The easy money is not on Unix, it's on Windows. So Vladmir Q MalwareWriter wants to build a botnet to sell to spam or DDOS services, is he going to pick 1% of the worlds most powerful but well protected computers or 90% of computers where at least 60% of that market doesn't care about security in any meaningful way.
Yes, the big money is on UNIX, banks, stock exchanges and so forth but these orgs have dedicated security teams monitoring the systems 24/7. Like the GP said, do a quick cost/benefit analysis here, there is less money on Windows but it's dozens of orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to get. Ultimately, if you are doing something clandestine on someone elses equipment you do not want this noticed by the people using that equipment. How long would a trojan remain undetected in a bank?
The reality is, more than anything this tired "people hack windows boxes because they can win more" response pretends to suggest, that UNIX is phenominally more secure on a basic, fundamental, architectural level than Windows. Out of the box
But it is. Out of the box, Ubuntu (arguably, one of the weakest distro's in terms of *nix security) is miles ahead of Windows and Mac OSX (both still permit blank passwords).
Here's the rub, it is not easy to configure *nix to be less secure then Windows but it can be done. Mac OSX has almost done it (saved by the virtue that OSX does enforce separate user permissions). Windows and OS X are very difficult to secure properly unlike Linux and other *nixes. OS X makes it even more difficult because Apple insist on propagating a false sense of security around Macs (you cant get viruses, OS X is 100% safe). Security through obscurity, Mac's can get viruses and trojans the same way 90% of windows boxes get viruses and trojans, the user installs them and giving the user a false sense of security will only exacerbate this. If OSX gains a significant market share we will see OS X viruses becoming as abundant as Windows viruses because the biggest weakness for any system remains in the end user.
If you play around with Open Office, their spreadsheet app is in many ways better than Excel.
Except user friendliness.
Don't get me wrong, I've used OO.o for years and will keep using it because it's free, legit and works on all my PC's. But OO.o Calc is difficult to use for an experienced user with OO.o compared to Excel. If OO.o would work on that it would be a lot easier to convert people. Free (gratis) is a powerful persuader, but it's defeated by hard (difficult to use/learn).
And you don't see anything contradictory in these two statement?
No Mr AC, Exchange and Outlook need to go in order to enable better advancements via competition. Not because Exch-Outlook are bad products. Two completely different things here. Just because a product is good enough does not mean we should be happy to maintain it's monopoly status.
If we break AD-Exch-OL we break Windows on the server.
Outlook-Exchange is absurdly expensive, and at some point you have to weigh the costs of all those Exchange CALs (not to mention all the Server CALs for accessing file and printer shares). For us its pure economics
There is TCO, for an organisation of under 100 people, we had all MS license covered for A$150 a head per year (server CAL, client license, Exch CAL, office, Visio).
I agree that Exch-Oultook needs to go. It's the only strong bone holding together the whole decrepit Windows Server System. It can do this because Exch and Outlook do what people need them to and do so with minimal fuss. Exchange will run like a train so long as you do nothing to it. Exchange is unfortunately the best email/calendaring package that works out of the box. Provide me with something like that and I'd switch so I've got hopes for Google Wave in this regard.
The fucking iPhone has gone 3 years always-on with no viruses! Are you telling me a full PC can't do that?
An Iphone cant even run two programs at once.
Besides, that's a lie, there are viruses for JailBroken Iphones and JailBreaking is quiet popular. As the fanboys constantly point out its as simple as running an exe file (as a sysadmin, I can say that Iphone_Jailbreak_$VERSION.exe shows up in the virus scanner quite a bit).
Windows 7 runs 80% of XP viruses. The most important feature was not to run the viruses.
Citation. XP SP3 doesn't even run the worst of Windows viruses (Conficker, Melissa, MyDoom and so forth).
Try and be a bit more realistic and less fanboyish. I'd happily give up Windows for Linux if all my games would run on it. My media centre is 100% Linux, The last time I booted into XP on my laptop was six months ago. What I would not do, is put in a replacement that was more restrictive then Windows and did not do what I needed it to.
That's because the hackers want a Mac, not some lame old Windows box.
Perhaps it's easier to find a exploit for a Mac then Windows, there just aren't enough Mac's in the world to make developing one worthwhile outside a competition.
Terminating 16-bit legacy in Server 2000. A few old 16-bit couldnt be translated to 32 bit and were replaced.
Terminating the DOS/Win9x line with 2000/XP. Despite good legacy support many old Win 9x games will not work on XP. Most DOS games wont work without a DOS emulator like DOSbox.
Introducing a new security model in Vista. This prevented programs that depended on XP/IE6 hacks from running.
Not terminating legacy support is not one of the things we can bash MS for. MS want to end a lot of legacy products like Windows 2000, XP, IE6, Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, SQL 2000, the list goes on. They've even appointed a guy to work on killing IE6 they want it to die that much. MS wants everyone to upgrade but many of MS's customers wont.
Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google.
It looks like you are trying to kill Google.
Would you like help.
* Hire a hitman.
* Begin a smear campaing against them and sue by proxy.
* Dance around the stage getting sweaty.
Bullshit. You add an accessory Bluetooth keyboard and it turns into a PC replacement that easily replaces XP for most users.
It's not that scary that you believe that, what's scary is that 3 others with mod points believed that.
An Ipad with a bluetooth keyboard would be a complete pain in the arse to use every day. Not to mention the tiny screen size, risk of theft and the fact that none of our software would work properly.
There is no decent alternative to outlook. Yes outlook has a lot of functionality that many business users need, a user may only need 10% of it but each user uses a different 10%. Between all the end users in a 50 person org at least 80% of all functions are used in Word, Excel, Visio, Project and Outlook. Your experiences are not typical.
Not to mention production software, ArcGIS wouldn't run, neither will Quickbooks nor will any of the other prod software we use.
What about printing?
Ipad's cant access file shares, are you seriously suggesting that everyone keeps all their work locally?
Enterprise tools (auditing, communications and collaboration, content control).
You cant even turn one on without another PC.
Finally we still have the gorilla arm problem when using the touch screen to do basic functions like open programs and scroll. Lack of multi-tasking is another big one, most users in a call centre open at least 3 programs (call tracking, inter-office IM and knowledge base).
Really, have you thought about this at all.
You can't make assumptions about iPad based on previous tablets.
You cant make assumptions about office work based on your limited Ipad experience.
I'm continually amazed at the extreme terminological imprecision of some people in the tech industry.
The word "agnostic" has taken on a colloquial meaning that it does not have a specific requirement. In the same way that an agnostic person does not care whether god exists or not an agnostic program/format does not care which platform it is run under. Language is a living thing and it changes constantly, there is not point in whining because you cant keep up with that change.
I hate to call people silly outright, but that wishlist is silly.
No it isn't.
If you could see past your fanboy induced cognitive dissonance for a second and realise that yes, people want to view media without having to have it transcended by another device or server.
Why would you want a TABLET, which inherently needs to be as light as possible with as long a battery life as possible
No, if I need a tablet, I need it to do what I want it to do. All other priorities are secondary to this basic goal.
The only real need I have for a tablet in my life at the moment is as a field service data entry unit (GIS and Geology). This niche is currently filled by US$6000 ruggardised laptops/tablet hybrids but seeing as I cant run any decent mapping applications on an Ipad, it's completely useless. So we are using Windows, ArcGIS and a 6K laptop. If you give me a 1K tablet that can run ArcGIS at it's most basic level it would be perfect as I don't need to do image processing in the field, but I do need to enter data on a map.
any media bought from Apple will work with the iPad directly
I don't like DRM so I will not buy media from Apple, not that they have much available in my country anyway so I want a device that will play my current.avi files which include a sizable, already converted DVD collection. Other personal media players produced by the likes of Archos and Cowon (the D2 for example) have no problems with decoding almost any video I've thrown at it on the fly. Other tablets already have this one done and dusted.
Now after this you've conveniently ignored all the GP's other points, here they are again.
Comes with 250G+ internal storage or allows me to connect external storage.
Good point, even SD cards are a good alternative. I rarely use more then 32 GB storage at any one time for media but I can see the need for hundreds of GB's.
Connects to upnp servers and samba servers and netatalk.
My laptop has an SMB share, so does my media centre. My desktop doesn't (ironically, the only Windows box out of the three) plus there are the computers at work. I'd like to add MSC to the GP's list. I'd like to manipulate files on the device over USB on any box I choose to plug it into including my Linux boxes.
Allows for management of the device in the complete absence of iTunes.
Yes, I tunes is a buggy piece of crap on Windows and doesn't even work on Linux. I have multiple computers in my life. Most people have multiple computers in their lives these days, my media is spread out on my media centre, laptop and desktop. Not to mention the media I might want to take to another persons computer. Being tied to a single PC that must be a Mac or Windows is unacceptable.
People tend to overestimate the degree to which other people are like them... Doesn't mean that they are. No, we are not all sociopaths to a degree
Yes we are.
The same as we are all philanthropists to a degree. These are personality traits we all have, you are making the assumption because one has this trait that it is dominant. This is not true. The same traits in sociopaths exist in everyone because it is natural human behaviour (driven by instincts, needs, wants etc...)
What we are seeing in your statement is that you don't want to believe this, thus cognitive dissonance kicks in and you refute the fact to make yourself feel better.
This is partially an indication that being a sociopath is not a dominant trait in you (as it makes you feel repulsive).
And if humour were based on that
Where did I say that?
I did not say all humour is based on that, I said some humour is based on that. Humour is based on appealing to emotions and different types of humour target different types of emotions and personality traits.
then the people that were sociopaths would have a better sense of humour than the rest of us, and that's not the case.
Your assertion leaves out the fact that humour is subjective. It is very important to understand this before making any statements on humour.
Education is for making MONEY, because without MONEY, you have fewer choices.
Wow, I pity your limited view.
Education to me was about enabling me to do what I wanted. Not about money, I could have spent those 4 years that I spent studying working in construction earning a packet, A$20 an hour starting, brickies got $1 a brick and you could lay 600 a day easy, that's A$144,000 ($600 x 5 days a week x 48 working days a year), still over A$100K after tax for a tradie. The thing is I don't want to lay bricks for the rest of my life, I've done manual labour and it's boring as batshit, in the sun and you will go nowhere, it's the same job day in, day out for 47 years.
I worked at getting an education because it let me do what I want. If it was all about money I'd get a well paying job that I hate.
That's wrong. We only laugh when we know that the person/animated character is not seriously hurt.
Not necessarily true, we don't laugh because Wile E Coyote was hurt, we laugh because he was stopped and his hare brained schemes turned on him. We laugh when the villain gets hurt or dies because they were the villain and were stopped.
But I think you missed the GP's point and unwittingly stumbled upon the Ottoman of that point.
Of course there are sociopaths to whom this general rule may not apply.
We are all sociopaths to a degree, some more then others but that inner sociopath needs to be taken out for a walk every now and then. This type of comedy is a method of doing that in a healthy and productive manner. The alternative is to repress the sociopathic tendencies until they explode.
Schadenfreude type comedies are not new at all, they date back to ancient Greek and Roman comedies, where we take joy in the suffering of the actors. The reasons for this are varied but typically it's because it's how we wouldn't like to feel in that situation, we laugh to ignore the fact that someone has been hurt, normally in a very minor way as you pointed out. Picture when a friend drops a hammer or brick onto their foot, you laugh despite the fact you know you wouldn't be laughing if it happened to you, in this case it's a reminder that bad things happen to someone else.
Some people find it amusing when someone is embarrassed, personally I cringe at these shows where they set out to make a mockery of the person. So understandably I don't like American Sitcoms.
Yes, they can't do it like they did in the old days, through the power of the Kings. But it seems to me that the only reason you don't see them declaring a Holy War on anyone is because they simply haven't. Not because they can't.
You have even less evidence then I for your theory. I can at least call upon the fact that they haven't been able to start a war, let alone stop one in the last century. Right now the Christian church's power is at such a low that they cant even cover up the indiscretions of their own members. Instead they are asking us to ignore paedophile priests rather then disappearing the situation as they would in the good old days.
The church has very limited power over states today, power over states was the only thing they had previously that could compel other states.
For one, most of them really wouldn't be bothered to the point of calling for a ban, and you're not going to see Christian leaders calling for the death of the webmaster, even Pat Robertson isn't that crazy.
He would be that crazy, even the pope would if he though he could get away with it. The point is that the Christian church has not got enough power to call holy wars on things they don't like. Islam is pretty much in the same boat with so many splintered factions (sunni's fighting shiite's) so no one takes this stuff seriously except for the Anti-Islam crowd who blow this crap out of proportion as undeniable evidence of their nefarious evil.
Remember, when the church had enough power they would order entire kingdoms to war for the holy lands (and the trade routes contained within). Torture was approved, mass murder/relocation of other religious groups (no one expected the people who did this). Don't think that Christianity is any better then Islam, in fact we'd need all the current Islamic wars to continue for another 70 years before we've equalled the damage done by the Spanish Inquisition. Fortunately that was a mistake we have learned from and I don't expect it to happen again.
As a Christian, I can tell you people make fun of us all the time. Heck, they've been doing it for around, what, 2000 years?
And how conveniently did you forget about that about 800 year period where you send people off to kill and die in order to capture foreign lands where your imaginary friend had a son to control trade routes under the auspices of serving your imaginary friend. There were about six of these.
Or there was that Spanish mob, I forgot what they were called but no body expected them. Where it was punishable by torture or death simply to have another religion or not follow the accepted religion to an appropriate level, that went for about 150 years.
Letters of marque were written about anyone of note who disagreed with you, be they a queen, philosopher or astronomer.
Lets not get into the involuntary immolation of wicca shall we?
Slashdot Mirror
Just dont mention any other platforms or use a language thats easy to port to other platforms.
It's not like Apple is doing everything short of outright banning of cross platform applications to maintain application exclusivity.
Then why is Windows always second to go in the last three Pwn20wn competitions.
I've alway figured it was easier to find a new exploit for a system that no one targets.
Uninformed response is uninformed.
The easy money is not on Unix, it's on Windows. So Vladmir Q MalwareWriter wants to build a botnet to sell to spam or DDOS services, is he going to pick 1% of the worlds most powerful but well protected computers or 90% of computers where at least 60% of that market doesn't care about security in any meaningful way.
Yes, the big money is on UNIX, banks, stock exchanges and so forth but these orgs have dedicated security teams monitoring the systems 24/7. Like the GP said, do a quick cost/benefit analysis here, there is less money on Windows but it's dozens of orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to get. Ultimately, if you are doing something clandestine on someone elses equipment you do not want this noticed by the people using that equipment. How long would a trojan remain undetected in a bank?
But it is. Out of the box, Ubuntu (arguably, one of the weakest distro's in terms of *nix security) is miles ahead of Windows and Mac OSX (both still permit blank passwords).
Here's the rub, it is not easy to configure *nix to be less secure then Windows but it can be done. Mac OSX has almost done it (saved by the virtue that OSX does enforce separate user permissions). Windows and OS X are very difficult to secure properly unlike Linux and other *nixes. OS X makes it even more difficult because Apple insist on propagating a false sense of security around Macs (you cant get viruses, OS X is 100% safe). Security through obscurity, Mac's can get viruses and trojans the same way 90% of windows boxes get viruses and trojans, the user installs them and giving the user a false sense of security will only exacerbate this. If OSX gains a significant market share we will see OS X viruses becoming as abundant as Windows viruses because the biggest weakness for any system remains in the end user.
Except user friendliness.
Don't get me wrong, I've used OO.o for years and will keep using it because it's free, legit and works on all my PC's. But OO.o Calc is difficult to use for an experienced user with OO.o compared to Excel. If OO.o would work on that it would be a lot easier to convert people. Free (gratis) is a powerful persuader, but it's defeated by hard (difficult to use/learn).
No Mr AC, Exchange and Outlook need to go in order to enable better advancements via competition. Not because Exch-Outlook are bad products. Two completely different things here. Just because a product is good enough does not mean we should be happy to maintain it's monopoly status.
If we break AD-Exch-OL we break Windows on the server.
There is TCO, for an organisation of under 100 people, we had all MS license covered for A$150 a head per year (server CAL, client license, Exch CAL, office, Visio).
I agree that Exch-Oultook needs to go. It's the only strong bone holding together the whole decrepit Windows Server System. It can do this because Exch and Outlook do what people need them to and do so with minimal fuss. Exchange will run like a train so long as you do nothing to it. Exchange is unfortunately the best email/calendaring package that works out of the box. Provide me with something like that and I'd switch so I've got hopes for Google Wave in this regard.
An Iphone cant even run two programs at once.
Besides, that's a lie, there are viruses for JailBroken Iphones and JailBreaking is quiet popular. As the fanboys constantly point out its as simple as running an exe file (as a sysadmin, I can say that Iphone_Jailbreak_$VERSION.exe shows up in the virus scanner quite a bit).
Citation. XP SP3 doesn't even run the worst of Windows viruses (Conficker, Melissa, MyDoom and so forth).
Try and be a bit more realistic and less fanboyish. I'd happily give up Windows for Linux if all my games would run on it. My media centre is 100% Linux, The last time I booted into XP on my laptop was six months ago. What I would not do, is put in a replacement that was more restrictive then Windows and did not do what I needed it to.
How is the above post a Troll?
Perhaps it's easier to find a exploit for a Mac then Windows, there just aren't enough Mac's in the world to make developing one worthwhile outside a competition.
Umm...
MS has broken it on several times.
Terminating 16-bit legacy in Server 2000. A few old 16-bit couldnt be translated to 32 bit and were replaced.
Terminating the DOS/Win9x line with 2000/XP. Despite good legacy support many old Win 9x games will not work on XP. Most DOS games wont work without a DOS emulator like DOSbox.
Introducing a new security model in Vista. This prevented programs that depended on XP/IE6 hacks from running.
Not terminating legacy support is not one of the things we can bash MS for. MS want to end a lot of legacy products like Windows 2000, XP, IE6, Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, SQL 2000, the list goes on. They've even appointed a guy to work on killing IE6 they want it to die that much. MS wants everyone to upgrade but many of MS's customers wont.
It looks like you are trying to kill Google.
Would you like help.
* Hire a hitman.
* Begin a smear campaing against them and sue by proxy.
* Dance around the stage getting sweaty.
It's not that scary that you believe that, what's scary is that 3 others with mod points believed that.
An Ipad with a bluetooth keyboard would be a complete pain in the arse to use every day. Not to mention the tiny screen size, risk of theft and the fact that none of our software would work properly.
There is no decent alternative to outlook. Yes outlook has a lot of functionality that many business users need, a user may only need 10% of it but each user uses a different 10%. Between all the end users in a 50 person org at least 80% of all functions are used in Word, Excel, Visio, Project and Outlook. Your experiences are not typical.
Not to mention production software, ArcGIS wouldn't run, neither will Quickbooks nor will any of the other prod software we use.
What about printing?
Ipad's cant access file shares, are you seriously suggesting that everyone keeps all their work locally?
Enterprise tools (auditing, communications and collaboration, content control).
You cant even turn one on without another PC.
Finally we still have the gorilla arm problem when using the touch screen to do basic functions like open programs and scroll. Lack of multi-tasking is another big one, most users in a call centre open at least 3 programs (call tracking, inter-office IM and knowledge base).
Really, have you thought about this at all.
You cant make assumptions about office work based on your limited Ipad experience.
What you call "Scepticism" is more commonly refereed to as being in denial.
Being sceptical means that you want proof, you haven't got enough information to make a decision, this in general is a good thing.
Being in denial means that you've made a decision and are using whatever evidence you can to justify that decision. This is not a good thing at all.
The word "agnostic" has taken on a colloquial meaning that it does not have a specific requirement. In the same way that an agnostic person does not care whether god exists or not an agnostic program/format does not care which platform it is run under. Language is a living thing and it changes constantly, there is not point in whining because you cant keep up with that change.
No it isn't.
If you could see past your fanboy induced cognitive dissonance for a second and realise that yes, people want to view media without having to have it transcended by another device or server.
No, if I need a tablet, I need it to do what I want it to do. All other priorities are secondary to this basic goal.
The only real need I have for a tablet in my life at the moment is as a field service data entry unit (GIS and Geology). This niche is currently filled by US$6000 ruggardised laptops/tablet hybrids but seeing as I cant run any decent mapping applications on an Ipad, it's completely useless. So we are using Windows, ArcGIS and a 6K laptop. If you give me a 1K tablet that can run ArcGIS at it's most basic level it would be perfect as I don't need to do image processing in the field, but I do need to enter data on a map.
I don't like DRM so I will not buy media from Apple, not that they have much available in my country anyway so I want a device that will play my current .avi files which include a sizable, already converted DVD collection. Other personal media players produced by the likes of Archos and Cowon (the D2 for example) have no problems with decoding almost any video I've thrown at it on the fly. Other tablets already have this one done and dusted.
Now after this you've conveniently ignored all the GP's other points, here they are again.
Good point, even SD cards are a good alternative. I rarely use more then 32 GB storage at any one time for media but I can see the need for hundreds of GB's.
My laptop has an SMB share, so does my media centre. My desktop doesn't (ironically, the only Windows box out of the three) plus there are the computers at work. I'd like to add MSC to the GP's list. I'd like to manipulate files on the device over USB on any box I choose to plug it into including my Linux boxes.
Yes, I tunes is a buggy piece of crap on Windows and doesn't even work on Linux. I have multiple computers in my life. Most people have multiple computers in their lives these days, my media is spread out on my media centre, laptop and desktop. Not to mention the media I might want to take to another persons computer. Being tied to a single PC that must be a Mac or Windows is unacceptable.
Most of the web contains flash so no, it's not ridiculous.
Reading into that it really says, "our device does what you want it to" which is a major selling point to many people.
Yes we are.
The same as we are all philanthropists to a degree. These are personality traits we all have, you are making the assumption because one has this trait that it is dominant. This is not true. The same traits in sociopaths exist in everyone because it is natural human behaviour (driven by instincts, needs, wants etc...)
What we are seeing in your statement is that you don't want to believe this, thus cognitive dissonance kicks in and you refute the fact to make yourself feel better.
This is partially an indication that being a sociopath is not a dominant trait in you (as it makes you feel repulsive).
Where did I say that?
I did not say all humour is based on that, I said some humour is based on that. Humour is based on appealing to emotions and different types of humour target different types of emotions and personality traits.
Your assertion leaves out the fact that humour is subjective. It is very important to understand this before making any statements on humour.
This is just the American Government picking on European companies.
Hey, it works for you guys when complaining about the EU even when the corporation is blatantly doing something illegal. Turnabout is fair play.
Wow, I pity your limited view.
Education to me was about enabling me to do what I wanted. Not about money, I could have spent those 4 years that I spent studying working in construction earning a packet, A$20 an hour starting, brickies got $1 a brick and you could lay 600 a day easy, that's A$144,000 ($600 x 5 days a week x 48 working days a year), still over A$100K after tax for a tradie. The thing is I don't want to lay bricks for the rest of my life, I've done manual labour and it's boring as batshit, in the sun and you will go nowhere, it's the same job day in, day out for 47 years.
I worked at getting an education because it let me do what I want. If it was all about money I'd get a well paying job that I hate.
I don't care what it's been, what is it now?
Your post makes me angry, and that makes mr Fibbles angry.
Not necessarily true, we don't laugh because Wile E Coyote was hurt, we laugh because he was stopped and his hare brained schemes turned on him. We laugh when the villain gets hurt or dies because they were the villain and were stopped.
But I think you missed the GP's point and unwittingly stumbled upon the Ottoman of that point.
We are all sociopaths to a degree, some more then others but that inner sociopath needs to be taken out for a walk every now and then. This type of comedy is a method of doing that in a healthy and productive manner. The alternative is to repress the sociopathic tendencies until they explode.
Schadenfreude type comedies are not new at all, they date back to ancient Greek and Roman comedies, where we take joy in the suffering of the actors. The reasons for this are varied but typically it's because it's how we wouldn't like to feel in that situation, we laugh to ignore the fact that someone has been hurt, normally in a very minor way as you pointed out. Picture when a friend drops a hammer or brick onto their foot, you laugh despite the fact you know you wouldn't be laughing if it happened to you, in this case it's a reminder that bad things happen to someone else.
Some people find it amusing when someone is embarrassed, personally I cringe at these shows where they set out to make a mockery of the person. So understandably I don't like American Sitcoms.
You have even less evidence then I for your theory. I can at least call upon the fact that they haven't been able to start a war, let alone stop one in the last century. Right now the Christian church's power is at such a low that they cant even cover up the indiscretions of their own members. Instead they are asking us to ignore paedophile priests rather then disappearing the situation as they would in the good old days.
The church has very limited power over states today, power over states was the only thing they had previously that could compel other states.
He would be that crazy, even the pope would if he though he could get away with it. The point is that the Christian church has not got enough power to call holy wars on things they don't like. Islam is pretty much in the same boat with so many splintered factions (sunni's fighting shiite's) so no one takes this stuff seriously except for the Anti-Islam crowd who blow this crap out of proportion as undeniable evidence of their nefarious evil.
Remember, when the church had enough power they would order entire kingdoms to war for the holy lands (and the trade routes contained within). Torture was approved, mass murder/relocation of other religious groups (no one expected the people who did this). Don't think that Christianity is any better then Islam, in fact we'd need all the current Islamic wars to continue for another 70 years before we've equalled the damage done by the Spanish Inquisition. Fortunately that was a mistake we have learned from and I don't expect it to happen again.
And how conveniently did you forget about that about 800 year period where you send people off to kill and die in order to capture foreign lands where your imaginary friend had a son to control trade routes under the auspices of serving your imaginary friend. There were about six of these.
Or there was that Spanish mob, I forgot what they were called but no body expected them. Where it was punishable by torture or death simply to have another religion or not follow the accepted religion to an appropriate level, that went for about 150 years.
Letters of marque were written about anyone of note who disagreed with you, be they a queen, philosopher or astronomer.
Lets not get into the involuntary immolation of wicca shall we?
Keep playing the victim card good sir.