What annoys you most about your culture?

[Noah]

It annoys me that we have ridiculously high taxes on alcohol and cigarette's cos its "bad for your health".

Hello dickface motherfucker. I'm your neighbour and I pay 3x more than you. Sweeden has it good compared to us

11-12$ for a 20 pack of Marlboro, around 7-8$ for a beer at a bar and around 14$ for a drink.

This is normal prices, not expensive stuff.

[Mantra-Slider]

you also have alot higher wages tho

[Noah]

We also have higher income taxes :P

[Jerome Scuggs]

Hello dickface motherfucker. I'm your neighbour and I pay 3x more than you. Sweeden has it good compared to us

11-12$ for a 20 pack of Marlboro, around 7-8$ for a beer at a bar and around 14$ for a drink.

This is normal prices, not expensive stuff.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Scurvy]

haha i knew this post was coming before you even typed it

[D1st0rt]

College is the greatest, you buy a 16oz plastic cup for $3 and just keep filling it up

[Noah]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

What?

[Jerome Scuggs]

What?

I pay 2 bucks for a decent pack of smokes. The most I've ever paid for a pack was $12, but they were some cigarettes that were in a metal tin, and even had a metallic filter wrapper... they were fuckin tops.

And if you think $12 is expensive... apparently they sell for roughly $24 over in England :P

[Scurvy]

49 cent black n milds

[Cops]

It's not getting used to the new OS that is hard nowadays, it's getting people to try it. The problem with free operating systems currently is that they come in so many flavors, so finding the right one is a little tricky. Depending on your culture, many won't be bothered to actually do some studying and God forbid work as opposed to spending hundreds of dollars for no reason. That said, as long as the price of the OS doesn't out-pace the efficiency gains that come from it (from a business standpoint), there is no reason to change unless it can be relatively inexpensive. The peculiarity in operating systems, though, is the enormous open source community dedicated to improving on them.

Speaking of which, it just occurred to me that Vista might spell Microsoft's doom. Why? It enforces better software programming practices and standards. One reason windows emulation (i.e. Wine) has been only moderately successful is the fact that windows applications have very loose standards in coding, memory usage, registry usage, etc. Vista breaks a lot of old software but enables free solutions like Wine to be more reliable in future releases. Before too long you'll be able to download a version of Ubuntu that not only looks and behaves akin to windows (and then some), but will also run all of the very necessary office applications as well. Microsoft's hold on the office application market isn't nearly as strong.

As for the price argument, there is no such thing as an acceptable price increase in computer software or hardware. As technology improves prices are expected to drop, not rise. Any increase in price would be a red flag to consumers on its own. For example, the $140 I spent two years ago on a 35GB 10K rpm hard drive was good to buy me twice that capacity a couple weeks ago when I ordered a new one.

And there is the fact that most versions of an operating system don't last long enough for any gradual price increase to have a real effect. The reality would be to just charge an extreme amount for a new version (real life example: Vista). Businesses easily respond to that by just not upgrading (real life example: Vista).

I'd love to use an Operating System that could take over all the functions that I have come to at the very least like about Microsfot. I used Knoppix for a total of ten minutes and said "we should use this instead of windows" that is until I found out I couldn't play games on Knoppix or use programs like MSN. I hope something comes readily available to replace Windows.

[Ephemeral]

The 'competitive' or 'competition' model has worked pretty well for nature for a few million years. Those attributes that give an advantage generally survive as long as the benefits outweigh the costs/risks.

Capitalism is no different, demand will affect the market if Microsoft, Exxon, etc. gets too greedy. At some point consumers will seek alternatives and drive market change. This model gets murky when investments in a market are quite high (i.e. building and implementing a power grid infrastructure limits another company from redundantly putting another power grid in place next to it). But even these restrictions can be challenged if the consumers/demand drive it hard enough.

If you understand something, you can predict it. If you can predict something, you can control it.

[Foreign]

I'd love to use an Operating System that could take over all the functions that I have come to at the very least like about Microsfot. I used Knoppix for a total of ten minutes and said "we should use this instead of windows" that is until I found out I couldn't play games on Knoppix or use programs like MSN. I hope something comes readily available to replace Windows.

maybe not "windows live messenger" but you can connect to msn, aim, yahoo, icq, and just about any other instant messaging platform in existence using gaim or kopete (both of which work similar to Trillian).

And the point of a good OS isn't to mimic Microsoft. Linux has a lot going for it the Microsoft doesn't. It's just unfortunate that Windows is so much a standard that even their bugs are considered as such.

The games argument is a good one though, one that Linux has caught a lot of flack over. Fortunately, a lot is being done to allow some of the most popular games at least to be ported. On the other hand, like I said before Vista's best feature is probably the fact that it doesn't play as nice with shitty programming as previous versions, which will make porting the newer games a bit easier.

All that said the reason Linux will never be dominant in the operating system market is because it is free. If people don't have to pay for it, they think it isn't valuable. When Microsoft can get people to pay for upgrades (i.e. Vista, Office) they don't even need, those people aren't going to value anything for free.

[Subjugation]

Unless a law is passed saying "you must buy microsoft products or you will die" people will have the freedom to create alternative solutions that don't require shelling out so much dough (i.e. free as in beer). So yes, Microsoft can charge whatever it wants, monopoly or not, but at least in the realm of computer software consumers have control of the market, not the corporations.

Linux? Your big example is something that I can't even play Subspace on without having graduated from University of Nerdville? Yea, right. The fact is, if you're a gamer, the only option is Windows. The reason? Because Microsoft has cornered the market and has control of proprietary technology and contracts with all the video card manufacturers and game designers.

Don't get me wrong, I use Fedora on another box---it's great for what it is and I love what it represents. But unless you are a geek and NOT into gaming, it's not worth learning to use it. The fact is people DO pay whatever Microsoft charges because of their business practices, and yes they DO get away with charging whatever they want because of it. Most of the reviewers have said that Vista is a lame product. But do you honestly believe it's NOT going to be the standard OS 2 years from now?

PS: Jerome, I love you, but you're you're flat out wrong about universal health care. Nobody deserves to die slowly of cancer because they can't afford to buy health insurance.

[Cops]

I've come to enjoy the simplicity of my system, I personally just don't see a necessity to use anything other than Windows. I would full out support an operating system that could replace the functions that I've come to enjoy, but sadly I don't see very many options.