> The point isn't to great a killer app that sells. The point is that almost every user has the need that isn't met by an existing app.
Which is what stuff like python, perl and shell scripts are for.
Why is there not something called "BASIC" for PhoneOS and Android? Perhaps because it would be kind of redundant given the underlying Unixy underpinnings of both operating systems.
Although Apple tends to be uptight about things like interpreters.
It's also about handling it. Any time you touch the media, you run the risk of damaging it. It could get scratched coming out of or going into it's original packaging or the media player. Drive trays like to retract while a disk is half way out. Stuff even manages to get damaged in transit to the store or your house.
Although mainly it's about convenience.
iTunes or Netflix convenience without a lot of the limitations or high prices. 5 minutes spent ripping something is not such a bad deal if it's unavailable at iTunes or is a much better bargain at Amazon or Target.
Plus there's the whole "multi-room" thing. Conventional DVD/BD players don't keep track of what episode you're on or where you left off in the last one and can't start you up again from where you left off in another room.
Then there's the whole "one interface" thing. You can do that even with a Linux based HTPC setup that you likely will never have with a collection of randomly acquired appliances.
Are you kidding? That kind of crap would be even less tolerated in a business environment. Never mind a home environment. Companies use RAID specifically to AVOID the kind of bullshit you are describing.
Clearly you haven't used it in either sort of environment.
For media server use, you don't need a lot of performance or a lot of redundancy. You can cut a lot of corners because you aren't trying to replicate someone's TPC benchmarks.
One of the benefits of "cheap" is that you can easily afford TWO.
What's so complex about having your mail server sit in a different box? Really?
As far as the media stuff goes: complexity is mostly dependent on the sophistication of the playback devices. The more stupid they are, the more of a bother it will be.
Figure out what really needs or benefits from being "unified" and let the rest be split up if that helps.
> Myth is not suitable for a modern HTPC, because it doesn't support streaming from netflix.
Then buy a $60 appliance that's cheaper than most "trendy remotes".
Gear is cheap these days. Why settle when you can have both? Buy the appliance for what it's good for and don't try to turn it into something it's not.
You can't just depend on RAID to save your butt. You need to have a backup. Given the size of these arrays, it has to be another array. There's really no other good option. It's kind of painful but unavoidable.
You should never be in the position to panic about your data. Your stuff should be safe even if you need to rebuild an array from scratch.
Every one I know that still had a Yahoo mail account got their accounts hacked and then used as a carrier for virus infested spam.
Yes. "the era of Facebook".
Perhaps I don't want Facebook screwing it up.
People put a lot of faith in "the cloud" but the fact is that it really is not really warranted. Big prominent services get hacked. They sell your information. They do stupid annoying things. Then there's the problem that the network itself still sucks. We simply don't have the infastructure yet to "live in the cloud". It's just a marketing pipe dream that clueless idiots are prone to buy into because they like bragging about how ignorant of tech they are.
So. Something you (can) actually control yourself can have considerable advantages.
Apple TVs are weak and limited. Chances are that if you already have 8TB of stuff then you have lots of stuff that's not playable on the Apple TVs. You don't need to go with an Apple product to enforce the same interface. You can do that with anything.
That 8TB of legacy data also makes any "cloud" solution problematic.
Probably the wrong approach for this kind of user. Might work for someone starting completely from scratch though.
You didn't really need to be an insider to realize how bogus all of those IPOs were. It's pretty obvious really: sell off your options as soon as you can before reality intrudes.
Ultimately, I as the consumer have a right to know what goes into what I buy and especially what I eat. There is no "subsidy" here. It's just labeling. You should be able to easily and cheaply tell me what seed variety you used. Never mind whether or not it falls into one of two broad classes of product.
Monsanto imposes an abusive dependent relationship upon the farmers they sell to. The product of the farmer's labor is no longer entirely their own. This is due to the current patent insanity applied to living things.
Monsanto uses is relative size to corrupt government, bully customers, bully non-customers, and to bully 3rd parties that might allow farmers to be more independent.
I would rather "vote with my feet" and support the ability of a farmer to turn their back on the likes of Monsanto.
I would rather discourage big abusive corporations like Monsanto that contaminate regional crop varieties and then sue the victims. A farmer should be able to save the seeds from their crop regardless of who they bought the seed from. GMO crops represent a larger and more dangerous patent menace than anything else (including software).
Even the people that try to service traditional farmers get bullied out of business by the likes of Monsanto. At the rate we're going, traditional seed practice aren't even possible anymore.
This is something that hicks in Red States should scream about rather than gay marriages in California.
Also, the length of the supply chain has a lot to do with end result. Something that's ripe when you harvest it, is likely to be better recieved than something that needs to be picked green and then not entirely ripened through artificial chemical means during shipping.
One problem with BigAgra is the side effect of an industrialized mindset reducing the number of varieties planted and sold. This also tends to impact who is being catered too (you or big fat fast food buyer).
Tomatoes that aren't intended to be put on a Big Mac are far more interesting.
My first smartphone experience left me wondering why the device was so bad at being a phone. It's cool to be 20 other things but you should get the core features right first.
There should be no part of the core experience that makes you want to flee to a 5 or 10 year old "dumb" phone.
I can describe either Windows or MacOS in exactly the same way.
Each has it's rough edges and corner cases and places where it falls down and really shouldn't. So Linux really isn't any worse than any other option here.
Yeah "Windows 7 is great". Just don't try to run Safari.
> How is it patent trolling? I was always told patent trolling is done by those that don't actually have a product
Welcome to the new era.
We could try to come up with a new term for patent abuse but why bother. Patent Troll is the perfect metaphor. Why bother with inventing a new (and potential confusing) term when the current term accurately reflects what's going on?
Some ugly creature lurks beneath a bridge that they don't own and then try to rob people by charging them a toll to cross the bridge. These Patent Trolls don't "own" these patents any more than the classic bridge troll from a fairy tale.
It's the same kind of nonsense regardless of whether it's a "distinterested party" seeking a payday, a company trying to bleed money from competitors, or a company seeking to DESTROY competitors.
Slashdot Mirror
> For most end users, their iPhones, iPads, and Android devices do pretty much everything they want.
The blissful ignorant types tend to either be unaware of the possibilities or are successful at kidding themselves.
You don't have to be able to "build your own" to know when something is crap and should never have gotten into the wild. Although it helps.
If it were already perfect, there would be no App Store.
> The point isn't to great a killer app that sells. The point is that almost every user has the need that isn't met by an existing app.
Which is what stuff like python, perl and shell scripts are for.
Why is there not something called "BASIC" for PhoneOS and Android? Perhaps because it would be kind of redundant given the underlying Unixy underpinnings of both operating systems.
Although Apple tends to be uptight about things like interpreters.
It's also about handling it. Any time you touch the media, you run the risk of damaging it. It could get scratched coming out of or going into it's original packaging or the media player. Drive trays like to retract while a disk is half way out. Stuff even manages to get damaged in transit to the store or your house.
Although mainly it's about convenience.
iTunes or Netflix convenience without a lot of the limitations or high prices. 5 minutes spent ripping something is not such a bad deal if it's unavailable at iTunes or is a much better bargain at Amazon or Target.
Plus there's the whole "multi-room" thing. Conventional DVD/BD players don't keep track of what episode you're on or where you left off in the last one and can't start you up again from where you left off in another room.
Then there's the whole "one interface" thing. You can do that even with a Linux based HTPC setup that you likely will never have with a collection of randomly acquired appliances.
Are you kidding? That kind of crap would be even less tolerated in a business environment. Never mind a home environment. Companies use RAID specifically to AVOID the kind of bullshit you are describing.
Clearly you haven't used it in either sort of environment.
For media server use, you don't need a lot of performance or a lot of redundancy. You can cut a lot of corners because you aren't trying to replicate someone's TPC benchmarks.
One of the benefits of "cheap" is that you can easily afford TWO.
What's so complex about having your mail server sit in a different box? Really?
As far as the media stuff goes: complexity is mostly dependent on the sophistication of the playback devices. The more stupid they are, the more of a bother it will be.
Figure out what really needs or benefits from being "unified" and let the rest be split up if that helps.
> Myth is not suitable for a modern HTPC, because it doesn't support streaming from netflix.
Then buy a $60 appliance that's cheaper than most "trendy remotes".
Gear is cheap these days. Why settle when you can have both? Buy the appliance for what it's good for and don't try to turn it into something it's not.
You should not be dependent on a single array.
You can't just depend on RAID to save your butt. You need to have a backup. Given the size of these arrays, it has to be another array. There's really no other good option. It's kind of painful but unavoidable.
You should never be in the position to panic about your data. Your stuff should be safe even if you need to rebuild an array from scratch.
Yes... "the age of Facebook".
Every one I know that still had a Yahoo mail account got their accounts hacked and then used as a carrier for virus infested spam.
Yes. "the era of Facebook".
Perhaps I don't want Facebook screwing it up.
People put a lot of faith in "the cloud" but the fact is that it really is not really warranted. Big prominent services get hacked. They sell your information. They do stupid annoying things. Then there's the problem that the network itself still sucks. We simply don't have the infastructure yet to "live in the cloud". It's just a marketing pipe dream that clueless idiots are prone to buy into because they like bragging about how ignorant of tech they are.
So. Something you (can) actually control yourself can have considerable advantages.
Apple TVs are weak and limited. Chances are that if you already have 8TB of stuff then you have lots of stuff that's not playable on the Apple TVs. You don't need to go with an Apple product to enforce the same interface. You can do that with anything.
That 8TB of legacy data also makes any "cloud" solution problematic.
Probably the wrong approach for this kind of user. Might work for someone starting completely from scratch though.
> I don't really want to do much hacking
The frontend decoder box is not the "hard" part.
Troll harder next time.
Once you get beyond what you can store on a couple of disks, things become a little more interesting. Your suggestion does NOTHING to address that.
And here I was foolishly expecting to be presented some useful alternatives in terms of larger RAID and NAS devices. Silly me.
Authors are in fact a tertiary consideration here.
Authors are not farmers and haven't really ever been despite what lies some publisher might have tried to tell you.
You didn't really need to be an insider to realize how bogus all of those IPOs were. It's pretty obvious really: sell off your options as soon as you can before reality intrudes.
Your excuses don't matter.
His property was contaminated. HE is the victim. The perpetrator should not get to sue him for any sort of damages.
THIS is the problem with "patenting life".
It gets out of your control and COPIES ITSELF.
It's not even conventional piracy. It's self-piracy.
So now you have something that is effectively making everyone else's property the exclusive property of some large abusive corporation.
Seed saving should not be illegal under any circumstances. It shouldn't even matter if he was an actual Monsanto customer.
Ultimately, I as the consumer have a right to know what goes into what I buy and especially what I eat. There is no "subsidy" here. It's just labeling. You should be able to easily and cheaply tell me what seed variety you used. Never mind whether or not it falls into one of two broad classes of product.
I can refuse to buy Monsanto products.
Monsanto imposes an abusive dependent relationship upon the farmers they sell to. The product of the farmer's labor is no longer entirely their own. This is due to the current patent insanity applied to living things.
Monsanto uses is relative size to corrupt government, bully customers, bully non-customers, and to bully 3rd parties that might allow farmers to be more independent.
I would rather "vote with my feet" and support the ability of a farmer to turn their back on the likes of Monsanto.
I would rather discourage big abusive corporations like Monsanto that contaminate regional crop varieties and then sue the victims. A farmer should be able to save the seeds from their crop regardless of who they bought the seed from. GMO crops represent a larger and more dangerous patent menace than anything else (including software).
Even the people that try to service traditional farmers get bullied out of business by the likes of Monsanto. At the rate we're going, traditional seed practice aren't even possible anymore.
This is something that hicks in Red States should scream about rather than gay marriages in California.
It's not the fertilizer. It's the seed.
Also, the length of the supply chain has a lot to do with end result. Something that's ripe when you harvest it, is likely to be better recieved than something that needs to be picked green and then not entirely ripened through artificial chemical means during shipping.
One problem with BigAgra is the side effect of an industrialized mindset reducing the number of varieties planted and sold. This also tends to impact who is being catered too (you or big fat fast food buyer).
Tomatoes that aren't intended to be put on a Big Mac are far more interesting.
...as long as Mendel doesn't try to sue me for saving seeds from my own crop, his meddling isn't such a big problem.
> And if you follow through with your argument you could be as happy living in a cave hunting and fishing.
So you've heard of Ted Nugent then?
My first smartphone experience left me wondering why the device was so bad at being a phone. It's cool to be 20 other things but you should get the core features right first.
There should be no part of the core experience that makes you want to flee to a 5 or 10 year old "dumb" phone.
I can describe either Windows or MacOS in exactly the same way.
Each has it's rough edges and corner cases and places where it falls down and really shouldn't. So Linux really isn't any worse than any other option here.
Yeah "Windows 7 is great". Just don't try to run Safari.
> How is it patent trolling? I was always told patent trolling is done by those that don't actually have a product
Welcome to the new era.
We could try to come up with a new term for patent abuse but why bother. Patent Troll is the perfect metaphor. Why bother with inventing a new (and potential confusing) term when the current term accurately reflects what's going on?
Some ugly creature lurks beneath a bridge that they don't own and then try to rob people by charging them a toll to cross the bridge. These Patent Trolls don't "own" these patents any more than the classic bridge troll from a fairy tale.
It's the same kind of nonsense regardless of whether it's a "distinterested party" seeking a payday, a company trying to bleed money from competitors, or a company seeking to DESTROY competitors.
Then a "Gnome2 theme" should be pretty trivial then?
Otherwise, this kind of fork is exactly what a lot of users have been screaming for since the new UI changes were shoved down everyone's throats.
The community screamed bloody murder and someone decided to "step up" and do the work for the benefit of the rest of us.
Suitable renumeration should be sent in Mint's general direction.
Major studio games will be out, but pretty much everything else will still be on the table.
It shouldn't matter.
The OS simply should not melt because Apple can't code it's way out of a wet paper bag.
A real OS should simply not fall apart just because the users or programmers are idiots or malicious.