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One lecturer has posted an article about his final-year students' perceptions of Linux. It's scary. These possible future sysadmins don't even seem to question M$ at all - they all think it's normal and acceptable for machines to crash a lot; to be put on hold when calling support, etc. They made some good points, but they really made some horrible clangers.

Read this, but do it when you're feeling calm. Universal records have got to the stage where they are happy with a new form of copy protection which prevents CDs being played on Macs, DVD players, consoles like the PS2 and maybe even some CD players. So much for fair use. The claim which really makes my blood boil is "Unfortunately, phenomenon [sic] like Napster and the ease of `ripping and burning' are causing artists and record companies real harm,'' said Hilary Rosen, head of the Recording Industry Association of America. "The unprecedented amount of music being copied is hurting the industry." Yeah, I'm sure the record companies are hurting really badly. It's not like they've been fucking over the artists and fans for years on end. What really annoys me is this attitude: [Copy protection] would discourage 15 high school friends from getting together and pooling their money to buy a single music CD and a spindle of blank discs and making dubs for everyone in the group -- with a few extras to sell at school. Fine, stop them making copies. That way you don't make any more money anyway, because they couldn't afford to buy one each in the first place. Now the kids don't have new music, the artists don't have new fans and the record company won't get sales later when the kids grow up and get an income. I know I'm slowly filling my back catalogue, buying CDs of all my favourite dubbed tapes and burnt CDs. Maybe if they were cheaper, people wouldn't need to pirate them.

This has got to be a hoax: Al-Quaeda members seeding Windows XP with trojans. Uh huh. Mind you, it'd explain why M$ systems crash so damn much - terrorist sabotage.

Discussion of ditching the hard-drive icon and other interface issues.

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