The financial sector? Really? These are the same people that nearly destroyed our economy and triggered a 2nd great recession. These people aren't exactly the best example for trustworthy people.
Before that they resided over a stock bubble that destroyed everyone's retirement savings.
Stuffing your money in a mattress is actually starting to look pretty good right now. Between bank fees and the near zero interest rates on savings accounts and CDs, you may not be worse off with your money in a coffee can buried in the yard.
How many people here have groans every time they see the mass media report on something they have knowledge of? Generally the mass media gets it horribly wrong and intentionally leaves out important details so that they can create the "narrative.
That's assuming they aren't so clueless that they portray the state of the art in your field as 10 years out of date.
You make it sound like an offsite backup is such a burden.
It isn't. It's actually less of a burden than the cloud since the bandwidth I can obtain with a thumb drive in my pocket far exceeds any network connection I've ever had at home or at work.
When you can put a terabyte in your pocket, a highly throttled asymmetric network connection seems rather absurd.
Backups are trivial. Backups are not at all scary. The main problem here is getting people over the decades long indoctrination and fear mongering that paralyzes them.
A backup is as simple as a copy. Large external storage devices are cheap and plentiful. No special tools are required. However automated software and appliances are legion.
Been there. Done that. Luckily the damage wasn't permanent.
The simple fact of the matter is that WE ARE NOT HERBIVORES. We simply don't have the enzymes for it. This is why cows and sheep can survive on stuff we can't.
Mass starvation has occured with people trying to eat like herbivores and dying anyways.
You don't need a "special diet", but you need to exploit a regional food culture that accounts for the lack of meat. Vegans that try to claim otherwise are going to hurt people and their own "cause".
The fact is that it does take some work. This turns off lazy people. So people with an agenda try to deny the facts.
Beef rose to ascendancy in the American diet based on free range grazing. This was an activity that required ZERO agriculture. People are fixated on this idea of replacing Beef with Tofu and don't acknowledge the fact that it still takes a considerable amount of effort to get good soybean yields.
Grain fed beef and feedlots are a very recent phenomenon.
Less beef might not be such a big problem. The environmental impact will likely be lower than either feedlots or giant soybean farms.
The tree huggers ignore that soybean farmings isn't free either and it's sustainability is also disputable. It's disputable for the same reasons. A lot of energy goes into generating high crop yields.
This is a question of sustainability not the political agenda of some vegan zealots from PETA.
> but more than half use crappy intel graphics with 2002 era performance and can't run any modern games unless they dumb the graphics down big time
You just described two of my Mac Minis you big fat idiot.
In your example: it's not the "hardware support", it's the hardware. People don't have over-hyped gaming cards becaues there is little over-hyped gaming to be had.
On the other hand, a cheap upgrade can give Linux a very respectable gaming experience. If people want to play games on Linux they can do the same thing they have to do on Windows: spec their gear to match the games.
Running monpolyware doesn't solve the problem of having a lame Intel GPU because you didn't think about over-hyped gaming when you bought your PC.
Valve can do the same thing that any other game publisher does. They tell you the system requirements. Even your WinDOS PC may not be up to the task.
> And as a scientist, one shouldn't need to care of the OS is totally free (libre), but whether or not the math is good and fast.
You mean the like the scientists that created Beowulf?
Some people like to pretend that everyone is just a mindless consumer and that even subject matter experts in a different area gain no advantage from knowing their tools. That's simply nonsense.
Even ARTISTS hack their tools.
The idea that SCIENTISTS can't or would rather not be bothered is kind of obscene really. It's the height of anti-intellectualism and a bit ironic really considering what low regard PhDs have for the rest of us.
In reality, scientists are arrogant to the point of antagonizing their support staff.
All of this whining about "knowing what to expect" is just such a hoot. It's like none of you weenies have ever done Windows software development before. Do you idiots realize what all needs to be sorted out on a Windows machine before an app or a game can be successfuly installed?
You're basically re-creating the work of a proper package manager. Except you aren't really managing anything. There's no "reasonable expectations" on any other platform. Why it be a big problem on Linux?
The main difference on Linux/Unix is that you are expected to not trash/alter the root system files just to install an app.
> Unless your program is trivial, that doesn't actually work.
I have several games already that do precisely this.
This sounds a lot like the sound and video accleration whining from the likes of Adobe. Some people just bitch and moan while others just take care of business.
You're so busy trying to tell yourself that it can't be done that you never bother to try.
The LGPL is law for anyone that chooses to use works thus licensed.
Although that's not at all a problem.
Despite all of the whining and FUD, it is not at all a problem for a libre infasturcture to peacefully coexist with proprietary applications that sit on top of it. This is a long settled "problem".
It is old news.
It's a trollish sort of "Big Lie". They keep on repeating to fool the unwary.
No. The Linux Kernel devs are why your sound or wifi works.
Whether or not they work has SQUAT to do with your distro.
All of the relevant mechanisms are very low level (like embedded into the hardware itself) and actually has very little to do with the superficial differences in between distributions.
If they do work then they likely "just work" or they're just not supported.
There really is little in the way of "middle ground" here.
Steam is no different than any other proprietary game. It's no better and no worse really. While DRM sucks, that's just the state of things when it comes to commercial gaming.
A blob binary for a game is also no worse than a blob binary for any other sort of application like a photo manager or an enterprise database server.
Or they could simply choose a single distribution to target.
That would encapsulate an entire series of system requirements the same as their "custom distro" would without requiring any of the work. Anyone else could simply use that platform as a reference and work from there.
Creating their own distro is extra work they simply don't need to bother with.
The land that now grows corn to feed cattle used to feed the bison directly. That grass was able to sustain bison herds the size of a small country. This all happened without any human management. So the idea that we all have to get used to Tofu is a little silly.
If you dump animal proteins then you actually have to know what you are doing. Otherwise you can do permanent damage to yourselves. If you're going to be a vegetarian then you need the tribal knowledge to back it up and most Westerners simply don't have that.
Also, if we let all of corn fields go fallow, the cows could live off of that. We can't. That's an important detail that's missed here.
Cattle used to be semi-wild animals that just wandered around and mostly fended for themslves. It's the same for grazing animals in general.
A lot of effort and fossil fuel goes into turning grasslands into something that a human might be able to eat. Even if we repurpose the American midwest to direct human feed crops, a lot of high tech effort has to go into it.
I suppose you could try and eat like your ancestors. Do you want to live like them too?
I think that's the part people are missing here. It's like a bunch of people at the SCA or Ren fair acting like they all would be Lords and Ladies when in fact they would be the nearly starving peasants.
> Whoops. Game of thrones has been available online/streaming via HBO GO since the very first episode.
The only people that can take advantage of his can already watch the show through their CABLE SUBSCRIPTION.
That means that you have already paid the minimum buy in for cable plus an extra fee for HBO.
That means that you have already likely used your PVR to record this show.
At that point, what's the f*cking point of bothering with a streaming service? At that point, the only reason for using the streaming service is the fact that your recorded copy is locked down with DRM and can't be transfered to your iPhone or Android.
Game of Thrones has an absurd minimum buy in. If that's what you are primarily interested in then it is a very expensive show indeed. That makes for a very wide gap between what people are forced to spend and what they are willing to spend.
Plus there's the whole timing thing.
Lots of people don't care about seeing stuff right away. These are the kinds of people that watch movies only when they reach broadcast TV. They can wait out big content. They're only willing to spend so much and won't spend anymore.
For any bit of content different people will have a different interest level.
You go off the rails the moment you acknowledge the fact that this material is available on DVD. The fact that it is on DVD means that it is already in a format suitable for streaming.
If not for other laws that try to strip us of our personal property rights, the technology to "build our own iTunes" would be commonplace. We would not need Amazon or iTunes because we could all do for ourselves with minimal fuss or effort.
It's like Music CDs: it's already digital.
If that list of yours seems rediculous then I suggest it is only because you have no understanding of what's being discussed here.
> - i shouldn't be limited to what device i watch it on
There is nothing "entitled" about this idea. It's a simple extension of Anti-Trust. It's the same kind of idea that got movie studios divested of their theatres.
YOU nicely encapsulate the jackass mentality that erodes sympathy for Big Content among the population at large.
YOU have no right to artistic megalomania. In fact you have no rights at all. You have a temporary statutory right that exists only to suit the public at large.
We're not "entitled". We're the customer.
Piracy is really a big fat red herring. Piracy is not the problem. Me ignoring you is the problem.
It's not 1979 anymore. I don't need HBO to distract me anymore. Some people might be motivated enough to pirate but that's not the real problem. The real problem is that the alternative are legion.
Slashdot Mirror
I hated CDE even back when Windows 3.1 was the current thing. I am sure I am not alone in that regard.
A "need for bling" has nothing to do with our aversion for CDE.
It sorely needed to be replaced (and it was).
The fact that it was closed source payware also did not help.
Banks theoretically are heavily regulated.
They make a poor comparison to the Cloud in this regard.
Although they are great at losing people's money. So they are not a bad comparison in that respect.
Ironically enough, your own comparison implies that we shouldn't expect to trust the Cloud for decades.
The financial sector? Really? These are the same people that nearly destroyed our economy and triggered a 2nd great recession. These people aren't exactly the best example for trustworthy people.
Before that they resided over a stock bubble that destroyed everyone's retirement savings.
Stuffing your money in a mattress is actually starting to look pretty good right now. Between bank fees and the near zero interest rates on savings accounts and CDs, you may not be worse off with your money in a coffee can buried in the yard.
Compared to what? Fox News and CNN?
How many people here have groans every time they see the mass media report on something they have knowledge of? Generally the mass media gets it horribly wrong and intentionally leaves out important details so that they can create the "narrative.
That's assuming they aren't so clueless that they portray the state of the art in your field as 10 years out of date.
You make it sound like an offsite backup is such a burden.
It isn't. It's actually less of a burden than the cloud since the bandwidth I can obtain with a thumb drive in my pocket far exceeds any network connection I've ever had at home or at work.
When you can put a terabyte in your pocket, a highly throttled asymmetric network connection seems rather absurd.
In other words, we might get people to listen to the obvious just because some sort of celebrity has decided to repeat the message.
> - no one makes backups
Backups are trivial. Backups are not at all scary. The main problem here is getting people over the decades long indoctrination and fear mongering that paralyzes them.
A backup is as simple as a copy. Large external storage devices are cheap and plentiful. No special tools are required. However automated software and appliances are legion.
Been there. Done that. Luckily the damage wasn't permanent.
The simple fact of the matter is that WE ARE NOT HERBIVORES. We simply don't have the enzymes for it. This is why cows and sheep can survive on stuff we can't.
Mass starvation has occured with people trying to eat like herbivores and dying anyways.
You don't need a "special diet", but you need to exploit a regional food culture that accounts for the lack of meat. Vegans that try to claim otherwise are going to hurt people and their own "cause".
The fact is that it does take some work. This turns off lazy people. So people with an agenda try to deny the facts.
Animal protein is an easy shortcut.
Beef rose to ascendancy in the American diet based on free range grazing. This was an activity that required ZERO agriculture. People are fixated on this idea of replacing Beef with Tofu and don't acknowledge the fact that it still takes a considerable amount of effort to get good soybean yields.
Grain fed beef and feedlots are a very recent phenomenon.
Less beef might not be such a big problem. The environmental impact will likely be lower than either feedlots or giant soybean farms.
The tree huggers ignore that soybean farmings isn't free either and it's sustainability is also disputable. It's disputable for the same reasons. A lot of energy goes into generating high crop yields.
This is a question of sustainability not the political agenda of some vegan zealots from PETA.
> but more than half use crappy intel graphics with 2002 era performance and can't run any modern games unless they dumb the graphics down big time
You just described two of my Mac Minis you big fat idiot.
In your example: it's not the "hardware support", it's the hardware. People don't have over-hyped gaming cards becaues there is little over-hyped gaming to be had.
On the other hand, a cheap upgrade can give Linux a very respectable gaming experience. If people want to play games on Linux they can do the same thing they have to do on Windows: spec their gear to match the games.
Running monpolyware doesn't solve the problem of having a lame Intel GPU because you didn't think about over-hyped gaming when you bought your PC.
Valve can do the same thing that any other game publisher does. They tell you the system requirements. Even your WinDOS PC may not be up to the task.
> And as a scientist, one shouldn't need to care of the OS is totally free (libre), but whether or not the math is good and fast.
You mean the like the scientists that created Beowulf?
Some people like to pretend that everyone is just a mindless consumer and that even subject matter experts in a different area gain no advantage from knowing their tools. That's simply nonsense.
Even ARTISTS hack their tools.
The idea that SCIENTISTS can't or would rather not be bothered is kind of obscene really. It's the height of anti-intellectualism and a bit ironic really considering what low regard PhDs have for the rest of us.
In reality, scientists are arrogant to the point of antagonizing their support staff.
Sounds a lot like "use Ubuntu 12.04".
All of this whining about "knowing what to expect" is just such a hoot. It's like none of you weenies have ever done Windows software development before. Do you idiots realize what all needs to be sorted out on a Windows machine before an app or a game can be successfuly installed?
You're basically re-creating the work of a proper package manager. Except you aren't really managing anything. There's no "reasonable expectations" on any other platform. Why it be a big problem on Linux?
The main difference on Linux/Unix is that you are expected to not trash/alter the root system files just to install an app.
> Unless your program is trivial, that doesn't actually work.
I have several games already that do precisely this.
This sounds a lot like the sound and video accleration whining from the likes of Adobe. Some people just bitch and moan while others just take care of business.
You're so busy trying to tell yourself that it can't be done that you never bother to try.
The LGPL is law for anyone that chooses to use works thus licensed.
Although that's not at all a problem.
Despite all of the whining and FUD, it is not at all a problem for a libre infasturcture to peacefully coexist with proprietary applications that sit on top of it. This is a long settled "problem".
It is old news.
It's a trollish sort of "Big Lie". They keep on repeating to fool the unwary.
No. The Linux Kernel devs are why your sound or wifi works.
Whether or not they work has SQUAT to do with your distro.
All of the relevant mechanisms are very low level (like embedded into the hardware itself) and actually has very little to do with the superficial differences in between distributions.
If they do work then they likely "just work" or they're just not supported.
There really is little in the way of "middle ground" here.
Steam is no different than any other proprietary game. It's no better and no worse really. While DRM sucks, that's just the state of things when it comes to commercial gaming.
A blob binary for a game is also no worse than a blob binary for any other sort of application like a photo manager or an enterprise database server.
There's really nothing new here.
Must I dredge up 12 year old examples?
Or they could simply choose a single distribution to target.
That would encapsulate an entire series of system requirements the same as their "custom distro" would without requiring any of the work. Anyone else could simply use that platform as a reference and work from there.
Creating their own distro is extra work they simply don't need to bother with.
Yes. If Loki hadn't failed 11 YEARS AGO, Carmack wouldn't be talking trash about it's successor today.
The land that now grows corn to feed cattle used to feed the bison directly. That grass was able to sustain bison herds the size of a small country. This all happened without any human management. So the idea that we all have to get used to Tofu is a little silly.
Meat is easy.
If you dump animal proteins then you actually have to know what you are doing. Otherwise you can do permanent damage to yourselves. If you're going to be a vegetarian then you need the tribal knowledge to back it up and most Westerners simply don't have that.
Also, if we let all of corn fields go fallow, the cows could live off of that. We can't. That's an important detail that's missed here.
Cattle used to be semi-wild animals that just wandered around and mostly fended for themslves. It's the same for grazing animals in general.
A lot of effort and fossil fuel goes into turning grasslands into something that a human might be able to eat. Even if we repurpose the American midwest to direct human feed crops, a lot of high tech effort has to go into it.
I suppose you could try and eat like your ancestors. Do you want to live like them too?
I think that's the part people are missing here. It's like a bunch of people at the SCA or Ren fair acting like they all would be Lords and Ladies when in fact they would be the nearly starving peasants.
> Whoops. Game of thrones has been available online/streaming via HBO GO since the very first episode.
The only people that can take advantage of his can already watch the show through their CABLE SUBSCRIPTION.
That means that you have already paid the minimum buy in for cable plus an extra fee for HBO.
That means that you have already likely used your PVR to record this show.
At that point, what's the f*cking point of bothering with a streaming service? At that point, the only reason for using the streaming service is the fact that your recorded copy is locked down with DRM and can't be transfered to your iPhone or Android.
Game of Thrones has an absurd minimum buy in. If that's what you are primarily interested in then it is a very expensive show indeed. That makes for a very wide gap between what people are forced to spend and what they are willing to spend.
Plus there's the whole timing thing.
Lots of people don't care about seeing stuff right away. These are the kinds of people that watch movies only when they reach broadcast TV. They can wait out big content. They're only willing to spend so much and won't spend anymore.
For any bit of content different people will have a different interest level.
You go off the rails the moment you acknowledge the fact that this material is available on DVD. The fact that it is on DVD means that it is already in a format suitable for streaming.
If not for other laws that try to strip us of our personal property rights, the technology to "build our own iTunes" would be commonplace. We would not need Amazon or iTunes because we could all do for ourselves with minimal fuss or effort.
It's like Music CDs: it's already digital.
If that list of yours seems rediculous then I suggest it is only because you have no understanding of what's being discussed here.
> - i shouldn't be limited to what device i watch it on
There is nothing "entitled" about this idea. It's a simple extension of Anti-Trust. It's the same kind of idea that got movie studios divested of their theatres.
YOU nicely encapsulate the jackass mentality that erodes sympathy for Big Content among the population at large.
YOU have no right to artistic megalomania. In fact you have no rights at all. You have a temporary statutory right that exists only to suit the public at large.
We're not "entitled". We're the customer.
Piracy is really a big fat red herring. Piracy is not the problem. Me ignoring you is the problem.
It's not 1979 anymore. I don't need HBO to distract me anymore. Some people might be motivated enough to pirate but that's not the real problem. The real problem is that the alternative are legion.
Most of us simply aren't bothering.