Even if Enron didn't offer a pension, they did cheat their employees out of their retirement. I say this because the big wigs at Enron knew about their impending collapse, and did not warn the employees.
Wait, Enron screwed over its employees because it didn't assist them them in illegal insider trading by dumping their stock onto some sucker before the financial weakness was public information?
No, Enron's employees fared much better than if their employer had offered a conventional pension. For one thing, if they chose to divert their 401(k) funds to any investment other than Enron stock (i.e. followed rudimentary diversification advice), they would have kept everthing short the company match (i.e. most of it). In a convetional pension, they either would have gotten nothing, or what the PBGC chose to award them from *other* workers' premiums.
The point is not that Enron's management was blameless, but that raiding a pension fund (i.e. withdrawing dedicated investment funds) is one crime they did not commit. And while I do feel for the the employees, we need to quit pretending they were passive bystanders in all of this. They thought they could make fast money and so ignored the boring diversification advice. Claiming that executives should say their own stock is overvalued, even if true, is unrealistic.
For all their crimes, that's one thing Enron and Halliburton haven't done. They didn't offer a pension, just a retirement account match. In Enron's case, workers lost whatever they put into Enron stock, plus their match (which was given in stock).
If you want to complain about pension funds getting raided to pay for yachts, I'd like to direct your attention to:
-American car makers -American steel makers -American air carriers -every state and local government pension fund -the US Social Security system (I know, getting way off topic here)
All private companies listed above offered long-deferred compensation that they never bothered to fund in advance to actuarially-accurate levels, making them vulnerable to those expenses in the future. Because they got cheaper labor (by deferring part of workers' compensation) they were supposed to set aside a fund, but instead it was spent on dividends and bonuses. It is exactly as if I took out a giant business loan, paid it out as a dividend, and then complained about "legacy interest costs". Until recently, that was all with the blessing of the SEC.
In the case of the government agencies above, they take money that should be used to fully fund the obligations and instead spend it on present fads.
"door is open", "fasten your seatbelt", "handbrake on"
Okay, I can completely sympathize, but if you routinely drive around without your seatbelt, a door open, and the handbrake engaged, I think you have some more important things to worry about.
Yes. Everything is expected when your theory explains nothing. If it takes 50 more years to pass the Turing Test, hey, that was expected. If it takes 100, hey, that was expected. If it takes 1000, hey, that was expected.
So yeah, we perfectly understand exactly the necessary and sufficient conditions for a brain to work... er, except we haven't gotten any results working under that assumption.
Your argument is like suggesting that because man has not yet walked on Mars, that that is somehow evidence or an argument that man cannot walk on Mars. Obviously an invalid argument. They are two difficult engineering problems.
It would be an invalid argument if it was asserted as an absolute logical necessity. The more we understand, the weaker such evidence would be. There's more to scientific reasoning than pure deduction; there's also Bayesian inference, which you might want to brush up on. Once you do, you can make sense of this:
The probability of not having created even a small ("insect-like") brain, given that our understanding of brain workings is complete, is very low.
emergence
Wikipedia has a good article on emergent behavior.
Let's try to read me in context if we could. I didn't say
"emergence"
I didn't even say
"What is emergence?"
I certainly didn't say,
"Fill me in on what I need to know to use the latest buzzwords."
I asked a very specific question, and there was a reason I phrased it that way. The prompt was:
"how does the reference to emergence change the meaning of what you said?"
And what did he say?
"I read the properties of human behaviour to function perfectly well inside a "computer" mapped on top of neural networks as mapped on top of chemistry mapped on top of physics, with the emergent behaviour of the overall system optimizing for reproduction in a context that is slightly different from the present one."
The question, then, is how the idea conveyed there, differed from the idea that would be conveyed by:
"I read the properties of human behaviour to function perfectly well inside a "computer" mapped on top of neural networks as mapped on top of chemistry mapped on top of physics, with the behaviour of the overall system optimizing for reproduction in a context that is slightly different from the present one."
And before you say, "the difference is that emergent behaviour has properties that do not exist at lower levels, while non-emergent behavior has properties that do exist at all lower levels":
a) his explanation did not hinge on such a distinction b) under that explanation, everything is emergent and therefore the explanatory power is nil
(Just to subdue your gut reaction, this guy who advocates Strong AI and believes the Turing Test will be passed, makes the same critique of "emergence".)
And before you reply, remember that he did not claim to "prove" this. He said
Right, I know, because heaven forbid we blatantly misread what someone said.
For the soul argument (which as far as I can tell is different than the designed argument), I read the properties of human behaviour to function perfectly well inside a "computer" mapped on top of neural networks as mapped on top of chemistry mapped on top of physics, with the emergent behaviour of the overall system optimizing for reproduction in a context that is slightly different from the present one. I don't see any phenomena that are incompatible with this view.
What about the fact that no one's been able to construct an artificial brain capable of passing the Turing Test, under this paradigm?
(Btw, how does the reference to emergence change the meaning of what you said? I'm curious.)
Wow, that's the first creative AND economically justifiable use I've ever seen suggested for wage controls. A gold star to you Sir. (or feline or whatever)
Of course, you'd probably have to also reduce requirements to being one so as to ensure you'd have enough.
Yeah, while they're at it, they can quarter some military hackers in server farms. (Make sure to declare a state of war first, and authorize quartering so as to adhere to 3rd Amendment restrictions.)
My response was to my opponent's actual position, as he/she wrote it. I am under no obligation to figure out his/her unwritten positions, which he/she might hold, which somehow temper or put in another light their message.
Your post criticized libertarians *in general* with little apparent knowledge of what libertarians *in general* believe.
As it was written, the message bemoans all regulation without exception.
No, it bemoans licensure *aimed at limiting competition with politically-powerful groups*.
To which I responded.
You responded with a long spiel about libertarians in general, only tangentially related to the issues I raised.
True, these things occur. And that is a failure of governance, to address which is the responsibility of the citizenry in a functioning, sane, modern state. I will not argue with you that, as it stands, the US government for example, is not being essentially subverted by the same very jerks it is supposed to protect the US citizens against. But this failure stemms from the general apathy and dis-interest of the general populace of their own goverment and their unwillingess to do anything to improve its operation.
Kind of. Remember, it's the *interested* citizens *who are voting for these bad policies* in the first place. It's the active voters that buy into the "OMG people will die if doctors don't get umpteen years of unrelated education" line. Suggesting that we vote out these policies misses the point. It's like saying, "You don't like pollution? Quit burning fuel." My individual pollution doesn't make a difference! Well, asking that voters reduce their "political pollution" is flawed for the same reason. People can afford to "vote with their hearts" rather than their minds, because it is costless to them to do so, just as my individual pollution is costless to me.
(This is the thesis of the recent book The Myth of the Rational Voter, summarized here.)
Are there systems that avoid these "problems of governance"? Yes. But they don't give each person a vote on how the law treats doctors;-)
Wolfram's claim in NKS that he had discovered some fundamentally new way to approach science that couldn't be handled by existing peer review processes was hogwash. Others had done that kind of thing long before, and little in NKS helped advance the state of the art.
Wolfram's proof in NKS that his Rule 110 cellular automaton was a Universal Turing Machine, was not hogwash. (That UTM was different from the one described in the story, obviously.)
Your trollish tone and ignorance of your opponents' actual positions is neither necessary nor helpful. But you do have a valid point, so let me clarify:
My criticism there was not of licensure as such, but the fact that this licensure inevitably goes far beyond what those public interest concerns you listed, could possibly justify. They do not, in other words, simply make sure every practicing neurosurgeon knows what he's doing. They make sure that, in addition to being qualified for neurosurgery, he has X years of unrelated schooling. They restrict entry into fields as mundane as floral arrangement (!) and auctioneering (there was a story about how some state actually wanted to enforce its law that would imply ebay sellers have to learn proper breathing techniques for hosting an auction). The bulk of the licensure requirements are simply the group flexing its political muscle to restrict entry and prop up their incomes. (And people like you are more than happy to vote for "feel good" policies to placate them.)
If the legislature merely wanted to protect public safety, it could just require that anyone wanted to do that activity must buy a $X million liability insurance policy against the type of outcomes you described, and then the insurers would only cover those who have been vetted to have proper qualifictions, *genuinely* matching those justified by safety concerns.
But then, that wouldn't artficially prop up a politically-powerful group's income, now, would it?
I don't think they're morally equivalent. However, they do have a subtle similarity.
Give money to terrorist group = "Hey world, you actually owe me $500 worth less in goods, and these guys over here, $500 more."
Post bomb-making materials = "Hey world, this is actually how you can make an explosive device."
You said you can't imagine a world without money. That includes all worlds in which people don't collectively change decisions about who is entitled to what, because that process is functionally equivalent to monetary transactions.
It might go against my USian belief in free speech, but I'd have a hard time arguing against this law if its merely placing blogs & websites under the same scrutiny as other publications.
Actually, that's what a lot of people find objectionable about these types of laws: that stringent regulation of "bad people" might actually apply to them too! (Sort of a variant of "a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested".)
I see this kind of thing all the time:
***
"I think it's HORRIBLE how corporations EXPLOIT all these tax loopholes to avoid paying their FAIR SHARE!" "To consistently enforce tax law, we will have to monitor MMORPGs like World of Warcraft so as to insure income earned there is taxed." "WHAT???? That's RIDICULOUS!"
***
"I think there should be STRINGENT regulations on businesses to make sure they don't DISCRIMINATE." "Excuse me sir, your site, 'Craig's List' has acted in contravention of Fair Housing law so we're suing you." "Er, what? I mean, those laws are for bad people, not me."
***
common internet discussion:
"Corporations are OBVIOUSLY inefficient. Look how easy it is to make something and sell it cheaper." "Yeah, but you didn't obey these regulations and pay these taxes." "Well... those shouldn't exist!" "And if they didn't, the corporation could sell for less." "No, because they're inefficient." *falls out of chair*
[Every country in the world] wants to restrict entrepreneurs' rights by forcing everyone to register their businesses, pay taxes on undistributed and phantom profits, and get a license for all activities that compete with politically-powerful groups. The law is clearly designed to curb competition with government monopolies and free association, although it has yet to be approved by its legislature.
I just wish y'all would worry about economic regulation *before* it starts getting applied to World of Warcraft and blogging.
I'm not saying the following happened, but I want to say why "US-made censorware used to oppress burma" sounds like a deliberately inflammatory statement of something that could be nothing.
Example: US group writes open-source "net-nanny" type flexible program. Burma government, like all of humanity, has access to this software and uses it to censor political speech.
Guess what: US-made censorware just got used to oppress Burma!
So, the fact that a US-made (or norweigan-made) software program was used for censorship (or military encryption, or...) should not itself be alarming. The title should be more like, "US firm sold censorship software to Burmese military".
'06: "Oh yeah, Ubuntu's ready for newbies, don't worry about that, it won't like, lock you out of your computer or anything. I mean, you may have had trouble in the past, but that's all been patched up."
'07: "Oh yeah, Ubuntu's ready for newbies, don't worry about that, it won't like, lock you out of your computer or anything. You're thinking about the days of Breezy Badger, we've got all that mess fixed up now in Dapper Drake."
'08: "Oh, you definitely had some valid points about Gutsy Gibbon, the whole community recognizes that a computer should totally not delete your entire hard drive because of a mistyped character. Agreed. But look, we've got Hairy Hardon now, and you don't have to worry about that stuff."
***
'37: "Yeah, Ubuntu has run into some sketchy areas before, but it's totally reliable now. Give Aggressive Alert Avian a try, you'll be impressed."
Please don't defriend me after I say this, but... I have a grievance against Ubuntu similar to that and to that described in the summary.
Specifically, following the HIGHLY RECOMMENDED advice to (unnecessarily) install Grub on the MBR locked me out of my computer -- all OSes. It should have:
-not HIGHLY RECOMMENDEDED that step -or listed the conditions in which you should take that step (and installing the OS on a separate hard drive ain't one of them) -or warned you to to have a recovery CD or separate high speed internet connection and CD burner read, because somehow the Ubuntu install/live CD (cause they're they same right? except when you ask for help on the forums) can't fill the role of a recovery CD
If these grievances against Vista are valid reasons to stay away from it, my experience is a valid reason not to install a Linux distro (since Ubuntu is the easiest, right?).
Just a hint as to why Linux hasn't taken the home PC market by storm...
On the other hand, I really hate Comcast even more now. They're allowed to charge for this? What the hell *is* that?
I'm kind of comforted knowing that Comcast uses the same "gouging for a service that costs them almost nothing" tactic against people who want to spy on me, and that they don't just reserve that for their official customers;-)
Really though, they are idiots. HTML isn't some magical closed source EXE, as much as they would like it to be.
When I first started learning how the Web works, I was genuinely surprised to learn that you could always view the "source code" of a website (excepting e.g. flash, etc.), and so could always copy the look of a site, and yet Microsoft still "played along".
Slashdot Mirror
Even if Enron didn't offer a pension, they did cheat their employees out of their retirement. I say this because the big wigs at Enron knew about their impending collapse, and did not warn the employees.
Wait, Enron screwed over its employees because it didn't assist them them in illegal insider trading by dumping their stock onto some sucker before the financial weakness was public information?
No, Enron's employees fared much better than if their employer had offered a conventional pension. For one thing, if they chose to divert their 401(k) funds to any investment other than Enron stock (i.e. followed rudimentary diversification advice), they would have kept everthing short the company match (i.e. most of it). In a convetional pension, they either would have gotten nothing, or what the PBGC chose to award them from *other* workers' premiums.
The point is not that Enron's management was blameless, but that raiding a pension fund (i.e. withdrawing dedicated investment funds) is one crime they did not commit. And while I do feel for the the employees, we need to quit pretending they were passive bystanders in all of this. They thought they could make fast money and so ignored the boring diversification advice. Claiming that executives should say their own stock is overvalued, even if true, is unrealistic.
For all their crimes, that's one thing Enron and Halliburton haven't done. They didn't offer a pension, just a retirement account match. In Enron's case, workers lost whatever they put into Enron stock, plus their match (which was given in stock).
If you want to complain about pension funds getting raided to pay for yachts, I'd like to direct your attention to:
-American car makers
-American steel makers
-American air carriers
-every state and local government pension fund
-the US Social Security system (I know, getting way off topic here)
All private companies listed above offered long-deferred compensation that they never bothered to fund in advance to actuarially-accurate levels, making them vulnerable to those expenses in the future. Because they got cheaper labor (by deferring part of workers' compensation) they were supposed to set aside a fund, but instead it was spent on dividends and bonuses. It is exactly as if I took out a giant business loan, paid it out as a dividend, and then complained about "legacy interest costs". Until recently, that was all with the blessing of the SEC.
In the case of the government agencies above, they take money that should be used to fully fund the obligations and instead spend it on present fads.
"door is open", "fasten your seatbelt", "handbrake on"
Okay, I can completely sympathize, but if you routinely drive around without your seatbelt, a door open, and the handbrake engaged, I think you have some more important things to worry about.
Um ... the car's cupholders ain't for number two.
Not milk?
That is expected.
... er, except we haven't gotten any results working under that assumption.
Yes. Everything is expected when your theory explains nothing. If it takes 50 more years to pass the Turing Test, hey, that was expected. If it takes 100, hey, that was expected. If it takes 1000, hey, that was expected.
So yeah, we perfectly understand exactly the necessary and sufficient conditions for a brain to work
Your argument is like suggesting that because man has not yet walked on Mars, that that is somehow evidence or an argument that man cannot walk on Mars. Obviously an invalid argument. They are two difficult engineering problems.
It would be an invalid argument if it was asserted as an absolute logical necessity. The more we understand, the weaker such evidence would be. There's more to scientific reasoning than pure deduction; there's also Bayesian inference, which you might want to brush up on. Once you do, you can make sense of this:
The probability of not having created even a small ("insect-like") brain, given that our understanding of brain workings is complete, is very low.
emergence
Wikipedia has a good article on emergent behavior.
Let's try to read me in context if we could. I didn't say
"emergence"
I didn't even say
"What is emergence?"
I certainly didn't say,
"Fill me in on what I need to know to use the latest buzzwords."
I asked a very specific question, and there was a reason I phrased it that way. The prompt was:
"how does the reference to emergence change the meaning of what you said?"
And what did he say?
"I read the properties of human behaviour to function perfectly well inside a "computer" mapped on top of neural networks as mapped on top of chemistry mapped on top of physics, with the emergent behaviour of the overall system optimizing for reproduction in a context that is slightly different from the present one."
The question, then, is how the idea conveyed there, differed from the idea that would be conveyed by:
"I read the properties of human behaviour to function perfectly well inside a "computer" mapped on top of neural networks as mapped on top of chemistry mapped on top of physics, with the behaviour of the overall system optimizing for reproduction in a context that is slightly different from the present one."
And before you say, "the difference is that emergent behaviour has properties that do not exist at lower levels, while non-emergent behavior has properties that do exist at all lower levels":
a) his explanation did not hinge on such a distinction
b) under that explanation, everything is emergent and therefore the explanatory power is nil
(Just to subdue your gut reaction, this guy who advocates Strong AI and believes the Turing Test will be passed, makes the same critique of "emergence".)
And before you reply, remember that he did not claim to "prove" this. He said
Right, I know, because heaven forbid we blatantly misread what someone said.
For the soul argument (which as far as I can tell is different than the designed argument), I read the properties of human behaviour to function perfectly well inside a "computer" mapped on top of neural networks as mapped on top of chemistry mapped on top of physics, with the emergent behaviour of the overall system optimizing for reproduction in a context that is slightly different from the present one. I don't see any phenomena that are incompatible with this view.
What about the fact that no one's been able to construct an artificial brain capable of passing the Turing Test, under this paradigm?
(Btw, how does the reference to emergence change the meaning of what you said? I'm curious.)
Wow, that's the first creative AND economically justifiable use I've ever seen suggested for wage controls. A gold star to you Sir. (or feline or whatever)
Of course, you'd probably have to also reduce requirements to being one so as to ensure you'd have enough.
So Rule 110 is universal but not a turing machine?
I may have to correct the phrasing of a previous post...
Yeah, while they're at it, they can quarter some military hackers in server farms. (Make sure to declare a state of war first, and authorize quartering so as to adhere to 3rd Amendment restrictions.)
My response was to my opponent's actual position, as he/she wrote it. I am under no obligation to figure out his/her unwritten positions, which he/she might hold, which somehow temper or put in another light their message.
;-)
Your post criticized libertarians *in general* with little apparent knowledge of what libertarians *in general* believe.
As it was written, the message bemoans all regulation without exception.
No, it bemoans licensure *aimed at limiting competition with politically-powerful groups*.
To which I responded.
You responded with a long spiel about libertarians in general, only tangentially related to the issues I raised.
True, these things occur. And that is a failure of governance, to address which is the responsibility of the citizenry in a functioning, sane, modern state. I will not argue with you that, as it stands, the US government for example, is not being essentially subverted by the same very jerks it is supposed to protect the US citizens against. But this failure stemms from the general apathy and dis-interest of the general populace of their own goverment and their unwillingess to do anything to improve its operation.
Kind of. Remember, it's the *interested* citizens *who are voting for these bad policies* in the first place. It's the active voters that buy into the "OMG people will die if doctors don't get umpteen years of unrelated education" line. Suggesting that we vote out these policies misses the point. It's like saying, "You don't like pollution? Quit burning fuel." My individual pollution doesn't make a difference! Well, asking that voters reduce their "political pollution" is flawed for the same reason. People can afford to "vote with their hearts" rather than their minds, because it is costless to them to do so, just as my individual pollution is costless to me.
(This is the thesis of the recent book The Myth of the Rational Voter, summarized here.)
Are there systems that avoid these "problems of governance"? Yes. But they don't give each person a vote on how the law treats doctors
Well Linux definitely runs it. ;-)
Clarification:
Wolfram's claim in NKS that he had discovered some fundamentally new way to approach science that couldn't be handled by existing peer review processes was hogwash. Others had done that kind of thing long before, and little in NKS helped advance the state of the art.
Wolfram's proof in NKS that his Rule 110 cellular automaton was a Universal Turing Machine, was not hogwash. (That UTM was different from the one described in the story, obviously.)
Your trollish tone and ignorance of your opponents' actual positions is neither necessary nor helpful. But you do have a valid point, so let me clarify:
My criticism there was not of licensure as such, but the fact that this licensure inevitably goes far beyond what those public interest concerns you listed, could possibly justify. They do not, in other words, simply make sure every practicing neurosurgeon knows what he's doing. They make sure that, in addition to being qualified for neurosurgery, he has X years of unrelated schooling. They restrict entry into fields as mundane as floral arrangement (!) and auctioneering (there was a story about how some state actually wanted to enforce its law that would imply ebay sellers have to learn proper breathing techniques for hosting an auction). The bulk of the licensure requirements are simply the group flexing its political muscle to restrict entry and prop up their incomes. (And people like you are more than happy to vote for "feel good" policies to placate them.)
If the legislature merely wanted to protect public safety, it could just require that anyone wanted to do that activity must buy a $X million liability insurance policy against the type of outcomes you described, and then the insurers would only cover those who have been vetted to have proper qualifictions, *genuinely* matching those justified by safety concerns.
But then, that wouldn't artficially prop up a politically-powerful group's income, now, would it?
That was satire. I was mocking people's support for selective enforcement of laws to satisfy their (inconsistent) intuitions about what "just law" is.
Which is the exact same thing I'm complaining about now, and here.
I don't think they're morally equivalent. However, they do have a subtle similarity.
Give money to terrorist group = "Hey world, you actually owe me $500 worth less in goods, and these guys over here, $500 more."
Post bomb-making materials = "Hey world, this is actually how you can make an explosive device."
You said you can't imagine a world without money. That includes all worlds in which people don't collectively change decisions about who is entitled to what, because that process is functionally equivalent to monetary transactions.
At risk of sounding too reductionist, they're more similar than you might think.
Speech is expression of information.
Money is expression of information. (scroll to part 3)
It might go against my USian belief in free speech, but I'd have a hard time arguing against this law if its merely placing blogs & websites under the same scrutiny as other publications.
... those shouldn't exist!"
Actually, that's what a lot of people find objectionable about these types of laws: that stringent regulation of "bad people" might actually apply to them too! (Sort of a variant of "a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested".)
I see this kind of thing all the time:
***
"I think it's HORRIBLE how corporations EXPLOIT all these tax loopholes to avoid paying their FAIR SHARE!"
"To consistently enforce tax law, we will have to monitor MMORPGs like World of Warcraft so as to insure income earned there is taxed."
"WHAT???? That's RIDICULOUS!"
***
"I think there should be STRINGENT regulations on businesses to make sure they don't DISCRIMINATE."
"Excuse me sir, your site, 'Craig's List' has acted in contravention of Fair Housing law so we're suing you."
"Er, what? I mean, those laws are for bad people, not me."
***
common internet discussion:
"Corporations are OBVIOUSLY inefficient. Look how easy it is to make something and sell it cheaper."
"Yeah, but you didn't obey these regulations and pay these taxes."
"Well
"And if they didn't, the corporation could sell for less."
"No, because they're inefficient."
*falls out of chair*
[Every country in the world] wants to restrict entrepreneurs' rights by forcing everyone to register their businesses, pay taxes on undistributed and phantom profits, and get a license for all activities that compete with politically-powerful groups. The law is clearly designed to curb competition with government monopolies and free association, although it has yet to be approved by its legislature.
I just wish y'all would worry about economic regulation *before* it starts getting applied to World of Warcraft and blogging.
I'm not saying the following happened, but I want to say why "US-made censorware used to oppress burma" sounds like a deliberately inflammatory statement of something that could be nothing.
Example: US group writes open-source "net-nanny" type flexible program. Burma government, like all of humanity, has access to this software and uses it to censor political speech.
Guess what: US-made censorware just got used to oppress Burma!
So, the fact that a US-made (or norweigan-made) software program was used for censorship (or military encryption, or...) should not itself be alarming. The title should be more like, "US firm sold censorship software to Burmese military".
Yes, and what's worse, those knaves are stealing the axles on my horse carriage.
Hey, as long as it's pretend history day...
No, *this* is what's getting old:
'06: "Oh yeah, Ubuntu's ready for newbies, don't worry about that, it won't like, lock you out of your computer or anything. I mean, you may have had trouble in the past, but that's all been patched up."
'07: "Oh yeah, Ubuntu's ready for newbies, don't worry about that, it won't like, lock you out of your computer or anything. You're thinking about the days of Breezy Badger, we've got all that mess fixed up now in Dapper Drake."
'08: "Oh, you definitely had some valid points about Gutsy Gibbon, the whole community recognizes that a computer should totally not delete your entire hard drive because of a mistyped character. Agreed. But look, we've got Hairy Hardon now, and you don't have to worry about that stuff."
***
'37: "Yeah, Ubuntu has run into some sketchy areas before, but it's totally reliable now. Give Aggressive Alert Avian a try, you'll be impressed."
Please don't defriend me after I say this, but ... I have a grievance against Ubuntu similar to that and to that described in the summary.
Specifically, following the HIGHLY RECOMMENDED advice to (unnecessarily) install Grub on the MBR locked me out of my computer -- all OSes. It should have:
-not HIGHLY RECOMMENDEDED that step
-or listed the conditions in which you should take that step (and installing the OS on a separate hard drive ain't one of them)
-or warned you to to have a recovery CD or separate high speed internet connection and CD burner read, because somehow the Ubuntu install/live CD (cause they're they same right? except when you ask for help on the forums) can't fill the role of a recovery CD
If these grievances against Vista are valid reasons to stay away from it, my experience is a valid reason not to install a Linux distro (since Ubuntu is the easiest, right?).
Just a hint as to why Linux hasn't taken the home PC market by storm...
Btw, I just ordered a MacBook.
On the other hand, I really hate Comcast even more now. They're allowed to charge for this? What the hell *is* that?
;-)
I'm kind of comforted knowing that Comcast uses the same "gouging for a service that costs them almost nothing" tactic against people who want to spy on me, and that they don't just reserve that for their official customers
Really though, they are idiots. HTML isn't some magical closed source EXE, as much as they would like it to be.
When I first started learning how the Web works, I was genuinely surprised to learn that you could always view the "source code" of a website (excepting e.g. flash, etc.), and so could always copy the look of a site, and yet Microsoft still "played along".