Where did they dredge up this Soulskill guy? Are they sure he's a nerd? Since when is, "Golly gee, they're such a big company I just assumed they'd keep my stuff safe for me" something that we care about?

Some idiot used a giant corporation and got treated like a cog. Good news for him, then; nothing went wrong, you're just experiencing the expected life of a cog. Some wear is expected. And when you're worn, you can be replaced.

If you want to choose from one of the large registrars, at least check various consumer reporting entities. I doubt you'll find great reviews of "GoDaddy." The reviews might be what you would expect if you just looked at their name and stereotyped the sort of company that would name themselves that.

You're in such a tiny minority that there is no chance at all your government will agree with you.

Go tell them, don't tell me.

Poles have a good reason to whine, they're scared of Russia.

Stallman came out against buying stuff at Amazon. I don't think he actually came out against returning them, which is what was said.

If you find yourself in the situation of having bought something from Amazon, received it, and felt less free, I think Stallman might agree that the right to return the item "is a freedom we can defend." Hopefully then you'll buy something somewhere else.

I know it isn't Amazon granting my right to return, it is consumer protection laws.

Historically, MS achieved market dominance by other means, and before there was widespread copying-with-a-license.

And the period when unlicensed copies were increasing the most also lines up with Apple's renewed market share, and with open source offerings being widely known about.

It may or may not be true that the unlicensed windows installs prevented people in various countries with low cost of living from switching to OSS. It makes sense that it would be true. But it is guaranteed to have taken place well after the peak of MS market share, and isn't available as a potential cause of said market share.

That isn't what they actually said. That is just what people are mindlessly assuming. What they have said is that even machines without a valid license will be able to download and install the upgrade. That is all they're really saying. Their only clarification was to say that if you didn't have a license, you still don't. They haven't promised any forgiveness. They can still shut you off later, or send you a bill.

Considering the technical problems they've had with legit users having to fight the license checks, it is not really any surprise that they're moving away from tying the physical upgrade capability to the license check. That tells us nothing at all about what they will do instead to enforce the licenses.

Maybe nothing, maybe something harsh. We don't know. And from the history of the company, that could go either way. Believing anything before we get more information is ill advised.

Not everybody cares about "community mods."

Not all games are even on a computer. Shocking, but true.

Some games are "on a computer," but don't rely on native clients. For example, people whose main game is chess often play chess on a computer, but using a native client is optional. (and cross-platform anyways in most cases)

So there are lots of other possibilities beyond the false-dichotomy presented.

I grew up playing Oregon Trail and Moon Unit on computers. The closest thing to a "community mod" that we had was, "Cracked by The Nibbler." Now I play chess, because most games suck. New graphics + same shit. Not intellectually stimulating, not physically stimulating, just mindless button-mashing. I'm not saying there is no skill involved, just that it is mindless skill without a contextual connection to my life. And if I want that, Tetris is already a thing, and runs fine anywhere. Tetris is more intellectually stimulating than most new games, though. It is at least mindless mental exercise.

I don't think many people who dislike MS Windows are worried about games. In fact, I think lots of people who use other operating systems for actual work on a computer also have a windows machine to play games. And even if you think windows is the devil, there would be little security risk because you wouldn't have any important private data on that machine.

If you're saying you do your real work in windows because that is your preferred gaming platform, then I would indeed say that is "stupid and clueless" if you're a computer nerd and either do paid work on a computer, or engage in serious hobby computing. Not for choosing windows, there are probably good reasons for that. But if you're a serious user, you wouldn't choose your OS based on games. Especially when dual-boot and VMs are both real things.

You're inventing the "is ought" fallacy, they're not using it. None of the people you're accusing of that fallacy actually said what you accuse them of saying.

They're just giving an opinion, they're not claiming to demonstrate logically that it is true. And their opinion isn't even that somebody must have checked just because they can and ought to have.

Your response is a Straw Man, based on just flat assuming that the "many eyes" theory, as you misunderstand it, is the source of the opinion. People are actually giving other reasons than that. In this case the person believes that OSS programmers are higher quality, based on the incentives for the different groups and who is attracted to those incentives. It is a good explanation of how the person feels about it, but it isn't a logical analysis for you to be trying to refute. You can't refute opinions.

Nobody is saying that OSS is perfect or without bugs, and your assumption that is what they mean, even when they didn't say it, is some sort of magical thinking. A weird upside-down magical thinking, where you accuse others of having religious-type motives, so that you can attack their religion-like views, except that the magical connection between cause and effect is supposed entirely by you, and not endorsed at all by your victim.

In this particular case, the person already gave their own counter-point at the end. It is clear you weren't trying to add to it. You didn't even disagree with any of the points actually raised.

I didn't use an absolute, so adding "some" wouldn't narrow it at all. I mentioned that the protesters exist. "Some" is redundant in that context.

If you're claiming that I was substantively wrong, it would be a high hurdle, because closing US bases has higher negatives than the US being there. And almost all the politicians take the "jobs" route of supporting the bases, even if they throw a bunch of anti-American language into their statements. The fact is that the US has proposed substantial reductions of troops numerous times over the past 30 years, and every time there has generally been a German diplomatic freak-out, and the plans are scrapped or scaled back in response. When the German government stops throwing its weight onto the side of those protesting the reductions, that is when it becomes relevant what other opinions are in play.

From the US perspective, it would be a lot better to shift most of those troops to Poland. The bases would be cheaper to operate, and the Poles really really want increased US protection.

Good job, you've made it through the first level of your analysis. :) Since you didn't uncover a mechanism for it to cause death, keep trying. I'm sure you can figure out how to get from there to the other thing I said, "war is hell."

It is true that I didn't repeat the context of the cameras being for the purpose of the government recording your private activities in order to make you safe. That was the premise I was replying to: "You know, it would probably save someone's life to install video cameras in every private residence and monitor citizens 24 hours a day."

I was saying, no, if you install cameras in such a way to do that level of surveillance, millions would die. War is hell.

Regardless of if you subscribe to theories that "they" might be doing exactly that, we can hopefully agree that the cameras on your phone and laptop were not installed for that purpose and in such a way that the government can use them to "keep you safe." It wouldn't be able to be a secret, because then they couldn't use it to actually keep you safe. At a minimum they'd have to be able to call 911 and say, "yeah, some guy just broke in through the window and has a gun and the residents are asleep upstairs." If they're just secretly watching then it isn't keeping anybody safe, and it isn't the context you're responding to.

Try to follow more closely.

Right. If you had assumed I'm not an idiot, and I meant what I said, it makes perfect sense that I wasn't talking about a book I didn't mention, and I was talking about real history.

When the literal words a person says make more sense than your presumptions about what a person might say, go with what they actually said. ;)

You're just totally wrong, and you seem to be making up numbers.

24 hours isn't any kind of limit or milepost here. 72 hours is the only checkpoint. The doctors can hold you for up to 72 hours based entirely on their own professional judgement.

Being held for over 72 hours requires other people to agree. Generally on a 72 hour hold, nobody is doing anything after 24 hours; that isn't a time frame that has legal requirements for a habeas corpus hearing, or any other review. It also isn't an amount of time where you're be expected to have gotten over an acute freak-out. Holding you the full 72 hours then releasing you is exactly what happens when it is a mistake. If you're getting a review after 24 hours it means they're already asking a judge for a longer hold order. If you come in on a suicide watch, and act totally normal, they're not going to believe you they're going to observe you as long as they're allowed.

The whole idea that they realize he was lying so they let him out is silly. If you convince them he is that dishonest, he is probably lying to get out earlier. They don't have a mechanism to decide which lie is the truth, so they're going to assume, for safety's sake, that he's still suicidal.

You don't have to like it, they didn't ask first. But that is how things actually work. And if it is a legal family member that reported it, they can probably hold you 14 days before asking a judge, unless you already hired a lawyer before they got you inside, or have somebody outside who can hire the lawyer on your behalf.

Naw, assholes that wide don't have friends with other friends. If they pranked their friend, they'd be the only one reading it.

The way I've always heard it told, instead of defending a line from WWI that they wouldn't be able to defend, and having Paris bombed to rubble, they surrendered and switched to guerrilla tactics in order to preserve their cultural treasures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

It seems to be mostly Americans from the political "right" who have that silly idea that the French just surrendered. They never stopped fighting, but they did save Paris. Every other plan I've heard about what they could have done instead amounts to, "well, they could have forced the Germans to level Paris before capturing France." That's the best they could have done by themselves at the start of the war.

If you get your understanding of European events from media associated with US politics, you're going to be eating nothing but propaganda. Sorry, "Freedom News."

Perhaps one reason I have a different understanding is that my grandfather was a US pilot during WWII, and got medals for flying lots of pilot rescue runs. Being able to land a cargo plane in a field behind enemy lines to rescue downed allied pilots was very dangerous, and often would not have been able to happen at all without trained French Resistance fighters on the ground.

A better way to understand the modern French military, (first off, they're a NATO member lol) is to understand their complaints about the Iraq war: they were not opposed to invading Iraq, killing Saddam, and all that stuff. They actually supported that part, in principle. The reason they stood against the war was because the US plan didn't look like it would be successful to them. They didn't think Iraq was going to just flower into a western democracy automatically, based on being invaded and occupied. Indeed, they wanted a plan that either didn't involve occupation, or that would have enough soldiers to maintain order; about half a million. In retrospect, the French were right about the military needs of the adventure.