The models are testable? I don't see how. If you could explain that I'd be quite interested to learn more about it. What I don't understand is how people can claim that a computer model is reliale when we can't even agree what percentage of the greenhouse effect is generated by CO2. Even the site you link to states it's anywhere between 9% and 30%. That's a HUGE margin of error. On only ONE factor. How much room for error is introduced by our inability to measure the effects of other elements? Or, talking about actual scientific observation, even with the global temperature measurememnts there's a big margin of error because of the difficulty of getting the temperature of something the size of a planet. Not like we can just tell Momma Earth to bend over so we can employ a rectal thermometer. On top of that, even if we could measure the exact global temperature today, we have no idea just how accurte the measurememnts have been over the last hundred years, so making comparisons would be rather foolish. AND, finaly, even if we had EXACT global temperature measurement every couple months for the last 100 years, it's still too small of a time frame to tell us anything useful. Assuming we had such highly accurate measurements, and assuming they showed a dramatic rise in temperatures, we could infer that humans were responsiblefor it. But even then we could easily be wrong. Just like we were wrong about every other doomsday scenario that environmentalists have been spouting since the '70's. And that whackos were spouting for hundreds of years before that.
Anyway, the short and the long of it is that I don't have much faith in these predictions because the methods used to come up with them don't seem either accurate nor scientific, AND because so much of the research is obviously politicized.
Note that I'm not saying I don't beleive in global warming. It's quite obvious that humans DO effect their environment just like all other living organisms. What's at question is how much and in what way might we be affecting the weather, and whether there's good reason to beleive that we could seriously damage the global climate. So far I haven't seen much to either support or disprove the idea, other than the opinions of numerous "experts" with dubious qualifications and/or motivations. Most of these studies certainly couldnt be considered scientific. Science doesn't start with an assumption and then create computer models to prove that assumption. Science is supposed to be about making observations, gathering accurate data, and then conducting experiments based on that data. These global warming studies seem to have more in common with astrology than with science.
Not bad, you've actually got some good points. So how do you propose we go about changing the gloabal political structure? Especially when we're having problems just getting people to accept the idea of basic universal human freedoms.
Remember, an idea is no good if it's not practical. Implementing your system would be, I fear, even more difficult than achieveing the utopian marxist society. Although in the field of finite mathematics, when you start seing such ludicrously high numbers the diference between them tends to be irrelevant since both are so improbable as to effectively be impossible.
Yah. Interesting how the site YOU link doesn't provide footnotes/references....
The bigest problem I have with the global warming hysteria is the clear misrepresentation in the media. Any time you see a graph for instance, it's had it's scale played with in order to make the recent assumed increases in global temperature seem much more dramatic than they are. That these "scientists" need to resort to such tomfoolery in order to scare the public makes me immediately skeptical of not only their ethics, but their research methods as well. Follow that by the fact that most of these predictions are based on computer models of questionable accuracy, and we're left with very little actual evidence that global warming is occuring at all, let alone occuring at the rate that the environmentalists keep epousing. Hell, all of our computer models and scientific sensors can't even pretend the weather in my city, so I'm a bit skeptical when the same "science" that's trying to convince me that I'm sitting under a raincloud right now is also telling me that the world is getting much hotter.
You monicker and your statements stand in absolute opposition to eachother. You obviously fail to realize that Marx was a proponent of Industrialization and Capitalims because he strongly beleived that only a capitalist economy could be strong and productive enough to provide the sort of wealth neccesary for a transition into Communism. Transfer from the rich to the poor indeed. Have you not the slightest bit of common sense?
I'm not a Marx fan at all, nor do I have anything but contempt for communism, yet even I know that much about the man. Either change your name, or read some of his writings.
eh, I'm pretty sure she was being sarcastic. we keep hearing about how the computer models are accurate, and Carbon Dioxide is causing massive heating. meanwhile there's been for quite a while pretty good evidence to suggest that the majority of the greenhouse effect is due largely to water vapour + clouds. it's just that all "real environmentalists" have been dismissing the effects of water vapour while proclaming doomsday scenarios based on carbon output increases. hopefuly this project in Tibet is a step towards countering some of the global-warming hysteria.
Except they're NOT offering it for $1.50 and are instead charging pretty much the price of a regular DVD. Therefore it IS just a token gesture. People who download movies online don't do it because they're allergic to physical DVD media - they do it because the damn things are massively overpriced.
This is rather off topic, but can you point to a single instance in which the patriot act has been used to infringe on our liberty and freedom? Not hypothetical "well it could be abused" scenarious. An actual case?
Legislation exists to protect society, not the rights and freedoms of every single individual. The powers of arrest of any police officer could be abused in orderto limit the rights and freedomsof individuals, however, such abuses are extremely rare, and the alternative (no police powers) would be far worse. Ditto for the patriot act. While it'scertainly open to abuse which sould impact the rights and freedoms of many of us, it has not been used in such a way. More importantly, the US legislative system is designed in such a way that any large scale abuse of laws would quickly be corrected. And who, outside of the ultra-paranoid crowd, could seriously beleive that the US government is poised to become an Orvellian faschism?
Interresting that many people see Coalition forces as heroic as they shoot missiles from helicopters at people armed with AK-47s and RPGs
Ah, yes, that old stereotype. Seen much of that have you? Goddamn media misrepresentation. FYI helicopter support is rarely used for such targets. Most of the time coalition troops mix it up on the ground, putting themselves in increased danger in order to protect the lives of innocents. THAT is why they're seen as "heros" by those few who get it. It's easy to blow yourself up in the middle of a crowded shop, taking 2 soldiers, and 20 civilians with you, in the beleif that you'll go off to heaven and get your 72 virgins. Hell, fucked up american kids commit murder-suicide all the time, and they don't even beleive in the 72 virgin bullshit. It's much harder to go after someone you know is suicidal, knowing that if you buy it you'll be leaving a wife and kid to watch over your casket, and KNOWING that you probably COULD call in support to level the area instead of putting yourself at risk.
Let us, for the sake of argument, say that the occupation of Iraq is categorically wrong. How exactly should Iraqis resist this occupation when conventional tactics againts Coallition forces are sure to fail due to inferior firepower?
Whether the occupation is wrong or not, there are two things which need to be considered:
1) Will the type of violence which the insurgency can employ harm the Americans more, or the Iraqi people more.
2) Does that same violence have any hope in defeating the US forces.
When all you're really accomplishing is to harm yourself and your people, without doing any damage to your enemy, it's time to consider new options.
It's very similar to the Israel-Palestine situation - Palestinian terrorist groups have no hope in hell of defeating Israel. If they had a legitemate goal to achieve through their bombings, they might have been succesfull, but it's become clear that they can't even agree on what they really want. AND over time it's become quite clear that their killings don't accomplish anything except reprisal killings by the Israelis. So the time has come where the Palestinians should be considering new options. Yet all they're able to do is fight between eachother, and blow up an occasional Israeli cafee to give themselves some legitemacy in the eyes of their people.
Getting back to iraq, the insurgency has a snowballs chance in hell of defeating the US. That should be quite clear to anyone not completely brainwashed by the anti-American propaganda. Meanwhile, the Americans have repeatedly stated quite clearly what their goals are in Iraq, and have stated that once those goals are met, they will depart. So what makes more sense - kill thousand of your own people and cause the rest to live in poverty without basic ameneties and services by retarding the development of the infrastructure.....OR join the police force, join the army, work WITH the Americans to rebuild your country...and then IF they refuse to leave, THEN blow the fuck outta them? If the insurgency had not sprung up immediately after the invasion, I can gaurantee that US troops would not be in Iraq right now. How can you call what they're doing an "occupation" when their primary goals consist of giving Iraq it's own army and police force, and rebuilding their infrastructure? And, if the "insuurgents" are the ones fighting for Iraq, what exactly is it that the new Iraqi army, and the Iraqi police are doing? The way I see it, THEY are the REAL heroes. They have inferior equipment and inferior training to their american counterparts. They're at increased threat of being kidnapped and beheaded, or otherwise executed. Every time one of them lines up to JOIN the military or police force, he knows there's a good chance that some suicidal son of a bitch might blow him up along with the rest of the recruits. Yet they still join by the hundreds. How can anyone have any respect for the "insurgency" when compared to such heroic individuals? There's just no comparison.
Funny you should say that. I'm actually half Serb and half Croat. While I lived in Yugoslavia, we all got along fine. The whole conflict blew up because of a bunch of idiotic extremists and politicians who decided that slaughtering eachother might be a good idea. Pretty good parallel to what's happening in Iraq. But nobody was suggesting that the way to end the Serb-Croat conflict was to get the "UN occupation force" out of the country.
They're fighting against an occupation by killing their countrymen? Have you SEEN the casualty figures? These fuckers kill something like 10 Iraqis for every 1 US soldier. I don't remember George Washington blowing up crowded markets in order to kill 3 British soldiers, or putting American children in the path of British horses and then blowing up all of them when the brits come to a stop.
Whatever term you decide to use for them, don't for one minute beleive that their goals have anything to do with freeing Iraq from opression or occupation. The vast majority of your "insurgents" employ terrorist tactics, and their ultimate goals have more to do with gauranteeing power for themselves and their supporters than with bringing freedom to the average Iraqi. If that doesn't make them terrorists, then you must be employing a very unusual definition for that word.
"Most nonvoters refuse to vote because they see the system as being corrupt and irrelevant to their lives"
You just proved his point. Most people don't understand the system and are too lazy or ignorant to do the research. On top of that, they think it's irrelevant to their lives. So you get ignorance and apathy. Look up those twow rods in a dictionary if you're confused about their meaning.
If you know anything about psychology you know that small minorities resort to force when they recognize that the usual channels offer no potential for them to effect change.
Ah, yes. When I was 15, kids I knew spraypainted graffiti, broke windows, and lit things on fire because they wanted to "effect change". Right.
If you know anything about human nature, you'll know that peoples basic peronalities don't change much over time unless something drastic happens to force that change. Juvenile delinquents who do stupid shit when they're 15 will generaly grow up to do even stupider shit when they're 25. They don't need a valid excuse for violance and destruction; they just need the opportunity.
The micro-utopian organic gardening crowd aren't a problem; they're the ones getting high and practicing what they preach without bothering the rest of us. The ELF types are the dangerous ones, and they exist in EVERY political movement. The real problem is that all they really want is an excuse to use force; they'd feel equaly at home in the communist movement, or as anarchists, or even as militant conservatives. For people like that, the actual goal or ideology is secondary - it's the hate and violence that's important.
We're already doing that. We produce more fuel efficient vehicles all the time. We've developed lightbulbs which use less than half the enery and last for years. Modern fridges, stoves, washing machines, and dryers are all more energy efficient than their predeccesors. I could go on listing such improvements for quite a while; the point is we're constantly improving our technology to function better while using less resources. It's part and parcel of living in a capitalist society. There's two problems though: we continue to develop and build new devices, and as the level of poverty in a country decreases more and more people can afford to have more things. So while your average device may get more energy efficient, as a society our energy needs are going to keep increasing. 15 years ago everyone was using indandascent lightbulbs, but very few people had a computer. These days people are switching to flourescent lighting, but the decrease in power consumption resulting from that is eclipsed by the fact that now most of us have at least a computer at work or at home, and most have a laptop, PDA, and web-capable cellphone as well. On a global scale it's even more of a problem; as countries like China and India become more prosperous, more and more of their people are going to start buying all of the things that we in europe and north america take for granted. So even though their poor may go from using inefficient wood stoves to using modern gas stoves, thus saving energy, their overal energy usage is going to skyrocket over the next decade because those same people will also be buying fridges, air conditioners, TV's and computers.
By bundling things the way they have, Microsoft has forced you to buy them even if you didn't want them. As such, people had less money to buy RP, Netscape, etc.
Well, since you started with the car analogies, I'll use one too.
When you buy a new car, it comes with a stock stereo and stock speakers. If I want to go out an buy a Kenwood deck, and Sony speakers, do I get my money back that went into developing, building, and installing the stock speakers and stereo?
If I want to use 19" performance tires, will I get the money back that went into buying and installing the original tires, rims, and rotors?
If I want to use propane instead of gasoline, will the company pay the $5,000 for the conversion? Or at least give me back the money that went into the original gas tank and fuel system?
You get the idea. You're buying windows with certain standard components, just like you buy a car with certain standard components. If you don't like it, too damn bad. They don't have any obligation to cater to the whims of every individual who doesn't like one feature or another.
Oh? Try buying a prebuilt computer without Windows. They are hard to get, if they even exist (Macs excluded).
Bullshit. I've bought 2 pre-built computers for myself in the past, and I've helped others pick out new computers to replace their old ones. Every single one of those times, I've bought them thout a windows licence. Granted, every single one of them had windows installed, but if you ask the company will usualy knock $50 off the price and either wipe the hard-drive or just not give you the licence. The LAST time I bought a computer they ended up knocking something like $150 off the sale price because the "special" included all sorts of software I didn't need.
Granted companies like Dell and Compaq probably won't do that, but that's hardly a sign of an MS "monopoly". Dell and Compaq are the ones who decide to only sell systems with windows installed. Other vendors offer it because it's simpler for most people, but will sell you a computer with no OS if you ask.
You just fill the drive with one huge file that contains a virtual disk image, and now you can format that with anything you want, and raid it with other disk images on other servers.
Problen is, in order to transfer any file at all, you'd need to download the entire image. Personally I don't want to download 2 gigs in order to access a 300k picture.
Slashdot Mirror
The models are testable? I don't see how. If you could explain that I'd be quite interested to learn more about it. What I don't understand is how people can claim that a computer model is reliale when we can't even agree what percentage of the greenhouse effect is generated by CO2. Even the site you link to states it's anywhere between 9% and 30%. That's a HUGE margin of error. On only ONE factor. How much room for error is introduced by our inability to measure the effects of other elements? Or, talking about actual scientific observation, even with the global temperature measurememnts there's a big margin of error because of the difficulty of getting the temperature of something the size of a planet. Not like we can just tell Momma Earth to bend over so we can employ a rectal thermometer. On top of that, even if we could measure the exact global temperature today, we have no idea just how accurte the measurememnts have been over the last hundred years, so making comparisons would be rather foolish. AND, finaly, even if we had EXACT global temperature measurement every couple months for the last 100 years, it's still too small of a time frame to tell us anything useful. Assuming we had such highly accurate measurements, and assuming they showed a dramatic rise in temperatures, we could infer that humans were responsiblefor it. But even then we could easily be wrong. Just like we were wrong about every other doomsday scenario that environmentalists have been spouting since the '70's. And that whackos were spouting for hundreds of years before that.
Anyway, the short and the long of it is that I don't have much faith in these predictions because the methods used to come up with them don't seem either accurate nor scientific, AND because so much of the research is obviously politicized.
Note that I'm not saying I don't beleive in global warming. It's quite obvious that humans DO effect their environment just like all other living organisms. What's at question is how much and in what way might we be affecting the weather, and whether there's good reason to beleive that we could seriously damage the global climate. So far I haven't seen much to either support or disprove the idea, other than the opinions of numerous "experts" with dubious qualifications and/or motivations. Most of these studies certainly couldnt be considered scientific. Science doesn't start with an assumption and then create computer models to prove that assumption. Science is supposed to be about making observations, gathering accurate data, and then conducting experiments based on that data. These global warming studies seem to have more in common with astrology than with science.
Not bad, you've actually got some good points. So how do you propose we go about changing the gloabal political structure? Especially when we're having problems just getting people to accept the idea of basic universal human freedoms.
Remember, an idea is no good if it's not practical. Implementing your system would be, I fear, even more difficult than achieveing the utopian marxist society. Although in the field of finite mathematics, when you start seing such ludicrously high numbers the diference between them tends to be irrelevant since both are so improbable as to effectively be impossible.
Distributism?
That's what we used to call being a nomad. Wandering around, living off the land.
You can't beterribly bright if you think 6 billion people could live on this planet in such a manner.
Yah. Interesting how the site YOU link doesn't provide footnotes/references....
The bigest problem I have with the global warming hysteria is the clear misrepresentation in the media. Any time you see a graph for instance, it's had it's scale played with in order to make the recent assumed increases in global temperature seem much more dramatic than they are. That these "scientists" need to resort to such tomfoolery in order to scare the public makes me immediately skeptical of not only their ethics, but their research methods as well. Follow that by the fact that most of these predictions are based on computer models of questionable accuracy, and we're left with very little actual evidence that global warming is occuring at all, let alone occuring at the rate that the environmentalists keep epousing. Hell, all of our computer models and scientific sensors can't even pretend the weather in my city, so I'm a bit skeptical when the same "science" that's trying to convince me that I'm sitting under a raincloud right now is also telling me that the world is getting much hotter.
I don't suppose you could explain how exactly an LHC is supposed to solve our energy problems? You planning on mass-producing us some anti-matter?
11th hour? Man, 20 years is going to be one long hour.....
Whatmoron modded THAT "funy"?
You monicker and your statements stand in absolute opposition to eachother. You obviously fail to realize that Marx was a proponent of Industrialization and Capitalims because he strongly beleived that only a capitalist economy could be strong and productive enough to provide the sort of wealth neccesary for a transition into Communism. Transfer from the rich to the poor indeed. Have you not the slightest bit of common sense?
I'm not a Marx fan at all, nor do I have anything but contempt for communism, yet even I know that much about the man. Either change your name, or read some of his writings.
eh, I'm pretty sure she was being sarcastic. we keep hearing about how the computer models are accurate, and Carbon Dioxide is causing massive heating. meanwhile there's been for quite a while pretty good evidence to suggest that the majority of the greenhouse effect is due largely to water vapour + clouds. it's just that all "real environmentalists" have been dismissing the effects of water vapour while proclaming doomsday scenarios based on carbon output increases. hopefuly this project in Tibet is a step towards countering some of the global-warming hysteria.
Except they're NOT offering it for $1.50 and are instead charging pretty much the price of a regular DVD. Therefore it IS just a token gesture. People who download movies online don't do it because they're allergic to physical DVD media - they do it because the damn things are massively overpriced.
This is rather off topic, but can you point to a single instance in which the patriot act has been used to infringe on our liberty and freedom? Not hypothetical "well it could be abused" scenarious. An actual case?
Legislation exists to protect society, not the rights and freedoms of every single individual. The powers of arrest of any police officer could be abused in orderto limit the rights and freedomsof individuals, however, such abuses are extremely rare, and the alternative (no police powers) would be far worse. Ditto for the patriot act. While it'scertainly open to abuse which sould impact the rights and freedoms of many of us, it has not been used in such a way. More importantly, the US legislative system is designed in such a way that any large scale abuse of laws would quickly be corrected. And who, outside of the ultra-paranoid crowd, could seriously beleive that the US government is poised to become an Orvellian faschism?
1) Will the type of violence which the insurgency can employ harm the Americans more, or the Iraqi people more.
2) Does that same violence have any hope in defeating the US forces.
When all you're really accomplishing is to harm yourself and your people, without doing any damage to your enemy, it's time to consider new options.
It's very similar to the Israel-Palestine situation - Palestinian terrorist groups have no hope in hell of defeating Israel. If they had a legitemate goal to achieve through their bombings, they might have been succesfull, but it's become clear that they can't even agree on what they really want. AND over time it's become quite clear that their killings don't accomplish anything except reprisal killings by the Israelis. So the time has come where the Palestinians should be considering new options. Yet all they're able to do is fight between eachother, and blow up an occasional Israeli cafee to give themselves some legitemacy in the eyes of their people.
Getting back to iraq, the insurgency has a snowballs chance in hell of defeating the US. That should be quite clear to anyone not completely brainwashed by the anti-American propaganda. Meanwhile, the Americans have repeatedly stated quite clearly what their goals are in Iraq, and have stated that once those goals are met, they will depart. So what makes more sense - kill thousand of your own people and cause the rest to live in poverty without basic ameneties and services by retarding the development of the infrastructure.....OR join the police force, join the army, work WITH the Americans to rebuild your country...and then IF they refuse to leave, THEN blow the fuck outta them? If the insurgency had not sprung up immediately after the invasion, I can gaurantee that US troops would not be in Iraq right now. How can you call what they're doing an "occupation" when their primary goals consist of giving Iraq it's own army and police force, and rebuilding their infrastructure? And, if the "insuurgents" are the ones fighting for Iraq, what exactly is it that the new Iraqi army, and the Iraqi police are doing? The way I see it, THEY are the REAL heroes. They have inferior equipment and inferior training to their american counterparts. They're at increased threat of being kidnapped and beheaded, or otherwise executed. Every time one of them lines up to JOIN the military or police force, he knows there's a good chance that some suicidal son of a bitch might blow him up along with the rest of the recruits. Yet they still join by the hundreds. How can anyone have any respect for the "insurgency" when compared to such heroic individuals? There's just no comparison.
Funny you should say that. I'm actually half Serb and half Croat. While I lived in Yugoslavia, we all got along fine. The whole conflict blew up because of a bunch of idiotic extremists and politicians who decided that slaughtering eachother might be a good idea. Pretty good parallel to what's happening in Iraq. But nobody was suggesting that the way to end the Serb-Croat conflict was to get the "UN occupation force" out of the country.
They're fighting against an occupation by killing their countrymen? Have you SEEN the casualty figures? These fuckers kill something like 10 Iraqis for every 1 US soldier. I don't remember George Washington blowing up crowded markets in order to kill 3 British soldiers, or putting American children in the path of British horses and then blowing up all of them when the brits come to a stop.
Whatever term you decide to use for them, don't for one minute beleive that their goals have anything to do with freeing Iraq from opression or occupation. The vast majority of your "insurgents" employ terrorist tactics, and their ultimate goals have more to do with gauranteeing power for themselves and their supporters than with bringing freedom to the average Iraqi. If that doesn't make them terrorists, then you must be employing a very unusual definition for that word.
Yeah because it's obvious that he was speaking about the entire effort in Iraq instead of just himself and a handful of guys.
Do you LIKE being a twat?
"Most nonvoters refuse to vote because they see the system as being corrupt and irrelevant to their lives"
You just proved his point. Most people don't understand the system and are too lazy or ignorant to do the research. On top of that, they think it's irrelevant to their lives. So you get ignorance and apathy. Look up those twow rods in a dictionary if you're confused about their meaning.
If you know anything about human nature, you'll know that peoples basic peronalities don't change much over time unless something drastic happens to force that change. Juvenile delinquents who do stupid shit when they're 15 will generaly grow up to do even stupider shit when they're 25. They don't need a valid excuse for violance and destruction; they just need the opportunity.
Ah. Sorry to hear that. I'm in Canada myself. Both here and in the US you can buy pre-built systems sans-OS without much difficulty.
The micro-utopian organic gardening crowd aren't a problem; they're the ones getting high and practicing what they preach without bothering the rest of us. The ELF types are the dangerous ones, and they exist in EVERY political movement. The real problem is that all they really want is an excuse to use force; they'd feel equaly at home in the communist movement, or as anarchists, or even as militant conservatives. For people like that, the actual goal or ideology is secondary - it's the hate and violence that's important.
We're already doing that. We produce more fuel efficient vehicles all the time. We've developed lightbulbs which use less than half the enery and last for years. Modern fridges, stoves, washing machines, and dryers are all more energy efficient than their predeccesors. I could go on listing such improvements for quite a while; the point is we're constantly improving our technology to function better while using less resources. It's part and parcel of living in a capitalist society. There's two problems though: we continue to develop and build new devices, and as the level of poverty in a country decreases more and more people can afford to have more things. So while your average device may get more energy efficient, as a society our energy needs are going to keep increasing. 15 years ago everyone was using indandascent lightbulbs, but very few people had a computer. These days people are switching to flourescent lighting, but the decrease in power consumption resulting from that is eclipsed by the fact that now most of us have at least a computer at work or at home, and most have a laptop, PDA, and web-capable cellphone as well. On a global scale it's even more of a problem; as countries like China and India become more prosperous, more and more of their people are going to start buying all of the things that we in europe and north america take for granted. So even though their poor may go from using inefficient wood stoves to using modern gas stoves, thus saving energy, their overal energy usage is going to skyrocket over the next decade because those same people will also be buying fridges, air conditioners, TV's and computers.
When you buy a new car, it comes with a stock stereo and stock speakers. If I want to go out an buy a Kenwood deck, and Sony speakers, do I get my money back that went into developing, building, and installing the stock speakers and stereo?
If I want to use 19" performance tires, will I get the money back that went into buying and installing the original tires, rims, and rotors?
If I want to use propane instead of gasoline, will the company pay the $5,000 for the conversion? Or at least give me back the money that went into the original gas tank and fuel system?
You get the idea. You're buying windows with certain standard components, just like you buy a car with certain standard components. If you don't like it, too damn bad. They don't have any obligation to cater to the whims of every individual who doesn't like one feature or another.
Granted companies like Dell and Compaq probably won't do that, but that's hardly a sign of an MS "monopoly". Dell and Compaq are the ones who decide to only sell systems with windows installed. Other vendors offer it because it's simpler for most people, but will sell you a computer with no OS if you ask.
Ever hear of VLC? Free (both as in speech AND as in beer), simple, doesn't hog resources, and plays pretty much every codec I've come across.
:)
I didn't stop breathing, I just started using my nose instead of my mouth. You might want to give it a shot
Uh. What?
I don't know man, my delete key got rid of Windows Media Player just fine....
And even if I hadn't bothered to delete it, setting all media types to play on VLC would ensure I never have to see WMP again.
So I don't get what you're going on about.