That's quite a hammer arsenal you've got going there. I'm not sure I'd admit to something like that if I were you. Do you have a hammer lab in your basement?
Seriously, though, I tried to do this with my middle school's layout and a TI-994a about twenty five years ago. I got bored (mine was going to be more like Zork or Adventure than Doom, but whatever). I even asked the principal for floor plans, but wasn't given any (not because she minded the idea, but because the weren't on the premises). The principal didn't think anything of it. And I was one of the quiet ones (you know, the ones you have to look out for).
There's a difference between "they pose a threat" and "they are threatening us." In the latter, anyone can threaten us -- whether they can do anything about it (or even plan to) is another issue. Heck, given the current climate of the world, we'd be bombing everyone if we based it on who spoke ill of the United States.
Ahmadinejad is a nut, and perhaps a dangerous one. But so is Kim Jong Il, I'd argue moreso. So is China. But we can't win those, so we've looked the other way. (Of course, given what we've seen in Iraq, I doubt we could win in Iran, either.) This is not the Iranian government posing an immediate and direct threat to the U.S. -- this is the current administration's dislike for radical Islam. I'm not too fond of the radical part myself, but we can't go around blowing up everyone who may one day pose a threat.
The American people get this (more than the White House originally gave them credit for), and therefore lies must be told to make the threat seem more imminent than it is. The first three articles of impeachment spell out this tactic fairly clearly, and the only reason the fourth doesn't do as well is because the Iran issue hasn't been around as long. Give it a year or two, and more lies will be told about them. Sadly, I think all it takes is one level of lies, and many Americans (due to media fatigue) seem to just buy it.
I don't doubt that Ahmadinejad is a bad guy. Nor did I doubt that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. But if we look the other way on North Korea, China, Sudan, and others while cutting a path through the Middle East, it looks more like either religious or oil-based profiling than it does like policing to me.
To my thinking (and that's all it is), no state government should be contracting with a company operated by the RNC (or the DNC, or the Libertarians, of the FSM fanatics, or any other political group) to host an election server. The potential for conflict of interest (perceived or real) is comically huge. I don't know if it's illegal, but I personally believe it to be at best unwise and at worst unethical. I think it really does call into question the validity of the election, something that harms the RNC more than it helps.
I'm not a Republican -- in fact, I'm eager to see this White House go down. But if this was my party (I'm a Democrat) doing this, I'd be just as pissed. Elections (particularly the 2004 election, given the mess of the 2000 election) have to be above reproach. And this, if it's true and not some kind of reverse smear, is just arrogant sloppiness.
And is it some kind of reverse smear? I personally doubt it. It lines up more with the past provable behavior of the RNC and the Bush adminstration than it does with the equally provable confused, disorganized Democrats. I'm ashamed of my party for several reasons, but I don't think there's enough organization to do something like this.
Could be one rogue "smearer," I suppose, but you'd think Netcraft would be more set up to notice someone gadding about with their data than even the above-average geek would be set up to bypass that.
I'll give you that, but I'd lean toward extreme ignorance. It struck me as someone just providing more data points (perhaps irrelevant, but likely not trolling).
My understanding is that it's simple Darwinian law -- for example, those who moved to colder regions and didn't have noses close to the warmth of their head and heavy epicanthic folds tended to get cold and die. So over hundreds of generations, minor physical differences became magnified as the people of a region lived or died based on the practical characteristics of those differences. And I'd imagine that taste began to play a part in it, as well -- certain cultures valued certain features (a chiseled jaw or big boobs or whatever [no, not on the same person]) and therefore those people were more likely to have the opportunity to breed.
But I'm just a web developer who's read a couple of books about this stuff, so don't take my word for it. That was my understanding, anyway.
Yep. Waiting for twenty minutes while the presenter screws around trying to get the laptop to reboot (nervously joking about it the whole time) and THEN sitting through that jerk reading his slides verbatim.
With the possible exception of Forbidden Planet, these are films that people roughly my age and younger (36) remember being released. While I know you can only vote on what you know, it's certainly a limited array. I immediately noticed the lack of A Trip to the Moon, the first (1902) sci-fi film ever made (and a quite entertaining one, at that). Metropolis isn't exactly pure sci-fi, but it has its own very prominent elements of sci-fi.
And while I know I'll get myself modded down here, I would argue that The Matrix is more about the special effects than the story -- I think anyone who ever got high with friends from their honors physics class has had discussions that go along the Matrix plot path. It was a pretty and cool-looking movie, but was certainly not innovative as far as the story went.
'Course, by that argument, the fact that Star Wars (IV) is just the hero myth revisited should get it taken off the list (though it clearly belongs there). So it could just be that I hate Keanu Reeves and that further colored my opinion.
Either way, it seems like some older classics were missed. Not surprising considering the likely target demographic of a sci-fi magazine, but still. It's like my saying that I'm the strongest man in my house -- true, and my wife and daughter and female cat would agree. But there's not a sufficient data set present to make that mean anything.
Actually, the comments on this blog post include one from an HP/Compaq employee who confirms that this scenario is indeed addressed in the warranty. So assuming the employee is correct (a rash assumption, though not as rash as assuming that every Linux aficionado on Slashdot and in the responses on this blog are correct about HP's warranty policies), HP is covered. It may be BS, it may be ethically wrong, but it's in the fine print that she agreed to when she powered the machine up the first time.
Oh, come on. I'll say it again. I'm not suggesting that people roll over for this kind of BS. I AM saying that it's a very difficult decision when your children's lives will be destroyed by your stand against the government (just or unjust).
It's all well and good to be all Ethan Allen dramatic about it, but I'm guessing you don't have kids. It's not a glorious decision to fight the corruption in the system -- it's a sobering, depressing decision to potentially condemn your family to a life without you. We should all be Steve Biko -- we won't all manage to do it. I simply meant to bring up the very real fact that it's a terribly frightening decision to make. Make it how you will -- I'd very likely fight such an order myself, as I wouldn't want to show my daughter that this kind of stuff is to be tolerated. But in doing so, I would be deciding to make her life a lot harder, and the thought of that sucks more than anything the government can do to me (except that car-battery-testicle thing -- I bet that sucks a lot).
If you have kids, you're not understanding my point -- it's that such decisions don't simply make themselves based on patriotism (the real kind, not the getting-assed-by-this-government kind). If you don't have kids, stop waving your Gadsden flag over me and my family. This stuff is hard enough to think rationally about without constant badgering from people who think they love this country more than everyone else.
We will, on the whole, survive this -- that is the beauty and strength of this country. Bush and his slavering fools have screwed up this country (and others) more than even my pessimistic estimations were prepared for. But the adjustment is already occurring -- Congress was changed by popular vote specifically in response to his tyrannical behavior. That is how it gets fixed, and it's happening. Getting yourself shipped off to Guantanamo is very noble in its own way, but you're DONE fighting if they take you there. Any chance to stay here and fight from within the system is much more effective, and a pleasant side effect is that your kids get to grow up with you.
I haven't had to make this decision personally, though I have in fact been involved in a situation where it had to be made (by my boss). I suspect he made the right decision (that's all I'll say, lest I get Slashdot subpoenaed for MY information). But he lives alone. We discussed it and decided that I and another person with a family who was involved should know nothing more about it. So I don't. I have no idea what he finally did about the request for information, and we're all happier for it. The DHS guy who came to the office was a scary MF, I'll tell you what. And if it had been me sitting there talking to him, thinking about my family, I would have been in a bind. I would have put him off to get more time to think about it all (as my boss did), but I would have been as scared for my kid as I would have been for myself and the potentially wrongfully accused at that moment.
THAT'S where I'm coming from. I'm not bandying about some pansy response to Big Brother -- I'm speaking with some experience in this (albeit secondary), and I was fortunate enough to have a buffer between me and the problem at hand. Many other people don't have that luxury, and my own limited experience leaves me with an enormous amount of pain and sympathy for those who had to put their own families on the line.
My experiences should have nothing to do with it, though. I could inject some dumb joke about the likelihood of an IT guy HAVING a family here (okay, I kind of just did), but it really is a livelihood-threatening decision that gets made by some person or other every day. But again, the point is that a responsible citizen is also a responsible parent, when the situation applies, and often that puts one at odds with oneself. Wave your flag over someone else, please. I watch C-SPAN almost every day -- I write my congresswoman and senators (all of whom happe
Seriously, though, I've heard of people doing this -- it's a viable solution if you a) are in a position to give them lots of data to wade around in, and b) you have the time and presence of mind to do it. If you are asked for one set of access logs for one customer for one week, for example, giving the feds 20 million disparate records to sift through will become quite obvious. But you're right -- if they want to play it sneaky, so be it. You have the option to be sneaky back. Just don't get caught -- that takes you from the role of possible rat to confirmed prisoner.
That is true in theory, but tell that to the agents at your door. I'm not saying one should follow unjust laws, nor am I suggesting one kow-tow to the officials. All I am saying is that the officials charged with the task of enforcing the law are going to do so until told otherwise by their superiors, which puts the average joe in a stinker of a position and leaves him making some difficult choices between doing what's right and doing what will preserve the safety of his family and himself.
It's actions like these by the FBI that exemplify the problems with the system. The government is going nowhere, and they have basically unlimited resources. They can just ride these things out. Look at the prisoners held indefinitely without trial or legal representation all over the place (Guantanamo is the most famous, but there are lots of places even in the states where it happens -- Cook County jail here in Chicago, for example). They're too scary for a lot of people, and therefore they get what they want. Simple oversight and adherence to the law by the agencies in question would fix a lot of this, but in the meantime, citizens, both innocent and otherwise, have some very real practical worries.
Indeed. There may be a moral responsibility to disobey the unconstitutional law, but there is at least technically a legal responsibility to obey it. While I applaud what this guy did (and it sounds like he's relatively unencumbered by family responsibilities, though you can't really know that from the article), I think about dragging my wife and daughter through this kind of thing and my skin crawls. And really, they are bigger than me -- could be that I'd fight the good fight, whittle away my and my family members' lives and resources, and then end up in jail anyway.
I'm not saying I wouldn't do it or that the guy was wrong to do it -- I think he's spot on in his reasoning and approach. But this administration and its worker bees throughout the rest of the federal government have shown an uncanny ability to destroy people -- a very scary thought. At least we have Congress starting to fight them now.
Yeah -- I've wondered if the string "Vista" automatically tags a story defectivebydesign. I find them to be at best a mild irritation, at worst a reminder that Slashdot is sometimes less of a geek news forum and more like Lord of the Flies.
Indeed, but keep in mind the scale we're talking about -- Google may have just noticed that it's making only stacks of money now, not big steaming piles of it. They'd be smart to cut costs NOW instead of waiting for crisis. I doubt they're about to fold.
Now on the other hand, I think pissing off your employees may well reduce motivation and productivity enough to offset much of the savings (particularly in a creativity-driven place like Google). I know they're the hourly folk, and I know it's federal law (though the law doesn't say anything about where they have to eat -- if they want to eat at their desk and are thinking about work while they do, I think that's still okay by law). And it could well be that we're talking more about grunts than creative types. But I can't imagine that it's worth the savings to have your entire support staff grumbling and calling your decisions "retarded."
It seems like such a strange morale killer that I wonder if they're cracking down now so they can respond to employee wishes and retract it all later to great fanfare. I'm not typically a conspiracy theorist, but this one seems so different from how Google is rumored to operate.
Actually, as a graphic designer, I'd switch to Linux tomorrow if I could get a REAL page layout app AND a good imaging app that did everything I need it to. But the Gimp falls short, and there's really nothing comparable to Quark or InDesign to switch to under Linux. I need something that can create reliable PDF-X1a files for 4-color print output, and there's nothing yet that reliably does that.
Or maybe there is (I'm sure someone will have a complicated solution for me). But my job is to create those files quickly, not to figure out how to create them under my own choice of platform. So I'm stuck with Windows or Mac, and mostly lean toward Windows. I run both, but find XP to be more stable than OS 10.4 (at least on the older hardware I have around here). So don't sell us short -- there are a lot of us, I think, who would switch if it worked. But building my own car when I just need to get somewhere efficiently doesn't make sense.
why not buy one off-lease from TigerDirect or something? $350 gets you a nice P4 with enough going on to do what you want, and it doesn't hurt as much if it gets stolen or broken. It'll come with XP -- keep it and load OSS, or wipe it for Linux. Just keep anything you don't want to lose on thumbdrives in your pocket. You can't find a Mac for that kind of money, but you can probably find a nice HP or even a ThinkPad. And while I'm not sure about this, I bet you can find cheap thumbdrives all over the world and ship your old ones home using the cheapest/slowest shipping option as they fill up with stuff you don't want to delete.
But really, most of the people around here are right -- while I haven't had the opportunity to travel around the world yet, when I do travel here in the states I always take a computer that I end up lugging around and hardly using at all. Leave it home, use Internet connections as you find them, and savor your surroundings. Only once have I NEEDED to take my laptop with me, and even then I was still stymied by a hotel's dead Internet connection and stuck trying to work on my Treo.
Fine, let's go down this road. I've bought Dell boxes -- quite a few of them in various capacities, for corporate and client and personal use. They all come with a stack of crap, and I generally remove it. But that doesn't change my point -- they had to weigh the advantage of including that (economic vs. customer satisfaction vs. support vs. whatever else) to the value of adding it. I don't know from WeatherBug, but I'm sure AOL was a selling point for a lot of consumers. Doesn't make it a good product, but it makes it something worth considering if your goal is to sell lots of computers.
When I set up a Dell box for myself, I take all the crap off. When I set one up for a client, we go over the pros and cons and I remove the chaff and leave what they want. I don't always agree with their choices, and I make my recommendations with what I believe to be solid reasoning. If they don't buy into my philosophy, fine -- I charge them to support crap like AOL. But really, you could as easily argue that OOo is bloatware as one could say about AOL, if it doesn't suit your needs. Tools is tools, and people use what they are comfortable with. It's imperfect to a high degree, but it's reality. I'd rather have a client who I can reliably reach at his or her AOL address than one who is struggling to figure out how to use a normal mail client. Moreover, I'm sure THEIR clients feel the same way.
If everyone on the planet worked in IT, we should truly be appalled at the personal computing world. As it stands, though, there are levels of comfort appropriate to a much wider range of users. Some of these options suck from an efficiency standpoint, but they get the job done and keep average Joes on the computer (thus making it more likely that they'll stick to using their computer and allow us geeks to improve their experience over time). I'm getting sick of the "AOL sucks" thing -- it does to us, but it very often scratches a simple itch for new users.
Slashdot Mirror
That's quite a hammer arsenal you've got going there. I'm not sure I'd admit to something like that if I were you. Do you have a hammer lab in your basement?
Seriously, though, I tried to do this with my middle school's layout and a TI-994a about twenty five years ago. I got bored (mine was going to be more like Zork or Adventure than Doom, but whatever). I even asked the principal for floor plans, but wasn't given any (not because she minded the idea, but because the weren't on the premises). The principal didn't think anything of it. And I was one of the quiet ones (you know, the ones you have to look out for).
There's a difference between "they pose a threat" and "they are threatening us." In the latter, anyone can threaten us -- whether they can do anything about it (or even plan to) is another issue. Heck, given the current climate of the world, we'd be bombing everyone if we based it on who spoke ill of the United States.
Ahmadinejad is a nut, and perhaps a dangerous one. But so is Kim Jong Il, I'd argue moreso. So is China. But we can't win those, so we've looked the other way. (Of course, given what we've seen in Iraq, I doubt we could win in Iran, either.) This is not the Iranian government posing an immediate and direct threat to the U.S. -- this is the current administration's dislike for radical Islam. I'm not too fond of the radical part myself, but we can't go around blowing up everyone who may one day pose a threat.
The American people get this (more than the White House originally gave them credit for), and therefore lies must be told to make the threat seem more imminent than it is. The first three articles of impeachment spell out this tactic fairly clearly, and the only reason the fourth doesn't do as well is because the Iran issue hasn't been around as long. Give it a year or two, and more lies will be told about them. Sadly, I think all it takes is one level of lies, and many Americans (due to media fatigue) seem to just buy it.
I don't doubt that Ahmadinejad is a bad guy. Nor did I doubt that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. But if we look the other way on North Korea, China, Sudan, and others while cutting a path through the Middle East, it looks more like either religious or oil-based profiling than it does like policing to me.
Yeah, I caught that too. I thought it was appropriate, as it was a fake song advertising fake money.
To my thinking (and that's all it is), no state government should be contracting with a company operated by the RNC (or the DNC, or the Libertarians, of the FSM fanatics, or any other political group) to host an election server. The potential for conflict of interest (perceived or real) is comically huge. I don't know if it's illegal, but I personally believe it to be at best unwise and at worst unethical. I think it really does call into question the validity of the election, something that harms the RNC more than it helps.
I'm not a Republican -- in fact, I'm eager to see this White House go down. But if this was my party (I'm a Democrat) doing this, I'd be just as pissed. Elections (particularly the 2004 election, given the mess of the 2000 election) have to be above reproach. And this, if it's true and not some kind of reverse smear, is just arrogant sloppiness.
And is it some kind of reverse smear? I personally doubt it. It lines up more with the past provable behavior of the RNC and the Bush adminstration than it does with the equally provable confused, disorganized Democrats. I'm ashamed of my party for several reasons, but I don't think there's enough organization to do something like this.
Could be one rogue "smearer," I suppose, but you'd think Netcraft would be more set up to notice someone gadding about with their data than even the above-average geek would be set up to bypass that.
I'll give you that, but I'd lean toward extreme ignorance. It struck me as someone just providing more data points (perhaps irrelevant, but likely not trolling).
Troll? Why is this modded Troll? I mean, it speaks ill of an Apple product, but it seems to have some factual merit. You can disagree, but Troll?
Good God, think of the paper jams. They're bad enough now, but imagine having to sit there picking pieces of a blender out of the printer ...
My understanding is that it's simple Darwinian law -- for example, those who moved to colder regions and didn't have noses close to the warmth of their head and heavy epicanthic folds tended to get cold and die. So over hundreds of generations, minor physical differences became magnified as the people of a region lived or died based on the practical characteristics of those differences. And I'd imagine that taste began to play a part in it, as well -- certain cultures valued certain features (a chiseled jaw or big boobs or whatever [no, not on the same person]) and therefore those people were more likely to have the opportunity to breed.
But I'm just a web developer who's read a couple of books about this stuff, so don't take my word for it. That was my understanding, anyway.
Yep. Waiting for twenty minutes while the presenter screws around trying to get the laptop to reboot (nervously joking about it the whole time) and THEN sitting through that jerk reading his slides verbatim.
Good point -- I never looked at it that way. Kind of like Falling Down for sci-fi geeks.
With the possible exception of Forbidden Planet, these are films that people roughly my age and younger (36) remember being released. While I know you can only vote on what you know, it's certainly a limited array. I immediately noticed the lack of A Trip to the Moon, the first (1902) sci-fi film ever made (and a quite entertaining one, at that). Metropolis isn't exactly pure sci-fi, but it has its own very prominent elements of sci-fi.
And while I know I'll get myself modded down here, I would argue that The Matrix is more about the special effects than the story -- I think anyone who ever got high with friends from their honors physics class has had discussions that go along the Matrix plot path. It was a pretty and cool-looking movie, but was certainly not innovative as far as the story went.
'Course, by that argument, the fact that Star Wars (IV) is just the hero myth revisited should get it taken off the list (though it clearly belongs there). So it could just be that I hate Keanu Reeves and that further colored my opinion.
Either way, it seems like some older classics were missed. Not surprising considering the likely target demographic of a sci-fi magazine, but still. It's like my saying that I'm the strongest man in my house -- true, and my wife and daughter and female cat would agree. But there's not a sufficient data set present to make that mean anything.
Actually, the comments on this blog post include one from an HP/Compaq employee who confirms that this scenario is indeed addressed in the warranty. So assuming the employee is correct (a rash assumption, though not as rash as assuming that every Linux aficionado on Slashdot and in the responses on this blog are correct about HP's warranty policies), HP is covered. It may be BS, it may be ethically wrong, but it's in the fine print that she agreed to when she powered the machine up the first time.
Oh, come on. I'll say it again. I'm not suggesting that people roll over for this kind of BS. I AM saying that it's a very difficult decision when your children's lives will be destroyed by your stand against the government (just or unjust).
It's all well and good to be all Ethan Allen dramatic about it, but I'm guessing you don't have kids. It's not a glorious decision to fight the corruption in the system -- it's a sobering, depressing decision to potentially condemn your family to a life without you. We should all be Steve Biko -- we won't all manage to do it. I simply meant to bring up the very real fact that it's a terribly frightening decision to make. Make it how you will -- I'd very likely fight such an order myself, as I wouldn't want to show my daughter that this kind of stuff is to be tolerated. But in doing so, I would be deciding to make her life a lot harder, and the thought of that sucks more than anything the government can do to me (except that car-battery-testicle thing -- I bet that sucks a lot).
If you have kids, you're not understanding my point -- it's that such decisions don't simply make themselves based on patriotism (the real kind, not the getting-assed-by-this-government kind). If you don't have kids, stop waving your Gadsden flag over me and my family. This stuff is hard enough to think rationally about without constant badgering from people who think they love this country more than everyone else.
We will, on the whole, survive this -- that is the beauty and strength of this country. Bush and his slavering fools have screwed up this country (and others) more than even my pessimistic estimations were prepared for. But the adjustment is already occurring -- Congress was changed by popular vote specifically in response to his tyrannical behavior. That is how it gets fixed, and it's happening. Getting yourself shipped off to Guantanamo is very noble in its own way, but you're DONE fighting if they take you there. Any chance to stay here and fight from within the system is much more effective, and a pleasant side effect is that your kids get to grow up with you.
I haven't had to make this decision personally, though I have in fact been involved in a situation where it had to be made (by my boss). I suspect he made the right decision (that's all I'll say, lest I get Slashdot subpoenaed for MY information). But he lives alone. We discussed it and decided that I and another person with a family who was involved should know nothing more about it. So I don't. I have no idea what he finally did about the request for information, and we're all happier for it. The DHS guy who came to the office was a scary MF, I'll tell you what. And if it had been me sitting there talking to him, thinking about my family, I would have been in a bind. I would have put him off to get more time to think about it all (as my boss did), but I would have been as scared for my kid as I would have been for myself and the potentially wrongfully accused at that moment.
THAT'S where I'm coming from. I'm not bandying about some pansy response to Big Brother -- I'm speaking with some experience in this (albeit secondary), and I was fortunate enough to have a buffer between me and the problem at hand. Many other people don't have that luxury, and my own limited experience leaves me with an enormous amount of pain and sympathy for those who had to put their own families on the line.
My experiences should have nothing to do with it, though. I could inject some dumb joke about the likelihood of an IT guy HAVING a family here (okay, I kind of just did), but it really is a livelihood-threatening decision that gets made by some person or other every day. But again, the point is that a responsible citizen is also a responsible parent, when the situation applies, and often that puts one at odds with oneself. Wave your flag over someone else, please. I watch C-SPAN almost every day -- I write my congresswoman and senators (all of whom happe
Malinger? I don't even know her!
Seriously, though, I've heard of people doing this -- it's a viable solution if you a) are in a position to give them lots of data to wade around in, and b) you have the time and presence of mind to do it. If you are asked for one set of access logs for one customer for one week, for example, giving the feds 20 million disparate records to sift through will become quite obvious. But you're right -- if they want to play it sneaky, so be it. You have the option to be sneaky back. Just don't get caught -- that takes you from the role of possible rat to confirmed prisoner.
That is true in theory, but tell that to the agents at your door. I'm not saying one should follow unjust laws, nor am I suggesting one kow-tow to the officials. All I am saying is that the officials charged with the task of enforcing the law are going to do so until told otherwise by their superiors, which puts the average joe in a stinker of a position and leaves him making some difficult choices between doing what's right and doing what will preserve the safety of his family and himself.
It's actions like these by the FBI that exemplify the problems with the system. The government is going nowhere, and they have basically unlimited resources. They can just ride these things out. Look at the prisoners held indefinitely without trial or legal representation all over the place (Guantanamo is the most famous, but there are lots of places even in the states where it happens -- Cook County jail here in Chicago, for example). They're too scary for a lot of people, and therefore they get what they want. Simple oversight and adherence to the law by the agencies in question would fix a lot of this, but in the meantime, citizens, both innocent and otherwise, have some very real practical worries.
Indeed. There may be a moral responsibility to disobey the unconstitutional law, but there is at least technically a legal responsibility to obey it. While I applaud what this guy did (and it sounds like he's relatively unencumbered by family responsibilities, though you can't really know that from the article), I think about dragging my wife and daughter through this kind of thing and my skin crawls. And really, they are bigger than me -- could be that I'd fight the good fight, whittle away my and my family members' lives and resources, and then end up in jail anyway.
I'm not saying I wouldn't do it or that the guy was wrong to do it -- I think he's spot on in his reasoning and approach. But this administration and its worker bees throughout the rest of the federal government have shown an uncanny ability to destroy people -- a very scary thought. At least we have Congress starting to fight them now.
Yeah -- I've wondered if the string "Vista" automatically tags a story defectivebydesign. I find them to be at best a mild irritation, at worst a reminder that Slashdot is sometimes less of a geek news forum and more like Lord of the Flies.
Indeed, but keep in mind the scale we're talking about -- Google may have just noticed that it's making only stacks of money now, not big steaming piles of it. They'd be smart to cut costs NOW instead of waiting for crisis. I doubt they're about to fold.
Now on the other hand, I think pissing off your employees may well reduce motivation and productivity enough to offset much of the savings (particularly in a creativity-driven place like Google). I know they're the hourly folk, and I know it's federal law (though the law doesn't say anything about where they have to eat -- if they want to eat at their desk and are thinking about work while they do, I think that's still okay by law). And it could well be that we're talking more about grunts than creative types. But I can't imagine that it's worth the savings to have your entire support staff grumbling and calling your decisions "retarded."
It seems like such a strange morale killer that I wonder if they're cracking down now so they can respond to employee wishes and retract it all later to great fanfare. I'm not typically a conspiracy theorist, but this one seems so different from how Google is rumored to operate.
Actually, as a graphic designer, I'd switch to Linux tomorrow if I could get a REAL page layout app AND a good imaging app that did everything I need it to. But the Gimp falls short, and there's really nothing comparable to Quark or InDesign to switch to under Linux. I need something that can create reliable PDF-X1a files for 4-color print output, and there's nothing yet that reliably does that.
Or maybe there is (I'm sure someone will have a complicated solution for me). But my job is to create those files quickly, not to figure out how to create them under my own choice of platform. So I'm stuck with Windows or Mac, and mostly lean toward Windows. I run both, but find XP to be more stable than OS 10.4 (at least on the older hardware I have around here). So don't sell us short -- there are a lot of us, I think, who would switch if it worked. But building my own car when I just need to get somewhere efficiently doesn't make sense.
Yeah, it was modded redundant for a while, but that's pretty darn funny.
I fer one welcome me new pirate-sniffing houndy overlords!
This is Slashdot -- there are no ex-girlfriends (or certainly current girlfriends) to worry about.
... the next Geico auto insurance ad.
Mars Rover II -- so easy, even a caveman can do it.
why not buy one off-lease from TigerDirect or something? $350 gets you a nice P4 with enough going on to do what you want, and it doesn't hurt as much if it gets stolen or broken. It'll come with XP -- keep it and load OSS, or wipe it for Linux. Just keep anything you don't want to lose on thumbdrives in your pocket. You can't find a Mac for that kind of money, but you can probably find a nice HP or even a ThinkPad. And while I'm not sure about this, I bet you can find cheap thumbdrives all over the world and ship your old ones home using the cheapest/slowest shipping option as they fill up with stuff you don't want to delete.
But really, most of the people around here are right -- while I haven't had the opportunity to travel around the world yet, when I do travel here in the states I always take a computer that I end up lugging around and hardly using at all. Leave it home, use Internet connections as you find them, and savor your surroundings. Only once have I NEEDED to take my laptop with me, and even then I was still stymied by a hotel's dead Internet connection and stuck trying to work on my Treo.
Fine, let's go down this road. I've bought Dell boxes -- quite a few of them in various capacities, for corporate and client and personal use. They all come with a stack of crap, and I generally remove it. But that doesn't change my point -- they had to weigh the advantage of including that (economic vs. customer satisfaction vs. support vs. whatever else) to the value of adding it. I don't know from WeatherBug, but I'm sure AOL was a selling point for a lot of consumers. Doesn't make it a good product, but it makes it something worth considering if your goal is to sell lots of computers.
When I set up a Dell box for myself, I take all the crap off. When I set one up for a client, we go over the pros and cons and I remove the chaff and leave what they want. I don't always agree with their choices, and I make my recommendations with what I believe to be solid reasoning. If they don't buy into my philosophy, fine -- I charge them to support crap like AOL. But really, you could as easily argue that OOo is bloatware as one could say about AOL, if it doesn't suit your needs. Tools is tools, and people use what they are comfortable with. It's imperfect to a high degree, but it's reality. I'd rather have a client who I can reliably reach at his or her AOL address than one who is struggling to figure out how to use a normal mail client. Moreover, I'm sure THEIR clients feel the same way.
If everyone on the planet worked in IT, we should truly be appalled at the personal computing world. As it stands, though, there are levels of comfort appropriate to a much wider range of users. Some of these options suck from an efficiency standpoint, but they get the job done and keep average Joes on the computer (thus making it more likely that they'll stick to using their computer and allow us geeks to improve their experience over time). I'm getting sick of the "AOL sucks" thing -- it does to us, but it very often scratches a simple itch for new users.