Actually it's "0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1", but in IPv6 you can represent a series of zero octets with a pair of colons. (You can only do it once though, beause otherwise how could you determine where the middle octet in "2002::19ef::127" is?)
Google also found a mention of a proposal to define::127:0:0:1 as an IPv4-compatible loopback address.
I would, but that's not one of the choices, so I guess I'll respond instead.
And that is why Microsoft must be sitting pretty, grinning to themselves - they have effectively nullified the main argument for going with OSS.
Are you the kind of person who clicks on the "Your internet connection is not optimized, buy our product" banners? Are you one of the 100 or so people who keeps spammers in business by buying the products they advertise? Do you pay protection money to guys that threaten to burn your house down? If so, then you're exactly the sucker SCO is looking for.
Neither Microsoft nor SCO have "nullified" anything. You are not obligated to buy a license from SCO because there has been no decision regarding any copyright infringement, trade secret disclosure, patent violation, or whatever the hell else SCO is claiming these days. They're shouting from the rooftops about seeking relief once they've had their day in court, and trying to shake down gullible businesses by promising they'll be exempt from any infringment claims when that day comes if they buy their Unixware license now, but it's all just smoke and mirrors.
If SCO wins against IBM (remember, those are the parties in this case), there is no existing precedent or law that says you as a Linux end user are obligated to pay SCO one thin dime. If IBM wronged SCO, then IBM is responsible for making restitution. Any other interpretation has dire ramifications for software licensing in general:
Adobe: "This company licenses Postscript for their laser printers, let's send letters to all of their customers saying they need to buy a Postscript license from us as well!"
Unisys(1): "Well, we didn't think we could go after GIF end users, but thanks to this court case, we can! Thanks SCO!"
IBM: "Since we own more patents than God, you might as well turn over all your earnings to us. We don't care who you originaly bought the product from."
I could care less what SCO thinks I "owe" them as a Linux end user. If they can prove that the Linux kernel has infringed code, I'll be the first in line to get the new 2.4.xx-scofree kernel release.
And if hell freezes over and some court decision makes it impossible to use Linux without paying SCO some kind of tribute...well, there are plenty of *BSDs out there. It'll take time for SCO to sue them all.
Jay (= (1) I know the GIF patent has expired in the U.S., I'm taking a little artistic license here. Pretend you live in Japan or something.
Am I now going to be fined thousands of dollars because of ONE wrong e-mail?
If you say your name is "Cheap Viagra Now", your email address is "clinton@whitehouse.gov", and you send your email through some AOL users' machine that you planted a Trojan horse on, yes.
It's about time people started to acknowledge this issue. While all fields (medicine, physics, philosophy...) have their own specialized jargons, as automobiles become more and more a part of every normal person's life, techspeak is going to prove a significant impediment to widespread automobile literacy.
A big part of the problem is that words in automobile lingo often refer to lower level concepts that normal users don't (and shouldn't have to) know about or understand. It should be possible to discuss the fuel efficiency of a car or truck without understanding how many gallons the gas tank holds or what engine capacity is, and to be able to discuss relative acceleration speeds of cars without understanding the role of torque and RPM in determining horsepower (or even what "RPM" stands for).
-----
In short, any field can sound confusing if you don't understand the basics behind it. (I used Google for a bunch of that above, and it probably shows...)
But it's not a matter of more slick marketing, since that's what got us into this mess in the first place. ("Megahertz, megahertz, megahertz!!") it's having people realize that some work is going to be required if you want to make the most of a technology.
How can you know whether or not you want to use a faster shutter speed and a wider f-stop to create a "freeze-frame" image with a clear subject and muddy background, as opposed to a small f-stop and a long shutter speed to capture motion and depth-of-field (or even understand why those might be important) if you don't learn the terminology?
What's that? What's fair for big companies is not fair for the little guy? Do tell...
Jay (=
Could there be a lesson? Not really
on
Sun's Last Stand
·
· Score: 1
The problem is, you're making the assumption that "Open Source" is a large, monolithic entity, like a corporation. It is not.
Slashdot and the "insta-pundit" sites are rife with people who talk a lot about the evils on MS and how "we" need to do X or replace Y, but 9 times out of 10 they're not the ones that are actually contributing to the movement. (Heck, you could probably lump me in that 9...)
There are a lot of people out there who could care less about MS that are just writing free/open software.
(Here's an ironic thought: isn't Microsoft guilty of exactly what you suggest? "We'll (help SCO) sue IBM! We'll undermine Java! We'll challenge Linux!" Wonder what that means...)
Is it possible to submit a patch to some backwater part of the kernel that improves upon something rather mundane, the kind of thing that doesn't get your picture on the "Top 10 Kernel Gurus" list and then have the identity of the submitter slowly slip away into the ether?
Or are the kernel submitters kept in some kind of list someplace along with the stuff they submitted?
Well, since the code in question was supposedly misappropriated by IBM, the real question is whether or not IBM keeps track of its in-house development. It's possible that IBM's contributions were submitted en masse to Linus and company.
And, since only "independant analysts" has seen the code, there's still no way to tell if the code in question isn't in hundred of textbooks around the world, or that SCO hasn't lifted the code from Linux (or that both came from some other source).
SCO's not really acting like it's interested in attempting to mitigate damages caused by copyright infringement (they sold their own Linux distribution for months after becoming aware of the alleged infringment), or even about getting compensation from IBM for improperly disclosing its trade secrets (this assumes the trade secrets don't actually belong to Novell in the first place).
SCO seems to think they'll either be able to make Linux go away or force everyone using Linux to buy an SCO license. They might succeed in the former, at least as far as corporate support and adoption, but the latter will never happen.
...because every time I read about some new security fix, hacking story, or exploit, I log into my web servers and download the security fixes for Debian stable.
(More often than not there's nothing to download, but last week there was a fix in the mime-support package, so you can never be too careful...)
If not for Slashdot and Microsoft, my servers might go for a week or two without updates. Thanks. guys!
Unless, of course, what SCO means by having the "contract rights" to Unix involves having the exclusive right to license the source (but if so, why didn't they say so?). And, how exactly would posessing the exclusive right to license be different from copyright itself?
It's different because SCO's agreement with Novell is a contract that can be renegotiated or terminated (non-sequitur: I wonder if Novell can use SCO's claims regarding Unix to claim breach of contract and yank those "exclusive rights"?) whereas Novell's rights under copyright are in extent until the expiration of the copyright -- that's 100 years for corporations, thanks DMCA!
When SCO is nothing but a bitter memory, Novell can contract those "exclusive rights" to IBM, Sun, Microsoft, or say "the heck with it" and release the code into the wild under an open-source license.
I feel that forcing developers to avoid technologies that are patent-encumbered will promote the Free Software agenda at the expense of freedom: freedom to create the very technologies that allowed Free Software to thrive in the first place!
There is nothing preventing proprietary software from competing in this space. They just can't force their only competition to be proprietary by allowing for patented technologies to be embedded in the "standard".
If they want to compete on quality of software, let them compete with free and open-source software as well.
Maybe you haven't seen the news that RMS is joining the IBM team.
Um, maybe you need to check your acronyms more carefully...
"OVER THE WEEKEND Linux and Main reported that IBM might be about to hire Eric S. Raymond as a trial consultant to assist with its defense against SCO's billion-dollar intellectual property lawsuit.
And how does this prove that Richard M. Stallman is now working for IBM?
...I was waiting for that CD to come back in at work before I could buy it again. But since I lsiten to all of my music on my Mac, I guess I won't be buying it. Or, worst case, I'll just download the tracks off of iTunes Music Store and make my own CD.
Yay, copy-protection technology; costing you more business than it will "save" you.
This is a rhetorical question : how can one possibly patent a 'feature' built into web-browsers?
He's not; he's patented the business method of directing traffic to web sites using popups, and using popups as exit surveys.
As far as thanking him for the popups go, I'll thank him more if he can C&D most of these sites into not using them anymore. (Of course, I never see them in Mozilla, but my wife's PC still uses IE...)
...I would love to see what the legislation submitted by Ms. Rosen looks like.
Please, please, please, someone has got to post a link to this monstrosity when it becomes public. (Although knowing Slashdot, I suspect I don't have to worry...)
Yeah, I'm one of those freaks that actually used Napster to find rare or out-of-print (or never-printed) tracks, or to preview CDs before I bought them. My music tastes range all over the place, and so I can't necessarily find someone who has the exact CD I'm looking for, and I've never liked using Kazaa for that kind of thing, what with mislabeled or partial files floating all over the place. Unlike some people on here, I don't have all the time in the world to hunt down music on P2P networks.
I see the iTunes music store as a way to preview an album before I buy and make my own rips; free 30-second previews of any track, and buy a track or two to listen to the whole song to see if I like.
Or I can use it to pick up those one or two tracks off of a CD when I don't want whole whole disc; the first two I bought were "Friends" by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow for my wife, and Eminem's "Lose Yourself" off of the 8 Mile soundtrack for myself.
This may not be the cheapest solution for online music buying, and I wish they offered the choice of MP3s so I can save myself the hassle or ripping them myself (it does look like it's possible to burn the AAC files onto a CD, so I can rip them on my PC for use in my Nomad), but it's just convenient enough to make it worth my while. (Heck, 90% of my music listening is done through iTunes anyway...)
However people who create software still need to be paid for their work, and the only way to do that is to control dissemination of the software.
That's simply not true. There are other ways to make money off of software; it's just that restricting dissemination and use of the software has been the laziest route to do so.
The development team typically has a thorough understanding of the software, and can offer customization and training for a price. There are always going to be people or organizations who will find value in paying someone for support of their software, either directly through support contracts or indirectly by training or certifying their in-house support personnel.
Open-source projects have also served as unofficial resumes for programmers, who have gotten jobs doing some other software development and continue to contribute their free time. (Linus at Transmeta, anyone?)
The people out in the field who contribute bug fixes and improvements in the course of their sysadmin duties are usually getting paid to support/administer those systems; each one who does is one less developer the core team has to pay for.
Hardware manufacturers contribute to porting open-source projects to their platforms; that development work is "paid for" by increasing the functionality of the hardware, making it more likely people will purchase the hardware.
All of these points have been made over and over ad nauseum; I can only assume you're clinging to your notion that "developers don't get paid if they give their software away" out of sheer stubbornness.
The problem with most open source advocatacy is that they don't address the second issue.
No, the problem is that you've made an arrogant assumption that restricting distribution is the only way to make money off of software, and won't listen to anyone who suggests otherwise.
Google is one of the best things about using the Web right now; reasonably accurate search results, simple design that keeps loading time/bandwidth down, NO POPUPS, and useful free addons such as the Google API and all of the trinkets it exposes.
If the company goes public (or should I say "goes.com"?), except all of these to change. Maybe not overnight, but they will change.
And all so some investors who aren't tired of the pump-n-dump can try to make a few bucks.
Jay (= (who longs for the good old days when people wanted stocks for the divdends they paid, not so they could trade them like Pokemon cards...)
Go out into the world and you'll see that real people (i.e. people who will be running the world in 20 years) don't really have the slightest idea what linux is. I know everyone on Slashdot and their friends know what Linux is and use it daily, but Joe Public MAYBE has heard about Linux from a friend of his who is a CS major.
And goes to their local Best Buy or CompUSA or Fry's to look for a copy. I know this because I get at least one or two new faces a week, of all ages, coming in to where I work (hint: it's one of the three places I just mentioned, out in the "real world" you claim to be an expert on) wanting to find out more about Linux.
Many customers stop when they hear it's not a Windows-compatible OS -- they're obviously only looking for a cheaper Windows. I also get the ones who are old DOS users, or haven't touched a PC in years, that are willing to give Linux a try. It's not a groundswell of public support by any means, but I am convinced that the Windows mindshare is starting to erode among the "Joe Public" crowd as well.
They're not all technophobes. They may be uneducated when it comes to modern computing, and feel like it's not worth the time and effort to switch to something else, but I'm beginning to think a good "consumer-oriented" Linux distro would be the one that blends a polished desktop environment (think Bluecurve) with a WINE implementation good enough to run all of the Windows-98 compatible greeting-card making / CD labelling / recipe-organizing / photo-editing programs that people I talk to daily are looking for.
They could re-organize the panels or redo the layout of thepage instead of outright shrinking the whole page. And I'm not talking about a pocket paperback, I'm talking about something similar to a paperback-sized version of the common hardcover novel format.
American adaptation of Japanese manga re-letters and in some cases, redoes the layout of the page to fit American comic-book sizes. I don't see this as any different.
American comics "fail" because American comic book publishers are hopelessly wedded to the superhero genre and are generally unwilling to take risks that will alienate their core "fanboy" market, a market that is predominantly male and ranges from teenagers to young adults. This is the conclusion I've come to after reading comics for nineteen years, reading trade publications for fourteen years, and actually running a comic book store for two and a half years.
They are stuck on the 22- to 32-page format that currently runs for about $3 each. $3 a pop for 32 pages? Even with the price of novels rising, a 200- to 300-page novel is still only about double that price. Granted, the paper quality is better in a comic book, but even though I can finish a 300-page novel in three to four hours of uninterrupted reading, it takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to read the typical comic book -- less if half of the pages are full-page "splash" panels.
The state of the industry for writers and artists at the big publishers isn't much better than the state of the industry for the music artists that Slashdot seems to rally behind whenever the RIAA opens its collective mouth. Writers and artists are seen as interchangeable cogs, to be hired and dismissed at the editor's discretion. In the 90's, creator-owned projects were starting to gain widespread acceptance in the comic book market; before then, creator-owned projects were thought of the purview of people who didn't have the talent to do "real" comic book work ("If he's such a great artist, why hasn't he ever drawn X-Men?") but now the trend is starting to backslide. There are small publishers that are willing to do primarily non-superhero, creator-owned books. Also note that I refer to these as "small" publishers.
Comic book publishers are unwilling to do any serious marketing or distribution outside of the circle of comic book retailers. In an essay, one comic book writer wondered how many copies of Fury (a recent revival of James Bond-esque Marvel Comics superspy Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.) Marvel Comics could sell if they stripped all of the comic-book art off of the cover of the book, put "FURY" in big bold letters on the cover with a.45 pistol and a tattered bullet-ridden American flag on the front, published in a normal novel-sized trade paperback form instead of the oversized comic-book TPB form, and got it into traditional bookstores under "Military Fiction" where people interested in military fiction might actually go to look for it.
Where are the Harry Potter-style comics for younger readers? What about comics for girls, like the Nancy Drew books my wife used to read incessantly when she was a child? There was a great comic back in the 90's called The Second Life of Doctor Mirage which had such a strong female readership that it actually had a soap opera actor as a guest character in the book. It died shortly after the publisher Valiant Comics decided it had to revamp its line to appeal to the fanboy market; now Valiant is owned by Acclaim which just uses the characters for videogames like X-O Manowar, the Turok series and Shadowman.
The only reason I still read and love comics is because there are stories there I can't find anywhere else. And I'm not talking about the superhero stuff, either.
I watched this last night (the short they released, not the trailer) saw some thing on it while my wife was watching Access Hollywood or ET...), it was neat animation and all, although the large format wasn't working, but the story wasn't that great. In fact it was actually quite disillusioning (is that a word?)- it seems like the humans were very mean to the robots - there was a robot holocaust and they were just defending themselves, trying to be free etc...so really what rights do the humans in The Matrix have to complain??? According to the short, they brought it on themselves.
No, they didn't. Given things like Agent Smith's comment that "entire crops were lost" when early incarnations of the Matrix failed, the humans in the Matrix were very likely grown by the machines for their power plant. The machines could be seen as abused children who are now lashing out at their children because that's all they understand about humans.
Either way, humans have an opportnity to break the cycle of violence; maybe Neo will figure that out in the last two movies. I kind of doubt it, because "can't we all just get along?" doesn't mesh well with awesome fight sequences...
Slashdot Mirror
Actually it's "0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1", but in IPv6 you can represent a series of zero octets with a pair of colons. (You can only do it once though, beause otherwise how could you determine where the middle octet in "2002::19ef::127" is?)
::127:0:0:1 as an IPv4-compatible loopback address.
Google also found a mention of a proposal to define
Jay (=
I would, but that's not one of the choices, so I guess I'll respond instead.
And that is why Microsoft must be sitting pretty, grinning to themselves - they have effectively nullified the main argument for going with OSS.
Are you the kind of person who clicks on the "Your internet connection is not optimized, buy our product" banners? Are you one of the 100 or so people who keeps spammers in business by buying the products they advertise? Do you pay protection money to guys that threaten to burn your house down? If so, then you're exactly the sucker SCO is looking for.
Neither Microsoft nor SCO have "nullified" anything. You are not obligated to buy a license from SCO because there has been no decision regarding any copyright infringement, trade secret disclosure, patent violation, or whatever the hell else SCO is claiming these days. They're shouting from the rooftops about seeking relief once they've had their day in court, and trying to shake down gullible businesses by promising they'll be exempt from any infringment claims when that day comes if they buy their Unixware license now, but it's all just smoke and mirrors.
If SCO wins against IBM (remember, those are the parties in this case), there is no existing precedent or law that says you as a Linux end user are obligated to pay SCO one thin dime. If IBM wronged SCO, then IBM is responsible for making restitution. Any other interpretation has dire ramifications for software licensing in general:
I could care less what SCO thinks I "owe" them as a Linux end user. If they can prove that the Linux kernel has infringed code, I'll be the first in line to get the new 2.4.xx-scofree kernel release.
And if hell freezes over and some court decision makes it impossible to use Linux without paying SCO some kind of tribute...well, there are plenty of *BSDs out there. It'll take time for SCO to sue them all.
Jay (=
(1) I know the GIF patent has expired in the U.S., I'm taking a little artistic license here. Pretend you live in Japan or something.
I think my roomate easily spent $200 just on the Star Wars DVD's.
Both of them???
That brings a whole new meaning to the term "sucker"...
Jay (=
Am I now going to be fined thousands of dollars because of ONE wrong e-mail?
If you say your name is "Cheap Viagra Now", your email address is "clinton@whitehouse.gov", and you send your email through some AOL users' machine that you planted a Trojan horse on, yes.
Jay (=
It's about time people started to acknowledge this issue. While all fields (medicine, physics, philosophy...) have their own specialized jargons, as automobiles become more and more a part of every normal person's life, techspeak is going to prove a significant impediment to widespread automobile literacy.
A big part of the problem is that words in automobile lingo often refer to lower level concepts that normal users don't (and shouldn't have to) know about or understand. It should be possible to discuss the fuel efficiency of a car or truck without understanding how many gallons the gas tank holds or what engine capacity is, and to be able to discuss relative acceleration speeds of cars without understanding the role of torque and RPM in determining horsepower (or even what "RPM" stands for).
-----
In short, any field can sound confusing if you don't understand the basics behind it. (I used Google for a bunch of that above, and it probably shows...)
But it's not a matter of more slick marketing, since that's what got us into this mess in the first place. ("Megahertz, megahertz, megahertz!!") it's having people realize that some work is going to be required if you want to make the most of a technology.
How can you know whether or not you want to use a faster shutter speed and a wider f-stop to create a "freeze-frame" image with a clear subject and muddy background, as opposed to a small f-stop and a long shutter speed to capture motion and depth-of-field (or even understand why those might be important) if you don't learn the terminology?
Jay (=
MS may be evil, but they never forced me to buy a new version of windows to get the latest web browser.
Well, not yet.
Jay (=
...I'll give Sen. Hatch's constituents the ability to attack machines containing "illegal" copyrighted material if, say, the entire Linux kernel dev team (and associated contributors) can DoS SCO's servers for continuing to distribute proprietary software that contains GPLed code in violation of the GPL.
What's that? What's fair for big companies is not fair for the little guy? Do tell...
Jay (=
The problem is, you're making the assumption that "Open Source" is a large, monolithic entity, like a corporation. It is not.
Slashdot and the "insta-pundit" sites are rife with people who talk a lot about the evils on MS and how "we" need to do X or replace Y, but 9 times out of 10 they're not the ones that are actually contributing to the movement. (Heck, you could probably lump me in that 9...)
There are a lot of people out there who could care less about MS that are just writing free/open software.
(Here's an ironic thought: isn't Microsoft guilty of exactly what you suggest? "We'll (help SCO) sue IBM! We'll undermine Java! We'll challenge Linux!" Wonder what that means...)
Jay (=
What? Should I tell all users of IE not to visit the site until they have the appropriate plug-in to view the advertisements?
Why not? It works with all of those Flash and Java adverts out there...
Jay
Is it possible to submit a patch to some backwater part of the kernel that improves upon something rather mundane, the kind of thing that doesn't get your picture on the "Top 10 Kernel Gurus" list and then have the identity of the submitter slowly slip away into the ether?
Or are the kernel submitters kept in some kind of list someplace along with the stuff they submitted?
Well, since the code in question was supposedly misappropriated by IBM, the real question is whether or not IBM keeps track of its in-house development. It's possible that IBM's contributions were submitted en masse to Linus and company.
And, since only "independant analysts" has seen the code, there's still no way to tell if the code in question isn't in hundred of textbooks around the world, or that SCO hasn't lifted the code from Linux (or that both came from some other source).
SCO's not really acting like it's interested in attempting to mitigate damages caused by copyright infringement (they sold their own Linux distribution for months after becoming aware of the alleged infringment), or even about getting compensation from IBM for improperly disclosing its trade secrets (this assumes the trade secrets don't actually belong to Novell in the first place).
SCO seems to think they'll either be able to make Linux go away or force everyone using Linux to buy an SCO license. They might succeed in the former, at least as far as corporate support and adoption, but the latter will never happen.
Jay
...because every time I read about some new security fix, hacking story, or exploit, I log into my web servers and download the security fixes for Debian stable.
(More often than not there's nothing to download, but last week there was a fix in the mime-support package, so you can never be too careful...)
If not for Slashdot and Microsoft, my servers might go for a week or two without updates. Thanks. guys!
Jay (=
Unless, of course, what SCO means by having the "contract rights" to Unix involves having the exclusive right to license the source (but if so, why didn't they say so?). And, how exactly would posessing the exclusive right to license be different from copyright itself?
It's different because SCO's agreement with Novell is a contract that can be renegotiated or terminated (non-sequitur: I wonder if Novell can use SCO's claims regarding Unix to claim breach of contract and yank those "exclusive rights"?) whereas Novell's rights under copyright are in extent until the expiration of the copyright -- that's 100 years for corporations, thanks DMCA!
When SCO is nothing but a bitter memory, Novell can contract those "exclusive rights" to IBM, Sun, Microsoft, or say "the heck with it" and release the code into the wild under an open-source license.
Jay (=
I feel that forcing developers to avoid technologies that are patent-encumbered will promote the Free Software agenda at the expense of freedom: freedom to create the very technologies that allowed Free Software to thrive in the first place!
There is nothing preventing proprietary software from competing in this space. They just can't force their only competition to be proprietary by allowing for patented technologies to be embedded in the "standard".
If they want to compete on quality of software, let them compete with free and open-source software as well.
Jay (=
Maybe you haven't seen the news that RMS is joining the IBM team.
Um, maybe you need to check your acronyms more carefully...
"OVER THE WEEKEND Linux and Main reported that IBM might be about to hire Eric S. Raymond as a trial consultant to assist with its defense against SCO's billion-dollar intellectual property lawsuit.
And how does this prove that Richard M. Stallman is now working for IBM?
Jay (=
...I was waiting for that CD to come back in at work before I could buy it again. But since I lsiten to all of my music on my Mac, I guess I won't be buying it. Or, worst case, I'll just download the tracks off of iTunes Music Store and make my own CD.
Yay, copy-protection technology; costing you more business than it will "save" you.
Jay
This is a rhetorical question : how can one possibly patent a 'feature' built into web-browsers?
He's not; he's patented the business method of directing traffic to web sites using popups, and using popups as exit surveys.
As far as thanking him for the popups go, I'll thank him more if he can C&D most of these sites into not using them anymore. (Of course, I never see them in Mozilla, but my wife's PC still uses IE...)
Jay
I used to consistently crash Mozilla on some Hotmail pages.
Is it me, or did the phrase "Hotmail isn't done until Mozilla won't run" run through anyone else's head when they read that?
Maybe Slashdot is affecting me more than I thought. (If this post turns up twice, we'll know for sure...)
Jay
...I would love to see what the legislation submitted by Ms. Rosen looks like.
Please, please, please, someone has got to post a link to this monstrosity when it becomes public. (Although knowing Slashdot, I suspect I don't have to worry...)
Jay
Yeah, I'm one of those freaks that actually used Napster to find rare or out-of-print (or never-printed) tracks, or to preview CDs before I bought them. My music tastes range all over the place, and so I can't necessarily find someone who has the exact CD I'm looking for, and I've never liked using Kazaa for that kind of thing, what with mislabeled or partial files floating all over the place. Unlike some people on here, I don't have all the time in the world to hunt down music on P2P networks.
I see the iTunes music store as a way to preview an album before I buy and make my own rips; free 30-second previews of any track, and buy a track or two to listen to the whole song to see if I like.
Or I can use it to pick up those one or two tracks off of a CD when I don't want whole whole disc; the first two I bought were "Friends" by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow for my wife, and Eminem's "Lose Yourself" off of the 8 Mile soundtrack for myself.
This may not be the cheapest solution for online music buying, and I wish they offered the choice of MP3s so I can save myself the hassle or ripping them myself (it does look like it's possible to burn the AAC files onto a CD, so I can rip them on my PC for use in my Nomad), but it's just convenient enough to make it worth my while. (Heck, 90% of my music listening is done through iTunes anyway...)
Jay
However people who create software still need to be paid for their work, and the only way to do that is to control dissemination of the software.
That's simply not true. There are other ways to make money off of software; it's just that restricting dissemination and use of the software has been the laziest route to do so.
The development team typically has a thorough understanding of the software, and can offer customization and training for a price. There are always going to be people or organizations who will find value in paying someone for support of their software, either directly through support contracts or indirectly by training or certifying their in-house support personnel.
Open-source projects have also served as unofficial resumes for programmers, who have gotten jobs doing some other software development and continue to contribute their free time. (Linus at Transmeta, anyone?)
The people out in the field who contribute bug fixes and improvements in the course of their sysadmin duties are usually getting paid to support/administer those systems; each one who does is one less developer the core team has to pay for.
Hardware manufacturers contribute to porting open-source projects to their platforms; that development work is "paid for" by increasing the functionality of the hardware, making it more likely people will purchase the hardware.
All of these points have been made over and over ad nauseum; I can only assume you're clinging to your notion that "developers don't get paid if they give their software away" out of sheer stubbornness.
The problem with most open source advocatacy is that they don't address the second issue.
No, the problem is that you've made an arrogant assumption that restricting distribution is the only way to make money off of software, and won't listen to anyone who suggests otherwise.
Jay (=
Google is one of the best things about using the Web right now; reasonably accurate search results, simple design that keeps loading time/bandwidth down, NO POPUPS, and useful free addons such as the Google API and all of the trinkets it exposes.
.com"?), except all of these to change. Maybe not overnight, but they will change.
If the company goes public (or should I say "goes
And all so some investors who aren't tired of the pump-n-dump can try to make a few bucks.
Jay (=
(who longs for the good old days when people wanted stocks for the divdends they paid, not so they could trade them like Pokemon cards...)
Go out into the world and you'll see that real people (i.e. people who will be running the world in 20 years) don't really have the slightest idea what linux is. I know everyone on Slashdot and their friends know what Linux is and use it daily, but Joe Public MAYBE has heard about Linux from a friend of his who is a CS major.
And goes to their local Best Buy or CompUSA or Fry's to look for a copy. I know this because I get at least one or two new faces a week, of all ages, coming in to where I work (hint: it's one of the three places I just mentioned, out in the "real world" you claim to be an expert on) wanting to find out more about Linux.
Many customers stop when they hear it's not a Windows-compatible OS -- they're obviously only looking for a cheaper Windows. I also get the ones who are old DOS users, or haven't touched a PC in years, that are willing to give Linux a try. It's not a groundswell of public support by any means, but I am convinced that the Windows mindshare is starting to erode among the "Joe Public" crowd as well.
They're not all technophobes. They may be uneducated when it comes to modern computing, and feel like it's not worth the time and effort to switch to something else, but I'm beginning to think a good "consumer-oriented" Linux distro would be the one that blends a polished desktop environment (think Bluecurve) with a WINE implementation good enough to run all of the Windows-98 compatible greeting-card making / CD labelling / recipe-organizing / photo-editing programs that people I talk to daily are looking for.
Jay (=
They could re-organize the panels or redo the layout of thepage instead of outright shrinking the whole page. And I'm not talking about a pocket paperback, I'm talking about something similar to a paperback-sized version of the common hardcover novel format.
American adaptation of Japanese manga re-letters and in some cases, redoes the layout of the page to fit American comic-book sizes. I don't see this as any different.
Jay
American comics "fail" because American comic book publishers are hopelessly wedded to the superhero genre and are generally unwilling to take risks that will alienate their core "fanboy" market, a market that is predominantly male and ranges from teenagers to young adults. This is the conclusion I've come to after reading comics for nineteen years, reading trade publications for fourteen years, and actually running a comic book store for two and a half years.
.45 pistol and a tattered bullet-ridden American flag on the front, published in a normal novel-sized trade paperback form instead of the oversized comic-book TPB form, and got it into traditional bookstores under "Military Fiction" where people interested in military fiction might actually go to look for it.
They are stuck on the 22- to 32-page format that currently runs for about $3 each. $3 a pop for 32 pages? Even with the price of novels rising, a 200- to 300-page novel is still only about double that price. Granted, the paper quality is better in a comic book, but even though I can finish a 300-page novel in three to four hours of uninterrupted reading, it takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to read the typical comic book -- less if half of the pages are full-page "splash" panels.
The state of the industry for writers and artists at the big publishers isn't much better than the state of the industry for the music artists that Slashdot seems to rally behind whenever the RIAA opens its collective mouth. Writers and artists are seen as interchangeable cogs, to be hired and dismissed at the editor's discretion. In the 90's, creator-owned projects were starting to gain widespread acceptance in the comic book market; before then, creator-owned projects were thought of the purview of people who didn't have the talent to do "real" comic book work ("If he's such a great artist, why hasn't he ever drawn X-Men?") but now the trend is starting to backslide. There are small publishers that are willing to do primarily non-superhero, creator-owned books. Also note that I refer to these as "small" publishers.
Comic book publishers are unwilling to do any serious marketing or distribution outside of the circle of comic book retailers. In an essay, one comic book writer wondered how many copies of Fury (a recent revival of James Bond-esque Marvel Comics superspy Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.) Marvel Comics could sell if they stripped all of the comic-book art off of the cover of the book, put "FURY" in big bold letters on the cover with a
Where are the Harry Potter-style comics for younger readers? What about comics for girls, like the Nancy Drew books my wife used to read incessantly when she was a child? There was a great comic back in the 90's called The Second Life of Doctor Mirage which had such a strong female readership that it actually had a soap opera actor as a guest character in the book. It died shortly after the publisher Valiant Comics decided it had to revamp its line to appeal to the fanboy market; now Valiant is owned by Acclaim which just uses the characters for videogames like X-O Manowar, the Turok series and Shadowman.
The only reason I still read and love comics is because there are stories there I can't find anywhere else. And I'm not talking about the superhero stuff, either.
Jay
I watched this last night (the short they released, not the trailer) saw some thing on it while my wife was watching Access Hollywood or ET...), it was neat animation and all, although the large format wasn't working, but the story wasn't that great. In fact it was actually quite disillusioning (is that a word?)- it seems like the humans were very mean to the robots - there was a robot holocaust and they were just defending themselves, trying to be free etc...so really what rights do the humans in The Matrix have to complain??? According to the short, they brought it on themselves.
No, they didn't. Given things like Agent Smith's comment that "entire crops were lost" when early incarnations of the Matrix failed, the humans in the Matrix were very likely grown by the machines for their power plant. The machines could be seen as abused children who are now lashing out at their children because that's all they understand about humans.
Either way, humans have an opportnity to break the cycle of violence; maybe Neo will figure that out in the last two movies. I kind of doubt it, because "can't we all just get along?" doesn't mesh well with awesome fight sequences...
Jay (=