Well if they are on a modern version of Windows like Vista or 7 then they have most likely moved to one of the Chromium based, since they support low rights mode which helps to stop those zero day Adobe bugs, along with sandboxing. Some like Chrome but personally I prefer Comodo Dragon as it doesn't phone home like Chrome and has some nice extras like domain validation and the option to use the Comodo secure DNS. You can also get Adblock Plus for it and the other Chromium based now, along with forecastfox which my customers just love.
It also seems to handle the heavier sites like FB faster than FF 4, which while I don't care about that my customers sure do. What I DO care about is the fact that I have to support everything from nettops and older office boxes to the latest multicore PCs and FF 4 frankly slams the hell out of the CPU and leaks memory, which is especially noticeable on the older and/or low powered machines.
So while I'm glad that something other than IE is winning somewhere for me and my users until FF fixes the bugs and supports the latest security tech I'm afraid I'll have to go with the Chromium based browsers. The speed and responsiveness, especially with those customers that practically live in their browsers, have made the switch a pretty easy sell. If FF 4 works for you I'm happy for you, on the multicores I don't have any problems with it either, but there is a whole world full of well functioning single core machines that the Chromium based just work better on IMHO, and only having to support one browser is easier on me.
Because you get some dumbass that can't be arsed to bring a flash stick to work and/or they aren't allowed to use a flash stick, so they just upload it to Rapidshit? Hell nobody reads anything or actually thinks anymore, even to this day you can look on any P2P site for the formats that taxes and other personal data are kept in (such as QuickBooks files) and literally find thousands upon thousands of morons sharing their entire C: drive because they don't bother to think.
To me that is the sad and/or scary part: Your security is only as strong as the biggest moron in the group and when it comes to computers the level of stupid out there is frankly mind boggling.
So NoScript FTW then? Has anybody come up with a NoScript style tool for Chromium BTW? Because on the one hand with FF devs refusing to support low rights mode in modern Windows it makes FF worse than Chromium, but on the other hand having NoScript makes it safer to actually have a readable page without the "all or nothing" approach of other browsers.
So I guess what I'm trying to figure out is this: Is it safer to run Chromium in low rights mode, or to have FF running in full rights but have NoScript? If anyone here has a clue please chime in, as I don't have any spare boxes capable of running Win 7 ATM so I have no way to really test the theory. It would be interesting to know which is safer: FF with NoScript or Chromium low rights mode and sandboxing.
Although if they don't fix the damned memory leaks and CPU spikes I'll have to switch everyone over to Comodo Dragon (Chromium based) anyway as I'm already running into customers that are having trouble with FF 4. But if anybody knows which sitch is the safer way to go please let me know. Anything that can give my customers and family a safer machine is always of the good.
Ya wanna know why I hate fundies (shut up, of course you do!) it is because my grandfather and several of my relatives shed and spilled blood so I can say "I think your religion is full of shit, and it teaches several bigoted and evil things" and I can even write that on a nice poster and stand outside your church every Sunday holding my little sign and that's just fine. Fundies want to take away our rights to do such things, or to believe or not as we choose.
And frankly if you are an Xtian and don't stand up and say that is bullshit every time a fundie opens their mouth then you are no damned better than the Muslims who sit there with their mouth shut while the fundies preach hatred and suicide bombing. what I do with my body, teach my kids, and believe or not should be none of your damned business and I sure as hell shouldn't have to pay for you to stuff that shit down the throats of my kids. Believe me I have seen fundie Xtians up close, I had to raise my kids with home schooling because I live in the middle of Baptist land and I have one kid that's Catholic and the other Gay.
So for all the supposed "love and peace" of the Xtians they sure do go out of their way to find things to hate. These same damned churches trying to push this shit or force women who've been raped to bear the rapist's child (which BTW I have NEVER seen any of these fundies offer to take the kids, have you?) are the same ones that back in the 60s said blacks shouldn't have equal rights because of the bible (something about a black mark? It has been too long since I read the BS).
So why don't you do us all a favor and go tell the fundies to STFU in your own community if you supposedly don't support them. Because for all the talk of tolerance and peace the supposedly "moderate" Xtains sure do seem to STFU when the fundies are spouting hate. Pretty fucking sad when I have to raise my kids at home because the Catholic was having to spend his afternoons stomping the shit out of Xtains who were taught by their parents that bashing someone's head in because they were gay is just a nice way to spend an afternoon. Personally if I had my way I'd round up every damned bible and chunk the fuckers in the fire along with the Tora and Koran. In a couple of generations the world WOULD be a better place, no doubt in my mind at all.
The funny part? You can get "Steam rips" all day long on P2P so frankly Steam and GOG (who doesn't have any activation at all) are the only two I really trust. BTW anybody wanting a cheap game The Witcher Director's Cut is gonna be on GOG on Tuesday for $5, so snatch it.
But this is one of those things where "If I can't pirate it I don't want it" because as long as I can get a pirate copy I don't have to worry about something happening that would bone me or allow me not to play. For a good example I bought Bioshock II on Amazon for like $10, but I play the hacked version. Why? Because the not hacked version requires GFWL which frankly sucks donkey nuts and the last time I tried using it I spent more time fighting with GFWL than I did playing the damned game.
I have plenty of games like the original NOLF that simply won't play on x64 thanks to shitty DRM (thanks SecuROM, may you rot in hell) but thanks to the pirates I can just extract the files off the disc and with a NoCD I'm good to go. Thanks to NoCDs cooked up by the pirates there are nearly NO games that I can't play on my new X64 system-*.
One of the reasons I got away from consoles is I got burnt by one of the early Playstations that would scratch discs and was basically told "tough shit it's out of warranty" but with the PC I decide what runs and thanks to the pirates any game I have that is no longer supported can still be hacked and played. Between Steam, GOG, and Amazon I have more gaming than I could possibly ever enjoy, cheap prices, and no online BS if I don't want it. Thanks pirate hackers argh!
*.-The ONLY game I've found where I can NOT run it at all is my classic MechWarrior 3, because apparently they used some old Win9x hacks and when run on a modern system you get this "bouncing tanks" bug where things bounce 100s of feet in the air making them impossible to shoot. But even games where the company went tits up like Vampire:Bloodlines I was able to play through the game once a fan made patch came out, on a console that would have been impossible. If a game can ONLY be used online? Frankly they can keep it, it isn't like there aren't literally 100s of games I haven't gotten to play yet.
A tracphone is $20, has no info about you, you can even shitcan it afterward if you like. Again it isn't like someone at MSFT is going "OMFG He is calling on a Tracphone! He must be like OBL's nephew or something!".
The guys getting paid to man the phones frankly don't give a shit, all the care about is the key. If you want to be paranoid just use a Tracphone and chunk it afterward, but I'm willing to bet my last dollar the only "logging" they do on those minimum wage help lines is the classic "this call may be monitored for quality assurance" to make sure the dude at the desk ain't making dirty comments or hitting on the females.
Believe me as I had to set up the PCs for one of those help desks once. Frankly those places only care about metrics, how many customers you can run through the system, and how professional the workers are acting. That is why nearly every helpdesk jockey will say "thanks for calling have a nice day" because they know they get dinged if they don't and they check the call for quality assurance.
But if you truly believe the minimum wage jockey at MSFT giving you the activation could is secretly triangulating you then may I say this is for you and you might want to contact RMS to find out where he got that uber rare Loongson netbook that he says is the only "free" system on the planet, because you may be a loonie.
Not to mention despite all the fancy electronics in the end it will come down to humans and whether or not they have any damned sense. I remember reading when the wall fell a couple of the "BTW did you know we came close to blowing your Yankee asses up?" articles, one where they came damned close to launching because the USA was doing a huge ePeen exercise with the Germans and the Russians thought it was a build up for launch, and on the second one of the commanders at one of their tracking stations actually detected what the computer thought was an ICBM headed to Moscow and despite orders refused to launch. He said 'It didn't make sense to me. The Americans would not just launch one or two birds, the sky would have been full. To launch only one or two birds would have been suicide" so he figured it was a glitch (turned out to be sunlight and clouds screwing with the detectors)
So in the end all we can do is hope the guy sitting there by the button has as much sense as that Russian commander. Because as any tech guy will tell you the fancier the system the more ways it can break horribly. Let us just hope they ain't basing their entire decision on whether to launch or not on these new fancy birds.
Uhhhh..you can do that over a phone if you wish, you know that right? All they care about is that you give them a legit serial, you could tell them your name is Henry Fonda for all they care.
I'm sorry but the other poster was right: Compared to all the crap FB and Google is collecting on people Ballmer looks like a big sweaty Care bear. You hand them money, they hand you software, what you do with said software after that they really don't give a crap about.
Why not? They had articles on which software to snatch with, had screencaps all over the place showing how to use said software to snatch tunes, they did everything but have a link to Goatse with a hyperlink that said "Here is what we think of your steenkin rules, bitches!"
It wasn't in this case that they offered the software, it was that they were completely fucking blatant about what to use it for and when. To use a/. car analog it is like the difference between offering a radar detector and having it accompany an article saying "And just in case you're unclear of its purpose, please follow along with John who will show you how to rig your license plates so you won't have to worry about speed cams either!"
They broke the carinal rule, which is "don't be an asshole about it". There are plenty of places like Major Geeks that offer the software, but they aren't assholes about it. Reading the links in TFA the writers at Cnet made it VERY clear they thought the movie and record companies could suck their collective dicks, and then went out of their way to make sure everyone knew they thought piracy was all that and a bag of chips. So again if for nothing else being giant assholes about it will probably get them busted, as I can't see how any judge could read those articles and say Cnet wasn't condoning and assisting with infringement. I mean every damned screencap had them hunting for pirate movies and tunes!
But does it plug into major browsers like FF and Chromium based? Because as a PC repairman the biggest problem I run into is folks just can't keep up with all the damned passwords so they either use the same thing everywhere, or they save them all in the browser and then if something happens to the browser or OS they are boned.
What I need is something simple, that is easy to use, where someone like my dad could just plug in a thumbstick, input a master password, and then have the thing generate random passwords and remember them on the stick. It would have to input the data into the browser so they don't have to mess with copy/paste, just plug in, use and go.
Everyone here complains about security but average folks just can't keep up with all the bullshit. They need simple, they need easy, they need 'clicky clicky". this is why so many people have lame passwords, it is because they just can't keep up with any more and most "solutions" are a PITA themselves. So does anybody know of something that works like I described?
Eh, you could still make it into a killer, just put a six shot pepper box style of 22 rounds (light barrels, especially if they are only for a single shot) and have the bullets dipped in poison...it could work. If you used one of the more nasty ones you wouldn't even have to be very accurate at all, any hit would do.
But am I the only one who really doesn't like how damned cheap these "electric eyes" are getting? I mean all we need is to end up with the things so damned cheap every BF nowhere PD has the entire population being watched, hell it is already getting harder and harder not to be under constant camera surveillance, do we REALLY need the things so simple cops can drive them with iPhones?
But you seem to be missing what for me at least, is the meat of the matter: If anyone OTHER than the *.A.As tried this they'd be busted for extortion and but quick. I mean can you imagine how well it would go if I started sending out letters to customers of other repair shops "I think that your PC has been optimized using MY designs. You will pay me $3000 for that infringement or get a lawyer as you'll be spending the next year in court"?
I would be hauled away in cuffs before the week was out! So I'd say the more important argument is why is a corporation allowed to do this when We The People are not. They should be forced to go to court on every single case or STFU. Because otherwise this is NOTHING but extortion, plain and simple.
Actually I think Joss Whedon nailed it on the nature of Villainy "The thing about villainy is that nobody thinks they are evil no matter what they do. I have known some people who have done truly awful things, things that caused pain and suffering to their fellow human beings, and in their minds they are right and just as they can always explain it away with a reason".
This is why I ultimately believe the *.A.As need to DIAF, as they refuse to see what actual harm they are causing to societies, how they are locking entire histories behind paywalls, how they have raped the public domain for future generations. Instead all they can see is how can I profit how can I increase my vast wealth, how can I bribe my way to ever more income, etc.
The simple fact is, if it weren't for bribery (such as bribing the government so they could own all the stations) they simply wouldn't have a reason to exist anymore. We can have free radio from all over the planet, bands can cook up their own videos and post them to Youtube, they can sell you those albums at places like CDBaby.
Frankly I don't give a shit if the judge said they couldn't sue because it was Thursday and he was gassy, anything that helps to stop these blood sucking leeches is a-ok in my book. When you have copyrights that literally last longer than any human can possibly live? That just shows that the system as is is irretrievably broken.
Actually I've set up quite a few of those, and they damned near all run WinServer. Hell I can take any PHB and have him in about two weeks far enough along he can add OUs and do basic GPO edits. WinServer is so damned "clicky clicky" it is beyond simple now.
The problem with Linux, especially in the server role, is you really have to know your shit to get it running rock solid and hassle free. And those guys? They ain't cheap, even if there are any in your area (which is usually rare unless you live in a city of over 500,000) whereas MCSEs are as common as dirt and just as cheap. As long as you pay for licenses by the server and not the user (which in small shops works just fine) then WinServer ends up cheaper in the long run. For web hosting you just pay some guy to set up the website on a virtual server with some hosting company, easy peasy.
So I'd say there is a reason why fully two thirds of new servers being sold are coming with WinServer, and WinSBS is selling like hitcakes. Because despite the 'free as in beer" BS it actually comes out cheaper in the long run to get an MCSE than it is to pay a Linux guru for anything smaller than say UPS or Amazon. Linux guys are rare, expensive,and even then all it takes is one funky rare error for the downtime to kill you. With WinServer any problem has been found a thousand times over and is usually one short Google away from being fixed. hell my mom could run a Windows domain, it really ain't hard.
Ya know, normally I'd tell these lawsuit scum to jump off a short bridge, but sadly in this case I think he kinda has a point. If you follow the links to his page and look at the evidence he's collected, not only is Cnet making money on the downloads with ad revenue, but they have several articles where they test P2P software by looking for infringing stuff to download complete with screenshots, several of their articles have lines like 'The best stuff to snatch music with" and their writers for their P2P reviews are pretty much 'Suck it bitches!' while making cracks and having every single screenshot be them downloading infringing material.
We have always had the twist on the Fight Club rule, we ALL know what the software is for, but we don't go around blabbing about it! But these clowns at Cnet have been pretty much flying the bird while laughing and taking screen caps. This reminds me of the moron that robbed a place and then put it on FaceBook. If you are just offering the software that's one thing, but putting your tune snatching in screencaps? Way too fucking stupid, and they should be busted for being total dumbasses if nothing else.
The problem with your BS MR AC, is this: Those servers? they actually have these things called "admins" that make many thousands of dollars and are sent to classes and things like Black hat to stay on top of the game, whereas with Windows you have the nice little old lady down the hall that still can't figure out the difference between memory and hard drive space.
Think of it THIS way MR AC: Which would be easier to rob, the bank in the middle of Paduka AR with one old guy that hasn't fired a gun in 30 years, or the supermegabank in Las Vegas where they have had a dozen attempts over the years and have ex special forces for security?
In the end, as much as it will butthurt the Linux desktop users (all four of you) the simple fact is YOU ARE TOO SMALL to be worth the trouble, and the servers running Linux are locked down tighter than a nun's thighs by guys like my old friend Glenn that spend all their time ass deep in sites like Securina and consider recompiling code for security and speed improvements a "fun" way to spend an afternoon. In the end malware writers are like any other criminal and are thus lazy: the easiest mark will always be the target. Now once XP finally dies hard? Well as we have seen with the OSX malware kit they are starting to look at OSX as kinda tasty, and there are plenty of exploits for Android. But Linux desktop is what...0.02% of the market? It would be like targeting OS/2 Warp users, it just isn't worth the effort.
Oh please do go fuck off and die you partisan hack. Did you see ANYWHERE where I mentioned fucking demorats? They are BOTH so far up the corporate asshole that every chili fart feels like katrina alright? And you HONESTLY think they are gonna REPEAL the gas tax if they get this passed? BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA! God man boy, your naivete is fucking incredible! Show me where EITHER side repealed shit in the past 20 years when it comes to taxes. Hell unless it is a tax that hurts the 1%ers you'll NEVER get rid of it ever!
Did you know that currently government employs more than logging, construction, mining, COMBINED! You have a money cranking machine which enriches BOTH parties, you think they really give a shit about YOU? You think Nobama cares any more than McSame? Well friend here is a nice bridge you might be interested in, it goes to nowhere so it is hardly used! Give me a break!
You mean "Windows excels in that part of the attack vector a decade ago" FTFY. Seriously people Vista has been out nearly FIVE years, Windows 7 now for TWO years, did the DOS jokes continue into 2005?
So the moral of the story little childrens is this: stop running decade old shite and if you ARE gonna run decade old shite have a fricking brain about it and run a decent free AV (I'd recommend either Avast or Comodo as both have default sandboxing) along with not running every damned bit of code found in the backwoods of the Internet offering you free titties or money from a Nigerian prince. is that REALLY so hard?
As for TFA, count the days Linux guys, count the days. you already have the malware kit for OSX, and all those Android phones means malware writers finally have a reason to start snooping around. All those noobs you got on Ubuntu sure would be a nice little addition to their botnets wouldn't they? Count the days Linux guys, count the days until your DOOM!
You gonna pay a couple of trillion to create a massive mass transit system for us here in the south? No? Well guess what sparky, guess where huge amounts of your food comes from? If we can't afford to drive the long distances to maintain the computers, the machinery, your city ass can go starve.
I probably have to drive a good couple of hundred miles or more some weeks simply helping these small businesses (you know, the things that employ Americans? Yeah those things) and as long as I keep my foot off it my little Ranger does that job just fine. You gonna give me that hybrid for free? Or maybe you just want to close those small businesses (who won't be able to stay afloat if you keep piling on the taxes) and send them overseas like the big boys?
It is called QUIT BLOWING MONEY YOU DAMNED PIGS and there goes the problems! We don't need the F-35 when all our wars are in Bumfuckistan against goat herders, even against more technologically advanced (which considering all of those countries have nukes so it would be suicide anyway) we can have drones for cheap that can do things no human could ever survive. Cut military spending by a good 2/3rds right off the bat, bring our boys home, close the shitload of military bases splattered all over the world, and set up a WPA style program so those without jobs can earn their money rebuilding our infrastructure.
TADA I just solved the whole damned thing, am I a genius or what? the ONLY reason you haven't seen what I just proposed implemented is it doesn't figure in MASSIVE BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION which the pigs in DC live off of. What we do NOT need is more taxes gouging the poor, what we need is leaders with a fucking brain!
You want to know why MS Office won? Piracy! The older versions of Office were beyond easy to pirate, hell I even remember one of them would take all 1s or all 0s as the serial number!
It is the same reason why cheaper alternatives to PhotoShop never have a chance. The kids snatch PS, they learn PS, and this helps Adobe in the long run to sell to businesses. I can't find the link ATM but back in the day old Bill himself said something along the lines of "If they are gonna pirate I want them to pirate us instead of our competitor, as we can always find a way later to turn them into a paying customer".
Hell I would argue that is why they've never tried making a "hack proof" Windows activation and they never seem to go out and shut down those WGA kill programs. It is because they know there is no way in hell Linux will ever gain a foothold on the desktop as long as it is easy to pirate Windows. Only problem they have at MSFT is someone forgot to fill Ballmer in as those $50 Win 7 HP licenses was turning pirates legit left and right, so instead of killing it they should have kept it and turned the pirates into paying customers.
So I'd love to see how they are gonna argue this one in court, as repeated studies show PS is easy to snatch and that is why PS ends up being used in business, because everybody already knows how to run it. Are they gonna argue that it isn't fair for MSFT not to try to make their programs uncopyable? Or that legit Office users should have to jump through flaming activation hoops so WP would be the easier product to snatch? Because I don't see how the black market helping a product can be simply sued away.
Sorry MR AC, but that is BS spread by Mac guys to cover up their failing. if you look at the actual rules for pwn2own in addition to the PC they get 10 grand if it were simply a case of owning the machine you'd be right but the 10 grand means the easiest target will ALWAYS be the first hit so they can grab the money.
The simple fact, whether Mac guys want to admit it or not, is since Vista Macs are easier to hack then Windows thanks to Windows having DEP, ASLR, low rights mode on IE/Chrome, and file and registry virtualization. Mac is simply behind the curve now when it comes to security as pwn2own clearly proves. Now that malware kits for OSX are out I have a feeling you'll be seeing a lot more pwned Macs thanks to too many Mac users simply believing their machines unhackable and not taking proper precautions.
And I'd say there ain't nothing wrong with taking a couple of minutes out of your day to jaw with the little teller girl, and by doing so you make things SOOO much easier for yourself in the long run!
Since I took the time to go in and yak at the little teller girl I can walk in there now and go "Hi Lisa, how's things? Well wouldn't you know it one of those companies I buy parts from done double dipped on my account" and she'll say "Oh don't you just hate that? That happened to my sister a couple of weeks ago and it took her ages to straighten out. I told her she needs to have an account with us but you know her, stubborn as a mule and hates change. Let me look it up, the $250 second charge? Okay let me just fix that...there you go, all done!"
So you see taking a couple of minutes to yak at the little teller girl gives you an advantage in the long run, because instead of a faceless number they deal with over the phone they know you as a person, which means they are more likely to help out if they can. Plus what can be bad about chatting with a pretty girl for a couple of minutes?
Like what EXT 2? Like that doesn't break. And frankly why should they? It is a free market, you are free to pay the RAND license or walk away. You see THIS is what I find hilariously about the "community" in that while they talk about unity and other crap they will happily fuck each other for a buck and they'll do so even when it slits their own throat!
Did you know nearly two thirds of Linux servers are running CentOS over RHEL? Did you know CentOS was created by a leech company that sold hardware that required RHEL but didn't want to have to shell a dime to RH? Do you see the community calling them out? Nope instead you see them trumpeting CentOS because they are at heart cheap bastards that don't care they are shitting in their own backyard! Who do you think gives back more code than all the others combined? Who do you think has to hire less coders and give back less code because of leeches like CentOS?
So please, continue shooting yourselves in the face. There is nothing I hate more than hypocrites and the "community" has the hypocrisy so thick you can cut it with a chainsaw. The "community" says open up your code and we'll buy and support you! So AMD does what is asked and everywhere you recommend Nvidia who fucks their customers, drops support for anything more than a generation or two old, and who won't give you access to shit! You say you'll support those that support the community yet on every damned forum you push CentOS like there is no tomorrow! Oh the hypocrisy is so thick and rich!
Hell I could go on all damned day with instance after instance of stupidity, greed, and just outright religious zealotry and egoism fucking the community, all the way up to the top with Linus" Plans? What are those?" Torvalds refusing to allow a stable ABI, which would make it trivial for all the hardware OEMs to support you, because it would keep him from getting a wild hair and going Goatse on the kernel anytime he pleases. Even the argument so frequently posted here against it is religious, with the writer going so far as to accuse those that don't give their code as GPL "leeches" and hoping Torvalds next Goatse kills the drivers, even though that is hurting the very users you want to attract.
So please,keep up the hypocrisy. Keep up with "free as in cheapskate above all!" and saying one thing and doing the opposite, please do. Because companies and orgs are getting tired of "update foo broke my drivers" so much that fully two thirds of new SERVERS sold come with Windows, and by refusing to pay even a single cent for a RAND license for anything nearly every new flash that I come across is formatted in NTFS.
You refuse to play nice with others, you have arrogance that would make Jobs blush and without the numbers to back it up, and you expect the world to give you everything for free. So frankly you really shouldn't be surprised your numbers are currently flatline globally and in Europe which so many touted as the next growth market for Linux. Hell last I checked JavaME was beating you! So please, keep it up. I do so love watching hypocrisy and arrogance get its comeuppance!
Well I've also found that when you help folks when they are done they'll usually hook you up when they are up as well.
For example one that I knew vaguely from HS came to me when he was trying to get his HVAC business off the ground, but anyone who has bought the tools for that line of work can tell you they ain't cheap! He had come mainly hoping I could give him a little bit of advice but when I heard what he was trying to do I hooked him up with a couple of off lease office boxes I had recently acquired and told him to just pay me a little here and there when he could. hell I had already gotten my money back on the shipment so I wasn't really worried about it and I know how hard it can be just starting out.
So sure enough he or his GF drop off $10 here, $20 there for a couple of months, nothing regular (which I had already told him was fine,like I said I knew how much those tools cost) so one day he calls me and asks me to meet him at the local staples. I figured he wanted some advice on something and wanted to throw me a few bucks, kill two birds you know? So he has me look at some monitors and give him my opinion on which would be the best for his home office. I point out a nice Dell 1600x900 22 inch and tell him that's a good office monitor, with a better picture than the 20 inch CRT at my shop so he'd know about what to expect on picture quality.
So he calls over a sales guy and tells him he wants three of them and at the checkout and asks me to grab one so I carry it out to his van and when I go to put it in he says "Nope, these two are mine and that one is yours along with this" and proceeds to whip off $600 in hundred dollar bills (even though he only owed me a little over $120 on the boxes) and when I pointed that out he laughed and said "When I struggling to get my license and tools and was just hoping you'd show me how to use my old junker to make invoices you not only hooked me up with two office machines, you loaded them up with bookkeeping software and invoice generators and everything else I could need, and even took the time to teach Melissa how to run it all, and didn't charge us a dime for that extra time. Now that I have several jobs lined up I just wanted to show you I remember who looked out for me and I'll be sending Mel by next week to get us a new machine for the office, along with something I can carry with me" which he did, I got them a nice AMD netbook for him to use in the field and built them an AMD triple core for the office.
So it just goes to show if you treat folks right most of the time they'll return the favor if they can. Sure I've been burned a time or two but I find that happens VERY rarely (more likely they just pay me off $10 here, $20 there if they are struggling, which I understand, everyone goes through a bad spell now and then) and they make sure their friends and family come to you FIRST which will 9 times out of 10 keep you so swamped. I've gotten not only this nice monitor as a gift, but graphics cards, cash, chicken dinners, hell I've got half a dozen P4 machines for free from a business that upgraded sitting in front of me because I helped out the handyman that works there learn how to do his banking and shopping online so he talked them out of the whole lot. He says I have at least two more loads coming.
So while scum like Rent A Ripoff may delight in treating folks bad, I found there are plenty of rewards besides karma for treating folks decently. And sorry about the length, I just thought the guys here might like to hear one where the person treating folks right didn't finish last. I've not only always had business and gotten great perks, but I met my sweet little Cherokee princess through her being a referral at the shop, my family just adores her and I've never been happier. Treat folks right and you never know what good things will come through your door!
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Well if they are on a modern version of Windows like Vista or 7 then they have most likely moved to one of the Chromium based, since they support low rights mode which helps to stop those zero day Adobe bugs, along with sandboxing. Some like Chrome but personally I prefer Comodo Dragon as it doesn't phone home like Chrome and has some nice extras like domain validation and the option to use the Comodo secure DNS. You can also get Adblock Plus for it and the other Chromium based now, along with forecastfox which my customers just love.
It also seems to handle the heavier sites like FB faster than FF 4, which while I don't care about that my customers sure do. What I DO care about is the fact that I have to support everything from nettops and older office boxes to the latest multicore PCs and FF 4 frankly slams the hell out of the CPU and leaks memory, which is especially noticeable on the older and/or low powered machines.
So while I'm glad that something other than IE is winning somewhere for me and my users until FF fixes the bugs and supports the latest security tech I'm afraid I'll have to go with the Chromium based browsers. The speed and responsiveness, especially with those customers that practically live in their browsers, have made the switch a pretty easy sell. If FF 4 works for you I'm happy for you, on the multicores I don't have any problems with it either, but there is a whole world full of well functioning single core machines that the Chromium based just work better on IMHO, and only having to support one browser is easier on me.
Because you get some dumbass that can't be arsed to bring a flash stick to work and/or they aren't allowed to use a flash stick, so they just upload it to Rapidshit? Hell nobody reads anything or actually thinks anymore, even to this day you can look on any P2P site for the formats that taxes and other personal data are kept in (such as QuickBooks files) and literally find thousands upon thousands of morons sharing their entire C: drive because they don't bother to think.
To me that is the sad and/or scary part: Your security is only as strong as the biggest moron in the group and when it comes to computers the level of stupid out there is frankly mind boggling.
So NoScript FTW then? Has anybody come up with a NoScript style tool for Chromium BTW? Because on the one hand with FF devs refusing to support low rights mode in modern Windows it makes FF worse than Chromium, but on the other hand having NoScript makes it safer to actually have a readable page without the "all or nothing" approach of other browsers.
So I guess what I'm trying to figure out is this: Is it safer to run Chromium in low rights mode, or to have FF running in full rights but have NoScript? If anyone here has a clue please chime in, as I don't have any spare boxes capable of running Win 7 ATM so I have no way to really test the theory. It would be interesting to know which is safer: FF with NoScript or Chromium low rights mode and sandboxing.
Although if they don't fix the damned memory leaks and CPU spikes I'll have to switch everyone over to Comodo Dragon (Chromium based) anyway as I'm already running into customers that are having trouble with FF 4. But if anybody knows which sitch is the safer way to go please let me know. Anything that can give my customers and family a safer machine is always of the good.
Ya wanna know why I hate fundies (shut up, of course you do!) it is because my grandfather and several of my relatives shed and spilled blood so I can say "I think your religion is full of shit, and it teaches several bigoted and evil things" and I can even write that on a nice poster and stand outside your church every Sunday holding my little sign and that's just fine. Fundies want to take away our rights to do such things, or to believe or not as we choose.
And frankly if you are an Xtian and don't stand up and say that is bullshit every time a fundie opens their mouth then you are no damned better than the Muslims who sit there with their mouth shut while the fundies preach hatred and suicide bombing. what I do with my body, teach my kids, and believe or not should be none of your damned business and I sure as hell shouldn't have to pay for you to stuff that shit down the throats of my kids. Believe me I have seen fundie Xtians up close, I had to raise my kids with home schooling because I live in the middle of Baptist land and I have one kid that's Catholic and the other Gay.
So for all the supposed "love and peace" of the Xtians they sure do go out of their way to find things to hate. These same damned churches trying to push this shit or force women who've been raped to bear the rapist's child (which BTW I have NEVER seen any of these fundies offer to take the kids, have you?) are the same ones that back in the 60s said blacks shouldn't have equal rights because of the bible (something about a black mark? It has been too long since I read the BS).
So why don't you do us all a favor and go tell the fundies to STFU in your own community if you supposedly don't support them. Because for all the talk of tolerance and peace the supposedly "moderate" Xtains sure do seem to STFU when the fundies are spouting hate. Pretty fucking sad when I have to raise my kids at home because the Catholic was having to spend his afternoons stomping the shit out of Xtains who were taught by their parents that bashing someone's head in because they were gay is just a nice way to spend an afternoon. Personally if I had my way I'd round up every damned bible and chunk the fuckers in the fire along with the Tora and Koran. In a couple of generations the world WOULD be a better place, no doubt in my mind at all.
The funny part? You can get "Steam rips" all day long on P2P so frankly Steam and GOG (who doesn't have any activation at all) are the only two I really trust. BTW anybody wanting a cheap game The Witcher Director's Cut is gonna be on GOG on Tuesday for $5, so snatch it.
But this is one of those things where "If I can't pirate it I don't want it" because as long as I can get a pirate copy I don't have to worry about something happening that would bone me or allow me not to play. For a good example I bought Bioshock II on Amazon for like $10, but I play the hacked version. Why? Because the not hacked version requires GFWL which frankly sucks donkey nuts and the last time I tried using it I spent more time fighting with GFWL than I did playing the damned game.
I have plenty of games like the original NOLF that simply won't play on x64 thanks to shitty DRM (thanks SecuROM, may you rot in hell) but thanks to the pirates I can just extract the files off the disc and with a NoCD I'm good to go. Thanks to NoCDs cooked up by the pirates there are nearly NO games that I can't play on my new X64 system-*.
One of the reasons I got away from consoles is I got burnt by one of the early Playstations that would scratch discs and was basically told "tough shit it's out of warranty" but with the PC I decide what runs and thanks to the pirates any game I have that is no longer supported can still be hacked and played. Between Steam, GOG, and Amazon I have more gaming than I could possibly ever enjoy, cheap prices, and no online BS if I don't want it. Thanks pirate hackers argh!
*.-The ONLY game I've found where I can NOT run it at all is my classic MechWarrior 3, because apparently they used some old Win9x hacks and when run on a modern system you get this "bouncing tanks" bug where things bounce 100s of feet in the air making them impossible to shoot. But even games where the company went tits up like Vampire:Bloodlines I was able to play through the game once a fan made patch came out, on a console that would have been impossible. If a game can ONLY be used online? Frankly they can keep it, it isn't like there aren't literally 100s of games I haven't gotten to play yet.
A tracphone is $20, has no info about you, you can even shitcan it afterward if you like. Again it isn't like someone at MSFT is going "OMFG He is calling on a Tracphone! He must be like OBL's nephew or something!".
The guys getting paid to man the phones frankly don't give a shit, all the care about is the key. If you want to be paranoid just use a Tracphone and chunk it afterward, but I'm willing to bet my last dollar the only "logging" they do on those minimum wage help lines is the classic "this call may be monitored for quality assurance" to make sure the dude at the desk ain't making dirty comments or hitting on the females.
Believe me as I had to set up the PCs for one of those help desks once. Frankly those places only care about metrics, how many customers you can run through the system, and how professional the workers are acting. That is why nearly every helpdesk jockey will say "thanks for calling have a nice day" because they know they get dinged if they don't and they check the call for quality assurance.
But if you truly believe the minimum wage jockey at MSFT giving you the activation could is secretly triangulating you then may I say this is for you and you might want to contact RMS to find out where he got that uber rare Loongson netbook that he says is the only "free" system on the planet, because you may be a loonie.
Not to mention despite all the fancy electronics in the end it will come down to humans and whether or not they have any damned sense. I remember reading when the wall fell a couple of the "BTW did you know we came close to blowing your Yankee asses up?" articles, one where they came damned close to launching because the USA was doing a huge ePeen exercise with the Germans and the Russians thought it was a build up for launch, and on the second one of the commanders at one of their tracking stations actually detected what the computer thought was an ICBM headed to Moscow and despite orders refused to launch. He said 'It didn't make sense to me. The Americans would not just launch one or two birds, the sky would have been full. To launch only one or two birds would have been suicide" so he figured it was a glitch (turned out to be sunlight and clouds screwing with the detectors)
So in the end all we can do is hope the guy sitting there by the button has as much sense as that Russian commander. Because as any tech guy will tell you the fancier the system the more ways it can break horribly. Let us just hope they ain't basing their entire decision on whether to launch or not on these new fancy birds.
Uhhhh..you can do that over a phone if you wish, you know that right? All they care about is that you give them a legit serial, you could tell them your name is Henry Fonda for all they care.
I'm sorry but the other poster was right: Compared to all the crap FB and Google is collecting on people Ballmer looks like a big sweaty Care bear. You hand them money, they hand you software, what you do with said software after that they really don't give a crap about.
Why not? They had articles on which software to snatch with, had screencaps all over the place showing how to use said software to snatch tunes, they did everything but have a link to Goatse with a hyperlink that said "Here is what we think of your steenkin rules, bitches!"
It wasn't in this case that they offered the software, it was that they were completely fucking blatant about what to use it for and when. To use a /. car analog it is like the difference between offering a radar detector and having it accompany an article saying "And just in case you're unclear of its purpose, please follow along with John who will show you how to rig your license plates so you won't have to worry about speed cams either!"
They broke the carinal rule, which is "don't be an asshole about it". There are plenty of places like Major Geeks that offer the software, but they aren't assholes about it. Reading the links in TFA the writers at Cnet made it VERY clear they thought the movie and record companies could suck their collective dicks, and then went out of their way to make sure everyone knew they thought piracy was all that and a bag of chips. So again if for nothing else being giant assholes about it will probably get them busted, as I can't see how any judge could read those articles and say Cnet wasn't condoning and assisting with infringement. I mean every damned screencap had them hunting for pirate movies and tunes!
But does it plug into major browsers like FF and Chromium based? Because as a PC repairman the biggest problem I run into is folks just can't keep up with all the damned passwords so they either use the same thing everywhere, or they save them all in the browser and then if something happens to the browser or OS they are boned.
What I need is something simple, that is easy to use, where someone like my dad could just plug in a thumbstick, input a master password, and then have the thing generate random passwords and remember them on the stick. It would have to input the data into the browser so they don't have to mess with copy/paste, just plug in, use and go.
Everyone here complains about security but average folks just can't keep up with all the bullshit. They need simple, they need easy, they need 'clicky clicky". this is why so many people have lame passwords, it is because they just can't keep up with any more and most "solutions" are a PITA themselves. So does anybody know of something that works like I described?
Eh, you could still make it into a killer, just put a six shot pepper box style of 22 rounds (light barrels, especially if they are only for a single shot) and have the bullets dipped in poison...it could work. If you used one of the more nasty ones you wouldn't even have to be very accurate at all, any hit would do.
But am I the only one who really doesn't like how damned cheap these "electric eyes" are getting? I mean all we need is to end up with the things so damned cheap every BF nowhere PD has the entire population being watched, hell it is already getting harder and harder not to be under constant camera surveillance, do we REALLY need the things so simple cops can drive them with iPhones?
Ugh Hot Pockets? Your mama ought to be ashamed! Hamburger Helper FTW!
But you seem to be missing what for me at least, is the meat of the matter: If anyone OTHER than the *.A.As tried this they'd be busted for extortion and but quick. I mean can you imagine how well it would go if I started sending out letters to customers of other repair shops "I think that your PC has been optimized using MY designs. You will pay me $3000 for that infringement or get a lawyer as you'll be spending the next year in court"?
I would be hauled away in cuffs before the week was out! So I'd say the more important argument is why is a corporation allowed to do this when We The People are not. They should be forced to go to court on every single case or STFU. Because otherwise this is NOTHING but extortion, plain and simple.
Actually I think Joss Whedon nailed it on the nature of Villainy "The thing about villainy is that nobody thinks they are evil no matter what they do. I have known some people who have done truly awful things, things that caused pain and suffering to their fellow human beings, and in their minds they are right and just as they can always explain it away with a reason".
This is why I ultimately believe the *.A.As need to DIAF, as they refuse to see what actual harm they are causing to societies, how they are locking entire histories behind paywalls, how they have raped the public domain for future generations. Instead all they can see is how can I profit how can I increase my vast wealth, how can I bribe my way to ever more income, etc.
The simple fact is, if it weren't for bribery (such as bribing the government so they could own all the stations) they simply wouldn't have a reason to exist anymore. We can have free radio from all over the planet, bands can cook up their own videos and post them to Youtube, they can sell you those albums at places like CDBaby.
Frankly I don't give a shit if the judge said they couldn't sue because it was Thursday and he was gassy, anything that helps to stop these blood sucking leeches is a-ok in my book. When you have copyrights that literally last longer than any human can possibly live? That just shows that the system as is is irretrievably broken.
Actually I've set up quite a few of those, and they damned near all run WinServer. Hell I can take any PHB and have him in about two weeks far enough along he can add OUs and do basic GPO edits. WinServer is so damned "clicky clicky" it is beyond simple now.
The problem with Linux, especially in the server role, is you really have to know your shit to get it running rock solid and hassle free. And those guys? They ain't cheap, even if there are any in your area (which is usually rare unless you live in a city of over 500,000) whereas MCSEs are as common as dirt and just as cheap. As long as you pay for licenses by the server and not the user (which in small shops works just fine) then WinServer ends up cheaper in the long run. For web hosting you just pay some guy to set up the website on a virtual server with some hosting company, easy peasy.
So I'd say there is a reason why fully two thirds of new servers being sold are coming with WinServer, and WinSBS is selling like hitcakes. Because despite the 'free as in beer" BS it actually comes out cheaper in the long run to get an MCSE than it is to pay a Linux guru for anything smaller than say UPS or Amazon. Linux guys are rare, expensive,and even then all it takes is one funky rare error for the downtime to kill you. With WinServer any problem has been found a thousand times over and is usually one short Google away from being fixed. hell my mom could run a Windows domain, it really ain't hard.
Ya know, normally I'd tell these lawsuit scum to jump off a short bridge, but sadly in this case I think he kinda has a point. If you follow the links to his page and look at the evidence he's collected, not only is Cnet making money on the downloads with ad revenue, but they have several articles where they test P2P software by looking for infringing stuff to download complete with screenshots, several of their articles have lines like 'The best stuff to snatch music with" and their writers for their P2P reviews are pretty much 'Suck it bitches!' while making cracks and having every single screenshot be them downloading infringing material.
We have always had the twist on the Fight Club rule, we ALL know what the software is for, but we don't go around blabbing about it! But these clowns at Cnet have been pretty much flying the bird while laughing and taking screen caps. This reminds me of the moron that robbed a place and then put it on FaceBook. If you are just offering the software that's one thing, but putting your tune snatching in screencaps? Way too fucking stupid, and they should be busted for being total dumbasses if nothing else.
The problem with your BS MR AC, is this: Those servers? they actually have these things called "admins" that make many thousands of dollars and are sent to classes and things like Black hat to stay on top of the game, whereas with Windows you have the nice little old lady down the hall that still can't figure out the difference between memory and hard drive space.
Think of it THIS way MR AC: Which would be easier to rob, the bank in the middle of Paduka AR with one old guy that hasn't fired a gun in 30 years, or the supermegabank in Las Vegas where they have had a dozen attempts over the years and have ex special forces for security?
In the end, as much as it will butthurt the Linux desktop users (all four of you) the simple fact is YOU ARE TOO SMALL to be worth the trouble, and the servers running Linux are locked down tighter than a nun's thighs by guys like my old friend Glenn that spend all their time ass deep in sites like Securina and consider recompiling code for security and speed improvements a "fun" way to spend an afternoon. In the end malware writers are like any other criminal and are thus lazy: the easiest mark will always be the target. Now once XP finally dies hard? Well as we have seen with the OSX malware kit they are starting to look at OSX as kinda tasty, and there are plenty of exploits for Android. But Linux desktop is what...0.02% of the market? It would be like targeting OS/2 Warp users, it just isn't worth the effort.
Oh please do go fuck off and die you partisan hack. Did you see ANYWHERE where I mentioned fucking demorats? They are BOTH so far up the corporate asshole that every chili fart feels like katrina alright? And you HONESTLY think they are gonna REPEAL the gas tax if they get this passed? BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA! God man boy, your naivete is fucking incredible! Show me where EITHER side repealed shit in the past 20 years when it comes to taxes. Hell unless it is a tax that hurts the 1%ers you'll NEVER get rid of it ever!
Did you know that currently government employs more than logging, construction, mining, COMBINED! You have a money cranking machine which enriches BOTH parties, you think they really give a shit about YOU? You think Nobama cares any more than McSame? Well friend here is a nice bridge you might be interested in, it goes to nowhere so it is hardly used! Give me a break!
You mean "Windows excels in that part of the attack vector a decade ago" FTFY. Seriously people Vista has been out nearly FIVE years, Windows 7 now for TWO years, did the DOS jokes continue into 2005?
So the moral of the story little childrens is this: stop running decade old shite and if you ARE gonna run decade old shite have a fricking brain about it and run a decent free AV (I'd recommend either Avast or Comodo as both have default sandboxing) along with not running every damned bit of code found in the backwoods of the Internet offering you free titties or money from a Nigerian prince. is that REALLY so hard?
As for TFA, count the days Linux guys, count the days. you already have the malware kit for OSX, and all those Android phones means malware writers finally have a reason to start snooping around. All those noobs you got on Ubuntu sure would be a nice little addition to their botnets wouldn't they? Count the days Linux guys, count the days until your DOOM!
You gonna pay a couple of trillion to create a massive mass transit system for us here in the south? No? Well guess what sparky, guess where huge amounts of your food comes from? If we can't afford to drive the long distances to maintain the computers, the machinery, your city ass can go starve.
I probably have to drive a good couple of hundred miles or more some weeks simply helping these small businesses (you know, the things that employ Americans? Yeah those things) and as long as I keep my foot off it my little Ranger does that job just fine. You gonna give me that hybrid for free? Or maybe you just want to close those small businesses (who won't be able to stay afloat if you keep piling on the taxes) and send them overseas like the big boys?
It is called QUIT BLOWING MONEY YOU DAMNED PIGS and there goes the problems! We don't need the F-35 when all our wars are in Bumfuckistan against goat herders, even against more technologically advanced (which considering all of those countries have nukes so it would be suicide anyway) we can have drones for cheap that can do things no human could ever survive. Cut military spending by a good 2/3rds right off the bat, bring our boys home, close the shitload of military bases splattered all over the world, and set up a WPA style program so those without jobs can earn their money rebuilding our infrastructure.
TADA I just solved the whole damned thing, am I a genius or what? the ONLY reason you haven't seen what I just proposed implemented is it doesn't figure in MASSIVE BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION which the pigs in DC live off of. What we do NOT need is more taxes gouging the poor, what we need is leaders with a fucking brain!
You want to know why MS Office won? Piracy! The older versions of Office were beyond easy to pirate, hell I even remember one of them would take all 1s or all 0s as the serial number!
It is the same reason why cheaper alternatives to PhotoShop never have a chance. The kids snatch PS, they learn PS, and this helps Adobe in the long run to sell to businesses. I can't find the link ATM but back in the day old Bill himself said something along the lines of "If they are gonna pirate I want them to pirate us instead of our competitor, as we can always find a way later to turn them into a paying customer".
Hell I would argue that is why they've never tried making a "hack proof" Windows activation and they never seem to go out and shut down those WGA kill programs. It is because they know there is no way in hell Linux will ever gain a foothold on the desktop as long as it is easy to pirate Windows. Only problem they have at MSFT is someone forgot to fill Ballmer in as those $50 Win 7 HP licenses was turning pirates legit left and right, so instead of killing it they should have kept it and turned the pirates into paying customers.
So I'd love to see how they are gonna argue this one in court, as repeated studies show PS is easy to snatch and that is why PS ends up being used in business, because everybody already knows how to run it. Are they gonna argue that it isn't fair for MSFT not to try to make their programs uncopyable? Or that legit Office users should have to jump through flaming activation hoops so WP would be the easier product to snatch? Because I don't see how the black market helping a product can be simply sued away.
Sorry MR AC, but that is BS spread by Mac guys to cover up their failing. if you look at the actual rules for pwn2own in addition to the PC they get 10 grand if it were simply a case of owning the machine you'd be right but the 10 grand means the easiest target will ALWAYS be the first hit so they can grab the money.
The simple fact, whether Mac guys want to admit it or not, is since Vista Macs are easier to hack then Windows thanks to Windows having DEP, ASLR, low rights mode on IE/Chrome, and file and registry virtualization. Mac is simply behind the curve now when it comes to security as pwn2own clearly proves. Now that malware kits for OSX are out I have a feeling you'll be seeing a lot more pwned Macs thanks to too many Mac users simply believing their machines unhackable and not taking proper precautions.
And I'd say there ain't nothing wrong with taking a couple of minutes out of your day to jaw with the little teller girl, and by doing so you make things SOOO much easier for yourself in the long run!
Since I took the time to go in and yak at the little teller girl I can walk in there now and go "Hi Lisa, how's things? Well wouldn't you know it one of those companies I buy parts from done double dipped on my account" and she'll say "Oh don't you just hate that? That happened to my sister a couple of weeks ago and it took her ages to straighten out. I told her she needs to have an account with us but you know her, stubborn as a mule and hates change. Let me look it up, the $250 second charge? Okay let me just fix that...there you go, all done!"
So you see taking a couple of minutes to yak at the little teller girl gives you an advantage in the long run, because instead of a faceless number they deal with over the phone they know you as a person, which means they are more likely to help out if they can. Plus what can be bad about chatting with a pretty girl for a couple of minutes?
Like what EXT 2? Like that doesn't break. And frankly why should they? It is a free market, you are free to pay the RAND license or walk away. You see THIS is what I find hilariously about the "community" in that while they talk about unity and other crap they will happily fuck each other for a buck and they'll do so even when it slits their own throat!
Did you know nearly two thirds of Linux servers are running CentOS over RHEL? Did you know CentOS was created by a leech company that sold hardware that required RHEL but didn't want to have to shell a dime to RH? Do you see the community calling them out? Nope instead you see them trumpeting CentOS because they are at heart cheap bastards that don't care they are shitting in their own backyard! Who do you think gives back more code than all the others combined? Who do you think has to hire less coders and give back less code because of leeches like CentOS?
So please, continue shooting yourselves in the face. There is nothing I hate more than hypocrites and the "community" has the hypocrisy so thick you can cut it with a chainsaw. The "community" says open up your code and we'll buy and support you! So AMD does what is asked and everywhere you recommend Nvidia who fucks their customers, drops support for anything more than a generation or two old, and who won't give you access to shit! You say you'll support those that support the community yet on every damned forum you push CentOS like there is no tomorrow! Oh the hypocrisy is so thick and rich!
Hell I could go on all damned day with instance after instance of stupidity, greed, and just outright religious zealotry and egoism fucking the community, all the way up to the top with Linus" Plans? What are those?" Torvalds refusing to allow a stable ABI, which would make it trivial for all the hardware OEMs to support you, because it would keep him from getting a wild hair and going Goatse on the kernel anytime he pleases. Even the argument so frequently posted here against it is religious, with the writer going so far as to accuse those that don't give their code as GPL "leeches" and hoping Torvalds next Goatse kills the drivers, even though that is hurting the very users you want to attract.
So please,keep up the hypocrisy. Keep up with "free as in cheapskate above all!" and saying one thing and doing the opposite, please do. Because companies and orgs are getting tired of "update foo broke my drivers" so much that fully two thirds of new SERVERS sold come with Windows, and by refusing to pay even a single cent for a RAND license for anything nearly every new flash that I come across is formatted in NTFS.
You refuse to play nice with others, you have arrogance that would make Jobs blush and without the numbers to back it up, and you expect the world to give you everything for free. So frankly you really shouldn't be surprised your numbers are currently flatline globally and in Europe which so many touted as the next growth market for Linux. Hell last I checked JavaME was beating you! So please, keep it up. I do so love watching hypocrisy and arrogance get its comeuppance!
Well I've also found that when you help folks when they are done they'll usually hook you up when they are up as well.
For example one that I knew vaguely from HS came to me when he was trying to get his HVAC business off the ground, but anyone who has bought the tools for that line of work can tell you they ain't cheap! He had come mainly hoping I could give him a little bit of advice but when I heard what he was trying to do I hooked him up with a couple of off lease office boxes I had recently acquired and told him to just pay me a little here and there when he could. hell I had already gotten my money back on the shipment so I wasn't really worried about it and I know how hard it can be just starting out.
So sure enough he or his GF drop off $10 here, $20 there for a couple of months, nothing regular (which I had already told him was fine,like I said I knew how much those tools cost) so one day he calls me and asks me to meet him at the local staples. I figured he wanted some advice on something and wanted to throw me a few bucks, kill two birds you know? So he has me look at some monitors and give him my opinion on which would be the best for his home office. I point out a nice Dell 1600x900 22 inch and tell him that's a good office monitor, with a better picture than the 20 inch CRT at my shop so he'd know about what to expect on picture quality.
So he calls over a sales guy and tells him he wants three of them and at the checkout and asks me to grab one so I carry it out to his van and when I go to put it in he says "Nope, these two are mine and that one is yours along with this" and proceeds to whip off $600 in hundred dollar bills (even though he only owed me a little over $120 on the boxes) and when I pointed that out he laughed and said "When I struggling to get my license and tools and was just hoping you'd show me how to use my old junker to make invoices you not only hooked me up with two office machines, you loaded them up with bookkeeping software and invoice generators and everything else I could need, and even took the time to teach Melissa how to run it all, and didn't charge us a dime for that extra time. Now that I have several jobs lined up I just wanted to show you I remember who looked out for me and I'll be sending Mel by next week to get us a new machine for the office, along with something I can carry with me" which he did, I got them a nice AMD netbook for him to use in the field and built them an AMD triple core for the office.
So it just goes to show if you treat folks right most of the time they'll return the favor if they can. Sure I've been burned a time or two but I find that happens VERY rarely (more likely they just pay me off $10 here, $20 there if they are struggling, which I understand, everyone goes through a bad spell now and then) and they make sure their friends and family come to you FIRST which will 9 times out of 10 keep you so swamped. I've gotten not only this nice monitor as a gift, but graphics cards, cash, chicken dinners, hell I've got half a dozen P4 machines for free from a business that upgraded sitting in front of me because I helped out the handyman that works there learn how to do his banking and shopping online so he talked them out of the whole lot. He says I have at least two more loads coming.
So while scum like Rent A Ripoff may delight in treating folks bad, I found there are plenty of rewards besides karma for treating folks decently. And sorry about the length, I just thought the guys here might like to hear one where the person treating folks right didn't finish last. I've not only always had business and gotten great perks, but I met my sweet little Cherokee princess through her being a referral at the shop, my family just adores her and I've never been happier. Treat folks right and you never know what good things will come through your door!