Best -- many pieces of proprietary software are technically superior to free software. If you value your freedom, you will say no to these too.
the few bits of proprietary software I run (after buying them) on my Linux box, notably BibblePro and Antidote are there because : - I find them superior to the open/free equivalent and - They don't lock me into anything since they don't create any proprietary format (except maybe the settings for the Bibble conversions, but that doesn't matter much since I have the original and the end results)
I wouldn't use software that lock my data into a proprietary format (like MS Office, especially when I don't have a need for its integrated features), but for some utilities and games I really don't have the slightest problem with it.
This kind of extremism reminds me of those people who wouldn't run X11 because it was for weenies and real users would make do with a VT100 and screen.
I'm all for freedom, have been running Linux and BSD for close to 15 years now and in my opinion there's room enough for everybody in the ecosystem.
Comcast is whining about it, but they're effectively been told off and punished for not disclosing to their customers what they were doing to paid services. It really says a lot about the company that they're complaining that they have to inform their customers before they make significant service changes. Hell if customers should be informed and able to make competent purchasing decisions... informed and self-interested customers would utterly destroy Comcast's entire business model.
Isn't standard practice of "informing" customers to just add something in the sales contract to the effect of :
"This contract might be changed at any time by publishing addendums and corrections to http://www.exampleisp.invalid/salestermsN where N is a 128 bit integer that is randomised every half second"
It may be annoying, but they have to stick with that stupid 8.3 naming thing for hysterical raisins. Things that read camera cards aren't required to understand FAT32....
I sometimes wonder if centuries from now people still won't have to make do with 8.3 files popping here and there because of some stupid FAT compatibility leftover.
My wife is a pro-photographer and takes like, 500+ images per job, and, we had the $3000 dual G5 Mac and Aperature and Aperature yakked and we lost a year of work because Aperature's doesn't generate unique filenames for its images across subdirectories and when you export it overlays them...
Is this Aperture or the camera ? Most cameras can be set to number their files sequentially or to renumber them from 0 on every new card.
I tried plugging her camera into the trusty Linux box last with OpenSuse 10, and it was like flying into total darkness. Now that you've jogged my memory a bit, I'll have to try it now that I'm onto Ubuntu.
You do know that you'd get much higher transfer speeds with a card reader (which incidentally always works on anything) ?
There's also digikam which does a *lot* of things including management, basic editing and raw processing (although I do that last bit in Bibble). It's Qt but will run fine on a Gnome desktop.
Sounds to me more like lying, what with the two stances being exact opposites.
Don't be silly, when the lawyers are done fighting we'll find out it's all a big misunderstanding. Why, I'm sure a few years from now we'll all laugh about it.
Which is worse, McCain skipping, or Obama present and voting yea?
You have to remember that thanks to the wonderful world of politics, both candidates are now going to work to gather people who hold views who are sometimes quite far from their own, while at the same time trying not to alienate their own base.
So you'll get candidate X hugging Ecocide Inc. while vouching for cleaner water and candidate Y making strong declarations on the Iraqi mess while brown nosing generals (do you brown nose generals ? I'm not familiar with US military etiquette).
Anyway now that they're both (we all know that the US, unlike other democracies only gets to candidates) decided upon, they can start to act up. Which is what they all do because they need *some* votes from the (so called) other side.
And then your "journalists" (although worldwide journalism is busy aligning on your quality requirements, which seem to be that a goat wouldn't die of boredom in front of a TV news shore) finally get to the candidates and to the *real* issues : religion, sex (as in what sex the partner should be, and whether it would be a good idea to stone him - in a masculine neutral way) and whether it's ok to kill people who speak funny, have a tan and lots of oil. Provided that they're poor but look cruel (those white eyes in a tanned face with a towel on top, looks great on TV, frown a bit, now turn your head to catch the light) and there's an excuse that flies ("um, Mr President, it's been done before, but 'Think of the children' always works"... except we need a new twist, what about "Don't let them eat our children ?" "What ? They want to eat children ?" "Well, not as such, but we have those rendered images from the NSA based from old ILM software, it'll be an instant hit").
When you have that large a juggernaut as the US, how do you stop it or even steer it ? Do you think that standing in front of it waving in front of it waving your arms will amount to anything ? Beyond a smear that is ?
Most of the world sees the US as a machine that has run astray. However the machine is so large, and there are so many cogs, and so many... gremlins...
It is said that there are few places in the US armed forces where you can be promoted if you aren't the right kind of christian. If this is true, then no part of the US armed forces are trustworthy. And this is so serious it's mind boggling. If you have to be part of a specific religious group to be part of the management of a very major chunk of the planet's military hardware... Be afraid.
As a European who has travelled a bit in the US, who has *numerous* US friends, including a lot of "euro-refugees", I ran into a *lot* of people that were on the *far* side of weird every time I went there.
I mean I like the US, I like the people, they're great, they're nice they're friendly. But what's wrong with you ? Someone says "fuck" on TV and it's a revolution ? I've seen boards where teens looked for *hours* at the rendered tits in Beowulf because your country is completely obsessed with sex ?
Any beach in Europe will have 1/4th of the women going topless. And *nobody* *cares*
Please US, Grow up. The planet asks it of you. Not just a drunken me.
Actually he *really* was born in 604 BC and died much later than is usually believed although it's usually kept very hush hush. He also sold the recipe of Marmite to the British and later helped designed the Colossus during WWII.
That only makes the quoted prices worse. People in the UK and EU are looking for a 100 Euro or Pound notebook.
Theoretically we ought to be expecting something like that (hah), but we know that any $300 laptop will turn into 350 € laptop *if we're lucky*. Typically most vendors make some kind of reverse currency conversion and $300 are more like 450 €...
I don't think they are paying for support. I think Canonical support costs more than $20.
Regular prices from Canonical are $250 (USD) for 9x5 (not sure what that's supposed to be, 9 hours per day, mon to fri ?) or $900 24x7. As quoted at http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid I suppose that a retailer could strike a support deal for lower prices but USD 20 seems to be a bit on the low side.
Except the tazers make for an easy way out when just talking would solve many such situations.
As soon as someone crosses the line, i.e. refuses to leave a building when security or a cop tells them to, walks out into the street with a knive and won't drop it, etc., they run the risk of having physical force applied to them.
Physical force should be the last issue, not the default just because it's easier. That's what the Gestapo you refer to used to do (and many people around here actually got to meet them).
I think it was meant as "tongue in cheek" (aka "not really a joke... except maybe").
All those supposedly non lethal weapons which happen to be way too often are "feel good" solutions to a problem that will not go away anyway.
A guy that doesn't speak the language in an airport ? Taze him. A guy acting up in a political meeting ? Taze him. Any problem ? Taze it. And again. Talk ? What's that ?
But Chief, why should we talk ? We have Tazers ! Sure, we overuse them. But think of the children. And some of those people could be terrorists !
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Best -- many pieces of proprietary software are technically superior to free software. If you value your freedom, you will say no to these too.
the few bits of proprietary software I run (after buying them) on my Linux box, notably BibblePro and Antidote are there because :
- I find them superior to the open/free equivalent and
- They don't lock me into anything since they don't create any proprietary format (except maybe the settings for the Bibble conversions, but that doesn't matter much since I have the original and the end results)
I wouldn't use software that lock my data into a proprietary format (like MS Office, especially when I don't have a need for its integrated features), but for some utilities and games I really don't have the slightest problem with it.
This kind of extremism reminds me of those people who wouldn't run X11 because it was for weenies and real users would make do with a VT100 and screen.
I'm all for freedom, have been running Linux and BSD for close to 15 years now and in my opinion there's room enough for everybody in the ecosystem.
Comcast is whining about it, but they're effectively been told off and punished for not disclosing to their customers what they were doing to paid services. It really says a lot about the company that they're complaining that they have to inform their customers before they make significant service changes.
Hell if customers should be informed and able to make competent purchasing decisions... informed and self-interested customers would utterly destroy Comcast's entire business model.
Isn't standard practice of "informing" customers to just add something in the sales contract to the effect of :
"This contract might be changed at any time by publishing addendums and corrections to http://www.exampleisp.invalid/salestermsN where N is a 128 bit integer that is randomised every half second"
It may be annoying, but they have to stick with that stupid 8.3 naming thing for hysterical raisins. Things that read camera cards aren't required to understand FAT32....
I sometimes wonder if centuries from now people still won't have to make do with 8.3 files popping here and there because of some stupid FAT compatibility leftover.
My wife is a pro-photographer and takes like, 500+ images per job, and, we had the $3000 dual G5 Mac and Aperature and Aperature yakked and we lost a year of work because Aperature's doesn't generate unique filenames for its images across subdirectories and when you export it overlays them...
Is this Aperture or the camera ? Most cameras can be set to number their files sequentially or to renumber them from 0 on every new card.
I tried plugging her camera into the trusty Linux box last with OpenSuse 10, and it was like flying into total darkness. Now that you've jogged my memory a bit, I'll have to try it now that I'm onto Ubuntu.
You do know that you'd get much higher transfer speeds with a card reader (which incidentally always works on anything) ?
There's also digikam which does a *lot* of things including management, basic editing and raw processing (although I do that last bit in Bibble). It's Qt but will run fine on a Gnome desktop.
Sounds to me more like lying, what with the two stances being exact opposites.
Don't be silly, when the lawyers are done fighting we'll find out it's all a big misunderstanding. Why, I'm sure a few years from now we'll all laugh about it.
Which is worse, McCain skipping, or Obama present and voting yea?
You have to remember that thanks to the wonderful world of politics, both candidates are now going to work to gather people who hold views who are sometimes quite far from their own, while at the same time trying not to alienate their own base.
So you'll get candidate X hugging Ecocide Inc. while vouching for cleaner water and candidate Y making strong declarations on the Iraqi mess while brown nosing generals (do you brown nose generals ? I'm not familiar with US military etiquette).
Anyway now that they're both (we all know that the US, unlike other democracies only gets to candidates) decided upon, they can start to act up. Which is what they all do because they need *some* votes from the (so called) other side.
And then your "journalists" (although worldwide journalism is busy aligning on your quality requirements, which seem to be that a goat wouldn't die of boredom in front of a TV news shore) finally get to the candidates and to the *real* issues : religion, sex (as in what sex the partner should be, and whether it would be a good idea to stone him - in a masculine neutral way) and whether it's ok to kill people who speak funny, have a tan and lots of oil. Provided that they're poor but look cruel (those white eyes in a tanned face with a towel on top, looks great on TV, frown a bit, now turn your head to catch the light) and there's an excuse that flies ("um, Mr President, it's been done before, but 'Think of the children' always works"... except we need a new twist, what about "Don't let them eat our children ?" "What ? They want to eat children ?" "Well, not as such, but we have those rendered images from the NSA based from old ILM software, it'll be an instant hit").
When you have that large a juggernaut as the US, how do you stop it or even steer it ? Do you think that standing in front of it waving in front of it waving your arms will amount to anything ? Beyond a smear that is ?
Most of the world sees the US as a machine that has run astray. However the machine is so large, and there are so many cogs, and so many... gremlins...
It is said that there are few places in the US armed forces where you can be promoted if you aren't the right kind of christian. If this is true, then no part of the US armed forces are trustworthy. And this is so serious it's mind boggling. If you have to be part of a specific religious group to be part of the management of a very major chunk of the planet's military hardware... Be afraid.
As a European who has travelled a bit in the US, who has *numerous* US friends, including a lot of "euro-refugees", I ran into a *lot* of people that were on the *far* side of weird every time I went there.
I mean I like the US, I like the people, they're great, they're nice they're friendly. But what's wrong with you ? Someone says "fuck" on TV and it's a revolution ? I've seen boards where teens looked for *hours* at the rendered tits in Beowulf because your country is completely obsessed with sex ?
Any beach in Europe will have 1/4th of the women going topless. And *nobody* *cares*
Please US, Grow up. The planet asks it of you. Not just a drunken me.
You'll be in the same boat soon.
Remember You've always been at war with eurasia and due to unexpected attacks the chocolate ration has been lowered.
No it hasn't ! I just checked in the paper !
And it's Eastasia you insensitive clod, who do you think you're fooling ?
Although, now that you mention it... nah...
I'm sure you're all feeling a little bit better now right ?
Um, right ?
We should be learning about longevity from people like this.
Actually he *really* was born in 604 BC and died much later than is usually believed although it's usually kept very hush hush. He also sold the recipe of Marmite to the British and later helped designed the Colossus during WWII.
And don't quote me I'll deny everything anyway.
Ask Aubrey de Grey About Longevity Research
So, um, Mr de Grey, what can you tell us about longevity research ?
(damn, I should have taken that job at the beach)
Speak for yourself. I'm running Web 2.3 beta 5, and it's nice to have a numeric metric that proves how much I'm ahead of the rest of you chumps.
Oh, you've heard of the Web ? I've heard of the Web too !
Wait, what was the article about again ?
Also, if you read the PDF of the letter mentioned, it is about technical limitations of U.S. government support for internet access.
Come on, we're reading the comments already, we can't read *everything*, what's wrong with you.
If it's on /. it has to be true. They have editors after all. (cough cough)
No no, this makes perfect sense.
Housewives don't play video games and download a bajillion "utilities". Geeks do.
And that's why as a Geek I'm getting the Windows version. I want to run Crysis and Assassin's Creed and, um, wait...
Quick, buy technology product before it goes up in price!
I'm glad I did, just try finding a 368SX16 nowadays, or a Tseng ET1000 even. My grandchildren will be glad I acted when the market was just starting.
That only makes the quoted prices worse. People in the UK and EU are looking for a 100 Euro or Pound notebook.
Theoretically we ought to be expecting something like that (hah), but we know that any $300 laptop will turn into 350 € laptop *if we're lucky*.
Typically most vendors make some kind of reverse currency conversion and $300 are more like 450 €...
I don't think they are paying for support. I think Canonical support costs more than $20.
Regular prices from Canonical are $250 (USD) for 9x5 (not sure what that's supposed to be, 9 hours per day, mon to fri ?) or $900 24x7. As quoted at http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid
I suppose that a retailer could strike a support deal for lower prices but USD 20 seems to be a bit on the low side.
Ubuntu may be free, but MP3, CD, WMA, and MPEG playback aren't.
In what way is CD playback not free?
You have to buy CDRs to burn your MP3s first ?
Except the tazers make for an easy way out when just talking would solve many such situations.
As soon as someone crosses the line, i.e. refuses to leave a building when security or a cop tells them to, walks out into the street with a knive and won't drop it, etc., they run the risk of having physical force applied to them.
Physical force should be the last issue, not the default just because it's easier. That's what the Gestapo you refer to used to do (and many people around here actually got to meet them).
Few old timers around it seems :)
I think it was meant as "tongue in cheek" (aka "not really a joke... except maybe").
All those supposedly non lethal weapons which happen to be way too often are "feel good" solutions to a problem that will not go away anyway.
A guy that doesn't speak the language in an airport ? Taze him. A guy acting up in a political meeting ? Taze him. Any problem ? Taze it. And again.
Talk ? What's that ?
But Chief, why should we talk ? We have Tazers ! Sure, we overuse them. But think of the children. And some of those people could be terrorists !
They're being overused as a compliance tool instead of their intended purpose, which was to prevent acute lead poisoning.
With the added bonus of :
"I didn't mean to kill him, I just used the Tazer (wink wink)".
"Oh, all right then"
And can you even pinpoint a "taze" (sic) to an individual unit ?
RTFA, they created a new stable DNA molecule with four bases that are each similar to but different from the bases found in natural DNA.
But they use, uh, *synthetic* carbon !
Just like the carbon they make plastic with ! (no, really !) Those atoms, they're spooky !
Hey, we were supposed to wait until September before publishing that ! Didn't you get the memo ?