You'll notice I specifically pointed out that sysadminning isn't actually my job now. I've been a webmaster for the last four years, and while it's still got its share of frustrations, it's heaps better than sysadminning (yes, even including dealing with IE).
Well, possibly because Payroll Clerks or Staffing Managers:
Aren't responsible for equipment you use all day, every day.
Don't get incoming jobs and have to prioritise them minute-by-minute, or have to face explaining to their bosses why there's a whole office full of people unable to do any work.
Rarely have to work evenings or weekends.
Rarely have to explain hideously complex technical issues to ill-educated managers/directors, then live with the consequences when they overrule your recommendations[2].
Can stuff something up and not bring the whole company down until it's fixed.
Have a vastly less complicated, technically (and mentally) demanding job[1].
Aren't frequently chronically underfunded, overworked and blamed for screwups caused by cheap or old equipment, and, finally...
Aren't blamed, every time when you stuff your computer up because you don't know how to operate the damn thing, and blithely assume no matter how badly it's hosed it'll be fixed and replaced within an hour or two at most.
Ok, I'm over-egging it slightly, but offhand I can't think of many other occupations where every essential system the company uses is under your purview and where one mistake can hose whole sections of the company and lose man-weeks of working time.
Sysadmins probably have the least-recognised job in the company - when they're doing their jobs well you never even notice they're there, and the only time you notice their existence is when something goes wrong. And when it does all the blame generally falls on the sysadmin for not preventing it (no matter how stupid, unlikely or unforeseeable "it" is).
I should probably point out I haven't done a lot of sysadminning for several years, but I remember vividly the irritation caused by idiot managers and clueless users ("Yeah. Uh, I deleted my Program Files directory, and when I ran Excel it had an error, and it mentioned Windows, so I deleted my Windows folder, and now it keeps on giving errors... Oh, and I have a presentation to finish for 16:00").
I also remember the incredibly frustrating attitude many users seemed to have - that you were there solely for their convenience, rather than to maintain the system that keeps the entire company running.
Sysadmins, I salute you.
Footnotes:
[1] Obviously this depends on the size and complexity of the network (and how well you've got it set up), but in general I think "sysadminning" is harder than (say) "accounts", in terms of diversity of skills required and sheer amount of time you have to spend teaching yourself new things every week.
[2] Although everyone who's ever worked in an office appreciates it, there's a reason Dilbert works in IT. Whether it's because the underlings' jobs are so obscurely technical, or because IT just attracts managers who are fuckwits, the PHB-quotient in IT is easily ten times any other discipline in the company.
No, not any specific examples of advertising, but advertising as a concept. Ultimately, advertising's just "letting people know about your product or service" - even word-of-mouth recommendations can be termed viral advertising.
If advertising didn't exist in any form I'd never hear about anything new and cool, never buy anything exciting or useful, businesses as a concept couldn't exist, and our society would stagnate.
Now, most companies abuse the need for advertising - while society need ads to function, we don't need people paid to jump out from behind corners, knock you to the ground and kneel on your windpipe while screaming you're unattractively deformed without their latest appendix upgrade, but this doesn't invalidate the concept of advertising as an essential part of our culture.
I must admit, I hate advert^H^H^H^H^H^H almost every example of advertising I see. However, pretty much the only type I don't mind is the Google adverts that have taken over the web, largely displacing obnoxious banner-adverts and pop-up windows.
Google has returned advertising to what it should be - simple, relevant, "soft"-sell and ignorable, and for that it should be praised.
Aaaah, it's time for the (in)famous Failed/. Car Analogies;-)
"Microsoft is doing the same thing, here. Bitch all you want to, but your license number is effectively the "VIN" for your software. Why shouldn't they have some reasonable means to check it?"
Actually, it's more like they're demanding the keys to your home office, then wanting to go in alone to look through your car's paperwork.
You're not allowed to go in with them or see what they're doing, and when they come out X minutes later and say "fine, you're legit" you have only their word that all they looked at was your VIN and not your bank statements, or that they didn't poke around and check your insurance or road fund tax were up-to-date while they were there. Oh yeah, and this is a company that has a history of trying to get into your office to examine all your paperwork every time they think they can get away with it.
If the mechanic checks my VIN once I've dropped the car off in the shop it doesn't bother me, but if I hear my car has a stupid (and user-fixable) design flaw, I phone up to get advice on fixing it and he made me go outside, pop the bonnet and scrabble around the engine just to check I really bought my car from his garage, I'd be a bit more annoyed.
This is (as with all/. car analogies) a flawed analogy - when you "steal" the car it costs the garage nothing, since it costs nothing to reproduce, strictly accurately the "mechanic" is an automated system (and so my use effectively costs nothing to MS, whether I bought the car from them or "acquired" it), and instead of a trivial broken taillight the design flaw is more likely to be that the brakes suddenly stop working on the Interstate, or the airbag goes off randomly when you hit 73mph and empties your bank account.
Oh yeah, and the "garage" has a widely-known and documented history of breaking things in the name of vendor lockin, screwing over their very own customers, used both illegal and immoral business practices, is a convicted illegal monopoly and has been caught multiple times using blackmail, extortion and bribery to get its way, often at the expense of its own users.
I don't want Microsoft (or, by extension any other vendor) scanning my machine. Providing patches to everyone costs them no more than providing patches to legitimate users only. The only reason patches are even necessary is because the software they've sold me is fundmentally flawed (and yes, I am legit) - patches are an unnecessary pain in the arse, and now they want me to jump through yet another hoop, for no benefit to me, for a tiny reduction in piracy of their already- overpriced software?
Price of Windows machine = Hardware cost + OS licence cost + OS installation cost + Dell's Profit - Money back from bundled software (AOL etc) Price of FreeDOS machine = Hardware cost + OS licence cost + OS installation cost + Dell's Profit
Now, FreeDOS is free (leaving aside media duplication, which should be the same for both OSs), and isn't even installed on the machine when you buy it, so the two equations actually look like this:
Price of Windows machine = Hardware cost + OS licence cost + OS installation cost + Dell's Profit - Money back from bundled software Price of FreeDOS machine = Hardware cost + Dell's Profit
Now, for the price of the Windows machine to be less than the FreeDOS one, one of 5 things has to happen:
Monetary kickbacks from bundled software offset the price of the OS licence and installation. I doubt very, very much if they can make enough money back from bundling a crappy AOL installer to pay for the Windows OEM licence and the hassle of installing it on every machine.
The hardware costs less for the Windows machine. We know this isn't the case, since the two machines are apparently identical apart from their OS.
Windows installation cost is negative. This is clearly stupid - hard drives aren't supplied with Windows pre-installed, so installing another OS doesn't cost you anything. I'm willing to admit the possibility that production-line Windows installations (eg, using disk images) would be so cheap as to be effectively free, but that just makes them irrelevant - it doesn't explain the difference in price.
The OS licence cost is negative (ie, Microsoft pays DELL for each Windows copy sold). This is not the case, since Microsoft makes money from Windows sales. Microsoft's business model means it has to charge for software - it can give away some items as loss leaders (eg, giving MS Office cheap to schools to get home users to buy it), but if they were giving away Windows to home users they wouldn't be so worried about piracy. Hence "OS licence cost" > 0.
Dell makes less profit on Windows machines. This is the only option that makes sense. Now, if Dell doesn't have to factor in the OS licence cost or OS installation costs it could (should!) be turning those into pure profit. The fact that it's doing something so manifestly against its own best interests suggests that they're being strongarmed behind the scenes.
This is an illegal and unfair monopolistic practice, exactly what the Microsoft anti-trust ruling was supposed to stop. However, after MS was convicted of being an illegal monopoly Bush and Co. got in, and all the high talk about breaking up Microsoft or imposing real sanctions withered away. Suddenly the administration got cold feet about prosecuting, and although they'd already won the case they pretty much let them off with the lightest penalty they could get away with.
Microsoft clearly hasn't learned a thing from this, apart from that you can do whatever you like as long as you contribute to the right political campaigns. Look at the recent debacle here in Europe, where MS was instructed to open up APIs and protocol specs to allow fair competition, then attmepted to use the punishment to squash competition, charging thousands of dollars for the information they were supposed to "open", unnecessarily bundling protocols and formats together so licensees had to pay for mountains of data they didn't want for the single bit they did, and using a restrictive licence that specifically blocks the FLOSS movement from benefiting, although the penalty was designed to encourage competition and FLOSS is Microsoft's biggest (only real?) competitor.
I'm ignoring for the sake of brevity your confusion over the OEM and retail prices of windows, since it's irrelevant. Ditto your bizarre idea that it's legal to install a copy of Windows on three machines - this is piracy, and while you might
Twice the number of chips. Twice the expense. Twice the complication. Extra storage necessary. No advantage.
They'd be better off either just extending Symbian or porting all their software across to Linux - development costs are one-off and up-front. Adding in another chip is a nasty workaround that costs you more on every handset sold.
The problem is that now PCs are poised to explode into the home entertainment market as a general-purpose device, the overwhelming majority of the market is going to be Joe Sixpack, who's quite happy to buy DRM-encrusted shit because he doens't know any better.
For most of the history of the PC, people who've been buying PCs (or at least advising those who do) have been the more technically literate, so things like DRM would have a hard time gaining headspace.
With the PC's move from "expensive equipment" to "commodity entertainment device" the majority of the new buyers are much less technical than previously, so manufacturers can at last freely lobotomise their products for Big Business interests, and still be assured there's a huge market (in fact, the majority of the market) who'll be willing to buy them.
So, Joe Sixpack can't watch pirate movies (like he once vaguely heard of people doing), and can't back up his DVDs, but then he never could, so by his perceptions he doesn't really "lose" anything.
As for us hackers, techies, geeks and nerds, well, we're just going to have to get used to forswearing all mainstream-culture media, or living with an ass-full of MPAA/RIAA cock every time we turn on our machines.
I've re-read your post, and two more points occurred:
You won't carry your passport (which, these days, fits in a wallet) around all the time, but you'll happily carry a card around? Why?
True, there are identity theft issues with passports, which is why I don't carry mine with me all the time. And that's exactly why I object to being forced to carry around yet another weak point in my personal and financial security, let alone one I'm charged £300 for up-front, and doubtless a mandatory replacement charge if I lose it.
Before ID cards you have a single major point of weakness, and a free choice as to whether you carry it around or not.
After ID cards you now have two major points of weakness, and no choice whether you have to carry it around or not.
If you want a government-backed ID card then sign up for a Citizen Card (yeah, the website sucks). These are photo ID, require references to apply for one, and are supported by the Home Office.
Importantly, they're also optional, administrated by a non-profit, non-governmental organisation, and have to conform to strict Data Protection laws, none of which apply to the ID card if the government decides otherwise.
With options like these available it seems like simple ignorance or laziness to support the ID card scheme. You have your option. You have your benefits.
Leave our rights and privacy alone.
Apologies if this post seems somewhat terse, but you've just advanced the most intellectually lazy and unashamedly self-serving reason I've ever heard for supporting a national ID card scheme.
This kind of dovetails with my point - they're a way to sort out who's a subject of a country and who's a foreign visitor (who might carry legal complications). They aren't to track subjects within their own country, and they certainly aren't mandatory.
Yeah, I suppose. But I strongly suspect had he (or the government) attempted to make political capital out of events the way Bush did with 9/11, he'd have been hung drawn and quartered by an outraged mob.
You'll notice also that the question was introduced by the interviewer (not the interviewee), and that Tony Blair (who's been leading the pro-ID card charge from the front) has been merely quiet on the subject, rather than admitting it would have done bugger-all to help.
Most telling bit of the interview:
"I've never argued... that ID cards would prevent any particular act.
The question on ID cards, but also on any other security measure actually, is on the balance of the ability to deal with particular threats and civil liberties, does a particular measure help or hinder it?
I actually think ID cards do help rather than hinder.
If you ask me whether ID cards or any other measure would have stopped yesterday, I can't identify any measure which would have just stopped it like that."
So, still pro-ID card, still happy to give up essential liberty to obtain (possible) temporary safety, but not actually advancing outrageous exaggerations on the subject (as the government has up to now)....
That said, it is a concession, and one I hope the anti-ID card lobby jump all over...
Doesn't that suggest, then, that it would be more proper to simply fix the broken visa system than to institute draconian and privacy-invading observation laws on every person already in your country?
Passports and visas are basically a way to track who comes into and who leaves your country. This is understandable and essential, because without it you couldn't have any kind of meaningful border controls (immigration controls, customs & excise, etc, etc), and no way to track even the rough population of your country (taxes, budget, statistics, public spending, etc, etc, etc).
It is important to note that if you don't wish to leave the country, you don't need a passport (indeed, I know of a few 50 year-olds - "local" types - who've never owned a passport).
In fact, I believe legally you don't need a passport to leave the country, it's just that not many other countries will allow you in without one, and airlines won't serve you without that kind of reliable ID.
Incidentally, a girlfriend of mine once flew from the UK to Greece only on her student NUS card, and got back into the UK with only her Greek ID card (different to a passport, and before internal EU border controls were relaxed).
Short answer, passports allow you to keep functioning effectively as a country, by tracking those who enter and leave. ID cards track you within your own country, and have no further purpose than that. You can't see the problem?
"But they won't use these powers for intimidation" is not an excuse. Historically powers like that are extremely unlikely to ever be repealed[1].
Do you feel able to make that promise for every government your country has for the rest of time?
No, then you'd be stupid to completely unnecessarily hand them the powers now, wouldn't you?
Here's a quick hint: If the government is (1) seeking greater powers over their citizenry, and (2) citing terrorism, drugs, organised crime or whatever the trendy anxiety du jour is as the reason, and (3) failing to give a single sensible example of how these new powers would actually help prevent the problem, they're either megalomaniacs after power for power's sake or they're knee-jerk-reacting paranoid idiots - either way they should be opposed[2].
Governments serve people, not the other way around. The government is supposed to represent the majority will, not impose their will on the majority.
Footnotes:
[1] Well, without revolution or large-scale civil unrest. And historically what happens when there's a lot of civil unrest? Right - governments clamp down and do start abusing those powers.
[2] Since even paranoid idiots will then get those laws on the books... to be abused by the very next megalomaniac administration that gets in.
So, basically, you're a criminal in your own country by the simple expedient of forgetting your wallet when you leave the house in the morning?
And it's a crime punishable by several hours detention (minumum?).
And the police don't have to have a reason to stop you and demand your ID?
And what happens if/when you lose your card?
Hate to tell you mate, but that sounds frighteningly like a totalitarian police state to me.
As an aside, isn't the biggest step towards a police state the attempt to criminalise the average citizen, so there's always something you can pull them in for if you want an excuse? (I'm sure I remember reading that somewhere - might even have been 1984.) The idea is that then the average citizen always has to be slightly afraid of the police, because they always have something they can be threatened with.
In a free society the police shouldn't be able to inconvenience anyone without just cause.
And the overwhelming majority of those involved in 9/11 were in the Unites States legally. In fact (IIRC) the few (3-5 max) who weren't there legally had entered the country legally on temporary visas, and simply overstayed for a couple of weeks after their visas expired.
And yet every single time a terrorist incident occurs the government concerned trots out the "ID cards would have prevented this!" bullshit. Just once I'd like to hear them explain how.
"...it wasn't just having ID and being required to present it that made such regimes oppressive. It was the limitations on what you could do and where you could go that was the real evil."
Right, but you can't effectively restrict what people do and where they go without a national ID system.
There's nothing wrong with a National ID card. And there's nothing wrong with police asking you to see it instead of another form of ID. And there's nothing wrong with every government or utilities-related transaction you engage in sitting on one central database, and traceable right back to you. There's nothing wrong with you not being able to find out what information is stored on that database. And there's nothing wrong with the government having unfettered access to the database, as long as you trust the government to act selflessly in your best interest.
For those of us who keep up with the news (and no, I'm not talking about Fox News or the Sun/Daily Mirror/Daily Sport), it's very, very, very painfully obvious that the government can only be trusted to do three things - act entirely in its own interest, attempt to garner the maximum amount of information and control it possibly can over the people it's meant to be serving, and abuse said power and control whenever it's convenient.
Yeah, the words were silly, but I was serious about the motivation - "belief" is an emotionally-charged word, and "scientific" versus "religious" belief is just too slight a difference to really stick out. Entirely new words force people to stop and remember what it means, whereas both those phrases would just get lazily shortened to "belief" again, which rather defeats the point.
Besides, the ID crew are already mis-using words like "know" and "scientific", so do you think merely tacking a modifier onto the beginning of the phrase would be enough to stop them misusing it?
I have no problem with spirituality - in fact, believe it or not, I consider myself somewhat spiritual. I have no problem with the idea that (for example), God created the entire universe X billion years ago, and "created" all living beings through evolution.
The problem I have is with fundamentalists who believe Science is opposed to Religion, then try to dress up Religion in Science's clothing in order to depose it.
I'm happy to let Science handle the "how" and the "when", and let Religion handle the "why".
Unfortunately, while scientists by and large are careful with their assertions and strive to stay in their niche, religious fundamentalists often play fast and loose with semantics, logic and reason, and seem intent on invading and conquering science, depriving us of our most useful tool in our (physical) arsenal.
FWIW, I believe you're correct in your assertion that modern life is entirely too materialistic, and that we lose a great deal (including, studies indicate, mental stability) by focusing on stressful living and material acquisition rather than what truly makes us happy.
That said, I'd lay the blame for that more on economics, fashion and advertising (all avowedly non-scientific) than on science.
Science just gives us the tools - it's up to us whether we use them to promote a comfortable utopian equality for all, or to plaster the freeway with high-pressure paranoia-inducing adverts telling you no-one will have sex with you if you don't replace your car every 18 months...;-)
The trouble here is the word "believe" is used so loosely.
We need two new words to describe the differing statuses. I propose bunghoolie and squink:
Bunghoolie: The state of starting from directly-observed evidence, proceeding with logical inference and Occams Razor, deriving a "current best theory" from which to work, and being ready to discard said theory the second a better-supported one comes along.
Squink: The state of being handed a conclusion by others, lacking access to all the reasoning or evidence which which to assess its correctness, and refusing to abandon said belief until it is unequivocally disproven (whether or not it can be, and sometimes not even then).
So, scientists can say "I bunghoolie that evolution is the driving force behind our development" and we can all nod wisely and argue about how it actually works or if we can come up with anything better.
Creationists and ID-proponents can say "I squink that we were created from scratch by a big beard in the sky, that you can never prove the existence of, only he made some deliberate mistakes, and you can't ever know what he intends anyway", and we can all pat them on the head, mumble "that's nice" and return to the grown-up discussion at hand...
Problem solved - scientists reinforce the fact every time they make a statement that it's a provisional answer that will be discarded if a better one is presented, and creationists are prevented from equating their irrational beliefs with the regimented, double-blind, experimental processes scientists use.
Slashdot Mirror
You'll notice I specifically pointed out that sysadminning isn't actually my job now. I've been a webmaster for the last four years, and while it's still got its share of frustrations, it's heaps better than sysadminning (yes, even including dealing with IE).
Ok, I'm over-egging it slightly, but offhand I can't think of many other occupations where every essential system the company uses is under your purview and where one mistake can hose whole sections of the company and lose man-weeks of working time.
Sysadmins probably have the least-recognised job in the company - when they're doing their jobs well you never even notice they're there, and the only time you notice their existence is when something goes wrong. And when it does all the blame generally falls on the sysadmin for not preventing it (no matter how stupid, unlikely or unforeseeable "it" is).
I should probably point out I haven't done a lot of sysadminning for several years, but I remember vividly the irritation caused by idiot managers and clueless users ("Yeah. Uh, I deleted my Program Files directory, and when I ran Excel it had an error, and it mentioned Windows, so I deleted my Windows folder, and now it keeps on giving errors... Oh, and I have a presentation to finish for 16:00").
I also remember the incredibly frustrating attitude many users seemed to have - that you were there solely for their convenience, rather than to maintain the system that keeps the entire company running.
Sysadmins, I salute you.
Footnotes:
[1] Obviously this depends on the size and complexity of the network (and how well you've got it set up), but in general I think "sysadminning" is harder than (say) "accounts", in terms of diversity of skills required and sheer amount of time you have to spend teaching yourself new things every week.
[2] Although everyone who's ever worked in an office appreciates it, there's a reason Dilbert works in IT. Whether it's because the underlings' jobs are so obscurely technical, or because IT just attracts managers who are fuckwits, the PHB-quotient in IT is easily ten times any other discipline in the company.
And what's wrong with advertising?
No, not any specific examples of advertising, but advertising as a concept. Ultimately, advertising's just "letting people know about your product or service" - even word-of-mouth recommendations can be termed viral advertising.
If advertising didn't exist in any form I'd never hear about anything new and cool, never buy anything exciting or useful, businesses as a concept couldn't exist, and our society would stagnate.
Now, most companies abuse the need for advertising - while society need ads to function, we don't need people paid to jump out from behind corners, knock you to the ground and kneel on your windpipe while screaming you're unattractively deformed without their latest appendix upgrade, but this doesn't invalidate the concept of advertising as an essential part of our culture.
I must admit, I hate advert^H^H^H^H^H^H almost every example of advertising I see. However, pretty much the only type I don't mind is the Google adverts that have taken over the web, largely displacing obnoxious banner-adverts and pop-up windows.
Google has returned advertising to what it should be - simple, relevant, "soft"-sell and ignorable, and for that it should be praised.
Aaaah, it's time for the (in)famous Failed /. Car Analogies ;-)
/. car analogies) a flawed analogy - when you "steal" the car it costs the garage nothing, since it costs nothing to reproduce, strictly accurately the "mechanic" is an automated system (and so my use effectively costs nothing to MS, whether I bought the car from them or "acquired" it), and instead of a trivial broken taillight the design flaw is more likely to be that the brakes suddenly stop working on the Interstate, or the airbag goes off randomly when you hit 73mph and empties your bank account.
"Microsoft is doing the same thing, here. Bitch all you want to, but your license number is effectively the "VIN" for your software. Why shouldn't they have some reasonable means to check it?"
Actually, it's more like they're demanding the keys to your home office, then wanting to go in alone to look through your car's paperwork.
You're not allowed to go in with them or see what they're doing, and when they come out X minutes later and say "fine, you're legit" you have only their word that all they looked at was your VIN and not your bank statements, or that they didn't poke around and check your insurance or road fund tax were up-to-date while they were there. Oh yeah, and this is a company that has a history of trying to get into your office to examine all your paperwork every time they think they can get away with it.
If the mechanic checks my VIN once I've dropped the car off in the shop it doesn't bother me, but if I hear my car has a stupid (and user-fixable) design flaw, I phone up to get advice on fixing it and he made me go outside, pop the bonnet and scrabble around the engine just to check I really bought my car from his garage, I'd be a bit more annoyed.
This is (as with all
Oh yeah, and the "garage" has a widely-known and documented history of breaking things in the name of vendor lockin, screwing over their very own customers, used both illegal and immoral business practices, is a convicted illegal monopoly and has been caught multiple times using blackmail, extortion and bribery to get its way, often at the expense of its own users.
I don't want Microsoft (or, by extension any other vendor) scanning my machine. Providing patches to everyone costs them no more than providing patches to legitimate users only. The only reason patches are even necessary is because the software they've sold me is fundmentally flawed (and yes, I am legit) - patches are an unnecessary pain in the arse, and now they want me to jump through yet another hoop, for no benefit to me, for a tiny reduction in piracy of their already- overpriced software?
Fuck that.
In other news, sarcastic forum poster loses argument, tries to claim moral high ground.
Sigh.
Look, it's really, really simple:
Price of Windows machine = Hardware cost + OS licence cost + OS installation cost + Dell's Profit - Money back from bundled software (AOL etc)
Price of FreeDOS machine = Hardware cost + OS licence cost + OS installation cost + Dell's Profit
Now, FreeDOS is free (leaving aside media duplication, which should be the same for both OSs), and isn't even installed on the machine when you buy it, so the two equations actually look like this:
Price of Windows machine = Hardware cost + OS licence cost + OS installation cost + Dell's Profit - Money back from bundled software
Price of FreeDOS machine = Hardware cost + Dell's Profit
Now, for the price of the Windows machine to be less than the FreeDOS one, one of 5 things has to happen:
Monetary kickbacks from bundled software offset the price of the OS licence and installation. I doubt very, very much if they can make enough money back from bundling a crappy AOL installer to pay for the Windows OEM licence and the hassle of installing it on every machine.
The hardware costs less for the Windows machine. We know this isn't the case, since the two machines are apparently identical apart from their OS.
Windows installation cost is negative. This is clearly stupid - hard drives aren't supplied with Windows pre-installed, so installing another OS doesn't cost you anything. I'm willing to admit the possibility that production-line Windows installations (eg, using disk images) would be so cheap as to be effectively free, but that just makes them irrelevant - it doesn't explain the difference in price.
The OS licence cost is negative (ie, Microsoft pays DELL for each Windows copy sold). This is not the case, since Microsoft makes money from Windows sales. Microsoft's business model means it has to charge for software - it can give away some items as loss leaders (eg, giving MS Office cheap to schools to get home users to buy it), but if they were giving away Windows to home users they wouldn't be so worried about piracy. Hence "OS licence cost" > 0.
Dell makes less profit on Windows machines. This is the only option that makes sense. Now, if Dell doesn't have to factor in the OS licence cost or OS installation costs it could (should!) be turning those into pure profit. The fact that it's doing something so manifestly against its own best interests suggests that they're being strongarmed behind the scenes.
This is an illegal and unfair monopolistic practice, exactly what the Microsoft anti-trust ruling was supposed to stop. However, after MS was convicted of being an illegal monopoly Bush and Co. got in, and all the high talk about breaking up Microsoft or imposing real sanctions withered away. Suddenly the administration got cold feet about prosecuting, and although they'd already won the case they pretty much let them off with the lightest penalty they could get away with.
Microsoft clearly hasn't learned a thing from this, apart from that you can do whatever you like as long as you contribute to the right political campaigns. Look at the recent debacle here in Europe, where MS was instructed to open up APIs and protocol specs to allow fair competition, then attmepted to use the punishment to squash competition, charging thousands of dollars for the information they were supposed to "open", unnecessarily bundling protocols and formats together so licensees had to pay for mountains of data they didn't want for the single bit they did, and using a restrictive licence that specifically blocks the FLOSS movement from benefiting, although the penalty was designed to encourage competition and FLOSS is Microsoft's biggest (only real?) competitor.
I'm ignoring for the sake of brevity your confusion over the OEM and retail prices of windows, since it's irrelevant. Ditto your bizarre idea that it's legal to install a copy of Windows on three machines - this is piracy, and while you might
Twice the number of chips. Twice the expense. Twice the complication. Extra storage necessary. No advantage.
They'd be better off either just extending Symbian or porting all their software across to Linux - development costs are one-off and up-front. Adding in another chip is a nasty workaround that costs you more on every handset sold.
This, unfortunately, is exactly right.
The problem is that now PCs are poised to explode into the home entertainment market as a general-purpose device, the overwhelming majority of the market is going to be Joe Sixpack, who's quite happy to buy DRM-encrusted shit because he doens't know any better.
For most of the history of the PC, people who've been buying PCs (or at least advising those who do) have been the more technically literate, so things like DRM would have a hard time gaining headspace.
With the PC's move from "expensive equipment" to "commodity entertainment device" the majority of the new buyers are much less technical than previously, so manufacturers can at last freely lobotomise their products for Big Business interests, and still be assured there's a huge market (in fact, the majority of the market) who'll be willing to buy them.
So, Joe Sixpack can't watch pirate movies (like he once vaguely heard of people doing), and can't back up his DVDs, but then he never could, so by his perceptions he doesn't really "lose" anything.
As for us hackers, techies, geeks and nerds, well, we're just going to have to get used to forswearing all mainstream-culture media, or living with an ass-full of MPAA/RIAA cock every time we turn on our machines.
I've re-read your post, and two more points occurred:
You won't carry your passport (which, these days, fits in a wallet) around all the time, but you'll happily carry a card around? Why?
True, there are identity theft issues with passports, which is why I don't carry mine with me all the time. And that's exactly why I object to being forced to carry around yet another weak point in my personal and financial security, let alone one I'm charged £300 for up-front, and doubtless a mandatory replacement charge if I lose it.
Before ID cards you have a single major point of weakness, and a free choice as to whether you carry it around or not.
After ID cards you now have two major points of weakness, and no choice whether you have to carry it around or not.
Hmmm, progress...
If you want a government-backed ID card then sign up for a Citizen Card (yeah, the website sucks). These are photo ID, require references to apply for one, and are supported by the Home Office.
Importantly, they're also optional, administrated by a non-profit, non-governmental organisation, and have to conform to strict Data Protection laws, none of which apply to the ID card if the government decides otherwise.
With options like these available it seems like simple ignorance or laziness to support the ID card scheme. You have your option. You have your benefits.
Leave our rights and privacy alone.
Apologies if this post seems somewhat terse, but you've just advanced the most intellectually lazy and unashamedly self-serving reason I've ever heard for supporting a national ID card scheme.
This kind of dovetails with my point - they're a way to sort out who's a subject of a country and who's a foreign visitor (who might carry legal complications). They aren't to track subjects within their own country, and they certainly aren't mandatory.
Yeah, I suppose. But I strongly suspect had he (or the government) attempted to make political capital out of events the way Bush did with 9/11, he'd have been hung drawn and quartered by an outraged mob.
... that ID cards would prevent any particular act.
You'll notice also that the question was introduced by the interviewer (not the interviewee), and that Tony Blair (who's been leading the pro-ID card charge from the front) has been merely quiet on the subject, rather than admitting it would have done bugger-all to help.
Most telling bit of the interview:
"I've never argued
The question on ID cards, but also on any other security measure actually, is on the balance of the ability to deal with particular threats and civil liberties, does a particular measure help or hinder it?
I actually think ID cards do help rather than hinder.
If you ask me whether ID cards or any other measure would have stopped yesterday, I can't identify any measure which would have just stopped it like that."
So, still pro-ID card, still happy to give up essential liberty to obtain (possible) temporary safety, but not actually advancing outrageous exaggerations on the subject (as the government has up to now)....
That said, it is a concession, and one I hope the anti-ID card lobby jump all over...
Touché - interesting point.
Doesn't that suggest, then, that it would be more proper to simply fix the broken visa system than to institute draconian and privacy-invading observation laws on every person already in your country?
And of course I'm ignoring for a second the whole argument about whether it's right to give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety...
Passports and visas are basically a way to track who comes into and who leaves your country. This is understandable and essential, because without it you couldn't have any kind of meaningful border controls (immigration controls, customs & excise, etc, etc), and no way to track even the rough population of your country (taxes, budget, statistics, public spending, etc, etc, etc).
It is important to note that if you don't wish to leave the country, you don't need a passport (indeed, I know of a few 50 year-olds - "local" types - who've never owned a passport).
In fact, I believe legally you don't need a passport to leave the country, it's just that not many other countries will allow you in without one, and airlines won't serve you without that kind of reliable ID.
Incidentally, a girlfriend of mine once flew from the UK to Greece only on her student NUS card, and got back into the UK with only her Greek ID card (different to a passport, and before internal EU border controls were relaxed).
Short answer, passports allow you to keep functioning effectively as a country, by tracking those who enter and leave. ID cards track you within your own country, and have no further purpose than that. You can't see the problem?
Bonus points - the compromised ID will have biometric data on it.
You can always change a password or PIN after you experience ID theft - ever tried to change your iris map or fingerprints?
Connecting the ID card to biometric data was the single stupidest idea since... well, the ID card.
Yeah - the poster clearly had no clue, but the Mod was a fucking tool.
Oops - forgot... also:
"But they won't use these powers for intimidation" is not an excuse. Historically powers like that are extremely unlikely to ever be repealed[1].
Do you feel able to make that promise for every government your country has for the rest of time?
No, then you'd be stupid to completely unnecessarily hand them the powers now, wouldn't you?
Here's a quick hint: If the government is (1) seeking greater powers over their citizenry, and (2) citing terrorism, drugs, organised crime or whatever the trendy anxiety du jour is as the reason, and (3) failing to give a single sensible example of how these new powers would actually help prevent the problem, they're either megalomaniacs after power for power's sake or they're knee-jerk-reacting paranoid idiots - either way they should be opposed[2].
Governments serve people, not the other way around. The government is supposed to represent the majority will, not impose their will on the majority.
Footnotes:
[1] Well, without revolution or large-scale civil unrest. And historically what happens when there's a lot of civil unrest? Right - governments clamp down and do start abusing those powers.
[2] Since even paranoid idiots will then get those laws on the books... to be abused by the very next megalomaniac administration that gets in.
So, basically, you're a criminal in your own country by the simple expedient of forgetting your wallet when you leave the house in the morning?
And it's a crime punishable by several hours detention (minumum?).
And the police don't have to have a reason to stop you and demand your ID?
And what happens if/when you lose your card?
Hate to tell you mate, but that sounds frighteningly like a totalitarian police state to me.
As an aside, isn't the biggest step towards a police state the attempt to criminalise the average citizen, so there's always something you can pull them in for if you want an excuse? (I'm sure I remember reading that somewhere - might even have been 1984.) The idea is that then the average citizen always has to be slightly afraid of the police, because they always have something they can be threatened with.
In a free society the police shouldn't be able to inconvenience anyone without just cause.
And the overwhelming majority of those involved in 9/11 were in the Unites States legally. In fact (IIRC) the few (3-5 max) who weren't there legally had entered the country legally on temporary visas, and simply overstayed for a couple of weeks after their visas expired.
And yet every single time a terrorist incident occurs the government concerned trots out the "ID cards would have prevented this!" bullshit. Just once I'd like to hear them explain how.
"...it wasn't just having ID and being required to present it that made such regimes oppressive. It was the limitations on what you could do and where you could go that was the real evil."
Right, but you can't effectively restrict what people do and where they go without a national ID system.
There's nothing wrong with a National ID card. And there's nothing wrong with police asking you to see it instead of another form of ID. And there's nothing wrong with every government or utilities-related transaction you engage in sitting on one central database, and traceable right back to you. There's nothing wrong with you not being able to find out what information is stored on that database. And there's nothing wrong with the government having unfettered access to the database, as long as you trust the government to act selflessly in your best interest.
For those of us who keep up with the news (and no, I'm not talking about Fox News or the Sun/Daily Mirror/Daily Sport), it's very, very, very painfully obvious that the government can only be trusted to do three things - act entirely in its own interest, attempt to garner the maximum amount of information and control it possibly can over the people it's meant to be serving, and abuse said power and control whenever it's convenient.
Ohhhh, if you want then...
Yeah, the words were silly, but I was serious about the motivation - "belief" is an emotionally-charged word, and "scientific" versus "religious" belief is just too slight a difference to really stick out. Entirely new words force people to stop and remember what it means, whereas both those phrases would just get lazily shortened to "belief" again, which rather defeats the point.
Besides, the ID crew are already mis-using words like "know" and "scientific", so do you think merely tacking a modifier onto the beginning of the phrase would be enough to stop them misusing it?
ObPratchett:
;-)
Vimes: "How is his lordship?"
Littlebottom: "Stable"
Vimes: "Dead is stable."
And always remember:
Stable != Ethical
Stable != Honest
Stable != Trustworthy
I have no problem with spirituality - in fact, believe it or not, I consider myself somewhat spiritual. I have no problem with the idea that (for example), God created the entire universe X billion years ago, and "created" all living beings through evolution.
;-)
The problem I have is with fundamentalists who believe Science is opposed to Religion, then try to dress up Religion in Science's clothing in order to depose it.
I'm happy to let Science handle the "how" and the "when", and let Religion handle the "why".
Unfortunately, while scientists by and large are careful with their assertions and strive to stay in their niche, religious fundamentalists often play fast and loose with semantics, logic and reason, and seem intent on invading and conquering science, depriving us of our most useful tool in our (physical) arsenal.
FWIW, I believe you're correct in your assertion that modern life is entirely too materialistic, and that we lose a great deal (including, studies indicate, mental stability) by focusing on stressful living and material acquisition rather than what truly makes us happy.
That said, I'd lay the blame for that more on economics, fashion and advertising (all avowedly non-scientific) than on science.
Science just gives us the tools - it's up to us whether we use them to promote a comfortable utopian equality for all, or to plaster the freeway with high-pressure paranoia-inducing adverts telling you no-one will have sex with you if you don't replace your car every 18 months...
The trouble here is the word "believe" is used so loosely.
We need two new words to describe the differing statuses. I propose bunghoolie and squink:
Bunghoolie: The state of starting from directly-observed evidence, proceeding with logical inference and Occams Razor, deriving a "current best theory" from which to work, and being ready to discard said theory the second a better-supported one comes along.
Squink: The state of being handed a conclusion by others, lacking access to all the reasoning or evidence which which to assess its correctness, and refusing to abandon said belief until it is unequivocally disproven (whether or not it can be, and sometimes not even then).
So, scientists can say "I bunghoolie that evolution is the driving force behind our development" and we can all nod wisely and argue about how it actually works or if we can come up with anything better.
Creationists and ID-proponents can say "I squink that we were created from scratch by a big beard in the sky, that you can never prove the existence of, only he made some deliberate mistakes, and you can't ever know what he intends anyway", and we can all pat them on the head, mumble "that's nice" and return to the grown-up discussion at hand...
Problem solved - scientists reinforce the fact every time they make a statement that it's a provisional answer that will be discarded if a better one is presented, and creationists are prevented from equating their irrational beliefs with the regimented, double-blind, experimental processes scientists use.
Thoughts?
Nevertheless, we still each have an appendix and coccycx, and it's been a loooong time since we ate grass to survive or commonly had tails.