I don't see why recoiledsnake was modded Troll. His point is completely valid - "using a different distribution method" is not a solution to "Apple prevents competition in the App Store" if the different distribution method involves removing most of your potential customer base.
I'm confused about why this is modded 'Funny'. My neighbor has an OpenMoko (at least, he'll have it until he gets his Android) and for the most part he likes it. Its firmware gets updated regularly and has an ever-expanding feature set. It isn't ready to be an iPhone killer, and might never be, but given enough time it could be relatively close.
Regarding MMS/SMS: It is far more expensive for me to use e-mail on my phone than to pay for unlimited texting. I pay $30 per month to get unlimited texts on all five lines of my plan - but paying for data, I'd pay $0.01 per KB on all five phones (separately). Data has the additional disadvantage of making me pay for each spam message I recieve - so if some spammer sends me an image, it costs me half a dollar instead of being free as it would be on the computer.
Which service, exactly, is trying to nickel-and-dime me to death?
As for phones in general, I paid $120 for my new Sony Ericsson w580i (including a 4GB memory card), $60 for the second (including memory card), and $30 for three more (including memory cards). I get to run any java app I want, I can write my own, I can bluetooth to my heart's content, I get great battery life and great reception, and I've got a 2.0 megapixel camera. It plays mp3s and m4as, and it has an FM receiver in it for those times when I'm tired of my own music collection. I can run MSN or AIM in the background without any perceptible slowdown (and it uses my unlimited SMS instead of the pricey data).
The cheapest iPhone is $199 (times five makes it $1000 if I had gotten five iPhones instead), and what extra would I get out of it? Internet access? That requires paying for the unlimited data plan for each line, so I would have quickly lost money every month on that.
You can espouse the virtues of the iPhone all day if you want, but it doesn't mean your opinion is the only one that matters.
Nielsen's data is used to determine which shows to air and which to cancel - feeding them lies will get your favorite shows canceled and the crappy reality shows played over and over and over. Please don't do that. Just say no if they ask.
As far as I'm aware, companies can't call cell phone numbers for surveys and such. Since I have no landline and since I plan on never having a landline, it is quite impossible to end up in one of Nielsen's surveys - and I watch quite a bit of TV (including ads, I don't have DVR/Tivo).
Aside from not having a landline, I'm the perfect candidate to represent the nerdy ad-watching audience that could keep shows like Firefly on the air. Too bad it will never happen.
I think some of those sentences are malformed. It's too late... I'm going to bed.
I didn't say you needed to reach for the manual all the time, I just said that *I* did/do;)
I'm still somewhat unfamiliar with cross-platform IDEs, and my first tentative foray into Linux-based IDEs was several years ago (before Intellisense-like systems had made it in to OSS projects), so I just thought I'd give some perspective. I'm glad that most IDEs will do what I need nowadays though.
Just to provide some perspective from the other side of the fence (I'm primarily a Win32 programmer)... The biggest issue for me is intellisense (do they call that autocompletion in the OSS world?). Yeah, Visual C++ 6.0 spoiled me. I've been training myself to use a plain editor lately (since I've done more Linux programming in recent days).
So when I ask around for an IDE, I'm mostly asking for three things (in order of least to greatest importance):
Can it run the language's compiler/interpreter without having to switch to a command prompt?
Does it have an integrated debugger for the language?
Does it have intellisense for at least the standard libraries and the currently loaded project?
Maybe it means my brain is broken - but I have pulled up cppreference.com hundreds of times because I couldn't remember some little thing like the order of parameters to a function, or what exactly some flag is named. Intellisense solves that problem quickly by simply showing me as I type what the parameters are that I need.
A bonus for me in an IDE, now that I'm trying to switch over to Linux (or at least cross-platform) programming, would be support for makefiles. I'd still like to be able to run make from the command line... There was one that I used briefly that did pretty much all of this (Intellisense, makefiles, integration with GDB, automatic in-IDE compilation) but I don't remember what it's called. I think it started with an A...
I think this is a very good solution - I hope an enterprising denizen of slashdot can get your idea to someone at Mozilla who can do something about it....
The GPL itself isn't an EULA, no matter how a program may present it...
In other words, if I say "Here's my program's EULA" and I show you the GPL, that doesn't make the GPL an EULA - the GPL is about distribution, not use. All those programs that present the GPL as an EULA are wrong.
As others have stated, you don't need to agree to the GPL in order to use GPL-licensed software. You only need to agree to the GPL if you're going to distribute GPL-licensed software.
You, sir, just made my day:) I didn't know other people actually remembered Sliders...
I should mention that I've been watching Sliders again on Netflix. Their online viewer is kinda crappy, and it's IE-only, but it has only bluescreened my machine once;)
I've never been a fan of the ACLU's methods. They seem to support whatever cause is in the media at the moment rather than the issues that actually need to be addressed.
One of the biggest reasons my employer let me switch their file downloads from their dedicated server to Amazon S3 is reliability (the other being cost). With our own dedicated server we have to take care of hard drive failures, manage service uptime, and so on. Amazon takes care of all that stuff for us.
Verizon Math, anyone? Come on, I thought this was well-known.
And regarding AT&T, all you have to do is call and they'll often waive stuff. I recently got them to waive the $18 phone upgrade fee (which is bogus anyway) and the $36 switch-number-from-Verizon fee (which I was told would be free).
You were marked Flamebait but in general I happen to agree with you. Our society is getting worse and worse - this fascination with lawsuits is a perfect example of it. People sue McDonald's for serving hot coffee hot - and win! A thief cuts himself falling through a skylight and landing on a knife left out on the counter - then he sues the homeowner for medical bills... and wins!
It's sad that Slashdot has degraded to the point that mentioning the sad state of our society warrants being modded Flamebait.
When I added four lines to my cell phone account, the salesperson made me listen to the spiel about monthly fees and charges and limits once for every single line, even though I bought them all from the same person and they remembered me. I don't think I can say I wasn't informed of what the fees would be.
On the other hand, a few days ago I got my August bill and it was quite a bit higher than usual. They had charged me for switching my wife's number over from Verizon (the salesperson said it would be free) and they had charged me for half a month's service on two deactivated lines. One call resolved that.
And here's a "protip" for those of you who take advantage of their "upgrade" offers near the end of your contract. They'll charge you an $18 upgrade fee on your next bill. Call them and ask why. They'll give you some nonsense about activating it in the system. At this point, explain how SIM cards work and make sure they understand that swapping a SIM card to a new phone requires exactly zero intervention from them; in fact they don't even need to know about it. Go on to say "If that's your reason, I want a refund for the fee because your reason is a blatant lie." If the person on the other end of the line is anything like the person I talked to, you'll get your $18 back.
As far as I'm aware, there was never a credit check run on me when I signed up for cell service. I didn't have *any* credit at the time. There was definitely no credit check run when I added four more lines to my plan.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see why recoiledsnake was modded Troll. His point is completely valid - "using a different distribution method" is not a solution to "Apple prevents competition in the App Store" if the different distribution method involves removing most of your potential customer base.
I'm confused about why this is modded 'Funny'. My neighbor has an OpenMoko (at least, he'll have it until he gets his Android) and for the most part he likes it. Its firmware gets updated regularly and has an ever-expanding feature set. It isn't ready to be an iPhone killer, and might never be, but given enough time it could be relatively close.
There's a simple solution to your dilemma: buy an iPod Touch and switch to a free(ish) crappy phone for your communication needs.
Regarding MMS/SMS: It is far more expensive for me to use e-mail on my phone than to pay for unlimited texting. I pay $30 per month to get unlimited texts on all five lines of my plan - but paying for data, I'd pay $0.01 per KB on all five phones (separately). Data has the additional disadvantage of making me pay for each spam message I recieve - so if some spammer sends me an image, it costs me half a dollar instead of being free as it would be on the computer.
Which service, exactly, is trying to nickel-and-dime me to death?
As for phones in general, I paid $120 for my new Sony Ericsson w580i (including a 4GB memory card), $60 for the second (including memory card), and $30 for three more (including memory cards). I get to run any java app I want, I can write my own, I can bluetooth to my heart's content, I get great battery life and great reception, and I've got a 2.0 megapixel camera. It plays mp3s and m4as, and it has an FM receiver in it for those times when I'm tired of my own music collection. I can run MSN or AIM in the background without any perceptible slowdown (and it uses my unlimited SMS instead of the pricey data).
The cheapest iPhone is $199 (times five makes it $1000 if I had gotten five iPhones instead), and what extra would I get out of it? Internet access? That requires paying for the unlimited data plan for each line, so I would have quickly lost money every month on that.
You can espouse the virtues of the iPhone all day if you want, but it doesn't mean your opinion is the only one that matters.
Nielsen isn't a public institution.
Nielsen's data is used to determine which shows to air and which to cancel - feeding them lies will get your favorite shows canceled and the crappy reality shows played over and over and over. Please don't do that. Just say no if they ask.
The content of the Harry Potter books is also public information. Would you argue that the Harry Potter series can't be copyrighted?
As far as I'm aware, companies can't call cell phone numbers for surveys and such. Since I have no landline and since I plan on never having a landline, it is quite impossible to end up in one of Nielsen's surveys - and I watch quite a bit of TV (including ads, I don't have DVR/Tivo).
Aside from not having a landline, I'm the perfect candidate to represent the nerdy ad-watching audience that could keep shows like Firefly on the air. Too bad it will never happen.
I think some of those sentences are malformed. It's too late... I'm going to bed.
I didn't say you needed to reach for the manual all the time, I just said that *I* did/do ;)
I'm still somewhat unfamiliar with cross-platform IDEs, and my first tentative foray into Linux-based IDEs was several years ago (before Intellisense-like systems had made it in to OSS projects), so I just thought I'd give some perspective. I'm glad that most IDEs will do what I need nowadays though.
Just to provide some perspective from the other side of the fence (I'm primarily a Win32 programmer)... The biggest issue for me is intellisense (do they call that autocompletion in the OSS world?). Yeah, Visual C++ 6.0 spoiled me. I've been training myself to use a plain editor lately (since I've done more Linux programming in recent days).
So when I ask around for an IDE, I'm mostly asking for three things (in order of least to greatest importance):
Maybe it means my brain is broken - but I have pulled up cppreference.com hundreds of times because I couldn't remember some little thing like the order of parameters to a function, or what exactly some flag is named. Intellisense solves that problem quickly by simply showing me as I type what the parameters are that I need.
A bonus for me in an IDE, now that I'm trying to switch over to Linux (or at least cross-platform) programming, would be support for makefiles. I'd still like to be able to run make from the command line... There was one that I used briefly that did pretty much all of this (Intellisense, makefiles, integration with GDB, automatic in-IDE compilation) but I don't remember what it's called. I think it started with an A...
I think this is a very good solution - I hope an enterprising denizen of slashdot can get your idea to someone at Mozilla who can do something about it....
The GPL itself isn't an EULA, no matter how a program may present it...
In other words, if I say "Here's my program's EULA" and I show you the GPL, that doesn't make the GPL an EULA - the GPL is about distribution, not use. All those programs that present the GPL as an EULA are wrong.
As others have stated, you don't need to agree to the GPL in order to use GPL-licensed software. You only need to agree to the GPL if you're going to distribute GPL-licensed software.
Mine? I didn't give one :P But I see your point, and if the occasion arises I will use an IP in the reserved space as my example.
If I were giving a random example IP, I'd certainly choose an obviously invalid one.
You, sir, just made my day :) I didn't know other people actually remembered Sliders...
I should mention that I've been watching Sliders again on Netflix. Their online viewer is kinda crappy, and it's IE-only, but it has only bluescreened my machine once ;)
I've never been a fan of the ACLU's methods. They seem to support whatever cause is in the media at the moment rather than the issues that actually need to be addressed.
One of the biggest reasons my employer let me switch their file downloads from their dedicated server to Amazon S3 is reliability (the other being cost). With our own dedicated server we have to take care of hard drive failures, manage service uptime, and so on. Amazon takes care of all that stuff for us.
Apple should have debugged it on a vista box
Fixed that for you.
i know not everyone can get away with it but i can...
Why, are you the company president's son?
Verizon Math, anyone? Come on, I thought this was well-known.
And regarding AT&T, all you have to do is call and they'll often waive stuff. I recently got them to waive the $18 phone upgrade fee (which is bogus anyway) and the $36 switch-number-from-Verizon fee (which I was told would be free).
You were marked Flamebait but in general I happen to agree with you. Our society is getting worse and worse - this fascination with lawsuits is a perfect example of it. People sue McDonald's for serving hot coffee hot - and win! A thief cuts himself falling through a skylight and landing on a knife left out on the counter - then he sues the homeowner for medical bills... and wins!
It's sad that Slashdot has degraded to the point that mentioning the sad state of our society warrants being modded Flamebait.
When I added four lines to my cell phone account, the salesperson made me listen to the spiel about monthly fees and charges and limits once for every single line, even though I bought them all from the same person and they remembered me. I don't think I can say I wasn't informed of what the fees would be.
On the other hand, a few days ago I got my August bill and it was quite a bit higher than usual. They had charged me for switching my wife's number over from Verizon (the salesperson said it would be free) and they had charged me for half a month's service on two deactivated lines. One call resolved that.
And here's a "protip" for those of you who take advantage of their "upgrade" offers near the end of your contract. They'll charge you an $18 upgrade fee on your next bill. Call them and ask why. They'll give you some nonsense about activating it in the system. At this point, explain how SIM cards work and make sure they understand that swapping a SIM card to a new phone requires exactly zero intervention from them; in fact they don't even need to know about it. Go on to say "If that's your reason, I want a refund for the fee because your reason is a blatant lie." If the person on the other end of the line is anything like the person I talked to, you'll get your $18 back.
But, as always, YMMV.
As far as I'm aware, there was never a credit check run on me when I signed up for cell service. I didn't have *any* credit at the time. There was definitely no credit check run when I added four more lines to my plan.
For the record, the Gentoo Handbook recommends ext3 as the default ;)