I for one loved CS with all it's "camping lamers" as you put it. It forced you to learn maps and use terrain...especially if you were the assault team in the scenario. Don't get me wrong I played a crap load of Quake 2 in college and loved it too but they were different games and I don't think you have to worry about all the super space marine stuff going away anytime soon given our attention span and love of instant gratification. That said even though I played the Q2 and Q3 more than any human should have I now wish there were at least a handful of FPS/combat games that were deeper and required more thinking and strategy than twitch shooting.

for the first 7 years they release patches, service packs, tools, add ons like Powershell and you can call support for issues. they will also provide developers with API and other support in developing applications for the OS

for the last three years it's only security hotfixes

new features like reading these new drives will probably never be added and are for a new version of the OS which is completely fair

you're a horrible person of no worth

You're not the only one who thinks so. But my point was that attack or no, your comment did in fact come across as bitter and whiney and selfish.

But I had the same experience as you -- I was down and out, only married with a new baby and nobody would help. We wound up living in my (now ex) wife's attic for a while until we could get work. That made me even more determined to help others when I could. I don't want anybody else thinking "people are shit and nobody will help", because most people aren't shit and will help. At least, I hope so.

As to the Salvation Army, they're a terrible charity. I really encourage you to rethink your position on giving, because I think you're wrong.

Sure, they use it generate interest. I certainly hope they do. But what if they did something else instead?

What if the rumor-mongered to generate ideas?

Apple seems to do it all the time now too. Maybe it's just looking for a conspiracy when there isn't one, but think about it. What a great business model:

1. Think about something that people are dissatisfied with and is lagging technologically.
2. Use your reputation and clout to monger a rumor about an "upcoming" product.
3. Cherry pick ideas generating by hundreds of people.
4. Develop and polish product.
5. Profit!

Seems pretty simple to me. You off-load all of your speculative R&D efforts onto the public. That is probably the most cost-intensive portion of any company that relies on innovation. Brilliant!

And some people underestimate it. According to wikipedia:

At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages.

That's a bit more than just North America.

Well *I* am not only a noted expert on complexity but a specialist in improbability and a noted chaos activist (having a doctorate in activism) and *I* say that IT errors cost TEN QUINZILLION DOLLARS so pay attention to me me me.

Still surprised these aren't diesel.

In Europe where some very large portion of the automobiles in use are diesel, I bet most consumers would think to check the fuel requirements of a rental. But in the US, diesel engines are used in less than 1% of small passenger vehicles, so some significant percentage of renters would probably put gasoline in the tank without thinking to check the fuel requirements first. I wouldn't be surprised if U-Haul tried to use diesel engines in its trucks at some point, and experienced such a high failure rate from renter errors that they gave up on the idea.

That's all speculation on my part.

Philosophers! Artists! Legislators! Gather round! The age old debate of art versus porn has finally been solved:

Nobody in their right mind has any difficulty distinguishing between depictions of nudity and pornography - the fundamental problem with porn is not that it depicts naked people engaged in the natural activity of copulation, but that it is so obviously false and artificial.

So if two people film themselves shagging all night long, and then post it on YouTube, everyone would agree it's not porn? Porn is only when it's pretend, but if you do it for real, it stops being porn?

Porn, in my view, does not make people obsessed with sex - it turns you off from it; especially if you imagine this is the way it should be.

If only the legislators agreed...

its been below zero outside for weeks, snow is piled high. working on this house with sunken foot high wells for the basement windows, requiring you to clean out the snow and leaves that often gather in the wells, so it doesn't break the windows or leak water inside. so i'm yanking out this snow and compacted ice and leaves accumulated, and underneath, half frozen in the ice, is a dead toad. sad

then the fucker kicks me

absolutely blew my mind. well below zero in february. half frozen in ice. i put him back in the window well, give him a roof of leaves

this was two years ago. same toad still lives in the same window well to this day, dining all summer with gusto on the worms and bugs that fall in the well. never left. probably frozen under the snow right now. some sort of toad oasis

The whole thing is anusing. My friend Charlie had to have some very invasive surgery last year from taking OTC Naproxin. Acetaminophen can destroy your liver. Yet marijuana is illegal, even though there is no lethal dose and no dangerous side effects.

What amuses me is calling it "controlled". Antibiotics are controlled, marijuana is as unclntrolled as you can get. You can't regulate illegal activities.

The HP T-series thin clients are quite nice. I have one in production driving a wall-mounted display. It's a t5000 series, specifically the t5735. It has DVI, VGA, parallel and serial, audio, USB, everything that a normal desktop has, AMD Sempron 2100+, 512MB RAM, 1 GB internal flash, and runs Debian Linux 4.0. By default, it has a stripped down Debian install, but has Gnome and gives you root access - I just added the packages that I needed and was ready to go (though it also has software for Citrix and RDP, etc. HP lists it for around $500, I got an open box demo, with full warranty, for $130.

So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?

Fix it. Write equivalent open source apps. There's nothing wrong (in my book) with running proprietary on top of open source (so long as this isn't a violation of the license). Value for the platform is value for the platform.

If the platform succeeds, the open source equivalents will be there eventually.

"The community" could come up with a very restrictive license that doesn't allow that sort of thing, which Google et. al. will just not use anyway.

The point of open source and free software is that it's supposed to be better than proprietary. It's supposed to win on merit, not restrictive licensing or "the community" trying to force things.

Huh, that's a really funny statement. I thought one of the biggest barriers to Linux on the desktop was the fact that we couldn't entice proprietary manufacturers (from device drivers to bulky enterprise solutions) to also release and thoroughly support a Linux distribution of their software. Hell, every other week we're bitching about the sad state of gaming on Linux or sound on Linux and let's just face it: you need to improve that before people will buy Linux for that purpose. And now we're concerned that proprietary will be released on Android? And it might challenge Linux? Good. If it can manage that, good for it. I assure you that if proprietary manufacturers see Android as a viable release alternative to Windows CE, Symbian, etc, that is when you're going to see everyone embrace an open source product.

And really, what's wrong with that? The people who wanted to release their open source software still are but now the people that want to release their closed source software still are and can. And the best part about it is everyone's using an open source stack to support their application.

I don't know about you but if you could replace Windows with Linux on the desktop even though 99% of the apps running on it were proprietary, I would be much more happy with the state of things.

We need both FOSS and proprietary software. Give both of them what they want like options to achieve their goals and then you will have a truly great product that helps the community and humanity as a whole in utilizing computers.

No, it doesn't really say anything. They were a small fish happily using the trademark for the past nine years without any trouble. There was no need for them to register the mark, which is still legally protected even without registration. Trademark registration is expensive and takes years to complete, so many small companies are content to use unregistered trademarks.

However, now that Microsoft has stepped on their turf, they've decided they need additional protection, so they began the process of registering the mark. They should have no problem getting that registration since they likely have ample proof that they've been using it for nine years (marketing materials, print advertisements, maybe some TV commercials, etc).