The people of the internet want Craig Mundie to STFU. But they will consider his whiny suggestion if he does in fact STFU and agrees never to apply for a license. They thought the internet was free, as in you are free to make an ass out of yourself, just as he does in real life.
Oddly, Majia said his parents did not know that he was hacking at night [hacking is illegal in China].
His parents know. If he hacks for money, is up late at night fiddling with computers all the time, and talks about hacking with unusual guests right in front of his mom, she knows what is going on. This is a mother with traditional, conservative beliefs who does not want to be rude and is reluctant to admit that her son is a criminal, so she ignores the entire situation. Not that unusual, and not indicative of some strange counter cultural underworld that is unique to China. Though I'm sure my folks and my friends' parents all thought our blue boxes, black boxes, and mobile (as in, in a car) collections of computers and cordless phones were all for educational purposes back in the day, and the 2600 meetings were just to hang out and drink coffee, since that's what we told them.
Ok can someone please explain why a cell phone with less power then this laptop costs around 300 bucks and that apparently still does not cover the mfg costs of the device hence the locked in contracts to recoup phone costs? Yet this laptop with an arm proc and a larger screen and more moving parts can be sold at 100??? The iPhone costs $179 to mfg.. Pre $138... g1 $140
Very good question there. $100 seems almost too cheap, though I agree with other people's comments that this price point is a game changer - that's an impulse buy for a lot of people, and something attainable for many,many more with some planning and saving. So how can this work for the manufacturers? Does it have anything to do with GSM/CDMA licensing/development/hardware, or the lack thereof in this case?
I still dig my G1, but if I could get something else with a bigger, better screen and that smokes the phone but is still highly portable for only $100, I'd buy one immediately.
Yeah, I'd give 'em two ones and tell them to keep the change.
This isn't about the money though, and even if the courts knocked it down to that number, I don't think defendant would go along with it so willingly. Personally, I'd give 'em the two bucks too, but I'd demand my change back from those fuckers.
I'd like to let everyone know that Mars is full of gold just under the crust, and every planet around Proxima Centauri is rich with uranium.
That's quite intriguing, and something to consider, although gold might not be worth going to Mars for if there were a whole planet of it there. And I'd rather just see more news about Uranus.
And furthermore, we all need to remember to pray to Jobs and thank him for OS X, since the internet could certainly not run largely on linux or other OSs.
Yeah, it sucks that I can't get all of my work done on this cheap computer because it is running linux instead of OS X (nevermind all the folks who use Windows - I'm sure nothing of use is ever done with those solitaire machines, since they don't run OS X). But at least I'm not bothered by lots of phone calls, emails, and other communications sent by people bugging me to get a real OS so I can get work done, since my useless phone runs Android rather than being an iphone. And now that I've mentioned iphones, I feel even more need to get one today, since the only network they are available for is so much more reliable and useful than mine, even though I've never had a problem with T-Mobile.
Man, talk about flamebait. How did that even get posted? Must have been done on an iphone or Mac.
Why would you need to do this? For $70, a bunch of work, and to open yourself up to a hugely major security and safety risk? I'm not sure where the poster lives, but there are plenty of companies who do aftermarket work on cars here and advertise that they will install proper remote start systems for something like $100-$150. I don't have a need for this, but if I did, I would pay $30 more to know it would work and not be triggered by a wrong number. You can probably build your own refrigerator and sofa out of other objects too, but there are stores that sell pre-made ones, you know.
The Viewer Friendly Interface trope was (surprisingly) largely averted in the Matrix where only a little Hollywood was wrapped around an almost unmodified nmap and sshnuke.
Yes, very true, except for two tiny exceptions: the crazy, green characters flying all over their screens (which does not look like a very easy to use ui, to me), and the small fact that the majority of interfacing with the matrix is done in people's minds after physically sticking something into the backs of their necks.
Of course, with this settlement now, I'm sure Samsung will claim that it did anything wrong. $900 million worth of nothing wrong, to be more precise.
This looks like one of those cases were they are really saying, "Yeah, we screwed you, but please please please take this money so a court doesn't award you nearly as much AND open us up to further suits by consumers or other companies we screwed, since open discovery and an official finding that we did what we did would be very, very bad for us, and will delay the money you will get." So shocking.
I switched to T-Mobile from AT&T and got a G1 last June. I have been quite happy with not only the phone but also with the coverage. I can not get 3G where I live, though it was not available with AT&T, either. 3G has been available whenever I've been in or near a larger city, just not out in my suburban/nearly-rural town. The pricing is okay - not what I would call cheap, but less than AT&T. I have needed customer service twice since switching, and both times, the representative was surprisingly cheerful (like she was actually happy, not just going through the motions of her job and waiting for payday), listened to and comprehended my problem, and gave me a solution immediately. The first time was due to my own carelessness and they could have easily told me "tough luck," but they were very helpful and understanding.
Overall, I was expecting an experience just like I had gotten used to with Alltel, Cingular, AT&T (old), Cingular (round two - slightly better coverage), AT&T (after taking over Cingular), and like friends have had with Verizon (horrible). I also strongly considered Sprint, but when I went to buy a Palm Pre, the sales folks were too busy and disorganized to help me, so I left. T-Mobile has been fine for the first six months. Careful where you buy though - one local, indie company insisted that their price for a G1 ($200, I think) was what everyone had to charge and insulted me for questioning them, even though it was $129 online, there was a brief promo around that time for less, and WalMart (ick) had it for $99.
I'd go for this instead of a business jet. Far more fun and you don't have to worry if the engines fail - you can always use the ejection seat. Russian fighter's ejection seats are far more safe than the US ones - you can eject at over Mach 2 and survive!
It would certainly be impressive, but it would be hard to stare at your Blackberry, have a cocktail, and count the rest of your money if you actually had to pilot the plane. And if you seriously think you might have to use the ejector seat one day, this is not a good risk/reward scenario, financially speaking, since most business jets are never written off as total losses due to crashing. And what real business man with a jet mixes his own cocktail anyway?
The fact that you are asking on slashdot shows that you are not qualified, and what you're going to get back is a bunch of others, who aren't qualified, suggesting all sorts of half assed hacks to do it which will just result in a utterly shitty service overall.
Seriously? That's your answer? You think this is that hard, and you presume that no experts or professionals read and contribute to slashdot? There is plenty of good advice in this thread, though this is not it. My area of expertise is not ISP infrastructure, but I know a project of this size and scope is not necessarily impossible for someone who doesn't do it all the time. My advice for the original poster is to formulate a complete plan before beginning work - complete as in have every bit of hardware figured out, know exactly what software will be running where, allow twice as much time as you think you will need, test and test some more before going live, and plan for budgetary contingencies. Throwing ungodly sums of money at a problem isn't the only way to do it full-assed.
All that hype, and a nice but not ground-breaking phone that is being sold with even worse terms than are the norm. I thought it was going to blow away all other phones, including the Droid and IPhone? Marginally better, perhaps. Wasn't it supposed to be "Google branded" and unlocked, so you could do as you please with it? Sounds pretty tightly tied to Mobile, and operates more or less like all the other HTC Android phones. It isn't even especially attractive. I've been a pretty big fan of some of the things Google has done, but lately now it seems as if they are behaving just like every other company: screwing customers whenever a profit can be made, making empty promises, doing as much as possible to put competitors out of business, and just generally sucking. I still like my G1 and depend on Gmail, but Google is beginning to annoy me.
Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should start sharing more porn! Darn leechers!
Perhaps those who aren't using anywhere near 250GB a month should start paying less.
If the price is a flat $45 (or whatever) for unlimited use, that is fine. But if they can quantify usage and affix a more specific pricing scheme to it over and above 250GB of usage, then they can due the same but in reverse for usage under 250GB a month. But they won't. This isn't about fairness or network congestion, it is about making as much money as possible, nothing more. Opinion of Comcast and Time Warner: "Some folks download a lot and will continue to do so, so let's wring every last penny from them!!! What are they gonna do, get some crappy DSL connection? Haha, let's see them get comparable download speeds. Some of them can't get DSL at all. Screw 'em, it isn't like we have competition. Oh, and we should probably raise TV rates again, just for the hell of it (but no reason to improve service). Thank you, local monopolies!"
...Zed Shaw is a cranky, irrelevant whiner 96.3% of the time, at least according to the lambda standard deviation of the probability factor. Or so the graph shows, when enough data points are confabulated by the denominator of the sigma variation. And he thinks HE knows statistics.
Very well said. But you forgot about 14400 and 19200. Man, I sure was in heaven Christmas morning of 1992 or 1993 when I opened my Zoom 14.4k modem. Naturally it amazed me, and I thought there would never be anything much faster, aside from the "exotic" 19.2k modems that none of the local boards or my friends had. I think Zyxel and a USR model or two would do 16.8k. 1200 and 2400 were never acceptable again, though 14.4k meant speed to spare! Then a year or two later we thought 28.8k was near a theoretical speed limit for twisted-pair copper, 33.6k used dirty tricks, 56k was unrealistic and not possible for a BBS, 64k/128k ISDN was crazy expensive, and ADSL and SDSL were futuristic 21st century vaporware. Today's DSL and cable speeds were unfathomable 15 years ago, not to mention optical fiber which seems to be getting rolled out everywhere except where I live.
He's right. The OLPC project appears to have lost its focus on improving education for the most disadvantaged children, and is instead attempting to innovate in other ways. This falls into the same category as many other tech/geekdom mistakes: making the gadgets and gizmos the focus rather than what they can do for people. I love building and upgrading computers, trying out new operating systems, and just generally tinkering with all sorts of things, so that is a legitimate hobby for me. But crap like M$ software and things like Macs are popular because people can just get their real work done with them. The most awesome, multi-touch, quad core, 16GB DDR4 tablet computer won't help an author like my mom finish a book faster, or do anything to help a kid learn if the kid can't get one. Make it work, and make it available NOW, and you've got a winner.
I could argue about incorrect word creation and use like this all day. Irregardless, I have to go literally right this second to dethaw a roast for x-mas, which is a whole nother story we won't go into.
I've been saying pretty much this exact same thing for years: the penalty for a particular infraction is largely irrelevant if the chances of it being put into effect are very slim. People commit crimes not because they don't care about being incarcerated or fined, or because they necessarily disagree with the intent of a particular law - people commit crimes because doing so makes their lives more convenient in some way and most importantly, because they think they can get away with it.
This is so simple! If general deterrence were effective, the USA would have lower murder and violent crime rates than perhaps any other industrialized country. I'll leave out the boring statistics and tell you that the opposite is true. Our penalties are very stiff, though the certainty of apprehension is not high(high proportion of unsolved crimes), relative to comparable nations. Therefore, our gun-loving, cowboy citizenry sometimes thinks they are slick enough to escape prosecution. Even the specific deterrence of harsh penalties for minor/non-violent crimes is ineffective here, which is proven by ridiculously high recidivism rates. My solutions are not the point here, and I could go on and on and on, so I won't go into that. But until we begin to enforce laws that prohibit largely-unseen behaviors (or, *gasp*, educate people to prevent dangerous behaviors) in a more certain way, hefty fines and jail terms will not prevent cell phone use while driving, copyright evasion, vandalism, petty theft, white collar crimes, or most other crimes.
No matter your stance on any particular subset of laws, I think you must agree that prohibitions without teeth (or ones that are perceived to be unenforceable) are pointless.
America is no longer the spam king. According to Cisco, US-originated spam dropped by over two trillion messages -- American-based IP addresses sent about 6.2 trillion spam messages. The new world leader is Brazil at 7.7 trillion messages.
These figures are over what span of time, a year? Calendar year 2008? Last week? One weekend? An acquaintance used to send most of his over weekends, when fewer senior admins were around to notice and more people were at home and likely to actually read mail and respond to sales offers, rather than just trashing messages like they do when they are in a hurry during the work week (not sure if this strategy worked). I got about 1.5 million just yesterday. No time to RTFA, after buying 7 Faulex watches, 3 mini helicopters, some stocks that will make me rich, and a pile pf penis pills.
I think this also could relate to maintaining a relatively level playing field for all. If even the fanciest CL ads are not too elaborate, then even the most casual computer user's ads will not necessarily look that much worse. Maybe limiting the technology makes it easier for non-tech savy folks to read, understand, and post on CL with success? The posting interface is so simple that even my grandma can whip up an ad with a picture and get responses to it in no time. If they allowed a whole lot more, average bargain hunters might feel more intimidated by the competition and post less ads. Maybe this is not their motivation, but it is something I actually like about the site.
Slashdot Mirror
The people of the internet want Craig Mundie to STFU. But they will consider his whiny suggestion if he does in fact STFU and agrees never to apply for a license. They thought the internet was free, as in you are free to make an ass out of yourself, just as he does in real life.
Oddly, Majia said his parents did not know that he was hacking at night [hacking is illegal in China].
His parents know. If he hacks for money, is up late at night fiddling with computers all the time, and talks about hacking with unusual guests right in front of his mom, she knows what is going on. This is a mother with traditional, conservative beliefs who does not want to be rude and is reluctant to admit that her son is a criminal, so she ignores the entire situation. Not that unusual, and not indicative of some strange counter cultural underworld that is unique to China. Though I'm sure my folks and my friends' parents all thought our blue boxes, black boxes, and mobile (as in, in a car) collections of computers and cordless phones were all for educational purposes back in the day, and the 2600 meetings were just to hang out and drink coffee, since that's what we told them.
i can haz degree now ?? i passed ur classez and now i can gradjuate lol :)
Ok can someone please explain why a cell phone with less power then this laptop costs around 300 bucks and that apparently still does not cover the mfg costs of the device hence the locked in contracts to recoup phone costs? Yet this laptop with an arm proc and a larger screen and more moving parts can be sold at 100??? The iPhone costs $179 to mfg.. Pre $138... g1 $140
Very good question there. $100 seems almost too cheap, though I agree with other people's comments that this price point is a game changer - that's an impulse buy for a lot of people, and something attainable for many,many more with some planning and saving. So how can this work for the manufacturers? Does it have anything to do with GSM/CDMA licensing/development/hardware, or the lack thereof in this case?
I still dig my G1, but if I could get something else with a bigger, better screen and that smokes the phone but is still highly portable for only $100, I'd buy one immediately.
Yeah, I'd give 'em two ones and tell them to keep the change.
This isn't about the money though, and even if the courts knocked it down to that number, I don't think defendant would go along with it so willingly. Personally, I'd give 'em the two bucks too, but I'd demand my change back from those fuckers.
I'd like to let everyone know that Mars is full of gold just under the crust, and every planet around Proxima Centauri is rich with uranium.
That's quite intriguing, and something to consider, although gold might not be worth going to Mars for if there were a whole planet of it there. And I'd rather just see more news about Uranus.
And furthermore, we all need to remember to pray to Jobs and thank him for OS X, since the internet could certainly not run largely on linux or other OSs.
Yeah, it sucks that I can't get all of my work done on this cheap computer because it is running linux instead of OS X (nevermind all the folks who use Windows - I'm sure nothing of use is ever done with those solitaire machines, since they don't run OS X). But at least I'm not bothered by lots of phone calls, emails, and other communications sent by people bugging me to get a real OS so I can get work done, since my useless phone runs Android rather than being an iphone. And now that I've mentioned iphones, I feel even more need to get one today, since the only network they are available for is so much more reliable and useful than mine, even though I've never had a problem with T-Mobile.
Man, talk about flamebait. How did that even get posted? Must have been done on an iphone or Mac.
Why would you need to do this? For $70, a bunch of work, and to open yourself up to a hugely major security and safety risk? I'm not sure where the poster lives, but there are plenty of companies who do aftermarket work on cars here and advertise that they will install proper remote start systems for something like $100-$150. I don't have a need for this, but if I did, I would pay $30 more to know it would work and not be triggered by a wrong number. You can probably build your own refrigerator and sofa out of other objects too, but there are stores that sell pre-made ones, you know.
The Viewer Friendly Interface trope was (surprisingly) largely averted in the Matrix where only a little Hollywood was wrapped around an almost unmodified nmap and sshnuke.
Yes, very true, except for two tiny exceptions: the crazy, green characters flying all over their screens (which does not look like a very easy to use ui, to me), and the small fact that the majority of interfacing with the matrix is done in people's minds after physically sticking something into the backs of their necks.
Of course, with this settlement now, I'm sure Samsung will claim that it did anything wrong. $900 million worth of nothing wrong, to be more precise.
This looks like one of those cases were they are really saying, "Yeah, we screwed you, but please please please take this money so a court doesn't award you nearly as much AND open us up to further suits by consumers or other companies we screwed, since open discovery and an official finding that we did what we did would be very, very bad for us, and will delay the money you will get." So shocking.
I switched to T-Mobile from AT&T and got a G1 last June. I have been quite happy with not only the phone but also with the coverage. I can not get 3G where I live, though it was not available with AT&T, either. 3G has been available whenever I've been in or near a larger city, just not out in my suburban/nearly-rural town. The pricing is okay - not what I would call cheap, but less than AT&T. I have needed customer service twice since switching, and both times, the representative was surprisingly cheerful (like she was actually happy, not just going through the motions of her job and waiting for payday), listened to and comprehended my problem, and gave me a solution immediately. The first time was due to my own carelessness and they could have easily told me "tough luck," but they were very helpful and understanding.
Overall, I was expecting an experience just like I had gotten used to with Alltel, Cingular, AT&T (old), Cingular (round two - slightly better coverage), AT&T (after taking over Cingular), and like friends have had with Verizon (horrible). I also strongly considered Sprint, but when I went to buy a Palm Pre, the sales folks were too busy and disorganized to help me, so I left. T-Mobile has been fine for the first six months. Careful where you buy though - one local, indie company insisted that their price for a G1 ($200, I think) was what everyone had to charge and insulted me for questioning them, even though it was $129 online, there was a brief promo around that time for less, and WalMart (ick) had it for $99.
I'd go for this instead of a business jet. Far more fun and you don't have to worry if the engines fail - you can always use the ejection seat. Russian fighter's ejection seats are far more safe than the US ones - you can eject at over Mach 2 and survive!
It would certainly be impressive, but it would be hard to stare at your Blackberry, have a cocktail, and count the rest of your money if you actually had to pilot the plane. And if you seriously think you might have to use the ejector seat one day, this is not a good risk/reward scenario, financially speaking, since most business jets are never written off as total losses due to crashing. And what real business man with a jet mixes his own cocktail anyway?
The fact that you are asking on slashdot shows that you are not qualified, and what you're going to get back is a bunch of others, who aren't qualified, suggesting all sorts of half assed hacks to do it which will just result in a utterly shitty service overall.
Seriously? That's your answer? You think this is that hard, and you presume that no experts or professionals read and contribute to slashdot? There is plenty of good advice in this thread, though this is not it. My area of expertise is not ISP infrastructure, but I know a project of this size and scope is not necessarily impossible for someone who doesn't do it all the time. My advice for the original poster is to formulate a complete plan before beginning work - complete as in have every bit of hardware figured out, know exactly what software will be running where, allow twice as much time as you think you will need, test and test some more before going live, and plan for budgetary contingencies. Throwing ungodly sums of money at a problem isn't the only way to do it full-assed.
All that hype, and a nice but not ground-breaking phone that is being sold with even worse terms than are the norm. I thought it was going to blow away all other phones, including the Droid and IPhone? Marginally better, perhaps. Wasn't it supposed to be "Google branded" and unlocked, so you could do as you please with it? Sounds pretty tightly tied to Mobile, and operates more or less like all the other HTC Android phones. It isn't even especially attractive. I've been a pretty big fan of some of the things Google has done, but lately now it seems as if they are behaving just like every other company: screwing customers whenever a profit can be made, making empty promises, doing as much as possible to put competitors out of business, and just generally sucking. I still like my G1 and depend on Gmail, but Google is beginning to annoy me.
Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should start sharing more porn! Darn leechers!
Perhaps those who aren't using anywhere near 250GB a month should start paying less.
If the price is a flat $45 (or whatever) for unlimited use, that is fine. But if they can quantify usage and affix a more specific pricing scheme to it over and above 250GB of usage, then they can due the same but in reverse for usage under 250GB a month. But they won't. This isn't about fairness or network congestion, it is about making as much money as possible, nothing more.
Opinion of Comcast and Time Warner: "Some folks download a lot and will continue to do so, so let's wring every last penny from them!!! What are they gonna do, get some crappy DSL connection? Haha, let's see them get comparable download speeds. Some of them can't get DSL at all. Screw 'em, it isn't like we have competition. Oh, and we should probably raise TV rates again, just for the hell of it (but no reason to improve service). Thank you, local monopolies!"
...Zed Shaw is a cranky, irrelevant whiner 96.3% of the time, at least according to the lambda standard deviation of the probability factor. Or so the graph shows, when enough data points are confabulated by the denominator of the sigma variation. And he thinks HE knows statistics.
Very well said. But you forgot about 14400 and 19200. Man, I sure was in heaven Christmas morning of 1992 or 1993 when I opened my Zoom 14.4k modem. Naturally it amazed me, and I thought there would never be anything much faster, aside from the "exotic" 19.2k modems that none of the local boards or my friends had. I think Zyxel and a USR model or two would do 16.8k. 1200 and 2400 were never acceptable again, though 14.4k meant speed to spare! Then a year or two later we thought 28.8k was near a theoretical speed limit for twisted-pair copper, 33.6k used dirty tricks, 56k was unrealistic and not possible for a BBS, 64k/128k ISDN was crazy expensive, and ADSL and SDSL were futuristic 21st century vaporware. Today's DSL and cable speeds were unfathomable 15 years ago, not to mention optical fiber which seems to be getting rolled out everywhere except where I live.
He's right. The OLPC project appears to have lost its focus on improving education for the most disadvantaged children, and is instead attempting to innovate in other ways. This falls into the same category as many other tech/geekdom mistakes: making the gadgets and gizmos the focus rather than what they can do for people. I love building and upgrading computers, trying out new operating systems, and just generally tinkering with all sorts of things, so that is a legitimate hobby for me. But crap like M$ software and things like Macs are popular because people can just get their real work done with them. The most awesome, multi-touch, quad core, 16GB DDR4 tablet computer won't help an author like my mom finish a book faster, or do anything to help a kid learn if the kid can't get one. Make it work, and make it available NOW, and you've got a winner.
I could argue about incorrect word creation and use like this all day. Irregardless, I have to go literally right this second to dethaw a roast for x-mas, which is a whole nother story we won't go into.
...but not dead yet. There is news today that Spyker has changed their offer.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/20/autos/saab_gm_spyker_offer/index.htm
Ted Alvin Klaudt Ted Alvin Klaudt Ted Alvin Klaudt Ted Alvin Klaudt Ted Alvin Klaudt Ted Alvin Klaudt
No, you can not have $3 million, Ted Alvin Klaudt! Idiot.
I've been saying pretty much this exact same thing for years: the penalty for a particular infraction is largely irrelevant if the chances of it being put into effect are very slim. People commit crimes not because they don't care about being incarcerated or fined, or because they necessarily disagree with the intent of a particular law - people commit crimes because doing so makes their lives more convenient in some way and most importantly, because they think they can get away with it.
This is so simple! If general deterrence were effective, the USA would have lower murder and violent crime rates than perhaps any other industrialized country. I'll leave out the boring statistics and tell you that the opposite is true. Our penalties are very stiff, though the certainty of apprehension is not high(high proportion of unsolved crimes), relative to comparable nations. Therefore, our gun-loving, cowboy citizenry sometimes thinks they are slick enough to escape prosecution. Even the specific deterrence of harsh penalties for minor/non-violent crimes is ineffective here, which is proven by ridiculously high recidivism rates. My solutions are not the point here, and I could go on and on and on, so I won't go into that. But until we begin to enforce laws that prohibit largely-unseen behaviors (or, *gasp*, educate people to prevent dangerous behaviors) in a more certain way, hefty fines and jail terms will not prevent cell phone use while driving, copyright evasion, vandalism, petty theft, white collar crimes, or most other crimes.
No matter your stance on any particular subset of laws, I think you must agree that prohibitions without teeth (or ones that are perceived to be unenforceable) are pointless.
America is no longer the spam king. According to Cisco, US-originated spam dropped by over two trillion messages -- American-based IP addresses sent about 6.2 trillion spam messages. The new world leader is Brazil at 7.7 trillion messages.
These figures are over what span of time, a year? Calendar year 2008? Last week? One weekend? An acquaintance used to send most of his over weekends, when fewer senior admins were around to notice and more people were at home and likely to actually read mail and respond to sales offers, rather than just trashing messages like they do when they are in a hurry during the work week (not sure if this strategy worked). I got about 1.5 million just yesterday. No time to RTFA, after buying 7 Faulex watches, 3 mini helicopters, some stocks that will make me rich, and a pile pf penis pills.
I think this also could relate to maintaining a relatively level playing field for all. If even the fanciest CL ads are not too elaborate, then even the most casual computer user's ads will not necessarily look that much worse. Maybe limiting the technology makes it easier for non-tech savy folks to read, understand, and post on CL with success? The posting interface is so simple that even my grandma can whip up an ad with a picture and get responses to it in no time. If they allowed a whole lot more, average bargain hunters might feel more intimidated by the competition and post less ads. Maybe this is not their motivation, but it is something I actually like about the site.