For years your neighbour has been clearing his drive with a snow blower and laughing at you with your shovel. Now his blower's broken and you are considering clearing his drive for him ?
Most windows users I know haven't been laughing at linux users. Hell the majority of them still don't know what linux is.
THIS shows the difference between Linux [open-source] developers and Microsoft developers- open-source people do it for fun and the good of the community, Microsoft developers do it for a buck and there won't be many bucks in writing drivers for crappy no-name blue-tooth dongles.
Care to explain everything from OpenOffice to the Gimp to Apache to PostgreSQL? Apparently there are PLENTY of "open source people" who do things for fun and the good of the community and are happy to take the non-trivial effort to get a lot of this stuff running on windows.
Why should the community "just step in" and write them?
Because there is a demand for all these devices to work under new versions of windows. The community has the know how, and gets the benefit.
We pay for that stuff, it should work under Windows because they're mostly dedicated to home users and about 90% of them run Windows.
That is ridiculous. It did work under the supported operating systems. Why should the OEM or Microsoft be responsible for it once its been discontinued and you move on to a new OS, whether its Windows x64 or Linux for that matter?
Sounds reasonable enough for me that the hardware manufacturers should "bother" to write proper Windows drivers.
Linux distros don't generally directly support old hardware either. Its thanks to volunteer efforts from the community that makes that happen. Such a community could exist for windows too. In any case its absurd to blame Microsoft. And if you are going to blame the OEM why do you accept that they don't 'bother' to write Linux drivers at all?
Maybe Microsoft should do what the Linux community does. Work with manufacturers to get the drivers written and then maintain the drivers for the manufacturers forever.
Maybe the community should just step up and write them? I mean they do it for Linux, why not Microsoft? Plus, for any device supported under Linux, the hardest part of the work is already done... figuring out how to communicate with the device.
And don't whine about driver signing, if a large OSS group came to MS with a large body of updated drivers for x64, they'd take them in a heartbeat, sign them, and even stick them on the next Windows CD if we let them.
BTW - I own two webcams now. Neither work under Windows since I lost the driver disk (and those drivers were useless under XP64/Vista anyway), but they both work just fine under Linux. What's the world coming to?!
The difference is the manufacturer abandoned the hardware a couple years ago for Windows, while they never bothered to support Linux at all in the first place. So the community stepped up for Linux, because that was the only way it was going to happen, while the manufacturers did a passable job long enough for the hardware to be non-mainstream enough that most people really don't care.
Right, Fox can turn on the delay for these events and bleep as needed; and in fact this how life already works. The fact there would be a heavy fine won't affect them unless they are completely asleep at the wheel.
So why exactly is Fox taking this all the way to the Supreme court?
Because they DON'T WANT to bleep them, they want to be the broadcast network that lets celebrities swear, because they probably think they can boost ratings that way.
So its not that Fox can't prevent them, its that they DON'T WANT to; and this case is about whether they HAVE TO.
She thought that was a trick question designed to make her seem out of touch.
It was a question she didn't want to answer, and she didn't want to answer it because the truth probably wasn't particularly inspiring.
That doesn't make it a "trick question".
Seriously, the question was a probe into her qualification to be vice president, with respect to her knowledge of the issues facing the country as a whole, and the various states within it.
She could have diverted the 'which magazine question' easily by simply saying... 'Oh, as governor of Alaska I of course read "The Alaskan Gazette" as it focuses on relevant local issues; my office also brings in New American, and I skim a number of other publications; but magazines aren't really how I stay on top of the issues that face our country;... instead I..."... and then say whatever it she wants to say to not appear as an ignorant isolated governor from Alaska...
In Word, MS doesn't own the letters in your language, so you're free to recombine them however you want, and that's not a derivative work.
Ah, but in many cases, MS, Adobe, or another party DOES own the font glyphs used to represent those letters, and has merely licensed them to you.
Levels you create in LBP are derivative of Sony's work in creating the base assets. They're more analogous to remixes or sampling, while the word doc is an original song.
Unless you are actually using a public domain or 'open source' font, you are simply arranging someone else's glyphs around on a canvas. Sounds a lot like LBP levels to me.
You don't want people to sit on committees that interest them, and match their strengths?
Perhaps counter intuitively, the more a congress critter wants to be on a particular committee the less I think I want them there.
Its sort of like letting jurors decide which cases they want.
Re:This week it is YOUR turn to vote "no".
on
How We Used To Vote
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· Score: 1
Why no incentive for bribery? It would be much easier now that they are not held accountable for how they vote to take money from however is willing to give it and vote all kids of outrageous bills as their constituents would never find out.
Also no way for the people bribing them to know if they got what they paid for. He could just take the money, and vote however he was going to vote anyway... how are they going to know? Hell, if he's particularly corrupt he can even take bribes from both sides...
So, while it doesn't remove the incentive for bribery, it does make it riskier for the people doing the bribing.
Why on Earth would I want to spend hours with my arms extended to use a touchscreen?
Why exactly would having a touch screen make you do that? Do you think your touchscreen equipped PC will not also have a keyboard and mouse?
Lets say you've got your nice touchscreen on a living room desk, your wireless keyboard and mouse are neatly stashed in a drawer. You've got company coming over so you tap the iTunes icon on the screen, and then tap a playlist, and walk away.
Company arrives, and a song comes on you don't want, so you walk up to the screen, and tap the skip button. Someone asks what the lyrics were, you tap firefox, tap in the search and an onscreen keyboard pops up... you tap the name of the song... and then tap the lyric link returned.
Still later, you tap the screen a few more times to run a slide show of some recent vacation pics.
Later on, they leave, and you decide do write up a proposal... you idiotically tap out your essay in OpenOffice using the on-screen-keyboard directly on the screen... oh wait... no you don't... because that would be idiotic... you pull out your keyboard and mouse...
Five minutes would be painful enough.
Typical useful applications as described above all run in the less than 20 seconds category.
Besides that, there's the issue of fingerprints all over the screen.
1) Fingerprints wipe off pretty easily.
2) People still buy white clothes, carpets, cars, etc... in other words, the fact that they are going to get dirty and show the dirt isn't going to prevent most people from buying one.
Touchscreens might have application on mobile devices, and kiosk style computers, but I don't see them replacing displays in mainstream use anytime soon.
I see them complementing traditional input devices, not replacing them.
Dropping support is not the same as not being portable.
I realize that.
Do they claim support for ARM? I don't think so but the iPhone uses one.
They don't have an officially supported ARM release they are dropping support for either.
Power on the desktop? No I don't think so.
They ALREADY have PowerPPC on the desktop / laptop, and its currently supported.
Power on the iPhone, iPod, and maybe a netbook?
Again, what would be the point of dropping support for the PowerPC if they were planning on using it in the near future. They've GOT a PowerPC platform out there with a pile of users who will buy the next OS if they release it... if they are building it ANYWAY for some new device, why not sell it to the legacy crowd?
OS/X is portable. They are still supporting Power based Macs last time I checked.
As I recall snow leopard or whatever the next version is called is dropping support for Power based Macs. If they were planning to switch back or support the chips on handhelds or something, why drop support on the G5s etc.
There's no limit to how much a government could spend on a single patient (new heart, new lungs, life-sustaining machines, biotic limbs), and yet even if the government spent a Trillion dollars per patient, ultimately they will all die.
Governments don't have unlimited funds. Some might like to think they do, but they don't and such thinking brings disaster upon them. The population must determine what level and method of taxation they support, and then its the government's job to provide the best health care it can afford with the funds allocated.
I don't see why this is modded flamebait. He has a legitimate point. Let's face it, processor-wise and capability-wise the Wii is little more than a slightly improved Gamecube.
Let's face it, you are essentially trolling here.
Processor-wise and capability-wise the Wii is more than twice as powerful as a gamecube by any reasonable measuring.
The whole console was built around the controller,
What precisely do you think a gaming console should have been built around? Blu-Ray?
as has every game for the system.
That simply isn't true.
This is a fun novelty, for sure (and great for parties). But it would still be more than fair to call it a "gimmick,"
Hint: a "gimmick" that proceeds to be copied into every future console made by every competitor is not a gimmick. Motion control is here to stay, deal with it.
especially as so many Wii owners are now admitting that their Wii's spend most of the time these days gathering dust (only broken out for friends and parties).
Right, because 'core gamer' fanbois starting threads about their Wii collecting dust being repeated on every gaming forum every couple months should be taken seriously. And as for casual gamers -- what do you expect? Most things we do casually collects dust most of the time. Part of the definition of 'casual' is that we don't obsessively do it all the time.
While consoles like the 360 and PS3 move forward,
Wii is reliably outselling the PS3 and 360 by 2:1 or more. The Wii is not being left behind.
many Wii owners are increasingly disappointed by scarce offerings and underpowered performance
Yes, its abject disappointment that causes title after title to sell out. SSBB sold out and was hard to find for a few weeks. MarioKart sold out and was hard to find for few weeks. I have still yet to see Wii Fit in stock anywhere.
Its true a small class of Wii owners are disappointed by a scarcity of offerings in a genre that is better served by the other consoles anyway. To them I say, "Hey moron, buy another console."
(look at Yahtzee's recent review of the Wii version of The Force Unleashed for a pretty good summary of this problem).
The 'problem' with Force Unleashed as he so eloquently pointed out, really had NOTHING to do with the Wii. In particular he complained that:
a) the graphics would have been considered poor even on the Xbox 1. b) the level design was BAD c) Lucas is an idiot d) the motion control system was terrible e) Lucas is really an idiot f) lack of balance - the force powers made the light sabre a pointless distraction
In other words, Wii owners are the victim of a particularly shitty cash grabbing port of an already flawed game.
Nobody expects the graphics to be on par with the PS3, but to look like rubbish compared to LAST gen consoles reflects on the developer not the console. Ditto for bad level design. Ditto for bad controls. (We have a number examples of games that do motion control VERY WELL -- resident evil 4, metroid prime, etc -- so when a game shows up with shitty controls, its the developers fault.)
And as for Lucas being a complete idiot, and the lack of balance between sabre and force -- those are in ample evidence on the PS3 version too.
The difference is that the people at the water cooler are people who are likely to be peripherally related to your job, with expertise relavant to your job.
Sure SOME people will have some 'work-related/work-useful facebook friends' but most of the people I see at work on facebook are just goofing off with their boy/girlfriends and drinking friends planning their weekend/party/whatever.
I'm not saying it can't happen that you've got a guru facebook buddy who helped you fix a perl script... but that's the exception, not the norm.
Yeah, one of my clients used to use "Thinstall" to package a number of.net programs into a single trivial to deploy executables, with some basic encryption and licensing wrapper. It worked well enough and was reasonable, a thousand bucks or so.
Then.net 2.0 came out and our software was fine but their wrapper broke on systems with.net 2.0 installed, and we got in touch with them about an upgrade...
They'd completely rewritten the software, and taken it in a new direction, and it was going to be around $10,000 for the upgrade (although they offered us a break as existing customers, but even then it was out of line for our needs)... and instead of licencing the software, we would be paying per app that we wanted to 'wrap'.... we ended up rolling our own licensing solution, and purchased a highly rated obfuscator. And things have been good for a while now. However, the new obfuscator people seems to be heading in the direction thinstall went... now offering virtual file system, virtual registry, the ability to include.net itself inside the app executable etc... and I have a feeling we won't be using them much longer either. Arrgh.
Meanwhile Thinstall got bought out by VMWare and is now "ThinApp", is still monstrously overpriced for what it really is. Although I can see that it would be worth what its priced at for the enterprise users they are targeting.
As I have seen it, ACORN committed no fraud. Perhaps I have missed the story that points at ACORN employees doing anything wrong, but it is the people ACORN is trying to register that are the fraudsters. ACORN did not create a Mickey Mouse registration form. Someone who ACORN was trying to register did. ACORN then in fact did the ethically correct thing and turn it in. Let the voter registration people determine if it is fraudulent, not the guy trying to sign up Obama supporters. He might throw out registration cards if he thinks the person might vote McCain. If people are voting based on this fraud, it is due to asshats handing ACORN fraudulent cards and State Departments not throwing them out.
My impression was that it was fraud perpetrated by low level employees, paid a commission on each card they hand in. So they were motivated to create fraudulent cards.
Now, ACORN at higher levels certainly did the right thing in terms of turning ALL the cards over, including the fraudulant ones, and I have complete disgust at the media for failing to properly report this fact.
But even so my impression isn't that it was some asshat on the street filling out bogus cards, but rather that it was the lowest level acorn employees, who were charged with getting cards filled out, who were entering in the bogus information.
Regardless of what really happened though, I simply can't see how Obama 'benefits' from this fraud, and cannot understand how McCain can charge him with a straight face of 'undermining the fabric of democracy' and not get torn apart by the media for it.
You can give your money away much more intelligently than the government can.
Would you be happy then if the government simply took your taxes and then gave you a form so you direct which programs or charities it goes towards. You'll pay exactly the same, but get to exercise your so called intelligence in its distribution.
Or is this whole charity a ploy to distract us from the reality that most rich people don't give significantly to charity at all, and wouldn't be motivated to do so if they were given a tax cut.
Hell, Bush gave the rich tax cuts, did we see them step and give much their newly recovered cash to charity? Of course not, just ask the charities.
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For years your neighbour has been clearing his drive with a snow blower and laughing at you with your shovel. Now his blower's broken and you are considering clearing his drive for him ?
Most windows users I know haven't been laughing at linux users. Hell the majority of them still don't know what linux is.
THIS shows the difference between Linux [open-source] developers and Microsoft developers- open-source people do it for fun and the good of the community, Microsoft developers do it for a buck and there won't be many bucks in writing drivers for crappy no-name blue-tooth dongles.
Care to explain everything from OpenOffice to the Gimp to Apache to PostgreSQL? Apparently there are PLENTY of "open source people" who do things for fun and the good of the community and are happy to take the non-trivial effort to get a lot of this stuff running on windows.
Why should the community "just step in" and write them?
Because there is a demand for all these devices to work under new versions of windows. The community has the know how, and gets the benefit.
We pay for that stuff, it should work under Windows because they're mostly dedicated to home users and about 90% of them run Windows.
That is ridiculous. It did work under the supported operating systems. Why should the OEM or Microsoft be responsible for it once its been discontinued and you move on to a new OS, whether its Windows x64 or Linux for that matter?
Sounds reasonable enough for me that the hardware manufacturers should "bother" to write proper Windows drivers.
Linux distros don't generally directly support old hardware either. Its thanks to volunteer efforts from the community that makes that happen. Such a community could exist for windows too. In any case its absurd to blame Microsoft. And if you are going to blame the OEM why do you accept that they don't 'bother' to write Linux drivers at all?
Maybe Microsoft should do what the Linux community does. Work with manufacturers to get the drivers written and then maintain the drivers for the manufacturers forever.
Maybe the community should just step up and write them? I mean they do it for Linux, why not Microsoft? Plus, for any device supported under Linux, the hardest part of the work is already done... figuring out how to communicate with the device.
And don't whine about driver signing, if a large OSS group came to MS with a large body of updated drivers for x64, they'd take them in a heartbeat, sign them, and even stick them on the next Windows CD if we let them.
BTW - I own two webcams now. Neither work under Windows since I lost the driver disk (and those drivers were useless under XP64/Vista anyway), but they both work just fine under Linux. What's the world coming to?!
The difference is the manufacturer abandoned the hardware a couple years ago for Windows, while they never bothered to support Linux at all in the first place. So the community stepped up for Linux, because that was the only way it was going to happen, while the manufacturers did a passable job long enough for the hardware to be non-mainstream enough that most people really don't care.
D-Link is Shit. Buy Linksys.
Linksys is even worse shit.
I currently advocate Netgear at the "cheap-as-dirt" price-point these products fall into, but I'm sure someone will chime in that they are shit too.
Ultimately you get what you pay for.
but then the maps get bigger etc... I am tired of running ..
Nobody is making you play. Why not quit and play something else that you actually enjoy more?
Africa doesn't have the tax and people will work for EVEN LESS. Prices wont change.
Does africa generally have enough internet infrastructure?
Sure they do: it's called a delay.
Right, Fox can turn on the delay for these events and bleep as needed; and in fact this how life already works. The fact there would be a heavy fine won't affect them unless they are completely asleep at the wheel.
So why exactly is Fox taking this all the way to the Supreme court?
Because they DON'T WANT to bleep them, they want to be the broadcast network that lets celebrities swear, because they probably think they can boost ratings that way.
So its not that Fox can't prevent them, its that they DON'T WANT to; and this case is about whether they HAVE TO.
She thought that was a trick question designed to make her seem out of touch.
It was a question she didn't want to answer, and she didn't want to answer it because the truth probably wasn't particularly inspiring.
That doesn't make it a "trick question".
Seriously, the question was a probe into her qualification to be vice president, with respect to her knowledge of the issues facing the country as a whole, and the various states within it.
She could have diverted the 'which magazine question' easily by simply saying ... 'Oh, as governor of Alaska I of course read "The Alaskan Gazette" as it focuses on relevant local issues; my office also brings in New American, and I skim a number of other publications; but magazines aren't really how I stay on top of the issues that face our country;... instead I..."... and then say whatever it she wants to say to not appear as an ignorant isolated governor from Alaska...
In Word, MS doesn't own the letters in your language, so you're free to recombine them however you want, and that's not a derivative work.
Ah, but in many cases, MS, Adobe, or another party DOES own the font glyphs used to represent those letters, and has merely licensed them to you.
Levels you create in LBP are derivative of Sony's work in creating the base assets. They're more analogous to remixes or sampling, while the word doc is an original song.
Unless you are actually using a public domain or 'open source' font, you are simply arranging someone else's glyphs around on a canvas. Sounds a lot like LBP levels to me.
You don't want people to sit on committees that interest them, and match their strengths?
Perhaps counter intuitively, the more a congress critter wants to be on a particular committee the less I think I want them there.
Its sort of like letting jurors decide which cases they want.
Why no incentive for bribery? It would be much easier now that they are not held accountable for how they vote to take money from however is willing to give it and vote all kids of outrageous bills as their constituents would never find out.
Also no way for the people bribing them to know if they got what they paid for. He could just take the money, and vote however he was going to vote anyway... how are they going to know? Hell, if he's particularly corrupt he can even take bribes from both sides...
So, while it doesn't remove the incentive for bribery, it does make it riskier for the people doing the bribing.
Why on Earth would I want to spend hours with my arms extended to use a touchscreen?
Why exactly would having a touch screen make you do that? Do you think your touchscreen equipped PC will not also have a keyboard and mouse?
Lets say you've got your nice touchscreen on a living room desk, your wireless keyboard and mouse are neatly stashed in a drawer. You've got company coming over so you tap the iTunes icon on the screen, and then tap a playlist, and walk away.
Company arrives, and a song comes on you don't want, so you walk up to the screen, and tap the skip button. Someone asks what the lyrics were, you tap firefox, tap in the search and an onscreen keyboard pops up... you tap the name of the song... and then tap the lyric link returned.
Still later, you tap the screen a few more times to run a slide show of some recent vacation pics.
Later on, they leave, and you decide do write up a proposal... you idiotically tap out your essay in OpenOffice using the on-screen-keyboard directly on the screen... oh wait... no you don't... because that would be idiotic... you pull out your keyboard and mouse...
Five minutes would be painful enough.
Typical useful applications as described above all run in the less than 20 seconds category.
Besides that, there's the issue of fingerprints all over the screen.
1) Fingerprints wipe off pretty easily.
2) People still buy white clothes, carpets, cars, etc ... in other words, the fact that they are going to get dirty and show the dirt isn't going to prevent most people from buying one.
Touchscreens might have application on mobile devices, and kiosk style computers, but I don't see them replacing displays in mainstream use anytime soon.
I see them complementing traditional input devices, not replacing them.
Dropping support is not the same as not being portable.
I realize that.
Do they claim support for ARM? I don't think so but the iPhone uses one.
They don't have an officially supported ARM release they are dropping support for either.
Power on the desktop? No I don't think so.
They ALREADY have PowerPPC on the desktop / laptop, and its currently supported.
Power on the iPhone, iPod, and maybe a netbook?
Again, what would be the point of dropping support for the PowerPC if they were planning on using it in the near future. They've GOT a PowerPC platform out there with a pile of users who will buy the next OS if they release it... if they are building it ANYWAY for some new device, why not sell it to the legacy crowd?
OS/X is portable. They are still supporting Power based Macs last time I checked.
As I recall snow leopard or whatever the next version is called is dropping support for Power based Macs. If they were planning to switch back or support the chips on handhelds or something, why drop support on the G5s etc.
There's no limit to how much a government could spend on a single patient (new heart, new lungs, life-sustaining machines, biotic limbs), and yet even if the government spent a Trillion dollars per patient, ultimately they will all die.
Governments don't have unlimited funds. Some might like to think they do, but they don't and such thinking brings disaster upon them. The population must determine what level and method of taxation they support, and then its the government's job to provide the best health care it can afford with the funds allocated.
I don't see why this is modded flamebait. He has a legitimate point. Let's face it, processor-wise and capability-wise the Wii is little more than a slightly improved Gamecube.
Let's face it, you are essentially trolling here.
Processor-wise and capability-wise the Wii is more than twice as powerful as a gamecube by any reasonable measuring.
The whole console was built around the controller,
What precisely do you think a gaming console should have been built around? Blu-Ray?
as has every game for the system.
That simply isn't true.
This is a fun novelty, for sure (and great for parties). But it would still be more than fair to call it a "gimmick,"
http://kotaku.com/5071145/sony-patents-ultrasonic-waggle-controller-technology
Hint: a "gimmick" that proceeds to be copied into every future console made by every competitor is not a gimmick. Motion control is here to stay, deal with it.
especially as so many Wii owners are now admitting that their Wii's spend most of the time these days gathering dust (only broken out for friends and parties).
Right, because 'core gamer' fanbois starting threads about their Wii collecting dust being repeated on every gaming forum every couple months should be taken seriously. And as for casual gamers -- what do you expect? Most things we do casually collects dust most of the time. Part of the definition of 'casual' is that we don't obsessively do it all the time.
While consoles like the 360 and PS3 move forward,
Wii is reliably outselling the PS3 and 360 by 2:1 or more. The Wii is not being left behind.
many Wii owners are increasingly disappointed by scarce offerings and underpowered performance
Yes, its abject disappointment that causes title after title to sell out. SSBB sold out and was hard to find for a few weeks. MarioKart sold out and was hard to find for few weeks. I have still yet to see Wii Fit in stock anywhere.
Its true a small class of Wii owners are disappointed by a scarcity of offerings in a genre that is better served by the other consoles anyway. To them I say, "Hey moron, buy another console."
(look at Yahtzee's recent review of the Wii version of The Force Unleashed for a pretty good summary of this problem).
The 'problem' with Force Unleashed as he so eloquently pointed out, really had NOTHING to do with the Wii. In particular he complained that:
a) the graphics would have been considered poor even on the Xbox 1.
b) the level design was BAD
c) Lucas is an idiot
d) the motion control system was terrible
e) Lucas is really an idiot
f) lack of balance - the force powers made the light sabre a pointless distraction
In other words, Wii owners are the victim of a particularly shitty cash grabbing port of an already flawed game.
Nobody expects the graphics to be on par with the PS3, but to look like rubbish compared to LAST gen consoles reflects on the developer not the console. Ditto for bad level design. Ditto for bad controls. (We have a number examples of games that do motion control VERY WELL -- resident evil 4, metroid prime, etc -- so when a game shows up with shitty controls, its the developers fault.)
And as for Lucas being a complete idiot, and the lack of balance between sabre and force -- those are in ample evidence on the PS3 version too.
So what exactly was the 'problem' with the Wii?
I submit this as an example of why Slashdot is the greatest website on earth.
You should check out /b/ on 4chan. They'll have the picture.
You're saying someone got fat by eating 3 apples within a month?
That plus everything else he eats.
Remember; his criteria for eating something is not based on whether he is hungry but whether it is his to eat.
We can only hope he doesn't have a costco card. I hear they sell ketchup and mustard by the gallon.
If I'm going to be hungry later, and my apple supply isn't going to be refreshed until further down the road, you bet your ass I'd refuse to share.
Your apple supply (ie comcast quota) refreshes monthly, ie ... presumably, in fact, the day after tomorrow.
If you use comcast ( and others ) your monthly bandwidth is limited.
Most people don't use anywhere near their quota.
Are YOU going to share what you have left with others? Im not.
If you have 3 apples and are only hungry enough for 1 apple, do you refuse to share your remaining apples simply because your apple supply is limited?
The difference is that the people at the water cooler are people who are likely to be peripherally related to your job, with expertise relavant to your job.
Sure SOME people will have some 'work-related/work-useful facebook friends' but most of the people I see at work on facebook are just goofing off with their boy/girlfriends and drinking friends planning their weekend/party/whatever.
I'm not saying it can't happen that you've got a guru facebook buddy who helped you fix a perl script... but that's the exception, not the norm.
Yeah, one of my clients used to use "Thinstall" to package a number of .net programs into a single trivial to deploy executables, with some basic encryption and licensing wrapper. It worked well enough and was reasonable, a thousand bucks or so.
Then .net 2.0 came out and our software was fine but their wrapper broke on systems with .net 2.0 installed, and we got in touch with them about an upgrade...
They'd completely rewritten the software, and taken it in a new direction, and it was going to be around $10,000 for the upgrade (although they offered us a break as existing customers, but even then it was out of line for our needs)... and instead of licencing the software, we would be paying per app that we wanted to 'wrap'.... we ended up rolling our own licensing solution, and purchased a highly rated obfuscator. And things have been good for a while now. However, the new obfuscator people seems to be heading in the direction thinstall went... now offering virtual file system, virtual registry, the ability to include .net itself inside the app executable etc... and I have a feeling we won't be using them much longer either. Arrgh.
Meanwhile Thinstall got bought out by VMWare and is now "ThinApp", is still monstrously overpriced for what it really is. Although I can see that it would be worth what its priced at for the enterprise users they are targeting.
As I have seen it, ACORN committed no fraud. Perhaps I have missed the story that points at ACORN employees doing anything wrong, but it is the people ACORN is trying to register that are the fraudsters. ACORN did not create a Mickey Mouse registration form. Someone who ACORN was trying to register did. ACORN then in fact did the ethically correct thing and turn it in. Let the voter registration people determine if it is fraudulent, not the guy trying to sign up Obama supporters. He might throw out registration cards if he thinks the person might vote McCain. If people are voting based on this fraud, it is due to asshats handing ACORN fraudulent cards and State Departments not throwing them out.
My impression was that it was fraud perpetrated by low level employees, paid a commission on each card they hand in. So they were motivated to create fraudulent cards.
Now, ACORN at higher levels certainly did the right thing in terms of turning ALL the cards over, including the fraudulant ones, and I have complete disgust at the media for failing to properly report this fact.
But even so my impression isn't that it was some asshat on the street filling out bogus cards, but rather that it was the lowest level acorn employees, who were charged with getting cards filled out, who were entering in the bogus information.
Regardless of what really happened though, I simply can't see how Obama 'benefits' from this fraud, and cannot understand how McCain can charge him with a straight face of 'undermining the fabric of democracy' and not get torn apart by the media for it.
You can give your money away much more intelligently than the government can.
Would you be happy then if the government simply took your taxes and then gave you a form so you direct which programs or charities it goes towards. You'll pay exactly the same, but get to exercise your so called intelligence in its distribution.
Or is this whole charity a ploy to distract us from the reality that most rich people don't give significantly to charity at all, and wouldn't be motivated to do so if they were given a tax cut.
Hell, Bush gave the rich tax cuts, did we see them step and give much their newly recovered cash to charity? Of course not, just ask the charities.