Get ready to bust a fucking gut, they called their "tech" and the dumb fucker tried to install Norton AV for Windows onto my Linux laptop! No shit, I swear to God, the retard was trying to install Windows AV onto a Linux system. I finally got tired of their shit and told them they could hand me my money INCLUDING the installation fee or I would be seeing their asses in court, i got handed the cash and walked out.
But thanks to the cable/DSL duopoly here (which hasn't run a single foot of cable or fixed shit in over a decade, even though its a college town and more than a third bigger now than it was a decade ago) that WISP is still in business, still fucking folks I'm sure, because the duopoly won't run any lines which leaves them the only game in town if you don't live in a cherry picked area. My nephew ended up taking a one room apt in my building just so he could get away from them, THAT is how bad the service is. The guy was willing to pay $300 a month for a one room apt just to get the fuck away from the WISP because both the cable and DSL have made it clear they ain't running another foot. In fact AT&T (the DSL here and the ONLY DSL here) has made it clear if 3Mbps isn't fast enough? Tough shit, they ain't spending a dime and in fact the rumors are AT&T are gonna bail on landlines for their overpriced wireless data plans. If that happens less than a third of the town will have any high speed at all other than the WISP so they'll be able to do what they want. Capitalism, ain't it grand?
As much as I think Ayn Rand was a total hypocrite and a whackjob this is the ONE thing she got right, there are so many laws on the books now that frankly we are ALL criminals and at any time, for any slight, they can throw you in prison for as many years as they like simply because the laws are such a minefield now that just by breathing you are probably violating a dozen statutes.
I mean for the love of God we have no less than 2 people in prison even as we speak for thoughtcrimes folks, how much more proof do you need that Orwell got the time a little off but otherwise was right on the money? You have the guy who wrote the "pro pedo" book, he wasn't charged with actually DOING anything, just putting his thoughts on the subject in book form, and the second was a guy that was told by his therapist to write his fantasies about sleeping with underage girls down so they could discuss them in therapy. Again he didn't actually DO anything, he just put his thoughts on paper.
This is why I have always tried to support the ACLU and speak up, just as my grandfather taught me when he spoke up in support of the right of the Illinois Nazis to march even though Nazis dropped a wall on him and his squad at the end of WWII and he spent 2 years in a full body cast, its because you HAVE to support those with the unpopular cases because THOSE are how they get these bad laws rammed down our throats. Pedos, terrorists, racists, they use these as bogeymen precisely because they know how few will speak up for fear of looking like they support their views. Here is a perfect example, a law they ran through after the tragedy of 9/11 under the guise of "We must make sure it never happens again!" but government NEVER gets smaller or weaker, only bigger and more powerful, so now we are seeing these laws used as a blank check to spy on anybody that looks at them funny.
But its NOT the weapons training that makes the fascists fear the vet, its the fact that those who have suffered for their freedoms are the ones who covet it most dearly. As I said if anybody had a reason to hate Nazis it was my grandfather, the stories of what he went through, of having the PAK 88 used upon them, of seeing bodies blown to bits, yet he was the first to step up and tell all those around him "They deserve the right to speak, no matter what we feel about their speech they have the right to be heard" and THAT is what scares the fascist, the fact that the vets won't kowtow and will stand up and point out their lies.
Voting is two wolves and a sheep deciding what is for dinner in case you ain't figured that out yet. the ONLY ones you will be allowed to vote for, be it in a primary or general election, are the pre-bought. hell you might as well have only one checkbox that says "support the system" because that is ALL voting does. Even though I'm in no way a libertarian (I feel their beliefs would end up with a return to feudalism) watch this video for a better explanation of why voting is just a waste of time.
Oh and you might want to look up "Jon Stweart Ron Paul" to see how badly the primaries are rigged, he got footage that doesn't even try to hide how badly its rigged. It even shows that at places where Paul might have had a snowball's chance in hell the MSM treated him as "he who shall not be named" with talking heads practically tap dancing around their sentences so they would NOT ever speak his name, with it going so far as one naming the first, second, and FOURTH place finishers without even saying the words third place much less the fact that Paul took it. Its so bad that at the end of the video one of the reporters actually calls the anchor out on it, saying "Here we are talking about Palin and Christie, who aren't even running, and not speaking anything about Paul who is looking good in the polls here" and the anchor looks right at the camera, gets a douchebag smirk and says "If you get footage of Palin or Christie send it in, you can keep the Paul stuff". Hell he might as well have said "fuck the peasants, thinking they get a choice" while he was at it, because that douchebag smirk said it all.
So all you can do is grab as much as you possibly can and be ready for the collapse which is inevitable now. Over 430% of our GDP is now in the stock market, including the retirement funds of a good portion of your fellow citizens, when the 29 bubble burst it was less than 125% GDP and that took nearly 40 years to climb out of, what do you think will happen when a bubble 3 times as large blows? there is nothing you can do to change it, nothing you can do to stop it, you can wave your little banner in the free speech zone all you want, the die is cast and the collapse simply can't be stopped. We shall see the system get more and more fascist as the collapse nears as they try to "maintain order" but it won't do any good, when the money is worthless and it takes a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy an egg nobody is gonna listen to big bro anymore, the whole thing will come tumbling down. But things will get a LOT worse before that happens, so be ready for it but don't think that walking into a booth with a piece of paper is gonna do shit, that paper isn't worth wiping your behind with anymore.
The REAL bullshit is you are guilty until you PAY to prove your innocence and there is ZERO protection or penalty for fraudulent claims, so pretty much anybody can say "infringed" and get you shut down with no penalty on their end or recourse on your end.
And before anybody says "The ISP don't want to lose customers" remember how they are overselling the hell out of their lines while not adding capacity? i have a feeling the ones given strikes won't have a damned thing to do with copyrights, it'll be the ones the ISPs want to toss for actually using what they PAID for. get close to the cap? well you must have infringed because our data says you shouldn't do that. I've already seen similar shit in my area where an ISP claims you have a "virus" and pulls your plug if you use more data than your average grandma. I finally walked in with my Xandros laptop and said "Show me a fucking virus or give me my money back" but there is no telling how many they pulled the same shit in for daring to use YouTube or watch netflix.
BTW you can kiss that "future is the cloud" bullshit buh bye, the ISPs are gonna make the net all but unusable so they can keep all the profits as CEO bonuses instead of laying lines. Capitalism, ain't it grand?
FACT. We have yet to see ANY ARM chip get even in the same ballpark as the first gen Core Solo, in fact only by optimizing like mad and being VERY picky about which tests to run have they shown (on paper) an ARM chip beating a PENTIUM 4, which was a badly designed dead end that has been dead more than half a decade!
So I'm sorry ARM fanboys but its simply easier to cut features on an already insanely overpowered chip and get it to fit into a power envelope than it is to take a new design (the 64bit chips) and get it to scale without blowing the power budget all to shit. Intel has three BIG advantages, they are the leaders in fabs so they can hit die shrinks sometimes a full year and a half before anybody else is ready, they have a chip design that is insanely overpowered with a huge lead in IPC, and finally they have the consumers themselves who are demanding more and more from their mobile devices when it comes to speed, responsiveness, and basically wanting a computer as fast as their desktop (or at least one that feels as fast) in their pocket which plays to Intel's strengths.
I'm sorry but its Intel's game to lose, and this is coming from somebody that hasn't bought a single Intel chip since Prescott. They have such huge advantages that frankly I wouldn't be surprised if Intel owns the all important $299 and up device market in less than 2 years. ARM will still have its place, nobody can compete with ARM on price, but as Apple has shown you can make a hell of a good living simply ignoring the low end and sticking with the high margin sales and I have a feeling that is what Intel is gonna go after.
That ain't the problem Hoss, the problem is they bet the farm on casual gaming and that business has moved onto the tablets and smartphones, simple as that. They were able to get away with it last time because the systems were expensive enough that if you wanted casual AND hardcore you could simply pick up a Wii and a PS3 or X360, smartphones and tablets were not even really an option for most.
Now you can get a tablet that works great for a hundred bucks, I've played with $80 Android phones that play casual games like Angry Birds great (in fact many of the smartphones and tablets I saw come with several games like Angry Birds or Cut The Rope) and with those they not only have the games but the advantage of carrying it in your pocket.
Nintendo made their bed now they gotta lie in it. while everybody else spent the money to come up with next gen consoles they bet the farm on casuals and cheap tricks. Well the cheap tricks aren't selling and the casual customers have moved on. and the hardcore aren't buying Wii U. The big question will be if Nintendo stays in hardware or goes the way of Sega, as the handhelds are being replaced by smartphones and Nintendo just doesn't have a plan B.
Drinkypoo, surely to God you know that it ain't Americans working them fields...right? I mean you DO know this, yes? So anything you do that makes field work harder isn't gonna affect MY well fed American ass, its gonna fall on Paco.
And WTF does a city in Japan that has green spaces have to do with shit? you HONESTLY believe that you can grow enough food to say feed the city of NY INSIDE the city itself? Can I have some of what YOU are growing because honestly its gotta be some good shit, because THAT is gonna happen about as likely as my behind growing wings and flying south for the winter.
You can get away with that shit in Fukuoka because the Japs have lived like rats in a cage so damned long their entire culture is built around obedience to the system. hell I bet somebody starving in that town wouldn't pick from somebody else's garden because of the way the culture is burned into their entire being. if you were to try that shit here you'd get the tragedy of the commons so damned fast it'd make your head swim. If you didn't have 24/7 cameras and possibly guards the whole thing would be trashed before you even got your first harvest, sorry but its true.
The ONLY way your idea could work here is to go full on communism so you could order people to take "potato duty" or abuse the shit out of Paco, that's it. In a way what you are advocating reminds me of the libertarians as they too believe "if you just do X then it'll all be perfect" while ignoring that X goes against everything we've seen and known from history, you might as well say "if we would all love each other without exception we would never know war" which is true but its just never gonna happen. i have known guys that have taken jobs at slaughterhouses just so they wouldn't have to work in the damned fields anymore and I spent 3 years being a human jukebox behind chicken wire in a club that looked like Roadhouse just to keep my ass out of the fields, its a shitty job bro, and nothing you can say is gonna make it less shitty.
I'm glad you asked that, we should be doing an ACT UP kind of awareness campaign, complete with letters and emails making it clear that ANY congressman that doesn't vote to end software patents will be looking for a job next election. This CAN work, look at how pure Nerd rage shut down SOPA/PIPA.
but if you really want this situation to change then we ALL must work together, we need the critics and the bloggers and the nerds, make damned sure that Joe and Jane average can't surf the web without having this shoved in their face a couple of dozen times and you CAN change the system.
You don't even know what RAND means, do you? Its REASONABLE and NON discriminatory, NOT FREE. You don't have any right to try to redefine a term that has been in use for over half a century, RAND goes back to the very first computers.
But lets cut through the bull, shall we? if your product is so damned shitty you can't even pay RAND through a fund raiser or waving a tin cup maybe you shouldn't be in business, how about that? BTW ask yourself THIS question, which I have YET to hear a FOSSIe come up with a reasonable answer: Why is it that plumbers and lawyers and CEOs can ALL get paid for THEIR labor, but programmers are dity filthy things for wanting to get paid for theirs? I've never seen RMS demand that plumbers work for free, have you? How much does he get paid per lecture again? Doesn't it strike you as even a tiny bit odd that a guy that writes ZERO software (both Emacs and GCC have been FORKED to get them away from RMS) and who gets paid for HIS labor should say that YOU don't deserve to get paid for yours?
at the end of the day if you want to give away YOUR stuff? Fine and dandy but the ENTIRE POINT of RAND is so that those that do the work get paid while at the same time insuring that nobody plays favorites. your distro will get charged the same as ubuntu and Red hat and Sony and anybody else that wants the tech, no playing favorites. if you don't like that? tough, write your own software and don't steal other people's work, is that REALLY so hard?
Already thought of that but I've talked to multiple people with multiple ISPs all across the south and it seems they are ALL seeing the same shit, at least in this area. In my home town I have relatives on all 3 ISPs and none of them can watch YouTube and we can ALL load multiple videos by anybody else and have half a dozen download and play before YouTube has even buffered enough to play a single movie trailer. There is something funky going on at YouTube.
Oh good, I was afraid it was just me or that there was something off in the last patch Tuesday that was making YouTube suck. I've asked a dozen friends and relative scattered all over the state on multiple ISPs and they are all seeing the same thing, YouTube WAS working okay then a few weeks ago it started going downhill and now its all stutter city. The bitch is I can load a half a dozen videos from multiple sites and have ALL of them ready to go before YouTube has buffered enough to even let me play a music video without stuttering like crazy. Nothing more irritating than trying to look up a song only to have the thing sound like a CD playing while bouncing down train tracks.
I have to wonder if this is why I'm seeing more and more videos that I click on being hosted on BlipTV instead of YouTube because its gotten bad enough that if I click on a link and see its YouTube I just close it, the stuttering has been so damned bad its really not worth the trouble.
And maybe I'm wrong, not a JavaScript or streaming video guy, but it feels like YouTube just "dies" for want of a better term. you can leave the video paused and it STILL doesn't buffer for shit, the damned thing just sits there doing nothing. Its really fucking irritating when I have all this bandwidth and YouTube acts like I'm on fricking dialup.
One final question, does anybody know how to block ACs WITHOUT blocking real users, you know, the ones that have actual UIDs? preferably something that works in Chrome? Because i'm really getting fucking sick of all the batshit crazy ACs that act like if you dare say ANYTHING other than "Gee, isn't product A great in every way?" that you MUST be a shill for somebody else. I've been using YouTube since before Google even bought the damned thing and it was ONLY in the last month or so that service really started going downhill, before that? it buffered fine, vids loaded quick, i had no complaints.
But the ACs can blow Google or Apple or MSFT or anybody they want but if a product starts sucking ass I AM gonna call them out on it and YouTube is sucking some serious ass right now. When I could literally download an entire fucking movie on BT faster than I can get the damned trailer to load on YouTube? Something is seriously broken with YouTube.
Because all they have to do now is find a browser vulnerability and they'll own the entire phone without making the users click through anything? and remember most phones don't get updated constantly like browsers are so basing an OS on a browser is probably not the smartest move you could make. it'll be interesting to see if FF is a small enough fish to not get any major bullseye painted on it or if the malware guys will think its an easy target and hit it with a vengeance.
remember Android is on its way to its millionth infection by this summer and Google has a hell of a lot more money for security researchers than Moz has so it'll be interesting how long this approach will be able to go without getting pwned.
I don't know but they have really gotten batshit on the pricing. when I was a teen i went to concerts almost weekly because you could easily afford to, now tickets in the nosebleed section often run close to a hundred bucks.
And is it just me or is anybody else having trouble with YouTube not buffering worth a shit? I go to speedtest and it consistently shows I'm hitting 20Mbps and all the other video sites load and play perfectly but for the past week or so YouTube has stuttered like its on dialup no matter what res I set the video to. I have asked those around me and they are all seeing the same thing, I get told "Oh thank God I thought there was something wrong with my PC" but I've tried 4 different PCs and the results are the same, stutter city. So I am just curious if others are seeing this or if its only in my area.
That's nice that you have nothing better to do than give out free support, my time is $35 an hour and I just can't afford to be wasting it dealing with shit I'm not getting paid for. And what failures? A $50 router will run longer than the PC its hooked to, I have customers with routers that have been going for nearly a decade, in fact the only reason they have a router now is I talked them into getting rid of the hubs they had previously.
Again if you got nothing better to do, that you can afford to give away free support? Good for you, I really mean that. I have a dozen system waiting for me when I go to work tomorrow, no less than 3 service calls and at least 5 messages on my phone wanting to set up a time for either dropping off a system or for setting up a service call, I don't have the damned time to waste setting up some PITA system that is gonna eat up time. if they want to pay for a support contract? Then I'll be happy to do it but between my work and my band on the weekends i just don't have enough hours in the day as it is and your "solution" is a giant PITA and not as good as COTS without a bunch of fiddling and hand holding. Not to mention that if they buy a tablet next week your "solution" is impossible for them to work on or get the device hooked up so there is another service call for you, shame you aren't getting a cent for all that work.
To steal a line from Mel Brooks "Bullshit, bullshit aaaannnnddd bullshit". You think an Appleite is gonna give a rat's ass if Apple sues somebody? To them its all about fashion and being seen using expensive products, they don't give a shit about some product used by poor scum. And think grandma is ever even go HEAR about a MSFT lawsuit much less care?
You have MAYBE 4% of the population IF THAT that even reads tech sites, much less actually gives a wet fart about all this shit. I'm a PC retailer, think this lawsuit is gonna make me quit selling Windows 7? Not a chance because there isn't a product that can replace it, Linux is a pile of broken sick, Apple is as locked down as a cell phone so little guys like me can't make a fucking cent selling Apple crap, so that leaves only one game in town.
so if you don't focus on the root of the problem, that software patents are stupid and damaging to the system as a whole, then all you are doing is pissing up a rope. I mean did YOU see Apple's sales go down when they were trying to kill Android? Did YOU see MSFT's sales go down (as a result of, not because the X86 MHz war bubble has burst) when they called Linux a cancer? Nope, nobody cares beyond a handful of geeks. If people did care Apple wouldn't be the largest corp on the planet and MSFT wouldn't still own 90%+ of the PCs on this planet. So focus on the root or keep wasting your breath, because bitching about companies doing what the USPTO encourages with these bad patents is just a waste of time and energy and will change nothing.
And whose fault is that? If I design a product and you decide YOU want to live like a hippie why the fuck should I have to do without? You can do what you want with YOUR products but if you want to use MY stuff you should have to pay something.
This is a BIG problem with FOSS, its communism at the barrel of a gun. If you decide you want to give away your life's work? Hey good for you, whatever makes you happy but you have NO RIGHT to stick a gun to my head and make me give MY stuff away because you like communism over capitalism, that is bullshit.
So charge a buck, have a fund raising drive, whatever but don't tell me I have to give MY stuff away because you want to give away YOUR stuff, its mine, I paid to build it, if you want to buy it fine but if you don't then don't fucking use it, simple as that.
And this is different than Apple, Rambus, etc did and does...how EXACTLY? Its not, when a system is broken you will have players manipulate that broken system to maximum advantage. You get rid of one and a dozen more will be standing behind them because the system ENCOURAGES this behavior. Watch this video on the stock market which clearly and plainly shows how bad laws have encouraged the shitty behavior we see now in the financial sector because you get punished for doing the right thing and rewarded for doing the wrong thing so naturally the companies are gonna do the wrong thing because it rewards them.
To use a/. car analogy if the government made it illegal for the insurance companies to investigate car claims so that there was zero risk or penalty for just setting your car on fire to get the insurance to pay out for a new car, do you HONESTLY think there wouldn't be burnt car hulks on every block? The USPTO by handing out vague software patents like candy have made it stupid NOT to be an asshole and patent every vague idea under the sun because as MSFT has shown its more profitable to do this than to make your own products. After all they don't have to pay for assembly, R&D, shipping, why go through all that shit when you can get paid just by filing a shitload of vague patents and sue everybody when some of those patents are approved?
You are bitching about the punk hitting you with a bat while ignoring the fact the cops are the ones handing the punk the bat and telling him to go have fun. if you want this stopped getting rid of the bully will never work because more will take his place, what you have to do is stop the cops passing out the bats and make them arrest the ones using the bats. In this case until we focus on the core problem, the USPTO is horribly broken and software patents need to be banned, then we are just wasting our time. if you wiped out MSFT tomorrow think it would be cotton candy and kittens for everybody
? Nope you'd have Apple and RIM and Google through Motorola and every other company who managed to get some vague patents lined up to take their place so lets focus on the task at hand which is getting rid of the core problem of software patents. Anything else is just sticking band aids on bullet wounds while ignoring the guy shooting you.
Nice to see somebody knows the truth, once they saw other ways to get around the EU console tax it was buh bye OtherOS. And as for media bullshit? Content providers suck and treat you like criminals, end of story. Between them and the ISPs that are starting to gouge with caps and overage fees this is why streaming will never replace discs, not because it can't technically be done, but because the greedy will shit all over it and ruin it for everybody else.
Won't work because as long as 90%+ of the PCs out there (which is what folks are gonna want to get those pics on to for editing and sharing) run Windows getting rid of support for MSFT file systems would be slitting your own throat.
Now as for WHY does MSFT and Apple own 90% and 10% respectively and every other OS not even owns above the margin for error? I will get hate but truth is truth, nobody has offered a compelling product with the ease of use of OSX and Windows. Even Win 8 and Vista, as shitty as they are/were is a better OS than Linux because of the devs breaking shit with itch scratching (Yeah just throw out KDE 3 and gnome 2 when shit FINALLY gets good and stable, oh and crap all over audio by replacing ALSA with Pulse, that's the ticket!) and its obvious that Google isn't any "nicer" than Apple and MSFT and by refusing to make ChromeOS anything more than a glorified thin client has made it clear they don't give a shit about the PC market.
So until you come out with a product that is truly better and easier to use than Windows you can give it up Chuck, any camera manufacturer that charged more or refused to support NTFS and FAT would get slaughtered by those like Nikon who will just write this off as a cost of doing business and keep right on selling their cameras.
And maybe if the guys here actually read that they will see that YES Android and pretty much anything else having to do with computers infringes so the more relevant question SHOULD BE "Why are we letting such basic concepts be patented in the first place?"
And THAT is the problem in a nutshell, software patents has made the system so broken companies can make more money spamming the USPTO with vague concepts and then suing when a few of these stick than in actually building products.
These articles are like complaining "I'm tired of getting hit by punks with bats!" while ignoring there is a guy on the corner handing free bats out to the punks. Stop THAT guy and the punks won't have the bats to hit you upside the head with.
So you've never even tried the actual device as its marketed and sold, and think pfsense is a viable "solution" when you don't even know what the competition does or how?
Its obvious that your ass ain't never worked in retail because with an attitude like that you'd be having a going out of business sale before the year was up. You can NOT offer "solutions" if you don't even know how it compares to the competition and I can promise you pfsense is a bad joke compared to the ease of use of modern routers. I have seen customers who don't even know what a router is other than "I can hook up by wireless" that have managed to set the whole thing up with nothing but the CD. They know NOTHING about IP addressing, nothing about LAN or WAN, yet they have functioning networks and THAT is what you are competing against.
And do NOT give me that elitest "Well they better fucking learn, stupid noobs" bullshit because that is a classic "is ought" problem which again is a reason why Linux never goes anywhere, the devs think "They OUGHT to be able to do this because i can" while ignoring that reality IS the fact that people who don't even know what an OS is can do all the basic tasks they require because there is enough hand holding and dumbing down that those with zero education can use these things as easily as one uses a toaster.
You can say Blender and Gimp is built by "artists" all day long, don't make the UI not suck. Again I don't blame them for that, UI design is fucking HARD which is why there are companies that make crazy money JUST focusing on UI design and advising companies on good UI design. That is why I had to LMAO at how bad Win 8 was because even with all that money it was obvious MSFT didn't call in any UI designers or specialized UI companies because the one thing they could ALL agree on was Win 8 has a terrible UI.
Look I'm a bass player, I write beautiful songs and cool cooking lines based on that instrument, but you seem to be saying because I'm an "artist" in that regard I'd be able to paint beautiful pictures...but that's a completely different skillset. Writing a great program is a HELL of a lot different than the skills required to take a blank canvas and create a UI that is intuitive and easily discoverable. I'm saying while its obvious the Blender and Gimp guys are good at the former, the latter? Not so much. Again no blame, nobody is great at everything but with their budgets they just can't afford to bring in the guys required to do what needs doing in that dept.
And this is different to what Apple, Motorola (now owned by Google who didn't stop the suits when they bought Motorola thus making them trolls by proxy in my book) and every other big tech company this decade has done?
If you want to fix this kind of shit you have to get to the root of the problem which is the patent system is broken and until you fix it this kind of shit will continue. This is like blaming companies who take advantage of the fact that offshoring not only incurs them no monetary penalty but they can often get tax breaks for doing so....the problem is the SYSTEM is broken and encouraging bad behavior therefor the SYSTEM needs to be fixed.
We need to push like hell for a law ending software patents, if you want protections for software copyrights and NOT patents are the logical choice and since you copyright specific works and NOT vague concepts like these shitty software "patents" you could nip this bullshit in the bud. I also personally think we need a law that says concepts required for interoperability (such as file systems and formats) should have to be published under RAND terms so that the user will always have a way to get their stuff on and off a device, but that may be just a personal beef, but no matter how you slice it these kinds of bullshit trolls and lawsuits didn't become a problem until software patents were hoisted on us and THAT is what must be fixed. You stop MSFT and they'll be a dozen more pulling the same shit waiting for their shot.
Oh and on a final note, lets get something clear: Linux and Android by extension DOES infringe on MSFT patents, how do I know? Have you seen how many patents have been filed on software since the shitty ruling that allowed software patents? EVERYBODY is infringing! Hell the whole history of computers has been standing on the shoulders of giants so frankly with as vague as these patents are you can't build shit to do with a computer that doesn't infringe! Hell I wouldn't be surprised if every possible way to build a file system or make an audio/video format isn't covered by some vague as hell "method to store files on things" style patent, the whole thing is so broken you are tap dancing in a minefield.
Is what MSFT doing shitty? yep, no doubt, but if we focus on that instead of the conditions that have ALLOWED them to behave shitty all we will be doing is playing whack a mole until the end of time. To use the famed/. car analogy if your front end is shot and eating tires you can change tire brands a billion times, the tires are still gonna keep getting eaten until you get off your ass and fix the front end. Until we fix the patents system this kind of shit is only gonna get worse.
Yeah because we don't already abuse Paco enough, lets go back to the "good old days" and we can work them filthy Mexicans to death!
While profits are a part of it the fact that field labor is a shitty back breaking job is also a BIG fucking part of it. You may have your little vegetable garden but I've worked on a 20 acre farm and you pretty much do NOTHING but that and sleep PERIOD. Ain't no leisure time, ain't no furthering your education or enjoying jack shit, its like the damned priesthood in that you pretty much have to do NOTHING but that. the only time my ass wasn't in the damned field was when my ass was sent in the truck to get stuff FOR the field or FROM the field to market, that was it. And if it comes down to chemicals or living like a fucking Quaker? I'll take the chemicals, thanks ever so.
The only other way i could see to do it would be to go full on communist and make serving in the fields like jury duty only without any ways to get out of it. ironically this is EXACTLY what they had to do in the USSR, look up "potato duty" and you'll find plenty of articles about soldiers ordered to work in the fields just because they couldn't find enough people to do that job, despite how nasty a Russian factory was people would rather take that job than deal with sun up to sun down back breaking labor.
so again we wipe out...ohh I'd say you'd probably need a good 70% wasted to build this utopia and have enough food to feed those left, otherwise you are gonna have cities full of starving folks because the farms will be raising enough for themselves but NOT enough for everybody. But you could wipe out big agra tomorrow and unless you advocate Paco abuse your ass still wouldn't have enough people willing to work in the fields, its just a shitty job.
Actually according to Wikipedia the first red/green anaglyph film was shown in 1922 for an audience in NYC. man I knew that shit was old but not THAT damned old.
And as much as I hate to admit it, but being in computer retail as long as i have I know this will end up being the case, know what you need to get VR the big thing again? Porn, that's what. people wanted burners "To back up my pictures" (bullshit, porn) and they got big hard drive "To store my pictures" (A TB of pictures? bullshit its for porn) and if they come out with VR porn I have no damned doubt I'll be selling VR units to people who'll say "So I can see my pictures in virtual reality" (Bullshit, I've seen your family and they don't even look good in 2D, its for porn).
If there is one thing I've learned its not only the Internet that was made for porn, everything from VCRs to big fat HDDs are all needed for porn. Porn, its what drives technology today for a better smuttier tomorrow.
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Get ready to bust a fucking gut, they called their "tech" and the dumb fucker tried to install Norton AV for Windows onto my Linux laptop! No shit, I swear to God, the retard was trying to install Windows AV onto a Linux system. I finally got tired of their shit and told them they could hand me my money INCLUDING the installation fee or I would be seeing their asses in court, i got handed the cash and walked out.
But thanks to the cable/DSL duopoly here (which hasn't run a single foot of cable or fixed shit in over a decade, even though its a college town and more than a third bigger now than it was a decade ago) that WISP is still in business, still fucking folks I'm sure, because the duopoly won't run any lines which leaves them the only game in town if you don't live in a cherry picked area. My nephew ended up taking a one room apt in my building just so he could get away from them, THAT is how bad the service is. The guy was willing to pay $300 a month for a one room apt just to get the fuck away from the WISP because both the cable and DSL have made it clear they ain't running another foot. In fact AT&T (the DSL here and the ONLY DSL here) has made it clear if 3Mbps isn't fast enough? Tough shit, they ain't spending a dime and in fact the rumors are AT&T are gonna bail on landlines for their overpriced wireless data plans. If that happens less than a third of the town will have any high speed at all other than the WISP so they'll be able to do what they want. Capitalism, ain't it grand?
As much as I think Ayn Rand was a total hypocrite and a whackjob this is the ONE thing she got right, there are so many laws on the books now that frankly we are ALL criminals and at any time, for any slight, they can throw you in prison for as many years as they like simply because the laws are such a minefield now that just by breathing you are probably violating a dozen statutes.
I mean for the love of God we have no less than 2 people in prison even as we speak for thoughtcrimes folks, how much more proof do you need that Orwell got the time a little off but otherwise was right on the money? You have the guy who wrote the "pro pedo" book, he wasn't charged with actually DOING anything, just putting his thoughts on the subject in book form, and the second was a guy that was told by his therapist to write his fantasies about sleeping with underage girls down so they could discuss them in therapy. Again he didn't actually DO anything, he just put his thoughts on paper.
This is why I have always tried to support the ACLU and speak up, just as my grandfather taught me when he spoke up in support of the right of the Illinois Nazis to march even though Nazis dropped a wall on him and his squad at the end of WWII and he spent 2 years in a full body cast, its because you HAVE to support those with the unpopular cases because THOSE are how they get these bad laws rammed down our throats. Pedos, terrorists, racists, they use these as bogeymen precisely because they know how few will speak up for fear of looking like they support their views. Here is a perfect example, a law they ran through after the tragedy of 9/11 under the guise of "We must make sure it never happens again!" but government NEVER gets smaller or weaker, only bigger and more powerful, so now we are seeing these laws used as a blank check to spy on anybody that looks at them funny.
But its NOT the weapons training that makes the fascists fear the vet, its the fact that those who have suffered for their freedoms are the ones who covet it most dearly. As I said if anybody had a reason to hate Nazis it was my grandfather, the stories of what he went through, of having the PAK 88 used upon them, of seeing bodies blown to bits, yet he was the first to step up and tell all those around him "They deserve the right to speak, no matter what we feel about their speech they have the right to be heard" and THAT is what scares the fascist, the fact that the vets won't kowtow and will stand up and point out their lies.
Voting is two wolves and a sheep deciding what is for dinner in case you ain't figured that out yet. the ONLY ones you will be allowed to vote for, be it in a primary or general election, are the pre-bought. hell you might as well have only one checkbox that says "support the system" because that is ALL voting does. Even though I'm in no way a libertarian (I feel their beliefs would end up with a return to feudalism) watch this video for a better explanation of why voting is just a waste of time.
Oh and you might want to look up "Jon Stweart Ron Paul" to see how badly the primaries are rigged, he got footage that doesn't even try to hide how badly its rigged. It even shows that at places where Paul might have had a snowball's chance in hell the MSM treated him as "he who shall not be named" with talking heads practically tap dancing around their sentences so they would NOT ever speak his name, with it going so far as one naming the first, second, and FOURTH place finishers without even saying the words third place much less the fact that Paul took it. Its so bad that at the end of the video one of the reporters actually calls the anchor out on it, saying "Here we are talking about Palin and Christie, who aren't even running, and not speaking anything about Paul who is looking good in the polls here" and the anchor looks right at the camera, gets a douchebag smirk and says "If you get footage of Palin or Christie send it in, you can keep the Paul stuff". Hell he might as well have said "fuck the peasants, thinking they get a choice" while he was at it, because that douchebag smirk said it all.
So all you can do is grab as much as you possibly can and be ready for the collapse which is inevitable now. Over 430% of our GDP is now in the stock market, including the retirement funds of a good portion of your fellow citizens, when the 29 bubble burst it was less than 125% GDP and that took nearly 40 years to climb out of, what do you think will happen when a bubble 3 times as large blows? there is nothing you can do to change it, nothing you can do to stop it, you can wave your little banner in the free speech zone all you want, the die is cast and the collapse simply can't be stopped. We shall see the system get more and more fascist as the collapse nears as they try to "maintain order" but it won't do any good, when the money is worthless and it takes a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy an egg nobody is gonna listen to big bro anymore, the whole thing will come tumbling down. But things will get a LOT worse before that happens, so be ready for it but don't think that walking into a booth with a piece of paper is gonna do shit, that paper isn't worth wiping your behind with anymore.
The REAL bullshit is you are guilty until you PAY to prove your innocence and there is ZERO protection or penalty for fraudulent claims, so pretty much anybody can say "infringed" and get you shut down with no penalty on their end or recourse on your end.
And before anybody says "The ISP don't want to lose customers" remember how they are overselling the hell out of their lines while not adding capacity? i have a feeling the ones given strikes won't have a damned thing to do with copyrights, it'll be the ones the ISPs want to toss for actually using what they PAID for. get close to the cap? well you must have infringed because our data says you shouldn't do that. I've already seen similar shit in my area where an ISP claims you have a "virus" and pulls your plug if you use more data than your average grandma. I finally walked in with my Xandros laptop and said "Show me a fucking virus or give me my money back" but there is no telling how many they pulled the same shit in for daring to use YouTube or watch netflix.
BTW you can kiss that "future is the cloud" bullshit buh bye, the ISPs are gonna make the net all but unusable so they can keep all the profits as CEO bonuses instead of laying lines. Capitalism, ain't it grand?
FACT. We have yet to see ANY ARM chip get even in the same ballpark as the first gen Core Solo, in fact only by optimizing like mad and being VERY picky about which tests to run have they shown (on paper) an ARM chip beating a PENTIUM 4, which was a badly designed dead end that has been dead more than half a decade!
So I'm sorry ARM fanboys but its simply easier to cut features on an already insanely overpowered chip and get it to fit into a power envelope than it is to take a new design (the 64bit chips) and get it to scale without blowing the power budget all to shit. Intel has three BIG advantages, they are the leaders in fabs so they can hit die shrinks sometimes a full year and a half before anybody else is ready, they have a chip design that is insanely overpowered with a huge lead in IPC, and finally they have the consumers themselves who are demanding more and more from their mobile devices when it comes to speed, responsiveness, and basically wanting a computer as fast as their desktop (or at least one that feels as fast) in their pocket which plays to Intel's strengths.
I'm sorry but its Intel's game to lose, and this is coming from somebody that hasn't bought a single Intel chip since Prescott. They have such huge advantages that frankly I wouldn't be surprised if Intel owns the all important $299 and up device market in less than 2 years. ARM will still have its place, nobody can compete with ARM on price, but as Apple has shown you can make a hell of a good living simply ignoring the low end and sticking with the high margin sales and I have a feeling that is what Intel is gonna go after.
That ain't the problem Hoss, the problem is they bet the farm on casual gaming and that business has moved onto the tablets and smartphones, simple as that. They were able to get away with it last time because the systems were expensive enough that if you wanted casual AND hardcore you could simply pick up a Wii and a PS3 or X360, smartphones and tablets were not even really an option for most.
Now you can get a tablet that works great for a hundred bucks, I've played with $80 Android phones that play casual games like Angry Birds great (in fact many of the smartphones and tablets I saw come with several games like Angry Birds or Cut The Rope) and with those they not only have the games but the advantage of carrying it in your pocket.
Nintendo made their bed now they gotta lie in it. while everybody else spent the money to come up with next gen consoles they bet the farm on casuals and cheap tricks. Well the cheap tricks aren't selling and the casual customers have moved on. and the hardcore aren't buying Wii U. The big question will be if Nintendo stays in hardware or goes the way of Sega, as the handhelds are being replaced by smartphones and Nintendo just doesn't have a plan B.
Drinkypoo, surely to God you know that it ain't Americans working them fields...right? I mean you DO know this, yes? So anything you do that makes field work harder isn't gonna affect MY well fed American ass, its gonna fall on Paco.
And WTF does a city in Japan that has green spaces have to do with shit? you HONESTLY believe that you can grow enough food to say feed the city of NY INSIDE the city itself? Can I have some of what YOU are growing because honestly its gotta be some good shit, because THAT is gonna happen about as likely as my behind growing wings and flying south for the winter.
You can get away with that shit in Fukuoka because the Japs have lived like rats in a cage so damned long their entire culture is built around obedience to the system. hell I bet somebody starving in that town wouldn't pick from somebody else's garden because of the way the culture is burned into their entire being. if you were to try that shit here you'd get the tragedy of the commons so damned fast it'd make your head swim. If you didn't have 24/7 cameras and possibly guards the whole thing would be trashed before you even got your first harvest, sorry but its true.
The ONLY way your idea could work here is to go full on communism so you could order people to take "potato duty" or abuse the shit out of Paco, that's it. In a way what you are advocating reminds me of the libertarians as they too believe "if you just do X then it'll all be perfect" while ignoring that X goes against everything we've seen and known from history, you might as well say "if we would all love each other without exception we would never know war" which is true but its just never gonna happen. i have known guys that have taken jobs at slaughterhouses just so they wouldn't have to work in the damned fields anymore and I spent 3 years being a human jukebox behind chicken wire in a club that looked like Roadhouse just to keep my ass out of the fields, its a shitty job bro, and nothing you can say is gonna make it less shitty.
I'm glad you asked that, we should be doing an ACT UP kind of awareness campaign, complete with letters and emails making it clear that ANY congressman that doesn't vote to end software patents will be looking for a job next election. This CAN work, look at how pure Nerd rage shut down SOPA/PIPA.
but if you really want this situation to change then we ALL must work together, we need the critics and the bloggers and the nerds, make damned sure that Joe and Jane average can't surf the web without having this shoved in their face a couple of dozen times and you CAN change the system.
You don't even know what RAND means, do you? Its REASONABLE and NON discriminatory, NOT FREE. You don't have any right to try to redefine a term that has been in use for over half a century, RAND goes back to the very first computers.
But lets cut through the bull, shall we? if your product is so damned shitty you can't even pay RAND through a fund raiser or waving a tin cup maybe you shouldn't be in business, how about that? BTW ask yourself THIS question, which I have YET to hear a FOSSIe come up with a reasonable answer: Why is it that plumbers and lawyers and CEOs can ALL get paid for THEIR labor, but programmers are dity filthy things for wanting to get paid for theirs? I've never seen RMS demand that plumbers work for free, have you? How much does he get paid per lecture again? Doesn't it strike you as even a tiny bit odd that a guy that writes ZERO software (both Emacs and GCC have been FORKED to get them away from RMS) and who gets paid for HIS labor should say that YOU don't deserve to get paid for yours?
at the end of the day if you want to give away YOUR stuff? Fine and dandy but the ENTIRE POINT of RAND is so that those that do the work get paid while at the same time insuring that nobody plays favorites. your distro will get charged the same as ubuntu and Red hat and Sony and anybody else that wants the tech, no playing favorites. if you don't like that? tough, write your own software and don't steal other people's work, is that REALLY so hard?
Already thought of that but I've talked to multiple people with multiple ISPs all across the south and it seems they are ALL seeing the same shit, at least in this area. In my home town I have relatives on all 3 ISPs and none of them can watch YouTube and we can ALL load multiple videos by anybody else and have half a dozen download and play before YouTube has even buffered enough to play a single movie trailer. There is something funky going on at YouTube.
Oh good, I was afraid it was just me or that there was something off in the last patch Tuesday that was making YouTube suck. I've asked a dozen friends and relative scattered all over the state on multiple ISPs and they are all seeing the same thing, YouTube WAS working okay then a few weeks ago it started going downhill and now its all stutter city. The bitch is I can load a half a dozen videos from multiple sites and have ALL of them ready to go before YouTube has buffered enough to even let me play a music video without stuttering like crazy. Nothing more irritating than trying to look up a song only to have the thing sound like a CD playing while bouncing down train tracks.
I have to wonder if this is why I'm seeing more and more videos that I click on being hosted on BlipTV instead of YouTube because its gotten bad enough that if I click on a link and see its YouTube I just close it, the stuttering has been so damned bad its really not worth the trouble.
And maybe I'm wrong, not a JavaScript or streaming video guy, but it feels like YouTube just "dies" for want of a better term. you can leave the video paused and it STILL doesn't buffer for shit, the damned thing just sits there doing nothing. Its really fucking irritating when I have all this bandwidth and YouTube acts like I'm on fricking dialup.
One final question, does anybody know how to block ACs WITHOUT blocking real users, you know, the ones that have actual UIDs? preferably something that works in Chrome? Because i'm really getting fucking sick of all the batshit crazy ACs that act like if you dare say ANYTHING other than "Gee, isn't product A great in every way?" that you MUST be a shill for somebody else. I've been using YouTube since before Google even bought the damned thing and it was ONLY in the last month or so that service really started going downhill, before that? it buffered fine, vids loaded quick, i had no complaints.
But the ACs can blow Google or Apple or MSFT or anybody they want but if a product starts sucking ass I AM gonna call them out on it and YouTube is sucking some serious ass right now. When I could literally download an entire fucking movie on BT faster than I can get the damned trailer to load on YouTube? Something is seriously broken with YouTube.
Because all they have to do now is find a browser vulnerability and they'll own the entire phone without making the users click through anything? and remember most phones don't get updated constantly like browsers are so basing an OS on a browser is probably not the smartest move you could make. it'll be interesting to see if FF is a small enough fish to not get any major bullseye painted on it or if the malware guys will think its an easy target and hit it with a vengeance.
remember Android is on its way to its millionth infection by this summer and Google has a hell of a lot more money for security researchers than Moz has so it'll be interesting how long this approach will be able to go without getting pwned.
I don't know but they have really gotten batshit on the pricing. when I was a teen i went to concerts almost weekly because you could easily afford to, now tickets in the nosebleed section often run close to a hundred bucks.
And is it just me or is anybody else having trouble with YouTube not buffering worth a shit? I go to speedtest and it consistently shows I'm hitting 20Mbps and all the other video sites load and play perfectly but for the past week or so YouTube has stuttered like its on dialup no matter what res I set the video to. I have asked those around me and they are all seeing the same thing, I get told "Oh thank God I thought there was something wrong with my PC" but I've tried 4 different PCs and the results are the same, stutter city. So I am just curious if others are seeing this or if its only in my area.
That's nice that you have nothing better to do than give out free support, my time is $35 an hour and I just can't afford to be wasting it dealing with shit I'm not getting paid for. And what failures? A $50 router will run longer than the PC its hooked to, I have customers with routers that have been going for nearly a decade, in fact the only reason they have a router now is I talked them into getting rid of the hubs they had previously.
Again if you got nothing better to do, that you can afford to give away free support? Good for you, I really mean that. I have a dozen system waiting for me when I go to work tomorrow, no less than 3 service calls and at least 5 messages on my phone wanting to set up a time for either dropping off a system or for setting up a service call, I don't have the damned time to waste setting up some PITA system that is gonna eat up time. if they want to pay for a support contract? Then I'll be happy to do it but between my work and my band on the weekends i just don't have enough hours in the day as it is and your "solution" is a giant PITA and not as good as COTS without a bunch of fiddling and hand holding. Not to mention that if they buy a tablet next week your "solution" is impossible for them to work on or get the device hooked up so there is another service call for you, shame you aren't getting a cent for all that work.
To steal a line from Mel Brooks "Bullshit, bullshit aaaannnnddd bullshit". You think an Appleite is gonna give a rat's ass if Apple sues somebody? To them its all about fashion and being seen using expensive products, they don't give a shit about some product used by poor scum. And think grandma is ever even go HEAR about a MSFT lawsuit much less care?
You have MAYBE 4% of the population IF THAT that even reads tech sites, much less actually gives a wet fart about all this shit. I'm a PC retailer, think this lawsuit is gonna make me quit selling Windows 7? Not a chance because there isn't a product that can replace it, Linux is a pile of broken sick, Apple is as locked down as a cell phone so little guys like me can't make a fucking cent selling Apple crap, so that leaves only one game in town.
so if you don't focus on the root of the problem, that software patents are stupid and damaging to the system as a whole, then all you are doing is pissing up a rope. I mean did YOU see Apple's sales go down when they were trying to kill Android? Did YOU see MSFT's sales go down (as a result of, not because the X86 MHz war bubble has burst) when they called Linux a cancer? Nope, nobody cares beyond a handful of geeks. If people did care Apple wouldn't be the largest corp on the planet and MSFT wouldn't still own 90%+ of the PCs on this planet. So focus on the root or keep wasting your breath, because bitching about companies doing what the USPTO encourages with these bad patents is just a waste of time and energy and will change nothing.
And whose fault is that? If I design a product and you decide YOU want to live like a hippie why the fuck should I have to do without? You can do what you want with YOUR products but if you want to use MY stuff you should have to pay something.
This is a BIG problem with FOSS, its communism at the barrel of a gun. If you decide you want to give away your life's work? Hey good for you, whatever makes you happy but you have NO RIGHT to stick a gun to my head and make me give MY stuff away because you like communism over capitalism, that is bullshit.
So charge a buck, have a fund raising drive, whatever but don't tell me I have to give MY stuff away because you want to give away YOUR stuff, its mine, I paid to build it, if you want to buy it fine but if you don't then don't fucking use it, simple as that.
And this is different than Apple, Rambus, etc did and does...how EXACTLY? Its not, when a system is broken you will have players manipulate that broken system to maximum advantage. You get rid of one and a dozen more will be standing behind them because the system ENCOURAGES this behavior. Watch this video on the stock market which clearly and plainly shows how bad laws have encouraged the shitty behavior we see now in the financial sector because you get punished for doing the right thing and rewarded for doing the wrong thing so naturally the companies are gonna do the wrong thing because it rewards them.
To use a /. car analogy if the government made it illegal for the insurance companies to investigate car claims so that there was zero risk or penalty for just setting your car on fire to get the insurance to pay out for a new car, do you HONESTLY think there wouldn't be burnt car hulks on every block? The USPTO by handing out vague software patents like candy have made it stupid NOT to be an asshole and patent every vague idea under the sun because as MSFT has shown its more profitable to do this than to make your own products. After all they don't have to pay for assembly, R&D, shipping, why go through all that shit when you can get paid just by filing a shitload of vague patents and sue everybody when some of those patents are approved?
You are bitching about the punk hitting you with a bat while ignoring the fact the cops are the ones handing the punk the bat and telling him to go have fun. if you want this stopped getting rid of the bully will never work because more will take his place, what you have to do is stop the cops passing out the bats and make them arrest the ones using the bats. In this case until we focus on the core problem, the USPTO is horribly broken and software patents need to be banned, then we are just wasting our time. if you wiped out MSFT tomorrow think it would be cotton candy and kittens for everybody ? Nope you'd have Apple and RIM and Google through Motorola and every other company who managed to get some vague patents lined up to take their place so lets focus on the task at hand which is getting rid of the core problem of software patents. Anything else is just sticking band aids on bullet wounds while ignoring the guy shooting you.
Nice to see somebody knows the truth, once they saw other ways to get around the EU console tax it was buh bye OtherOS. And as for media bullshit? Content providers suck and treat you like criminals, end of story. Between them and the ISPs that are starting to gouge with caps and overage fees this is why streaming will never replace discs, not because it can't technically be done, but because the greedy will shit all over it and ruin it for everybody else.
Won't work because as long as 90%+ of the PCs out there (which is what folks are gonna want to get those pics on to for editing and sharing) run Windows getting rid of support for MSFT file systems would be slitting your own throat.
Now as for WHY does MSFT and Apple own 90% and 10% respectively and every other OS not even owns above the margin for error? I will get hate but truth is truth, nobody has offered a compelling product with the ease of use of OSX and Windows. Even Win 8 and Vista, as shitty as they are/were is a better OS than Linux because of the devs breaking shit with itch scratching (Yeah just throw out KDE 3 and gnome 2 when shit FINALLY gets good and stable, oh and crap all over audio by replacing ALSA with Pulse, that's the ticket!) and its obvious that Google isn't any "nicer" than Apple and MSFT and by refusing to make ChromeOS anything more than a glorified thin client has made it clear they don't give a shit about the PC market.
So until you come out with a product that is truly better and easier to use than Windows you can give it up Chuck, any camera manufacturer that charged more or refused to support NTFS and FAT would get slaughtered by those like Nikon who will just write this off as a cost of doing business and keep right on selling their cameras.
And maybe if the guys here actually read that they will see that YES Android and pretty much anything else having to do with computers infringes so the more relevant question SHOULD BE "Why are we letting such basic concepts be patented in the first place?"
And THAT is the problem in a nutshell, software patents has made the system so broken companies can make more money spamming the USPTO with vague concepts and then suing when a few of these stick than in actually building products.
These articles are like complaining "I'm tired of getting hit by punks with bats!" while ignoring there is a guy on the corner handing free bats out to the punks. Stop THAT guy and the punks won't have the bats to hit you upside the head with.
So you've never even tried the actual device as its marketed and sold, and think pfsense is a viable "solution" when you don't even know what the competition does or how?
Its obvious that your ass ain't never worked in retail because with an attitude like that you'd be having a going out of business sale before the year was up. You can NOT offer "solutions" if you don't even know how it compares to the competition and I can promise you pfsense is a bad joke compared to the ease of use of modern routers. I have seen customers who don't even know what a router is other than "I can hook up by wireless" that have managed to set the whole thing up with nothing but the CD. They know NOTHING about IP addressing, nothing about LAN or WAN, yet they have functioning networks and THAT is what you are competing against.
And do NOT give me that elitest "Well they better fucking learn, stupid noobs" bullshit because that is a classic "is ought" problem which again is a reason why Linux never goes anywhere, the devs think "They OUGHT to be able to do this because i can" while ignoring that reality IS the fact that people who don't even know what an OS is can do all the basic tasks they require because there is enough hand holding and dumbing down that those with zero education can use these things as easily as one uses a toaster.
You can say Blender and Gimp is built by "artists" all day long, don't make the UI not suck. Again I don't blame them for that, UI design is fucking HARD which is why there are companies that make crazy money JUST focusing on UI design and advising companies on good UI design. That is why I had to LMAO at how bad Win 8 was because even with all that money it was obvious MSFT didn't call in any UI designers or specialized UI companies because the one thing they could ALL agree on was Win 8 has a terrible UI.
Look I'm a bass player, I write beautiful songs and cool cooking lines based on that instrument, but you seem to be saying because I'm an "artist" in that regard I'd be able to paint beautiful pictures...but that's a completely different skillset. Writing a great program is a HELL of a lot different than the skills required to take a blank canvas and create a UI that is intuitive and easily discoverable. I'm saying while its obvious the Blender and Gimp guys are good at the former, the latter? Not so much. Again no blame, nobody is great at everything but with their budgets they just can't afford to bring in the guys required to do what needs doing in that dept.
And this is different to what Apple, Motorola (now owned by Google who didn't stop the suits when they bought Motorola thus making them trolls by proxy in my book) and every other big tech company this decade has done?
If you want to fix this kind of shit you have to get to the root of the problem which is the patent system is broken and until you fix it this kind of shit will continue. This is like blaming companies who take advantage of the fact that offshoring not only incurs them no monetary penalty but they can often get tax breaks for doing so....the problem is the SYSTEM is broken and encouraging bad behavior therefor the SYSTEM needs to be fixed.
We need to push like hell for a law ending software patents, if you want protections for software copyrights and NOT patents are the logical choice and since you copyright specific works and NOT vague concepts like these shitty software "patents" you could nip this bullshit in the bud. I also personally think we need a law that says concepts required for interoperability (such as file systems and formats) should have to be published under RAND terms so that the user will always have a way to get their stuff on and off a device, but that may be just a personal beef, but no matter how you slice it these kinds of bullshit trolls and lawsuits didn't become a problem until software patents were hoisted on us and THAT is what must be fixed. You stop MSFT and they'll be a dozen more pulling the same shit waiting for their shot.
Oh and on a final note, lets get something clear: Linux and Android by extension DOES infringe on MSFT patents, how do I know? Have you seen how many patents have been filed on software since the shitty ruling that allowed software patents? EVERYBODY is infringing! Hell the whole history of computers has been standing on the shoulders of giants so frankly with as vague as these patents are you can't build shit to do with a computer that doesn't infringe! Hell I wouldn't be surprised if every possible way to build a file system or make an audio/video format isn't covered by some vague as hell "method to store files on things" style patent, the whole thing is so broken you are tap dancing in a minefield.
Is what MSFT doing shitty? yep, no doubt, but if we focus on that instead of the conditions that have ALLOWED them to behave shitty all we will be doing is playing whack a mole until the end of time. To use the famed /. car analogy if your front end is shot and eating tires you can change tire brands a billion times, the tires are still gonna keep getting eaten until you get off your ass and fix the front end. Until we fix the patents system this kind of shit is only gonna get worse.
Yeah because we don't already abuse Paco enough, lets go back to the "good old days" and we can work them filthy Mexicans to death!
While profits are a part of it the fact that field labor is a shitty back breaking job is also a BIG fucking part of it. You may have your little vegetable garden but I've worked on a 20 acre farm and you pretty much do NOTHING but that and sleep PERIOD. Ain't no leisure time, ain't no furthering your education or enjoying jack shit, its like the damned priesthood in that you pretty much have to do NOTHING but that. the only time my ass wasn't in the damned field was when my ass was sent in the truck to get stuff FOR the field or FROM the field to market, that was it. And if it comes down to chemicals or living like a fucking Quaker? I'll take the chemicals, thanks ever so.
The only other way i could see to do it would be to go full on communist and make serving in the fields like jury duty only without any ways to get out of it. ironically this is EXACTLY what they had to do in the USSR, look up "potato duty" and you'll find plenty of articles about soldiers ordered to work in the fields just because they couldn't find enough people to do that job, despite how nasty a Russian factory was people would rather take that job than deal with sun up to sun down back breaking labor.
so again we wipe out...ohh I'd say you'd probably need a good 70% wasted to build this utopia and have enough food to feed those left, otherwise you are gonna have cities full of starving folks because the farms will be raising enough for themselves but NOT enough for everybody. But you could wipe out big agra tomorrow and unless you advocate Paco abuse your ass still wouldn't have enough people willing to work in the fields, its just a shitty job.
Actually according to Wikipedia the first red/green anaglyph film was shown in 1922 for an audience in NYC. man I knew that shit was old but not THAT damned old.
And as much as I hate to admit it, but being in computer retail as long as i have I know this will end up being the case, know what you need to get VR the big thing again? Porn, that's what. people wanted burners "To back up my pictures" (bullshit, porn) and they got big hard drive "To store my pictures" (A TB of pictures? bullshit its for porn) and if they come out with VR porn I have no damned doubt I'll be selling VR units to people who'll say "So I can see my pictures in virtual reality" (Bullshit, I've seen your family and they don't even look good in 2D, its for porn).
If there is one thing I've learned its not only the Internet that was made for porn, everything from VCRs to big fat HDDs are all needed for porn. Porn, its what drives technology today for a better smuttier tomorrow.