The US has entrenched technology that will take decades if not centuries to phase out; coal and oil fired power plants, internal combustion engines for automobiles, oil, natural gas, and coal heat for homes, and so forth.
China has a great opportunity to go electric across the board from the get-go, using nuclear power and solar power. Their infrastructure is still immature, and as such there is no huge investment in existing power to speak of. I'm sure that the folks working in agriculture are still using wood, peat, or coal for heat, and have not spent thousands on oil-fired central heating systems for their homes; why not go electric from the beginning? Then emissions controls can be centralized, and their choice for petrol-vs.-nuke-vs.-wind can be made now. What's more, if so-called environmentalists who really are all about "NIMBY" can't block this development like they can here with their bleeding heart "think of the children" whining. (sorry about that last comment, I'm just really bitter about so-called environmentalist dropping the cape wind project in Nantucket Sound, especially that drunkard Ted Kennedy who claims to be an environmentalist)
Equally important there is the issue of system crashes; if an electronic voting booth dies, and the HDDs/flash memory/etc. dies and/or corrupts so badly that data recovery will take weeks or worse yet be unrecoverable, then will those votes get discounted? Yes, I realize that paper ballots can burn with a building, but throughout the election and tallying process there are people present to supervise and protect the ballots, and those persons can remove the ballots from danger in the face of the alternative (discounting botes)
Also: in this country we have a secret ballot. We can identify who voted, but cannot determine who voted for whom. This is by design to protect citizens in the face of tyranny. Oh sure, you can find out who someone voted for by asking him or her, but that person will have to admit it.
When it comes to computerized voting, who voted for whom can be immediately identified, and in the event of a coup, it becomes a simple matter to identify political opponents and eliminate them.
- Installing the OS - unless on bleeding-edge hardware, it's actually easier than installing Windows. Ref: SuSE, (k)Ubuntu, Mandriva, Linspire
- Using office applications, email, etc.
- Connecting digital cameras, MP3 players, and most scanners
- Configuring most older printers
What is a royal pain in the ass in Linux:
- Connecting to PDAs, cellphones (Oh, using a cellphone as a modem is a snap, but to pull photos and contact lists from the phone? Good freaking luck. Even Moto4Lin is a pain in the neck)
- Configuring scanners which require firmware
(developers ought to say "fuck copyright" and include the firmware, or prompt for the Windows driver disc and automate extraction of the firmware, similar to the ndiswrapper install process. Why? First sale doctrine rights apply. You buy the scanner, a commodity good, and not a work for hire, you shouldn't have to hunt all over for fucking firmware that SHOULD BE FLASHED INTO THE DEVICE to begin with. Fuck vendors who go the uber-cheap route)
- Configuring MythTV. Easy if you go with Knoppmyth and have an obsolete motherboard, but if you have a bleeding-edge or even fairly-recent system? Forget about Knoppmyth and have fun hunting down firmware files (see above point regarding scanner firmware)
- Configuring newer printers (Konica Minolta and Kyocera aside; may God bless those companies, they come with incredibly good drivers for Linux), and GOOD LUCK getting full-bleed printouts, even with a commercial print filter solution like turboprint
Well to be honest my post was inspired by a friend who worked at BBN/Genuity/whateverthehellthey'recalledtoday who actually has those issues, but he did a good job at it because he studied and worked hard at learning the ins and outs of checkpoint and Cisco products. I just thought that the idea of capitalizing on certain mental characteristics which are normally viewed as negative, but in a positive way. Of course, the primary intent was humor, but who knows, while I was making a wisecrack there may be something to that idea.
why bother with that when you can hire a schizo with paranoia issues who also suffers from OCD? Tell him to monitor the firewalls, and that if anyone manages to break in undetected that he'll lose his job. Add in some muzak with subliminal messages chanting "they're breaking in! They're out to get you!" then you'll have your dream tech monitoring your NOC. No need to train anyone to be paranoid, just take a few mentally ill folks off of their brain meds and leverage their condition. You'll save them money on medical care, they'll get paid and have a secure job, and you will rest easy knowing you have paranoid people obsessively monitoring your network.:D
Keygens come up with random keys and test them against known algorithms.
Microsoft generates keys according to their algorithms, sends them to distributors, they sit on the shelves for MONTHS. However they are determined to be valid keys.
In the meantime, pirate uses one of the keys which tested as "valid" but which matches stock on the shelf.
You purchase LEGIT package with the cloned key, however, that key has already been activated by Microsoft so your install is invalid.
You're fucked. So sad, too bad, buy another license.
Even Joe Sixpack will benefit. His MSIE will have one browser and his minimum of three rootkits/spambots/spyware background processes will run on the other three cores without bringing his machine to a screeching halt.
I doubt very much that MS will say "IE 7 has X million users"; they'll say "IE 7 has been downloaded X million times" and leave the "but that doesn't really say a lot about how many people are actually using it" unsaid, just as the article summaries for FF download numbers here do.
OK, what about downloading firefox ONCE to a fileserver, and pushing it out via login scripts?
Therefore, I can legitimately claim a >100:1 user:download ratio. So, based on my anecdotal experience, I can only presume that at least 200 million users have already upgraded to and are using Firefox. Also, every PC we deploy/sell/etc. has Firefox preinstalled on it and configured as the default browser. The install image is most certainly not downloaded for each individual machine.
85% of statistics are made up on the spot; 99% of staticians can tell you that!;) Although, the numbers in my experience are true. Here internally at my office the ratio is more on the order of 12:1, so to be fair I could make the assumption that my experience = everyone's and that there are at minimum 24 million Firefox2 users.
My point? Downloads != active users and downloads != browser share. There may be fewer active users, or far more likely, several to many times that amount. Wait a few months and see what big sites report as their trends. I'd expect MySpace and other lame "community" sites to be more MSIE-heavy since it'll be mainly MSIE-using kiddie-speak-spouting teenyboppers on Daddy Joe Sixpack's PeeCee with preinstalled-spyware-ridden $299 Dell computers. MSN/MS Live search will boast probably five nines' MSIE browser share. Forbes, zdnet, google, digg, slashdot, or even shitty site Fark will likely claim that Firefox has the majority of the market. For practically any given site, the statistics will be skewed based on the demographic the sites cater to.
So; how does one arrive at the true share statistics, short of random surveys?
Oh, there is a SIMPLE fix for this. If your key was used by some warez kiddie with a key generator, Microsoft's solution is for you to buy a new license even they sold you the invalid/cloned license in the first place. Now THAT'S customer service!
. . . supposed to be reserved strictly for security patches and not new functionality?
It couldn't possibly be Microsoft leveraging their monopoly to regain what share of the market they have lost to Firefox, Opera, etc. now, could it? Why couldn't they just FIX security problems in MSIE 6?
Please, before complaining about GIMP's UI give Photoshop on OS X a try. Or even the OS X version of Microsoft Office (toolbars float on the desktop, which is very nice).
I have, and it does not sport the behavior I am pointing out. Bring a document forward - yep, toolbars/docks/palettes come forward as well.
And as far as virtual desktops go: I hate them, and much prefer multihead systems.
[One thing strikes me though - "losing focus" hardly matters in a unix-style lazy-focus-follows-pointer world - you sure you're not running your desktop in utterly pants windows-style "click to focus-and-raise-argh"?]
That's fine when you're running a single application, or if you're running a multihead box with Gimp all by its lonesome on one screen, but as soon as you have multiple documents or multiple applications open on the screen where Gimp is, it becomes a PITA.
Where the hell is the tool palette? Where the hell is the layer palette? alt-tab or check the dock or the click window menu and search for it. When one brings a document window forward, all applicable contextual/sibling windows (palettes) should come to the foreground as well - or it should at least be an option one can enable.
Right, and alternative applications and OSes is always a bad thing. You know, Rehat should be everyone's choice distribution, and Gnome should be the ONLY desktop. Oh, and the Gnome theme you use on your desktop should be the ONLY theme, right down to your choice of wallpaper. Heck, let's take it a step further! Linux, BSD, OS X, and QNX should all be killed off in favor of Windows.
Not everyone likes Gimp. Not everyone likes Krita. Not everyone likes Photoshop. Not everyone likes Paint Shop Pro. Some people like the choices, and some people BUY Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, but still use The Gimp for some tasks. Why shouldn't the KDE folks continue Krita development?
But of course, you posted AC just to troll, so I shouldn't be wasting this bandwidth right now responding to such an assinine comment.
No way; they'd be worse off because they would be following bullshit links to cloaked pages, linkfarms, and the like. In other words, they'd be on a wild goose chase and not catching the real criminals.
Oh wait, this PROVES they're googling for ter'rists!;)
and USA is the absolute World champion of protectionism,
Funny, everything I buy in the stores is labeled "made in Taiwan" or "made in China" or "made in Viet Nam" - hardly anything "made in USA" any more. In fact it's so hard to find stuff manufactured here that a few months ago I quit looking.
Install Windows XP OEM - say you had an old SP1 "license" on hand to use. You're using the submitted-by-Nvidia-to-microsofoft-distributed-wit h-windows driver (Microsoft does NOT write most drivers, they rely on vendor submissions). OK, now you've run Windows Update and, since you were coerced into Activation immediately to grab the updates. Now install the NVidia driver. Reboot when prompted, oops, time to reactivate Windows. Try to reactivate - yep, time to call Microsoft and wait on hold for 10 minutes or more.
Fuck Microsoft. I cannot put enough venom behind that to convey my hatred of their anti-customer policies; policies which are NOT deterring pirates in the least because they just download streamlined CD images ANYHOW, and are left 100% unaffected by activation.
Also, NO Mustang is in league with those cars. The only American cars currently in production which are would be the Corvette and the Viper. The Ford GT was too, but sadly, Ford cancelled production of that gorgeous car.:(
See, Vista users are going to install an upgrade from Windows XP to Vista. Activation #1.
Next, they will find their HDD is somewhat tight for space (13GB footprint for RC1), so they will upgrade their HDD. Oh, and the video card is inadequate, they'll hear the NVidia 7300 or 7600 runs Vista great. So they upgrade --- oops, nope, wait, Microsoft says they need to buy a new license? Just because the machine was upgraded to effectively run Vista with the new shiny interface? WTF?
Do Chevrolet, Cadillac, Pontiac, Buick, GMC, Saab, etc. file separate returns at the end of the fiscal year? Are they separate entities in that respect? And, are they further broken down? What about other mega-corps? Is Sprawl*Mart broken into hundreds separate legal entities which file taxes separately?
If not, then poster's point is valid. Microsoft wants puny companies like mine running Windows because small companies (which large accounting firms do not even consider to be small businesses because of the sub $10mil revenue - even many of my larger clients with 20-50 employees don't rank in the small business category as defined by large accounting firms) to run Windows, but they're pissing the likes of us off with their licensing.
The truth is, I think that they have seen their market peak over the last few years, it's shrinking thanks to gains in OS X and Linux, so they are attempting to boost their short-to-mid term earnings before they finally fall. They're grabbing what they can in the meantime, but where does that leave users who legally purchased Windows but want to upgrade video drivers or hard drives? That's right, seeking Activation cracks to take advantage of their legally-purchased commodity goods.
Backups, for example. If you buy your kids an Xbox and pay $40-$80 per game, you do not want their grubby hands on the originals, you want to give them copies and keep the originals on the shelf out of harm's way.
Slashdot Mirror
*snickerfits* Well this certainly clears up the objections he has toward the project.
Simple.
The US has entrenched technology that will take decades if not centuries to phase out; coal and oil fired power plants, internal combustion engines for automobiles, oil, natural gas, and coal heat for homes, and so forth.
China has a great opportunity to go electric across the board from the get-go, using nuclear power and solar power. Their infrastructure is still immature, and as such there is no huge investment in existing power to speak of. I'm sure that the folks working in agriculture are still using wood, peat, or coal for heat, and have not spent thousands on oil-fired central heating systems for their homes; why not go electric from the beginning? Then emissions controls can be centralized, and their choice for petrol-vs.-nuke-vs.-wind can be made now. What's more, if so-called environmentalists who really are all about "NIMBY" can't block this development like they can here with their bleeding heart "think of the children" whining. (sorry about that last comment, I'm just really bitter about so-called environmentalist dropping the cape wind project in Nantucket Sound, especially that drunkard Ted Kennedy who claims to be an environmentalist)
They are called "freelance writers" and "tipsters."
That's because North Korea blocked the entire internet.
Equally important there is the issue of system crashes; if an electronic voting booth dies, and the HDDs/flash memory/etc. dies and/or corrupts so badly that data recovery will take weeks or worse yet be unrecoverable, then will those votes get discounted? Yes, I realize that paper ballots can burn with a building, but throughout the election and tallying process there are people present to supervise and protect the ballots, and those persons can remove the ballots from danger in the face of the alternative (discounting botes)
Also: in this country we have a secret ballot. We can identify who voted, but cannot determine who voted for whom. This is by design to protect citizens in the face of tyranny. Oh sure, you can find out who someone voted for by asking him or her, but that person will have to admit it.
When it comes to computerized voting, who voted for whom can be immediately identified, and in the event of a coup, it becomes a simple matter to identify political opponents and eliminate them.
What is EASY in Linux:
- Installing the OS - unless on bleeding-edge hardware, it's actually easier than installing Windows. Ref: SuSE, (k)Ubuntu, Mandriva, Linspire
- Using office applications, email, etc.
- Connecting digital cameras, MP3 players, and most scanners
- Configuring most older printers
What is a royal pain in the ass in Linux:
- Connecting to PDAs, cellphones (Oh, using a cellphone as a modem is a snap, but to pull photos and contact lists from the phone? Good freaking luck. Even Moto4Lin is a pain in the neck)
- Configuring scanners which require firmware
(developers ought to say "fuck copyright" and include the firmware, or prompt for the Windows driver disc and automate extraction of the firmware, similar to the ndiswrapper install process. Why? First sale doctrine rights apply. You buy the scanner, a commodity good, and not a work for hire, you shouldn't have to hunt all over for fucking firmware that SHOULD BE FLASHED INTO THE DEVICE to begin with. Fuck vendors who go the uber-cheap route)
- Configuring MythTV. Easy if you go with Knoppmyth and have an obsolete motherboard, but if you have a bleeding-edge or even fairly-recent system? Forget about Knoppmyth and have fun hunting down firmware files (see above point regarding scanner firmware)
- Configuring newer printers (Konica Minolta and Kyocera aside; may God bless those companies, they come with incredibly good drivers for Linux), and GOOD LUCK getting full-bleed printouts, even with a commercial print filter solution like turboprint
Well to be honest my post was inspired by a friend who worked at BBN/Genuity/whateverthehellthey'recalledtoday who actually has those issues, but he did a good job at it because he studied and worked hard at learning the ins and outs of checkpoint and Cisco products. I just thought that the idea of capitalizing on certain mental characteristics which are normally viewed as negative, but in a positive way. Of course, the primary intent was humor, but who knows, while I was making a wisecrack there may be something to that idea.
CA does not have a secret ballot?
why bother with that when you can hire a schizo with paranoia issues who also suffers from OCD? Tell him to monitor the firewalls, and that if anyone manages to break in undetected that he'll lose his job. Add in some muzak with subliminal messages chanting "they're breaking in! They're out to get you!" then you'll have your dream tech monitoring your NOC. No need to train anyone to be paranoid, just take a few mentally ill folks off of their brain meds and leverage their condition. You'll save them money on medical care, they'll get paid and have a secure job, and you will rest easy knowing you have paranoid people obsessively monitoring your network. :D
Uh, let's think about it for a moment, shall we?
Keygens come up with random keys and test them against known algorithms.
Microsoft generates keys according to their algorithms, sends them to distributors, they sit on the shelves for MONTHS. However they are determined to be valid keys.
In the meantime, pirate uses one of the keys which tested as "valid" but which matches stock on the shelf.
You purchase LEGIT package with the cloned key, however, that key has already been activated by Microsoft so your install is invalid.
You're fucked. So sad, too bad, buy another license.
Even Joe Sixpack will benefit. His MSIE will have one browser and his minimum of three rootkits/spambots/spyware background processes will run on the other three cores without bringing his machine to a screeching halt.
OK, what about downloading firefox ONCE to a fileserver, and pushing it out via login scripts?
Therefore, I can legitimately claim a >100:1 user:download ratio. So, based on my anecdotal experience, I can only presume that at least 200 million users have already upgraded to and are using Firefox. Also, every PC we deploy/sell/etc. has Firefox preinstalled on it and configured as the default browser. The install image is most certainly not downloaded for each individual machine.
85% of statistics are made up on the spot; 99% of staticians can tell you that!
My point? Downloads != active users and downloads != browser share. There may be fewer active users, or far more likely, several to many times that amount. Wait a few months and see what big sites report as their trends. I'd expect MySpace and other lame "community" sites to be more MSIE-heavy since it'll be mainly MSIE-using kiddie-speak-spouting teenyboppers on Daddy Joe Sixpack's PeeCee with preinstalled-spyware-ridden $299 Dell computers. MSN/MS Live search will boast probably five nines' MSIE browser share. Forbes, zdnet, google, digg, slashdot, or even shitty site Fark will likely claim that Firefox has the majority of the market. For practically any given site, the statistics will be skewed based on the demographic the sites cater to.
So; how does one arrive at the true share statistics, short of random surveys?
Oh, there is a SIMPLE fix for this. If your key was used by some warez kiddie with a key generator, Microsoft's solution is for you to buy a new license even they sold you the invalid/cloned license in the first place. Now THAT'S customer service!
. . . supposed to be reserved strictly for security patches and not new functionality?
It couldn't possibly be Microsoft leveraging their monopoly to regain what share of the market they have lost to Firefox, Opera, etc. now, could it? Why couldn't they just FIX security problems in MSIE 6?
I have, and it does not sport the behavior I am pointing out. Bring a document forward - yep, toolbars/docks/palettes come forward as well.
And as far as virtual desktops go: I hate them, and much prefer multihead systems.
That's fine when you're running a single application, or if you're running a multihead box with Gimp all by its lonesome on one screen, but as soon as you have multiple documents or multiple applications open on the screen where Gimp is, it becomes a PITA.
Where the hell is the tool palette? Where the hell is the layer palette? alt-tab or check the dock or the click window menu and search for it. When one brings a document window forward, all applicable contextual/sibling windows (palettes) should come to the foreground as well - or it should at least be an option one can enable.
Right, and alternative applications and OSes is always a bad thing. You know, Rehat should be everyone's choice distribution, and Gnome should be the ONLY desktop. Oh, and the Gnome theme you use on your desktop should be the ONLY theme, right down to your choice of wallpaper. Heck, let's take it a step further! Linux, BSD, OS X, and QNX should all be killed off in favor of Windows.
Not everyone likes Gimp. Not everyone likes Krita. Not everyone likes Photoshop. Not everyone likes Paint Shop Pro. Some people like the choices, and some people BUY Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, but still use The Gimp for some tasks. Why shouldn't the KDE folks continue Krita development?
But of course, you posted AC just to troll, so I shouldn't be wasting this bandwidth right now responding to such an assinine comment.
No way; they'd be worse off because they would be following bullshit links to cloaked pages, linkfarms, and the like. In other words, they'd be on a wild goose chase and not catching the real criminals.
;)
Oh wait, this PROVES they're googling for ter'rists!
Funny, everything I buy in the stores is labeled "made in Taiwan" or "made in China" or "made in Viet Nam" - hardly anything "made in USA" any more. In fact it's so hard to find stuff manufactured here that a few months ago I quit looking.
OK, try this:
t h-windows driver (Microsoft does NOT write most drivers, they rely on vendor submissions). OK, now you've run Windows Update and, since you were coerced into Activation immediately to grab the updates. Now install the NVidia driver. Reboot when prompted, oops, time to reactivate Windows. Try to reactivate - yep, time to call Microsoft and wait on hold for 10 minutes or more.
Install Windows XP OEM - say you had an old SP1 "license" on hand to use.
You're using the submitted-by-Nvidia-to-microsofoft-distributed-wi
Fuck Microsoft. I cannot put enough venom behind that to convey my hatred of their anti-customer policies; policies which are NOT deterring pirates in the least because they just download streamlined CD images ANYHOW, and are left 100% unaffected by activation.
You misspelled Rustang. ;)
:(
Also, NO Mustang is in league with those cars. The only American cars currently in production which are would be the Corvette and the Viper. The Ford GT was too, but sadly, Ford cancelled production of that gorgeous car.
It's going to be >5%.
See, Vista users are going to install an upgrade from Windows XP to Vista. Activation #1.
Next, they will find their HDD is somewhat tight for space (13GB footprint for RC1), so they will upgrade their HDD. Oh, and the video card is inadequate, they'll hear the NVidia 7300 or 7600 runs Vista great. So they upgrade --- oops, nope, wait, Microsoft says they need to buy a new license? Just because the machine was upgraded to effectively run Vista with the new shiny interface? WTF?
Do Chevrolet, Cadillac, Pontiac, Buick, GMC, Saab, etc. file separate returns at the end of the fiscal year? Are they separate entities in that respect? And, are they further broken down? What about other mega-corps? Is Sprawl*Mart broken into hundreds separate legal entities which file taxes separately?
If not, then poster's point is valid. Microsoft wants puny companies like mine running Windows because small companies (which large accounting firms do not even consider to be small businesses because of the sub $10mil revenue - even many of my larger clients with 20-50 employees don't rank in the small business category as defined by large accounting firms) to run Windows, but they're pissing the likes of us off with their licensing.
The truth is, I think that they have seen their market peak over the last few years, it's shrinking thanks to gains in OS X and Linux, so they are attempting to boost their short-to-mid term earnings before they finally fall. They're grabbing what they can in the meantime, but where does that leave users who legally purchased Windows but want to upgrade video drivers or hard drives? That's right, seeking Activation cracks to take advantage of their legally-purchased commodity goods.
I think the VIC-20 and C=64 beat it to:
Ready
[]
Hint: not all copies are illegal.
Backups, for example. If you buy your kids an Xbox and pay $40-$80 per game, you do not want their grubby hands on the originals, you want to give them copies and keep the originals on the shelf out of harm's way.