This article has no merit unless the author can either A) Prove that the devices have been tampered with or B) Link all poorly designed computer technology to political conspiracy.
"...they don't earn any cash from supporting it..."
Can someone please give me the free support phone number for Microsoft? Oh wait, all of my questions are answered on Knowledge Base, Technet, and newsgroups .
Yes some work better than others. I have tried deploying Red Hat Core and Ubuntu to non-tech users. Ubuntu has worked out much better for them and me. The Java and Acrobat can be easily installed with "Easy Ubuntu" ( http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/ ). No rpm needed.
I do apologize if that came off as a flame. I agree that Red Hat Core is an excellent distro.
After spending days fixing broken crap and searching for missing.rpm's Red Hat Core was fantastic! Except for the fact that it didn't detect my wireless LAN adapter, but hey, a little bit of fantastic goes a long way right?
Fortunately Ubuntu practically installs itself and works without any fixing, so I was able to roll back to a working OS in about 30 minutes.
Sure, I could get my iTunes music to.mp3 format easily and then play it on a non-iPod device, but why? I can sit down at the computer, buy a few songs, sync my iPod for the treadmill, then burn a CD for the car in just a few minutes. With zero headaches.
I love the idea that Apple produced a system rather than individual components that *kinda* work with other individual components after hours of tinkering. This is why iPod / iTunes is so popular. Not because iPod is the best.mp3 playing gadget. Not because iTunes is the best music playing software. It's because iPod / iTunes work so well together.
The article is correct in assuming that there is no reason for me to buy an iPod, because I already own 2 (one for me, one for my wife) and love them.
Every title ever made for NES. This platform seems to be where game designers finally decided to rely more on graphics than game design. Only problem is that the graphics sucked.
Here at HP we take ourselves WAY TOO FUCKING SERIOUSLY.
One question that continually springs into my mind is how people can work in this type of environment? You put on your suit and tie, go to work at a computer company, and start spying on people??? This isn't the first story about HP performing (illegal?) survelliance either. Sounds like a really toxic, hostile, and generally insane / absurd way to sell electronics.
What type of survelliance equipment is embedded in my Laserjet 4350, or Proliant DL360. Is my integrated lights out board sending information back to HP HQ? Is my HP customer profile being looked over by men in black suits? Is someone headed over to my house right now to break my legs for posting this? Should tinfoil hats be distributed to all HP employees?
Of course they are spammers. If tiny gray guys in overcoats, fake moustaches, and dark sunglasses ask permission (in a squeaky voice) to shut down the mouse trap factory, what do you think is going on?
My experience has been that proprietary anything eventually leads to no good. The company that owns the proprietary technology can go out of business, leaving you with no support. Or that same company will drop support for your hardware, also leaving you stranded. Or that company can simply decide that since your project is getting such great benefit from their product that a price hike is justified. None of this would benefit people without enough monety to buy a computer. You can dance around it with legal mumbo jumbo all you want, but it just doesn't fit. Eventually there will be a conflict between the project goals and the proprietary drivers.
The goal of OLPC is to bring computers to poor countries and people. Poor computer users will want / need a completely open computing environment. What if one of these proprietary drivers turns out to be buggy? Wouldn't it make sense in this project for the user community to participate in debugging the driver? That can't happen with a proprietary driver.
We all know that corporations who provide proprietary technology to OSS projects can be very very very very slow with patches and upgrades (*cough* Adobe Flash player 9 for Linux *cough*). Why introduce this frustration into the OLPC project?
Honestly, they would be better off with a $400.00 Dell laptop running XP Pro than they would with proprietary drivers on Fedora Core. The proprietary drivers on XP would be patched / upgraded more quickly, and less likely to be buggy (because more attention is always paid to proprietary Windows drivers. Proprietary OSS plays second fiddle at best).
So RMS and Theo, my hat is off to you (once again) for standing up for what's right. You are both saints and heroes in my book.
Does the remove toolbar reset the local hosts file to it's original state when a toolbar hijacks it? I don't know for sure, but I'll guess no.
Can you install IE7 on Win2k or 9x? No? So are these people expected to buy a new OS because their web browser sucks?
What about those toolbars that replace OS files, install services, or actually shut down your anti-spyware? Is all of that fixed?
What about the annoying Flash pop-ups not blocked by the IE pop-up blocker? Can I install grease monkey or Adblock to stop them?
Now ask yourself how many of these toolbars people actually want or use. I look at a ton of business and home desktops every day, and I have never met anyone who wants or uses some of these Cool Web Search, Home Search Assistant, Starware, etc. toolbars. Google, MSN, and Yahoo *sometimes*. So if nobody wants them, and some of them perform malicious actions on your PC, why does the browser allow them to install? The Microsoft attitude is "These spyware people are connected to the global mass marketing machine, so we cannot offend them. We had better let them install their software first, then remove it if too many people complain". Intrusive marketing companies are held in higher regard by Microsoft than their own OS users.
My opinion is that cleaning up a mess which is only possible in their own web browser, Microsoft is not being proactive on security. It's an insufficient reaction at best.
A proactive security measure might be to A) Further limit the scope of what the "install on demand" system can actually change on your system. I'm sorry, but nothing from the user end of my web browser has any business changing things in %windir% or \system32 EVEN IF IT POPS UP A PROMPT THAT MANY USERS AUTOMATICALLY CLICK YES ON TO GET OFF THE SCREEN. B) Actively identify malicious software, particularly web browser toolbars and prevent them from installing at the OS level via windowsupdate security patches. C) Put out their own security product that removes both spyware and viruses (this one has been done for home users, the business product is still not available in public beta yet). Some other products already have this ability, but none with a large enough market share to force McAffee and Symantec to follow suit.
In general it's a little frustrating that I would need to run a WSUS, desktop firewall, desktop anti-virus, anti-spyware, and hardware firewall to keep my Windows PC running properly. With all the billions of dollars the world has paid Microsoft for complete crap software in the past, they can't produce something better than this? Ubuntu Linux / Firefox works better for me, and that's free!
I've been using IE7 at work since the first day of the first public beta. Up to this point I still prefer Firefox.
In closing, I'll say that the days of crap software fetching top dollar are numbered. The alternatives are rapidly growing, and many are superior products to anything produced by Microsoft.
IE toolbars are a plague
on
IE7 Toolbar Mayhem
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Those toolbars are a plague. Does every company in the world need a toolbar? It has nothing to do with filling a need for anyone, it's pure marketing trash. In the early days of IE6 there was literally no defense against them, and some of them were practically impossible to remove (hotbar, cool web search). The anti-spyware tools (at the time) were horribly inadequate; using Ad-Aware and Spybot with up to date definitions back then would only remove some of the toolbars. My company spent a lot of money removing that crap. Fortunately people started using another web browser and Microsoft finally admitted that spyware was a problem (years too late IMHO). That whole situation was enough to get me off of Microsoft products. I've been an Ubuntu Linux user for quite some time now, and never had a *single* unwanted toolbar or spyware installed on my computer.
The old cliche's about "you must be visiting questionable web sites if you have spyware" is completely ridiculous. I can't tell you how many times I've heard techs (or Microsoft) wrongly blame users for crappy OS and web browser security. It is 100% possible (and likely) for someone to get spyware and unwanted toolbars in Internet Explorer without visiting questionable web sites or agreeing to install it. It's a virus plain and simple.
And where are the anti-virus companies? Instead of adding virus definitions for spyware to existing AV products, they IRRESPONSIBLY used the opportunity to create a new category of viruses and sell additional products. MS has used the opportunity to themselves launch anti-spyware products (Defender is currently in free beta, but word is that it will be pay only when out of beta). Nevermind that IE is the ONLY browser with this problem.
What makes it worse is that companies like Adobe and Sun bundle toolbars with their software. So if someone isn't paying close attention they get Yahoo or Google toolbar.
The fact that IE now has a "cleanup" option is completely meaningless IMHO. The fact that the browser can be loaded down with crap toolbars filling up 80% of the page in less than a few minutes should tell Microsoft that IE still needs a LOT of work.
Last I heard they didn't even have hardware for OS4. They failed miserably even when they had the best desktop OS on the market, which is definately not true now. The company itself has been involved in legal battles, technological blunders, community alienation, etc. for the last 10 years. If you read the forums, makers of AmigaOS4 hardware have reported that Amiga has stopped communicating with them altogether. Add to that that the head of the company has been prone to flip (bordering on rude) comments to the user community over the years, that is when he's not ignoring them altogether.
Why would ANYONE waste time with this company or anything they produce? Talk about an exercise in futility.
I read a thread that said "not ALL next gen games charge money after purchase". RIIIIGGGHHHHT. If one company makes money from this tactic, many other companies will quickly follow suit.
By the time my 2 year old starts playing games, they will have an initial purchase price of $200.00, require 27 hours per day to play, and the entertainment industry will be watching you through a built-in camera to make sure you're not using "their" product wrongly.
I'll stick to Ur-Quan Masters on my hand-me-down Ubuntu laptop. Fantastic game that has yet to cost me a penny.
In a PvP environment it's possible to go completely skill based and let the classes naturally evolve. As the game matures, favored "builds" will become more and more popular.
IMHO it's naive for game developers to assume what they have lumped together in a "class" will be the most effective configuration. Let the "meta game" decide what needs lumped together.
I could really care less if my OS "morphs" to my personality and habits. How about an OS that is well tested, reliable, reasonably priced (or free), secure, runs all the apps I need, doesn't have obnoxious licensing / DRM, accepts only tested and approved hardware / drivers, has a default user interface that doesn't look like cow shit or a Care Bears cartoon, boots from a storage device with no moving parts, mobile with a non-exploding battery, affordable and fast "connect anywhere" network connection, and an easy to use developer environment?
Less abstract ideas, more fixing the crap we already have.
Flaming aside, you seem to be missing the reality of things. Our government and legal system backs the music industry 100%. If you think that massive amounts of people violating the law will in any way CHANGE the law, then I invite you to look at the history of P2P music downloads. Massive amounts of people downloading illegal music did not change the law then, and it never will.
I agree that music prices are insane, but illegally downloading music only makes the situation worse. So go ahead and download illegal music to your hearts content, but don't expect anyone to care it / when you get slapped with a ridiculous fine.
Trust me, I couldn't care less if the entire music industry went belly up worldwide, but it amazes me that people find it necessary to download illegal music. The entertainment industry LOVES music thieves. They love the free media coverage. They love the money handed to them by our legal system. They love the increased sales that P2P brought about. They love the fact that they FINALLY had a reason to impliment DRM. Most of the songs people steal are looped endlessly on local radio stations, the rest being available on iTunes for a buck or two. Why risk being sued by entertainment industry sleazebags when you can get almost the same level of enjoyment legally, and at little or no cost?
I used to have an old white box with an IBM serial mouse, and a Boca 14.4 internal ISA modem. For some reason whenever I called a BBS I would have to smack the top of my computer desk before it would connect. It would just hang there until I smacked the top of the desk.
Turns out there was an IRQ conflict with the modem and the mouse. When I was smacking the top of the desk it would jiggle the mouse and (somehow) allow the modem to connect. This went on for about 6 months. Finally I was able to resolve the problem by purchasing a PS/2 mouse.
Ever hear of Spyware? Most people ALREADY have an ad driven OS. All Microsoft would need to do is refund the purchase price of Windows for a free AD OS.
Re:The Linux Flaw
on
Ubuntu Hacks
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've been using the current Ubuntu at home in a fairly complex environment, and the amount of normal computing tasks that require hacks seem minimal. There were a few thing that required some googline like installing JRE, pptp, and flash but on the whole it's workable.
Photo management (simple red eye / crop / slideshow like Picassa, not photo editing with beefy complex apps like Gimp or Photoshop) is still a little rough. Even Picassa for Linux has some major issues to work out. I tried to print several very small.jpg,.gif, and.png files to two different printers and the print jobs were blown up to 300+MB in the spooler. GThumb doesn't have red eye, crop, or any tools like that. I tried several other photo management packages that were ok, but still not quite there.
I guess my point is that Ubuntu is very useable, but some tasks are still going to be painful, and others will still require "hacks".
This "hack" problem is not limited to Ubuntu though. I sold 10 PC's at a garage sale last year, 5 of which I KNOW are still running Ubuntu because I know the people. NONE of those people have called me with spyware, virus, or any of the goofy buggy shit you commonly see on Windows. People I know who use XP are CONSTANTLY bugging me with spyware, virus, broken MSI installers, windows updates that break something they're using, PC's that won't boot, cheap hardware with poorly written drivers causing BSOD's, you name it.
My point is that Ubuntu still requires a few "hacks", but my Ubuntu users seem to require far less maintenance than my XP users.
Maybe someone could write a hack for XP that makes less people call me to fix it!
He won't need it. Ken Lay has a chair reserved for him. Sorry, every time I hear about top execs leaving big corrupt organazations I think of Enron. Off topic, but I also wonder which of the two companies has ripped America off more?
Ok, so it runs on tacos, goes.8 MPH, and doesn't have the power to climb my driveway. STILL, you have to imagine that scientists who can achieve 3 THOUSAND miles per gallon could at least double the performance of my 2006 Saturn VUE. Why not set their sights on something a little more practical that might eventually benefit consumers? I'm not saying this work will never be beneficial, but if the goal were to improve the fuel efficiency of consumer autos it might be more beneficial.
There are tons of really fun games out there which are designed for a few quick easy minutes of fun. You probably have a few installed on your computer.
There are also games out there that require a large time and money investment. Many, many people enjoy that type of thing. I have myself in the past when I had more time and money.
I consider the game Guild Wars to be the perfect blend of the two, especially if you enjoy PvP. A large time investment is not required, there is no monthly charge, can be played over dial up, relativelly low hardware spec, and can be played effectively with a standard keyboard. The PvP system is incredibly robust, fast paced, balanced, competetive, and they're adding new content all the time. Gliches and cheats are fixed on a regular basis, so you don't have to worry about losing too many matches that way. The best part is that you can have fun no matter how much time you have to invest. I play for about an hour or two a day and find that sufficient to be competetive in PvP. You can literally buy the game, install it, and then jump right into a PvP match with (character) skills and equipment equal to your competition. This game is all about strategy, not about how many hundreds of hours you have invested. There is also a great international flavor with teams from Korea, Europe, America, Japan, and China (there might even be more).
I'm really not trying to plug one game, but IMHO Guild Wars has set the standard for fantasy PvP games and overall playability. If you're sick of paying for game fun in blood then Guild Wars is for you.
Slashdot Mirror
This article has no merit unless the author can either A) Prove that the devices have been tampered with or B) Link all poorly designed computer technology to political conspiracy.
"...they don't earn any cash from supporting it..."
Can someone please give me the free support phone number for Microsoft? Oh wait, all of my questions are answered on Knowledge Base, Technet, and newsgroups .
Yes some work better than others. I have tried deploying Red Hat Core and Ubuntu to non-tech users. Ubuntu has worked out much better for them and me. The Java and Acrobat can be easily installed with "Easy Ubuntu" ( http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/ ). No rpm needed. I do apologize if that came off as a flame. I agree that Red Hat Core is an excellent distro.
You'll probably be getting a thank you card from your garbage man any day now.
After spending days fixing broken crap and searching for missing .rpm's Red Hat Core was fantastic! Except for the fact that it didn't detect my wireless LAN adapter, but hey, a little bit of fantastic goes a long way right?
Fortunately Ubuntu practically installs itself and works without any fixing, so I was able to roll back to a working OS in about 30 minutes.
Sure, I could get my iTunes music to .mp3 format easily and then play it on a non-iPod device, but why? I can sit down at the computer, buy a few songs, sync my iPod for the treadmill, then burn a CD for the car in just a few minutes. With zero headaches.
.mp3 playing gadget. Not because iTunes is the best music playing software. It's because iPod / iTunes work so well together.
I love the idea that Apple produced a system rather than individual components that *kinda* work with other individual components after hours of tinkering. This is why iPod / iTunes is so popular. Not because iPod is the best
The article is correct in assuming that there is no reason for me to buy an iPod, because I already own 2 (one for me, one for my wife) and love them.
Every title ever made for NES. This platform seems to be where game designers finally decided to rely more on graphics than game design. Only problem is that the graphics sucked.
Here at HP we take ourselves WAY TOO FUCKING SERIOUSLY.
One question that continually springs into my mind is how people can work in this type of environment? You put on your suit and tie, go to work at a computer company, and start spying on people??? This isn't the first story about HP performing (illegal?) survelliance either. Sounds like a really toxic, hostile, and generally insane / absurd way to sell electronics.
What type of survelliance equipment is embedded in my Laserjet 4350, or Proliant DL360. Is my integrated lights out board sending information back to HP HQ? Is my HP customer profile being looked over by men in black suits? Is someone headed over to my house right now to break my legs for posting this? Should tinfoil hats be distributed to all HP employees?
Of course they are spammers. If tiny gray guys in overcoats, fake moustaches, and dark sunglasses ask permission (in a squeaky voice) to shut down the mouse trap factory, what do you think is going on?
"Luckily, Ubuntu will still ship with Firefox so not an issue (even though it is a Debian distro)."
That's all anyone REALLY cares about anyway. The 33 people who use Debian as a desktop OS can just sudo apt-get install firefox if they want it.
My experience has been that proprietary anything eventually leads to no good. The company that owns the proprietary technology can go out of business, leaving you with no support. Or that same company will drop support for your hardware, also leaving you stranded. Or that company can simply decide that since your project is getting such great benefit from their product that a price hike is justified. None of this would benefit people without enough monety to buy a computer. You can dance around it with legal mumbo jumbo all you want, but it just doesn't fit. Eventually there will be a conflict between the project goals and the proprietary drivers.
The goal of OLPC is to bring computers to poor countries and people. Poor computer users will want / need a completely open computing environment. What if one of these proprietary drivers turns out to be buggy? Wouldn't it make sense in this project for the user community to participate in debugging the driver? That can't happen with a proprietary driver.
We all know that corporations who provide proprietary technology to OSS projects can be very very very very slow with patches and upgrades (*cough* Adobe Flash player 9 for Linux *cough*). Why introduce this frustration into the OLPC project?
Honestly, they would be better off with a $400.00 Dell laptop running XP Pro than they would with proprietary drivers on Fedora Core. The proprietary drivers on XP would be patched / upgraded more quickly, and less likely to be buggy (because more attention is always paid to proprietary Windows drivers. Proprietary OSS plays second fiddle at best).
So RMS and Theo, my hat is off to you (once again) for standing up for what's right. You are both saints and heroes in my book.
Ok the toolbars can be removed, big whoop.
Does the remove toolbar reset the local hosts file to it's original state when a toolbar hijacks it? I don't know for sure, but I'll guess no.
Can you install IE7 on Win2k or 9x? No? So are these people expected to buy a new OS because their web browser sucks?
What about those toolbars that replace OS files, install services, or actually shut down your anti-spyware? Is all of that fixed?
What about the annoying Flash pop-ups not blocked by the IE pop-up blocker? Can I install grease monkey or Adblock to stop them?
Now ask yourself how many of these toolbars people actually want or use. I look at a ton of business and home desktops every day, and I have never met anyone who wants or uses some of these Cool Web Search, Home Search Assistant, Starware, etc. toolbars. Google, MSN, and Yahoo *sometimes*. So if nobody wants them, and some of them perform malicious actions on your PC, why does the browser allow them to install? The Microsoft attitude is "These spyware people are connected to the global mass marketing machine, so we cannot offend them. We had better let them install their software first, then remove it if too many people complain". Intrusive marketing companies are held in higher regard by Microsoft than their own OS users.
My opinion is that cleaning up a mess which is only possible in their own web browser, Microsoft is not being proactive on security. It's an insufficient reaction at best.
A proactive security measure might be to A) Further limit the scope of what the "install on demand" system can actually change on your system. I'm sorry, but nothing from the user end of my web browser has any business changing things in %windir% or \system32 EVEN IF IT POPS UP A PROMPT THAT MANY USERS AUTOMATICALLY CLICK YES ON TO GET OFF THE SCREEN. B) Actively identify malicious software, particularly web browser toolbars and prevent them from installing at the OS level via windowsupdate security patches. C) Put out their own security product that removes both spyware and viruses (this one has been done for home users, the business product is still not available in public beta yet). Some other products already have this ability, but none with a large enough market share to force McAffee and Symantec to follow suit.
In general it's a little frustrating that I would need to run a WSUS, desktop firewall, desktop anti-virus, anti-spyware, and hardware firewall to keep my Windows PC running properly. With all the billions of dollars the world has paid Microsoft for complete crap software in the past, they can't produce something better than this? Ubuntu Linux / Firefox works better for me, and that's free!
I've been using IE7 at work since the first day of the first public beta. Up to this point I still prefer Firefox.
In closing, I'll say that the days of crap software fetching top dollar are numbered. The alternatives are rapidly growing, and many are superior products to anything produced by Microsoft.
Those toolbars are a plague. Does every company in the world need a toolbar? It has nothing to do with filling a need for anyone, it's pure marketing trash. In the early days of IE6 there was literally no defense against them, and some of them were practically impossible to remove (hotbar, cool web search). The anti-spyware tools (at the time) were horribly inadequate; using Ad-Aware and Spybot with up to date definitions back then would only remove some of the toolbars. My company spent a lot of money removing that crap. Fortunately people started using another web browser and Microsoft finally admitted that spyware was a problem (years too late IMHO). That whole situation was enough to get me off of Microsoft products. I've been an Ubuntu Linux user for quite some time now, and never had a *single* unwanted toolbar or spyware installed on my computer. The old cliche's about "you must be visiting questionable web sites if you have spyware" is completely ridiculous. I can't tell you how many times I've heard techs (or Microsoft) wrongly blame users for crappy OS and web browser security. It is 100% possible (and likely) for someone to get spyware and unwanted toolbars in Internet Explorer without visiting questionable web sites or agreeing to install it. It's a virus plain and simple. And where are the anti-virus companies? Instead of adding virus definitions for spyware to existing AV products, they IRRESPONSIBLY used the opportunity to create a new category of viruses and sell additional products. MS has used the opportunity to themselves launch anti-spyware products (Defender is currently in free beta, but word is that it will be pay only when out of beta). Nevermind that IE is the ONLY browser with this problem. What makes it worse is that companies like Adobe and Sun bundle toolbars with their software. So if someone isn't paying close attention they get Yahoo or Google toolbar. The fact that IE now has a "cleanup" option is completely meaningless IMHO. The fact that the browser can be loaded down with crap toolbars filling up 80% of the page in less than a few minutes should tell Microsoft that IE still needs a LOT of work.
Last I heard they didn't even have hardware for OS4. They failed miserably even when they had the best desktop OS on the market, which is definately not true now. The company itself has been involved in legal battles, technological blunders, community alienation, etc. for the last 10 years. If you read the forums, makers of AmigaOS4 hardware have reported that Amiga has stopped communicating with them altogether. Add to that that the head of the company has been prone to flip (bordering on rude) comments to the user community over the years, that is when he's not ignoring them altogether. Why would ANYONE waste time with this company or anything they produce? Talk about an exercise in futility.
I read a thread that said "not ALL next gen games charge money after purchase". RIIIIGGGHHHHT. If one company makes money from this tactic, many other companies will quickly follow suit.
By the time my 2 year old starts playing games, they will have an initial purchase price of $200.00, require 27 hours per day to play, and the entertainment industry will be watching you through a built-in camera to make sure you're not using "their" product wrongly.
I'll stick to Ur-Quan Masters on my hand-me-down Ubuntu laptop. Fantastic game that has yet to cost me a penny.
In a PvP environment it's possible to go completely skill based and let the classes naturally evolve. As the game matures, favored "builds" will become more and more popular.
IMHO it's naive for game developers to assume what they have lumped together in a "class" will be the most effective configuration. Let the "meta game" decide what needs lumped together.
I could really care less if my OS "morphs" to my personality and habits. How about an OS that is well tested, reliable, reasonably priced (or free), secure, runs all the apps I need, doesn't have obnoxious licensing / DRM, accepts only tested and approved hardware / drivers, has a default user interface that doesn't look like cow shit or a Care Bears cartoon, boots from a storage device with no moving parts, mobile with a non-exploding battery, affordable and fast "connect anywhere" network connection, and an easy to use developer environment?
Less abstract ideas, more fixing the crap we already have.
Flaming aside, you seem to be missing the reality of things. Our government and legal system backs the music industry 100%. If you think that massive amounts of people violating the law will in any way CHANGE the law, then I invite you to look at the history of P2P music downloads. Massive amounts of people downloading illegal music did not change the law then, and it never will. I agree that music prices are insane, but illegally downloading music only makes the situation worse. So go ahead and download illegal music to your hearts content, but don't expect anyone to care it / when you get slapped with a ridiculous fine.
Trust me, I couldn't care less if the entire music industry went belly up worldwide, but it amazes me that people find it necessary to download illegal music. The entertainment industry LOVES music thieves. They love the free media coverage. They love the money handed to them by our legal system. They love the increased sales that P2P brought about. They love the fact that they FINALLY had a reason to impliment DRM. Most of the songs people steal are looped endlessly on local radio stations, the rest being available on iTunes for a buck or two. Why risk being sued by entertainment industry sleazebags when you can get almost the same level of enjoyment legally, and at little or no cost?
I used to have an old white box with an IBM serial mouse, and a Boca 14.4 internal ISA modem. For some reason whenever I called a BBS I would have to smack the top of my computer desk before it would connect. It would just hang there until I smacked the top of the desk. Turns out there was an IRQ conflict with the modem and the mouse. When I was smacking the top of the desk it would jiggle the mouse and (somehow) allow the modem to connect. This went on for about 6 months. Finally I was able to resolve the problem by purchasing a PS/2 mouse.
Ever hear of Spyware? Most people ALREADY have an ad driven OS. All Microsoft would need to do is refund the purchase price of Windows for a free AD OS.
I've been using the current Ubuntu at home in a fairly complex environment, and the amount of normal computing tasks that require hacks seem minimal. There were a few thing that required some googline like installing JRE, pptp, and flash but on the whole it's workable. Photo management (simple red eye / crop / slideshow like Picassa, not photo editing with beefy complex apps like Gimp or Photoshop) is still a little rough. Even Picassa for Linux has some major issues to work out. I tried to print several very small .jpg, .gif, and .png files to two different printers and the print jobs were blown up to 300+MB in the spooler. GThumb doesn't have red eye, crop, or any tools like that. I tried several other photo management packages that were ok, but still not quite there.
I guess my point is that Ubuntu is very useable, but some tasks are still going to be painful, and others will still require "hacks".
This "hack" problem is not limited to Ubuntu though. I sold 10 PC's at a garage sale last year, 5 of which I KNOW are still running Ubuntu because I know the people. NONE of those people have called me with spyware, virus, or any of the goofy buggy shit you commonly see on Windows. People I know who use XP are CONSTANTLY bugging me with spyware, virus, broken MSI installers, windows updates that break something they're using, PC's that won't boot, cheap hardware with poorly written drivers causing BSOD's, you name it.
My point is that Ubuntu still requires a few "hacks", but my Ubuntu users seem to require far less maintenance than my XP users.
Maybe someone could write a hack for XP that makes less people call me to fix it!
He won't need it. Ken Lay has a chair reserved for him. Sorry, every time I hear about top execs leaving big corrupt organazations I think of Enron. Off topic, but I also wonder which of the two companies has ripped America off more?
Ok, so it runs on tacos, goes .8 MPH, and doesn't have the power to climb my driveway. STILL, you have to imagine that scientists who can achieve 3 THOUSAND miles per gallon could at least double the performance of my 2006 Saturn VUE. Why not set their sights on something a little more practical that might eventually benefit consumers? I'm not saying this work will never be beneficial, but if the goal were to improve the fuel efficiency of consumer autos it might be more beneficial.
There are tons of really fun games out there which are designed for a few quick easy minutes of fun. You probably have a few installed on your computer.
There are also games out there that require a large time and money investment. Many, many people enjoy that type of thing. I have myself in the past when I had more time and money.
I consider the game Guild Wars to be the perfect blend of the two, especially if you enjoy PvP. A large time investment is not required, there is no monthly charge, can be played over dial up, relativelly low hardware spec, and can be played effectively with a standard keyboard. The PvP system is incredibly robust, fast paced, balanced, competetive, and they're adding new content all the time. Gliches and cheats are fixed on a regular basis, so you don't have to worry about losing too many matches that way. The best part is that you can have fun no matter how much time you have to invest. I play for about an hour or two a day and find that sufficient to be competetive in PvP. You can literally buy the game, install it, and then jump right into a PvP match with (character) skills and equipment equal to your competition. This game is all about strategy, not about how many hundreds of hours you have invested. There is also a great international flavor with teams from Korea, Europe, America, Japan, and China (there might even be more).
I'm really not trying to plug one game, but IMHO Guild Wars has set the standard for fantasy PvP games and overall playability. If you're sick of paying for game fun in blood then Guild Wars is for you.