Actually it isn't the retailer at all. It's the manufacturer. And it isn't just Linux. I installed Windows XP Pro after wiping XP Home off a new laptop, and HP immediately voided my warranty upon finding out. Again, hardware problem (which was common in the DV6045NR I had), but because I had "Upgraded my drivers to XP Pro" my warranty was void (don't EVEN get me started on the "knowledge" of HP's Tech Support). Luckily, I had a service plan from BBY on it, which did NOT provide for being void due to a change in software (it doesn't cover software problems, so they don't even consider software when determining if their service plan will fix something), and so now I have a nice shiny new laptop, and HP can suck it.
But don't blame the retailer (in spite of the suckage) because the manufacturer is the one that screwed you. The retailer just was unfortunate enough to be the messenger.
I'm not generally one to do a sort of "I agree" post but this time it's damn well deserved.
Here, fucking here!
Nukes may overall be pretty scary, but the bottom line is, WW-II came to an abrupt halt. Without those bombs, who knows how much longer it would have kept going. Japan was no joke, their military was pretty scary, and if you think Normandy was bad, just try to THINK about what landing on Japanese soil would have been.
Ugly. That's what. An ugly bloody bath of death and mayhem. The point of war is to win. If you're smart, you try to win it as quickly and efficiently as possible. I'd say 2 atomic bombs that brought 4 years of constant fighting to an abrupt and definitive halt accomplished that quite well.
Well a few things. First off, I'm a former Geek Squadder, and I bled Black & Orange for over 18 months. Let me say this. Our services, were NOT for you. They weren't for me. They were for Sally Joe & John Q Public, who has better things to do than sink their lives into computers. I once sold roughly about $2,000 of services to a brain surgeon. Did he need all of them? Probably not, he even said so himself (and I tried to talk him OUT of some of them). But it was the CONVENIENCE factor of it all. He didn't have to worry about anything. We were taking care of all of it. After spending about 4 hours on-site at his house, he could just sit down, and go, knowing that everything was going to just work, and he could worry about other things.
As for your 1 year warranty bit... *smirk*. Maybe you don't do much with your computer. Or maybe you're just a troll. Take a look at failed HDD rates from every manufacturer except Sony (for some reason they seem to have the least failed HDDs). You'll see a helluva lot start happening around the 8 month mark, and peaking at pretty close to 16-18 months. Seems a bit outside your 1 year. Laptop batteries? Forget it. If you use that thing at all, that bettery WILL need to be replaced at some point within 2-3 years (the limit of BBYs service plans, 4 years for CC). Batteries CAN be (although certainly not always) hellaciously expensive.
And what happens if little Billy son-of-a-bitch spills his coke acrossd the laptop keyboard? Oh I'm sure Gateway would LOVE to help you there (along with about a $1,200 bill for parts & labor). Here's the thing, ACCIDENTS HAPPEN. Now that BBY and CC both offer plans that protect against "Accidental Damage" it's almost stupid NOT to get the plan. Wait until the plan is about to expire, spill some coffee on it (damn thing doesn't work now), and as you walk in the store, when the niec young man in the pretty yellow shirt start to put a sticker on it, lose your grip and drop it (now he feels bad too, to which you can amicably say "ah hell it didn't work anyway"). Well, it's a good thing you have that service plan, now you're getting a brand new laptop after 3 years (you have to wait a week or so for them to discover that parts aren't available, or are prohibitively expensive), and instead of costing you $1600 (if you bought a fairly decent one), it cost you a whole ~$300. I've been through 4 laptops in the last 2 years (finally got a good one), and would have been totally screwed without that service plan.
And for those of you that are quick to praise the MFG, think about this. HP Voided the warranty on the laptop I had prior to this one (It's actually HOW i got the one I have now, because HP wouldn't honor the warranty, and HP didn't supply a specific part that it needed, saying they did that repair themselves, but they would NOT do it under any kind of service contract, so BBY replaced it right then and there), because I installed Windows XP Pro on it. The machine came with Windows XP Home, I burned the recovery disks first thing, grabbed all the drivers that the hardware was using, then wiped the laptop and put XP Pro on it.
The video issues I had noticed within a day of having it became worse (I seriously thought it was just my eyes that were bugging out). After 3 weeks it became something that was absolutely without a doubt screwed up. I talked to HP, and they said, and I QUOTE "We do not support upgraded drivers like Windows XP Professional. Since you no longer have the XP Home driver, we cannot warranty your laptop."
As for the recovery disks costing $29. Again, services like that are not for me, they are not for you, they are for the people that either can't be bothered to do it themselves (and most people won't), or don't know how. Period.
If a salesperson is lying about anything to try and sell something, they need to be fired. I was the best sales person in all the stores I worked for services, and not ONCE did I lie to any clients. I always told the truth, absolutely, told peop
As this whole thread is quite offtopic, I figure my karma can take the hit.
The people who are self-proclaimed "Young Earthers" actually take a stance of the earth being roughly 6,000-10,000 years old. They totally ignore/refute carbon dating practices NOT by saing that God "could have just made it that way" (which, while annoyingly convenient, would at least be irrefutable), but by instead attacking the reliability of the science behind it. The subscribers of this particular belief system take pretty much everything in the Bible (insert your favorite Bible distro here) quite literally. They therefore trace from the very beginning of time, from creation, to 7 days later, then trace the path of every birth and death that is listed in the Bible, all the way to the birth and death of Christ ~2,000 years ago. Since we know that point in time (or at least have based our entire calendar system on it, even the secular descriptions of BCE(Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) stop and start at the exact same time) the 2,000 years is added to their already defined age of the Earth at Christ's birth.
The interesting thing to note, is that while they take the age to be quite literal, other things in the Bible, that if taken literal, wouldn't make any sense, are suddenly "metaphorical".
Sometimes you find people that take EVERYTHING literally, and indeed still view the earth as seen here in this drawing . Flat Earthers, Young Earthers, Old Earthers, Orthodox, Reformed Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and the myriad of others that would take too long to list, all have some quirk that's kind of interesting. Being a non-Christian myself, I find the Orthodox church probably the easiest, well versed, and more intelligent reasonable faith, and were I ever to begin following Christianity again, it would likely be as a member of the Orthodox church (since there is no room for people like me, however, that's not bloody likely!).
Perhaps the single best defense, and argument, I've EVER heard from someone "defending the faith" is that science essentially teaches us (when we get to the nuts and bolts of things) that we can't really ever know anything for certain (at least such is our current understanding of things). God said that without him, nothing is certain, and nothing can be known, for humanity is flawed (way to go there big guy!). I'm paraphrasing the argument, but it always struck me as possibly the best counter I've ever heard to various things that aim to poke holes in creationsist ideals. It is impossible at present, to either prove, or to disprove the existence of "God". But it sure can make for some interesting, and educational discourse with people capable of forming rational thoughts, and more than the simple "Because God said so!" or because "I can't see, taste, smell, hear, or feel God, therefore he does not exist" arguments which get nothing accomplished.
I actually learned how to type years ago in a channel on Undernet devoted entirely to religious debate, and discussion. I still occasionally venture there today for some good verbal sparring. I personally loved the discussion over Intelligent Design, and a decision that was handed down some years ago, and the flaming I took for my position of "Well, ok if you believe that fine, but it belongs in a theology class, not the science class." After some pretty brutal exchanges (I say brutal because some people were quite upset that I was able to pick apart their "but, but, but, it's SCIENCE, not religion!" assertions, then promptly said "You know what, I agree. It is science. Furthermore, I want this included as well. After all, we must give ALL scientifically founded theories of Intelligent Design equal footing in our science classes."
Amazingly enough, many of them did laugh and appreciate the joke. They still thought it should be accepted as "there was no scientific proof to RULE OUT intelligent design". The fact tha
FIrst a bit of background. I am a Windows girl. I've been accused (and rightfully so) of being an MS fan-girl. As a server and sys admin, it happens. I like Windows. I rarely use Linux, and have sampled many distros. My reasons for liking one or the other, or why i use one more than the other, is irrelevant to my comment. And before the flamers get TOO fired up, I'm also a pseudo-Unix Admin. All in all I take care of a LOT of servers, and help take care of many more.
Now then, I actually like Gentoo. The first ever install of it that I ran through was about a year and a half ago, maybe a little bit more. I started from stage 1. Unsupported, poorly documented, oh yea, gimme the good stuff. I like a challenge. I did have a little bit of help, which I would tap when I got stuck, or just wanted to have someone doublecheck me. #linux was my friend surprisingly enough. I asked intelligent questions when I did have them, and detailed everything I had done to that point, and what searches I'd tried. Knowing that I was trying to avoid being spoon-fed answers, and have someone walk me through everything, many people would offer their assistance, or nudge me in the right direction.
All in all I ran through about 12 kernel configurations and compiles before I had one that was right, and booted with nary a single !! showing. Everything was A-OK green. I was tickled pink. Then after just playng with it for a while, I decided I liked it. I also learned a lot about Linux during this time. I wasn't a COMPLETE noob to Linux, but my overall exposure was pretty minimal.
I will likely be installing this later in the week, to give it a whirl. I'm not a Gentoo zealot, hell I'm not even a Linux guru or zealot (though I've nothing against it), but I can tell you that with a bit of patience, and tenacity, anything you run into can be overcome. And the installs don't take forever if you start with one of the later stages. When you start as early as I did though, expect the install to be running for a few days.
No flaming is warranted, it's not the easiest thing to figure out. I freely admit that had I not received the nudges I did while running through it, I would likely have eventually given up. Though I would have kept going on a side machine somewhere here and there just to eventually get it done to say that I had done it. Overall, I'm far better at what I do because of my experience with installing Gentoo. I actually know a Gentoo dev (whom I met about 6 months after the above took place), and when she found this out, she said, almost verbatim, "Jesus Christ, insane much? Are you seriously THAT much of a masochist?"
Just to be clear, it was not my intention to drop everyone in Public service into one category. But the truth is that the corruption in our government is very high, and has been for quite some time. It doesn't start with Joe Shmoe carrying messages, or taking your renewal notice for your DL, or even from the aide to a Congressional Member (usually). It's the decision makers. It's the ones that say "Hey, this sounds like a good idea, let's do this."
As for someone who said they will bitch no matter what *snicker*... Well, you go right on ahead, but realize that until you care enough to affect change, things will remain the same.
And anyone who is surprised by this hasn't been paying attention tot he level of corruption at higher levels. This government is rotting from the inside out. One look at the myriad of scandals and corruption at the top is all that's needed to deduce that at lower levels, it's going to be just as bad, albeit potentially not as well known, because it's not as sensational. Doesn't make for news quite as good as a Lawyer testifying before congress that she doesn't want to incriminate herself with her testimony over attorney's being fired. Apparently she didn't understand what being granted Immunity meant.
C'mon, with idiocy like that rampant, is anyone really shocked by this?
On the other hand, I can see exactly why this was done, and why it might be ok. It is the taxpayer's money, and it's expectd to be used. They spent it very poorly yes, but it's there to be spent. If the public is upset about it, they need to make that known, by tossing those dips out of office. If they don't do that, then no bitching from you. Either change it or stfu.
There's an emergency government meeting behind closed doors...
Suit 1:"So there's this new Google deal going down. Apparently some companies have their panties in a twist because of how much information Google will have."
Suit 2: "How much information are we talking about?"
Suit 3: "Well, Doubleclick catches a lot of web traffic information, browsing patterns, etc. and Google already mines tons of data..."
Suit 1 begins crunching some numbers. "Good God! We have to put a stop to this! Soon they'll know more than we do! That's it. I want the Board (from Google) in here now. They'll be more than happy to give us wha6t we wish. After all, it'd be a shame if something unfortunate happened..."
I'd like to see some Oingo Boingo, DEVO, Styx. David Bowie (Yes I know he's in the first one). I mean, the 80s gave us SO much tow ork with. Blondie even would be awesome. How about "Guitar Hero IV: One Hit Wonders" That would be fun.
Too bad MTV isn't going to develop it anymore (idiots for killing a golden franchise).
Nope, it's not the smartest thing in the world, in fact it's downright dangerous and stupid. At least I can admit that. Really though it's not much worse than flipping through your favorite CD tof ind that song you really want to hear, or reaching down to pick something up. I still agree with the law, however. Ban it, but yes I also agree with the summary, give it some pretty sharp teeth.
THese are the kinds of things that happen when you live in a society that demands you be available, and productive at all times. It starts with business oriented type stuff, then it moves to being personal, then you have every sally joe and john q public running around texting on their cellphones, yakking away on their phone while they smoke, eat, drink, put on make-up, reach for that thing they just dropped, check their schedule, AND change the radio station while shifting gears, all at the same time. It's too much. Many people will stop doing something, just knowing that they can get into trouble for it. Many people won't give a damn. If Colorado had a law like this, I'd not do it again. I do it now because I've yet to have an accident(or come even close to one), I do it very rarely, and I can get away with it. If it were illegal, I would just as soon say "To hell with it" and not do it.
This is where society has moved us. Not only into the fast lane, but at high speeds even for the fast lane. Things like this are the inevitable fallout of the need to be available at all times.
And to be fair, I came closer to accidents after I bought new radio for my car, that had a spiffy little animated screen on it that I was drawn to watch for a few seconds while driving. Darwin seriously needs to get off his ass and get to work.
Heh, I think not. I run an occasional scan of my system, and the only thing it ever turns up are cookies from google, and a few other sites. Considering the security afforded by my well configured router, and how finicky I am about my system, I've very little to worry about. If the slightest strangeness occurs, I spend a lot of time investigating it, and, just in case it IS an infection, I disconnect from any kind of network while I hunt down the root cause. THe last little quirk turned out to be the southbridge on my motherboard going bad. It was only the slightest hit in performance, and I wouldn't have likely even noticed it had I not been trying to squeeze just a little more speed out of it. It passed every diagnostic test I could find to hit it with, but I was SURE the southbridge was dying. So I booted with a Gentoo Live CD, checked a few things, and lo and behold I'm seeing weird returns from queries to the HDD and the DVD drive on my SATA controllers. I eliminate the drives themselves as the culprits and bam, assurance that something is wonky with my southbridge.
Now, if I can hunt that down without any real indication, no red flag, no smoking gun as to the problem, do you HONESTLY believe that I wouldn't notice the increase in traffic over my network if my computer was a bot-zombie? Or even the increased resource usage on my system? Hell even the southbridge issue was, at it's worst (when it started) a 3 second cpu usage increase of 2% by the indexing service. I quickly ruled out infection as the case thanks to a few very well designed tools. Filemon, Procmon, and RKR. After ruling out infection, I started looking for other things.
The last time I had something on my system, I was rather disappointed. It was a downloader, outdated and poorly coded. Damn thing didn't even work. It hooked itself into a couple of files to keep itself resident. I killed it, took a look at it, figured out what it was supposed to do, and was REALLY REALLY bored so decided "What the hell, let's see what this thing is made of." and TRIED to let it do it's thing. It failed, miserably. None of it's requests were being answered, I kept an eye on it, and turns out the IRC server it was trying to connect to didn't exist. The source it was trying to download other infections from didn't exist, and it was leaking memory like the Titanic took on water. Judging from it's construction, design, and what it was doing, I'm thinking it was a VERY VERY early version of what would later become abetterinternet. Either that or the creators of abi took a lot of the code from this. Either way, I was rather disappointed, and removed all trace of the little interloper.
So no, I'm not worried about infection. If I do get one, I know how to take it off, and keep it off. The average user? Better have some f-ing protection. And it better be good.
I can see a lot of Pros and Cons to this. While certainly it's good that such a major player is taking an active and aggressive stance on this, I thinkk it's also going to cause a lot of people to have a false sense of security. And while this only affects users who search for pages (and that is a LOT of traffic), it's still going to bring the question to some users "Google tells me if a site is dangerous, what do I need malware protection for?"
I surf almost exclusively in Windows, using IE (IE6 + XP Pro on Desktop, IE7 + Vista on laptop) with no protection, and I've not had an issue with malware in years. But most people's browsing habits aren't quite like mine.
One other effect I can see this having, is let's say www.bigcompanyhere.com gets tagged as being potentially harmful. Now Google has done them a favor by alerting them to a security problem, which they can then address, and are likely to do so much quicker to try and minimize damage to their image.
Agreed, which is pretty much the same thing I'm saying. The Buffer overflow bit was just an example. But you can see this everywhere. You see it in ACLs in firewalls, routers, and switches. You see it in applications that let everything just go willy nilly. You see it in default installations of some OSes. You see it in the installations of applications, in websites, email-clients, hell even games. And before you say "What could POSSIBLY happen in a game that could be a security threat?" Let me illustrate this example...
Take a well known game, say, a first person shooter based in WW-II. Fairly good game, kinda fun. Let's say it's released witha BIG following, and several expansions are released for it. Now imagine, that since it's initial release, it has had a vulnerability just hiding, waiting to be discovered. It is discovered, by a couple of gamers just having fun. Say there's a voting system (for kicks, map change, etc.). Let's say people use this voting system all the time to talk to people who are still alive, because it displays the vote in yellow text to everyone. Some ingenious players discover that if your vote is for a map change, and you manually enter the command and name via console something like:
callvote change_map "Shotgunner camping in the vent!!"
It's been a while so forgive the syntax if it's wrong. In any case, these intrepid gamer friends are having fun, and annoying each other with vote requests that mean nothing, and just fill the screen with yellow text (repeating gibberish to flood the screen so the player can't see). Let's say during this, both game clients crash. Hmm, well that sucks. So you go back to having fun, the server is running on an actual server in the garage so it's no biggy. Same thing happens again. The clients just crash immediately after a vote is called that is an absurd length. Hmmmm.. You get another friend involved, they join, they also crash. Interesting. Then you crash 2 clients, and have the 3rd join immediately after to see people running in place, stuck in doors, etc. Server is still running just fine. Clients however, have crashed. Now intensely curious, you start digging, and find the exact point at which is goes from "Annoying Spam Vote" to Buffer Overflow.
Now through various methods you discover that this vulnerability is definitely client specific. The server is totally unaffected. The server simply hands everything off to the clienhts, which don't know what to make of it, stuff is outside the buffer, client craps all over itself. Now someone malicious enough could take that, and create something that would quite literally be capable of hijacking any machine the game client was running on, and the only thing the user would notice MIGHT be a game crash (hell if you do it right you might be able to do it without the game itself crashing), which happens occasionally anyway, so it's ignored. Now let's say you notify the producer of this Entertainingly Amazing game, and exchange a few emails with them. 4 patches later it still isn't fixed. Several expansions later it still is not fixed.
Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable. And this happens throughout the industry. THAT is why security problems, are as much of a thorn in our side as they are.
*flips two coins onto the table, returns the soapbox to it's upright and locked position, and returns to her regularly scheduled nonsense*
I invite you to investigate this site which holds no immediate bias in it's reporting of security advisories, patches, problems and exploits. Look at the average turnaround time for patches, fixes, and responses to security problems. You will find out that Microsoft isn't as bad as everyone likes to pretend it is, nor is it's flagship Windows OS. Also to, I find it ironic that whenever someone points out a problem that affects Linux, people are like "But that's not the OS, it's (insert kernel module, driver, app, whatever) that is (insert special circumstance here).", but when it's Microsoft, they're all lumped together as "OMGz! Windoze h4x!". This includes vulnerabilities in Word, and Excel (and something else from the Office Suite, can't remember though atm), and additionally mentions Exchange. Exchange runs on a server platform, but ok, I'm not going to get into semantics on that (I assume they meant Outlook, though even if it was Exchange, it's still a fix, or at least an attempt at one).
I am the first to admit that Microsoft has problems with security, but it's a problem that plagues the entire industry. Linux, Unix, Windows, Mac, websites, forms, applications, EVERYTHING. It's a problem in how the industry approaches security. It goes far beyond Microsoft. The entire industry has this "Get it working now, patch it later" mentality. It's the "Default Allow" instead of "Default Deny" approach. There is NO reason Buffer Overflow attacks should work... EVER. Period. How hard is it to check your buffers, and make sure you're handling them properly? Very sloppy. Microsoft certainly isn't the best, but they're far from the worst. Don't believe me? Check that website, and all the security advisories for the past few years, and you will notice and interesting trend.
Hehe, I did actually tell her that either her friend who recommended she install it should come get it up and running for her, and show her how to use it, or she should go back to Windows and be done with it. I'm all for people being adventurous, but she was like "OMGz need this like, yesterday!".
And yea, I did play the techie trump card a few times, and also explained to her exactly what that command prompt was. She finally shut up when i put her on google's homepage via lynx LOL.
THen she asked me where she could download Windows and I just shook my head and told her Microsoft.com =D
Well the rest of that story is the user was "tired of Windows giving her viruses and popups, and spyware. And her friend said she should isntall Ubuntu, and she really didn't want to go dig out her Windows disk, and if I could just tell her how to get into her system that'd be great." She had already rebooted several times. What I think happened (and i never saw the system so I can't tell you for sure) is that the newbie friendly installer didn't get her display adapter right, and wasn't using a VESA driver, and as soon as she logged in, X dumped her on her ass. I told her I could fix it, to which she immediately demanded I walk her through it over the phone, and became very irate when I told her I couldn't do that, because I'm not the best in the world with Linux, and I've got to hunt down all the logs that would be of use to me, find out exactly what was going on, then start to get to work on a fix. She said I should be able to tell her how to do it herself, and I just kind of laughed and said "Ma'am, please, get your Windows install disk, and put Windows back on here. Linux is NOT for you. If you want to dive in and learn, be my guest, otherwise without you bringing in the computer, there's nothing I can do for you."
She didn't want to pay me for my time to fix it, and after 45 minutes on the phone trying to explain to her she WAS logged on, she WAS in her system, and that she was probably better off in Windows, I'd had enough.
Wow, a very well thought out response. Please allow me to respond in kind.
As for your rankings of usability, I've not had enough exposure to Macs to really comment one way or the other. I had to use iMacs exclusively as a Sr in High School, and I hated every moment of it. As for your actual ranking, I tend to go from the perspective of the average user. 10 random users, and 10 random hardware configurations. People who've had little, or no exposure to the world of Windows or Linux. Windows XP, vs we'll say Ubuntu, or Kubuntu. My money is on XP. Anymore it's just about idiot proof, and will at least get through the initial setup (most of the time) and have most things working (newer hardware would, however, undoubtedly be a pain). That's one area where Ubuntu has a SLGIHT edge (if it's not taken back by compatability issues), because it's young, it's fresh, and it's hip. Whereas Windows XP is... well, old and archaic by software standards.
Still though, I've seen a lot of users barely able to turn a PC on make it through an XP install, and I've seen a lot of decent users get clobbered even by Ubuntu (Why is this at my email?! I just want into my system! - That is your system, it's called a command prompt. Your Window Manager crashed, that thing that makes all the pretty, and easy to use stuff, and put you back at the command prompt. - No, it's my email, it even says user@machinename - That's YOU, at YOUR computer. - But I'm not IN my computer.). When I talk usability, those are the people I'm talking about. Me? I can get Ubuntu up and running in a heartbeat, and get most stuff that doesn't work out of the box working with a bit of effort, but it's such a pain to get a lot of things going. Wireless is one example. I've run into a few chipsets that were pretty interesting to get running too. When your southbridge doesn't want to cooperate, it's tough. Windows tends not to have those problems. Worst case, you go find a driver, and install it. Cant always do that with Linux. Sometimes there is a driver that works 'out of the box' (a binary), other times you have to do some arcane junk to get it working. The average user can't do that. You and I maybe, but not billy bob joe sally q public.
I will happily concede the point that some software stuff is easier to take care of on Linux than on Windows, because it's free, and as you pointed out, it's all (or at least the majority of what an average user would want to look for) in one place. Mad props on Amorak btw, i LOVE that program. I'm with you there, hands down the BEST Media organizer/music player ever written. I personally use mplayer for the majority of my movie playback on Windows. ^_^ But I digress (hey! You can't steal my line!).
As for out of the box driver support, I touched on this a moment ago, but I'm trying to go down your list. 5 year old OS, vs 6mo old OS. The 6mo old OS BETTER have better driver support, or it fails. (Insert Vista jabs here). Actually Vista's been pretty good to me thus far, but I've heard plenty of horror stories.
Foreign file-systems, again, average user. What need is there for this? As for the power user, I frequently stream media to my XBox 360 from my desktop, and sometimes from my laptop. Desktop runs XP Pro, laptop runs Vista Ultimate. It's easy, non-frustrating, and simple. I get to just turn it on, maybe spend a few minutes getting it setup, and spend the rest of the time enjoying it. Not as easy to do with Linux. Not saying it can't be done, in fact i know it can, it's just a pain in the ass.
I personally am a bigger fan of Gnome than I am KDE. The last time I used KDE it seemed rather clunky and primitive. I know you said the same of Windows XP, but personally I'm not a big fan of XP's GUI "Luna Shell". I do, however, find a matter of appreciation for Gnome. It's practical, I just wish it were prettier, like KDE. I do think that KDE is probably the closest to being on par with XP as far as ease of use goes in the UI category. As for who the winner would be, lemme fi
Now, that said, I have to say this makes Linux far more attractive to me. That is an absurd amount of work for one person to do, and given that the hard work is done, I'm (hoping) sure that others will pick it up, and keep it going, tweaking, adding functionality. That is the beauty of Open Source.
I've long said usability is what has kept Linux from becoming a mainstream desktop (read: PC) OS. People like me (and I'm actually a Server Admin, mostly Windows servers, though I'm responsible for helping to maintain some Unix servers as well) who aren't n00bs by any means, but still find Linux to be fairly daunting in some respects (though it has made impressive strides over the last few years, Ubuntu, Slackware, and Suse spring immediately to mind, though my own preferred flavor is Gentoo). Why spend an enormous amount of time, and effort, and still have problems, when I could just install Windows, and go? This is a giant (imho) leap forward for Linux. Little things like this that seem arbitrary, or perhaps even superfulous, are EXACTLY the kind of efforts that the world of Linux needs.
Coming from a "die-hard" MS fan, I hope this stands out to someone. I've nothing against *nix, in fact I love my Unix servers, but as an everyday use OS, it leaves much to be desired. Now, it leaves one less thing. Die hard webcam driver making guru, I salute you.
Ugh, body building, no thanks, lol not quite what I had in mind. I was thinking more along the lines of actually having CURVES!!! Ok, I'm not going beyond that cause yea, I don't want to get mobbed, suffice it to say, that being skinny sucks just as bad, if not more, than being fat. ^_^
Regardless as to whether or not the game is currently "in" doesn't matter. It gets people doing something active, without being the aggrivating "omg it's time for gymn class and doing some god awful dodgeball activity, or jump the bleachers thing". It's a frikken video game.
I still see kids lining up to play this in the malls, arcades, etc. Dozens of people standing around watching. Sometimes you just can't help it. I think it's a great idea, at least it beats sweeping the gym. As for combating obesity, good luck with that. Call my skinny ass when you've figured out how to make people with metabolisms in the stratosphere GAIN weight. I care not for this "obesity epidemic".
These aren't Star Trek shields. They ONLY protect against a few types of radiation. Basically do the same thing as the Earth's Magnetosphere. Too bad. It'd be really cool to run around in something with shields up, see an occasional flare up when something hits it.
Course, it wouldn't be long before Jack-Ass had shields around someone's nether regions, and shot it with a gun.
OMG I hadn't thought of that. Why stop at the subscription though? Write off your internet connection, electric bill, even rent since you have to have a place to "work". I'm sure there's a few more I'm overlooking but yea. Great idea. On second thought, yes, DO tax these things, my tax refund will be larger than ever, as since I don't make real money playing these games (not often anyway, occasionally a friend might slip me a $20 to go hunting with them), I'll always have a capital loss. That would make my tax refund even larger every year, since I'm spending soooo much on this "Business" and not making any money. I LIKE IT!
Never pay taxes again! Just play MMOs a lot! And collect EVERYTHING you can find.
As i said in my earlier post to a similar story here there just aren't enough taxes. After all, I only pay taxes on normal stuff like things i buy, income, electricity, entertainment, food, water, shelter, work, gas, and even, as I realized, death. I mean that leaves things like sunshine, air, thoughts, fingernails, dead skin, and a plethora of other things that are not taxed. These are all just billions of dollars in potential income that no one is going after. Why, just imagine all the cool things we could have if they taxed those. And while they're at it, let's institute a gravity tax too. That can't be easy to maintain.
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But don't blame the retailer (in spite of the suckage) because the manufacturer is the one that screwed you. The retailer just was unfortunate enough to be the messenger.
Here, fucking here!
Nukes may overall be pretty scary, but the bottom line is, WW-II came to an abrupt halt. Without those bombs, who knows how much longer it would have kept going. Japan was no joke, their military was pretty scary, and if you think Normandy was bad, just try to THINK about what landing on Japanese soil would have been.
Ugly. That's what. An ugly bloody bath of death and mayhem. The point of war is to win. If you're smart, you try to win it as quickly and efficiently as possible. I'd say 2 atomic bombs that brought 4 years of constant fighting to an abrupt and definitive halt accomplished that quite well.
As for your 1 year warranty bit... *smirk*. Maybe you don't do much with your computer. Or maybe you're just a troll. Take a look at failed HDD rates from every manufacturer except Sony (for some reason they seem to have the least failed HDDs). You'll see a helluva lot start happening around the 8 month mark, and peaking at pretty close to 16-18 months. Seems a bit outside your 1 year. Laptop batteries? Forget it. If you use that thing at all, that bettery WILL need to be replaced at some point within 2-3 years (the limit of BBYs service plans, 4 years for CC). Batteries CAN be (although certainly not always) hellaciously expensive.
And what happens if little Billy son-of-a-bitch spills his coke acrossd the laptop keyboard? Oh I'm sure Gateway would LOVE to help you there (along with about a $1,200 bill for parts & labor). Here's the thing, ACCIDENTS HAPPEN. Now that BBY and CC both offer plans that protect against "Accidental Damage" it's almost stupid NOT to get the plan. Wait until the plan is about to expire, spill some coffee on it (damn thing doesn't work now), and as you walk in the store, when the niec young man in the pretty yellow shirt start to put a sticker on it, lose your grip and drop it (now he feels bad too, to which you can amicably say "ah hell it didn't work anyway"). Well, it's a good thing you have that service plan, now you're getting a brand new laptop after 3 years (you have to wait a week or so for them to discover that parts aren't available, or are prohibitively expensive), and instead of costing you $1600 (if you bought a fairly decent one), it cost you a whole ~$300. I've been through 4 laptops in the last 2 years (finally got a good one), and would have been totally screwed without that service plan.
And for those of you that are quick to praise the MFG, think about this. HP Voided the warranty on the laptop I had prior to this one (It's actually HOW i got the one I have now, because HP wouldn't honor the warranty, and HP didn't supply a specific part that it needed, saying they did that repair themselves, but they would NOT do it under any kind of service contract, so BBY replaced it right then and there), because I installed Windows XP Pro on it. The machine came with Windows XP Home, I burned the recovery disks first thing, grabbed all the drivers that the hardware was using, then wiped the laptop and put XP Pro on it.
The video issues I had noticed within a day of having it became worse (I seriously thought it was just my eyes that were bugging out). After 3 weeks it became something that was absolutely without a doubt screwed up. I talked to HP, and they said, and I QUOTE "We do not support upgraded drivers like Windows XP Professional. Since you no longer have the XP Home driver, we cannot warranty your laptop."
As for the recovery disks costing $29. Again, services like that are not for me, they are not for you, they are for the people that either can't be bothered to do it themselves (and most people won't), or don't know how. Period.
If a salesperson is lying about anything to try and sell something, they need to be fired. I was the best sales person in all the stores I worked for services, and not ONCE did I lie to any clients. I always told the truth, absolutely, told peop
The people who are self-proclaimed "Young Earthers" actually take a stance of the earth being roughly 6,000-10,000 years old. They totally ignore/refute carbon dating practices NOT by saing that God "could have just made it that way" (which, while annoyingly convenient, would at least be irrefutable), but by instead attacking the reliability of the science behind it. The subscribers of this particular belief system take pretty much everything in the Bible (insert your favorite Bible distro here) quite literally. They therefore trace from the very beginning of time, from creation, to 7 days later, then trace the path of every birth and death that is listed in the Bible, all the way to the birth and death of Christ ~2,000 years ago. Since we know that point in time (or at least have based our entire calendar system on it, even the secular descriptions of BCE(Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) stop and start at the exact same time) the 2,000 years is added to their already defined age of the Earth at Christ's birth.
The interesting thing to note, is that while they take the age to be quite literal, other things in the Bible, that if taken literal, wouldn't make any sense, are suddenly "metaphorical".
Sometimes you find people that take EVERYTHING literally, and indeed still view the earth as seen here in this drawing . Flat Earthers, Young Earthers, Old Earthers, Orthodox, Reformed Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and the myriad of others that would take too long to list, all have some quirk that's kind of interesting. Being a non-Christian myself, I find the Orthodox church probably the easiest, well versed, and more intelligent reasonable faith, and were I ever to begin following Christianity again, it would likely be as a member of the Orthodox church (since there is no room for people like me, however, that's not bloody likely!).
Perhaps the single best defense, and argument, I've EVER heard from someone "defending the faith" is that science essentially teaches us (when we get to the nuts and bolts of things) that we can't really ever know anything for certain (at least such is our current understanding of things). God said that without him, nothing is certain, and nothing can be known, for humanity is flawed (way to go there big guy!). I'm paraphrasing the argument, but it always struck me as possibly the best counter I've ever heard to various things that aim to poke holes in creationsist ideals. It is impossible at present, to either prove, or to disprove the existence of "God". But it sure can make for some interesting, and educational discourse with people capable of forming rational thoughts, and more than the simple "Because God said so!" or because "I can't see, taste, smell, hear, or feel God, therefore he does not exist" arguments which get nothing accomplished.
I actually learned how to type years ago in a channel on Undernet devoted entirely to religious debate, and discussion. I still occasionally venture there today for some good verbal sparring. I personally loved the discussion over Intelligent Design, and a decision that was handed down some years ago, and the flaming I took for my position of "Well, ok if you believe that fine, but it belongs in a theology class, not the science class." After some pretty brutal exchanges (I say brutal because some people were quite upset that I was able to pick apart their "but, but, but, it's SCIENCE, not religion!" assertions, then promptly said "You know what, I agree. It is science. Furthermore, I want this included as well. After all, we must give ALL scientifically founded theories of Intelligent Design equal footing in our science classes."
Amazingly enough, many of them did laugh and appreciate the joke. They still thought it should be accepted as "there was no scientific proof to RULE OUT intelligent design". The fact tha
Now then, I actually like Gentoo. The first ever install of it that I ran through was about a year and a half ago, maybe a little bit more. I started from stage 1. Unsupported, poorly documented, oh yea, gimme the good stuff. I like a challenge. I did have a little bit of help, which I would tap when I got stuck, or just wanted to have someone doublecheck me. #linux was my friend surprisingly enough. I asked intelligent questions when I did have them, and detailed everything I had done to that point, and what searches I'd tried. Knowing that I was trying to avoid being spoon-fed answers, and have someone walk me through everything, many people would offer their assistance, or nudge me in the right direction.
All in all I ran through about 12 kernel configurations and compiles before I had one that was right, and booted with nary a single !! showing. Everything was A-OK green. I was tickled pink. Then after just playng with it for a while, I decided I liked it. I also learned a lot about Linux during this time. I wasn't a COMPLETE noob to Linux, but my overall exposure was pretty minimal.
I will likely be installing this later in the week, to give it a whirl. I'm not a Gentoo zealot, hell I'm not even a Linux guru or zealot (though I've nothing against it), but I can tell you that with a bit of patience, and tenacity, anything you run into can be overcome. And the installs don't take forever if you start with one of the later stages. When you start as early as I did though, expect the install to be running for a few days.
No flaming is warranted, it's not the easiest thing to figure out. I freely admit that had I not received the nudges I did while running through it, I would likely have eventually given up. Though I would have kept going on a side machine somewhere here and there just to eventually get it done to say that I had done it. Overall, I'm far better at what I do because of my experience with installing Gentoo. I actually know a Gentoo dev (whom I met about 6 months after the above took place), and when she found this out, she said, almost verbatim, "Jesus Christ, insane much? Are you seriously THAT much of a masochist?"
Who knows? Maybe I am.
As for someone who said they will bitch no matter what *snicker*... Well, you go right on ahead, but realize that until you care enough to affect change, things will remain the same.
C'mon, with idiocy like that rampant, is anyone really shocked by this?
On the other hand, I can see exactly why this was done, and why it might be ok. It is the taxpayer's money, and it's expectd to be used. They spent it very poorly yes, but it's there to be spent. If the public is upset about it, they need to make that known, by tossing those dips out of office. If they don't do that, then no bitching from you. Either change it or stfu.
Suit 1:"So there's this new Google deal going down. Apparently some companies have their panties in a twist because of how much information Google will have."
Suit 2: "How much information are we talking about?"
Suit 3: "Well, Doubleclick catches a lot of web traffic information, browsing patterns, etc. and Google already mines tons of data..."
Suit 1 begins crunching some numbers. "Good God! We have to put a stop to this! Soon they'll know more than we do! That's it. I want the Board (from Google) in here now. They'll be more than happy to give us wha6t we wish. After all, it'd be a shame if something unfortunate happened..."
Too bad MTV isn't going to develop it anymore (idiots for killing a golden franchise).
THese are the kinds of things that happen when you live in a society that demands you be available, and productive at all times. It starts with business oriented type stuff, then it moves to being personal, then you have every sally joe and john q public running around texting on their cellphones, yakking away on their phone while they smoke, eat, drink, put on make-up, reach for that thing they just dropped, check their schedule, AND change the radio station while shifting gears, all at the same time. It's too much. Many people will stop doing something, just knowing that they can get into trouble for it. Many people won't give a damn. If Colorado had a law like this, I'd not do it again. I do it now because I've yet to have an accident(or come even close to one), I do it very rarely, and I can get away with it. If it were illegal, I would just as soon say "To hell with it" and not do it.
This is where society has moved us. Not only into the fast lane, but at high speeds even for the fast lane. Things like this are the inevitable fallout of the need to be available at all times.
And to be fair, I came closer to accidents after I bought new radio for my car, that had a spiffy little animated screen on it that I was drawn to watch for a few seconds while driving. Darwin seriously needs to get off his ass and get to work.
Now, if I can hunt that down without any real indication, no red flag, no smoking gun as to the problem, do you HONESTLY believe that I wouldn't notice the increase in traffic over my network if my computer was a bot-zombie? Or even the increased resource usage on my system? Hell even the southbridge issue was, at it's worst (when it started) a 3 second cpu usage increase of 2% by the indexing service. I quickly ruled out infection as the case thanks to a few very well designed tools. Filemon, Procmon, and RKR. After ruling out infection, I started looking for other things.
The last time I had something on my system, I was rather disappointed. It was a downloader, outdated and poorly coded. Damn thing didn't even work. It hooked itself into a couple of files to keep itself resident. I killed it, took a look at it, figured out what it was supposed to do, and was REALLY REALLY bored so decided "What the hell, let's see what this thing is made of." and TRIED to let it do it's thing. It failed, miserably. None of it's requests were being answered, I kept an eye on it, and turns out the IRC server it was trying to connect to didn't exist. The source it was trying to download other infections from didn't exist, and it was leaking memory like the Titanic took on water. Judging from it's construction, design, and what it was doing, I'm thinking it was a VERY VERY early version of what would later become abetterinternet. Either that or the creators of abi took a lot of the code from this. Either way, I was rather disappointed, and removed all trace of the little interloper.
So no, I'm not worried about infection. If I do get one, I know how to take it off, and keep it off. The average user? Better have some f-ing protection. And it better be good.
Hahaha! You should totally get modded up "Funny". The sad part is, it's probably true. Anyone remember abetterinternet and apropos?
I surf almost exclusively in Windows, using IE (IE6 + XP Pro on Desktop, IE7 + Vista on laptop) with no protection, and I've not had an issue with malware in years. But most people's browsing habits aren't quite like mine.
One other effect I can see this having, is let's say www.bigcompanyhere.com gets tagged as being potentially harmful. Now Google has done them a favor by alerting them to a security problem, which they can then address, and are likely to do so much quicker to try and minimize damage to their image.
I'm fairly interested to see how this plays out.
Take a well known game, say, a first person shooter based in WW-II. Fairly good game, kinda fun. Let's say it's released witha BIG following, and several expansions are released for it. Now imagine, that since it's initial release, it has had a vulnerability just hiding, waiting to be discovered. It is discovered, by a couple of gamers just having fun. Say there's a voting system (for kicks, map change, etc.). Let's say people use this voting system all the time to talk to people who are still alive, because it displays the vote in yellow text to everyone. Some ingenious players discover that if your vote is for a map change, and you manually enter the command and name via console something like:
callvote change_map "Shotgunner camping in the vent!!"
It's been a while so forgive the syntax if it's wrong. In any case, these intrepid gamer friends are having fun, and annoying each other with vote requests that mean nothing, and just fill the screen with yellow text (repeating gibberish to flood the screen so the player can't see). Let's say during this, both game clients crash. Hmm, well that sucks. So you go back to having fun, the server is running on an actual server in the garage so it's no biggy. Same thing happens again. The clients just crash immediately after a vote is called that is an absurd length. Hmmmm.. You get another friend involved, they join, they also crash. Interesting. Then you crash 2 clients, and have the 3rd join immediately after to see people running in place, stuck in doors, etc. Server is still running just fine. Clients however, have crashed. Now intensely curious, you start digging, and find the exact point at which is goes from "Annoying Spam Vote" to Buffer Overflow.
Now through various methods you discover that this vulnerability is definitely client specific. The server is totally unaffected. The server simply hands everything off to the clienhts, which don't know what to make of it, stuff is outside the buffer, client craps all over itself. Now someone malicious enough could take that, and create something that would quite literally be capable of hijacking any machine the game client was running on, and the only thing the user would notice MIGHT be a game crash (hell if you do it right you might be able to do it without the game itself crashing), which happens occasionally anyway, so it's ignored. Now let's say you notify the producer of this Entertainingly Amazing game, and exchange a few emails with them. 4 patches later it still isn't fixed. Several expansions later it still is not fixed.
Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable. And this happens throughout the industry. THAT is why security problems, are as much of a thorn in our side as they are.
*flips two coins onto the table, returns the soapbox to it's upright and locked position, and returns to her regularly scheduled nonsense*
I am the first to admit that Microsoft has problems with security, but it's a problem that plagues the entire industry. Linux, Unix, Windows, Mac, websites, forms, applications, EVERYTHING. It's a problem in how the industry approaches security. It goes far beyond Microsoft. The entire industry has this "Get it working now, patch it later" mentality. It's the "Default Allow" instead of "Default Deny" approach. There is NO reason Buffer Overflow attacks should work... EVER. Period. How hard is it to check your buffers, and make sure you're handling them properly? Very sloppy. Microsoft certainly isn't the best, but they're far from the worst. Don't believe me? Check that website, and all the security advisories for the past few years, and you will notice and interesting trend.
I for one, welcome our new english speaking tyrannical ape-like overlords.
And yea, I did play the techie trump card a few times, and also explained to her exactly what that command prompt was. She finally shut up when i put her on google's homepage via lynx LOL.
THen she asked me where she could download Windows and I just shook my head and told her Microsoft.com =D
She didn't think that was very funny.
She didn't want to pay me for my time to fix it, and after 45 minutes on the phone trying to explain to her she WAS logged on, she WAS in her system, and that she was probably better off in Windows, I'd had enough.
As for your rankings of usability, I've not had enough exposure to Macs to really comment one way or the other. I had to use iMacs exclusively as a Sr in High School, and I hated every moment of it. As for your actual ranking, I tend to go from the perspective of the average user. 10 random users, and 10 random hardware configurations. People who've had little, or no exposure to the world of Windows or Linux. Windows XP, vs we'll say Ubuntu, or Kubuntu. My money is on XP. Anymore it's just about idiot proof, and will at least get through the initial setup (most of the time) and have most things working (newer hardware would, however, undoubtedly be a pain). That's one area where Ubuntu has a SLGIHT edge (if it's not taken back by compatability issues), because it's young, it's fresh, and it's hip. Whereas Windows XP is... well, old and archaic by software standards.
Still though, I've seen a lot of users barely able to turn a PC on make it through an XP install, and I've seen a lot of decent users get clobbered even by Ubuntu (Why is this at my email?! I just want into my system! - That is your system, it's called a command prompt. Your Window Manager crashed, that thing that makes all the pretty, and easy to use stuff, and put you back at the command prompt. - No, it's my email, it even says user@machinename - That's YOU, at YOUR computer. - But I'm not IN my computer.). When I talk usability, those are the people I'm talking about. Me? I can get Ubuntu up and running in a heartbeat, and get most stuff that doesn't work out of the box working with a bit of effort, but it's such a pain to get a lot of things going. Wireless is one example. I've run into a few chipsets that were pretty interesting to get running too. When your southbridge doesn't want to cooperate, it's tough. Windows tends not to have those problems. Worst case, you go find a driver, and install it. Cant always do that with Linux. Sometimes there is a driver that works 'out of the box' (a binary), other times you have to do some arcane junk to get it working. The average user can't do that. You and I maybe, but not billy bob joe sally q public.
I will happily concede the point that some software stuff is easier to take care of on Linux than on Windows, because it's free, and as you pointed out, it's all (or at least the majority of what an average user would want to look for) in one place. Mad props on Amorak btw, i LOVE that program. I'm with you there, hands down the BEST Media organizer/music player ever written. I personally use mplayer for the majority of my movie playback on Windows. ^_^ But I digress (hey! You can't steal my line!).
As for out of the box driver support, I touched on this a moment ago, but I'm trying to go down your list. 5 year old OS, vs 6mo old OS. The 6mo old OS BETTER have better driver support, or it fails. (Insert Vista jabs here). Actually Vista's been pretty good to me thus far, but I've heard plenty of horror stories.
Foreign file-systems, again, average user. What need is there for this? As for the power user, I frequently stream media to my XBox 360 from my desktop, and sometimes from my laptop. Desktop runs XP Pro, laptop runs Vista Ultimate. It's easy, non-frustrating, and simple. I get to just turn it on, maybe spend a few minutes getting it setup, and spend the rest of the time enjoying it. Not as easy to do with Linux. Not saying it can't be done, in fact i know it can, it's just a pain in the ass.
I personally am a bigger fan of Gnome than I am KDE. The last time I used KDE it seemed rather clunky and primitive. I know you said the same of Windows XP, but personally I'm not a big fan of XP's GUI "Luna Shell". I do, however, find a matter of appreciation for Gnome. It's practical, I just wish it were prettier, like KDE. I do think that KDE is probably the closest to being on par with XP as far as ease of use goes in the UI category. As for who the winner would be, lemme fi
I've long said usability is what has kept Linux from becoming a mainstream desktop (read: PC) OS. People like me (and I'm actually a Server Admin, mostly Windows servers, though I'm responsible for helping to maintain some Unix servers as well) who aren't n00bs by any means, but still find Linux to be fairly daunting in some respects (though it has made impressive strides over the last few years, Ubuntu, Slackware, and Suse spring immediately to mind, though my own preferred flavor is Gentoo). Why spend an enormous amount of time, and effort, and still have problems, when I could just install Windows, and go? This is a giant (imho) leap forward for Linux. Little things like this that seem arbitrary, or perhaps even superfulous, are EXACTLY the kind of efforts that the world of Linux needs.
Coming from a "die-hard" MS fan, I hope this stands out to someone. I've nothing against *nix, in fact I love my Unix servers, but as an everyday use OS, it leaves much to be desired. Now, it leaves one less thing. Die hard webcam driver making guru, I salute you.
Ugh, body building, no thanks, lol not quite what I had in mind. I was thinking more along the lines of actually having CURVES!!! Ok, I'm not going beyond that cause yea, I don't want to get mobbed, suffice it to say, that being skinny sucks just as bad, if not more, than being fat. ^_^
I still see kids lining up to play this in the malls, arcades, etc. Dozens of people standing around watching. Sometimes you just can't help it. I think it's a great idea, at least it beats sweeping the gym. As for combating obesity, good luck with that. Call my skinny ass when you've figured out how to make people with metabolisms in the stratosphere GAIN weight. I care not for this "obesity epidemic".
Course, it wouldn't be long before Jack-Ass had shields around someone's nether regions, and shot it with a gun.
Never pay taxes again! Just play MMOs a lot! And collect EVERYTHING you can find.