The technical details surrounding how the apps are implemented are obviously irrelevant to the discussion of whether two apps compete. In this case, they are both browsers, so yeah, they compete even though one of the browsers is severely limited. There are several other browsers in the App Store, too, and they all "compete."
Well, it's easy to prop up the straw man who is telling us the free market has no flaws. I'm still trying to figure out why anybody thinks a powerful government is ultimately good for civil and human rights when the history of the world tells a drastically different story. Said more bluntly, nobody is arguing that the free market is perfect, but many governments with too much power cause more pain on a daily basis than any private venture ever did.
Once again Microsoft chooses to litigate instead of innovate. I guess Bing didn't crush Google quite as firmly as Microsoft hoped...
I don't know what Microsoft expected with Bing, but I would guess that they are more than pleased with the marketshare they have been able to grab. Some of the things they've had to do to get that marketshare has been quite lame (deals with Verizon, etc), but I would be surprised if Bing's success has not already exceeded their expectations.
The designers of the CDDL may have had some sort of agenda against the GPL, but the fact remains; when it comes to license compatibility issues in general, it is the GPL which is decidedly incompatible with every other license. The CDDL would be the rare exception of a license that is incompatible with the GPL on purpose, and Sun obviously had business reasons to do it. Therefore, while the GP is very probably wrong in asserting that Sun uses the CDDL because they hate GPL restrictions, he is also probably correct (from what I've seen) that some GPL advocates tend to view those who choose a non-GPL license as trying to thwart GNU and/or Linux so they don't have to admit that maybe other licenses have terms and conditions that have their own merit.
World of Warcraft and EVE online run just fine on Linux with WINE. Neither company uses DRM on their client. EVE online had a native linux client but
the WINE version ran better.
Despite all the mythlogy about "too many distros" the truth of the matter is that 90%+ of linux users use spinoffs of one of four distros (debian, redhat, suse, and mandriva) all of which run WINE just about the same.
So it seems that the big game outfits are right to not worry about Linux support because their games work just fine as-is in Wine... It costs more to add an extra platform than just porting the game; they also have to support their product. Even if the distros are "just about the same," why should they spend anything supporting a platform when its users will buy their games anyway and either dual-boot or do the work themselves to get it running in Wine? It would hardly be worth it for them to even bundle their win32 binaries with wine because they would then be on the line for the support; they have even less reason to put money toward a proper Linux port.
because obviously the command-line is still there and easily accessible, but it's still a dumbed down distro
Why on earth do you equate "accessible" with "dumbed down"?
Why would you equate inaccessible with "dumbed down?" I never made the point that Ubuntu is less configurable, only that Ubuntu is geared toward users less familiar with UNIX and is therefore "dumbed down" (i.e. usable by "dummies"). You're reading this and assuming "dumbed down" necessarily means less capable, and that's not true so you've missed the point.
So while the rest of us pick a distro that just works out of the box, and so is labeled "dumbed down" because we don't have to manually edit config files, the young geeks can go on showing off how awesome they are because they switched to Gentoo and get to fiddle with their compiler flags.
Apparently Gentoo is a lot more misunderstood than Ubuntu. Of all those who use Gentoo, only a small fraction use it because they can compile everything with their own flags. Gentoo is just a simple distro for those who are already perfectly at home with a command-line, not because it makes them feel superior but because they can more easily work how they like to work. I don't doubt that there is a relatively small group of kids who don't really understand the command-line but try to use Gentoo because they've heard it makes you "133t," but that certainly does not describe the average Gentoo user.
On the other hand, Ubuntu seems to be quite well-understood, although a lot of people are getting defensive about it. The truth is Ubuntu is a dumbed down Debian, and that's not a bad thing. It's great for anybody who doesn't want to see a command-line at all and doesn't have need for a lot of fancy or special configuration. Being dumbed down also doesn't make Ubuntu a bad choice for power users who feel like their needs are met by the available configuration options and unique attributes that make Ubuntu what it is, because obviously the command-line is still there and easily accessible, but it's still a dumbed down distro; it's built with a lot of GUI wizards and preset configurations that most "noob" (not my word) users would like. Obviously that doesn't mean you're dumb if you use Ubuntu, but there's no getting around the fact that it is "dumbed down" Linux. I think all of this is generally and correctly understood about Ubuntu, but you seem to misunderstand Gentoo completely.
...since the internet is a series of tubes. Its not like a truck. It can get clogged.
While Stevens was the archetypal old person who doesn't understand modern technology, his "series of tubes" quote looks completely brilliant beside some of the things my parents say about their computers on a daily basis. I would hope our senators would inform themselves on an issue thoroughly before either opposing it or supporting it, but I'm convinced that some (most?) old people are so far behind the curve and have so few good brain cells left that they're basically incapable of understanding any of it. That being the case, we will still make fun of him, but falling in party lines isn't such a bad backup. Moral of the story: don't pretend to be knowledgeable about something you actually don't get at all.
Good point, but I don't think your group is nearly as large as the other. Your anti-DRM group is comprised mostly of us nerds who have a problem with our computers not being completely under our control. Most gamers, I've found, are not nearly as savvy or idealistic. While DRM issues are becoming more and more publicized, it's still very unlikely that your average Joe is going to forgo the latest shoot-em-up or whatever just to try to make a point about DRM.
That's why I said it's only kinda a joke. After I wrote it, I realized that mostly it was just a sad truth. You're being disingenuous if you think 20ms is a reasonable measurement of the overhead of the Firefox bloat, but you probably know that. Regardless, we're just fortunate that there are now better free options waiting to catch the collateral damage after Mozilla cannibalizes the once-great browser.
Stop calling them either liars or idiots. You are the one who is way off. Take a Macbook, expand it from 2GB to 4GB, change the 250GB drive to 500GB, add iWork, add Microsoft Office home and student edition, and add Applecare because now you've got quite a lot riding on a measly 1 year warranty. You're looking at $1676.95. And that's without Aperture, Logic Express, Final Cut, Filemaker, no DVI adapter, and no airline adapter. Just that stuff will take you up to $2491.90, and that's the CHEAP version of Filemaker.
So, $1500.00 is easily reached with the bottom of the line Macbook, even with a 15% discount.
Or you can order a custom Wintel laptop with gold-plating and it will be even more money that the Macbook; either way you're not making a logical comparison. You're being more misleading than the person you're replying to, so let's exercise a little intellectual honesty and trim that down to size. What do you think a student is going to do with Filemaker, the cheap version or otherwise? A student probably isn't going to be traveling much either, so no need for an airline adapter. A student probably isn't a photo pro, a music pro, and a video pro at the same time, so take away the unneeded professional-grade software you decided to add. You can also pass on the Applecare since most do and you're probably not comparing this against a PC with a warranty as good as Applecare provides. You don't really need iWork and MS Office at the same time unless you want both, so let's go with one or the other. Let's keep the hardware upgrades, even though most students won't really need those either. After all that, you'll find that we're left with a pretty reasonably-priced machine for what we're getting.
I like that a lot of what makes Firefox different from Chrome is due to the "we'll let users decide how they want it" approach instead of just telling them how it's going to be done.
Yeah, like how Chrome insists on being a fast browser without letting the user decide. Just watch; the next version of Firefox will finally give us the option: "Do you want a slow, bloated experience, or do you want a slow, bloated experience?" Mozilla: different because we give you options!
Okay calm down FF fanboys; it's just a joke... kinda.
Anyway I would probably prefer the reverse: uFreeBSD/Linux + ports. But porting the ports collection would be a major hindrance.
So what you're looking for is something like Gentoo. It doesn't have the BSD userland, but it does have Portage which is comparable to ports but with even better package management tools (in my opinion).
Re:I Guess I Don't Exist Then ...
on
Why Wave Failed
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· Score: 1
I wouldn't say Nexus One was a flop - it accomplished exactly what it was supposed to; just look at all the SnapDragon-based phones it spawned.
Any incidental good that comes out of a failure doesn't make up for the fact that the failure actually didn't accomplish what it was "supposed to." Hence it is called a failure. Certainly Google had bigger plans than just spawning a narrow breed of phones. You can be the judge, though, of whether or not it was a flop to you.
It isn't quite right to say that the GPL takes freedom away from anyone, since there is no obligation to use GPL-licensed code.
Well, duh. There's no obligation to use any code; that doesn't mean we can't talk about the (di)similarities of each license in terms of freedoms given or taken away (held back). I'm all for the proper use of language in otherwise ambiguous situations, but let's not cloud the issue with pointless discussions about semantics when the meaning is perfectly clear.
The reason you add two spaces is because the additional space aids your eyes in determining individual sentences. Two spaces gives the eyes an additional visual cue, and thus is far easier to parse.
Please explain why you used one space between all sentences in your post.
Don't browsers generally reduce white space to a single space?
I just don't understand why everyone keeps buying iPhones and iPads if they don't do what they want.
I think the answer to this is fairly obvious. The people who complain the loudest are the ones who don't actually have one. But there probably is a fringe of customers who somehow got hoodwinked (meaning they didn't do market research to figure out what they want) who are disappointed with their purchase. Another small percentage of people are dissatisfied due to a myriad of possible and legitimate reasons (their phone broke, customer service was bad for them, or the antennae problem actually effects them), but it's easy for outsiders to marvel at the mass of people choosing the iPhone and explain it away in their minds. It's far easier to call iPhone users sheeple or whatever instead of actually realizing that the iPhone actually does satisfy (or over-satisfy) the needs of the vast majority of people, "walled-gardens" and whatnot notwithstanding.
Disclaimer: I am not and will never be an iPhone owner.
If there's a leak, then it might as well be published publicly so they know what was leaked. A scary alternative is a private leak funneling information exclusively to the Bad Guys, and they may never know what was leaked. If the information is concerning current or future strategy and it got on Wikileaks, at least they will be able to change course as needed. If, on the other hand, the information exposes government corruption, then it definitely should be made public.
So, will Microsoft come out with a tablet that "people will really want to go and buy"? Maybe - if they licence the iPad 2.0
Yeah, well... long gone are the days when Apple licensed its operating systems. They have a real fear of diluting the "experience." That's also the reason that Android will easily overcome iOS in market share but still remain less successful by other (perhaps more important) indicators.
Microsoft has been playing catch-up with Apple since the day the Apple II launched. The only reason Apple didn't continually trounce Microsoft was due the ouster of Steve Jobs in 1985. Apple's board thought they were the big brains, but as everyone found, it was Steve all along.
That's debatable. All indicators showed that Jobs was driving Apple into the ground. Maybe he needed some time away. Just because he's a good CEO today doesn't make up for the fact that Apple might not even be here now if Jobs was allowed to remain at the helm.
These three enumerated powers are big enough to drive a postal truck through.
Not really. Even the commerce clause (perhaps the broadest of them all) could not possibly be twisted so far as to (for example) force citizens to purchase a product; you can't say with a straight face that that has anything to do with interstate commerce, especially if the product isn't purchased across borders. There's not doubt congress has overreached and it's not because the constitution is too vague.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait... you really have two friends named Irony and Sarcasm? That's incredible! What are the chances...
The technical details surrounding how the apps are implemented are obviously irrelevant to the discussion of whether two apps compete. In this case, they are both browsers, so yeah, they compete even though one of the browsers is severely limited. There are several other browsers in the App Store, too, and they all "compete."
Well, it's easy to prop up the straw man who is telling us the free market has no flaws. I'm still trying to figure out why anybody thinks a powerful government is ultimately good for civil and human rights when the history of the world tells a drastically different story. Said more bluntly, nobody is arguing that the free market is perfect, but many governments with too much power cause more pain on a daily basis than any private venture ever did.
Once again Microsoft chooses to litigate instead of innovate. I guess Bing didn't crush Google quite as firmly as Microsoft hoped...
I don't know what Microsoft expected with Bing, but I would guess that they are more than pleased with the marketshare they have been able to grab. Some of the things they've had to do to get that marketshare has been quite lame (deals with Verizon, etc), but I would be surprised if Bing's success has not already exceeded their expectations.
The designers of the CDDL may have had some sort of agenda against the GPL, but the fact remains; when it comes to license compatibility issues in general, it is the GPL which is decidedly incompatible with every other license. The CDDL would be the rare exception of a license that is incompatible with the GPL on purpose, and Sun obviously had business reasons to do it. Therefore, while the GP is very probably wrong in asserting that Sun uses the CDDL because they hate GPL restrictions, he is also probably correct (from what I've seen) that some GPL advocates tend to view those who choose a non-GPL license as trying to thwart GNU and/or Linux so they don't have to admit that maybe other licenses have terms and conditions that have their own merit.
World of Warcraft and EVE online run just fine on Linux with WINE. Neither company uses DRM on their client. EVE online had a native linux client but the WINE version ran better.
Despite all the mythlogy about "too many distros" the truth of the matter is that 90%+ of linux users use spinoffs of one of four distros (debian, redhat, suse, and mandriva) all of which run WINE just about the same.
So it seems that the big game outfits are right to not worry about Linux support because their games work just fine as-is in Wine... It costs more to add an extra platform than just porting the game; they also have to support their product. Even if the distros are "just about the same," why should they spend anything supporting a platform when its users will buy their games anyway and either dual-boot or do the work themselves to get it running in Wine? It would hardly be worth it for them to even bundle their win32 binaries with wine because they would then be on the line for the support; they have even less reason to put money toward a proper Linux port.
because obviously the command-line is still there and easily accessible, but it's still a dumbed down distro
Why on earth do you equate "accessible" with "dumbed down"?
Why would you equate inaccessible with "dumbed down?" I never made the point that Ubuntu is less configurable, only that Ubuntu is geared toward users less familiar with UNIX and is therefore "dumbed down" (i.e. usable by "dummies"). You're reading this and assuming "dumbed down" necessarily means less capable, and that's not true so you've missed the point.
I don't know which "squad" is more f____g annoying.............
It's a good thing you put those underscores in there or we might have realized you just used a naughty word.
So while the rest of us pick a distro that just works out of the box, and so is labeled "dumbed down" because we don't have to manually edit config files, the young geeks can go on showing off how awesome they are because they switched to Gentoo and get to fiddle with their compiler flags.
Apparently Gentoo is a lot more misunderstood than Ubuntu. Of all those who use Gentoo, only a small fraction use it because they can compile everything with their own flags. Gentoo is just a simple distro for those who are already perfectly at home with a command-line, not because it makes them feel superior but because they can more easily work how they like to work. I don't doubt that there is a relatively small group of kids who don't really understand the command-line but try to use Gentoo because they've heard it makes you "133t," but that certainly does not describe the average Gentoo user.
On the other hand, Ubuntu seems to be quite well-understood, although a lot of people are getting defensive about it. The truth is Ubuntu is a dumbed down Debian, and that's not a bad thing. It's great for anybody who doesn't want to see a command-line at all and doesn't have need for a lot of fancy or special configuration. Being dumbed down also doesn't make Ubuntu a bad choice for power users who feel like their needs are met by the available configuration options and unique attributes that make Ubuntu what it is, because obviously the command-line is still there and easily accessible, but it's still a dumbed down distro; it's built with a lot of GUI wizards and preset configurations that most "noob" (not my word) users would like. Obviously that doesn't mean you're dumb if you use Ubuntu, but there's no getting around the fact that it is "dumbed down" Linux. I think all of this is generally and correctly understood about Ubuntu, but you seem to misunderstand Gentoo completely.
It's not a purse; it's European.
...since the internet is a series of tubes. Its not like a truck. It can get clogged.
While Stevens was the archetypal old person who doesn't understand modern technology, his "series of tubes" quote looks completely brilliant beside some of the things my parents say about their computers on a daily basis. I would hope our senators would inform themselves on an issue thoroughly before either opposing it or supporting it, but I'm convinced that some (most?) old people are so far behind the curve and have so few good brain cells left that they're basically incapable of understanding any of it. That being the case, we will still make fun of him, but falling in party lines isn't such a bad backup. Moral of the story: don't pretend to be knowledgeable about something you actually don't get at all.
It's like an old Hypercard game, or Myth, you just wildly click on random things and then sometimes things happen.
I think the game you're think of is Myst.
Good point, but I don't think your group is nearly as large as the other. Your anti-DRM group is comprised mostly of us nerds who have a problem with our computers not being completely under our control. Most gamers, I've found, are not nearly as savvy or idealistic. While DRM issues are becoming more and more publicized, it's still very unlikely that your average Joe is going to forgo the latest shoot-em-up or whatever just to try to make a point about DRM.
Then it should have been funny.
That's why I said it's only kinda a joke. After I wrote it, I realized that mostly it was just a sad truth. You're being disingenuous if you think 20ms is a reasonable measurement of the overhead of the Firefox bloat, but you probably know that. Regardless, we're just fortunate that there are now better free options waiting to catch the collateral damage after Mozilla cannibalizes the once-great browser.
Stop calling them either liars or idiots. You are the one who is way off. Take a Macbook, expand it from 2GB to 4GB, change the 250GB drive to 500GB, add iWork, add Microsoft Office home and student edition, and add Applecare because now you've got quite a lot riding on a measly 1 year warranty. You're looking at $1676.95. And that's without Aperture, Logic Express, Final Cut, Filemaker, no DVI adapter, and no airline adapter. Just that stuff will take you up to $2491.90, and that's the CHEAP version of Filemaker.
So, $1500.00 is easily reached with the bottom of the line Macbook, even with a 15% discount.
Or you can order a custom Wintel laptop with gold-plating and it will be even more money that the Macbook; either way you're not making a logical comparison. You're being more misleading than the person you're replying to, so let's exercise a little intellectual honesty and trim that down to size. What do you think a student is going to do with Filemaker, the cheap version or otherwise? A student probably isn't going to be traveling much either, so no need for an airline adapter. A student probably isn't a photo pro, a music pro, and a video pro at the same time, so take away the unneeded professional-grade software you decided to add. You can also pass on the Applecare since most do and you're probably not comparing this against a PC with a warranty as good as Applecare provides. You don't really need iWork and MS Office at the same time unless you want both, so let's go with one or the other. Let's keep the hardware upgrades, even though most students won't really need those either. After all that, you'll find that we're left with a pretty reasonably-priced machine for what we're getting.
I like that a lot of what makes Firefox different from Chrome is due to the "we'll let users decide how they want it" approach instead of just telling them how it's going to be done.
Yeah, like how Chrome insists on being a fast browser without letting the user decide. Just watch; the next version of Firefox will finally give us the option: "Do you want a slow, bloated experience, or do you want a slow, bloated experience?" Mozilla: different because we give you options!
Okay calm down FF fanboys; it's just a joke... kinda.
Anyway I would probably prefer the reverse: uFreeBSD/Linux + ports. But porting the ports collection would be a major hindrance.
So what you're looking for is something like Gentoo. It doesn't have the BSD userland, but it does have Portage which is comparable to ports but with even better package management tools (in my opinion).
I wouldn't say Nexus One was a flop - it accomplished exactly what it was supposed to; just look at all the SnapDragon-based phones it spawned.
Any incidental good that comes out of a failure doesn't make up for the fact that the failure actually didn't accomplish what it was "supposed to." Hence it is called a failure. Certainly Google had bigger plans than just spawning a narrow breed of phones. You can be the judge, though, of whether or not it was a flop to you.
It isn't quite right to say that the GPL takes freedom away from anyone, since there is no obligation to use GPL-licensed code.
Well, duh. There's no obligation to use any code; that doesn't mean we can't talk about the (di)similarities of each license in terms of freedoms given or taken away (held back). I'm all for the proper use of language in otherwise ambiguous situations, but let's not cloud the issue with pointless discussions about semantics when the meaning is perfectly clear.
Efficiency has nothing to do with it.
The reason you add two spaces is because the additional space aids your eyes in determining individual sentences. Two spaces gives the eyes an additional visual cue, and thus is far easier to parse.
Please explain why you used one space between all sentences in your post.
Don't browsers generally reduce white space to a single space?
I just don't understand why everyone keeps buying iPhones and iPads if they don't do what they want.
I think the answer to this is fairly obvious. The people who complain the loudest are the ones who don't actually have one. But there probably is a fringe of customers who somehow got hoodwinked (meaning they didn't do market research to figure out what they want) who are disappointed with their purchase. Another small percentage of people are dissatisfied due to a myriad of possible and legitimate reasons (their phone broke, customer service was bad for them, or the antennae problem actually effects them), but it's easy for outsiders to marvel at the mass of people choosing the iPhone and explain it away in their minds. It's far easier to call iPhone users sheeple or whatever instead of actually realizing that the iPhone actually does satisfy (or over-satisfy) the needs of the vast majority of people, "walled-gardens" and whatnot notwithstanding.
Disclaimer: I am not and will never be an iPhone owner.
If there's a leak, then it might as well be published publicly so they know what was leaked. A scary alternative is a private leak funneling information exclusively to the Bad Guys, and they may never know what was leaked. If the information is concerning current or future strategy and it got on Wikileaks, at least they will be able to change course as needed. If, on the other hand, the information exposes government corruption, then it definitely should be made public.
So, will Microsoft come out with a tablet that "people will really want to go and buy"? Maybe - if they licence the iPad 2.0
Yeah, well... long gone are the days when Apple licensed its operating systems. They have a real fear of diluting the "experience." That's also the reason that Android will easily overcome iOS in market share but still remain less successful by other (perhaps more important) indicators.
Microsoft has been playing catch-up with Apple since the day the Apple II launched. The only reason Apple didn't continually trounce Microsoft was due the ouster of Steve Jobs in 1985. Apple's board thought they were the big brains, but as everyone found, it was Steve all along.
That's debatable. All indicators showed that Jobs was driving Apple into the ground. Maybe he needed some time away. Just because he's a good CEO today doesn't make up for the fact that Apple might not even be here now if Jobs was allowed to remain at the helm.
These three enumerated powers are big enough to drive a postal truck through.
Not really. Even the commerce clause (perhaps the broadest of them all) could not possibly be twisted so far as to (for example) force citizens to purchase a product; you can't say with a straight face that that has anything to do with interstate commerce, especially if the product isn't purchased across borders. There's not doubt congress has overreached and it's not because the constitution is too vague.