I admit, I've used The GIMP to mangle a lot of images, but I don't try printing things that much.
Doesn't it just send PostScript to the printer, or whatnot? It looks like it's sending at least 24 bits per pixel... (8 each for R, G, and B) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I'll have to respectfully disagree with you on point C there. Sticking files "all over the place" is a strength, not a weakness.
RPM's exist to keep track of where all the files go. Programs are installed in the path (generally/usr/bin or/usr/local/bin) so that users don't have to make "shortcuts". (although it'd be easy to type in the name of a program and make a shortcut because the binary is in a *standard* location)
There are packaging methods that do what you describe, though. They stick the application files in a separate directory, and symlink the needed places in the file tree to there. So it has one place for the application, Unix is happy, and it has your "shortcuts" too. You can do things that way, but you certainly don't have to.
Applications install *libraries* into \WINDOWS\SYSTEM. (it's actually more complicated than that, "\WINDOWS" is really whatever the Windows root directory is set to, but...) These libraries can have multiple versions with the same name, and an *application* can overwrite a needed library that might not be binary-compatible with the new one!
This is one of the biggest flaws in Windows, which Windows 2000 will hopefully help to fix. However, the Unix method of using symbolic links to keep track of library versions, and only allowing an Administrator to install new libraries (that might conflict with the system-wide ones) is *definitely* a good thing.
If you lock users into one model and way of doing things, and only teach them that, sure they'll get used to it. And if you give Linux a default, consistent look-and-feel, people will get used to that too.
Heck, Linux is configurable enough that you could create and distribute a version of it that implements your own braindead file hierarchy, make it look Windows-ish, disable logins and only start X, etc., etc. And some people might even love it. It wouldn't be as powerful as standard Unix, but at least it wouldn't crash.:) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I agree, Windows tends to be faster due to its driver model and graphics support. It does graphics in the kernel, which is dangerous, and fast.
The rest of this sounds like application issues. First, if you have to use GNOME, try using sawmill for a window manager. Heck, I'm still waiting for GTK to mature. If you want to compare to Windows '95/'98, use something like qvwm for a window manager, it's probably closer in functionality and appearance to Windows.
Netscape under Linux (and UNIX in general) is pretty bad. To mimic the Windows experience, try using Mozilla. It'll crash more, but not as hard, and it's faster. Also, compiling stuff with "-O9 -s -fomit-frame-pointer"...etc. is always fun.:)
(or you can use Wine and try running the same applications, that might actually be more fair. That should bump the RAM requirements for Linux up to something equal for Windows, and you can compare apples to apples (almost). Linux should still be more stable, but Wine will run less stuff.)
What's your graphics card? When I buy my next system, I'm making sure all my hardware is blazing fast under Linux... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Wow. You haven't even been a user for that long, and already your default posting score is 0. I'm impressed. I guess people don't like Archie Bunker anymore... But enough about credibility.
Staroffice and Applix use MS documents well enough. My biggest complaint about StarOffice is that it's just too #*&% much like Office!
MagicPoint is also supposed to be a good PowerPoint replacement. (and PowerPoint is a *horrible* application! It can't even store images decently; I find myself using HTML and JPEGs instead...)
NeXS is a pretty cool spreadsheet, too. But there are tons of spreadsheets out there, and Excel never really impressed me that much. (Just another spreadsheet, except that it has a DOOM-style easter egg built-in. WTF?!??! That's like if Lotus 1-2-3 had a scrolly in mode 13!)
It saddens me that so many people use Office. Fortunately, 90% of the world doesn't use a computer. There's still hope.
GIMP rules. Of course, it's free, so the same people who already have PhotoShop can still use The GIMP as needed. (for its cool scripting language) The GIMP might not be as cool as the Fractal Image Painter was, but it's way cooler than PhotoShop. PhotoShop hasn't had a decent new feature since PhotoShop 3.0. (which runs great under Wine, by the way...) However, PhotoShop is also a >$500.00 application. Good thing all the Windows d00ds have already pirated it... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Linux has *tons* of great Office applications. It just doesn't have "Microsoft Office" yet. And whose fault is that, really? Also, the way wine is coming along, expect Office to work better under Linux anyhow... Of course, we still have WordPerfect, StarOffice, Applix, and even a lot of Linux-specific office suites that even Windows doesn't have... (and for real work, nothing beats TeX.:)
Preinstalled boxes don't have funky hardware issues, because the vendors pick the right hardware. I've tried to install NT on machines that could be sold preinstalled with NT, and I still couldn't configure it! Why? Because they probably got it to install *once* through black magic, and saved that image forever after for the rest of their installs. There's no shame in having a "supported hardware" list when the vendors don't do all of your work for you. And even so, Linux *still* supports more hardware than NT does...
All that having been said, it sounds like SuSE is doing a great job, and I'm very happy with SGI's commitment to Linux. Even if they're doing it out of self-interest, I don't care as long as it benefits the community as well. And that's a lesson that Microsoft should have learned 20 years ago, before they alienated their power users... If they had, and admitted their shortcomings up front, maybe the community at large would be more sympathetic towards them. --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
MESS actually does all three, but it's still a bit of a hassle getting it all to work.
DOSEmu runs some DOS stuff, (doesn't run Second Reality right, I can't get sound, freezes up or runs slow in places) whereas VMWare should run most/all of it (but you still have to pay for the real version, of course)...
Frodo and VICE are C64 emulators, I use VICE, it's sweet. (It ran the C64 version of Second Reality flawlessly, too)
I haven't messed with Amiga emulators for a while, but I think UAE is pretty good. --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Sounds catchy, I like it. Kinda like "veni vidi vici".
Beats the hell out of "Hasta dónde quiere llegar hoy?", anyhow...
Maybe I'll just try posting stories from one site to the other for a while... Wait for the "Biotech companies giving Universities money for evil patents" story, I guess...:) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
"You have not entered like user. You can enter or Create an account. If stuffed your name and your password in addition to the fields Subject and Commentary, you can send your commentary without using a galletita (cookie). If you do not enter, your commentary will be put to name of Asshole Without Name"
Yep, that sounds about right.;) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
That's completely braindead, but why am I not surprised?
Microsoft shows its commitment to embracing and extending open standards once again. Let's see what new and wonderful ideas they don't share with the people working on LDAP, Directory Protocols, etc., etc.
My only reassuring thought is that Microsoft couldn't secure a paper bag, so their implementation of Kerberos should be humorous, at least.:) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yes, but my post was not a real post. It was humor. Darn, I forgot to put "HUMOR" in the subject line again...
Besides, if they call themselves the "Inquirer", there will be that negative association. Why don't they change their name? Maybe web filters will eventually block all "suspicious-lookin g Inquirer sites too. Check out the link, their journalism isn't that serious. Anything that's written at a sixth-grade level for the below-average american can't be.
So what do you think? Inquiring minds want to know...:) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Summary: Studies have shown that the fabric of the web is made of random noise. Evidence for this is consistent with the S/N ratio proven greater than 90%.
Analysis: Proof for entropy is given by the growth of noise and signal decay recently associated with online forums such as slashdot, and the disappearance of content, such as New Scientist articles.
Growth of noise as a number instead of a percentage or ratio is given by the number of Java, Flash, Image-intensive and framed sites now, which consume more bandwidth and consistently crash more web browsers every day.
Alternatives: use gopher and get news from USENET.
Disadvantages: You won't be K-K00L anymore.
Conclusion: You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game. --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
First, why is Slashdot linking to the Inquirer? I know it's gotten bad here, but... Oh well, there's always the Weekly World News, right?
Second, what web filter would look for "Beaver" as a word to block? What about all the legitimate "Beaver" sites out there about little furry creatures who like to "get wood" and chew on it?
Feel free to change the name of your college; it's a dumb name. However, think about your reasons.
What could be stupider than letting a word-matching computer with the brains of a spell-checker on prozac decide what content you allow yourself and others to see?
That's about as smart as reading all your text files with 'grep -v [blahblahblah]'! --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
But yes, the response looks good. I was going to mention muPad, but someone already did.
I'd want more of a MathCad clone though, because its interface is far superior to maple's crappy interface... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Excellent. I was going to say this, but you already have.:)
mp3's are all well and good for popular music, but they take up 10x the space of a (great!) mod. I'd love to see a program that analyzes and mp3 and breaks it up into redundant frequency spectrums, and generates a sequence from that to make the file. (or a mod that could use mp3's for the sample data, which would be similar, just not as automated or cool)
What player are you using? (I tend to use mikmod, but I'm still waiting for OpenCP (was Cubic) to get ported to Linux...) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
What *does* that say, and what's the foreign word for it?
Babelfish translates "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän" to Danube steam navigation society captain, which is an interesting guess, but... well, I figured out the "captain" part, but that's all I'm sure of...
"Hacker" is a pretty decent word to pick, it's just a little overloaded in English. --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Excellent. I usually offer links to "The Bible" (if you only had one book to read on the subject, this one would be a good choice) where appropriate, but obviously I haven't been reloading slashdot enough lately.
It looks like this sort of (lame) occurence happens at least every decade or so, let's try to stop it this time! --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Anyone got any news? Um. Withers, the Computer Science building here at NCSU, had an explosion today. It's also used for chemistry labs, and apparently someone did something careless with sulfuric acid and some potassium compound, and it went *boom*... So I got to miss my File Org class, but still had to turn in my project...
And besides, who trolls the trolls? I miss MEEPT! --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Being able to control who has root for what jobs is a very hairy task under Unix. Although having user accounts devoted to specific tasks in certain groups works for some things, ultimately it's all just a nasty hack on top of a "good enough" system...
A good design for this would have to designate certain capabilities for a given user or task, and I imagine that it would get very complicated. That's one of the good things about groups under Unix: it does most of this, while still being pretty simple.
That having been said, it's still a lot better than a system where there's *only* a root account, or a system that is only designed to be used by one user, and needs ugly hacks to add to that...:) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Really, why read Slashdot when you could be playing Gauntlet:Legends? Isn't life just an analogy for Gauntlet:Legends? Isn't it a shame that the arcade isn't open yet...
I could care less about USB devices yet, I'll wait until some better ones appear on the market. (like I need that much bandwidth for a keyboard...) However, I would like to see some new, cool 3D games for Linux. After that, I'll think about getting a USB GamePad instead of my trusty analog one....maybe.:) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Well, with the "car" argument as with the "CD" argument, they both break down somewhere.
A good point someone else raised before was most CD's only end up costing a fair ("market value") price, if you shop at used CD stores. The same is true for cars. And in both cases, the first person to buy it gets ripped off, horribly.
Because there is some kind of strange "status" attached to owning a new car or CD first, once it's used (however slightly) it immediately drops in value by a large amount (or percentage)...
If I had to buy a car, it'd probably be a really cheap, pretty decent station wagon / tank. Not like those plastic disposable cars they have today. (The Aspire: It aspires to be a car!)
...and I didn't really get the rest of your argument. Could you use some carriage returns in there, next time? --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
That's right. But there *are* laws against monopolies, price fixing collusion, etc., etc. And CDs are most definitely above market value because there's no source of fair competition.
Think gas prices are a little high lately? Well, that's because not enough oil was produced. I wonder why anyone would want to control production like that, since we're all using roughly the same fixed amount...
Of course, no matter how evil OPEC is, it's still *their* oil, so they can shaft^H^H^H^H^Hcharge whatever they like for it and whatnot...:P
Basically, what I'm saying is that people have a right to any good or service at a fair, market value price. And that price isn't $20 for CDs, and it isn't $1.60 for gas (in the US).
Only paying what you're willing to pay and the other party is willing to accept is what this is based on. Well, the other party obviously isn't listening. Let's take a look at a typical bargaining session between me and the record industry.
Me:Wow, that CD has two songs I like on it. I'm willing to pay $3 for it.
Record Industry:How about $20? We worked really hard to make this CD, and you might pirate it.
Me:Well, I don't know how hard you had to work. Don't you make tons of those? How about $5.
Record Industry:Sorry, it costs $20.
Me:Okay. $8. But I don't want to go much higher than that, for just two songs! That's $4/song!
Record Indsustry:$12 more and we might even sell you a CD!
Me:Aaaarrgh!!!!
See the problem yet? --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Although I think it's pure evil, you can always get domains in tonga (.to) or niue (.nu).
It's the internet equivalent of a "1-888" number, except that in this case, it's the little countries that sold out. However, maybe your name won't be taken... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm? What does it do currently?
I admit, I've used The GIMP to mangle a lot of images, but I don't try printing things that much.
Doesn't it just send PostScript to the printer, or whatnot? It looks like it's sending at least 24 bits per pixel... (8 each for R, G, and B)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I'll have to respectfully disagree with you on point C there. Sticking files "all over the place" is a strength, not a weakness.
/usr/bin or /usr/local/bin) so that users don't have to make "shortcuts". (although it'd be easy to type in the name of a program and make a shortcut because the binary is in a *standard* location)
:)
RPM's exist to keep track of where all the files go. Programs are installed in the path (generally
There are packaging methods that do what you describe, though. They stick the application files in a separate directory, and symlink the needed places in the file tree to there. So it has one place for the application, Unix is happy, and it has your "shortcuts" too. You can do things that way, but you certainly don't have to.
Applications install *libraries* into \WINDOWS\SYSTEM. (it's actually more complicated than that, "\WINDOWS" is really whatever the Windows root directory is set to, but...) These libraries can have multiple versions with the same name, and an *application* can overwrite a needed library that might not be binary-compatible with the new one!
This is one of the biggest flaws in Windows, which Windows 2000 will hopefully help to fix. However, the Unix method of using symbolic links to keep track of library versions, and only allowing an Administrator to install new libraries (that might conflict with the system-wide ones) is *definitely* a good thing.
If you lock users into one model and way of doing things, and only teach them that, sure they'll get used to it. And if you give Linux a default, consistent look-and-feel, people will get used to that too.
Heck, Linux is configurable enough that you could create and distribute a version of it that implements your own braindead file hierarchy, make it look Windows-ish, disable logins and only start X, etc., etc. And some people might even love it. It wouldn't be as powerful as standard Unix, but at least it wouldn't crash.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I agree, Windows tends to be faster due to its driver model and graphics support. It does graphics in the kernel, which is dangerous, and fast.
:)
The rest of this sounds like application issues. First, if you have to use GNOME, try using sawmill for a window manager. Heck, I'm still waiting for GTK to mature. If you want to compare to Windows '95/'98, use something like qvwm for a window manager, it's probably closer in functionality and appearance to Windows.
Netscape under Linux (and UNIX in general) is pretty bad. To mimic the Windows experience, try using Mozilla. It'll crash more, but not as hard, and it's faster. Also, compiling stuff with "-O9 -s -fomit-frame-pointer"...etc. is always fun.
(or you can use Wine and try running the same applications, that might actually be more fair. That should bump the RAM requirements for Linux up to something equal for Windows, and you can compare apples to apples (almost). Linux should still be more stable, but Wine will run less stuff.)
What's your graphics card? When I buy my next system, I'm making sure all my hardware is blazing fast under Linux...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Wow. You haven't even been a user for that long, and already your default posting score is 0. I'm impressed. I guess people don't like Archie Bunker anymore... But enough about credibility.
Staroffice and Applix use MS documents well enough. My biggest complaint about StarOffice is that it's just too #*&% much like Office!
MagicPoint is also supposed to be a good PowerPoint replacement. (and PowerPoint is a *horrible* application! It can't even store images decently; I find myself using HTML and JPEGs instead...)
NeXS is a pretty cool spreadsheet, too. But there are tons of spreadsheets out there, and Excel never really impressed me that much. (Just another spreadsheet, except that it has a DOOM-style easter egg built-in. WTF?!??! That's like if Lotus 1-2-3 had a scrolly in mode 13!)
It saddens me that so many people use Office. Fortunately, 90% of the world doesn't use a computer. There's still hope.
GIMP rules. Of course, it's free, so the same people who already have PhotoShop can still use The GIMP as needed. (for its cool scripting language) The GIMP might not be as cool as the Fractal Image Painter was, but it's way cooler than PhotoShop. PhotoShop hasn't had a decent new feature since PhotoShop 3.0. (which runs great under Wine, by the way...) However, PhotoShop is also a >$500.00 application. Good thing all the Windows d00ds have already pirated it...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Linux has *tons* of great Office applications. It just doesn't have "Microsoft Office" yet. And whose fault is that, really? Also, the way wine is coming along, expect Office to work better under Linux anyhow... Of course, we still have WordPerfect, StarOffice, Applix, and even a lot of Linux-specific office suites that even Windows doesn't have... (and for real work, nothing beats TeX. :)
Preinstalled boxes don't have funky hardware issues, because the vendors pick the right hardware. I've tried to install NT on machines that could be sold preinstalled with NT, and I still couldn't configure it! Why? Because they probably got it to install *once* through black magic, and saved that image forever after for the rest of their installs. There's no shame in having a "supported hardware" list when the vendors don't do all of your work for you. And even so, Linux *still* supports more hardware than NT does...
All that having been said, it sounds like SuSE is doing a great job, and I'm very happy with SGI's commitment to Linux. Even if they're doing it out of self-interest, I don't care as long as it benefits the community as well. And that's a lesson that Microsoft should have learned 20 years ago, before they alienated their power users... If they had, and admitted their shortcomings up front, maybe the community at large would be more sympathetic towards them.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yep. There are a lot of them out there, actually.
MESS actually does all three, but it's still a bit of a hassle getting it all to work.
DOSEmu runs some DOS stuff, (doesn't run Second Reality right, I can't get sound, freezes up or runs slow in places) whereas VMWare should run most/all of it (but you still have to pay for the real version, of course)...
Frodo and VICE are C64 emulators, I use VICE, it's sweet. (It ran the C64 version of Second Reality flawlessly, too)
I haven't messed with Amiga emulators for a while, but I think UAE is pretty good.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Microsoft: "Adoptar, Extender, Extinguir"
:)
Sounds catchy, I like it. Kinda like "veni vidi vici".
Beats the hell out of "Hasta dónde quiere llegar hoy?", anyhow...
Maybe I'll just try posting stories from one site to the other for a while... Wait for the "Biotech companies giving Universities money for evil patents" story, I guess...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Oh man, that's fun to read in babelfish.
;)
"You have not entered like user. You can enter or Create an account. If stuffed your name and your password in addition to the fields Subject and Commentary, you can send your commentary without using a galletita (cookie). If you do not enter, your commentary will be put to name of Asshole Without Name"
Yep, that sounds about right.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
That's completely braindead, but why am I not surprised?
:)
Microsoft shows its commitment to embracing and extending open standards once again. Let's see what new and wonderful ideas they don't share with the people working on LDAP, Directory Protocols, etc., etc.
My only reassuring thought is that Microsoft couldn't secure a paper bag, so their implementation of Kerberos should be humorous, at least.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yes, but my post was not a real post. It was humor. Darn, I forgot to put "HUMOR" in the subject line again...
:)
Besides, if they call themselves the "Inquirer", there will be that negative association. Why don't they change their name? Maybe web filters will eventually block all "suspicious-lookin g Inquirer sites too. Check out the link, their journalism isn't that serious. Anything that's written at a sixth-grade level for the below-average american can't be.
So what do you think? Inquiring minds want to know...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Summary: Studies have shown that the fabric of the web is made of random noise. Evidence for this is consistent with the S/N ratio proven greater than 90%.
Analysis:
Proof for entropy is given by the growth of noise and signal decay recently associated with online forums such as slashdot, and the disappearance of content, such as New Scientist articles.
Growth of noise as a number instead of a percentage or ratio is given by the number of Java, Flash, Image-intensive and framed sites now, which consume more bandwidth and consistently crash more web browsers every day.
Alternatives: use gopher and get news from USENET.
Disadvantages: You won't be K-K00L anymore.
Conclusion: You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
First, why is Slashdot linking to the Inquirer? I know it's gotten bad here, but... Oh well, there's always the Weekly World News, right?
Second, what web filter would look for "Beaver" as a word to block? What about all the legitimate "Beaver" sites out there about little furry creatures who like to "get wood" and chew on it?
Feel free to change the name of your college; it's a dumb name. However, think about your reasons.
What could be stupider than letting a word-matching computer with the brains of a spell-checker on prozac decide what content you allow yourself and others to see?
That's about as smart as reading all your text files with 'grep -v [blahblahblah]'!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Heh, I was going to say the same thing...
:)
"Can't you just write in Scheme or Prolog?"
But yes, the response looks good. I was going to mention muPad, but someone already did.
I'd want more of a MathCad clone though, because its interface is far superior to maple's crappy interface...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Excellent. I was going to say this, but you already have. :)
mp3's are all well and good for popular music, but they take up 10x the space of a (great!) mod. I'd love to see a program that analyzes and mp3 and breaks it up into redundant frequency spectrums, and generates a sequence from that to make the file. (or a mod that could use mp3's for the sample data, which would be similar, just not as automated or cool)
What player are you using? (I tend to use mikmod, but I'm still waiting for OpenCP (was Cubic) to get ported to Linux...)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
What *does* that say, and what's the foreign word for it?
Babelfish translates "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän" to Danube steam navigation society captain, which is an interesting guess, but... well, I figured out the "captain" part, but that's all I'm sure of...
"Hacker" is a pretty decent word to pick, it's just a little overloaded in English.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Excellent. I usually offer links to "The Bible" (if you only had one book to read on the subject, this one would be a good choice) where appropriate, but obviously I haven't been reloading slashdot enough lately.
It looks like this sort of (lame) occurence happens at least every decade or so, let's try to stop it this time!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yeah, it's pretty boring here.
Anyone got any news? Um. Withers, the Computer Science building here at NCSU, had an explosion today. It's also used for chemistry labs, and apparently someone did something careless with sulfuric acid and some potassium compound, and it went *boom*... So I got to miss my File Org class, but still had to turn in my project...
And besides, who trolls the trolls? I miss MEEPT!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Being able to control who has root for what jobs is a very hairy task under Unix. Although having user accounts devoted to specific tasks in certain groups works for some things, ultimately it's all just a nasty hack on top of a "good enough" system...
:)
A good design for this would have to designate certain capabilities for a given user or task, and I imagine that it would get very complicated. That's one of the good things about groups under Unix: it does most of this, while still being pretty simple.
That having been said, it's still a lot better than a system where there's *only* a root account, or a system that is only designed to be used by one user, and needs ugly hacks to add to that...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
"You are greedy!"
...maybe. :)
"Hey, that was mine!"
"[USB] is good!"
Really, why read Slashdot when you could be playing Gauntlet:Legends? Isn't life just an analogy for Gauntlet:Legends? Isn't it a shame that the arcade isn't open yet...
I could care less about USB devices yet, I'll wait until some better ones appear on the market. (like I need that much bandwidth for a keyboard...) However, I would like to see some new, cool 3D games for Linux. After that, I'll think about getting a USB GamePad instead of my trusty analog one.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yep. This has been mentioned on slashdot before, but it took me a while to find the link again.
:)
All I can say is, I'll never look at Disney in the same way. It's an empire rotting to the core, but built on the ideas of a real visionary.
It's like if no one listened to Hari Seldon's plans, but used them to start something like the Tessier-Ashpool empire instead.
(if you don't catch the references... well, read more Science Fiction, especially Asimov and Gibson!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Well, with the "car" argument as with the "CD" argument, they both break down somewhere.
A good point someone else raised before was most CD's only end up costing a fair ("market value") price, if you shop at used CD stores. The same is true for cars. And in both cases, the first person to buy it gets ripped off, horribly.
Because there is some kind of strange "status" attached to owning a new car or CD first, once it's used (however slightly) it immediately drops in value by a large amount (or percentage)...
If I had to buy a car, it'd probably be a really cheap, pretty decent station wagon / tank. Not like those plastic disposable cars they have today. (The Aspire: It aspires to be a car!)
...and I didn't really get the rest of your argument. Could you use some carriage returns in there, next time?
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
That's right. But there *are* laws against monopolies, price fixing collusion, etc., etc. And CDs are most definitely above market value because there's no source of fair competition.
:P
Think gas prices are a little high lately? Well, that's because not enough oil was produced. I wonder why anyone would want to control production like that, since we're all using roughly the same fixed amount...
Of course, no matter how evil OPEC is, it's still *their* oil, so they can shaft^H^H^H^H^Hcharge whatever they like for it and whatnot...
Basically, what I'm saying is that people have a right to any good or service at a fair, market value price. And that price isn't $20 for CDs, and it isn't $1.60 for gas (in the US).
Only paying what you're willing to pay and the other party is willing to accept is what this is based on. Well, the other party obviously isn't listening. Let's take a look at a typical bargaining session between me and the record industry.
Me:Wow, that CD has two songs I like on it. I'm willing to pay $3 for it.
Record Industry:How about $20? We worked really hard to make this CD, and you might pirate it.
Me:Well, I don't know how hard you had to work. Don't you make tons of those? How about $5.
Record Industry:Sorry, it costs $20.
Me:Okay. $8. But I don't want to go much higher than that, for just two songs! That's $4/song!
Record Indsustry:$12 more and we might even sell you a CD!
Me:Aaaarrgh!!!!
See the problem yet?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Very cool. Also, it's a registrar that ends in a register, (x86, that is...) and that's what counts. :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
The Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Country codes are here.
:)
...sounds like a "Carbon Copy" domain to me.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Although I think it's pure evil, you can always get domains in tonga (.to) or niue (.nu).
It's the internet equivalent of a "1-888" number, except that in this case, it's the little countries that sold out. However, maybe your name won't be taken...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.