Ironically...your comment explains in a nutshell how we got here
"Christ on a stick" pretty much encompases all of the ideology that has lead up to the current set events.
Fighting over who put Christ on a stick, or if Jesus was even the Christ (what seems to be little known yet terribly relevant is that Jesus Christ isn't the man's name...Jesus THE Christ)
Now just couple these few large groups arguging (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) over the whole thing with the fact that the vast majority of their followers are barely aware of the tenets of their OWN religion let alone someone elses...and you have the recipe for thousands of years of murder in God's name.
Jesus (the Christ or not) had a GREAT number of words on kindness and how we should behave...something about if someone strikes your face, you should turn the other cheek so that they may strike the other side as well.
Judaism, forgive me I'm not terribly sure WHICH of the main books it came from, but it says those who live with brotherhood towards their fellow man are blessed in the eyes of God.
Islam when one Mohammed found a dead woman and child on the battle field he asked his general why they were killed. When his general responded they were infedels Mohammed chastised him for killing the innocent, and that only those who are fighting should be killed.
So...forgivness, acceptance, and brotherly love are key tenets...not murder the infidels, blame the jews, or purge the muslims.
This is all just the logical extension of holy wars that have been waging for hundreds of years. We just now have more technology and better weapons.
I don't want to get raped in the arse and get AIDS or some other horrific disease...so I should be compromising when the rapist agrees to wear a condom?
The RIAA/MPAA and crew have pretty much shown themselves to be the lowest form of scum. I don't care that the 4yr old girl's thing got thrown out, or that granny wasn't forced to pay...the fact is...they did it anyways and in many cases it took either a judge tossing out their stupid crap, or the threat of a mob reaction to make them even back off. No real change in behavior, no stopping the plowing forward with nonsense....just a quick jump back from that specific incident where they got slapped. So...explain to me why I am supposed to compromise with them...on anything. I don't want money...I will let them use my bandwidth to make money while they overcharge me for movies...IF at least one of their executives is publiclly executed each year. Sounds fair to me, they should compromise:)
Also...I will point out YES I KNOW the analogy is horribly flawed and otherwise over the top. I would also like to say...You know your still reading this on slashdot right?:) My point still stands...why in the hell should we compromise with them? Let them rot.
Go do some research about campaign contributions. Look how much money MS gave, before, during and after the antitrust stuff. Screw the politics...R and D are just as bad. 99% of the problems we face can be easily figured out by following the money.
Ok...so...just would like to point out. You are on slashdot....talking about filesystem drivers...and you think that is what SINGLE stands for? You sir should get a +1 Funny:)
First of all, its more like holding a chalupa upside down on a hot day while your friend holds a icecream cone upside down on a hot day...don't you think you should tell your friend "Hey, upside down icecream has a heat vulnerability"
Excellent description of the problem, but I don't see why so many people shout about "MS shouldn't be allowed to get away with this". Yes, yes they should...because you bought their products, you agreed to the stuff that said "We might support you if we want". You agreed to it, they can do it. It doesn't really matter if you didn't read the fine print, you still agreed. The same goes for every other closed proprietary line of stuff people buy. Trust me, their lawyers are WAY smarter than their sense of morality is strong.
It amuses me that the big software houses just don't get that. That they shout and scream and stomp their feet "You can't tell our customers we screwed them!" "You can't tell them we lied to them about what we offer!" Rather than spending the money to fix the problem, they spend a fortune in legal battles trying to silence the critics, so they don't have to spend the money fixing stuff. In the mean time the OSS world just goes "DOH!" and fixes it. Realistically, if this was pointed out to shareholders...things might change. "Look, rather than actually fixing the problems that are causing them to do worse, they want to try to hide them...but these service based companies over here...based on a new business model, just fix the problem, notifiy their customers, and continue to move in the right direction without wasting money on unneccessary legal battles"
Valthan, you are a whiner. 1) That is a valid reference that people use to laugh about the way northerners speak. Its not even just Canadians though usually applied mostly to Canadians...almost EVERY northerner (specially north west) I have ever spoken to or hung out with has had the same accent. It was not started by southpark, it was started by northerners (including canadians) saying Aboot and Eh alot. In fact last time I had to deal with high level tech support it was a canadian guy...before the call was over I almost asked him to say "aboot" because he had said "eh" a dozen times already...but he said it without me asking and I about fell out of my chair (I hadn't slept in a few days fighting its problem so I was easily amused). Deal with it, many do say "aboot" and "eh" quite frequently. 2) You are right, with the exception of it makes Canada look like a terribly nice place to move to. So call it a real estate advertisement.
Oh and BTW, signatures are done with the private key. So while yes they are signed...this is the same bunch that had a huge chunk of their source code lifted from them. Now I know personally I would protect my source code for my flagship product a bit more than the private key that can be killed and reissued. Coarse...I would protect both a little more than what they did, but that is a different story altogether. So you have to assume if what is arguably their most valuable asset was lifted right off of their network, under their noses, their private key could be out in the wild too.
Granted, rather unlikely, but you always need to be a bit paranoid with security or you will wind up installing packages signed with MS key by Vladamir Ping Chang the Chinese Russian Super H4x0r!
I think it only looks genuine if you ignore everything else he has done. The man has an incredible ego. A old friend of mine was a big time Gates fanboy, had his book and everything. Went on and on about the stuff in the book...the man is definetly full of himself. He really behaves as if he was stuffed into one too many lockers as a kid and this is his revenge on the world for not liking him then. Outside of the monetary and PR he stands to gain from the donations...it makes everyone else think he is important and "like" him.
It really would be nice if it was genuine, but honestly...the man still lives in a giant mansion, has everything he could ever want many times over...and has multiple world governments by the balls with Office. He is not changing his lifestyle much to donate. I have FAR more respect for the family that gives a couple hundred a year and actually has to make meaningful personal sacrificies in their daily lives to do it. Charity is not about the dollar ammount, charity is about sacrificing some of your well being for the well being of someone else.
Your original post said 46 billion and 29 billion which is barely over 0.5 not 7.25. But if the figures are 4 billion and he donated 29 billion...well we are sort of back to the question of how do you donate more money than you have? Unless he is donating other peoples money and he is the only one mentioned due to his already high public profile.
As far as benefiting him and MS I would also argue that everyone associates Bill Gates with Microsoft regardless. The same way Walt Disney is permanently associated with Disney the company. So in most peoples minds its one in the same. Most people have no idea that he has stepped down, or what his position is, other than overlord of MS.
I have learned from dealing with a great many people like him, sincerity is rarely true. I have tried really hard to give people the benefit of the doubt, but when people that are so good at manipulating others do nice things...its generally part of the manipulation, and not a real desire to be nice. I could be wrong...but life experience has pretty much shown me the capabilities of people who are power hungry and manipulative, even when it doesn't work, and they are beaten...they still try to manipulate rather than turn over a new leaf. (Disclaimer, I don't believe most people are this type of person at all...I'm just saying the ones that are like this all pretty much behave the same) Sweet as can be to your face...the second you turn around thinking "ok good, he learned his lesson, he will be goo*URK*" and you lose:)
Its going to take alot of public apologies and admissions of guilt before I ever believe he is doing much of anything to be the nice guy.
Uhm, I am assuming you have an extra digit in there becuase otherwise your numbers really don't make sense. However, to counter...go look up the tax laws surrounding the rich and corporations. Most of 'the rich' have an income FAR below what kind of money they actually have to spend. It is derived from manipulation of tax codes and what not. Corporations get to spend their money BEFORE taxes, people get to spend their money AFTER taxes. So...as long as you can write off your purchases as business expenses...and damn near everything under the sun can be written of as a business expense...you get to buy all your stuff before taxes hit...so you spend all the money you can on business expenses (legit or questionable) so when the tax man comes by...you have minimal money to be taxed. This is the same reason why the lower end of the economic population pays so much of the taxes, the upper end has the laws supporting them artificially pushing them downward in the tax brackets.
Also...I can almost gaurontee in that $29bn in charity dollars....a huge chunk was not in cash or any other liquid asset. It was in Office XP donations to schools so they would have to buy Windows...or maybe even Windows...so they would all have to become trained Windows users instead of learning Linux or Mac in school. Also...every cent of that donation figure is also used for tax purposes:). So...he gives tons of crap software away, enfocing his lockin, gets tons of free publicity on "see he isn't really bad", and gets a hefty tax write off. But he only did it out of the goodness of his heart....he only mercileslly crushes his competitors and steals their technology...he wouldn't have other motives for donations...
The average person thinks Bill Gates is a supergenius god of computers. The average person worships the fact that he has so much money, and uses his bank account as a measure of how important and admirable the guy is. Every time I fix someones computer or fix some big IT issue I get people comment about me being the next Bill Gates, or my kids growing up to be the next Bill Gates and it makes me sick. The man is a sham, he is incredibly immoral, and I don't believe for a second that all of his 'charity' is any more than cheap PR because he knows people are catching on. The time/money he spends on charity would be like me tossing a nickel in a homeless guys cup and expecting to get Time Person of the Year for it.
The money worship that goes on these days makes me sick...all he is is a very good and very rich theif and scam artist. Even more sickening is listening to people defend his antics as "You would do the same if you had that kind of money" or "so what? He still has more money than you will ever see".
SOME systems I hear they do now, mostly server stuff. When I bought my laptop from them I spent 2 hours on the phone speaking with indians trying to explain that I don't want Windows...eventually gave up and just decided to suck it up and have a valid license for "Windows Media Center Edition" sitting around unused.
Go ask Cisco, or MS, or any of the other major vendors how many of their patches came from the DoD. DoD has found a great number of problems in a great number of products and has in turn work on a great number of patches that made it back into the consumer world.
Coarse...for the really paranoid type...I would like to point out that the DoD has played very large roles in quite a few other critical areas that I'm sure everyone holds near and dear...vehicles, aircraft, radar, computers, oh and that intarweb thingy...DARPAnet and all.
DoD has had a pretty good history of providing goodness to the populace as well as all the negative that people like to focus on. DoD doesn't start the fight...politicians do, remember that next time you see a service member. They bleed for the good causes, and the bad causes...its the leaders that determine what causes they are going to bleed for next.
Listen to Dell, RIAA, MPAA, etc etc....uhm... no they don't. They just don't beat them as mercilessly as the home consumer, because they COULD swing back and do some damage over time.
To Dell/HP/Etc - You must not sell naked or Linux systems or your the price of OEM Windows gets larger.
RIAA/MPAA - If you don't do what we like...we won't play with your DRM schemes.
Government - If you stop pressuring us we will donate to campaign funds and let you keep using Office.
Go look at MS campaign fund history...right up until the antitrust thing they really didn't give anyone any money, once the antitrust thing kicked off....big dollars to everyone running.
There is a VERY VERY simple solution...that may not work forever, but will at least get us on the right track. To vote...you go into the poll booth...and pass the citizenship test...then you are allowed to cast your vote. Go look at the statistics concerning the number of americans that cannot pass the test that is required of foreigners to become citizens. Pretty scary....and a little sad considering most of it is below high school level stuff.
Here is the heart of the problem in America these days. LONG LONG LONG since gone are the days of finding new and interesting ways to make money...to pioneer new markets, to give away razors and sell the blades, etc. Now its just a bunch of crusty dying 'tried and true' business models trying to squeeze every last cent out of 'criminal consumers'. Maybe I am missing something, but I don't really understand the lockin mentality. Tapes were terribly easy to make copies of, in fact, I have FAR more taped movies than DVDs and such. Why the hell are they so hell bent on not just selling more, lower prices, less control, because I'm pretty sure they would make more money. Right now they are spending fortunes on DRM schemes that are broken as soon as they hit the streets, they are making themselves look like monsterous flaming assholes chasing everyone down and threatening their customers, who the hell runs these things?
So quit taking the unrated movies and editing them into Disney movies. Safe movies exist, so buy those instead. Don't support the hack editors illicit dealings. How can anyone possibly defend this as being legal? So...you make a movie...I buy a copy of it and hack n slash it up to be what I want people to see...and then I resell it with your name on it. How about I take Disney movies and edit a bunch of violence and sex scenes into them and sell them as Disney movies. You think Disney wouldn't be crawling up my ass in a matter of minutes with a horde of lawyers? You think I would have people spring to my defense the same way? Probably not...but ultimately in the legal sense I did the exact same thing that these editors are doing.
So...you go to the discount used movie place. Because we all know that noone on slashdot buys new movies and supports the evil MPAA, they all go to used movie places so they support local vendors and not the MPAA.... Anyways...so you grab that new movie Kill Death Sex Monster Truck Explosions 2 and you take it home and pop it in and all you get is a chopped up version with no killing, death, sex, or explosions...just a few monster trucks doing nothing. Wouldn't you maybe be a little pissed? Maybe have a pretty low view of the people that made Kill Death Sex Monster Truck Explosions 2? Start telling all your friends the movie sucked? Well...thats probably what they are afraid of, because you didn't know you went into that store and bought the Editied for Mormons edition from Cleanflix.
I can give you a perfect example of this. I told a friend "The best part of the Family Guy movie was the beginning where Lois stumbles out and you actually get to hear her say 'Fuck yea'" They looked at me like I was stupid and explained to me there was no cussing in the movie. Oops they bought the Walmart cleaned version and didn't know there was an unedited version that didn't censor the cussing. As much as I hate the MPAA and friends...I'm sorta glad they won this one...
I don't vote unless there is a candidate worth voting for. I get so tired of the "you didn't vote you can't bitch" argument...I don't vote because I think the choice of who is running my country should be based more on merit than who stinks less. And while I realize that not all republicans are on the same side...Bush is a fundie...super kneejerk reactionary fundie. So its not about "throwing em a bone and fuck em" Its about "They finally got their position of power and now we must all suffer their stupidity".
Uhm...might wanna recheck some things. Republicans are the ones that were responsible for that little lying punk NASA PR guy that demanded Big Bang info be removed from the NASA sites and replaced with right wing fundamentalist creationism stuff. If its intentional, its because they view space as having no value because god is coming back for us right here, and soon.
Personally...I think the greatest irony would be God, Jesus and friends standing on some remote place far on the other side of creation saying "Geeze dad, I woulda thought they could have made it here by now..."
So...I give them my master password...and then I give them where I want to use this password...and they generate my password? Uhm...seems like you are kinda giving the owners of hashapass the keys to the kingdom with that one. Not only do they have your password, but they know where to use each password they created for you. "You have no control over what the remote side is doing with your password" and then suggesting "let these guys create all of your passwords for you" seem to be VERY counter productive. Using a utility like this on a privately owned machine that doesn't have net access is a neat idea, but doing it from a website is about as bad as you can possibly get.
I must disagree on point 1. The ONLY thing I use the keyboard for playing FFXI is to chat. I find it infinetly easier to use the controller rather than the keyboard. However, on the issue of FPS...Halo has been the only FPS that didn't make me want to break the controller after trying to play for more that a few minutes...unless of coarse you are using the original bigfoot xbox controller, but thats another story. I haven't played many other MMORPGs so I can't say for sure how many would be easier or not with a controller.
I even have modpoints...seriously...what is this about? "Help me, my phone bill looks funny and my partner says they don't know" Uhm...so call the phone company, act rational, tell them common sense things like "block this" or "I didn't make these calls" and don't go on strange tyraids about cell phone cloning to people who probably have little understanding of what you are even talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Ironically...your comment explains in a nutshell how we got here
"Christ on a stick" pretty much encompases all of the ideology that has lead up to the current set events.
Fighting over who put Christ on a stick, or if Jesus was even the Christ (what seems to be little known yet terribly relevant is that Jesus Christ isn't the man's name...Jesus THE Christ)
Now just couple these few large groups arguging (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) over the whole thing with the fact that the vast majority of their followers are barely aware of the tenets of their OWN religion let alone someone elses...and you have the recipe for thousands of years of murder in God's name.
Jesus (the Christ or not) had a GREAT number of words on kindness and how we should behave...something about if someone strikes your face, you should turn the other cheek so that they may strike the other side as well.
Judaism, forgive me I'm not terribly sure WHICH of the main books it came from, but it says those who live with brotherhood towards their fellow man are blessed in the eyes of God.
Islam when one Mohammed found a dead woman and child on the battle field he asked his general why they were killed. When his general responded they were infedels Mohammed chastised him for killing the innocent, and that only those who are fighting should be killed.
So...forgivness, acceptance, and brotherly love are key tenets...not murder the infidels, blame the jews, or purge the muslims.
This is all just the logical extension of holy wars that have been waging for hundreds of years. We just now have more technology and better weapons.
Simple...
:)
:) My point still stands...why in the hell should we compromise with them? Let them rot.
I don't want to get raped in the arse and get AIDS or some other horrific disease...so I should be compromising when the rapist agrees to wear a condom?
The RIAA/MPAA and crew have pretty much shown themselves to be the lowest form of scum. I don't care that the 4yr old girl's thing got thrown out, or that granny wasn't forced to pay...the fact is...they did it anyways and in many cases it took either a judge tossing out their stupid crap, or the threat of a mob reaction to make them even back off. No real change in behavior, no stopping the plowing forward with nonsense....just a quick jump back from that specific incident where they got slapped. So...explain to me why I am supposed to compromise with them...on anything. I don't want money...I will let them use my bandwidth to make money while they overcharge me for movies...IF at least one of their executives is publiclly executed each year. Sounds fair to me, they should compromise
Also...I will point out YES I KNOW the analogy is horribly flawed and otherwise over the top. I would also like to say...You know your still reading this on slashdot right?
Go do some research about campaign contributions. Look how much money MS gave, before, during and after the antitrust stuff. Screw the politics...R and D are just as bad. 99% of the problems we face can be easily figured out by following the money.
Ok...so...just would like to point out. You are on slashdot....talking about filesystem drivers...and you think that is what SINGLE stands for? You sir should get a +1 Funny :)
First of all, its more like holding a chalupa upside down on a hot day while your friend holds a icecream cone upside down on a hot day...don't you think you should tell your friend "Hey, upside down icecream has a heat vulnerability"
Excellent description of the problem, but I don't see why so many people shout about "MS shouldn't be allowed to get away with this". Yes, yes they should...because you bought their products, you agreed to the stuff that said "We might support you if we want". You agreed to it, they can do it. It doesn't really matter if you didn't read the fine print, you still agreed. The same goes for every other closed proprietary line of stuff people buy. Trust me, their lawyers are WAY smarter than their sense of morality is strong.
It amuses me that the big software houses just don't get that. That they shout and scream and stomp their feet "You can't tell our customers we screwed them!" "You can't tell them we lied to them about what we offer!" Rather than spending the money to fix the problem, they spend a fortune in legal battles trying to silence the critics, so they don't have to spend the money fixing stuff. In the mean time the OSS world just goes "DOH!" and fixes it. Realistically, if this was pointed out to shareholders...things might change. "Look, rather than actually fixing the problems that are causing them to do worse, they want to try to hide them...but these service based companies over here...based on a new business model, just fix the problem, notifiy their customers, and continue to move in the right direction without wasting money on unneccessary legal battles"
Valthan, you are a whiner. 1) That is a valid reference that people use to laugh about the way northerners speak. Its not even just Canadians though usually applied mostly to Canadians...almost EVERY northerner (specially north west) I have ever spoken to or hung out with has had the same accent. It was not started by southpark, it was started by northerners (including canadians) saying Aboot and Eh alot. In fact last time I had to deal with high level tech support it was a canadian guy...before the call was over I almost asked him to say "aboot" because he had said "eh" a dozen times already...but he said it without me asking and I about fell out of my chair (I hadn't slept in a few days fighting its problem so I was easily amused). Deal with it, many do say "aboot" and "eh" quite frequently. 2) You are right, with the exception of it makes Canada look like a terribly nice place to move to. So call it a real estate advertisement.
0 Day
That's all I'm going to say.
Oh and BTW, signatures are done with the private key. So while yes they are signed...this is the same bunch that had a huge chunk of their source code lifted from them. Now I know personally I would protect my source code for my flagship product a bit more than the private key that can be killed and reissued. Coarse...I would protect both a little more than what they did, but that is a different story altogether. So you have to assume if what is arguably their most valuable asset was lifted right off of their network, under their noses, their private key could be out in the wild too.
Granted, rather unlikely, but you always need to be a bit paranoid with security or you will wind up installing packages signed with MS key by Vladamir Ping Chang the Chinese Russian Super H4x0r!
I think it only looks genuine if you ignore everything else he has done. The man has an incredible ego. A old friend of mine was a big time Gates fanboy, had his book and everything. Went on and on about the stuff in the book...the man is definetly full of himself. He really behaves as if he was stuffed into one too many lockers as a kid and this is his revenge on the world for not liking him then. Outside of the monetary and PR he stands to gain from the donations...it makes everyone else think he is important and "like" him.
It really would be nice if it was genuine, but honestly...the man still lives in a giant mansion, has everything he could ever want many times over...and has multiple world governments by the balls with Office. He is not changing his lifestyle much to donate. I have FAR more respect for the family that gives a couple hundred a year and actually has to make meaningful personal sacrificies in their daily lives to do it. Charity is not about the dollar ammount, charity is about sacrificing some of your well being for the well being of someone else.
Your original post said 46 billion and 29 billion which is barely over 0.5 not 7.25. But if the figures are 4 billion and he donated 29 billion...well we are sort of back to the question of how do you donate more money than you have? Unless he is donating other peoples money and he is the only one mentioned due to his already high public profile.
:)
As far as benefiting him and MS I would also argue that everyone associates Bill Gates with Microsoft regardless. The same way Walt Disney is permanently associated with Disney the company. So in most peoples minds its one in the same. Most people have no idea that he has stepped down, or what his position is, other than overlord of MS.
I have learned from dealing with a great many people like him, sincerity is rarely true. I have tried really hard to give people the benefit of the doubt, but when people that are so good at manipulating others do nice things...its generally part of the manipulation, and not a real desire to be nice. I could be wrong...but life experience has pretty much shown me the capabilities of people who are power hungry and manipulative, even when it doesn't work, and they are beaten...they still try to manipulate rather than turn over a new leaf. (Disclaimer, I don't believe most people are this type of person at all...I'm just saying the ones that are like this all pretty much behave the same) Sweet as can be to your face...the second you turn around thinking "ok good, he learned his lesson, he will be goo*URK*" and you lose
Its going to take alot of public apologies and admissions of guilt before I ever believe he is doing much of anything to be the nice guy.
Uhm, I am assuming you have an extra digit in there becuase otherwise your numbers really don't make sense. However, to counter...go look up the tax laws surrounding the rich and corporations. Most of 'the rich' have an income FAR below what kind of money they actually have to spend. It is derived from manipulation of tax codes and what not. Corporations get to spend their money BEFORE taxes, people get to spend their money AFTER taxes. So...as long as you can write off your purchases as business expenses...and damn near everything under the sun can be written of as a business expense...you get to buy all your stuff before taxes hit...so you spend all the money you can on business expenses (legit or questionable) so when the tax man comes by...you have minimal money to be taxed. This is the same reason why the lower end of the economic population pays so much of the taxes, the upper end has the laws supporting them artificially pushing them downward in the tax brackets.
:). So...he gives tons of crap software away, enfocing his lockin, gets tons of free publicity on "see he isn't really bad", and gets a hefty tax write off. But he only did it out of the goodness of his heart....he only mercileslly crushes his competitors and steals their technology...he wouldn't have other motives for donations...
Also...I can almost gaurontee in that $29bn in charity dollars....a huge chunk was not in cash or any other liquid asset. It was in Office XP donations to schools so they would have to buy Windows...or maybe even Windows...so they would all have to become trained Windows users instead of learning Linux or Mac in school. Also...every cent of that donation figure is also used for tax purposes
The average person thinks Bill Gates is a supergenius god of computers. The average person worships the fact that he has so much money, and uses his bank account as a measure of how important and admirable the guy is. Every time I fix someones computer or fix some big IT issue I get people comment about me being the next Bill Gates, or my kids growing up to be the next Bill Gates and it makes me sick. The man is a sham, he is incredibly immoral, and I don't believe for a second that all of his 'charity' is any more than cheap PR because he knows people are catching on. The time/money he spends on charity would be like me tossing a nickel in a homeless guys cup and expecting to get Time Person of the Year for it.
The money worship that goes on these days makes me sick...all he is is a very good and very rich theif and scam artist. Even more sickening is listening to people defend his antics as "You would do the same if you had that kind of money" or "so what? He still has more money than you will ever see".
SOME systems I hear they do now, mostly server stuff. When I bought my laptop from them I spent 2 hours on the phone speaking with indians trying to explain that I don't want Windows...eventually gave up and just decided to suck it up and have a valid license for "Windows Media Center Edition" sitting around unused.
Go ask Cisco, or MS, or any of the other major vendors how many of their patches came from the DoD. DoD has found a great number of problems in a great number of products and has in turn work on a great number of patches that made it back into the consumer world.
Coarse...for the really paranoid type...I would like to point out that the DoD has played very large roles in quite a few other critical areas that I'm sure everyone holds near and dear...vehicles, aircraft, radar, computers, oh and that intarweb thingy...DARPAnet and all.
DoD has had a pretty good history of providing goodness to the populace as well as all the negative that people like to focus on. DoD doesn't start the fight...politicians do, remember that next time you see a service member. They bleed for the good causes, and the bad causes...its the leaders that determine what causes they are going to bleed for next.
Listen to Dell, RIAA, MPAA, etc etc....uhm... no they don't. They just don't beat them as mercilessly as the home consumer, because they COULD swing back and do some damage over time.
To Dell/HP/Etc - You must not sell naked or Linux systems or your the price of OEM Windows gets larger. RIAA/MPAA - If you don't do what we like...we won't play with your DRM schemes. Government - If you stop pressuring us we will donate to campaign funds and let you keep using Office.
Go look at MS campaign fund history...right up until the antitrust thing they really didn't give anyone any money, once the antitrust thing kicked off....big dollars to everyone running.
There is a VERY VERY simple solution...that may not work forever, but will at least get us on the right track. To vote...you go into the poll booth...and pass the citizenship test...then you are allowed to cast your vote. Go look at the statistics concerning the number of americans that cannot pass the test that is required of foreigners to become citizens. Pretty scary....and a little sad considering most of it is below high school level stuff.
Here is the heart of the problem in America these days. LONG LONG LONG since gone are the days of finding new and interesting ways to make money...to pioneer new markets, to give away razors and sell the blades, etc. Now its just a bunch of crusty dying 'tried and true' business models trying to squeeze every last cent out of 'criminal consumers'. Maybe I am missing something, but I don't really understand the lockin mentality. Tapes were terribly easy to make copies of, in fact, I have FAR more taped movies than DVDs and such. Why the hell are they so hell bent on not just selling more, lower prices, less control, because I'm pretty sure they would make more money. Right now they are spending fortunes on DRM schemes that are broken as soon as they hit the streets, they are making themselves look like monsterous flaming assholes chasing everyone down and threatening their customers, who the hell runs these things?
So quit taking the unrated movies and editing them into Disney movies. Safe movies exist, so buy those instead. Don't support the hack editors illicit dealings. How can anyone possibly defend this as being legal? So...you make a movie...I buy a copy of it and hack n slash it up to be what I want people to see...and then I resell it with your name on it. How about I take Disney movies and edit a bunch of violence and sex scenes into them and sell them as Disney movies. You think Disney wouldn't be crawling up my ass in a matter of minutes with a horde of lawyers? You think I would have people spring to my defense the same way? Probably not...but ultimately in the legal sense I did the exact same thing that these editors are doing.
So...you go to the discount used movie place. Because we all know that noone on slashdot buys new movies and supports the evil MPAA, they all go to used movie places so they support local vendors and not the MPAA.... Anyways...so you grab that new movie Kill Death Sex Monster Truck Explosions 2 and you take it home and pop it in and all you get is a chopped up version with no killing, death, sex, or explosions...just a few monster trucks doing nothing. Wouldn't you maybe be a little pissed? Maybe have a pretty low view of the people that made Kill Death Sex Monster Truck Explosions 2? Start telling all your friends the movie sucked? Well...thats probably what they are afraid of, because you didn't know you went into that store and bought the Editied for Mormons edition from Cleanflix.
I can give you a perfect example of this. I told a friend "The best part of the Family Guy movie was the beginning where Lois stumbles out and you actually get to hear her say 'Fuck yea'" They looked at me like I was stupid and explained to me there was no cussing in the movie. Oops they bought the Walmart cleaned version and didn't know there was an unedited version that didn't censor the cussing. As much as I hate the MPAA and friends...I'm sorta glad they won this one...
I don't vote unless there is a candidate worth voting for. I get so tired of the "you didn't vote you can't bitch" argument...I don't vote because I think the choice of who is running my country should be based more on merit than who stinks less. And while I realize that not all republicans are on the same side...Bush is a fundie...super kneejerk reactionary fundie. So its not about "throwing em a bone and fuck em" Its about "They finally got their position of power and now we must all suffer their stupidity".
Uhm...might wanna recheck some things. Republicans are the ones that were responsible for that little lying punk NASA PR guy that demanded Big Bang info be removed from the NASA sites and replaced with right wing fundamentalist creationism stuff. If its intentional, its because they view space as having no value because god is coming back for us right here, and soon.
Personally...I think the greatest irony would be God, Jesus and friends standing on some remote place far on the other side of creation saying "Geeze dad, I woulda thought they could have made it here by now..."
So...I give them my master password...and then I give them where I want to use this password...and they generate my password? Uhm...seems like you are kinda giving the owners of hashapass the keys to the kingdom with that one. Not only do they have your password, but they know where to use each password they created for you. "You have no control over what the remote side is doing with your password" and then suggesting "let these guys create all of your passwords for you" seem to be VERY counter productive. Using a utility like this on a privately owned machine that doesn't have net access is a neat idea, but doing it from a website is about as bad as you can possibly get.
I played for about a year on gilgamesh, then quit, then got drug back in and I'm back on gilgamesh...so...gimme your stuff you quitter! :) lol
I must disagree on point 1. The ONLY thing I use the keyboard for playing FFXI is to chat. I find it infinetly easier to use the controller rather than the keyboard. However, on the issue of FPS...Halo has been the only FPS that didn't make me want to break the controller after trying to play for more that a few minutes...unless of coarse you are using the original bigfoot xbox controller, but thats another story. I haven't played many other MMORPGs so I can't say for sure how many would be easier or not with a controller.
I even have modpoints...seriously...what is this about? "Help me, my phone bill looks funny and my partner says they don't know" Uhm...so call the phone company, act rational, tell them common sense things like "block this" or "I didn't make these calls" and don't go on strange tyraids about cell phone cloning to people who probably have little understanding of what you are even talking about.