It was more than a "few" years. Microsoft didn't really make super ingrounds on the servers arena until Windows NT 4. Similarly, many people switched to Microsoft when Windows 95 came out. What was there to compete? Let's see, at the time, 1995, Apple had OS 7. It wasn't updated to OS 7.6 until 1997 (Windows 98). It looked butt ugly. Only ran on proprietary hardware, that was up to 300% more expensive than the PC counterpart. You're blaming Microsoft for its dominance when the opposition was weaker than a piece of wet toiletpaper? FFS man, wake up!!! You ever done extensions troubleshooting on a OS 9/pre mac? It's a fucking nightmare man. I'd rather the Windows registry anyday to be honest.
The other major player was IBM's OS2/4 series. Incompetent management @ IBM, lack of real interest @ IBM, a smart marketing plan from Microsoft (can you really blame them?), no software ran on the platform (well, very little), and a semi-ugly interface. WTF, why would it win!!!!
Yes, Windows 95 wasn't perfect. It had tonnes of bugs. It it was good enough for most people, ran on open PCs that were priced competitively, had tonnes of software than run on it. You'd have to have been an idiot to have considered anything else imho.
I can't believe you got modded up to +4 or so. What are/. 's smoking? I guess it is wholly representative of/. 's history of being anti Windows and pro Linux/BSD, anything other than Microsoft!
Apple is a notoriously tight assed, litiguous, monopolistic and anti competitive company. Remember 2004 in Australia, where Apple decided to sue a restaurant cos it was named Apple? WTF? Bullyism anyone? Abusing the legal system anyone? They didn't win the case, the owner of the restaurant decided it was simply easier and cheaper to change the name. Now, if you don't know how trademarks work, go fucking read up on it. Apple didn't have a leg to stand on, but they knew that they could bankrupt the restaurant owner just by using the legal process itself. Does that sound like a nice company to you? I didn't see Microsoft doing that. Sure, it went after competitors in the software industry, but non software? Not that I can remember.
Yeah, Apple had a GUI before Microsoft did, big deal. Imagine if software patents had been in force back then, shit, we'd be screwed. Forced to say Sig Heil Jobs! and do the Apple salute. Fuck that. Hang on, jobs...here ya go!
Now, let's consider Apple's apps for the iPhone etc, is there a fairness to applications approval? Nope. Typical Apple, it loves to control the ENTIRE market. Don't give the consumer any choices, control it, but make it look like you've given the consumer some choices by using smart, BS marketing.
Now that I've had my daily Apple diatribe, I feel so much better.
If Apple ever gets to a really large market share, we're fucked. I'd rather Microsoft anyday, and I HATE Microsoft.
It'll simply kill the format. What Amazon, and other companies have done is:
1) lace the market with cheaper stuff
2) get people hooked
3) raise prices without fairness, or warning.
It's much like what drug dealers do. They hope that some people are addicted to eBooks, and therefore, will continue to buy them at the higher prices, meaning more profit.
I'm sorry, but capitalism does NOT work. Businesses will *always* screw the consumer. I personally believe in that a government board looks at products, sets a price, and then businesses etc have to stick by it. It has to be a fair price too, not unrealistically low. Businesses would never like it, because they are GREEDY. Consumers would love it because they don't ripped off. Since businesses = 2% or so of population, and consumers the rest, I know who governments SHOULD be backing. But, governments like more tax, cos they're greedy too. So, it's all about the money, not serving the people. Funny eh?
Until the ordinary populace grows up and realises the BS that we're putting up with, and overthrows the economical tyrants currently in power, we'll never get a fair socio-economical system imho. Why are more and more people becoming poorer? Why are more people becoming homeless? I mean, let's look at the bank/financial institution bailouts by the US government a year or so ago. Why is this fair? Will they bail out ordinary people who are losing their houses? Nooooooooo...we're ordinary and mean jack squat to govermnents (and to business).
Oh I'm sorry, did I hurt your feelings by telling the truth about Australians. My oh my, I'm sooo bad. The truth is, we're a friggen lazy lot. I could counter claim your comments by linking to URLs that say Australians have the largest rate of obesity in the world. Obesity is usually linked to 2 things - over eating and lack of exercise, i.e. laziness.
We work the longest hours because our government doesn't give a fuck about the average worker. Employers can do what they want here. Unfair dismissal? Businesses with less than 10 staff are immune to unfair dismissal laws (blatant discrimination anyone?). That's around 60% of the working population btw. Governments have been far more concerned with "oh, the poor little business" than the people who fucking vote them in - the ordinary populace. Yet, our average Australia is still too fucking stupid to realise this, let alone voice their thoughts and opinions.
More proof of stupidty? The Internet firewall - roughly 70% of our populace is happy with it, because they're too stupid and too fucking lazy to understand the reality of it all. They just happily accept the BS that they are fed by the government. Those damn pesky pedos, they're almost as bad as terrorist lol.
Don't even get me started. This country is pretty fucked up, and that's all down to the people.
As V says to Evey in V for Vendetta:
"people should not be afraid of their goverments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
There's also a nice reference in this very same movie about the government, and all the restrictive changes being down to the people themselves refusing to act (it's the whole premise of the movie really).
It traditionally has been more secure than any Linux distribution. Of course, openBSD in particular is probably the most secure operating system available, but Theo is a wee bit pedantic imho.
Or the average level of stupidity of the average Australian is lowered, so that they can comprehend things. Most Australians will also need anti-laziness pills, to counter the natural laziness of the average Australian. We'll also need some pills for the "she'll be right mate" syndrome.
We're a fucking lazy country, full of fucking lazy people, who don't give a shit about anything, other than our own little worlds. Anyone who tries to educate others is socially ostracised and called "weird", or a "troublemaker".
Until the masses understand what is happening, and why, and rises against it en masse, nothing will EVER happen. This is both true of Australia and the US of A. Governments now this, and play on it. They play on our fear (BS about terrorism), they play on our apathy, and also our laziness and inaction.
I'd say you're right to a large extent - Solaris on dedicated boxes, set up correctly, runs forever. Very secure. Very stable. Very scalable. Look at a large site like EBay - it runs off Solaris and is incredibly stable.
The downsides to that are usually dedicated Sun hardware to get the utmost out of the operating system, supreme knowledge of how to install/setup and tweak Solaris to the nth degree to get it to be the best that it can be. Cost. Any decent organisation will have a support licence with the vendor for those things that their in house techs can't solve. That costs money.
Still, I think that this decision by Oracle will kill Solaris. There was some uptake over the past few years due to Sun's changing attitude toward the desktop user, and more reasonable support contracts (cost wise) - it was actually cheaper to get support on Solaris than RH or Suse products. I'm glad I've alrady got a copy of Solaris 10 for x86. I've never liked Oracle as a company to be honest, as good as their dbase product might be, them, along with Apple, I'd love to see go bust. They are a nasty trash p.o.s company.
Yup. The same happens in Australia, although to a much lesser degree as we're not quite as heavily litigant as our American brothers. The whole court system is broken - there is only legal ability for the rich and powerful, not your average person. The best way to stop this is to make lawyers illegal, and have people represent themselves. It reduces the cost, and makes a much more honest stab at things imho. Lawyers have made a shyte load of money over the past few hundred years, I say feed them to themselves, oops, I mean the sharks!
People are just well...lemmings. I remember when Ubuntu came out, and all the Gnome lovers came out of the woodworks to unite under the one distro to fight off the KDE ass kicking they were getting. I'm not a fan of Ubuntu for many reasons - I believe a distribution shouldn't favour one desktop environment over another, but should offer the major ones, and let users *choose* what they like. Kubuntu has been a p.o.s since the word dot, it's utter crap. And it's not officially part of Ubuntu either, it's a fork, using KDE. It's like a afterbirth variant of Ubuntu, but not done right.
Ubuntu has a strong sense (like Gnome) of dumbing things down, to the point of reducing the users ability to have any sane reasoning when it comes to configuring. It also looks ugly (to my eyes). GTK is horrid, always has been, always will be. There's a reason why you don't see many commercial applications using GTK, but many using QT. It's far easier to work with by all accounts, far more stable, and far nicer on the eye. Ubuntu's forums are horrid. I remember trying it on my laptop around a year ago. I dislike sudo, so I disabled it, and enabled su. This broke several of the Ubuntu administration tools. So, I posted a post asking if anyone had encountered this before and had any ideas. After 5 minutes (I had just joined the forums), I got an official warning from a mod for talking about disabling sudo! WTF!!!!!!!! I basically told the mod where to shove it and promptly uninstalled Ubuntu. I don't like, or recommend it.
I remember the good old days of Libranet - v3 shitted on Ubuntu. And it had a development team of just 2! I wish it had survived, and maybe the owner (Tal Danzig) had been smarter and better priced Libranet 3.
Yeah, that's a really good attitude towards your users. You know what most intelligent users are going to say to you don't you? You can shove your program where the sun don't shine.
This is the exact attitude that is a HUGE turnoff for every newbie Linux user. It's people like you who have killed the spirit in GNU/Linux and, I might add, done a lot of damage to the image.
Keep it up and you won't have many users in the western world. Sure, the poor might go for you and your software, but only until they develop and have the money to buy *real* software.
I totally agree with you. Sadly, most on here won't, because their l33t Linux users (or they think they are). Do you think Apple has its developers making decisions on UI etc? No way. I guarantee they have a dedicated UI department that designs the interfaces and then gives intructions to the development team to make those UIs come alive via programming. Programmers don't think like ordinary people. Programmers don't seem to mind complex. Or illogical. Ordinary users do.
It's sad to see you marked as a troll, but that's a sign of the pro Linux/. times we're in.
There's a reason why Linux is losing market to others (Windows 7/OS X) - because it's ugly and its' over complex to both install, use and administrate. There is no common logic to it. These very people who've voted your comment down are the cause of this, and the real reason why Linux is losing market share on the desktop (not that it had much to begin with). As a point of example, I was showing off my new MacBook Pro to a friend on Saturday night just gone, and he knows a bit about Macs and is also a Linux enthusiast and you know what he said? "You know, Linux has an expose like application, but they fucked with it so much that they ruined it". Apple got it right, didn't tinker with it just to show how l33t they are. Programming just because you can doesn't make it right. Programming to a defined logical purpose is an altogether different thing. This particular guy was a long time Ubuntu user and evangalist but has now switched (mostly) to Windows 7, because it not only looks good, but it's UI suits him better than Ubuntu's was. Interesting.
You can mod me down as a troll all you like, I don't really care. But, in Ten or so years, when Linux on the desktop is all but dead, and most developers have left it because there's no one to program for, you might understand what I'm saying. Ordinary users drive software. If you have the arrogance of most of the Linux kernel development community, and it seems, the Ubuntu community, and tell your ordinary users to piss off, then you'll lose them. Maybe not all of them, maybe not all of them in one go, but they will eventually move to other operating systems and designers that *listen*.
I absolutely disagree with this. Governments should ALWAYS be FULLY accountable on EVERYTHING. Secrets breed mistrust. Governments are the servants of the people. Not themselves. Not business. The people. Period. The sooner the better when current forms of government are overpowered and replaced by governments that are for the people, and that respect the people. I don't give a shit about business. Tough shit, I'm sick and tired of the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer.
Obama's done SFA. He's the most boring US president in history. Sure, Bush Jr, fucked up [a lot], but at least he *did* something. Obama seems to be the American version of our own Kevin Rudd (who I nickname "krudd"). All talk, no action, doesn't give a fuck about the people, sides with big business. I'd like to see a average joe become president, not a wealthy businessman. Then, we might see some basic commonsense decisions and respect to the people.
Oh wait, you have a 2 party system that doesn't allow any other party to compete...monopoly anyone?
If I could mod you up, I would. In short, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Of course Obama (and every other politician on the western planet) would back the large corporations and wealthy. Us "average" person is an inconvenience to them, and if they could do away with us, they surely would.
I'm sad that I live in Australia, because we might as well be the 53rd state, we do everything that Herr Obama (and previous presidents) say. That means we'll get ACTA:-(
mmm I disagree. Watching free to air TV doesn't cost money. If one doesn't like the ads you can channel surf. Or just walk away from the TV for a few minutes. That's akin to blocking the ads in my books. I have one rule:
my computer, my rules. If I don't want cookies or ads or other shyte, then I'll sure as hell block it. If Ars Technica, or any other "popular" site doesn't like that, then no ones making them put up web content, are they? If it's such a terrible thing, they don't have to do it. People aren't holding a gun to their heads. Just close the website down and go do something else. Of course, me being smart, I know that these guys are *making* money, and this crying poor is just BS to get people to feel sorry for them, so that you don't disable ads and they make EVEN more money. I'm not gullible, and I'm sure as hell not stupid.
Yeah, but if we can't even reliably (and cheaply) get to the moon, we have no hope of Mars, or other planets for that matter, let alone extra sol planetary systems. We're stuck on this planet, and we're screwing it seriously. Obama has been like Australia's Kevin Rudd - all talk, no action. At least Bush Jr did something (admittedly not good, but he did *do* something). All Obama does is talk. He's the most unimpressive president I can remember. Inaction does more harm than bad action.
I hope realdvd has someone "hack" into their systems and steal the src code. hahaha. Would be nice to see this spreading around the world.
The easiest way for us to deal with the RIAA/MPAA/DMCA/corrupt US government is for *everyone* to start openly breaking this silly law. I mean everyone. Encourage children, parents, friends, family, everyone. Openly break the law. If 99.9% of the population is openly breaking the law, then either the law is stupid, the people don't want the law (and the government is meant to server the people I might add, that's who elects them). Are they seriously going to clog up the courts with millions and millions of people? Are they seriously going to start taking legal action against people and risk rebellion? Are they seriously going to start just murdering people who defy them? I think not. If everyone sticks together, these corrupt, filthy governments can be beaten.
I find the US political system a joke anyways. The laughing stock of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
It was more than a "few" years. Microsoft didn't really make super ingrounds on the servers arena until Windows NT 4. Similarly, many people switched to Microsoft when Windows 95 came out. What was there to compete? Let's see, at the time, 1995, Apple had OS 7. It wasn't updated to OS 7.6 until 1997 (Windows 98). It looked butt ugly. Only ran on proprietary hardware, that was up to 300% more expensive than the PC counterpart. You're blaming Microsoft for its dominance when the opposition was weaker than a piece of wet toiletpaper? FFS man, wake up!!! You ever done extensions troubleshooting on a OS 9/pre mac? It's a fucking nightmare man. I'd rather the Windows registry anyday to be honest.
The other major player was IBM's OS2/4 series. Incompetent management @ IBM, lack of real interest @ IBM, a smart marketing plan from Microsoft (can you really blame them?), no software ran on the platform (well, very little), and a semi-ugly interface. WTF, why would it win!!!!
Yes, Windows 95 wasn't perfect. It had tonnes of bugs. It it was good enough for most people, ran on open PCs that were priced competitively, had tonnes of software than run on it. You'd have to have been an idiot to have considered anything else imho.
I can't believe you got modded up to +4 or so. What are /. 's smoking? I guess it is wholly representative of /. 's history of being anti Windows and pro Linux/BSD, anything other than Microsoft!
Apple is a notoriously tight assed, litiguous, monopolistic and anti competitive company. Remember 2004 in Australia, where Apple decided to sue a restaurant cos it was named Apple? WTF? Bullyism anyone? Abusing the legal system anyone? They didn't win the case, the owner of the restaurant decided it was simply easier and cheaper to change the name. Now, if you don't know how trademarks work, go fucking read up on it. Apple didn't have a leg to stand on, but they knew that they could bankrupt the restaurant owner just by using the legal process itself. Does that sound like a nice company to you? I didn't see Microsoft doing that. Sure, it went after competitors in the software industry, but non software? Not that I can remember.
Yeah, Apple had a GUI before Microsoft did, big deal. Imagine if software patents had been in force back then, shit, we'd be screwed. Forced to say Sig Heil Jobs! and do the Apple salute. Fuck that. Hang on, jobs...here ya go!
http://www.ecn.net.au/~dpastern/images/nazi-apple.jpg
it suits him!
Now, let's consider Apple's apps for the iPhone etc, is there a fairness to applications approval? Nope. Typical Apple, it loves to control the ENTIRE market. Don't give the consumer any choices, control it, but make it look like you've given the consumer some choices by using smart, BS marketing.
Now that I've had my daily Apple diatribe, I feel so much better.
If Apple ever gets to a really large market share, we're fucked. I'd rather Microsoft anyday, and I HATE Microsoft.
Dave
Oh yes, and the iPhone, iTouch and iPad can't multitask..wtf!!!!
Dave
Piss off. Tax the fucking companies to the hilt I say. Let's tax the wealthy more as well. Those who have it, can pay it. Those who don't, can't.
Dave
It'll simply kill the format. What Amazon, and other companies have done is:
1) lace the market with cheaper stuff
2) get people hooked
3) raise prices without fairness, or warning.
It's much like what drug dealers do. They hope that some people are addicted to eBooks, and therefore, will continue to buy them at the higher prices, meaning more profit.
I'm sorry, but capitalism does NOT work. Businesses will *always* screw the consumer. I personally believe in that a government board looks at products, sets a price, and then businesses etc have to stick by it. It has to be a fair price too, not unrealistically low. Businesses would never like it, because they are GREEDY. Consumers would love it because they don't ripped off. Since businesses = 2% or so of population, and consumers the rest, I know who governments SHOULD be backing. But, governments like more tax, cos they're greedy too. So, it's all about the money, not serving the people. Funny eh?
Until the ordinary populace grows up and realises the BS that we're putting up with, and overthrows the economical tyrants currently in power, we'll never get a fair socio-economical system imho. Why are more and more people becoming poorer? Why are more people becoming homeless? I mean, let's look at the bank/financial institution bailouts by the US government a year or so ago. Why is this fair? Will they bail out ordinary people who are losing their houses? Nooooooooo...we're ordinary and mean jack squat to govermnents (and to business).
Dave
Oh I'm sorry, did I hurt your feelings by telling the truth about Australians. My oh my, I'm sooo bad. The truth is, we're a friggen lazy lot. I could counter claim your comments by linking to URLs that say Australians have the largest rate of obesity in the world. Obesity is usually linked to 2 things - over eating and lack of exercise, i.e. laziness.
We work the longest hours because our government doesn't give a fuck about the average worker. Employers can do what they want here. Unfair dismissal? Businesses with less than 10 staff are immune to unfair dismissal laws (blatant discrimination anyone?). That's around 60% of the working population btw. Governments have been far more concerned with "oh, the poor little business" than the people who fucking vote them in - the ordinary populace. Yet, our average Australia is still too fucking stupid to realise this, let alone voice their thoughts and opinions.
More proof of stupidty? The Internet firewall - roughly 70% of our populace is happy with it, because they're too stupid and too fucking lazy to understand the reality of it all. They just happily accept the BS that they are fed by the government. Those damn pesky pedos, they're almost as bad as terrorist lol.
Don't even get me started. This country is pretty fucked up, and that's all down to the people.
As V says to Evey in V for Vendetta:
"people should not be afraid of their goverments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
There's also a nice reference in this very same movie about the government, and all the restrictive changes being down to the people themselves refusing to act (it's the whole premise of the movie really).
Dave
It traditionally has been more secure than any Linux distribution. Of course, openBSD in particular is probably the most secure operating system available, but Theo is a wee bit pedantic imho.
Dave
So, you're saying that Oracle is like Apple?
Dave
Or the average level of stupidity of the average Australian is lowered, so that they can comprehend things. Most Australians will also need anti-laziness pills, to counter the natural laziness of the average Australian. We'll also need some pills for the "she'll be right mate" syndrome.
We're a fucking lazy country, full of fucking lazy people, who don't give a shit about anything, other than our own little worlds. Anyone who tries to educate others is socially ostracised and called "weird", or a "troublemaker".
Until the masses understand what is happening, and why, and rises against it en masse, nothing will EVER happen. This is both true of Australia and the US of A. Governments now this, and play on it. They play on our fear (BS about terrorism), they play on our apathy, and also our laziness and inaction.
Dave
I'd say you're right to a large extent - Solaris on dedicated boxes, set up correctly, runs forever. Very secure. Very stable. Very scalable. Look at a large site like EBay - it runs off Solaris and is incredibly stable.
The downsides to that are usually dedicated Sun hardware to get the utmost out of the operating system, supreme knowledge of how to install/setup and tweak Solaris to the nth degree to get it to be the best that it can be. Cost. Any decent organisation will have a support licence with the vendor for those things that their in house techs can't solve. That costs money.
Still, I think that this decision by Oracle will kill Solaris. There was some uptake over the past few years due to Sun's changing attitude toward the desktop user, and more reasonable support contracts (cost wise) - it was actually cheaper to get support on Solaris than RH or Suse products. I'm glad I've alrady got a copy of Solaris 10 for x86. I've never liked Oracle as a company to be honest, as good as their dbase product might be, them, along with Apple, I'd love to see go bust. They are a nasty trash p.o.s company.
Dave
Yup. Oracle won't make friends with this. It'll probably be the death knell of Solaris imho.
Dave
Yup. The same happens in Australia, although to a much lesser degree as we're not quite as heavily litigant as our American brothers. The whole court system is broken - there is only legal ability for the rich and powerful, not your average person. The best way to stop this is to make lawyers illegal, and have people represent themselves. It reduces the cost, and makes a much more honest stab at things imho. Lawyers have made a shyte load of money over the past few hundred years, I say feed them to themselves, oops, I mean the sharks!
Dave
Yup, agreed. That's some seriously nice bit of tool there. I've skipped CS3 and CS4, looks like CS5 is the one to get ;-)
Dave
People are just well...lemmings. I remember when Ubuntu came out, and all the Gnome lovers came out of the woodworks to unite under the one distro to fight off the KDE ass kicking they were getting. I'm not a fan of Ubuntu for many reasons - I believe a distribution shouldn't favour one desktop environment over another, but should offer the major ones, and let users *choose* what they like. Kubuntu has been a p.o.s since the word dot, it's utter crap. And it's not officially part of Ubuntu either, it's a fork, using KDE. It's like a afterbirth variant of Ubuntu, but not done right.
Ubuntu has a strong sense (like Gnome) of dumbing things down, to the point of reducing the users ability to have any sane reasoning when it comes to configuring. It also looks ugly (to my eyes). GTK is horrid, always has been, always will be. There's a reason why you don't see many commercial applications using GTK, but many using QT. It's far easier to work with by all accounts, far more stable, and far nicer on the eye. Ubuntu's forums are horrid. I remember trying it on my laptop around a year ago. I dislike sudo, so I disabled it, and enabled su. This broke several of the Ubuntu administration tools. So, I posted a post asking if anyone had encountered this before and had any ideas. After 5 minutes (I had just joined the forums), I got an official warning from a mod for talking about disabling sudo! WTF!!!!!!!! I basically told the mod where to shove it and promptly uninstalled Ubuntu. I don't like, or recommend it.
I remember the good old days of Libranet - v3 shitted on Ubuntu. And it had a development team of just 2! I wish it had survived, and maybe the owner (Tal Danzig) had been smarter and better priced Libranet 3.
Dave
Yeah, that's a really good attitude towards your users. You know what most intelligent users are going to say to you don't you? You can shove your program where the sun don't shine.
This is the exact attitude that is a HUGE turnoff for every newbie Linux user. It's people like you who have killed the spirit in GNU/Linux and, I might add, done a lot of damage to the image.
Keep it up and you won't have many users in the western world. Sure, the poor might go for you and your software, but only until they develop and have the money to buy *real* software.
Dave
I totally agree with you. Sadly, most on here won't, because their l33t Linux users (or they think they are). Do you think Apple has its developers making decisions on UI etc? No way. I guarantee they have a dedicated UI department that designs the interfaces and then gives intructions to the development team to make those UIs come alive via programming. Programmers don't think like ordinary people. Programmers don't seem to mind complex. Or illogical. Ordinary users do.
It's sad to see you marked as a troll, but that's a sign of the pro Linux /. times we're in.
There's a reason why Linux is losing market to others (Windows 7/OS X) - because it's ugly and its' over complex to both install, use and administrate. There is no common logic to it. These very people who've voted your comment down are the cause of this, and the real reason why Linux is losing market share on the desktop (not that it had much to begin with). As a point of example, I was showing off my new MacBook Pro to a friend on Saturday night just gone, and he knows a bit about Macs and is also a Linux enthusiast and you know what he said? "You know, Linux has an expose like application, but they fucked with it so much that they ruined it". Apple got it right, didn't tinker with it just to show how l33t they are. Programming just because you can doesn't make it right. Programming to a defined logical purpose is an altogether different thing. This particular guy was a long time Ubuntu user and evangalist but has now switched (mostly) to Windows 7, because it not only looks good, but it's UI suits him better than Ubuntu's was. Interesting.
You can mod me down as a troll all you like, I don't really care. But, in Ten or so years, when Linux on the desktop is all but dead, and most developers have left it because there's no one to program for, you might understand what I'm saying. Ordinary users drive software. If you have the arrogance of most of the Linux kernel development community, and it seems, the Ubuntu community, and tell your ordinary users to piss off, then you'll lose them. Maybe not all of them, maybe not all of them in one go, but they will eventually move to other operating systems and designers that *listen*.
Dave
Amen. At least some Americans are starting to realise this.
Dave
I absolutely disagree with this. Governments should ALWAYS be FULLY accountable on EVERYTHING. Secrets breed mistrust. Governments are the servants of the people. Not themselves. Not business. The people. Period. The sooner the better when current forms of government are overpowered and replaced by governments that are for the people, and that respect the people. I don't give a shit about business. Tough shit, I'm sick and tired of the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer.
Dave
Obama's done SFA. He's the most boring US president in history. Sure, Bush Jr, fucked up [a lot], but at least he *did* something. Obama seems to be the American version of our own Kevin Rudd (who I nickname "krudd"). All talk, no action, doesn't give a fuck about the people, sides with big business. I'd like to see a average joe become president, not a wealthy businessman. Then, we might see some basic commonsense decisions and respect to the people.
Oh wait, you have a 2 party system that doesn't allow any other party to compete...monopoly anyone?
Dave
If I could mod you up, I would. In short, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Of course Obama (and every other politician on the western planet) would back the large corporations and wealthy. Us "average" person is an inconvenience to them, and if they could do away with us, they surely would.
I'm sad that I live in Australia, because we might as well be the 53rd state, we do everything that Herr Obama (and previous presidents) say. That means we'll get ACTA :-(
Dave
mmm I disagree. Watching free to air TV doesn't cost money. If one doesn't like the ads you can channel surf. Or just walk away from the TV for a few minutes. That's akin to blocking the ads in my books. I have one rule:
my computer, my rules. If I don't want cookies or ads or other shyte, then I'll sure as hell block it. If Ars Technica, or any other "popular" site doesn't like that, then no ones making them put up web content, are they? If it's such a terrible thing, they don't have to do it. People aren't holding a gun to their heads. Just close the website down and go do something else. Of course, me being smart, I know that these guys are *making* money, and this crying poor is just BS to get people to feel sorry for them, so that you don't disable ads and they make EVEN more money. I'm not gullible, and I'm sure as hell not stupid.
Dave
Yeah, but if we can't even reliably (and cheaply) get to the moon, we have no hope of Mars, or other planets for that matter, let alone extra sol planetary systems. We're stuck on this planet, and we're screwing it seriously. Obama has been like Australia's Kevin Rudd - all talk, no action. At least Bush Jr did something (admittedly not good, but he did *do* something). All Obama does is talk. He's the most unimpressive president I can remember. Inaction does more harm than bad action.
Dave
I hope realdvd has someone "hack" into their systems and steal the src code. hahaha. Would be nice to see this spreading around the world.
The easiest way for us to deal with the RIAA/MPAA/DMCA/corrupt US government is for *everyone* to start openly breaking this silly law. I mean everyone. Encourage children, parents, friends, family, everyone. Openly break the law. If 99.9% of the population is openly breaking the law, then either the law is stupid, the people don't want the law (and the government is meant to server the people I might add, that's who elects them). Are they seriously going to clog up the courts with millions and millions of people? Are they seriously going to start taking legal action against people and risk rebellion? Are they seriously going to start just murdering people who defy them? I think not. If everyone sticks together, these corrupt, filthy governments can be beaten.
I find the US political system a joke anyways. The laughing stock of the world.
Dave
You gotta be fucking kidding me, right? You *own* the land, you should be able to do whatever the freaking hell you want with it!
ffs governments have gotten out of hand.
Dave
I couldn't help myself *grins*
Dave
*yawn*. another day, another Linux kernel.
Dave