In the end you have to trust somebody. If you don't and keep all your money under your bed, be your own OpenID provider, like me;)
Which is next to worthless if all the sites that claim to support openid are also only providers, and won't let you in. Which seems to be where things are headed.
No idea. It crashes when I quit. All the windows close and it appears to go away, and then later on, when I try and launch it, it complains its already running, and to quit it first. If I pull up task manager, sure enough there is always a 'firefox *32' process sitting there, which I have to kill before I can open up a new window.
Its intermittent though, it doesn't always crash... maybe one time in 4 or 5.
I wonder about your break problems. Is there anything specific that goes wrong?
See above.
Is your virus scan up to date?
I don't have a resident AV suite, but I scan regularly with command line AV tools, and its clean.
What is your OS?
Vista x64 (the *32 in the process name above is x64's way of telling me its a 32-bit process. I'd use Firefox 64 if more plugins worked.)
Are you Bill Gates perhaps? (sorry for the thought)
Yeah, I'm a multi-billionaire trolling on slashdot. I wish.;)
Thanks and I hope FF goes better for you,
Me too. FF2.x never gave me any issues at all, and I'm tempted to go back, but there are things about FF3 I like, and the crashes, because they always happen on exit (or when its supposed to be exiting) it doesn't really impact me that badly... but still daily crashing is really unacceptable.
I've never heard of Drupal before. Is this another flavor of the month software package?
No, I wouldn't call it that.
Its one of the larger and more popular open source CMS systems. It is fairly widely deployed and used, and usually shows up in any comparison or discussion of current CMS options from the last few years.
There are a few more than five available, not many but a few, available for the typically configured machine.
More than 5 available, but only 5 that are actually usable for content.
Comic Sans is pretty much off limits unless you are doing a myspace page.
The monospace fonts, while valuable for code snippets, numerical tables, and so forth are completely unsuitable for content.
That leaves us with Times (+Times New Roman) and Georgia for serif choices (2 fonts)
For sans serif, your link suggests we have: Andale mono, arial, century gothic, trebuchet, and verdana. (arial black, and impact real arent very useful outside of titles)
Andale Mono doesn't belong on that list at all, I think its on less than 15% of windows PCs. Century Gothic is represented best on Windows at around 80%, 60% on Mac; that's not exactly 'great'.
So for sans serif, the practical list of fonts is arial, verdana, & trebuchet. (3 fonts)
I don't have a Facebook account and I don't want one and only a fool *always* pushes first (why tip your hand to a potential adversary when observing before reacting might yield the same or even a better result with less effort?),
I agree entirely... but really what could be less effort than ignoring them entirely? Its not like its a daily struggle not to visit facebook and use their services.;)
but EULA, terms of service, and the like are generally silly documents which fly in the face of concepts, like first sale, that have been around since humans invented trade.
They've been steadily chipping away at first sale for a while now. Pretending they aren't and just ignoring it as it gradually happens is just going to end badly for society. Better to push back I think.
The wiser person recognizes when a contract is important and when the other party has nothing that he needs...
If the other party has nothing he needs, the wiser person recognizes there is no need to deal with that party at all if the other party is going to try and play games with absurd terms.
Some contracts, and particularly EULAs on websites where a fake identity is being used, are just not worth paying attention to in any case and that was my point.
Maybe, until the day the laws give them the power to enforce those eulas. And then suddenly maybe the 'worst they can do' will be a lot more than ban your fake account.
And that's when you also find out that your 'fake identity' is trivially unmasked... they have your ip address(es), and where you fit into their social network... if you've spent any time on their service you can pretty much rest assured your anonymity is pretty thin, unless you've been exceedingly paranoid, and refused to associate with your friends, and accessed it only through tor etc... but you probably weren't that clever. You thought it didn't matter.
I hope your right and it never comes to that. People like me fight to ensure it doesn't.
I think the real story here is the fact that you've upgraded Windows four times without your computer catching on fire.
You do realize its not the same original PC of course.
That's the joy of retail windows, really, they don't even -try- to tell you can't move your license from one box to the next as you upgrade hardware.)
The Vista upgrade's previous version install requirement is pure BS though, and MS better come up with an alternative next time around, because I am absolutely not going to install XP so I can install Vista so I can install windows 7, when I replace a hard drive.
You're suggesting that, even with the original media in your hands, the BSA would then accuse you of having pirated that software?
First, they don't say its 'pirated' (except in their lobbying rhetoric) they call it an 'unlicenced' copy, which really amounts to the same thing to them.
Secondly, when you buy a VLA, you often purchase media 'separately'; e.g you might pay 20,000$ for 200 licenses of software X at 100 per copy, and then buy 2 media kits (installation CDs) at $25 a shot. And having the media means nothing, its the paperwork that counts. Plus these days, its pretty common to just download the iso.
As for non-VLA software, if you've got a 'full version' installation media your probably ok, provided you have enough original disks... but if you'v got an 'ugrade version', its not a valid license unless you also have the version you upgraded -FROM- right down to the start of the chain.
Their reasoning is that you could have bought one copy of Office 2000, then bought 10 copies of Office XP Upgrade, and used the original Office 2000 media as the basis for each of the upgrades. So if you can only produce one copy of office 2000, 9 of your Office XP upgrades are 'unlicensed'.
Or in the case of more trusting software, maybe you even bought the upgrade, without ever having owned the original, or maybe you sold the previous version...)
You painted a total nightmare scenario in your hypothetical. Imagine if RIAA, MPAA, and BSA were to form a single cartel, pool their resources, and use their authority over local law enforcement (which they've blackmailed) to conduct such raids of your home.
It would be a nightmare scenario.
And the BSA already does this to businesses -- its generally a nightmare for them, as all but the most organized of megacorps who have a full time staff dedicated to their internal software inventory and licensing have a shot of satisfying the BSA.
Everybody else, even if they actually did buy everything they use, aren't going to be able to prove it.
Plus most businesses fail legitimately. After all even 'good' businesses get nailed on things like Winzip shareware (owned by Corel, a member of the BSA), [I use and recommend 7-zip because of this] or on fonts... e.g. they'll have unlicensed copies of the TrueType font XYZ used in their logo on floating around (which is owned by Adobe, a member of the BSA), for example....
So they get just about everybody on something, and a BSA audit is more about "how much" its going to cost you rather than "if".
So, according to the BSA, when you don't buy software, you put the cash you didn't spend under your mattress so the city doesn't get any tax revenue from it (past income taxes, I assume).
Evidently yes. I mean what else would they do with it? Spending on expanding the business? Surely not!
Of course, that assumes they ever had the money in the first place. I mean, if I have 0$ and I chose to pirate MS Office... well.. sure that counts as a lost sale, and lost tax revenue to the BSA... but since I had 0$ left in the budget, I was never going to buy the software or anything else for that matter.
But what REALLY bugs me about the BSA is that they consider upgrades for which you can't prove a complete chain for as a 'unlicenses/unauthorized/pirated'.
I mean, I have Vista Ultimate Upgrade on my PC. I obtained that legally, by upgrading my copy of Windows XP Professional Upgrade, which I obtained legally by upgrading my Windows 98 upgrade, which I obtained legally when I upgraded my Windows 95 retail which was purchased on 25 floppy disks over a decade ago. I do not have those floppy discs or license anymore from the original 95 purchase. (And it might even have been an upgrade to Windows 3.11 for Workgroups... I don't even remember.)
If I were audited by the BSA they would find my copy of Vista as 'unlicensed'.
This sort of scenario happens all the time in BSA audits where companies that bought a 5 user VLA in 1992, then in 98 upgraded them to a 10 user VLA (5 new licenses, 5 upgrade licenses), then upgraded to a 20 user VLA in 2002 (10 new licenses 10 upgrade licenses), then upgraded to 25 licenses in 2006 (5 new licesnes, 20 upgrade licenses)... and the BSA shows up...
And you pull out your licenses... and all you've kept are the 2002, and 2006 ones, but you misplaced or discarded the old 92 and 98 ones, so they determine that you have 15 valid licenses. (the 10 new ones bought in 2002 and upgraded in 06 plus the 5 new ones in 06. The rest are unsubstantiated and you better pay up quick you lousy crook!
Meanwhile the company your dealing with has been bought twice since 92, and the product has been renamed 3 times... and they have no record that you bought a VLA from a company acquired by a company they acquired years ago. Even the accounting records have been destroyed. All that old shit takes up valuable space.
And that's the VLAs... Its far more difficult for a small business to keep every box and license of every piece of software they ever bought just so they can show the BSA one day, especially after a few rounds of upgrades. And small businesses with 4 or 5 people don't usually have VLA's, just a cupboard where they have a bunch of stuff, and when the cupboard is full they usually toss the old versions of old software they've upgraded from...)
Its pure bullshit.
Can you imagine the BSA doing an audit of your home, not for software, just for everything in it. How much of the stuff in your home can you "prove" is legally purchased? You have receipts for every CD, every book, all your cutlery, dishes, pots, clothes, furniture?
Of course not, but that doesn't mean its all STOLEN.
Parents making a choice to protect their children is oppression???
It can be.
I'd have my kids LoJacked if it could be safely removed (with minimal scar) at the age of 18, were legal, and could be proved to be safe. No questions asked and no they don't get a choice. *gasp*
That would be oppression. Having your baby lojacked until age 5 or 10 might be reasonable, but 18 is absurd, especially if at 18 they were against it.
Choices are for me to make when it comes to protecting my child, not for you nor for the government, and sure as hell not for a child who doesn't know the differences between right and wrong.
The point of parenting is teach the child self reliance, and the difference between right and wrong so that they can make their own choices. Making their choices for them when they are 2 is fine, making their choices for them right up until they are 18 is absurd.
They both aren't ever allowed a single moment of privacy. *gasp* Nope.
If the child is old enough to want privacy, the child is old enough to start getting it. I dated a girl whose parents went through her room, her garbage, her purse, when she was 17-18 -- do you have any idea how screwed up that made her?
If you view a parent protecting their child in a reasonable (and hopefully open) manner as oppression than you fail.
It all depends where 'reasonable' falls. In your case, most of you say -is- reasonable, although lojacking a kid until they are 18 strikes me as oppressive. They should be able to move around without being electronically monitored before 18 if they wish, in my opinion.
When I was 18 I wouldn't have wanted it. Sure, I went on a wilderness camping trip with some friends when I was 18 and I'd have taken a gps tracker with me if it had been readily available. Hell, as an adult, I'd do that.
They should have privacy well before they are 18 too... and while you claim your kids have none, you simultaneously claim they have private safe... so I'm guessing you give them quite a bit more privacy in practice than your statement lets on at face value.
e.g. you probably let them lock the door when they are using the bathroom, get dressed behind closed doors, play in their room with the door closed, you evidently don't read your daughters diary,... etc...etc. Seems pretty reasonable... but if you go around making blanket statements like 'my children have zero privacy and should be electronically monitored until they are 18' you are projecting the image of an obsessive oppressive parent, and provoking the flames you are receiving.
The real address can be either a mail drop or an address controlled by a private trust.
It all depends upon how much you value your privacy and how much you are able and willing to spend to protect it, but there are ways.
Sure, you could also just not buy anything online, and show up in person wearing sunglasses, a veil, gloves, and cash... that's not really the point here though.
Well cry me a river, why should people give a crap about their terms of service?
Only a complete idiot would use a service without understanding what the terms and consequences were.
The worst they can do is ban your throwaway account.
Why create one in the first place? If you don't agree with the way they operate why deal with them at all?
In general, I do what I please until somebody pushes back because that is how the real world works.
Why wait until they push back? Push first. Refuse to use the services of a company you don't agree with.
Some people and certain relationships are important to and others are not and I treat them accordingly.
"Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners." ~Laurence Sterne
I have far too much self respect to lie just to get a silly facebook account.
If facebook wants my patronage and membership, they can come to the table with terms I'll agree to. Otherwise they can go fuck themselves. They need us far more than we need them.
Overwhelmingly shitty, buggy drivers. But hey, a bad computing experience is better than no computing experience right?
1) You get what you pay for. There is plenty of hardware available with 'rigourous attention to detail and quality.'.
2) You do realize that there is aftermarket hardware with overwhelmingly shitting and buggy drivers for macs too right. In fact, in my experience, a lot of stuff that is polished to a gleaming gem on windows is a buggy afterthought for the mac version.
What you call a "my way or the highway" approach, I (and others) might call a "rigorous attention to detail & quality, and an insistence on delivering a product that works well."
Windows has multiple OEMs. Some of them consistently package excellent hardware and drivers with their units, they are rigorously tested with attention to detail and quality.
Its true some OEMs package the cheapest poorly built crap they can find... but you don't have to buy those.
I'm okay with that sort of an approach, because to the extent I'm able to choose, I prefer appropriate, well-made tools for any job I'm doing.
You can get those on either platform.
And as OSX's popularity continues to grow the selection of cheap 3rd party crap to crash your mac and hog its resources will continue to grow as well.
But, different strokes right? I prefer using my computer to actually get things done, while you seem to prefer the masturbatory thrill of mucking around with drivers & hardware upgrades.
One day you'll you want to 'actually get something done' that wasn't blessed by apple in advance when they designed your imac, or macbook. And then you'll be enviously eyeing those Windows boxes that can be upgraded to the task you need to fulfill with a $150.00 PCI-E card.
Meanwhile you'll have to buy a whole new Mac, probably a $2800+ Mac Pro just to get access to a PCI-E slot, and that's assuming someone actually wrote osx software to support the hardware you need for your task...
they're just not in the mainstream of the computer-buying public.
Pretty much. Apple's are great if you fit into the consumer mainstream, and only need to do 'mainstream things'. If you need specialized hardware or software to get the job done, the apple is probably going to leave you wanting.
There is nothing to prevent them from recording ALL transactions reported to them by their affiliates and either associating them with you when you do create an account OR even if you never create an Facebook account attempting to maintain a dossier of transactions which Facebook believes are likely to have been made by the same person. This is why one should never provide accurate information concerning one's identity online unless it is absolutely necessary. If you are not feeling creative then you can always use Fake Name Generator to create a throw away identity.
1) Facebook is tracking your buying habits, obviously when dealing with vendors you have to provide a reasonably real identity... they need a real address, creditcard, etc in which to bill you and send you your goods. So you can't really lie there, even if you wanted to.
2) Lieing to facebook about your idenity is against the facebook eula and terms of service. Granted its something a lot of people do and get away with doing of course, but nonetheless it amounts to fraudulently using facebook's service.
In my opinion if you do not wish to agree to and submit to facebooks terms of service, you should not use facebooks services. It really is that simple.
If more people stood up for their rights and refused to click through agreements they don't agree with, service providers would change their agreements to something customers could actually stomach.
Uhhh... does anyone care about the massive waste of rocket fuel that this is? I mean, that's the number one reason I hate NASCAR. It's just downright wasteful. We could be using that gas, instead of burning it to drive in a circle 500 times.
This whole auto-racing thing is an artifact of a world where energy is plentiful and can be freely squandered.
What do you figure the energy costs are to to run an indoor football/soccer/basketball stadium? Or an NHL hockey rink? remember, these all have to be maintained 24x7.
Not to mention all the fuel used flying all those people back and forth across the globe just so they can kick a ball around or hit a puck with a stick?
At least there is some technology feedback from auto racing back into 'real cars'.
What would be the return on investment in the energy cost of hockey? baseball? football?
How confident are you that NASCAR is actually the most energy wasteful sport going?
When I fired up my brother's Vista box I was surprised how much RAM it was using. I don't recall the numbers but that would be useful mem for my dev.
Vista, by design, tries to do something useful with ram that is otherwise free. It doesn't need all that ram, but if nothing else is using it, why the heck shouldn't vista use its idle time and idle ram to preload and cache commonly used applications into RAM?
If I happen to use something its preloaded, great, it launches instantly. If you don't use it...hey, no harm done! If the applications you are running need some more ram, vista releases it. It doesn't even need to be 'swapped out'; it can just be straight up 'released' because it was only loaded in case you might need it because the ram was free anyway.
I'd rather the OS do this invisibly and automatically than have a bunch of stupid tray icons and processes that are installed and run at start up by default to 'preload' apps that I may or may not actually commonly use. (MS Office / Acrobat / Open Office... all do this for example.)
OSX and Linux could both benefit from something like this. Hell, one of my biggest complaints with OSX is application startup times... maybe if OSX intelligently preloaded stuff in the background into otherwise unused ram it would feel snappier.
Yes yes and BMW have a monopoly on BMW cars and Mercedes have a monopoly on Mercedes cars and
That's true but my point wasn't nearly that simplistic. Its not that Apple has a 'monopoly' on 'OSX'; every manufacturer of any even slightly differentiated product has a 'monopoly' on that self-same product.
However, in this case Apple -also- has a 'monopoly' on computers that work with 'OSX', and is actively protecting that monopoly.
That would be like BMW dictating that you can't install Dunlop tires on your car. Or Mercedes dictating what brand of soap you use to wash your Benz.
it would appear you have a monopoly on stupidity: please stop abusing it and stop posting.
Things aren't as they appear to you. Maybe if you pulled your head out of your ass you'd be able to see better.
This is a stupid argument, and I suspect you knew it. "OSX computers" is not a separate market, as practically anything that can be done with "OSX computers" can also be done with "Windows computers" or "Linux computers". If there's an interchangeable replacement, it's not a separate market.
So what you would suggest would be the non-Apple 'interchangeable replacement' to run iLife 08 on? If there isn't one, does that, by your own argument, mean that its a separate market?
I do get what you are saying, and agree to a point. But from a not unreasonable point of view Apple has a monopoly. Its an 'illegal monopoly', but its still a monopoly.
Its no different than replacement parts for a car. You often have multiple manufacturers who will make a given replacement part... whether you need a timing belt or a tire or an air filter... but a lot of parts... like if you need a replacement fuel tank, your probably looking at exactly ONE vender option.
Its not 'illegal', but -is- a monopoly on that part.
The main problem is redistributing the modified software for profit, big copyright no no.
Your confusing 'redistributing copies' with 'resale of original'.
If I buy a book, piss on it, and then sell it for twice what I paid for it with proud label that declaring that I had pissed on it, how would copyright even be involved? never-mind violated?
As I doubt any commercial software company would be ok with someone else selling modified versions of their software, this is just blatant infringement.
It is infringement to distribute copies of derivative works. But its not infringment to resell modified originals. As long as each Psystar goes out with its own original Apple OS X retail box, psystar isn't violating 'copyright', at least not with respect to redistribution.
I think this also shows why it took so long for Apple to sue, they needed to get everything in order to build a full case as the EULA by itself might not hold up. The copyright, image, trademarks, etc... side is something Apple can succeed on.
Maybe. I suspect it was probably just better to wait until they had a going concern. If they went belly up before getting off the ground Apple wouldn't have to lift a finger.
I'd like to see how any rational argument could be made that Apple is a monopoly in anything other than maybe MP3 players (and even there, they aren't a de-facto and abusive monopoly.)
Its trivial to demonstrate that apple has a monopoly on OSX and OSX computers. Its much harder to establish that this monopoly is illegal. Indeed, its probably not an illegal monopoly.
That said, tying doesn't require there be an illegal monopoly. It is illegal for a bank to tie your getting a mortgage to you having their credit card for example; clearly 'monopoly' isn't the issue there, as there are lots of credit cards and mortgage lenders out there. Yet it is still illegal to tie the two together.
I'd like to see how any rational argument could be made that Apple is a monopoly in anything other than maybe MP3 players (and even there, they aren't a de-facto and abusive monopoly.)
The argument is unessary. It can be illegal tying even without an illegal monopoly.
The thing is, a lot of NEW hardware didn't run Vista. Much of the blame should go to the hardware vendors for putting Vista on their underpowered crap, but it still hurt Vista's reputation.
This is partly microsofts fault too, as they released minimum specs that were unrealistically low.
But I agree this is ultimately the hardware venders fault. They should have tested them and concluded that the units weren't performing adequately with the minimal hardware. But instead they met all Microsofts checkboxes, slapped a Vista capable sticker on it, and then sold them to pissed off customers, who blamed Vista and Microsoft for their shitty new pc.
Imagine if someone tried building and selling a "Crysis capable PC" by reading the minimum requirements off the box... we'd laugh them out business.
You cannot say 2003 server is as stable as XP, it just doesn't work as an analogy.
I've got a client with an XP Pro box that runs a Filemaker Pro Server (hosting a CRM, point-of-sale system, and manufacturing process control system). It is in constant use throughout the day, every day, although the load is relatively light.
Its currently at 161 days since the last reboot. (Someone put a nail through an ethernet cable, and the ensuing network problems included continually crashing the gigabit switch, and we brought everything down to sort it out. I probably could have left the unit running... but the network was down anyway, so there wasn't really any reason to.
Prior to that it was 343 days. (brought down due to an extended power failure).
To my knowledge it has never actually crashed.
I think windows recent desktop OSes are percieved as less stable than their server counterparts primarily because of what is run on them and what they are run on.
You don't load your server up with all that desktop crud -- 14 tray icons to detect your ipod, camera, scanner helper, printer utility, sound-fx, msn messenger, java-notify, office-preload, adobe speed launcher... much of which is poorly written crap.
Similiarly you don't generally install a server OS on a $350 dell piece of crap PC... yet enterprises roll XP out on those things en masse. Cheap generic ram, cheap generic power supply, cheaply made motherboard and drives... while the server gets rolled out on a much better made set of hardware.
Is it any wonder the XP boxes were less stable?
Its not really fair to compare stability of the two OSes like that.
In my experience at least, if you use a Windows desktop OS in a 'server like' role, ie where you set it up with its services on good quality hardware and then otherwise leave it alone, its just as stable as a server. I've got a couple other XP boxes in situations like this too.
Flaky software as in products from driver and application vendors who are getting sick and tired of jumping every time Microsoft tells them to. Or don't have the manpower/finances available to keep patching their products for Microsoft's benefits rather than for their own needs.
Right. It should be more like Apple? Where application vendors have to jump everytime Apple tells them to? You can still run 1995 windows software on Vista, and most of it will even work.
I'd love to see you pull that off on a new mac.
Or maybe it should be more like Linux? Where most application vendors and hardware vendors steer well clear, and if they try at all, they only support a couple specific versions of specific distros, and everything else is 'up the community'.
Or don't have the manpower/finances available to keep patching their products for Microsoft's benefits rather than for their own needs.
1) Seriously. Its been 8 years since Microsoft had a version change. Windows 2000 was "version 5", windows vista 8 years later is "version 6".
XP was '5.1', and for the most part not a lot really changed. That was why XP was such a painless upgrade compared to Vista. It wasn't really much different.
2) The big compatibility breaking feature of Vista is security. Vista finally has it turned on by default. That benefits users. And if it means vendors have to fix some code to work in a secure environment, good, that benefits users too.
I have often wondered why we have not seen more of this.
Price? The reality that it doesn't matter? Both.
NT Server wasn't really any more stable than NT workstation. Server 2k wasn't really any more stable than 2k Pro. Server 2003 wasn't really any more stable than XP.
The stability of MS' "Server" line of OS' is proof that they have no real excuse for the Vista poor performance (other than it was deliberately done).
I find Vista to be very fast, and it hasn't crashed on me yet. I use it on multiple PCs. I don't deny its been something of a fiasco in general, but at the end of the day, if you put Vista on suitable hardware with good drivers there is really almost nothing seriously wrong with it.
A lot of the 'vista' problems were related to bad drivers, buggy bioses, and so on. Ultimately relatively few of the "Vista Issues" are related to Vista, and can be traced to some flakey 3rd party software.
On some level blaming Vista for running legacy windows stuff poorly is like blaming Linux for running legacy windows stuff poorly. The only difference is that Vista actually runs it well enough for people to expect it to work.
Because if they actually send the spam, then the people selling the Viagra might get some hits. And even if they don't make a profit, the fact that they get hits may entice them to try again, providing a potentially larger source of revenue for the people sending the spam.
It would be trivial for a group wielding a globe spanning botnet capable of sending out millions of spams to instead simulate a bunch of 'hits' on some suckers website.
Hell, they could even have a shill put a couple orders through to really push the suckers buttons.
Slashdot Mirror
In the end you have to trust somebody. If you don't and keep all your money under your bed, be your own OpenID provider, like me ;)
Which is next to worthless if all the sites that claim to support openid are also only providers, and won't let you in. Which seems to be where things are headed.
My FF 3.1 never crashes on XP SP2.
Mine crashes daily.
Could you provide specific sites that break?
No idea. It crashes when I quit. All the windows close and it appears to go away, and then later on, when I try and launch it, it complains its already running, and to quit it first. If I pull up task manager, sure enough there is always a 'firefox *32' process sitting there, which I have to kill before I can open up a new window.
Its intermittent though, it doesn't always crash... maybe one time in 4 or 5.
I wonder about your break problems. Is there anything specific that goes wrong?
See above.
Is your virus scan up to date?
I don't have a resident AV suite, but I scan regularly with command line AV tools, and its clean.
What is your OS?
Vista x64 (the *32 in the process name above is x64's way of telling me its a 32-bit process. I'd use Firefox 64 if more plugins worked.)
Are you Bill Gates perhaps? (sorry for the thought)
Yeah, I'm a multi-billionaire trolling on slashdot. I wish. ;)
Thanks and I hope FF goes better for you,
Me too. FF2.x never gave me any issues at all, and I'm tempted to go back, but there are things about FF3 I like, and the crashes, because they always happen on exit (or when its supposed to be exiting) it doesn't really impact me that badly... but still daily crashing is really unacceptable.
I've never heard of Drupal before. Is this another flavor of the month software package?
No, I wouldn't call it that.
Its one of the larger and more popular open source CMS systems.
It is fairly widely deployed and used, and usually shows up in any comparison or discussion of current CMS options from the last few years.
There are a few more than five available, not many but a few, available for the typically configured machine.
More than 5 available, but only 5 that are actually usable for content.
Comic Sans is pretty much off limits unless you are doing a myspace page.
The monospace fonts, while valuable for code snippets, numerical tables, and so forth are completely unsuitable for content.
That leaves us with Times (+Times New Roman) and Georgia for serif choices (2 fonts)
For sans serif, your link suggests we have:
Andale mono, arial, century gothic, trebuchet, and verdana.
(arial black, and impact real arent very useful outside of titles)
Andale Mono doesn't belong on that list at all, I think its on less than 15% of windows PCs.
Century Gothic is represented best on Windows at around 80%, 60% on Mac; that's not exactly 'great'.
So for sans serif, the practical list of fonts is arial, verdana, & trebuchet. (3 fonts)
For a total of five fonts.
I don't have a Facebook account and I don't want one and only a fool *always* pushes first (why tip your hand to a potential adversary when observing before reacting might yield the same or even a better result with less effort?),
I agree entirely... but really what could be less effort than ignoring them entirely? Its not like its a daily struggle not to visit facebook and use their services. ;)
but EULA, terms of service, and the like are generally silly documents which fly in the face of concepts, like first sale, that have been around since humans invented trade.
They've been steadily chipping away at first sale for a while now. Pretending they aren't and just ignoring it as it gradually happens is just going to end badly for society. Better to push back I think.
The wiser person recognizes when a contract is important and when the other party has nothing that he needs...
If the other party has nothing he needs, the wiser person recognizes there is no need to deal with that party at all if the other party is going to try and play games with absurd terms.
Some contracts, and particularly EULAs on websites where a fake identity is being used, are just not worth paying attention to in any case and that was my point.
Maybe, until the day the laws give them the power to enforce those eulas. And then suddenly maybe the 'worst they can do' will be a lot more than ban your fake account.
And that's when you also find out that your 'fake identity' is trivially unmasked... they have your ip address(es), and where you fit into their social network... if you've spent any time on their service you can pretty much rest assured your anonymity is pretty thin, unless you've been exceedingly paranoid, and refused to associate with your friends, and accessed it only through tor etc... but you probably weren't that clever. You thought it didn't matter.
I hope your right and it never comes to that. People like me fight to ensure it doesn't.
I think the real story here is the fact that you've upgraded Windows four times without your computer catching on fire.
You do realize its not the same original PC of course.
That's the joy of retail windows, really, they don't even -try- to tell you can't move your license from one box to the next as you upgrade hardware.)
The Vista upgrade's previous version install requirement is pure BS though, and MS better come up with an alternative next time around, because I am absolutely not going to install XP so I can install Vista so I can install windows 7, when I replace a hard drive.
You're suggesting that, even with the original media in your hands, the BSA would then accuse you of having pirated that software?
First, they don't say its 'pirated' (except in their lobbying rhetoric) they call it an 'unlicenced' copy, which really amounts to the same thing to them.
Secondly, when you buy a VLA, you often purchase media 'separately'; e.g you might pay 20,000$ for 200 licenses of software X at 100 per copy, and then buy 2 media kits (installation CDs) at $25 a shot. And having the media means nothing, its the paperwork that counts. Plus these days, its pretty common to just download the iso.
As for non-VLA software, if you've got a 'full version' installation media your probably ok, provided you have enough original disks... but if you'v got an 'ugrade version', its not a valid license unless you also have the version you upgraded -FROM- right down to the start of the chain.
Their reasoning is that you could have bought one copy of Office 2000, then bought 10 copies of Office XP Upgrade, and used the original Office 2000 media as the basis for each of the upgrades. So if you can only produce one copy of office 2000, 9 of your Office XP upgrades are 'unlicensed'.
Or in the case of more trusting software, maybe you even bought the upgrade, without ever having owned the original, or maybe you sold the previous version...)
You painted a total nightmare scenario in your hypothetical. Imagine if RIAA, MPAA, and BSA were to form a single cartel, pool their resources, and use their authority over local law enforcement (which they've blackmailed) to conduct such raids of your home.
It would be a nightmare scenario.
And the BSA already does this to businesses -- its generally a nightmare for them, as all but the most organized of megacorps who have a full time staff dedicated to their internal software inventory and licensing have a shot of satisfying the BSA.
Everybody else, even if they actually did buy everything they use, aren't going to be able to prove it.
Plus most businesses fail legitimately. After all even 'good' businesses get nailed on things like Winzip shareware (owned by Corel, a member of the BSA), [I use and recommend 7-zip because of this] or on fonts... e.g. they'll have unlicensed copies of the TrueType font XYZ used in their logo on floating around (which is owned by Adobe, a member of the BSA), for example....
So they get just about everybody on something, and a BSA audit is more about "how much" its going to cost you rather than "if".
Its really quite sick.
So, according to the BSA, when you don't buy software, you put the cash you didn't spend under your mattress so the city doesn't get any tax revenue from it (past income taxes, I assume).
Evidently yes. I mean what else would they do with it? Spending on expanding the business? Surely not!
Of course, that assumes they ever had the money in the first place. I mean, if I have 0$ and I chose to pirate MS Office... well.. sure that counts as a lost sale, and lost tax revenue to the BSA... but since I had 0$ left in the budget, I was never going to buy the software or anything else for that matter.
But what REALLY bugs me about the BSA is that they consider upgrades for which you can't prove a complete chain for as a 'unlicenses/unauthorized/pirated'.
I mean, I have Vista Ultimate Upgrade on my PC. I obtained that legally, by upgrading my copy of Windows XP Professional Upgrade, which I obtained legally by upgrading my Windows 98 upgrade, which I obtained legally when I upgraded my Windows 95 retail which was purchased on 25 floppy disks over a decade ago. I do not have those floppy discs or license anymore from the original 95 purchase. (And it might even have been an upgrade to Windows 3.11 for Workgroups... I don't even remember.)
If I were audited by the BSA they would find my copy of Vista as 'unlicensed'.
This sort of scenario happens all the time in BSA audits where companies that bought a 5 user VLA in 1992, then in 98 upgraded them to a 10 user VLA (5 new licenses, 5 upgrade licenses), then upgraded to a 20 user VLA in 2002 (10 new licenses 10 upgrade licenses), then upgraded to 25 licenses in 2006 (5 new licesnes, 20 upgrade licenses)... and the BSA shows up...
And you pull out your licenses ... and all you've kept are the 2002, and 2006 ones, but you misplaced or discarded the old 92 and 98 ones, so they determine that you have 15 valid licenses. (the 10 new ones bought in 2002 and upgraded in 06 plus the 5 new ones in 06. The rest are unsubstantiated and you better pay up quick you lousy crook!
Meanwhile the company your dealing with has been bought twice since 92, and the product has been renamed 3 times... and they have no record that you bought a VLA from a company acquired by a company they acquired years ago. Even the accounting records have been destroyed. All that old shit takes up valuable space.
And that's the VLAs... Its far more difficult for a small business to keep every box and license of every piece of software they ever bought just so they can show the BSA one day, especially after a few rounds of upgrades. And small businesses with 4 or 5 people don't usually have VLA's, just a cupboard where they have a bunch of stuff, and when the cupboard is full they usually toss the old versions of old software they've upgraded from...)
Its pure bullshit.
Can you imagine the BSA doing an audit of your home, not for software, just for everything in it. How much of the stuff in your home can you "prove" is legally purchased? You have receipts for every CD, every book, all your cutlery, dishes, pots, clothes, furniture?
Of course not, but that doesn't mean its all STOLEN.
Parents making a choice to protect their children is oppression???
It can be.
I'd have my kids LoJacked if it could be safely removed (with minimal scar) at the age of 18, were legal, and could be proved to be safe. No questions asked and no they don't get a choice. *gasp*
That would be oppression. Having your baby lojacked until age 5 or 10 might be reasonable, but 18 is absurd, especially if at 18 they were against it.
Choices are for me to make when it comes to protecting my child, not for you nor for the government, and sure as hell not for a child who doesn't know the differences between right and wrong.
The point of parenting is teach the child self reliance, and the difference between right and wrong so that they can make their own choices. Making their choices for them when they are 2 is fine, making their choices for them right up until they are 18 is absurd.
They both aren't ever allowed a single moment of privacy. *gasp* Nope.
If the child is old enough to want privacy, the child is old enough to start getting it. I dated a girl whose parents went through her room, her garbage, her purse, when she was 17-18 -- do you have any idea how screwed up that made her?
If you view a parent protecting their child in a reasonable (and hopefully open) manner as oppression than you fail.
It all depends where 'reasonable' falls. In your case, most of you say -is- reasonable, although lojacking a kid until they are 18 strikes me as oppressive. They should be able to move around without being electronically monitored before 18 if they wish, in my opinion.
When I was 18 I wouldn't have wanted it. Sure, I went on a wilderness camping trip with some friends when I was 18 and I'd have taken a gps tracker with me if it had been readily available. Hell, as an adult, I'd do that.
They should have privacy well before they are 18 too... and while you claim your kids have none, you simultaneously claim they have private safe... so I'm guessing you give them quite a bit more privacy in practice than your statement lets on at face value.
e.g. you probably let them lock the door when they are using the bathroom, get dressed behind closed doors, play in their room with the door closed, you evidently don't read your daughters diary, ... etc...etc. Seems pretty reasonable... but if you go around making blanket statements like 'my children have zero privacy and should be electronically monitored until they are 18' you are projecting the image of an obsessive oppressive parent, and provoking the flames you are receiving.
The real address can be either a mail drop or an address controlled by a private trust.
It all depends upon how much you value your privacy and how much you are able and willing to spend to protect it, but there are ways.
Sure, you could also just not buy anything online, and show up in person wearing sunglasses, a veil, gloves, and cash... that's not really the point here though.
Well cry me a river, why should people give a crap about their terms of service?
Only a complete idiot would use a service without understanding what the terms and consequences were.
The worst they can do is ban your throwaway account.
Why create one in the first place? If you don't agree with the way they operate why deal with them at all?
In general, I do what I please until somebody pushes back because that is how the real world works.
Why wait until they push back? Push first. Refuse to use the services of a company you don't agree with.
Some people and certain relationships are important to and others are not and I treat them accordingly.
"Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners."
~Laurence Sterne
I have far too much self respect to lie just to get a silly facebook account.
If facebook wants my patronage and membership, they can come to the table with terms I'll agree to. Otherwise they can go fuck themselves. They need us far more than we need them.
Overwhelmingly shitty, buggy drivers. But hey, a bad computing experience is better than no computing experience right?
1) You get what you pay for. There is plenty of hardware available with 'rigourous attention to detail and quality.'.
2) You do realize that there is aftermarket hardware with overwhelmingly shitting and buggy drivers for macs too right. In fact, in my experience, a lot of stuff that is polished to a gleaming gem on windows is a buggy afterthought for the mac version.
What you call a "my way or the highway" approach, I (and others) might call a "rigorous attention to detail & quality, and an insistence on delivering a product that works well."
Windows has multiple OEMs. Some of them consistently package excellent hardware and drivers with their units, they are rigorously tested with attention to detail and quality.
Its true some OEMs package the cheapest poorly built crap they can find... but you don't have to buy those.
I'm okay with that sort of an approach, because to the extent I'm able to choose, I prefer appropriate, well-made tools for any job I'm doing.
You can get those on either platform.
And as OSX's popularity continues to grow the selection of cheap 3rd party crap to crash your mac and hog its resources will continue to grow as well.
But, different strokes right? I prefer using my computer to actually get things done, while you seem to prefer the masturbatory thrill of mucking around with drivers & hardware upgrades.
One day you'll you want to 'actually get something done' that wasn't blessed by apple in advance when they designed your imac, or macbook. And then you'll be enviously eyeing those Windows boxes that can be upgraded to the task you need to fulfill with a $150.00 PCI-E card.
Meanwhile you'll have to buy a whole new Mac, probably a $2800+ Mac Pro just to get access to a PCI-E slot, and that's assuming someone actually wrote osx software to support the hardware you need for your task...
they're just not in the mainstream of the computer-buying public.
Pretty much. Apple's are great if you fit into the consumer mainstream, and only need to do 'mainstream things'. If you need specialized hardware or software to get the job done, the apple is probably going to leave you wanting.
Windows should build in a encryption program like on Mac OS X
Uh... they did... 8 years ago.
They've had EFS (encrypting file system) since Windows 2000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encrypting_File_System
They've added BitLocker Drive Encryption with Vista (Ultimate & Enterprise).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitLocker_Drive_Encryption
There is nothing to prevent them from recording ALL transactions reported to them by their affiliates and either associating them with you when you do create an account OR even if you never create an Facebook account attempting to maintain a dossier of transactions which Facebook believes are likely to have been made by the same person. This is why one should never provide accurate information concerning one's identity online unless it is absolutely necessary. If you are not feeling creative then you can always use Fake Name Generator to create a throw away identity.
1) Facebook is tracking your buying habits, obviously when dealing with vendors you have to provide a reasonably real identity... they need a real address, creditcard, etc in which to bill you and send you your goods. So you can't really lie there, even if you wanted to.
2) Lieing to facebook about your idenity is against the facebook eula and terms of service. Granted its something a lot of people do and get away with doing of course, but nonetheless it amounts to fraudulently using facebook's service.
In my opinion if you do not wish to agree to and submit to facebooks terms of service, you should not use facebooks services. It really is that simple.
If more people stood up for their rights and refused to click through agreements they don't agree with, service providers would change their agreements to something customers could actually stomach.
Same goes for DRM.
Uhhh... does anyone care about the massive waste of rocket fuel that this is? I mean, that's the number one reason I hate NASCAR. It's just downright wasteful. We could be using that gas, instead of burning it to drive in a circle 500 times.
This whole auto-racing thing is an artifact of a world where energy is plentiful and can be freely squandered.
What do you figure the energy costs are to to run an indoor football/soccer/basketball stadium? Or an NHL hockey rink? remember, these all have to be maintained 24x7.
Not to mention all the fuel used flying all those people back and forth across the globe just so they can kick a ball around or hit a puck with a stick?
At least there is some technology feedback from auto racing back into 'real cars'.
What would be the return on investment in the energy cost of hockey? baseball? football?
How confident are you that NASCAR is actually the most energy wasteful sport going?
When I fired up my brother's Vista box I was surprised how much RAM it was using. I don't recall the numbers but that would be useful mem for my dev.
Vista, by design, tries to do something useful with ram that is otherwise free. It doesn't need all that ram, but if nothing else is using it, why the heck shouldn't vista use its idle time and idle ram to preload and cache commonly used applications into RAM?
If I happen to use something its preloaded, great, it launches instantly. If you don't use it...hey, no harm done! If the applications you are running need some more ram, vista releases it. It doesn't even need to be 'swapped out'; it can just be straight up 'released' because it was only loaded in case you might need it because the ram was free anyway.
I'd rather the OS do this invisibly and automatically than have a bunch of stupid tray icons and processes that are installed and run at start up by default to 'preload' apps that I may or may not actually commonly use. (MS Office / Acrobat / Open Office... all do this for example.)
OSX and Linux could both benefit from something like this. Hell, one of my biggest complaints with OSX is application startup times... maybe if OSX intelligently preloaded stuff in the background into otherwise unused ram it would feel snappier.
Well, you stand half corrected.
Rocket engines are a type of jet engine
So while you were wrong that they weren't rockets, you were right in that they were jets. ;)
Yes yes and BMW have a monopoly on BMW cars and Mercedes have a monopoly on Mercedes cars and
That's true but my point wasn't nearly that simplistic. Its not that Apple has a 'monopoly' on 'OSX'; every manufacturer of any even slightly differentiated product has a 'monopoly' on that self-same product.
However, in this case Apple -also- has a 'monopoly' on computers that work with 'OSX', and is actively protecting that monopoly.
That would be like BMW dictating that you can't install Dunlop tires on your car. Or Mercedes dictating what brand of soap you use to wash your Benz.
it would appear you have a monopoly on stupidity: please stop abusing it and stop posting.
Things aren't as they appear to you. Maybe if you pulled your head out of your ass you'd be able to see better.
This is a stupid argument, and I suspect you knew it. "OSX computers" is not a separate market, as practically anything that can be done with "OSX computers" can also be done with "Windows computers" or "Linux computers". If there's an interchangeable replacement, it's not a separate market.
So what you would suggest would be the non-Apple 'interchangeable replacement' to run iLife 08 on? If there isn't one, does that, by your own argument, mean that its a separate market?
I do get what you are saying, and agree to a point. But from a not unreasonable point of view Apple has a monopoly. Its an 'illegal monopoly', but its still a monopoly.
Its no different than replacement parts for a car. You often have multiple manufacturers who will make a given replacement part... whether you need a timing belt or a tire or an air filter... but a lot of parts... like if you need a replacement fuel tank, your probably looking at exactly ONE vender option.
Its not 'illegal', but -is- a monopoly on that part.
The main problem is redistributing the modified software for profit, big copyright no no.
Your confusing 'redistributing copies' with 'resale of original'.
If I buy a book, piss on it, and then sell it for twice what I paid for it with proud label that declaring that I had pissed on it, how would copyright even be involved? never-mind violated?
As I doubt any commercial software company would be ok with someone else selling modified versions of their software, this is just blatant infringement.
It is infringement to distribute copies of derivative works. But its not infringment to resell modified originals. As long as each Psystar goes out with its own original Apple OS X retail box, psystar isn't violating 'copyright', at least not with respect to redistribution.
I think this also shows why it took so long for Apple to sue, they needed to get everything in order to build a full case as the EULA by itself might not hold up. The copyright, image, trademarks, etc... side is something Apple can succeed on.
Maybe. I suspect it was probably just better to wait until they had a going concern. If they went belly up before getting off the ground Apple wouldn't have to lift a finger.
I'd like to see how any rational argument could be made that Apple is a monopoly in anything other than maybe MP3 players (and even there, they aren't a de-facto and abusive monopoly.)
Its trivial to demonstrate that apple has a monopoly on OSX and OSX computers.
Its much harder to establish that this monopoly is illegal. Indeed, its probably not an illegal monopoly.
That said, tying doesn't require there be an illegal monopoly. It is illegal for a bank to tie your getting a mortgage to you having their credit card for example; clearly 'monopoly' isn't the issue there, as there are lots of credit cards and mortgage lenders out there. Yet it is still illegal to tie the two together.
I'd like to see how any rational argument could be made that Apple is a monopoly in anything other than maybe MP3 players (and even there, they aren't a de-facto and abusive monopoly.)
The argument is unessary. It can be illegal tying even without an illegal monopoly.
The thing is, a lot of NEW hardware didn't run Vista. Much of the blame should go to the hardware vendors for putting Vista on their underpowered crap, but it still hurt Vista's reputation.
This is partly microsofts fault too, as they released minimum specs that were unrealistically low.
But I agree this is ultimately the hardware venders fault. They should have tested them and concluded that the units weren't performing adequately with the minimal hardware. But instead they met all Microsofts checkboxes, slapped a Vista capable sticker on it, and then sold them to pissed off customers, who blamed Vista and Microsoft for their shitty new pc.
Imagine if someone tried building and selling a "Crysis capable PC" by reading the minimum requirements off the box... we'd laugh them out business.
You cannot say 2003 server is as stable as XP, it just doesn't work as an analogy.
I've got a client with an XP Pro box that runs a Filemaker Pro Server (hosting a CRM, point-of-sale system, and manufacturing process control system). It is in constant use throughout the day, every day, although the load is relatively light.
Its currently at 161 days since the last reboot. (Someone put a nail through an ethernet cable, and the ensuing network problems included continually crashing the gigabit switch, and we brought everything down to sort it out. I probably could have left the unit running... but the network was down anyway, so there wasn't really any reason to.
Prior to that it was 343 days. (brought down due to an extended power failure).
To my knowledge it has never actually crashed.
I think windows recent desktop OSes are percieved as less stable than their server counterparts primarily because of what is run on them and what they are run on.
You don't load your server up with all that desktop crud -- 14 tray icons to detect your ipod, camera, scanner helper, printer utility, sound-fx, msn messenger, java-notify, office-preload, adobe speed launcher... much of which is poorly written crap.
Similiarly you don't generally install a server OS on a $350 dell piece of crap PC... yet enterprises roll XP out on those things en masse. Cheap generic ram, cheap generic power supply, cheaply made motherboard and drives... while the server gets rolled out on a much better made set of hardware.
Is it any wonder the XP boxes were less stable?
Its not really fair to compare stability of the two OSes like that.
In my experience at least, if you use a Windows desktop OS in a 'server like' role, ie where you set it up with its services on good quality hardware and then otherwise leave it alone, its just as stable as a server. I've got a couple other XP boxes in situations like this too.
Flaky software as in products from driver and application vendors who are getting sick and tired of jumping every time Microsoft tells them to. Or don't have the manpower/finances available to keep patching their products for Microsoft's benefits rather than for their own needs.
Right. It should be more like Apple? Where application vendors have to jump everytime Apple tells them to? You can still run 1995 windows software on Vista, and most of it will even work.
I'd love to see you pull that off on a new mac.
Or maybe it should be more like Linux? Where most application vendors and hardware vendors steer well clear, and if they try at all, they only support a couple specific versions of specific distros, and everything else is 'up the community'.
Or don't have the manpower/finances available to keep patching their products for Microsoft's benefits rather than for their own needs.
1) Seriously. Its been 8 years since Microsoft had a version change. Windows 2000 was "version 5", windows vista 8 years later is "version 6".
XP was '5.1', and for the most part not a lot really changed. That was why XP was such a painless upgrade compared to Vista. It wasn't really much different.
2) The big compatibility breaking feature of Vista is security. Vista finally has it turned on by default. That benefits users. And if it means vendors have to fix some code to work in a secure environment, good, that benefits users too.
I have often wondered why we have not seen more of this.
Price? The reality that it doesn't matter? Both.
NT Server wasn't really any more stable than NT workstation. Server 2k wasn't really any more stable than 2k Pro. Server 2003 wasn't really any more stable than XP.
The stability of MS' "Server" line of OS' is proof that they have no real excuse for the Vista poor performance (other than it was deliberately done).
I find Vista to be very fast, and it hasn't crashed on me yet. I use it on multiple PCs. I don't deny its been something of a fiasco in general, but at the end of the day, if you put Vista on suitable hardware with good drivers there is really almost nothing seriously wrong with it.
A lot of the 'vista' problems were related to bad drivers, buggy bioses, and so on. Ultimately relatively few of the "Vista Issues" are related to Vista, and can be traced to some flakey 3rd party software.
On some level blaming Vista for running legacy windows stuff poorly is like blaming Linux for running legacy windows stuff poorly. The only difference is that Vista actually runs it well enough for people to expect it to work.
Because if they actually send the spam, then the people selling the Viagra might get some hits. And even if they don't make a profit, the fact that they get hits may entice them to try again, providing a potentially larger source of revenue for the people sending the spam.
It would be trivial for a group wielding a globe spanning botnet capable of sending out millions of spams to instead simulate a bunch of 'hits' on some suckers website.
Hell, they could even have a shill put a couple orders through to really push the suckers buttons.