the new Intel products? ...It seems like none of the apps that high-end Apple users actually use aren't going to be out for quite some time.
You mean somebody still believes the hype that Apple users are mostly graphic artists these days? I know a lot of people including a few who are artists that use macs. Most mac users I know, however, are programmers and scientists. Another large number are non-power users who basically use the Web, e-mail, and some word processing. More people I know are concerned about Mathematica or their personal favorite terminal application running nicely than photoshop. I'm sure there are a lot of graphics people who are pissed about the delay, but I doubt they are a significant number to affect the sales results. I've seen this exact same thing happen several times on the Mac platform and developers never learn. A major niche application developer announces they won't be supporting new hardware for a year or more. Two years later they actually get a version out the door and find half their customers have moved on to a more nimble competitor's application and they just aren't all that interested in switching back. Adobe just announced, "hey anyone who can throw together something nice that actually uses all the built in CoreImage technology that already does half what our product does is free to muscle in and steal our customers." Brilliant!
It would be unwise for Apple to release a photoshop competitor. Look what happened to the Mac version of Premier when Apple released Final Cut Pro...
You mean when Adobe killed it and most of the users migrated to Final Cut Pro, making Apple a lot of money?
I wouldn't call it a Microsoft insecurity issue, but a stupid user issue.
I disagree. Stupid users can be the weak link, but at this point, they aren't there yet. A whole lot could be done to mitigate these types of viruses by the OS that is not done. Give the users good tools and if they still screw up you can complain.
The user has to install it for it to work, the user actually has to be involved and allow it onto their box.
This is true, but most Windows OS's don't do a reasonable job of distinguishing data and programs. Even those that do, use very poorly designed UI's to do so.
The same type issue can be had for a Linux box and you don't even have to be a root user to be affected; someone emails you unknown app and like these windows dumbasses you run it can wack all of the Openoffice documents you have been using to write your disertation for the past year is gone.
Perhaps for some brain-dead Linux distros this is true. In general, however, Linux makes it a lot harder to disguise programs as data (no hidden extensions). They also require the user to explicitly make a downloaded program executable (no double click and it runs). Also, most Linux machines have a workable non-admin account and use it as a default. This means the virus cannot disable the virus protection, as this one does. Finally, a few more secure Linux distributions run programs in virtual servers, requiring the user to explicitly grant it the ability to modify the user's files.
A stupid user is stupid user
And yet, that stupid user running the average Linux or OS X distribution would not have had a problem.
Windows needs to be fixed. It is under siege and still does not implement security even as good as most Linux or OS X boxes. What they should be doing is implementing better security, not worse. When a user gets a program via e-mail, the attachment should be labeled as such, explicitly. To run any new application the user should have to explicitly agree. This does not mean give them an OK/Cancel dialogue. The UI throws so many techno-babble OK/Cancel dialogues at the average user they are conditioned to click OK to everything. They should be given real choices like "I trust this program, run it" and "Don't run this program." Even when run, the program should default to executing in a sandbox environment, with no access to the internet or to read/write any user-space files. It should be able to read necessary system files, but not write them. It should not be able to change existing DLLs. If the program tries to do any of these things, the user should be informed in plain English and given the opportunity to enable the program to do so. Think, "This program wants to read your e-mail address book (allow it to read your addresses)(Don't let it read your addresses). This program wants to access the internet in a way normally used by mail programs (allow it to send e-mail)(prevent it from sending e-mail)." Windows should install a non-admin account by default and use that as the user's normal login account, thus an additional password would be required to disable the anti-virus.
All of these abilities can be set up today with existing OS's and a company the size of MS should be able to have them working in a few month's time. It is easy to blame the user, but the user has to work with the tools he has. Sure maybe they clicked "OK" but they've already had to click it 50 times today just to do their normal work. After a while, you can't expect everyone to pay attention. I call upon MS to write a more secure OS, with a workable GUI. Until they do so, I call upon everyone here to stop cutting them slack for what "dumb users" do. They are not the weak link here. Not yet, by a long shot. You should not have to be a computer expert to use a tool designed for non-experts. Both Current and older versions of Windows need a lot of work. After it is done, then user education is needed, but until that time it is just not going to work.
So much for LightTable destroying Aperture!
Actually, LightTable is the exception. They announced they will have a beta of it available shortly. Now if only Apple would release a competitor to Photoshop, Illustrator, and Framemaker maybe they'd come out with new versions of those products as well.
But it IS a free market issue. The network meets and exceeds what the government paid to subsidize, even WITH the bandwidth being witheld for IPTV.
Networks are basically common carriers. That is to say, they are granted all of the benefits I listed above under the conditions that they are impartial and do not favor any one party. In this case they are giving services they run preferential treatment on the network. Verizon's service will run faster with a higher QoS than competitors. That is not being impartial. And before you argue that this is a special part of the network, and those criteria do not apply, make certain you know for a fact that this is not running over any of those subsidized networks, government granted right-of-ways. Also, make certain that their common carrier freedom from prosecution does not apply to content on this special network.
I have 4 ISP's available through Brighthouse, including RoadRunner (the one I use). And very soon I will have both Verizon and Brighthouse as options for my cable TV, and of course there's always satelite. These changes are bringing MORE choice, not less.
In a few areas there are choices, but in the majority of the US people only have access to one set of lines, and the only way they can get an alternate service is by that service provider renting the lines from the one with the local monopoly. That relies upon them granting equal access to use their lines to all parties. That is exactly what Verizon does not want to do. They want to provide unequal access, which is a violation of the principals under which they have been granted a lot of extraordinary benefits. This is not a free market. It is a heavily regulated industry where providers have taken a lot of benefits for just a few restrictions. Their violation of those few restrictions is unacceptable.