...in other words, given enough time, something *will* happen.
And sooner or later a micro-meteorite is going to slam through someones skull and end their life. However, we should do absolutely nothing about this.
We should still do what we can, within reason, to reduce the likelihood of their success. It's that "within reason" that most people seem to have lost sight of.
Exactly what is "within reason" here? Terrorism as a risk falls miles behind "diabetes". Its even far below "accidental incident with fire arm". It chums around with risks like "breaking neck falling down stairs".
Clearly we don't need a "Deparment of Staircase Security" with a multibillion dollar budget to make our stairways safer. What do we need? A response proportional to the risk is pretty minimal.
On occasion? Ha, that is the funniest thing I have ever heard.
Pretty much.
but we're *much* more beholden to actual proof of ability and less likely to have corruption when purchasing such expensive tools.
Across the street they sell tap water in a bottle for about $3. Further up the road you can buy anti-aging cream and various weight loss solutions that don't do either.
Granted its not 16,000. But its only because the average joe's budgets are simply too constrained for that scale of excess. In other words, if the average joe had access to military scale funding, he wouldn't blink at spending it. And of course, their are perfectly ineffective anti-aging creams in the thousands of dollars too... aimed at the discerning idiot.
And let us never forget our beloved cable vendor "Monster" where you can get $4 worth of wire and plastic for $140... or my personal favorite... the $500 ethernet patch cord from Denon.
I disagree with the EULA. It doesn't bind me. I decline to enter into that agreement.
That's why it says something like "if you don't agree to this, you can return this software for a full refund". It's not like you lost your money.
And my brother who received it as a gift?
But fine, so they offer a remedy if I don't agree (although it can be a royal hassle actually exercising this option), so what?
Yet another remedy is to ignore the EULA agreement entirely since I don't agree with it.
Now this is the important part: if I don't AGREE to it, then NONE of its terms or restrictions apply, because I don't agree to it.
That means that the ONLY thing that does apply are the normal copyright laws, and first sale doctrine etc, etc.
That means they can't dictate what my options are if I don't agree, because those options are part of the contract I didn't agree too. And they can't tell me I can't use it without agreeing because they ALREADY sold it to me. And without an agreement that says otherwise, first sale doctrine and copyright law allow me to use the copy I bought however I see fit.
Why shouldn't I be able to specify what happens with the software I write? Why shouldn't I be able to specify "you must run this on my hardware" as a condition of sale?
Make it a "condition of sale" and we'll talk.
Right now, I can walk into a store, buy a copy of OSX, take it home, give it to my brother for his birthday (implied complete transfer of ownership). And by the time you get around to trying to impose "conditions of sale" the sale is a fading memory... of a person who doesn't even have it anymore.
You want to make something a "condition of sale", fine, but you've got do that when you MAKE THE SALE.
More accurately, "if the robot is convinced that not killing hitler will lead to millions of lives being lost, yep."
An important, but subtle, difference in my restatement is that its not enough to know that killing hitler would stop the war. After all perhaps merely locking him in a closet for a year would also stop the war...point is, if they had a reasonable alternative to killing him they would take it, even if they were certain killing him would work.
Too bad youre not legally allowed to sell a book with out its cover.
Of course you can.
Learn the law before you analogize about it.
Yes, please do.
The whole "book without cover" refers to the way in which bookstores deal with extra copies. Rather than ship at great expense books nobody wants to get a refund, they tear off the covers and return just the covers, claim the refund, and destrouy the books. In exchange for this convenience they agree (by contract) not to sell those books, and that they have been destroyed.
So if you buy a book without a cover, their is a chance that the vendor has claimed a refund on that book, and is now trying to sell it. This would be a serious violation of their contract, as they agreed to destroy those book.
But there is, and never has been a law agaisnt selling books without their covers. And if your well loved copy of Lord of the Flies loses its cover, there is still nothing preventing you from selling it.
You are not buying the operating system, you are buying a license to use the operating system as laid out by a contract you sign during installation.
I am buying an authorized copy of the operating sytem. No different than a book or CD. Once I've bought that authorized copy. That authorized copy is mine to make USE of as I see fit. Provided I don't make and distribute additional copies.
Or at least it SHOULD be, and i will defy anyone who attempts to prevent me.
And the copies from installation disk to hard drive to ram to l2 cache to l1 cache, to swap file, that are made in the course of USING it? Those are specifically allowed by copyright law AND common sense. And while apple can argue and perhaps even prevail in a court of law, I don't consider it wrong, I will continue doing it, and I will work to fix that law.
I am just a curious person. I am flawed and easily fascinated. I see a name from my past, and I wonder, what in the world is that person up to these days...
Precisely. Its a passing amusement. If facebook were to vanish off the face of the earth some other shiny toy would fill your time. I don't object to people amusing themselves with facebook, that's fine by me.
I object when people claim its somehow important, that it meets and fills a 'need'. It doesn't. Its about on par with browsing youtube, wikipedia, or watching a sitcom. Nothing wrong with any of that, but don't put it on a pedestal.
If it entertains and fascinates you to know that you have a second cousin halfway around the world you've never met who just got a new mountain bike, that's fine, and you can spend your spare time however you like. But keep it in perspective...most of these facebook acquaintences aren't really friends. And if facebook went under and you never heard from or saw any of them again, you'd have to find something else to amuse yourself with, but that's about the extent of the loss.
Unless, of course, he was using WinXP on the same computer before Monday with no such trouble.
Irrelevant. It could still be 3rd party drivers. And yes, it could be the hardware, although its not likely. Unless this computer is on Microsofts Hardware Compatibility List for Windows 7 then its absurd to blame microsoft if it doesn't work.
There are lots of computers out there that will run xp but not 7. That's not a flaw of 7. There's a lot of computers out there than run OS X 10.2 but won't run Snow Leopard. That doesn't make Snow Leopard defective either.
Facebook is now the only way I hear or know about some members of my extended family and old friends
Who tricked you into thinking that having only web based contact with old friends was somehow worthwhile? I can see using a web app to commumicate with real friends and family on top of other channels, but if someone has drifted so far out of your life that facebook is the only way you get any news on them... why bother? If it was your mom or brother I'd get it... but extended family you've only ever seen on facebook... that's not much different arbitrarily choosing some random strangers to decide to care about.
Yeah, he should really update his hard disk drivers so they will come out of sleep mode correctly. Who's responsible for those again?
The motherboard (and/or chipset) vendor and / or the drive controller (and/or chipset) vendor.
If you install a 3rd party controller in your Mac, who is responsible for supporting it? Same applies here.
Linux is the exception, because the community has largely taken responsibility for providing the drivers (because the vendors mostly haven't stepped up).
But regardless of who is at fault, if you use hardware on the official hardware compatibility list, then microsoft has at the very least vetted that it will work. If you use hardware out side that you are on your own, and issues are between you and the vendor. Blaming microsoft because their os won't run on random hardware they never claimed it would run on is absurd.
And a hardware problem that just happened to manifest the exact day he installed 7!? Even you must have a hard time believing that one.
I said it was possible. I (strongly) agree its not likely.
problems like the above are caused by bad drivers that just accidentally happened to work perfectly in previous versions of windows.
Going to 7 from XP? The drivers aren't the same. Your scenario doesn't exist.
Seeing as I'm running full diagnostics on it, the hardware was fine on XP before a complete clean and rebuild, then the issue is with Win7.
Likely but not necessarily true. I've encountered lots of hardware that ran fine on one OS, but failed miserably on another. The issue was hardware. The device specifications indicated X but it really couldn't do all of X. The drivers for OS 1 only asked for a subset of X that it could do correctly, the drivers for OS 2 asked for a different subset of X that it couldn't do.
The fault was with the hardware. RAM is bad for this -- where it will run fine at one of its advertised supported timings, but not at another.
If it's with the vendor supplied drivers, then fine.
Odds are that's where the problem is.
I can't do what I want without them, so it's still to do with the whole experience and readiness of the product
Not really. Bottom line: Win7 isn't compatible with your hardware. It might NEVER be compatible with your hardware. That is not a fault of MS or a reflection of their product. If you want to resolve it you need to switch to compatible hardware.
What you are saying is equivalent to saying you bought a turbo engine upgrade that doesn't work with your particular model of car. The car manufacturer may or may not step up and provided the necessary adaptors and support. If they do great, but if they don't its not the turbo manufacturers fault.
I'd not put it in a business environment as the support margin would be too high
I disagree. Put it on compatible hardware and the support margin would beat both XP and Vista. Hell, I went through this with Vista, and the driver situation was terrible at Vista's launch. But IF you selected components with good driver support Vista was just fine, and in many respects superior to XP. The same is true of any OS. If you try and shoehorn OSX Leopard onto whitebox PC hardware or an old G3 there are all kinds of hiccups and problems too... but its not a defect with Leopard.
Personally, I'd be happier to give my opinion of the OS in 6 months when they have it bedded in. For now, what I say is what I see.
So when you see a car crash do you blame the manufacturer of the car? Do you post on forums how the new Ford is crash prone and isn't ready to be used in the marketplace? Or do you realize that, while there very well could be serious defects with the car, it it FAR more probable that it was a bad driver?
When windows 7 crashes why do you automatically blame Microsoft and talk about the lousy Windows 7 experience. Maybe as with cars, one should look at the drivers first.
I'm counting 2 BSODs, 6 complete lock ups and a few failures to activate disk drives waking up from sleep mode since Monday (I got the UK preorder, which came early due to the postal strikes here).
All that since monday? Clearly you have driver or even hardware problems.
Blame Microsoft if it makes you feel better, but the real problem is almost certainly elsewhere.
So... How did you change the resolution to 640x480
He went into the display settings, selected 640x480 and pressed, ok.
If so then you must presumably be able to change the resolution again using those same commands and you don't have a problem.
When its 640x480 and you go into that display settings dialog, you can select 1280x1024, but you can't press OK. So no, the same sequence of actions doesn't work. Because the dialog box is too big for 640x480.
Now if you know arcane keyboard shortcuts you can use them to move the window to reveal the offscreen button, but most people don't know that. If you have 2nd computer runnign the same version running right beside it, you can see how many tab presses it takes to get to the 'ok' button and then mirror that on the other unit, but most people don't have that luxury.
I don't have a machine running Ubuntu to hand to try.
This is why you probably should have kept your mouth shut.
But what do you call it when a huge portion of the wealth you create (in some cases >50% even in the US, very often >50% outside the US) is taken from you at gunpoint*, and given to someone else?
I call it tax. Same as most people.
It's one thing if it's taken and spent on national defense, infrastructure, etc., but when it is just taken from the individual who produced it and given to an individual who did not
That's a gross over simplification on multiple levels. The majority of the people who receive assistance do so for a temporary period of time. Its a safety net. Anyone can fall on hard times.
There are also crime and other arguments to be made as well. For example, if there were no social assistance there would be more crime. These people are not GOING to simply all quietly starve to death, they are ultimately going to do whatever it takes. Sure they can and will seek work, but if they aren't making ends meet they will be forced to turn to crime... shoplifting, theft, robbery, B&E, etc all go up. And that all amounts to wealth taken from those who earned it and given to those who didn't? How is that better? And what is the solution? More police, more prisons, more courts? That just raises 'infrastructure' taxes.
Ditto something like health care. Its simply expedient. We all need it. And regular health care is cheaper in the long run than emergency health care when a treatable condition goes untreated. Private insurance is delivering good health care to the elite, but the majority endure substandard care, if they get anything at all. And again, the costs of that substandard care still are charged against us (and amplified) by having to pay for emergency care of things that could have been treated much more inexpensively earlier on.
Again, its simply expedient. Its better to provide health care to all than to provide it only to those who can pay, and then pay for emergency care for those who can't. (And again, suffer increased crime etc, as the desperate look to cover health care costs.) The only way not providing health care would be cheaper is if it were absolute... and then if a poor person gets hit by a car without insurance, we let him die on the street rather than lift a finger. And I don't want to live in that society.
Some social assistance is simply economically expedient, unless you plan to literally execute people for being poor.
Now finally, yes there certainly is a segment that simply is a drain on the rest of society, that would become productive if the net were removed without turning to crime, etc. Some waste is inevitable. Removing social assistance to provide "justice" to this tiny segment simply isn't worth it. Just as a department store can't stamp out all shoplifting without making the store completely unpalatable to legit customers, society can't stamp out all abuse of public programs.
So that is why I think public safety nets are good thing. They don't cost nearly as much as you think once you include the costs of not having them. Either way you are going to pay, and having the safety nets is a much more humane, organized, and dignified way of handling it.
If it were 100% it would certainly be appropriate to call it slavery. What if it's 90%? 75%? I'd say if over half my day I am forced to work for someone else (who is as likely as not simply unwilling to work for themselves), that is close enough to slavery to draw the comparison.
But its not 100%. And of the taxes you do pay, only a fraction go towards that tiny of segment who are "simply unwilling to work for themselves". The rest goes to infrastructure, other programs, and as a stop gap to bridge people who ARE willing to work for themselves.
Further, taxation is progressive, which really invalidates it as a comparison to slavery. The income you need to live is virtually untaxed. The tax burden even at lower middle class is minimal. It ONLY starts to ramp up
In any event, the concept of the "social contract" proves too much. If you can impose one involuntary obligation on others in the name of a "social contract" then you can impose any involuntary obligation, including outright slavery.
Yes, you could. Society isn't inherently good, that takes a lot of work and vigilance, and so far have never succeeded. But the benefits of living in society are pretty significant (everything from mutual protection to economic efficiency to mating opportunities).
and that those born into [society] have an obligation to accept their place in society
No one has an obligation to accept their place in society. They may work within the society to change their obligations and they are free to at any time leave the society and join any other society of their choosing that will have them.
Perhaps regrettably the planet no longer has a dearth of unclaimed space where one can go and form his own society, and/or exclude himself completely from one, but there are still several places that are pretty close.
Perfect freedom is to do whatever the fuck you want UNLESS you are directly causing harm to another or impinging upon their freedom
So its ok to cause indirect harm? Or indirectly impinge upon their freedom?
Not ok to punch them in the face. Perfectly ok to explain to them that they can afford a house they can't, lend them money for that house, then take their house away because they can't afford it, leave them in debted to you, destroy their credit, and leave them homeless. I'd rather be punched in the face.
Oh they should have known better about compound interest, and variable rate mortgages,... right? Well they don't. So they went to someone with expertise in the field to advise them. Just like they go to a mechanic to fix their car because not everyone knows how to do that either.
You're confusing (or are perhaps unaware of) positive and negative "rights"...
No, I'm not the least bit confused. If anything it is you who are confused, or worse... you are deliberately presenting a false argument.
This means that his doctor is his slave, and has to be forced to utilize his knowledge and resources to provide for him.
The moment you break out the term "slave" you lose ALL credibility whatsoever. The doctor is not his slave in any rational sense. The doctor doesn't have to show up for work. The doctor doesn't even have to be a doctor. The doctor is not a slave. If he doesn't feel like caring for patients he can quit any time he likes.
The ONLY actual forced imposition on anyone is the taxation used to fund these programs. And sure, you can wave your arms all you like about how your a "slave" in your own country because they make you participate in funding the maintenance of the military too, and the police, and the fire department, and water/sewage, and public schools, and highways, and so on... but I'm not having any of it.
I refuse to be drawn into a debate with any idiot who thinks even the basic trappings of society amount to slavery.
They aren't slavery any more than hiring a contractor to do your kitchen is slavery. The fact that he now has an obligation to you doesn't make him a slave. Participating in a society is a social contract, with obligations to maintain and improve that society. That's not slavery.
Its a hyperbolic misapplication of the word to the point of absurdity.
No matter how well intended the chains, how nice the cage, you are still wearing chains and living in a cage.
Odd. In my perfect free anarchist state, someone was STILL in a cage, and it wasn't a particularly nice one. Being free doesn't eliminate cages. Because the other guy was "free" to put him there.
Freedom is the former, and socialism is the latter. No matter how well intended the chains, how nice the cage, you are still wearing chains and living in a cage.
You are confusing basic society with socialism. Its in a societies own best interest to take nominal care of all its members. That's not socialism. It's simply a pragmatic method of increasing over all happiness, reducing disease, reducing crime, increasing employment, increasing productivity, etc. Taken to an extreme it can become socialism, but basic health care is no more extreme than public education or a centrally run military.
You say that in a mocking way, but you're actually right. Freedom includes the risk of losing as well as the possibility of winning.
And your only TRULY free if you can walk up to a random guy on the street, knock him out, put him in a cage, hook up electrodes to his genitals and make him the electricity dance for your amusement. If you can't do that, someone's restricting your freedom.
Just because "freedom" lets you do it doesn't make it good.
"Freedom to lose at life" to lose everything and sit cold and sick and hungry under a bridge scrounging for edible garbage while you die of a perfectly curable ailment. What's so great about that that makes it worth defending?
If that's what you get with freedom, I'll pass. Maybe some restrictions aren't so bad. Maybe a the ultra successful should provide a safety net for the ones who lose... sure its not perfect freedom anymore... but perfect freedom is an ugly bitch anyway.
Like anything you need to find a balance. Abolulte freedom in anarchy. Nobody sane really wants that.
You could make a system where people offer bandwidth from their personal routers for really cheap. I think this does exist, but it's pretty limited in that instead of being offered by one small company, it should be an engineering standard offered in tandem by all the communications companies.
All those personal routers don't go anywhere except your personal LAN. For people to really be able to 'sell' or even give their own bandwidth they'd need to create a mesh network with their neighbors. (That means running cables between your router and all your neighbors router.) That's simply not going to happen.
Now you can do it wirelessly, but sending any data through a mesh network of wifi access points is going to be pathetic. Dozens of hops, high latency, unreliable connections, and there are security issues too. It would be handy to have, so that our home internet access could route around a fiber cut at the ISP... but it would be a very poor substitute for what you get from your ISP.
Get rid of the public airwaves and work on letting the market come up with standards -- frequency hopping software radios, hive networks, whatever. It'll be more efficient, cheaper, and it'll provide for much more competition.
er... this is where cellphones are already heading. hell... they are already there.
Today, we still are wasting a significant portion of bandwidth on broadcasting when the future is point to point communications along with some form of P2P crowdcasting.
crowdcasting/p2p is going to evolve significantly. We are already near the cusp i think, given how much traffic is already p2p. Sooner or later p2p is going to be metered and restricted and paid for. As soon as that happens crowdcasting is dead in the water. It only works as long as everyone has 'unlimited bandwidth' right now the market is working out that 'we have a lot, but its not unlimited, but we won't meter it yet because we have enough that most people don't need to know its not unlimited and unlimited is easier to sell... so we'll just deal with the blowback when the very small number people run us into the limits.
Let something like 'crowdcasting video' catch on to the point that it can replace 'broadcast tv', where everyone anywhere watching a TV show is simultaneously p2p serving it back on to the network... at the point the jig is up; and the bandwidth meters will go up.
Say what you will...at least they did the right thing and said they would repair it for 3 years.
That certainly wasn't their FIRST reaction.
And I didn't choose Nintendo because they don't really have a very good game line-up other than their first party titles (which has been a common them for awhile with them).
While from my point of view there isn't all that much out for the xbox (or ps3) that is that exciting isn't out for the PC.
I think the only way I would have gotten a Wii is if I had small children.
Its definitely the best of the bunch for small kids. Its also better for most couples, and at parties and family events. My wife will play Wii tennis with me... she won't play halo.
My second console with be a PS3 because it is a cheap blu-ray player.
If I buy another console it will be a PS3 for that reason. But I'm not all that impressed with blu-ray. I don't think its worth the premium price over a decent upscaled DVD. I don't like the DRM. I don't like Sony. I care more about plot and dialog than pixels, and i can lose myself in an SDTV broadcast movie just as easily as a 1080p bluray. If I'm watching for the clarity of the picture, the movie's not doing a good job of holding my interest...
Slashdot Mirror
I can imagine "why can't i own a canadian" being a joke.
Or being submitted before completed... perhaps they meant to ask something like
"Why can't I own a canadian domain name"
...in other words, given enough time, something *will* happen.
And sooner or later a micro-meteorite is going to slam through someones skull and end their life. However, we should do absolutely nothing about this.
We should still do what we can, within reason, to reduce the likelihood of their success. It's that "within reason" that most people seem to have lost sight of.
Exactly what is "within reason" here? Terrorism as a risk falls miles behind "diabetes". Its even far below "accidental incident with fire arm". It chums around with risks like "breaking neck falling down stairs".
Clearly we don't need a "Deparment of Staircase Security" with a multibillion dollar budget to make our stairways safer. What do we need? A response proportional to the risk is pretty minimal.
On occasion? Ha, that is the funniest thing I have ever heard.
Pretty much.
but we're *much* more beholden to actual proof of ability and less likely to have corruption when purchasing such expensive tools.
Across the street they sell tap water in a bottle for about $3. Further up the road you can buy anti-aging cream and various weight loss solutions that don't do either.
Granted its not 16,000. But its only because the average joe's budgets are simply too constrained for that scale of excess. In other words, if the average joe had access to military scale funding, he wouldn't blink at spending it. And of course, their are perfectly ineffective anti-aging creams in the thousands of dollars too... aimed at the discerning idiot.
And let us never forget our beloved cable vendor "Monster" where you can get $4 worth of wire and plastic for $140 ... or my personal favorite... the $500 ethernet patch cord from Denon.
http://www.usa.denon.com/ProductDetails/3429.asp#
It's an implied condition of sale.
What law enshrines that?
It's in the EULA.
I disagree with the EULA. It doesn't bind me. I decline to enter into that agreement.
That's why it says something like "if you don't agree to this, you can return this software for a full refund". It's not like you lost your money.
And my brother who received it as a gift?
But fine, so they offer a remedy if I don't agree (although it can be a royal hassle actually exercising this option), so what?
Yet another remedy is to ignore the EULA agreement entirely since I don't agree with it.
Now this is the important part: if I don't AGREE to it, then NONE of its terms or restrictions apply, because I don't agree to it.
That means that the ONLY thing that does apply are the normal copyright laws, and first sale doctrine etc, etc.
That means they can't dictate what my options are if I don't agree, because those options are part of the contract I didn't agree too. And they can't tell me I can't use it without agreeing because they ALREADY sold it to me. And without an agreement that says otherwise, first sale doctrine and copyright law allow me to use the copy I bought however I see fit.
Why shouldn't I be able to specify what happens with the software I write? Why shouldn't I be able to specify "you must run this on my hardware" as a condition of sale?
Make it a "condition of sale" and we'll talk.
Right now, I can walk into a store, buy a copy of OSX, take it home, give it to my brother for his birthday (implied complete transfer of ownership). And by the time you get around to trying to impose "conditions of sale" the sale is a fading memory... of a person who doesn't even have it anymore.
You want to make something a "condition of sale", fine, but you've got do that when you MAKE THE SALE.
More accurately, "if the robot is convinced that not killing hitler will lead to millions of lives being lost, yep."
An important, but subtle, difference in my restatement is that its not enough to know that killing hitler would stop the war. After all perhaps merely locking him in a closet for a year would also stop the war...point is, if they had a reasonable alternative to killing him they would take it, even if they were certain killing him would work.
Too bad youre not legally allowed to sell a book with out its cover.
Of course you can.
Learn the law before you analogize about it.
Yes, please do.
The whole "book without cover" refers to the way in which bookstores deal with extra copies. Rather than ship at great expense books nobody wants to get a refund, they tear off the covers and return just the covers, claim the refund, and destrouy the books. In exchange for this convenience they agree (by contract) not to sell those books, and that they have been destroyed.
So if you buy a book without a cover, their is a chance that the vendor has claimed a refund on that book, and is now trying to sell it. This would be a serious violation of their contract, as they agreed to destroy those book.
But there is, and never has been a law agaisnt selling books without their covers. And if your well loved copy of Lord of the Flies loses its cover, there is still nothing preventing you from selling it.
You are not buying the operating system, you are buying a license to use the operating system as laid out by a contract you sign during installation.
I am buying an authorized copy of the operating sytem. No different than a book or CD. Once I've bought that authorized copy. That authorized copy is mine to make USE of as I see fit. Provided I don't make and distribute additional copies.
Or at least it SHOULD be, and i will defy anyone who attempts to prevent me.
And the copies from installation disk to hard drive to ram to l2 cache to l1 cache, to swap file, that are made in the course of USING it? Those are specifically allowed by copyright law AND common sense. And while apple can argue and perhaps even prevail in a court of law, I don't consider it wrong, I will continue doing it, and I will work to fix that law.
I am just a curious person. I am flawed and easily fascinated. I see a name from my past, and I wonder, what in the world is that person up to these days...
Precisely. Its a passing amusement. If facebook were to vanish off the face of the earth some other shiny toy would fill your time. I don't object to people amusing themselves with facebook, that's fine by me.
I object when people claim its somehow important, that it meets and fills a 'need'. It doesn't. Its about on par with browsing youtube, wikipedia, or watching a sitcom. Nothing wrong with any of that, but don't put it on a pedestal.
If it entertains and fascinates you to know that you have a second cousin halfway around the world you've never met who just got a new mountain bike, that's fine, and you can spend your spare time however you like. But keep it in perspective...most of these facebook acquaintences aren't really friends. And if facebook went under and you never heard from or saw any of them again, you'd have to find something else to amuse yourself with, but that's about the extent of the loss.
Unless, of course, he was using WinXP on the same computer before Monday with no such trouble.
Irrelevant. It could still be 3rd party drivers. And yes, it could be the hardware, although its not likely. Unless this computer is on Microsofts Hardware Compatibility List for Windows 7 then its absurd to blame microsoft if it doesn't work.
There are lots of computers out there that will run xp but not 7. That's not a flaw of 7. There's a lot of computers out there than run OS X 10.2 but won't run Snow Leopard. That doesn't make Snow Leopard defective either.
Facebook is now the only way I hear or know about some members of my extended family and old friends
Who tricked you into thinking that having only web based contact with old friends was somehow worthwhile? I can see using a web app to commumicate with real friends and family on top of other channels, but if someone has drifted so far out of your life that facebook is the only way you get any news on them... why bother? If it was your mom or brother I'd get it... but extended family you've only ever seen on facebook... that's not much different arbitrarily choosing some random strangers to decide to care about.
Yeah, he should really update his hard disk drivers so they will come out of sleep mode correctly. Who's responsible for those again?
The motherboard (and/or chipset) vendor and / or the drive controller (and/or chipset) vendor.
If you install a 3rd party controller in your Mac, who is responsible for supporting it? Same applies here.
Linux is the exception, because the community has largely taken responsibility for providing the drivers (because the vendors mostly haven't stepped up).
But regardless of who is at fault, if you use hardware on the official hardware compatibility list, then microsoft has at the very least vetted that it will work. If you use hardware out side that you are on your own, and issues are between you and the vendor. Blaming microsoft because their os won't run on random hardware they never claimed it would run on is absurd.
And a hardware problem that just happened to manifest the exact day he installed 7!? Even you must have a hard time believing that one.
I said it was possible. I (strongly) agree its not likely.
problems like the above are caused by bad drivers that just accidentally happened to work perfectly in previous versions of windows.
Going to 7 from XP? The drivers aren't the same. Your scenario doesn't exist.
How is Alt+Mouse drag combination an "arcane keyboard shortcut"? Don't tell me that an average user will not know that shortcut.
The average user will not know that shortcut.
If a user is using Ubuntu for long enough time, he/she will know the shortcut - regardless of the skill levels.
The average windows user doesn't know Windows-D reveals the desktop. You'd be SHOCKED at how many don't even know Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V / Ctrl-X / Ctrl-Z.
Seeing as I'm running full diagnostics on it, the hardware was fine on XP before a complete clean and rebuild, then the issue is with Win7.
Likely but not necessarily true. I've encountered lots of hardware that ran fine on one OS, but failed miserably on another. The issue was hardware. The device specifications indicated X but it really couldn't do all of X. The drivers for OS 1 only asked for a subset of X that it could do correctly, the drivers for OS 2 asked for a different subset of X that it couldn't do.
The fault was with the hardware. RAM is bad for this -- where it will run fine at one of its advertised supported timings, but not at another.
If it's with the vendor supplied drivers, then fine.
Odds are that's where the problem is.
I can't do what I want without them, so it's still to do with the whole experience and readiness of the product
Not really. Bottom line: Win7 isn't compatible with your hardware. It might NEVER be compatible with your hardware. That is not a fault of MS or a reflection of their product. If you want to resolve it you need to switch to compatible hardware.
What you are saying is equivalent to saying you bought a turbo engine upgrade that doesn't work with your particular model of car. The car manufacturer may or may not step up and provided the necessary adaptors and support. If they do great, but if they don't its not the turbo manufacturers fault.
I'd not put it in a business environment as the support margin would be too high
I disagree. Put it on compatible hardware and the support margin would beat both XP and Vista. Hell, I went through this with Vista, and the driver situation was terrible at Vista's launch. But IF you selected components with good driver support Vista was just fine, and in many respects superior to XP. The same is true of any OS. If you try and shoehorn OSX Leopard onto whitebox PC hardware or an old G3 there are all kinds of hiccups and problems too... but its not a defect with Leopard.
Personally, I'd be happier to give my opinion of the OS in 6 months when they have it bedded in. For now, what I say is what I see.
So when you see a car crash do you blame the manufacturer of the car? Do you post on forums how the new Ford is crash prone and isn't ready to be used in the marketplace? Or do you realize that, while there very well could be serious defects with the car, it it FAR more probable that it was a bad driver?
When windows 7 crashes why do you automatically blame Microsoft and talk about the lousy Windows 7 experience. Maybe as with cars, one should look at the drivers first.
I'm counting 2 BSODs, 6 complete lock ups and a few failures to activate disk drives waking up from sleep mode since Monday (I got the UK preorder, which came early due to the postal strikes here).
All that since monday? Clearly you have driver or even hardware problems.
Blame Microsoft if it makes you feel better, but the real problem is almost certainly elsewhere.
So... How did you change the resolution to 640x480
He went into the display settings, selected 640x480 and pressed, ok.
If so then you must presumably be able to change the resolution again using those same commands and you don't have a problem.
When its 640x480 and you go into that display settings dialog, you can select 1280x1024, but you can't press OK. So no, the same sequence of actions doesn't work. Because the dialog box is too big for 640x480.
Now if you know arcane keyboard shortcuts you can use them to move the window to reveal the offscreen button, but most people don't know that. If you have 2nd computer runnign the same version running right beside it, you can see how many tab presses it takes to get to the 'ok' button and then mirror that on the other unit, but most people don't have that luxury.
I don't have a machine running Ubuntu to hand to try.
This is why you probably should have kept your mouth shut.
No, it's not quite slavery.
Its not even close to slavery.
But what do you call it when a huge portion of the wealth you create (in some cases >50% even in the US, very often >50% outside the US) is taken from you at gunpoint*, and given to someone else?
I call it tax. Same as most people.
It's one thing if it's taken and spent on national defense, infrastructure, etc., but when it is just taken from the individual who produced it and given to an individual who did not
That's a gross over simplification on multiple levels. The majority of the people who receive assistance do so for a temporary period of time. Its a safety net. Anyone can fall on hard times.
There are also crime and other arguments to be made as well. For example, if there were no social assistance there would be more crime. These people are not GOING to simply all quietly starve to death, they are ultimately going to do whatever it takes. Sure they can and will seek work, but if they aren't making ends meet they will be forced to turn to crime... shoplifting, theft, robbery, B&E, etc all go up. And that all amounts to wealth taken from those who earned it and given to those who didn't? How is that better? And what is the solution? More police, more prisons, more courts? That just raises 'infrastructure' taxes.
Ditto something like health care. Its simply expedient. We all need it. And regular health care is cheaper in the long run than emergency health care when a treatable condition goes untreated. Private insurance is delivering good health care to the elite, but the majority endure substandard care, if they get anything at all. And again, the costs of that substandard care still are charged against us (and amplified) by having to pay for emergency care of things that could have been treated much more inexpensively earlier on.
Again, its simply expedient. Its better to provide health care to all than to provide it only to those who can pay, and then pay for emergency care for those who can't. (And again, suffer increased crime etc, as the desperate look to cover health care costs.) The only way not providing health care would be cheaper is if it were absolute... and then if a poor person gets hit by a car without insurance, we let him die on the street rather than lift a finger. And I don't want to live in that society.
Some social assistance is simply economically expedient, unless you plan to literally execute people for being poor.
Now finally, yes there certainly is a segment that simply is a drain on the rest of society, that would become productive if the net were removed without turning to crime, etc. Some waste is inevitable. Removing social assistance to provide "justice" to this tiny segment simply isn't worth it. Just as a department store can't stamp out all shoplifting without making the store completely unpalatable to legit customers, society can't stamp out all abuse of public programs.
So that is why I think public safety nets are good thing. They don't cost nearly as much as you think once you include the costs of not having them. Either way you are going to pay, and having the safety nets is a much more humane, organized, and dignified way of handling it.
If it were 100% it would certainly be appropriate to call it slavery. What if it's 90%? 75%? I'd say if over half my day I am forced to work for someone else (who is as likely as not simply unwilling to work for themselves), that is close enough to slavery to draw the comparison.
But its not 100%. And of the taxes you do pay, only a fraction go towards that tiny of segment who are "simply unwilling to work for themselves". The rest goes to infrastructure, other programs, and as a stop gap to bridge people who ARE willing to work for themselves.
Further, taxation is progressive, which really invalidates it as a comparison to slavery. The income you need to live is virtually untaxed. The tax burden even at lower middle class is minimal. It ONLY starts to ramp up
In any event, the concept of the "social contract" proves too much. If you can impose one involuntary obligation on others in the name of a "social contract" then you can impose any involuntary obligation, including outright slavery.
Yes, you could. Society isn't inherently good, that takes a lot of work and vigilance, and so far have never succeeded. But the benefits of living in society are pretty significant (everything from mutual protection to economic efficiency to mating opportunities).
and that those born into [society] have an obligation to accept their place in society
No one has an obligation to accept their place in society. They may work within the society to change their obligations and they are free to at any time leave the society and join any other society of their choosing that will have them.
Perhaps regrettably the planet no longer has a dearth of unclaimed space where one can go and form his own society, and/or exclude himself completely from one, but there are still several places that are pretty close.
Perfect freedom is to do whatever the fuck you want UNLESS you are directly causing harm to another or impinging upon their freedom
So its ok to cause indirect harm? Or indirectly impinge upon their freedom?
Not ok to punch them in the face. Perfectly ok to explain to them that they can afford a house they can't, lend them money for that house, then take their house away because they can't afford it, leave them in debted to you, destroy their credit, and leave them homeless. I'd rather be punched in the face.
Oh they should have known better about compound interest, and variable rate mortgages,... right? Well they don't. So they went to someone with expertise in the field to advise them. Just like they go to a mechanic to fix their car because not everyone knows how to do that either.
You're confusing (or are perhaps unaware of) positive and negative "rights"...
No, I'm not the least bit confused. If anything it is you who are confused, or worse... you are deliberately presenting a false argument.
This means that his doctor is his slave, and has to be forced to utilize his knowledge and resources to provide for him.
The moment you break out the term "slave" you lose ALL credibility whatsoever. The doctor is not his slave in any rational sense.
The doctor doesn't have to show up for work. The doctor doesn't even have to be a doctor. The doctor is not a slave. If he doesn't feel like caring for patients he can quit any time he likes.
The ONLY actual forced imposition on anyone is the taxation used to fund these programs. And sure, you can wave your arms all you like about how your a "slave" in your own country because they make you participate in funding the maintenance of the military too, and the police, and the fire department, and water/sewage, and public schools, and highways, and so on... but I'm not having any of it.
I refuse to be drawn into a debate with any idiot who thinks even the basic trappings of society amount to slavery.
They aren't slavery any more than hiring a contractor to do your kitchen is slavery. The fact that he now has an obligation to you doesn't make him a slave. Participating in a society is a social contract, with obligations to maintain and improve that society. That's not slavery.
Its a hyperbolic misapplication of the word to the point of absurdity.
No matter how well intended the chains, how nice the cage, you are still wearing chains and living in a cage.
Odd. In my perfect free anarchist state, someone was STILL in a cage, and it wasn't a particularly nice one. Being free doesn't eliminate cages. Because the other guy was "free" to put him there.
Freedom is the former, and socialism is the latter. No matter how well intended the chains, how nice the cage, you are still wearing chains and living in a cage.
You are confusing basic society with socialism. Its in a societies own best interest to take nominal care of all its members. That's not socialism. It's simply a pragmatic method of increasing over all happiness, reducing disease, reducing crime, increasing employment, increasing productivity, etc. Taken to an extreme it can become socialism, but basic health care is no more extreme than public education or a centrally run military.
Welfare? Food Stamps? Medicaid? Public housing?
What about them? If anything that's precisely my point. Even in the US, 'land of freedom', we provide a safety net.
The poor get all of those. We have a safety net.
Oh noes!! We aren't free! America is ruined. -sarcasm
So are you arguing for a safety net, or are you arguing that government should give people a living?
I am arguing for a better safety net.
As for the 'government giving people a living', that's a straw man.
You say that in a mocking way, but you're actually right. Freedom includes the risk of losing as well as the possibility of winning.
And your only TRULY free if you can walk up to a random guy on the street, knock him out, put him in a cage, hook up electrodes to his genitals and make him the electricity dance for your amusement. If you can't do that, someone's restricting your freedom.
Just because "freedom" lets you do it doesn't make it good.
"Freedom to lose at life" to lose everything and sit cold and sick and hungry under a bridge scrounging for edible garbage while you die of a perfectly curable ailment. What's so great about that that makes it worth defending?
If that's what you get with freedom, I'll pass. Maybe some restrictions aren't so bad. Maybe a the ultra successful should provide a safety net for the ones who lose... sure its not perfect freedom anymore... but perfect freedom is an ugly bitch anyway.
Like anything you need to find a balance. Abolulte freedom in anarchy. Nobody sane really wants that.
You could make a system where people offer bandwidth from their personal routers for really cheap. I think this does exist, but it's pretty limited in that instead of being offered by one small company, it should be an engineering standard offered in tandem by all the communications companies.
All those personal routers don't go anywhere except your personal LAN. For people to really be able to 'sell' or even give their own bandwidth they'd need to create a mesh network with their neighbors. (That means running cables between your router and all your neighbors router.) That's simply not going to happen.
Now you can do it wirelessly, but sending any data through a mesh network of wifi access points is going to be pathetic. Dozens of hops, high latency, unreliable connections, and there are security issues too. It would be handy to have, so that our home internet access could route around a fiber cut at the ISP... but it would be a very poor substitute for what you get from your ISP.
Get rid of the public airwaves and work on letting the market come up with standards -- frequency hopping software radios, hive networks, whatever. It'll be more efficient, cheaper, and it'll provide for much more competition.
er... this is where cellphones are already heading. hell... they are already there.
Today, we still are wasting a significant portion of bandwidth on broadcasting when the future is point to point communications along with some form of P2P crowdcasting.
crowdcasting/p2p is going to evolve significantly. We are already near the cusp i think, given how much traffic is already p2p. Sooner or later p2p is going to be metered and restricted and paid for. As soon as that happens crowdcasting is dead in the water. It only works as long as everyone has 'unlimited bandwidth' right now the market is working out that 'we have a lot, but its not unlimited, but we won't meter it yet because we have enough that most people don't need to know its not unlimited and unlimited is easier to sell... so we'll just deal with the blowback when the very small number people run us into the limits.
Let something like 'crowdcasting video' catch on to the point that it can replace 'broadcast tv', where everyone anywhere watching a TV show is simultaneously p2p serving it back on to the network... at the point the jig is up; and the bandwidth meters will go up.
Say what you will...at least they did the right thing and said they would repair it for 3 years.
That certainly wasn't their FIRST reaction.
And I didn't choose Nintendo because they don't really have a very good game line-up other than their first party titles (which has been a common them for awhile with them).
While from my point of view there isn't all that much out for the xbox (or ps3) that is that exciting isn't out for the PC.
I think the only way I would have gotten a Wii is if I had small children.
Its definitely the best of the bunch for small kids. Its also better for most couples, and at parties and family events. My wife will play Wii tennis with me... she won't play halo.
My second console with be a PS3 because it is a cheap blu-ray player.
If I buy another console it will be a PS3 for that reason. But I'm not all that impressed with blu-ray. I don't think its worth the premium price over a decent upscaled DVD. I don't like the DRM. I don't like Sony. I care more about plot and dialog than pixels, and i can lose myself in an SDTV broadcast movie just as easily as a 1080p bluray. If I'm watching for the clarity of the picture, the movie's not doing a good job of holding my interest...