Uhhh...what is to keep a rapist from using one of those portable "mini cell tower" boxes to find out the IMEI of his target and then report it stolen? Seems like a good way to make sure your victim can't call for help, what with more and more folks switching to cell only.
Actually Loongson is a CPU makr you might want to watch, sadly we won't get the chips here (thanks to the broken patent and copyright messes) but they re cooking up some REALLY interesting chips, in fact I'd argue that for the first time in ages you have someone actually thinking out of the box and innovating instead of just making variations on the arm bandwagon.
For an example check out their MIPS designs, where they have added a hardware X86 emulation layer so that you can fire up their custom version of Bochs and have 80% of the performance of the chip when running your legacy software! Imagine how sweet it would be to have mobile devices with the power saving of RISC that still allowed you to fire up your old Windows programs in return for some battery life ONLY when you needed them, wouldn't that be awesome?
As for TFA, sling hate ALL you want but lets call a spade a spade, okay? RMS passed the reasonable exit about 20 miles ago and has been in batshit militant town for several years now, I mean the guy said the fricking OLPC was "too locked down"...what? Then again I figured the cheese had slipped off his cracker when I saw this video...Stallman WTF? You are in public man, on stage no less? What were you smoking that made you think that THAT was appropriate behavior?
That is why I say, much as I disagree with the man, especially on the way he treats people, that if you are gonna look for direction from someone in the FOSS community? Look to Torvalds. He may have a smart mouth but I've never seen him act like he might need a psych eval and even when you disagree with him he makes DAMN good arguments to support his position. With his holding up signs, acting like he does on stage, frankly RMS reminds me more and more of Rev Al Sharpton than anything, someone who trolls the media for publicity and does outrageous shit just to stay in the spotlight. With all the media looking seriously at FOSS since the hit of Android is that REALLY the kind of spokesman you want?
"Mediadefender doesn't count because the users install it"...sound familiar? if you go by THAT metric guess what? Windows is bug free! Yay, there are no malware infected systems, hey security guys, your all out of a job LOL!
Hate to break the news to ya friend but guess how the vast majority of malware spreads? PEBKAC and this proves that Linux is JUST AS VULNERABLE as any other OS. And can you show me ONE zero day that was caught and fixed by a user and NOT a corporation? Just one? You can't because you are falling for the many eyes fallacy that states because something COULD happen it HAS happened. You and others think because the code COULD be audited it HAS been audited with ZERO proof to back it up. Well by that logic since there COULD be zombies there ARE zombies...but I don't think i need to start carrying a shotgun to kill the undead, do you?
Since you seem like a normal person and not a FOSSie, which are like a Moonie only with FOSS as their religion you might want to read this which quickly and concisely explains why its a lie better than I ever could. Oh and just FYI you want to see a FOSSie go absolutely apeshit? Give him a TMRepo link. Of course just as a flat earther hates science so too does a FOSSie hate TMRepo because it has reduced their tired old talking points into cliches. I could take every pro Linux rant here and reduce it to 5 TMs or less, know why? Because its the SAME TIRED SHIT, for 20 fricking years they have been using the same tired ass excuses, "works for me(TM)" "Linux has more drivers(TM)" "Stable ABI nonsense(TM)" its the same shit.
But many eyes is just a variant of the man month. It doesn't work, isn't ever gonna work, and frankly just because you have the source for a low level subsystem doesn't magically give you the knowledge and experience required to repair that system. it would be like saying if I gave you the blueprints you could fab some O-Rings for the shuttle, not happening.
If you actually believe its about driving drunk, where they already can do a Breathalyzer or blood sample? i have a bridge you might be interested in. Its about getting as many citizens in as they can into their DB, specifically the poor. they know the person driving that Lexus is gonna tell them to get bent while the mother of 3 in that 94 Dodge? Not so much.
I never thought I'd say this but I'm glad my beloved grandfather and great uncles are gone, they fought against fascism in WWII and this kind of gestapo shit would disgust the hell out of them. I could probably wrap his body in some copper wire and run my entire neighborhood from all the revolutions he's turning in his grave.
I urge everybody who hasn't seen it to watch Naomi Wolf's lecture which shows how shit like this and the TSA intimidation fits into the bigger picture, because its fucking SCARY folks. This is the same plays that have been run since the time of Lenin and El Duce, get the population used to being confronted, cowed down and intimidated, makes things easier when they inevitably clamp down. Never forget that in 1930 Germany was a democracy and the NSDAP was a fringe bunch of kooks. Countries don't go from free to non free slowly, the shift is VERY fast but there is warning signs that a shift is occurring. I'd say shit like this and the NSA watching everything you do would be good indicators.
For those that think this kind of shit doesn't have a chilling effect? remember that when the wall fell it was found that the STASI had less than 7% of the population on their lists yet the entire population lived like they were always under the boot because everyone thought that they were one of the 7%. It really doesn't take much to break the will of a populace, just intimidation and fear used in the right places.
I think you are missing the more important information here, malware like this and Linux servers being targeted for attack finally drive a stake through the lie that just because you have source that magically makes it more secure. As we see its just as many of us have been saying for years that once Linux reached a level of popularity it too would fall, no different than windows and OSX.
All having the source does is make it so that 1.- if you have the money, or 2.- if you have the coding talent, that you can continue to have that older piece of hardware or software supported...that's it, that's all it does, it keeps you from ending up with software or hardware being unsupported because everybody moved on because you can pay to keep it going or fix it yourself. I mean if anybody even thought about it for more than 30 seconds it would be plain as the nose on your face why "many eyes" is a myth, how many tens of millions of loc is in your average distro? How many programs and/or components are updated/upgraded on that distro per quarter? This is why every bug tracker has bugs going back several years, for the vast majority of any distro I seriously doubt anybody other than the guys that actually work on the project look at it with any regularity and you can be damned sure the majority of it isn't getting a security audit, it simply changes too fast.
But of course I'll be modded off the page for daring to point out what TFA clearly shows, but IRL Linux is just as complex as any other modern OS and where there is complexity there is flaws, simple as that.
I know in the winter especially I can see real benefits of taking a multivitamin because if i don't i end up with split lips along the corners whereas if i take a multivitamin that just doesn't happen.
Now I'll be the first to admit I'm the "meat and taters" kind of guy and salads are what you feed to what you are gonna actually put on the plate but for me multivitamins show a benefit and the cost is so little i really see no reason not to take them. The same goes for my fiance, she hates drinking milk and so takes a multivitamin with calcium and the doc says her bone density is good while many of the women in her family have brittle bones. again the cost is so little why change?
Uhhh...how EXACTLY is "Linux" any sort of solution when it comes to bandwidth? I'd like to have that one explained please, because you can have a BSD/OSX/Windows box that never phones home and a Linux box that is a chatty Cathy and since pretty much any modern OS can use scheduled tasks I really don't see any advantage for one OS over the other.
As far as the other tips using your own DNS and using a router for QOS? Honestly? No offense man, as it seems like your heart is in the right place, but that kind of stuff would probably fit better on an eHow article or in your slashdot journal, most of the guys here already know networking 101 stuff.
BTW you think that's bad Internet? I was on HughesNet for nearly 5 years friend, now THAT is some painful fricking Internet! I would have killed to have even low end DSL, hell shotgunned modems was less painful than the Hughes Blues!
It wouldn't be if done correctly and the savings of domestic production combined with less pollution would have more than made up for the cost.
What we need is a "people's car/truck" made here in the USA that is 1.- Less than 20K,preferably less than 16K, 2.- Runs on diesel so it'll be simple and cheap to switch to biofuel and most importantly 3.- gets 40 MPG for the small truck and 50 MPG for the car.
Once you had this in place you could have a REAL cash for clunkers where the government would offer subsidies and breaks to get folks out of those old gas pigs and into the new more efficient vehicle. I mean have you looked at the national MPG? Last I checked it was something like 14MPG, but why? Its because poor folks have to drive what they can afford and the gas hogs are cheap to buy on the used market. I see it every day in the apts, working poor drive what they can get.
The sad part is you wouldn't need exotic batteries or new tech to do this, this is doable right now and would do more to wean us off of ME oil, cut down on pollution and as we all know the poor spend their money so every dime they weren't handing out at the pump would go back into the economy, it would do nothing but good all around. But sadly because the money men can't figure out how to get huge checks from this like Monsanto and friends get from the pointless ethanol? It'll never get done.
Not if you use Steam, my games are updated in the background, it even updates my mods when a new version comes out, couldn't be simpler.
It doesn't change the fact that the first year of a console's life is shit. Sorry i didn't think to save the link but there was an article just the other day showing that the best games for a system? Usually come late year 2 and early year 3. Just because its X86 isn't gonna change that as its still using a funky shared memory model and like with every launch its more about getting the game on the shelf ASAP and not how good it is so even if you like consoles? the smart money will sit it out for a good 8 months. This gives devs time to learn the system and for the manufacturers to get the bugs out.
Do we REALLY have to point out that correlation does not equal causation? If it did we could wipe out global warming by getting more pirates.
And honestly? DRM as a concept in and of itself isn't bad, its the assholes that always go too damned far with it that make it suck! Take CD checks, those were simple, kept Billy Joe Bob from just popping in a CD and hitting copy while those that know a little more? it was trivial to bypass. And I have zero problems with Steam because unlike other forms of DRM you GET something in return. I get matchmaking, updating of my games, easy access to mods via Steam Workshop, chat, and again just like CD checks if I really wanted to? 10 minutes at gamecopyworld and i could bypass it.
So i don't think the idea itself is bad, just the implementation. I still say piracy is the market telling you that you are doing something wrong, your price is too high, the product is too much of a PITA to get, there is something not right because if you have everything set up right by the market? Just look at Payday:The Heist, they listened to customers, gave them what they asked for without going insane on the budget and the preorders alone had that game making a profit, everything from day one onward is just gravy.
And you can thank Ronnie Raygun for that. See the chart at 3.30? See what happened when the government poured BILLIONS into the stock market through 401Ks and 403Bs? Your bailouts and "too big to fails" can be traced to all this money forced into the market which rewarded short term bounces and rumor instead of actually building real value. This bubble WILL BURST and when it does? It'll make the great depression look like a flash crash. It is inevitable, it can't be stopped, too much of the economy is tied into the mess for any politician to do anything but kick the can and hope it don't collapse on his watch. The bailouts and financial meltdown was what happens when people stop investing in 401Ks and 403Bs because they are all now working "mcJobs" and Wall Street in its current state can't survive without constantly climbing infusions of money.
TLDR? By flooding the market with money they have created the mother of all bubbles, the bailouts are just the preshocks.
Its still the same principle dude, a list maintained by some guy/s somewhere that is supposed to magically keep up with the 10,000+ websites pwned every single day and as I pointed out to the Linux "Just give us the source and we'll maintain it" the math just doesn't work. You've got MAYBE 50 guys working on that DNS list, you have several BILLION websites, and you have legitimate websites getting pwned all the time. in just the past few months we've seen everyone from wordpress to Google serve malware and you HONESTLY think that a text file is gonna save you?
You might as tape a rabbit's foot to the router for all the good you are doing, magical thinking just doesn't work. if it did? You'd see routers sold by default with easy to switch blocklists. the reason they don't is because you end up blocking legit sites that have been cleaned while letting in sites that have been freshly pwned, the math just isn't on your side, like blacklists you are playing an arms race with the world and you WILL lose, the only question is how long it takes.
What kind of "security system" are they running that they just now updated to an OS about to be abandoned? I have a feeling this system is about as useful as a 30 day trial of Norton from 2002.
As for TFA? look folks, its a dozen year old OS...what do you expect? Its patches has patches and unlike Vista and those that came after XP allowed programs to just run amok in its registry and system files. Frankly there ain't no telling which piece is causing the bug and how long it would take to fix. You've got third party AVs and DRM that dig into the kernel, you've got the bandaids bolted on to try to deal with the fact XP was designed to run as admin...its just a mess folks, it really is. So just let the thing die already, I mean if MSFT was still offering patches to Win98, would anybody here REALLY argue it was a good thing to run it, really? Well then why would you champion WinXP, an OS whose system requirements are a 300Mhz P3 with 128Mb of RAM. Yes its THAT fricking old. Let the old gal die already, like Win2K it had a good run but that time is past.
For those running hardware so damned old it won't take anything newer I suggest you look at an AMD Bobcat Board which will frankly pay for itself in a few months thanks to lower cooling and the fact that at load the whole thing uses less than those power hog P4s did idling while running rings around all those old POS chips. Hell you can get one with a PCI slot and use a PCI to IDE/SATA adapter and keep your old drives and STILL be faster than those old Pentiums. You can even dual boot with XP if you need some time to switch over your programs but with only 4 months left better get on the ball. Use Win 7, use Linux, use something but get of XP already!
Besides it really wouldn't be worth the bother as you could either spam the site from multiple directions, thus giving the tracking a lot harder time, or you could just use IEDs or suicide bombers which of course wouldn't be affected by your fancy laser.
Every time I see new "super tech" like this all I can think of is Vietnam, the USA had tech light years ahead of the enemy...who then proceeded to make it so messy that the USA gave up and pulled out.
Block lists are like blacklists dude, they just don't work. Too many legit sites get pwned every single day for block lists to be useful for anything except maybe making file sharers feel safer (protip:they aren't) by blocking known trolls like mediadefender.
It may help keep grandpa off porn sites but for actual security? Like i told APK with the HOSTS files its just not able to keep up with the thousands of new threats coming daily. With my method the system is running in low rights modes with default deny, a MUCH safer way to access the net IMHO.
Look at the AMD quads and hexas, if you want the biggest bang for the buck ATM they are an incredible value. Go look on Tiger and you can get a barebones starting at just $189 and I've built a few of those and I can tell ya....its a monster. You pair that with a nice HD77xx or HD78xx? You got a system that games like mad, does transcoding, editing, hell anything you want. you really can't beat the price either.
As far as FB? make you a bullshit FB account, pretty much all you can do anymore if you want to actually use forums. Sites are getting so fucking LAZY they'd rather just let FB do the work and sadly I wouldn't be surprised if there are plenty asking for this, as I have met several customers that live on garbage like FB and tweeting twits for shits. So make up an account, not like there aren't a bazillion browsers out there, use one for your forum usage and fake FB only. If you need a suggestion? Comodo Icedragon or Dragon, Pale Moon, Waterfox. Then if a forum asks for FB? Fire up your forum browser and give them your FB that says you are Leeroy Hungfarlow and keep on trucking.
Uhhh..somebody that likes having actual control of their files instead of handing everything over to FB maybe?
As for TFA the answer is....they BOTH SUCK, you should buy a PC instead. You can get a damned nice PC cheaper than ever, controllers? hundreds to pick from. Games? There is easily a dozen different places you can buy them and thanks to actual competition (a free market instead of a monopoly? What a concept!) prices have never been better and you can find sales all the time.
Lets face it folks,even if you are a console fan the first year of a new console? Sucks. It takes them awhile to really get the hang of coding for a new system and just because these are X86 isn't gonna change that. So for the first 6-12 months the titles are gonna be rushed, buggy, and when folks look back on the top titles of that system it ain't the launch titles that get mentioned. So grab yourself a cheap AMD quad or hexacore along with one of those nice cheap HD77xx cards, slap on the OS of your choice and get your game on. Hell don't want to build one? Your friendly neighborhood fixit shop guys like me are more than happy to put your kits together. So go grab one of those quad kits or Hexacores, slap in a card and get to gaming!
You are most welcome and if you haven't heard of them before let old Hairy turn you on to a couple of other "shop guy tricks", specifically WSUS Offline and Ninite.
These two little life savers can take the time from starting a windows install to finished and ready to go from several hours to less than an hour and a half. You use WSUS Offline to download all the updates, service packs, as well as DirectX,IE, and.NET updates and then just slap that sucker onto a USB drive (or in the case of the shop a share drive on the LAN) and let it go, takes all the hassle out of taking a Windows system from fresh install to ready to go. Works on XP- Win 8.1 so it doesn't matter which one you are using either.
And Ninite? Ohhh you are gonna love Ninite, he is the PC fixit guy's best buddy. With ninite all your major third party software is taken care of, you've got browsers and codecs and media players and antivirus and IMs and pretty much all of the stuff your average person wants, with Ninite you just check the boxes and go. oh and NO TOOLBARS, no extras, none of the crap that so many programs drag along these days, just a clean unattended install of the latest version of whatever you picked. As an added bonus if you need to update and aren't sure if your software is out of date? just check the boxes and run it, Ninite will only install if you have the older version.
So there ya have it, with that and the little 3 step I posted earlier you can take a PC from bare metal to grandma proof in no time flat, enjoy!
As a PC shop guy I run into this problem quite a lot and there are actually a few options. You can have a program like Paragon Backup and Recovery Free set to make daily/weekly/whatever disc images and then easily roll it back when they bone it (because if they are like most older folks no matter how many times you tell them "don't click on that" they will) but the problem with those is that you usually have to be the one to roll it back, too complex to restore from disk image for an old person.
So while this way is no longer supported on Win 8 and above (but since Win 8 is a bomb who cares) this is the way that I do it and it gets the "Hairyfeet seal of approval". This method scores damned near a 10 out of 10 in both keeping infections out and in fixing if they manage to bypass your security and infect it anyway. And yes that is a problem, as i have seen older folks actually turn OFF the AV because an email told them to. As a bonus it costs $0.00 and doesn't take more than an hour tops. Ready?
1.- Install Comodo AV Free and be DAMNED SURE to pick YES when it comes to installing Comodo Dragon, the why will be apparent in a moment. You can go ahead and uncheck geek buddy, that is your job, they don't need some guy at a helpdesk in India to tell them what to do. 2.- Go into Comodo AV after install and turn it to "paranoid mode" this will run everything in a sandbox by default and treat everything as suspect. Now for your not completely clueless you can leave it in clean PC mode, but for those that click the "punch the clown and win an iPad" types paranoid is safest. 3.- the final step is to download and install Comodo Time Machine and LOCK the first image, call it "clean PC" or something else that will be easy to tell grandma over the phone. A bit of warning when it comes to CTS, it dos NOT work on win 8, it does NOT work on dual boots, you should also set it to clean out old snapshots after say 30 days. That said if you want a PC that can recover from pretty much every bug out there? here ya go.
And that is it, stick a fork, there is no step 4. Of course this assumes you have already done the common sense things like set windows update to automatic but other than that you should now have a 100% clean PC that will stay that way. The browser is sandboxed and locked down, runs by default in low rights mode, the AV is watching everything like a hawk and if they manage to talk the old folks into bypassing the AV? Time machine has you covered. I have several users that would get more nasties than a Bangkok whore on coupon night and thanks to this little 3 step program their PCs are pretty much idiot proof. Oh and as a bonus if they screw anything up, uninstall a printer driver or just trash a program? it takes less than 10 minutes over the phone to restore with CTS. You tell them reboot, hit home key when they see the big clock, pick the day before (assuming you set it for daily or snapshot on boot) and leave it alone...and that is it, the CTS will set the machine back and it'll be like they never made the boo boo.
Name one....I'm waiting. You can't, and I know you can't because I have had several make the same case and when i ask them to name? nada. Look if they demanded proof that what you put in wasn't bullshit? THEN you'd have a point, but I have a buddy who is a 55 year old redneck whose profile says he's a 33 year old Swedish Cook named inga so its not like you have to put a damned thing real about yourself, okay? Think of it like a captcha, if they are too fucking LAZY to take a whole 3 minutes to fill in some made up bullshit to get an ID? Then they are probably trolls and should be told to fuck off anyway.
As for what it effects...dude look at the VERY FIRST THING you had to say to me, you had to waste a paragraph explaining you're being stalked! The problem is AC accounts are VERY useful at derailing conversations, and more and more you are seeing corps and those with an agenda do just that. You post anything anti-gov, or anti-big corp here? And watch how quickly your signal gets fucking tsunami by a tidal wave of AC posts doing everything from posting insane conspiracy theories to outright racism, just to derail the discussion. And you know what? It works a good 9 times out of 10, as soon the discussion is controlled by AC posts instead of legit users.
You can say I'm paranoid but pay close attention to your stalker, does he always chime in when you are posting on a certain subject? Does he seem to get nastier when you are writing anything negative about that subject? Because I have noticed I can post about games, MP3 players, trucks, and nothing. I say anything negative about Google,MSFT, or Apple? hello Mr Stalker who will then follow me around for a couple of days, across multiple websites BTW, and do his/her damnedest to derail any conversation i have.
You may THINK you are too small a fish to be targeted like that but from what I have seen the past few years, talking to dozens of folks across multiple tech sites? Well its really not hard to spot a pattern here. Do you have more than 25 fans/friends on Slashdot? More than 50? These are the kinds of metrics that re used to decide who needs to be STFU. I'd strongly suggest you start paying more attention to your stalker, you may learn more than you think.
Do those even work anymore on anything other than XP? Because I fix PCs 6 days a week and I haven't seen one in years. The way most folks get infected nowadays is 1.- "Hey its your (insert friend's name) on (insert IM) and I found this great new thing that made my PC faster, just (click this link,push this button)". 2.- "You want to see teh lesbians? To watch this hot video just run 'IzNotViruzIzCodec.exe'". 3.- (insert friend name) just sent you an e-card for (insert holiday), just go here and receive your e-card!" 4.- "Oh noes, you have teh viruz OMG! Run 'IzNotViruzIzCleaner.exe' to get rid of it". That last one works well on old folks BTW
As for TFA yet again another change that fucks the user or takes a valuable tool away from the user while giving Google more power....are we even surprised anymore? the only nice thing about Google in the last year is only the hardcore Googleaid drinkers buy the "Do no evil" "don't be evil" horseshit, the rest of the world can see its as much bullshit as "think different" and "where do you want to go today", Google has become just as nasty as the other two and in some ways worse.
You got a stalker too? Welcome to the club, mine comes and goes, and has followed me all over the net. It is one of the reasons why i think ACs should be banned or at the very least make it trivial for users to block AC posts in the formatting. After all if they are too damned lazy to spend a whole 3 minutes making an account, can be as anon (by filling it in with BS) as the AC but would make them stand by their posts? then they are trolls and not worth wasting time with.
And dude, no ofense, but you should REALLY get a better source than batshit PJ at groklaw, okay? if PJ said it was snowing I'd want a second opinion. Look up the rants she posted during the whole Apple cloner bit to see how REALLY fucking nuts she is, she actually wrote that the fly by night company that was making clone Apple boxen was "A plot by MSFT to kill FOSS" and had a conspiracy theory that would make old twitter proud. So I really wouldn't take a bit of stock in a single thing posted at groklaw, she is just too batshit dude.
As far as google? no means FUCKING NO, and THAT is what pisses me off. if I say "I don't want that" and go out of my way to make it clear that I REALLY don't want that, quit fucking bothering me, okay? all it has gotten google in the case of me and my family is bullshit accounts made for our phones and separate browsers for video watching that likewise don't have our real Gmail accounts. Oh and in my case i've switched my emails over to yahoo and now use my Gmail as a spamdump.
I mean really, how hard is it to respect the fucking user's wishes? they can talk shit but MSFT actually respected my wishes, i said what i did and didn't want in Bing and ya know what? Haven't heard another word from MSFT about it. And I sure as fuck don't get a "would you let us use your real name so we can market your ass, please?" every damned time I check out a KB article, which is a hell of a lot more than i can say for fricking google!
The sad part is like Capone this may very well be the ONLY way to really do shit about the NSA. After all even the US gov doesn't have unlimited pocketbooks and if it has to constantly shell out billions in payouts, payouts which could have gone to senator fatass' district or paid for congressman piggie's pet project, which his family would have gotten crazy kickbacks on? Well you'd be surprised how quickly them congress critters are suddenly for "the privacy of the American citizen".
Actually I'd say in its current form its better because 1.- Their image search seems to be better at giving you what you are looking for which probably ties to 2.- the SEO scum don't seem to be able to "game" the results nearly as bad with Bing as they can with Google.
Now is it because Bing is better at blocking the SEOs, or is it because Google is a juicer target than Bing so you have like Windows versus Linux more targeting the former than the latter? Who knows, all I personally care about is the results and I get a hell of a lot less "Miley Cyrus iPod iPhone (insert what you searched for here) Android Tablet designer handbags" SEO spam and a lot more of what I'm actually looking for with Bing than I do Google. Hell the last time i tried to find a product review for an obscure product on Google all i got was SEO spam.
As for TFA? Unless its taken over by somebody else? Sorry, kinda don't trust Google at this point, not after they changed their TOS and started bugging the shit out of me to tie my real name to everything so badly i had to set up a separate Gmail just for my Android phone and a separate browser on my desktop for YouTube just to keep from getting the "Are you SURE you don't want your real name used?" bullshit constantly. Yes I know you have to please the stockholders Google but you used to be this cool mad scientist "throw shit and see what sticks" kinda company, now you are coming off as kinda creepy and stalkerish. Cut it out,okay? No means no.
Sorry but that is NO different than saying "Well blacks have their own schools and drinking fountains so its cool"...uhhh NO ITS NOT, because you look into it and you find that they get royally reamed when it comes to taxes, many benefits don't apply, just like separate but equal its anything BUT.
So I'm sorry but saying "they should just have a will" is like saying "there is nothing wrong with the back of the bus" because at the end of the day you have the law treating one group as lesser worth than the others.
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Uhhh...what is to keep a rapist from using one of those portable "mini cell tower" boxes to find out the IMEI of his target and then report it stolen? Seems like a good way to make sure your victim can't call for help, what with more and more folks switching to cell only.
Actually Loongson is a CPU makr you might want to watch, sadly we won't get the chips here (thanks to the broken patent and copyright messes) but they re cooking up some REALLY interesting chips, in fact I'd argue that for the first time in ages you have someone actually thinking out of the box and innovating instead of just making variations on the arm bandwagon.
For an example check out their MIPS designs, where they have added a hardware X86 emulation layer so that you can fire up their custom version of Bochs and have 80% of the performance of the chip when running your legacy software! Imagine how sweet it would be to have mobile devices with the power saving of RISC that still allowed you to fire up your old Windows programs in return for some battery life ONLY when you needed them, wouldn't that be awesome?
As for TFA, sling hate ALL you want but lets call a spade a spade, okay? RMS passed the reasonable exit about 20 miles ago and has been in batshit militant town for several years now, I mean the guy said the fricking OLPC was "too locked down"...what? Then again I figured the cheese had slipped off his cracker when I saw this video...Stallman WTF? You are in public man, on stage no less? What were you smoking that made you think that THAT was appropriate behavior?
That is why I say, much as I disagree with the man, especially on the way he treats people, that if you are gonna look for direction from someone in the FOSS community? Look to Torvalds. He may have a smart mouth but I've never seen him act like he might need a psych eval and even when you disagree with him he makes DAMN good arguments to support his position. With his holding up signs, acting like he does on stage, frankly RMS reminds me more and more of Rev Al Sharpton than anything, someone who trolls the media for publicity and does outrageous shit just to stay in the spotlight. With all the media looking seriously at FOSS since the hit of Android is that REALLY the kind of spokesman you want?
"Mediadefender doesn't count because the users install it"...sound familiar? if you go by THAT metric guess what? Windows is bug free! Yay, there are no malware infected systems, hey security guys, your all out of a job LOL!
Hate to break the news to ya friend but guess how the vast majority of malware spreads? PEBKAC and this proves that Linux is JUST AS VULNERABLE as any other OS. And can you show me ONE zero day that was caught and fixed by a user and NOT a corporation? Just one? You can't because you are falling for the many eyes fallacy that states because something COULD happen it HAS happened. You and others think because the code COULD be audited it HAS been audited with ZERO proof to back it up. Well by that logic since there COULD be zombies there ARE zombies...but I don't think i need to start carrying a shotgun to kill the undead, do you?
Since you seem like a normal person and not a FOSSie, which are like a Moonie only with FOSS as their religion you might want to read this which quickly and concisely explains why its a lie better than I ever could. Oh and just FYI you want to see a FOSSie go absolutely apeshit? Give him a TMRepo link. Of course just as a flat earther hates science so too does a FOSSie hate TMRepo because it has reduced their tired old talking points into cliches. I could take every pro Linux rant here and reduce it to 5 TMs or less, know why? Because its the SAME TIRED SHIT, for 20 fricking years they have been using the same tired ass excuses, "works for me(TM)" "Linux has more drivers(TM)" "Stable ABI nonsense(TM)" its the same shit.
But many eyes is just a variant of the man month. It doesn't work, isn't ever gonna work, and frankly just because you have the source for a low level subsystem doesn't magically give you the knowledge and experience required to repair that system. it would be like saying if I gave you the blueprints you could fab some O-Rings for the shuttle, not happening.
If you actually believe its about driving drunk, where they already can do a Breathalyzer or blood sample? i have a bridge you might be interested in. Its about getting as many citizens in as they can into their DB, specifically the poor. they know the person driving that Lexus is gonna tell them to get bent while the mother of 3 in that 94 Dodge? Not so much.
I never thought I'd say this but I'm glad my beloved grandfather and great uncles are gone, they fought against fascism in WWII and this kind of gestapo shit would disgust the hell out of them. I could probably wrap his body in some copper wire and run my entire neighborhood from all the revolutions he's turning in his grave.
I urge everybody who hasn't seen it to watch Naomi Wolf's lecture which shows how shit like this and the TSA intimidation fits into the bigger picture, because its fucking SCARY folks. This is the same plays that have been run since the time of Lenin and El Duce, get the population used to being confronted, cowed down and intimidated, makes things easier when they inevitably clamp down. Never forget that in 1930 Germany was a democracy and the NSDAP was a fringe bunch of kooks. Countries don't go from free to non free slowly, the shift is VERY fast but there is warning signs that a shift is occurring. I'd say shit like this and the NSA watching everything you do would be good indicators.
For those that think this kind of shit doesn't have a chilling effect? remember that when the wall fell it was found that the STASI had less than 7% of the population on their lists yet the entire population lived like they were always under the boot because everyone thought that they were one of the 7%. It really doesn't take much to break the will of a populace, just intimidation and fear used in the right places.
I think you are missing the more important information here, malware like this and Linux servers being targeted for attack finally drive a stake through the lie that just because you have source that magically makes it more secure. As we see its just as many of us have been saying for years that once Linux reached a level of popularity it too would fall, no different than windows and OSX.
All having the source does is make it so that 1.- if you have the money, or 2.- if you have the coding talent, that you can continue to have that older piece of hardware or software supported...that's it, that's all it does, it keeps you from ending up with software or hardware being unsupported because everybody moved on because you can pay to keep it going or fix it yourself. I mean if anybody even thought about it for more than 30 seconds it would be plain as the nose on your face why "many eyes" is a myth, how many tens of millions of loc is in your average distro? How many programs and/or components are updated/upgraded on that distro per quarter? This is why every bug tracker has bugs going back several years, for the vast majority of any distro I seriously doubt anybody other than the guys that actually work on the project look at it with any regularity and you can be damned sure the majority of it isn't getting a security audit, it simply changes too fast.
But of course I'll be modded off the page for daring to point out what TFA clearly shows, but IRL Linux is just as complex as any other modern OS and where there is complexity there is flaws, simple as that.
I know in the winter especially I can see real benefits of taking a multivitamin because if i don't i end up with split lips along the corners whereas if i take a multivitamin that just doesn't happen.
Now I'll be the first to admit I'm the "meat and taters" kind of guy and salads are what you feed to what you are gonna actually put on the plate but for me multivitamins show a benefit and the cost is so little i really see no reason not to take them. The same goes for my fiance, she hates drinking milk and so takes a multivitamin with calcium and the doc says her bone density is good while many of the women in her family have brittle bones. again the cost is so little why change?
Uhhh...how EXACTLY is "Linux" any sort of solution when it comes to bandwidth? I'd like to have that one explained please, because you can have a BSD/OSX/Windows box that never phones home and a Linux box that is a chatty Cathy and since pretty much any modern OS can use scheduled tasks I really don't see any advantage for one OS over the other.
As far as the other tips using your own DNS and using a router for QOS? Honestly? No offense man, as it seems like your heart is in the right place, but that kind of stuff would probably fit better on an eHow article or in your slashdot journal, most of the guys here already know networking 101 stuff.
BTW you think that's bad Internet? I was on HughesNet for nearly 5 years friend, now THAT is some painful fricking Internet! I would have killed to have even low end DSL, hell shotgunned modems was less painful than the Hughes Blues!
It wouldn't be if done correctly and the savings of domestic production combined with less pollution would have more than made up for the cost.
What we need is a "people's car/truck" made here in the USA that is 1.- Less than 20K,preferably less than 16K, 2.- Runs on diesel so it'll be simple and cheap to switch to biofuel and most importantly 3.- gets 40 MPG for the small truck and 50 MPG for the car.
Once you had this in place you could have a REAL cash for clunkers where the government would offer subsidies and breaks to get folks out of those old gas pigs and into the new more efficient vehicle. I mean have you looked at the national MPG? Last I checked it was something like 14MPG, but why? Its because poor folks have to drive what they can afford and the gas hogs are cheap to buy on the used market. I see it every day in the apts, working poor drive what they can get.
The sad part is you wouldn't need exotic batteries or new tech to do this, this is doable right now and would do more to wean us off of ME oil, cut down on pollution and as we all know the poor spend their money so every dime they weren't handing out at the pump would go back into the economy, it would do nothing but good all around. But sadly because the money men can't figure out how to get huge checks from this like Monsanto and friends get from the pointless ethanol? It'll never get done.
Not if you use Steam, my games are updated in the background, it even updates my mods when a new version comes out, couldn't be simpler.
It doesn't change the fact that the first year of a console's life is shit. Sorry i didn't think to save the link but there was an article just the other day showing that the best games for a system? Usually come late year 2 and early year 3. Just because its X86 isn't gonna change that as its still using a funky shared memory model and like with every launch its more about getting the game on the shelf ASAP and not how good it is so even if you like consoles? the smart money will sit it out for a good 8 months. This gives devs time to learn the system and for the manufacturers to get the bugs out.
Do we REALLY have to point out that correlation does not equal causation? If it did we could wipe out global warming by getting more pirates.
And honestly? DRM as a concept in and of itself isn't bad, its the assholes that always go too damned far with it that make it suck! Take CD checks, those were simple, kept Billy Joe Bob from just popping in a CD and hitting copy while those that know a little more? it was trivial to bypass. And I have zero problems with Steam because unlike other forms of DRM you GET something in return. I get matchmaking, updating of my games, easy access to mods via Steam Workshop, chat, and again just like CD checks if I really wanted to? 10 minutes at gamecopyworld and i could bypass it.
So i don't think the idea itself is bad, just the implementation. I still say piracy is the market telling you that you are doing something wrong, your price is too high, the product is too much of a PITA to get, there is something not right because if you have everything set up right by the market? Just look at Payday:The Heist, they listened to customers, gave them what they asked for without going insane on the budget and the preorders alone had that game making a profit, everything from day one onward is just gravy.
And you can thank Ronnie Raygun for that. See the chart at 3.30? See what happened when the government poured BILLIONS into the stock market through 401Ks and 403Bs? Your bailouts and "too big to fails" can be traced to all this money forced into the market which rewarded short term bounces and rumor instead of actually building real value. This bubble WILL BURST and when it does? It'll make the great depression look like a flash crash. It is inevitable, it can't be stopped, too much of the economy is tied into the mess for any politician to do anything but kick the can and hope it don't collapse on his watch. The bailouts and financial meltdown was what happens when people stop investing in 401Ks and 403Bs because they are all now working "mcJobs" and Wall Street in its current state can't survive without constantly climbing infusions of money.
TLDR? By flooding the market with money they have created the mother of all bubbles, the bailouts are just the preshocks.
Its still the same principle dude, a list maintained by some guy/s somewhere that is supposed to magically keep up with the 10,000+ websites pwned every single day and as I pointed out to the Linux "Just give us the source and we'll maintain it" the math just doesn't work. You've got MAYBE 50 guys working on that DNS list, you have several BILLION websites, and you have legitimate websites getting pwned all the time. in just the past few months we've seen everyone from wordpress to Google serve malware and you HONESTLY think that a text file is gonna save you?
You might as tape a rabbit's foot to the router for all the good you are doing, magical thinking just doesn't work. if it did? You'd see routers sold by default with easy to switch blocklists. the reason they don't is because you end up blocking legit sites that have been cleaned while letting in sites that have been freshly pwned, the math just isn't on your side, like blacklists you are playing an arms race with the world and you WILL lose, the only question is how long it takes.
What kind of "security system" are they running that they just now updated to an OS about to be abandoned? I have a feeling this system is about as useful as a 30 day trial of Norton from 2002.
As for TFA? look folks, its a dozen year old OS...what do you expect? Its patches has patches and unlike Vista and those that came after XP allowed programs to just run amok in its registry and system files. Frankly there ain't no telling which piece is causing the bug and how long it would take to fix. You've got third party AVs and DRM that dig into the kernel, you've got the bandaids bolted on to try to deal with the fact XP was designed to run as admin...its just a mess folks, it really is. So just let the thing die already, I mean if MSFT was still offering patches to Win98, would anybody here REALLY argue it was a good thing to run it, really? Well then why would you champion WinXP, an OS whose system requirements are a 300Mhz P3 with 128Mb of RAM. Yes its THAT fricking old. Let the old gal die already, like Win2K it had a good run but that time is past.
For those running hardware so damned old it won't take anything newer I suggest you look at an AMD Bobcat Board which will frankly pay for itself in a few months thanks to lower cooling and the fact that at load the whole thing uses less than those power hog P4s did idling while running rings around all those old POS chips. Hell you can get one with a PCI slot and use a PCI to IDE/SATA adapter and keep your old drives and STILL be faster than those old Pentiums. You can even dual boot with XP if you need some time to switch over your programs but with only 4 months left better get on the ball. Use Win 7, use Linux, use something but get of XP already!
Besides it really wouldn't be worth the bother as you could either spam the site from multiple directions, thus giving the tracking a lot harder time, or you could just use IEDs or suicide bombers which of course wouldn't be affected by your fancy laser.
Every time I see new "super tech" like this all I can think of is Vietnam, the USA had tech light years ahead of the enemy...who then proceeded to make it so messy that the USA gave up and pulled out.
Block lists are like blacklists dude, they just don't work. Too many legit sites get pwned every single day for block lists to be useful for anything except maybe making file sharers feel safer (protip:they aren't) by blocking known trolls like mediadefender.
It may help keep grandpa off porn sites but for actual security? Like i told APK with the HOSTS files its just not able to keep up with the thousands of new threats coming daily. With my method the system is running in low rights modes with default deny, a MUCH safer way to access the net IMHO.
Look at the AMD quads and hexas, if you want the biggest bang for the buck ATM they are an incredible value. Go look on Tiger and you can get a barebones starting at just $189 and I've built a few of those and I can tell ya....its a monster. You pair that with a nice HD77xx or HD78xx? You got a system that games like mad, does transcoding, editing, hell anything you want. you really can't beat the price either.
As far as FB? make you a bullshit FB account, pretty much all you can do anymore if you want to actually use forums. Sites are getting so fucking LAZY they'd rather just let FB do the work and sadly I wouldn't be surprised if there are plenty asking for this, as I have met several customers that live on garbage like FB and tweeting twits for shits. So make up an account, not like there aren't a bazillion browsers out there, use one for your forum usage and fake FB only. If you need a suggestion? Comodo Icedragon or Dragon, Pale Moon, Waterfox. Then if a forum asks for FB? Fire up your forum browser and give them your FB that says you are Leeroy Hungfarlow and keep on trucking.
Uhhh..somebody that likes having actual control of their files instead of handing everything over to FB maybe?
As for TFA the answer is....they BOTH SUCK, you should buy a PC instead. You can get a damned nice PC cheaper than ever, controllers? hundreds to pick from. Games? There is easily a dozen different places you can buy them and thanks to actual competition (a free market instead of a monopoly? What a concept!) prices have never been better and you can find sales all the time.
Lets face it folks,even if you are a console fan the first year of a new console? Sucks. It takes them awhile to really get the hang of coding for a new system and just because these are X86 isn't gonna change that. So for the first 6-12 months the titles are gonna be rushed, buggy, and when folks look back on the top titles of that system it ain't the launch titles that get mentioned. So grab yourself a cheap AMD quad or hexacore along with one of those nice cheap HD77xx cards, slap on the OS of your choice and get your game on. Hell don't want to build one? Your friendly neighborhood fixit shop guys like me are more than happy to put your kits together. So go grab one of those quad kits or Hexacores, slap in a card and get to gaming!
You are most welcome and if you haven't heard of them before let old Hairy turn you on to a couple of other "shop guy tricks", specifically WSUS Offline and Ninite.
These two little life savers can take the time from starting a windows install to finished and ready to go from several hours to less than an hour and a half. You use WSUS Offline to download all the updates, service packs, as well as DirectX,IE, and .NET updates and then just slap that sucker onto a USB drive (or in the case of the shop a share drive on the LAN) and let it go, takes all the hassle out of taking a Windows system from fresh install to ready to go. Works on XP- Win 8.1 so it doesn't matter which one you are using either.
And Ninite? Ohhh you are gonna love Ninite, he is the PC fixit guy's best buddy. With ninite all your major third party software is taken care of, you've got browsers and codecs and media players and antivirus and IMs and pretty much all of the stuff your average person wants, with Ninite you just check the boxes and go. oh and NO TOOLBARS, no extras, none of the crap that so many programs drag along these days, just a clean unattended install of the latest version of whatever you picked. As an added bonus if you need to update and aren't sure if your software is out of date? just check the boxes and run it, Ninite will only install if you have the older version.
So there ya have it, with that and the little 3 step I posted earlier you can take a PC from bare metal to grandma proof in no time flat, enjoy!
As a PC shop guy I run into this problem quite a lot and there are actually a few options. You can have a program like Paragon Backup and Recovery Free set to make daily/weekly/whatever disc images and then easily roll it back when they bone it (because if they are like most older folks no matter how many times you tell them "don't click on that" they will) but the problem with those is that you usually have to be the one to roll it back, too complex to restore from disk image for an old person.
So while this way is no longer supported on Win 8 and above (but since Win 8 is a bomb who cares) this is the way that I do it and it gets the "Hairyfeet seal of approval". This method scores damned near a 10 out of 10 in both keeping infections out and in fixing if they manage to bypass your security and infect it anyway. And yes that is a problem, as i have seen older folks actually turn OFF the AV because an email told them to. As a bonus it costs $0.00 and doesn't take more than an hour tops. Ready?
1.- Install Comodo AV Free and be DAMNED SURE to pick YES when it comes to installing Comodo Dragon, the why will be apparent in a moment. You can go ahead and uncheck geek buddy, that is your job, they don't need some guy at a helpdesk in India to tell them what to do. 2.- Go into Comodo AV after install and turn it to "paranoid mode" this will run everything in a sandbox by default and treat everything as suspect. Now for your not completely clueless you can leave it in clean PC mode, but for those that click the "punch the clown and win an iPad" types paranoid is safest. 3.- the final step is to download and install Comodo Time Machine and LOCK the first image, call it "clean PC" or something else that will be easy to tell grandma over the phone. A bit of warning when it comes to CTS, it dos NOT work on win 8, it does NOT work on dual boots, you should also set it to clean out old snapshots after say 30 days. That said if you want a PC that can recover from pretty much every bug out there? here ya go.
And that is it, stick a fork, there is no step 4. Of course this assumes you have already done the common sense things like set windows update to automatic but other than that you should now have a 100% clean PC that will stay that way. The browser is sandboxed and locked down, runs by default in low rights mode, the AV is watching everything like a hawk and if they manage to talk the old folks into bypassing the AV? Time machine has you covered. I have several users that would get more nasties than a Bangkok whore on coupon night and thanks to this little 3 step program their PCs are pretty much idiot proof. Oh and as a bonus if they screw anything up, uninstall a printer driver or just trash a program? it takes less than 10 minutes over the phone to restore with CTS. You tell them reboot, hit home key when they see the big clock, pick the day before (assuming you set it for daily or snapshot on boot) and leave it alone...and that is it, the CTS will set the machine back and it'll be like they never made the boo boo.
Name one....I'm waiting. You can't, and I know you can't because I have had several make the same case and when i ask them to name? nada. Look if they demanded proof that what you put in wasn't bullshit? THEN you'd have a point, but I have a buddy who is a 55 year old redneck whose profile says he's a 33 year old Swedish Cook named inga so its not like you have to put a damned thing real about yourself, okay? Think of it like a captcha, if they are too fucking LAZY to take a whole 3 minutes to fill in some made up bullshit to get an ID? Then they are probably trolls and should be told to fuck off anyway.
As for what it effects...dude look at the VERY FIRST THING you had to say to me, you had to waste a paragraph explaining you're being stalked! The problem is AC accounts are VERY useful at derailing conversations, and more and more you are seeing corps and those with an agenda do just that. You post anything anti-gov, or anti-big corp here? And watch how quickly your signal gets fucking tsunami by a tidal wave of AC posts doing everything from posting insane conspiracy theories to outright racism, just to derail the discussion. And you know what? It works a good 9 times out of 10, as soon the discussion is controlled by AC posts instead of legit users.
You can say I'm paranoid but pay close attention to your stalker, does he always chime in when you are posting on a certain subject? Does he seem to get nastier when you are writing anything negative about that subject? Because I have noticed I can post about games, MP3 players, trucks, and nothing. I say anything negative about Google,MSFT, or Apple? hello Mr Stalker who will then follow me around for a couple of days, across multiple websites BTW, and do his/her damnedest to derail any conversation i have.
You may THINK you are too small a fish to be targeted like that but from what I have seen the past few years, talking to dozens of folks across multiple tech sites? Well its really not hard to spot a pattern here. Do you have more than 25 fans/friends on Slashdot? More than 50? These are the kinds of metrics that re used to decide who needs to be STFU. I'd strongly suggest you start paying more attention to your stalker, you may learn more than you think.
Do those even work anymore on anything other than XP? Because I fix PCs 6 days a week and I haven't seen one in years. The way most folks get infected nowadays is 1.- "Hey its your (insert friend's name) on (insert IM) and I found this great new thing that made my PC faster, just (click this link,push this button)". 2.- "You want to see teh lesbians? To watch this hot video just run 'IzNotViruzIzCodec.exe'". 3.- (insert friend name) just sent you an e-card for (insert holiday), just go here and receive your e-card!" 4.- "Oh noes, you have teh viruz OMG! Run 'IzNotViruzIzCleaner.exe' to get rid of it". That last one works well on old folks BTW
As for TFA yet again another change that fucks the user or takes a valuable tool away from the user while giving Google more power....are we even surprised anymore? the only nice thing about Google in the last year is only the hardcore Googleaid drinkers buy the "Do no evil" "don't be evil" horseshit, the rest of the world can see its as much bullshit as "think different" and "where do you want to go today", Google has become just as nasty as the other two and in some ways worse.
You got a stalker too? Welcome to the club, mine comes and goes, and has followed me all over the net. It is one of the reasons why i think ACs should be banned or at the very least make it trivial for users to block AC posts in the formatting. After all if they are too damned lazy to spend a whole 3 minutes making an account, can be as anon (by filling it in with BS) as the AC but would make them stand by their posts? then they are trolls and not worth wasting time with.
And dude, no ofense, but you should REALLY get a better source than batshit PJ at groklaw, okay? if PJ said it was snowing I'd want a second opinion. Look up the rants she posted during the whole Apple cloner bit to see how REALLY fucking nuts she is, she actually wrote that the fly by night company that was making clone Apple boxen was "A plot by MSFT to kill FOSS" and had a conspiracy theory that would make old twitter proud. So I really wouldn't take a bit of stock in a single thing posted at groklaw, she is just too batshit dude.
As far as google? no means FUCKING NO, and THAT is what pisses me off. if I say "I don't want that" and go out of my way to make it clear that I REALLY don't want that, quit fucking bothering me, okay? all it has gotten google in the case of me and my family is bullshit accounts made for our phones and separate browsers for video watching that likewise don't have our real Gmail accounts. Oh and in my case i've switched my emails over to yahoo and now use my Gmail as a spamdump.
I mean really, how hard is it to respect the fucking user's wishes? they can talk shit but MSFT actually respected my wishes, i said what i did and didn't want in Bing and ya know what? Haven't heard another word from MSFT about it. And I sure as fuck don't get a "would you let us use your real name so we can market your ass, please?" every damned time I check out a KB article, which is a hell of a lot more than i can say for fricking google!
The sad part is like Capone this may very well be the ONLY way to really do shit about the NSA. After all even the US gov doesn't have unlimited pocketbooks and if it has to constantly shell out billions in payouts, payouts which could have gone to senator fatass' district or paid for congressman piggie's pet project, which his family would have gotten crazy kickbacks on? Well you'd be surprised how quickly them congress critters are suddenly for "the privacy of the American citizen".
Actually I'd say in its current form its better because 1.- Their image search seems to be better at giving you what you are looking for which probably ties to 2.- the SEO scum don't seem to be able to "game" the results nearly as bad with Bing as they can with Google.
Now is it because Bing is better at blocking the SEOs, or is it because Google is a juicer target than Bing so you have like Windows versus Linux more targeting the former than the latter? Who knows, all I personally care about is the results and I get a hell of a lot less "Miley Cyrus iPod iPhone (insert what you searched for here) Android Tablet designer handbags" SEO spam and a lot more of what I'm actually looking for with Bing than I do Google. Hell the last time i tried to find a product review for an obscure product on Google all i got was SEO spam.
As for TFA? Unless its taken over by somebody else? Sorry, kinda don't trust Google at this point, not after they changed their TOS and started bugging the shit out of me to tie my real name to everything so badly i had to set up a separate Gmail just for my Android phone and a separate browser on my desktop for YouTube just to keep from getting the "Are you SURE you don't want your real name used?" bullshit constantly. Yes I know you have to please the stockholders Google but you used to be this cool mad scientist "throw shit and see what sticks" kinda company, now you are coming off as kinda creepy and stalkerish. Cut it out,okay? No means no.
Sorry but that is NO different than saying "Well blacks have their own schools and drinking fountains so its cool"...uhhh NO ITS NOT, because you look into it and you find that they get royally reamed when it comes to taxes, many benefits don't apply, just like separate but equal its anything BUT.
So I'm sorry but saying "they should just have a will" is like saying "there is nothing wrong with the back of the bus" because at the end of the day you have the law treating one group as lesser worth than the others.