you can always switch banks (or threaten to switch.)
Or shock them by working around their petty issues, which is, after all, what Linux does best. My ISP told me flat out that they didn't support Linux. So I researched it, figured it out, wrote the ten-line shell script that would allow Linux to talk to the internet, and then emailed their tech support just to say: "Guess what - you DO support Linux!" I wonder how many Linux customers they've turned away because they didn't know how?
Linux users are first-hand experienced in making things work in a Windows-world. Ask in a forum and you might be surprised!
Books made more readily available! More information in the hands of the masses! Yes, they might even start thinking for themselves, next! It's a guaranteed way I have of spotting a tyrant - how does he feel about my access to learning?
I was already a patron of libraries. I've been regularly snarfing copies of online books, as well. And *any* service to get more print in front of my eyeballs with more convenience has my support. Yes, I produce content as well (pictures, not print) and Google caches my site. And I'm *happy* about that, because the cache is a handy fallback for when my host goes down (just as it is here when a page gets Slashdotted). And people never use caches exclusively - they're an alternative (since a cache is never as up-to-date as the page itself).
Incidentally, here's some mud in the eye of the Microturfs who're always claiming that I think Microsoft is evil just because I "hate success" or whatever the nonsense line is. I'm 100% down with Google, because they just focus on DOING A GOOD JOB, instead of deliberately doing a shitty job and then trying to stop anybody else from doing anything at all!
Try, really hard to imagine a world which does not revolve around conquest and battle. I know somebody can. After all, who defined the IT world in terms of murder and siege? Microsoft, that's who. But you can free yourself of this illusion. Simply put down your gun and stop shooting.
"Linux vs. Microsoft, Microsoft vs. Linux" I'm sick of it. Let's try viewing Linux and Microsoft as two operating systems, not opponents in a winner-take-all prize fight. It is Microsoft who is at fault, here. As a Linux user and contributor, I DO NOT WANT TO CONQUER MICROSOFT. I JUST WANT MICROSOFT TO QUIT TRYING TO KILL MY FAVORITE OS. We don't all have to use one operating system. We are, the last time I checked, individuals.
It's Microsoft that can't stand competition, because Bill Gates suffers from the delusion that he must be the ONLY software company. But the rest of us have no need to smoke his hash pipe. We are still free to use our own common sense. We do not need to let ourselves be swept up in the mod frenzy.
Too bad, my simple sentiments will get flamed and modded down. Panic does make the monkeys scatter so! But what I prefer...what I've *always* preferred...is to let my "enemy" (who is only so because he defines himself that way) bash his brains out against my brick wall. I'm cozy inside, doing what I want with my own computer. I could give a rat's what other people do on theirs.
Hey! I've got it! After we "win" "our" war, why don't we start a new one between races? The Caucasians will try to force everybody who isn't Caucasian to become Caucasian. Everybody else will try to force the Caucasians to not be Caucasians. It will make just as much sense as what we're doing now! It doesn't have to make *any* sense, apparently. All you have to do is scream "WA-A-AR!!!" and all the monkeys start hurling coconuts at each other without knowing or caring why.
No, nobody can possibly make that claim. OS/2 was the max, the ultra, the pinnacle of perfection that no other OS can ever match. People who didn't like it just weren't 31337 enough to understand it.
Why is the icon from the top of my Window-Maker dock at the top of Slashdot? I thought I was the only one who knew that desktop existed (it's my second favorite after Fluxbox!). What's Gorm? Why is a GNU app, or ANY Open Source app, touted like a World Wrestling cheesehead brought into the show in the second half? I don't care if your open-source app is the second coming of Buddha, though shalt not challenge thy fellow FOSS! What's this with WM's lineage? I thought it was descended from NextStep? I can't reach any of the links. Has OpenStep just thrown away it's only chance for popularity with this dishrag post?
You're cribbing from my post history. That still doesn't answer the question: Why do you have to DENY that Microsoft is inherently evil? Do people say that about it alot? Does this happen with other operating systems? Why does it happen so much with Microsoft? Could it just be coincidence?
OK, first off, they promise support for Firefox. Well, I'm running Firefox from Linux, and the site, as far as I clicked around, appears to be working for me. Is that because they aren't supporting it yet? (Haw haw, blew it already...OK, sobering up!)
Ahem: A whole remote desktop in a website has been done before: a KDE desktop, no less: http://www.cosmopod.com/ with 1 Gig of storage per customer. The mind boggles at the bandwidth...for the KDE, not the Gig...
Finally: Hell is not freezing over, so I'm not about to say Microsoft is redeemed...but even *I* will admit that this seems to be a positive step in the right direction. If I am to understand, that it's going to be like a free mini-windows online? And will work with any ol' system at all? And it won't try to kill me in 101 new, creative ways? And it won't become virus-central? And MS won't shut it back down in a month? If it's all I hope and more, then Microsoft just may yet stumble out into the light, though it'll have to soak an awful long time in Holy water before it washes away the stench of it's past.
I *have* said all along: Microsoft and the rest of the world will fare better if it can just *get* *along* with the rest of us. Let the big, bad ogre put down his spiked club and be *nice* to us for a change, and watch our frozen little penguin hearts melt!
Naw, hell no! That's why Microsoft has to be defended every ten minutes by one of you Whack-moles poking your head out of the hole to chatter Microsoft-isn't-really-evil-and-get-that-Bill-Gate s-as-Borg-icon-outta-here-already and then disappear one hair's breadth ahead of the hammers. The day I have to go around trying to bash it into people's heads that Linux, Unix, BSD, Macintosh, OS X, BeOS, Novell, and Sun Microsystems don't deserve their Evil Overlord reputations, then we'll be even.
Know what quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and goes steady with ducks? Ducks!
*Eyeing my 8-year-old daughter as she nonchalantly shuts down the Mandriva machine to reboot it with the Linux-Live-Game-Project CD so she can blast through a couple levels of Metal Blob Solid...*
Pro: Projects like http://www.theopencd.org/ the Open CD are showcases for GNU/Linux products and introduce new users to the world of open source.
Con: Porting massive amounts of Open Source software to Windows actually butters Gates' fat belly, because that just makes that many more applications that run on Windows.
Pro: Porting any program to any operating system other then it's original platform, especially when you weren't the original author, is a heroic feat. A true act of selfless idealism. A brain-numbing intellectual feat.
Con: Effort spent this way takes coders off of making Linux better. Like, say, (since I am the Gimp's only fan, appartently) making a mod of the Gimp that tastes and smells just like Photoshop so everybody else but me can quit hating it.
Pro: What better PR than to have our programs running on the proprietary system, the better to show off what we can do? Every time a Windows user disparages IE in favor of Firefox, that's a victory for Open Source, right?
Con: My stingy grinch side wants to say: "The Hell with Windows users. There's gajillions of software titles on the shelf for Windows. Let 'em buy software, like they like to do anyway!" Honestly, I would see nothing wrong with GNU/Linux development supporting itself by: (a) Being 100% free for Linux, and (b) charging for Windows' ports. "But the Linux users get it for free!" "That's right, and switch to Linux and you'll get it free, too!" What could be fairer than "Free you, free me; money you, money me."? Yeah, make a special closed-source Windows-only license. Just to hear the gasps of indignation: How DARE we!
On the whole, I'm in favor of Open Source ports to Windows, but that's only because of my prime belief: More free software makes it a better world for everyone.
Really? Name names. I tried to use AIM extensively for about six months (back in my Windows days, just to see what all the rage was about), and found nothing in ANY room in the system but bots and cybersex; cybersex and bots; bots and cybersex; cybersex and bots. God, I remember the damn bots started hitting on each other, even! Name a single AOL chat room that has neither "A/S/L?" or "Hot pictures of college girlz - see my webcam!" as one of the first lines that automatically hit the screen upon first login.
You can tell me Windows is catching up to Linux in security, and I'll say , "Emmm, maybe". You can tell me Sun's gonna Open-Source and Community-License Java, and I'll think that was some time coming. You can claim that BSD and BeOS are gonna combine forces and take over 98% of desktops next year, and I'll say "Sounds like a long shot..." But when you tell me, with a straight face and clear conscience, that anything has ever transpired in any AOL chat since the day the beast was created that is anything less than a pimple on the hairy mole of the warty zit of the infected, puss-dripping scab on the ass of anything-good-at-all, and my only thought is, "How the hell did this person even FIND Slashdot???"
chrisitianity protests against anything they associate with Satanism
If that's the whole motivation behind this, then I'll make a point of preserving every image I have with the original daemon in it...including my obligatory comp-convention pics posed with the BSD devil-girls (hotter than anything that came out of a damn church!). The new one looks, uh, kind of bland, but OK.
OK, why would you not use a hard-coded buffer for a chat program? Simply allocate 256 characters (that'd fill about ten lines in a chat; more than enough), then keep reading and discarding characters until you get EOF. Am I missing something? I've never written a chat program, I'm rusty as heck on C/C++ in general, been a while. But don't I remember that this is very easy to avoid? What concept am I missing?
Linux just doesn't stand up on the desktop for most people at all
OK, that's the 1000th time I've heard that one, and I promised myself back when the count was in the mid-900's that I'd start saying this...so, congratulations, you're the first one to hear it: With all due respect(becasue you do have a wit about you), you're full of shit. You need to update yourself from Ygdrassil or Debian 1.0 or whatever you're running on a server. Try Knoppix or Mandriva (no, I don't mean for your server); Linux on the desktop has met, and SURPASSED every other system. Go look at the screenshots of KDE http://xwinman.org/screenshots/kde-anakin.jpg and Gnome http://xwinman.org/screenshots/gnome.jpg and Window Maker http://xwinman.org/screenshots/wmaker-matt.jpg and Fluxbox http://xwinman.org/screenshots/fluxbox-dbl.jpg, to name four out of 50 http://xwinman.org/ : if there's anything Linux isn't doing in this day and age (2005) on the desktop, it cannot be done. And I daresay that if there's a Window's desktop that comes close to the beauty and function of some of the *mediocre* Linux desktops, I'd like to see the screenshot.
Last time I checked Bill had not deprived me or anyone else of anything, either physically or financially. Whenever I have bought something from Microsoft, I have handed over my money of my own free will and received something back.
Thank you for opening that point up for debate. I, in fact, postulate that somebody who's *never* *even* *used* a computer has been victimized by Bill Gates. How? This person buys food at the store. The store depends on a network to co-ordinate shipping and stocking, and business accounting software. This stores computers are hit with viruses and worms at least once a month. The viruses and worms are possible because of software that the company (a) won't fix, and (b) is illegal for anybody else to fix! The inconvenience shows up in the bottom line as computer maintenence.
But let's look at the big picture. Has it ever occured to you how much farther technology would have advanced if those of us who are non-Windows would not have had to expend *so* *much* energy fighting a monopoly off of our backs that is determined to crush us? Even though I don't use Windows, it makes a problem for me. I run shell cripts to convert MS's bungled text to a format that will display on my screen without breaking. I view email from MS accounts with extra suspicion. My internet service provider was bullied into saying "We don't support Linux", even though all it took was a 20-line configuration script to fool their servers into believing they were talking to a Windows computer, so I could use the internet. My local school has tons of computer problems, and I've offered to provide some Linux CDs free to both alleviate some of their expenditure (their budgets are getting cut again, quite a few schools have closed down), but unfortunately their printers and other hardware is, of course, wired to talk to Windows only.
Bah, this is just the chaff at the top of the barrel. Everything I cite here has been cited before, by more gifted writers than I. Wave your pom-poms for Billy if you like, but don't expect me not to point out that you look silly doing so.
Um, yes, many people are. People are coerced into believing that they will not be able to submit a resume without Microsoft Word, students are forced to learn Windows in school believing that they will be jobless forever without it, anybody wishing to view files in a proprietary format such as Windows Media Player is forced to use it, Windows comes pre-installed on 98% of the computers sold today...I could go on and on. Yes, some of us resist...and to hear the rest of you tell it, at great inconvenience to ourselves (not true) and we're fools to do so anyway (huh!). Nice try, but the name of the game, after all, is monopoly!
You can't gain any money by giving money to charity.
Let's face it, you were determined to refute my post before you ever read it. I said nowhere that you would *gain* money by giving it to charity. But, in exactly the way you specify, it decreases your tax burden. As stated in one of the sites I link to, Gates gets "billions" in tax breaks - one wonders what else he does to earn them...
I know for me, the internet is killing newspapers, and magazines, too, for that matter. The only thing I still do is read the papers I get for free (your local free-press Cityview-type papers), mainly because I can't take the internet with me to the john. But I really miss the Scientific American, Smithsonian, and US News & World Report I used to subscribe to. I simply didn't renew them when I moved, and it makes no sense to get them now, because I can see it all for free online. But I sometimes miss having those handsome rags lined up on the coffee table.
Come to that, the internet is trumping *every* other media source when it comes to raw news. I can't Google search for related terms on my cable box. I can't run a Truth-or-Fiction fact check on a radio. People will tell me something they saw in the paper, and I'll say, "Oh, yeah, that was on [insert one of 20 news-sites here] yesterday!" In the age of RSS-feeds, plus a shell script I wrote to scrape them all, it's getting to be the next best thing to being psychic. In fact, even my library card usage is down - but I've downloaded and hoarded a slew of E-books!
You DID know charitable contributions count towards tax breaks in the US, didn't you? Out of all Gates' billions stolen from you and me and every poor person on the planet, he donates a penny (to him) to get himself some extra tax-dodging ammo, and everybody fawns all over him like he was a Saint. PS, I installed a rootkit with this post, which writes the word "gullible" in your Windows system registry. Go look.
Knocking on Darwin's door, screaming, "Take me! TAKE MEEEE!" That's what I'm reminded of when I see the people for whom corporations can do no wrong. No matter WHAT dastardly scheme the corporate evildoers hatch up as they twirl their mustaches and cackle with their henchmen, you can always find some round-shouldered wimp going, "Well, they were in their perfect legal right when they sodomized me, napalmed the village, and fed all those orphans to the crocodile pit."
SONY is WRONG to do this! Not law - shove the law! - they are MORALLY WRONG. Anybody who does anything on my hard drive for any reason and hides it from me is morally wrong. And thus am I ever justified in wiping it, cracking it, disabling it, or reverse-engineering it. It happened on my computer: therefore, it is entirely between me and whatever Deity I care to name what happens with it. And yes, Sony owes money to everybody they've done this to.
My God, don't people have any sense of basic human rights, anymore? Do you all want to be kept in dog kennels and fed dirt? Do you want ANY of the money you earn to go towards your personal enjoyment, or do you just work for the corporations for the priveledge of giving the tiny pittiance back to them? It's about time we brought back that term "MORALLY". Morals were here before laws, and they will be here long after the tinpot dictators who declared themselves God to make their stupid "laws" have crumbled to ashes and dust. And rightly so!
"The robot's processing is divided among six (with room to grow) commodity PCs running RTLinux. One to handle balance and locomotion, another visual processing, the third diagnostics and watchdog, the fourth planning and mapping, the fifth dexterous manipulation, and the sixth, coordination, watchdog and safety. Most of the design (except the goal planning and mapping) is behavior-based.
The main boards are sealed in a shock-box in the chest cavity to keep the muck out and shock isolate the critical components. All critical software is run off solid-state drives for safety. I wouldn't want a hard-drive crash make the robot fall over."
Slashdot Mirror
Or shock them by working around their petty issues, which is, after all, what Linux does best. My ISP told me flat out that they didn't support Linux. So I researched it, figured it out, wrote the ten-line shell script that would allow Linux to talk to the internet, and then emailed their tech support just to say: "Guess what - you DO support Linux!" I wonder how many Linux customers they've turned away because they didn't know how?
Linux users are first-hand experienced in making things work in a Windows-world. Ask in a forum and you might be surprised!
I was already a patron of libraries. I've been regularly snarfing copies of online books, as well. And *any* service to get more print in front of my eyeballs with more convenience has my support. Yes, I produce content as well (pictures, not print) and Google caches my site. And I'm *happy* about that, because the cache is a handy fallback for when my host goes down (just as it is here when a page gets Slashdotted). And people never use caches exclusively - they're an alternative (since a cache is never as up-to-date as the page itself).
Incidentally, here's some mud in the eye of the Microturfs who're always claiming that I think Microsoft is evil just because I "hate success" or whatever the nonsense line is. I'm 100% down with Google, because they just focus on DOING A GOOD JOB, instead of deliberately doing a shitty job and then trying to stop anybody else from doing anything at all!
In RPG terms, their alignment would be "chaotic".
Yeah, that told you, you...mindshare-astroturfer, you!
"Linux vs. Microsoft, Microsoft vs. Linux" I'm sick of it. Let's try viewing Linux and Microsoft as two operating systems, not opponents in a winner-take-all prize fight. It is Microsoft who is at fault, here. As a Linux user and contributor, I DO NOT WANT TO CONQUER MICROSOFT. I JUST WANT MICROSOFT TO QUIT TRYING TO KILL MY FAVORITE OS. We don't all have to use one operating system. We are, the last time I checked, individuals.
It's Microsoft that can't stand competition, because Bill Gates suffers from the delusion that he must be the ONLY software company. But the rest of us have no need to smoke his hash pipe. We are still free to use our own common sense. We do not need to let ourselves be swept up in the mod frenzy.
Too bad, my simple sentiments will get flamed and modded down. Panic does make the monkeys scatter so! But what I prefer...what I've *always* preferred...is to let my "enemy" (who is only so because he defines himself that way) bash his brains out against my brick wall. I'm cozy inside, doing what I want with my own computer. I could give a rat's what other people do on theirs.
Hey! I've got it! After we "win" "our" war, why don't we start a new one between races? The Caucasians will try to force everybody who isn't Caucasian to become Caucasian. Everybody else will try to force the Caucasians to not be Caucasians. It will make just as much sense as what we're doing now! It doesn't have to make *any* sense, apparently. All you have to do is scream "WA-A-AR!!!" and all the monkeys start hurling coconuts at each other without knowing or caring why.
No, nobody can possibly make that claim. OS/2 was the max, the ultra, the pinnacle of perfection that no other OS can ever match. People who didn't like it just weren't 31337 enough to understand it.
Oh, wait. The shrooms wore off!
Why is the icon from the top of my Window-Maker dock at the top of Slashdot? I thought I was the only one who knew that desktop existed (it's my second favorite after Fluxbox!). What's Gorm? Why is a GNU app, or ANY Open Source app, touted like a World Wrestling cheesehead brought into the show in the second half? I don't care if your open-source app is the second coming of Buddha, though shalt not challenge thy fellow FOSS! What's this with WM's lineage? I thought it was descended from NextStep? I can't reach any of the links. Has OpenStep just thrown away it's only chance for popularity with this dishrag post?
You're cribbing from my post history. That still doesn't answer the question: Why do you have to DENY that Microsoft is inherently evil? Do people say that about it alot? Does this happen with other operating systems? Why does it happen so much with Microsoft? Could it just be coincidence?
Ahem: A whole remote desktop in a website has been done before: a KDE desktop, no less: http://www.cosmopod.com/ with 1 Gig of storage per customer. The mind boggles at the bandwidth...for the KDE, not the Gig...
Finally: Hell is not freezing over, so I'm not about to say Microsoft is redeemed...but even *I* will admit that this seems to be a positive step in the right direction. If I am to understand, that it's going to be like a free mini-windows online? And will work with any ol' system at all? And it won't try to kill me in 101 new, creative ways? And it won't become virus-central? And MS won't shut it back down in a month? If it's all I hope and more, then Microsoft just may yet stumble out into the light, though it'll have to soak an awful long time in Holy water before it washes away the stench of it's past.
I *have* said all along: Microsoft and the rest of the world will fare better if it can just *get* *along* with the rest of us. Let the big, bad ogre put down his spiked club and be *nice* to us for a change, and watch our frozen little penguin hearts melt!
That, together with the original thread makes this the funniest discussion ever.
Naw, hell no! That's why Microsoft has to be defended every ten minutes by one of you Whack-moles poking your head out of the hole to chatter Microsoft-isn't-really-evil-and-get-that-Bill-Gate s-as-Borg-icon-outta-here-already and then disappear one hair's breadth ahead of the hammers. The day I have to go around trying to bash it into people's heads that Linux, Unix, BSD, Macintosh, OS X, BeOS, Novell, and Sun Microsystems don't deserve their Evil Overlord reputations, then we'll be even.
Know what quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and goes steady with ducks? Ducks!
OK, blow me away. What is unusable?
Con: Porting massive amounts of Open Source software to Windows actually butters Gates' fat belly, because that just makes that many more applications that run on Windows.
Pro: Porting any program to any operating system other then it's original platform, especially when you weren't the original author, is a heroic feat. A true act of selfless idealism. A brain-numbing intellectual feat.
Con: Effort spent this way takes coders off of making Linux better. Like, say, (since I am the Gimp's only fan, appartently) making a mod of the Gimp that tastes and smells just like Photoshop so everybody else but me can quit hating it.
Pro: What better PR than to have our programs running on the proprietary system, the better to show off what we can do? Every time a Windows user disparages IE in favor of Firefox, that's a victory for Open Source, right?
Con: My stingy grinch side wants to say: "The Hell with Windows users. There's gajillions of software titles on the shelf for Windows. Let 'em buy software, like they like to do anyway!" Honestly, I would see nothing wrong with GNU/Linux development supporting itself by: (a) Being 100% free for Linux, and (b) charging for Windows' ports. "But the Linux users get it for free!" "That's right, and switch to Linux and you'll get it free, too!" What could be fairer than "Free you, free me; money you, money me."? Yeah, make a special closed-source Windows-only license. Just to hear the gasps of indignation: How DARE we!
On the whole, I'm in favor of Open Source ports to Windows, but that's only because of my prime belief: More free software makes it a better world for everyone.
Really? Name names. I tried to use AIM extensively for about six months (back in my Windows days, just to see what all the rage was about), and found nothing in ANY room in the system but bots and cybersex; cybersex and bots; bots and cybersex; cybersex and bots. God, I remember the damn bots started hitting on each other, even! Name a single AOL chat room that has neither "A/S/L?" or "Hot pictures of college girlz - see my webcam!" as one of the first lines that automatically hit the screen upon first login.
You can tell me Windows is catching up to Linux in security, and I'll say , "Emmm, maybe". You can tell me Sun's gonna Open-Source and Community-License Java, and I'll think that was some time coming. You can claim that BSD and BeOS are gonna combine forces and take over 98% of desktops next year, and I'll say "Sounds like a long shot..." But when you tell me, with a straight face and clear conscience, that anything has ever transpired in any AOL chat since the day the beast was created that is anything less than a pimple on the hairy mole of the warty zit of the infected, puss-dripping scab on the ass of anything-good-at-all, and my only thought is, "How the hell did this person even FIND Slashdot???"
If that's the whole motivation behind this, then I'll make a point of preserving every image I have with the original daemon in it...including my obligatory comp-convention pics posed with the BSD devil-girls (hotter than anything that came out of a damn church!). The new one looks, uh, kind of bland, but OK.
OK, why would you not use a hard-coded buffer for a chat program? Simply allocate 256 characters (that'd fill about ten lines in a chat; more than enough), then keep reading and discarding characters until you get EOF. Am I missing something? I've never written a chat program, I'm rusty as heck on C/C++ in general, been a while. But don't I remember that this is very easy to avoid? What concept am I missing?
OK, that's the 1000th time I've heard that one, and I promised myself back when the count was in the mid-900's that I'd start saying this...so, congratulations, you're the first one to hear it: With all due respect(becasue you do have a wit about you), you're full of shit. You need to update yourself from Ygdrassil or Debian 1.0 or whatever you're running on a server. Try Knoppix or Mandriva (no, I don't mean for your server); Linux on the desktop has met, and SURPASSED every other system. Go look at the screenshots of KDE http://xwinman.org/screenshots/kde-anakin.jpg and Gnome http://xwinman.org/screenshots/gnome.jpg and Window Maker http://xwinman.org/screenshots/wmaker-matt.jpg and Fluxbox http://xwinman.org/screenshots/fluxbox-dbl.jpg, to name four out of 50 http://xwinman.org/ : if there's anything Linux isn't doing in this day and age (2005) on the desktop, it cannot be done. And I daresay that if there's a Window's desktop that comes close to the beauty and function of some of the *mediocre* Linux desktops, I'd like to see the screenshot.
Thank you for opening that point up for debate. I, in fact, postulate that somebody who's *never* *even* *used* a computer has been victimized by Bill Gates. How? This person buys food at the store. The store depends on a network to co-ordinate shipping and stocking, and business accounting software. This stores computers are hit with viruses and worms at least once a month. The viruses and worms are possible because of software that the company (a) won't fix, and (b) is illegal for anybody else to fix! The inconvenience shows up in the bottom line as computer maintenence.
But let's look at the big picture. Has it ever occured to you how much farther technology would have advanced if those of us who are non-Windows would not have had to expend *so* *much* energy fighting a monopoly off of our backs that is determined to crush us? Even though I don't use Windows, it makes a problem for me. I run shell cripts to convert MS's bungled text to a format that will display on my screen without breaking. I view email from MS accounts with extra suspicion. My internet service provider was bullied into saying "We don't support Linux", even though all it took was a 20-line configuration script to fool their servers into believing they were talking to a Windows computer, so I could use the internet. My local school has tons of computer problems, and I've offered to provide some Linux CDs free to both alleviate some of their expenditure (their budgets are getting cut again, quite a few schools have closed down), but unfortunately their printers and other hardware is, of course, wired to talk to Windows only.
Bah, this is just the chaff at the top of the barrel. Everything I cite here has been cited before, by more gifted writers than I. Wave your pom-poms for Billy if you like, but don't expect me not to point out that you look silly doing so.
Um, yes, many people are. People are coerced into believing that they will not be able to submit a resume without Microsoft Word, students are forced to learn Windows in school believing that they will be jobless forever without it, anybody wishing to view files in a proprietary format such as Windows Media Player is forced to use it, Windows comes pre-installed on 98% of the computers sold today...I could go on and on. Yes, some of us resist...and to hear the rest of you tell it, at great inconvenience to ourselves (not true) and we're fools to do so anyway (huh!). Nice try, but the name of the game, after all, is monopoly!
Let's face it, you were determined to refute my post before you ever read it. I said nowhere that you would *gain* money by giving it to charity. But, in exactly the way you specify, it decreases your tax burden. As stated in one of the sites I link to, Gates gets "billions" in tax breaks - one wonders what else he does to earn them...
Come to that, the internet is trumping *every* other media source when it comes to raw news. I can't Google search for related terms on my cable box. I can't run a Truth-or-Fiction fact check on a radio. People will tell me something they saw in the paper, and I'll say, "Oh, yeah, that was on [insert one of 20 news-sites here] yesterday!" In the age of RSS-feeds, plus a shell script I wrote to scrape them all, it's getting to be the next best thing to being psychic. In fact, even my library card usage is down - but I've downloaded and hoarded a slew of E-books!
Bill Gates's campaign contributions: http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_don
His "Linux attack money": http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/38971/
Prices gouged on laptops when you buy them without Windows: http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/originalCo
Some other dirty deeds: http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit006.html
Corporate Malfeasance of Microsoft: http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/malfy.html#ms
You DID know charitable contributions count towards tax breaks in the US, didn't you? Out of all Gates' billions stolen from you and me and every poor person on the planet, he donates a penny (to him) to get himself some extra tax-dodging ammo, and everybody fawns all over him like he was a Saint. PS, I installed a rootkit with this post, which writes the word "gullible" in your Windows system registry. Go look.
SONY is WRONG to do this! Not law - shove the law! - they are MORALLY WRONG. Anybody who does anything on my hard drive for any reason and hides it from me is morally wrong. And thus am I ever justified in wiping it, cracking it, disabling it, or reverse-engineering it. It happened on my computer: therefore, it is entirely between me and whatever Deity I care to name what happens with it. And yes, Sony owes money to everybody they've done this to.
My God, don't people have any sense of basic human rights, anymore? Do you all want to be kept in dog kennels and fed dirt? Do you want ANY of the money you earn to go towards your personal enjoyment, or do you just work for the corporations for the priveledge of giving the tiny pittiance back to them? It's about time we brought back that term "MORALLY". Morals were here before laws, and they will be here long after the tinpot dictators who declared themselves God to make their stupid "laws" have crumbled to ashes and dust. And rightly so!
And yes, it runs Linux: http://www.r50rd.co.uk/research/internal/v2i/engi
Just look at it. It's *dying* to conquest!
That'll happen about the time stupid assholes quit recklessly dishing out mod points.