Open thread

Here’s a fun gallery of animal photos.  There’s some good stuff there.  [via FUNNY PETS]

Look at these concept trucks by Luigi Colani  And we’re talking big trucks—of the 18-wheeler variety.  Very cool.

I and the Bird #39 is available, so wing your way over there and flit through all the cool bird stuff on display.

John summed it up so I don’t have to.  All I can say is this: Don’t buy Windows Vista, and don’t even plan to upgrade.  In the first month since it was released to businesses, at least six worrisome security vulnerabilities have been discovered (and this in what Microsoft billed as the most secure operating system in the industry; ha!).  Not only that, but you’ll also find a link to a disturbing report about its heavy focus on limiting your rights and access to multimedia content (yes, Microsoft is in the back pockets of the MPAA and RIAA).  Not only will the OS intentionally degrade performance of audio and video output based on DRM licensing and content, but it also creates an extreme hardware burden.  If you were to install it on the HW you have today, your system would slow down dramatically because of the digital rights management overhead that permeates the entire OS.  But let’s not stop there: How about the new functionality that disables hardware on ALL WINDOWS VISTA SYSTEMS if Microsoft decides it’s best?  Yes, they can do that now, so they could render your home PC or your entire company dead in the digital water simply because they have reports a piece of hardware may post a security risk to the OS.  And there’s more, but I won’t bore you with the details.  Don’t upgrade; don’t consider it; don’t even look at it.  It’s a hacker’s paradise because it only takes one strategic piece of code to disable computers around the world—and all by utilizing the built-in “security” in the OS.  Microsoft gets to decide what content you can and can’t access, and they also get to prevent you from using the full capabilities of your graphics and sound subsystems if they so much as think you might have premium content on your system that might not be properly licensed—all at the behest of the movie and recording industries, and we all know how they like to abuse customers.

Ugh.  Let me stop and reiterate the important points: Windows Vista is not secure, is built on requirements defined by the entertainment industry, requires more powerful hardware simply because of what the entertainment industry wanted MS to include, is built such that MS can disable hardware across the board and at will, and essentially is nothing more than a platform by which the MPAA and RIAA gain access to your PC and your data.  It’s a mess and is a dangerous step backward in operating systems and privacy.

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