Do they pay you for the effort of having to repurchase the same songs? I wasn't silly enough to buy this DRM ladened shite, but if I was, I would insist that they not only offer me vouchers to buy the same songs, but that they also compensate me for my time in repurchasing the same songs. Or did they warn people that they would have to do maintenance on their music collections?
I don't see that they have any obligation to compensate consumers for the effort. It's too far of a stretch to call false advertising. They were selling a digital download of a song. If I were silly enough to buy their DRM crippled product (your wording was better, I think), I would lament having made a bad purchase, and distrust any and all DRM.
I definitely sympathize with your sentiment, but barring public safety issues, it's not a company's responsibility to sell a quality product. The hope is that consumers learn what constitutes quality, and that company's learn that quality is the best business plan.
Unfortunately, consumers also buy experience, image, and convenience. This is why DRM is the model of success in the online music download world, thanks to the success of the iTunes Music store (another seller of a low-quality product, but wrapped in a slick user-experience).
To refuse you would have to be asked. I don't think any one needs to ask Obama for his records but McCain (or even Paul who I would rather see as President), most certainly. But if Obama were to be asked and then refuse, well then that would smell to me.
If Paul or Obama disclosed medical records when asked, that would "smell" to me more than if they did not. In that situation, I expect a President or Presidential candidate (especially a Libertarian like Paul) to stand firm on the issue of privacy.
In terms of the head of a private company, regardless of how much one person is perceived to be responsible for the firm's success, I don't see sufficient shareholder reason to warrant disclosure. Even if his records showed he had cancer, it would still just be speculation about his abilities.
If anything, it seems counter to shareholder interest for him to disclose the records, and as for potential investors, they can invest or not. Jobs works for Apple. If he is a tipping point for someone to invest, well, he might get hit by a truck tomorrow regardless.
Which part of dependency you do not get? I have music on my computer, I want to transfer it to another device. I own the computer, the other device and the songs. Why do I need to get a software from Apple to transfer songs? Why can't I just drag and drop folders/files - like I can do with my iriver?
Because it's an iPod/iPhone, and not an iRiver. The consumer chooses the product, and it's certainly not the only product around. If you want to drag and drop folders, well, as you say, you can buy something else.
Claiming there's anything legally wrong with it, is like saying it's legally wrong for iTunes to sell music in their protected AAC format. If I buy a song from the iTunes Music Store, the file won't play on all of my computers and the media players I have on them. I see no legal responsibility for Apple to change that, it's their business model, and as a result they don't get any of my business.
The iPhone is tied into iTunes, and that's their product. As a consumer, you can purchase it or not.
You mean a mandated tool. As in, parents don't simply exercise good parenting and choose a console model with the ability to lock out games (or actually monitor their kids, but we don't talk about that now do we?). Every console will be required to have the functionality to lock-out content at the consumer's cost.
I realize that there is no direct contradiction to freedom of speech/expression, but two problems arise. First, by including this backdoor all the pieces are in place for an immediately enforceable ban. Second, the law is done in the "think of the children" vein, which seems to validate poor parenting skills by making it society's fault. And that makes it a silly law.
The first part of your comment assumes that parents have a choice for a console model with the ability to lock out games, and that those choices have equal quality (e.g. performance and appropriate game titles) to the consoles that don't see sufficient market demand to have parental controls in their console (and all the games their console plays).
Without that, I don't think it's fair to assume that good parents can monitor their kids 100% of the time, or how relevant it even is, since you have little control over what games the kid's friends are allowed to play at their houses.
I see advertisements on my television service touting the ability to set a content level to have shows with a certain rating blocked. I don't know if this is mandated by law or not, but it certainly doesn't affect me at all, even if I have the ability to do it.
If the implementation of content-locks on gaming consoles also have no effect on me as a single adult, then I don't think I have an issue with it. Of course, it has been said that DRM on digital music purchases doesn't affect me, if I purchase the music. It certainly does, however, to the point where I don't buy music from sites that have such restrictions, as I find it a huge impairment to (non-piracy related) use.
So I can easily see a poor implementation coming out of such a law, at which point I would have to count the bungled products as off my list of consumer choices. Giving parents the technology to do their job better is a good thing, but it certainly shouldn't get in the way of legitimate product use. After all, if gaming consoles present a serious problem for children, then perhaps they're not children-appropriate period. If adult gamers everywhere push for disallowing all sales and marketing of gaming consoles to children, I have a feeling that both concerned parents (barring a few zealots) and the gaming industry would not get on board.
Deprecate: v, play down, belittle, disparage, etc.
Depreciate: v, to lower in estimation or esteem, to lower the price or value of, etc.
As an aside, I don't think Miriam-Webster is ever a good dictionary to cite when the point of contention is American English vs. the Queen's English. Miriam-Webster is a derivative of Noah Webster's works, the American lexicographer who is specifically known for pushing an American way of spelling words.
They are similar words. They both share the "de-" prefix, meaning "away, off, reverse, remove". After that, they have nothing in common, other than a similar spelling.
The etymology of deprecate comes from the latin de- precari, "to pray against", which somehow morphed into the current usage of "to belittle", or "to make obsolete".
The etymology of depreciate comes from the latin de- pretium, "lowered price".
Back on point, you argue that "to pray against" somehow morphed into "to belittle", and so I suppose the claim is that "lowered price" did not.
Another online dictionary which pulls definitions from many sources, lists "to belittle" many times in regards to uses of depreciate. Deprecate itself also shows up.
Furthermore, the definition of deprecate has depreciate as #3: "to depreciate; belittle".
If you're American, it's a bit silly to argue with a Brit or really anyone in the Commonwealth about a specific word's usage, spelling, or pronunciation, since all can differ, but still be correct.
We are all operating in areas that are subsets of CS. As a network admin I get to use a lot of cool technologies and watch them come together to do what I need. You use your CS knowledge a lot in an abstract sense.
I lol'd @ this description of subsets of CS. Programmers, skilled in computer science, wrote a bunch of cool technologies that come together to do what people need, and you as a network admin get to watch (apt-get install cool-technology).
I've always loved server/network administration and security (more so than programming), but I don't really buy your romanticism of it. All the useful tools in the admin arsenal have been created by very talented programmers and engineers.
Admins have a lot of hard work to do like anyone else, but really, there's no pretending it's on the same level as the work that was put out to create all those admin tools (including the operating system itself).
Of course, that's not the bulk of programming jobs; there is plenty of demand for programmers who will never get to do anything particularly interesting for their company.
Wouldn't this be easy for ISPs to avoid? Just un-throttle any connections to Google's servers? Just figure out where the test is being done and don't throttle that site. Easy. If the ISPs take that approach, and Google then releases their method & code, problem solved: we just all start testing and have our connections not throttled.
Without knowing just what Google is going to produce, we need more information before deciding on how effective it's going to be one way or the other.
the open source operating system can extend battery life from five to seven hours
Here I sit, typing on my Ubuntu running Acer TravelMate 4674WLMi that won't last two hours unplugged. I really hope the above quoted sentence is true. Battery life is one of the reasons I bought a Macbook over a cheaper windows-intended, linux-running laptop.
Since I just need the laptop for work, it's always seems like a programmer much more skilled than I could put together a distro that blows everyone else away when it comes to battery life and efficient resource handling. The tools are all there, it seems.
I have to disagree with your former Professor's numbers. I remember using C, Java, Scheme, and some assembly as in-class languages, and I don't remember any of them. The basic Java syntax has stuck with me to some degree, so I'd say it's more 10% / 90% in terms of the tangible, moot part of a CS education and the less-tangible always-relevant portion.
I've also recently had to train a new developer who looked good on paper, was good enough in the syntax area, and couldn't think like a programmer at all. He didn't last long, and I'll take someone with no formal CS training yet is able to think abstractly over employees like him anyday.
I'd like either a nice port of iTunes or to find a better jukebox-type music player. I know I can get 100 suggestions right now for players people swear by, but nothing I've tried so far handles browsing, selection, and playback of music as well. In fact, I'd like a better version of iTunes, with features like the ability to classify a song as multiple genres, and have it show up under each.
I've yet to try setting my Linux box up as a iTunes library sharing server (which makes sense with the Macs in the house but the media on my Linux desktop), but if that's not easy to maintain (adding/editing content) I'd like to see improvement there. I suppose that falls into the network media sharing server that's compatible with iTunes as a client category.
Also, the traditional complaint about having to fiddle around. Why should I have to assign keystrokes to 8 of my 12 mouse buttons for it to work across everything (comfiz-fusion/kde, wine/wow, fluxbox, etc)?
The following suggestion has no legal knowledge backing it:
Ignore him, come up with a simple logo featuring a dog, increase the name presence on your site, and apply for a registered trademark for the simple dog, the name you market your published writings under. Then threaten him for running a link farming site with a domain name so close to your registered tm.
I'd like to examine the obstacles involved in improving oversight of national security. There's the President and his administration, agencies like the CIA, NSA, and so on, why not an oversight agency that has a clear (and public) definition of national security combined with the highest clearance available? The Supreme Court only rules on cases brought to it, and Congress will forever have partisan and other interests that conflict with the role of oversight.
The CIA was formed with much less transparency than, for example, the FBI, with the limitation that they only conduct operations abroad (in theory, anyway, if you'd contest how much that was obeyed). So, ignoring political opposition to it's creation, if the idea is to create another agency, cleared to the highest level, who's sole job is to look over the other agencies' shoulder on behalf of the public, would it work? What powers / restrictions would it need? Ironic as it sounds, what if the CIA, NSA, and President himself all lost the power to classify documents, and instead could only submit them for classification to a part of the government who's only embarrassment is classifying material incorrectly?
This is getting to the point of the best argument against using Microsoft software as a platform. I like the custom need, custom implementation approach to things. Over simplifying things, Windows is what you get, Linux is what you make of it. It doesn't always boil down to the end product being proprietary vs open source; I recommend against using (open source) Joomla for a content management tool in place of having a custom one built for your needs (which wouldn't be released open source). The custom site would run off a Linux or BSD server, if I had anything to say about it, that does just what it's needed to do.
I find myself a little amused at this complaint, which is the reverse of my experience. I find myself using OSX and Windows more than I used to, and it's always a relief when I find myself back copying & pasting in Linux. I still find "highlight then middle-click" to be lovely and efficient (especially with window/desktop selection bound to mouse buttons as well), but more to the point, I enjoy not having to find some intermediary place to paste the text and re-copy it in order to remove whatever formatting the original application tacked onto it. I'm copying text, after all.
I can see the issue of closing the window being annoying, but honestly it's never come up for me. I copy the text so that I can paste it, and I guess I don't insert steps between then other than moving focus to the target window. I might suggest that be classified as a user mistake. If you want to copy from one window to another, you can, if you don't close the window. On the other hand, if formatting is copied along with text, I can't always, without going out of my way to remove it.
Think of it this way: you select text in OSX, hit ctrl-c, close the window, and try to paste with ctrl-v, it doesn't work. You used the wrong key combo out of habit. If I were to close the source window between the copy and paste steps in Linux, losing the selection, I'd give myself the same forehead-palm, not blame the OS.
Without reading through all the responses, I would venture that a factor in this is student visas may be easier to come by than companies that will pay for work Visas. Many foreigners I know in the US are here on their student visas, and are comfortably riding them while they earn their graduate degrees. It's win-win: they get to stay in the US and enhance their labor value at the same time, without yet tackling the hassle of switching to a new type of visa. American students, on the other hand, are able to go into industry with no entry hassles, and will tend to choose it over more school when in demand by industry.
Parent post modded off-topic, sure, but pirating Adobe software is advice that, given this situation, doesn't necessarily hurt Adobe. Look at it from the perspective of this "business-model". Your co-workers don't know how to use any of Adobe's products, and can't afford to buy them. They can, with limited technical knowledge (or knowing someone with that knowledge), pirate the full versions and pay nothing. They play around with the software and get comfortable with it.
Now your company CAN afford to buy the Adobe Creative Suite (after all, it's ideally an investment that will make money). After the individuals pirate the software for home use, another marketing department has people with experience in Adobe software, and Adobe gains a paying customer (without losing any, as your co-workers aren't going to buy it anyway).
I don't really see how any Windows user can maintain being interested in the "why" of fixing a problem. There's just too many situations where the answer is "reboot might fix it", or something I more recently encountered:
"It's not letting me remotely login to the pc over there."
"Oh, go login manually, right click my computer, properties, select the remote tab, disable remote login, apply, enable remote login, ok, then log out."
"Why does that work?"
"How the hell should I know? That's just the sort of thing you do in Windows."
Yes, I use SSH and find being connected to our dev box or a live server, from either home work my workstation, to be identical to working locally in BASH. My 10 minute config example included creating the virtual host, downloading and building a specific, out-moded version of PHP, and setting it up for use by the one client, and transferring the changes over to the live. I'm sure it's not so hard to install PHP and set a virtual host to use it, but does the simplicity remain constant when you're dealing with multiple, specific versions of it on the your dev server to reflect the various live server configurations. If we get a client with a very customized Apache configuration, it's pretty much zero-hassle to create an identical environment on our dev server, including configurations, required modules, code, and database structure/data. I hope IIS has a good import / export for all server settings, because tracking down checked boxes on one machine to check them on another would be a colossal waste of time.
A mighty strength of the SSH/config file setup (i.e. non-gui), is that I'm essentially able to transfer changes across servers in seconds, or have configuration files open for as many remote servers as I like. The question I've always had for an IIS admin, is if you need to make a few changes on 10 remote servers, all of which differ either a lot or slightly, are you really firing up Remote Desktop 10 separate times, opening up the IIS GUI 10 times, and finding / clicking the relevant buttons 10 times? Is there a good export/import for all your configurations on one server that lets you migrate it (or sections of it) to another?
No, actually it is more intuitive because you don't have to know how to do something before you do it with IIS since it's a GUI.
I suppose that's got some truth to it, but in the question of what web server to run, we're not starting from a position of zero-knowledge, and what knowledge we have affects what we see as intuitive, because we may have come to expect different standards. If I want to find in which file and on which line number a bit of code is coming from on a large, remotely-hosted website, I expect to be able to connect to it, run a complex search, and maybe copy the relevant files back to my computer with a very minimal investment of time and effort. SSH in, cd to server root, run my regular expressions, and scp back, all without opening any applications (since I've got a terminal open already). I can't really defend that as intuitive in the sense of being able to do it without any knowledge on how to do it, but I think of it as more intuitive in terms of "what's an efficient method of administering a remote server", considering that a server admin will have the skill set for whatever method of administering his/her job requires.
When we introduced an IIS/ASP.NET project to our workload a few months ago, the first thing I did was SSH in, which worked. Found myself on the windows command prompt, which has none of the OSS tools I come to expect, both in a terminal as when I'm writing PHP code. It was frustrating, first because I expect to have that option, and secondly because while I KNOW that it's "dir" and not "ls" I can't help but type it, and "ls" just happened to be the only unrecognized command failed to return the "command not found" error and instead would cause a complete crash (and I'd have to reconnect). I'm rambling on a tangent now, I know, but Windows users will flounder in Linux and Linux users will flounder in Windows. I really only see the conversions going in one direction, though.
This is a great post, because it illustrates the real divide between Microsoft server & development products and OSS server and development products. I don't know if the parent was trying to install Apache in Windows ("something called OpenSSL" was a tip-off), but the point is that IIS seems more intuitive because that's the environment in which the parent's comfortable.
I'm comfortable in an OSS environment. First of all, none of our Apache servers even have GUIs installed, and I'm quite pleased to not have to worry about Windows locking up or slowing down due to something entirely unrelated to IIS. Install and configuration of the server, modules, and virtual hosts can be done quickly and easily via ssh. IIS checkboxes are fine enough if you have physical access or blazingly quick remote access, and also if it's for an option that is widely used enough to warrent a checkbox. It may seem inconvenient to have to load modules to set up HTTPS vs a series of clicks, but how does ease of configuration compare when you don't find a checkbox for what you want? It took me 10 minutes to set up a particular virtual host (and only that one) to run PHP 4.3.11 because it was specifically required by a client's application, and rather doubt that sort of flexibility is so easily achieved with IIS.
The parent post shows a Windows user dealing with an unfamiliar environment. I'm sure I could come up with the same list from my perspective, involving loads of cursing about having to run a GUI on a GUI to configure a server that shouldn't need a GUI, getting confused by all the different menus, and so on. That which seems like a strength to some is a frustration to others, and vice versa.
Compare this, however, to the software Sony produced for their Net MD Minidisc players. It looked terrible, ran terribly, and required converting to atrac3 everytime it moved a song to a Minidisc (which I think could only be done three times per song). I still have my MZ-N1 player, and I love it's design and usability as a portable player, but it's sitting in a box in my closet while an ugly ipod sits on my desk.
From the IFPI's statement "Allofmp3.com: Setting the record straight":
Allofmp3.com is not a legal service either in Russia or anywhere else.
then:
The site claims to have a licence from ROMS, a Russian organisation that claims to be a collecting society. Yet ROMS has no rights from the record companies whatsoever to licence these pieces of music. ROMS and allofmp3.com are well aware that record companies have not granted authorisation for this service.
So is it legal under Russian law at the moment, or isn't it? If it's legal, then it's the Russian gov't at fault, not the site at all. If AllofMp3 is legal now, and they changes their business practice by the time the law changes, then it seems like they're being unfairly characterized as criminals.
I'm also a happy mac user, but you did leave out a very valid reason to not get a mac: already owning a fast PC. If you've got a good computer that windows is killing, linux is a great choice that doesn't involve putting up hundreds of dollars.
In the last 30 days of Netflix subscription I've gotten 21 DVDs, and I'd wager that only about a quarter of them could be found on p2p networks at all, much less be downloaded in far less time than it takes Netflix to send them. Three 5-7 GB discs every two or three days (I do watch the extras) is much more than I can hope to download via p2p, not even going into quality considerations.
Slashdot Mirror
Do they pay you for the effort of having to repurchase the same songs? I wasn't silly enough to buy this DRM ladened shite, but if I was, I would insist that they not only offer me vouchers to buy the same songs, but that they also compensate me for my time in repurchasing the same songs. Or did they warn people that they would have to do maintenance on their music collections?
I don't see that they have any obligation to compensate consumers for the effort. It's too far of a stretch to call false advertising. They were selling a digital download of a song. If I were silly enough to buy their DRM crippled product (your wording was better, I think), I would lament having made a bad purchase, and distrust any and all DRM.
I definitely sympathize with your sentiment, but barring public safety issues, it's not a company's responsibility to sell a quality product. The hope is that consumers learn what constitutes quality, and that company's learn that quality is the best business plan.
Unfortunately, consumers also buy experience, image, and convenience. This is why DRM is the model of success in the online music download world, thanks to the success of the iTunes Music store (another seller of a low-quality product, but wrapped in a slick user-experience).
To refuse you would have to be asked. I don't think any one needs to ask Obama for his records but McCain (or even Paul who I would rather see as President), most certainly. But if Obama were to be asked and then refuse, well then that would smell to me.
If Paul or Obama disclosed medical records when asked, that would "smell" to me more than if they did not. In that situation, I expect a President or Presidential candidate (especially a Libertarian like Paul) to stand firm on the issue of privacy.
In terms of the head of a private company, regardless of how much one person is perceived to be responsible for the firm's success, I don't see sufficient shareholder reason to warrant disclosure. Even if his records showed he had cancer, it would still just be speculation about his abilities.
If anything, it seems counter to shareholder interest for him to disclose the records, and as for potential investors, they can invest or not. Jobs works for Apple. If he is a tipping point for someone to invest, well, he might get hit by a truck tomorrow regardless.
Which part of dependency you do not get? I have music on my computer, I want to transfer it to another device. I own the computer, the other device and the songs. Why do I need to get a software from Apple to transfer songs? Why can't I just drag and drop folders/files - like I can do with my iriver?
Because it's an iPod/iPhone, and not an iRiver. The consumer chooses the product, and it's certainly not the only product around. If you want to drag and drop folders, well, as you say, you can buy something else.
Claiming there's anything legally wrong with it, is like saying it's legally wrong for iTunes to sell music in their protected AAC format. If I buy a song from the iTunes Music Store, the file won't play on all of my computers and the media players I have on them. I see no legal responsibility for Apple to change that, it's their business model, and as a result they don't get any of my business.
The iPhone is tied into iTunes, and that's their product. As a consumer, you can purchase it or not.
You mean a mandated tool. As in, parents don't simply exercise good parenting and choose a console model with the ability to lock out games (or actually monitor their kids, but we don't talk about that now do we?). Every console will be required to have the functionality to lock-out content at the consumer's cost.
I realize that there is no direct contradiction to freedom of speech/expression, but two problems arise. First, by including this backdoor all the pieces are in place for an immediately enforceable ban. Second, the law is done in the "think of the children" vein, which seems to validate poor parenting skills by making it society's fault. And that makes it a silly law.
The first part of your comment assumes that parents have a choice for a console model with the ability to lock out games, and that those choices have equal quality (e.g. performance and appropriate game titles) to the consoles that don't see sufficient market demand to have parental controls in their console (and all the games their console plays).
Without that, I don't think it's fair to assume that good parents can monitor their kids 100% of the time, or how relevant it even is, since you have little control over what games the kid's friends are allowed to play at their houses.
I see advertisements on my television service touting the ability to set a content level to have shows with a certain rating blocked. I don't know if this is mandated by law or not, but it certainly doesn't affect me at all, even if I have the ability to do it.
If the implementation of content-locks on gaming consoles also have no effect on me as a single adult, then I don't think I have an issue with it. Of course, it has been said that DRM on digital music purchases doesn't affect me, if I purchase the music. It certainly does, however, to the point where I don't buy music from sites that have such restrictions, as I find it a huge impairment to (non-piracy related) use.
So I can easily see a poor implementation coming out of such a law, at which point I would have to count the bungled products as off my list of consumer choices. Giving parents the technology to do their job better is a good thing, but it certainly shouldn't get in the way of legitimate product use. After all, if gaming consoles present a serious problem for children, then perhaps they're not children-appropriate period. If adult gamers everywhere push for disallowing all sales and marketing of gaming consoles to children, I have a feeling that both concerned parents (barring a few zealots) and the gaming industry would not get on board.
Deprecate: v, play down, belittle, disparage, etc.
Depreciate: v, to lower in estimation or esteem, to lower the price or value of, etc.
As an aside, I don't think Miriam-Webster is ever a good dictionary to cite when the point of contention is American English vs. the Queen's English. Miriam-Webster is a derivative of Noah Webster's works, the American lexicographer who is specifically known for pushing an American way of spelling words.
They are similar words. They both share the "de-" prefix, meaning "away, off, reverse, remove". After that, they have nothing in common, other than a similar spelling.
The etymology of deprecate comes from the latin de- precari, "to pray against", which somehow morphed into the current usage of "to belittle", or "to make obsolete".
The etymology of depreciate comes from the latin de- pretium, "lowered price".
Back on point, you argue that "to pray against" somehow morphed into "to belittle", and so I suppose the claim is that "lowered price" did not.
Another online dictionary which pulls definitions from many sources, lists "to belittle" many times in regards to uses of depreciate. Deprecate itself also shows up.
Furthermore, the definition of deprecate has depreciate as #3: "to depreciate; belittle".
If you're American, it's a bit silly to argue with a Brit or really anyone in the Commonwealth about a specific word's usage, spelling, or pronunciation, since all can differ, but still be correct.
We are all operating in areas that are subsets of CS. As a network admin I get to use a lot of cool technologies and watch them come together to do what I need. You use your CS knowledge a lot in an abstract sense.
I lol'd @ this description of subsets of CS. Programmers, skilled in computer science, wrote a bunch of cool technologies that come together to do what people need, and you as a network admin get to watch (apt-get install cool-technology).
I've always loved server/network administration and security (more so than programming), but I don't really buy your romanticism of it. All the useful tools in the admin arsenal have been created by very talented programmers and engineers.
Admins have a lot of hard work to do like anyone else, but really, there's no pretending it's on the same level as the work that was put out to create all those admin tools (including the operating system itself).
Of course, that's not the bulk of programming jobs; there is plenty of demand for programmers who will never get to do anything particularly interesting for their company.
Without knowing just what Google is going to produce, we need more information before deciding on how effective it's going to be one way or the other.
Here I sit, typing on my Ubuntu running Acer TravelMate 4674WLMi that won't last two hours unplugged. I really hope the above quoted sentence is true. Battery life is one of the reasons I bought a Macbook over a cheaper windows-intended, linux-running laptop.
Since I just need the laptop for work, it's always seems like a programmer much more skilled than I could put together a distro that blows everyone else away when it comes to battery life and efficient resource handling. The tools are all there, it seems.
I have to disagree with your former Professor's numbers. I remember using C, Java, Scheme, and some assembly as in-class languages, and I don't remember any of them. The basic Java syntax has stuck with me to some degree, so I'd say it's more 10% / 90% in terms of the tangible, moot part of a CS education and the less-tangible always-relevant portion.
I've also recently had to train a new developer who looked good on paper, was good enough in the syntax area, and couldn't think like a programmer at all. He didn't last long, and I'll take someone with no formal CS training yet is able to think abstractly over employees like him anyday.
I'd like either a nice port of iTunes or to find a better jukebox-type music player. I know I can get 100 suggestions right now for players people swear by, but nothing I've tried so far handles browsing, selection, and playback of music as well. In fact, I'd like a better version of iTunes, with features like the ability to classify a song as multiple genres, and have it show up under each.
I've yet to try setting my Linux box up as a iTunes library sharing server (which makes sense with the Macs in the house but the media on my Linux desktop), but if that's not easy to maintain (adding/editing content) I'd like to see improvement there. I suppose that falls into the network media sharing server that's compatible with iTunes as a client category.
Also, the traditional complaint about having to fiddle around. Why should I have to assign keystrokes to 8 of my 12 mouse buttons for it to work across everything (comfiz-fusion/kde, wine/wow, fluxbox, etc)?
The following suggestion has no legal knowledge backing it:
Ignore him, come up with a simple logo featuring a dog, increase the name presence on your site, and apply for a registered trademark for the simple dog, the name you market your published writings under. Then threaten him for running a link farming site with a domain name so close to your registered tm.
I'd like to examine the obstacles involved in improving oversight of national security. There's the President and his administration, agencies like the CIA, NSA, and so on, why not an oversight agency that has a clear (and public) definition of national security combined with the highest clearance available? The Supreme Court only rules on cases brought to it, and Congress will forever have partisan and other interests that conflict with the role of oversight.
The CIA was formed with much less transparency than, for example, the FBI, with the limitation that they only conduct operations abroad (in theory, anyway, if you'd contest how much that was obeyed). So, ignoring political opposition to it's creation, if the idea is to create another agency, cleared to the highest level, who's sole job is to look over the other agencies' shoulder on behalf of the public, would it work? What powers / restrictions would it need? Ironic as it sounds, what if the CIA, NSA, and President himself all lost the power to classify documents, and instead could only submit them for classification to a part of the government who's only embarrassment is classifying material incorrectly?
This is getting to the point of the best argument against using Microsoft software as a platform. I like the custom need, custom implementation approach to things. Over simplifying things, Windows is what you get, Linux is what you make of it. It doesn't always boil down to the end product being proprietary vs open source; I recommend against using (open source) Joomla for a content management tool in place of having a custom one built for your needs (which wouldn't be released open source). The custom site would run off a Linux or BSD server, if I had anything to say about it, that does just what it's needed to do.
I find myself a little amused at this complaint, which is the reverse of my experience. I find myself using OSX and Windows more than I used to, and it's always a relief when I find myself back copying & pasting in Linux. I still find "highlight then middle-click" to be lovely and efficient (especially with window/desktop selection bound to mouse buttons as well), but more to the point, I enjoy not having to find some intermediary place to paste the text and re-copy it in order to remove whatever formatting the original application tacked onto it. I'm copying text, after all.
I can see the issue of closing the window being annoying, but honestly it's never come up for me. I copy the text so that I can paste it, and I guess I don't insert steps between then other than moving focus to the target window. I might suggest that be classified as a user mistake. If you want to copy from one window to another, you can, if you don't close the window. On the other hand, if formatting is copied along with text, I can't always, without going out of my way to remove it.
Think of it this way: you select text in OSX, hit ctrl-c, close the window, and try to paste with ctrl-v, it doesn't work. You used the wrong key combo out of habit. If I were to close the source window between the copy and paste steps in Linux, losing the selection, I'd give myself the same forehead-palm, not blame the OS.
Without reading through all the responses, I would venture that a factor in this is student visas may be easier to come by than companies that will pay for work Visas. Many foreigners I know in the US are here on their student visas, and are comfortably riding them while they earn their graduate degrees. It's win-win: they get to stay in the US and enhance their labor value at the same time, without yet tackling the hassle of switching to a new type of visa. American students, on the other hand, are able to go into industry with no entry hassles, and will tend to choose it over more school when in demand by industry.
Parent post modded off-topic, sure, but pirating Adobe software is advice that, given this situation, doesn't necessarily hurt Adobe. Look at it from the perspective of this "business-model". Your co-workers don't know how to use any of Adobe's products, and can't afford to buy them. They can, with limited technical knowledge (or knowing someone with that knowledge), pirate the full versions and pay nothing. They play around with the software and get comfortable with it.
Now your company CAN afford to buy the Adobe Creative Suite (after all, it's ideally an investment that will make money). After the individuals pirate the software for home use, another marketing department has people with experience in Adobe software, and Adobe gains a paying customer (without losing any, as your co-workers aren't going to buy it anyway).
Or so the "model" goes.
I don't really see how any Windows user can maintain being interested in the "why" of fixing a problem. There's just too many situations where the answer is "reboot might fix it", or something I more recently encountered:
"It's not letting me remotely login to the pc over there."
"Oh, go login manually, right click my computer, properties, select the remote tab, disable remote login, apply, enable remote login, ok, then log out."
"Why does that work?"
"How the hell should I know? That's just the sort of thing you do in Windows."
You can if you use an scp client that lets you open remote files in the editor of your choice.
Yes, I use SSH and find being connected to our dev box or a live server, from either home work my workstation, to be identical to working locally in BASH. My 10 minute config example included creating the virtual host, downloading and building a specific, out-moded version of PHP, and setting it up for use by the one client, and transferring the changes over to the live. I'm sure it's not so hard to install PHP and set a virtual host to use it, but does the simplicity remain constant when you're dealing with multiple, specific versions of it on the your dev server to reflect the various live server configurations. If we get a client with a very customized Apache configuration, it's pretty much zero-hassle to create an identical environment on our dev server, including configurations, required modules, code, and database structure/data. I hope IIS has a good import / export for all server settings, because tracking down checked boxes on one machine to check them on another would be a colossal waste of time.
A mighty strength of the SSH/config file setup (i.e. non-gui), is that I'm essentially able to transfer changes across servers in seconds, or have configuration files open for as many remote servers as I like. The question I've always had for an IIS admin, is if you need to make a few changes on 10 remote servers, all of which differ either a lot or slightly, are you really firing up Remote Desktop 10 separate times, opening up the IIS GUI 10 times, and finding / clicking the relevant buttons 10 times? Is there a good export/import for all your configurations on one server that lets you migrate it (or sections of it) to another?
No, actually it is more intuitive because you don't have to know how to do something before you do it with IIS since it's a GUI.
I suppose that's got some truth to it, but in the question of what web server to run, we're not starting from a position of zero-knowledge, and what knowledge we have affects what we see as intuitive, because we may have come to expect different standards. If I want to find in which file and on which line number a bit of code is coming from on a large, remotely-hosted website, I expect to be able to connect to it, run a complex search, and maybe copy the relevant files back to my computer with a very minimal investment of time and effort. SSH in, cd to server root, run my regular expressions, and scp back, all without opening any applications (since I've got a terminal open already). I can't really defend that as intuitive in the sense of being able to do it without any knowledge on how to do it, but I think of it as more intuitive in terms of "what's an efficient method of administering a remote server", considering that a server admin will have the skill set for whatever method of administering his/her job requires.
When we introduced an IIS/ASP.NET project to our workload a few months ago, the first thing I did was SSH in, which worked. Found myself on the windows command prompt, which has none of the OSS tools I come to expect, both in a terminal as when I'm writing PHP code. It was frustrating, first because I expect to have that option, and secondly because while I KNOW that it's "dir" and not "ls" I can't help but type it, and "ls" just happened to be the only unrecognized command failed to return the "command not found" error and instead would cause a complete crash (and I'd have to reconnect). I'm rambling on a tangent now, I know, but Windows users will flounder in Linux and Linux users will flounder in Windows. I really only see the conversions going in one direction, though.
This is a great post, because it illustrates the real divide between Microsoft server & development products and OSS server and development products. I don't know if the parent was trying to install Apache in Windows ("something called OpenSSL" was a tip-off), but the point is that IIS seems more intuitive because that's the environment in which the parent's comfortable.
I'm comfortable in an OSS environment. First of all, none of our Apache servers even have GUIs installed, and I'm quite pleased to not have to worry about Windows locking up or slowing down due to something entirely unrelated to IIS. Install and configuration of the server, modules, and virtual hosts can be done quickly and easily via ssh. IIS checkboxes are fine enough if you have physical access or blazingly quick remote access, and also if it's for an option that is widely used enough to warrent a checkbox. It may seem inconvenient to have to load modules to set up HTTPS vs a series of clicks, but how does ease of configuration compare when you don't find a checkbox for what you want? It took me 10 minutes to set up a particular virtual host (and only that one) to run PHP 4.3.11 because it was specifically required by a client's application, and rather doubt that sort of flexibility is so easily achieved with IIS.
The parent post shows a Windows user dealing with an unfamiliar environment. I'm sure I could come up with the same list from my perspective, involving loads of cursing about having to run a GUI on a GUI to configure a server that shouldn't need a GUI, getting confused by all the different menus, and so on. That which seems like a strength to some is a frustration to others, and vice versa.
Compare this, however, to the software Sony produced for their Net MD Minidisc players. It looked terrible, ran terribly, and required converting to atrac3 everytime it moved a song to a Minidisc (which I think could only be done three times per song). I still have my MZ-N1 player, and I love it's design and usability as a portable player, but it's sitting in a box in my closet while an ugly ipod sits on my desk.
From the IFPI's statement "Allofmp3.com: Setting the record straight":
Allofmp3.com is not a legal service either in Russia or anywhere else.
then:
The site claims to have a licence from ROMS, a Russian organisation that claims to be a collecting society. Yet ROMS has no rights from the record companies whatsoever to licence these pieces of music. ROMS and allofmp3.com are well aware that record companies have not granted authorisation for this service.
So is it legal under Russian law at the moment, or isn't it? If it's legal, then it's the Russian gov't at fault, not the site at all. If AllofMp3 is legal now, and they changes their business practice by the time the law changes, then it seems like they're being unfairly characterized as criminals.
I'm also a happy mac user, but you did leave out a very valid reason to not get a mac: already owning a fast PC. If you've got a good computer that windows is killing, linux is a great choice that doesn't involve putting up hundreds of dollars.
Look closer - there are Google text-ads on nearly every page.
In the last 30 days of Netflix subscription I've gotten 21 DVDs, and I'd wager that only about a quarter of them could be found on p2p networks at all, much less be downloaded in far less time than it takes Netflix to send them. Three 5-7 GB discs every two or three days (I do watch the extras) is much more than I can hope to download via p2p, not even going into quality considerations.