I see where you're coming from but I have a two points to make about that: Number one, P2P is more efficient that a super powered centralized server. Second it is cheaper for the distributor to use P2P than to maintain a server farm, so theoretically they could lower their prices, which would indirectly reward the people that make it happen (participating clients). In a free market they would indeed lower their prices in order to compete.
Hm.. As a thought experiment, what if someone put a sign on their plate of cookies that is meant to say "Joanna's snacks--please leave them alone", but since Joanna doesn't know how to read she just clipped a piece of a magazine article to use as a sign that actually said "free cookies". If I take a cookie, am I stealing? The sign, which acted on Joanna's behalf, says I can but Joanna doesn't want me to. She was ignorant of what the sign meant to other people.
Bullshit. First and foremost, you're not stealing anything. It's more akin to enjoying music someone has playing on the boom-box in their window, or hell, even enjoying someone's shade--they obviously paid for the thing that's blocking the sun, you mooch. Second, by virtue of being able to connect in the first place, the hardware has acted on behalf of the owner to allow you to use their connection--the router says, essentially, "Here I am! My name is Linksys! Connect to me!" and your laptop says "Hi Linksys, gimme some internet access" and the router says (via DHCP) "you're good to go." Also, in the US at least, people buy unlimited (unmetered) access, so they would never even know or ever have to pay extra.
Not to be pedantic, but I hope you realize that most (any that I've come across) actually Free Software doesn't have ads or anything else "Faustian". I think you may be confusing Free Software with freeware. Though I see your point about the wolf in OSS sheep's clothing. Google isn't exactly Open Source, no matter how many times someone says it. I wouldn't go so far as to call them evil, but their priorities are to themselves, as a company, first, end users come later.
Unfortunately, though, one of Microsoft's vendor lock-in strategies is to offer Windows for, say, $45 per PC sold--including PCs that don't have Windows on them. It is still much cheaper for the vendor than paying the regular price, but it keeps them from selling their PCs for less if they don't have Windows.
That's actually not a demonstration of the Firefox 2 memory leak. It's taking up that much RAM simply because you have so many tabs open--all those pages (which are stored in RAM, for obvious reasons) actually take up that much space (unless, of course, each tab is looking at about:blank... then I guess that would make my post pretty useless). I have seen the memory leak in the past, but I'm not sure how to reproduce it. But it doesn't matter much anymore because Firefox 3 is in public beta and is perfectly usable now (I'm using it right now) and it fixes the leak.
I agree that the UIs are similar enough between XP and Vista so as to not be confusing. However, I believe you're overlooking part of the argument the GP was making--Linux UIs aren't that different either. Going from XP to Gnome, you'll see that the taskbar is on the top, has a clock on the right, a task tray next to the clock, and a "start menu" (though it's split into different tasks) on the left. Nautilus is different than explorer, sure, but IMO it is much better (anyone know of a way to get a nautilus-like file manager for XP?). While it is more different that the changes from XP to Vista, it is far from a dealbreaker, I believe. Gnome is more similar to XPs UI than Office 2007 is to Office 2003 (admittedly I have never used Office 2007, but I've seen lots of people get confused when, for example, trying to use Powerpoint 2007--it looks and works completely different).
Another huge flaw with internet based ads is that they are rarely (in my experience) advertising legit products. All to frequently clicking an ad exposes you to malware and/or scams. If internet based ads showed me things that I would be interested in (I DO NOT mean targeted ads which, IMO, are just more clever attempts to fool me) and were not so annoying I might consider disabling Adblock. Whenever I work on other people's computers I always install Adblock (and Firefox) to keep them from getting infected again.
some really awkward-sounding name That's the problem right there, and why I personally say Linux. I think most people have no problem with giving attribution to GNU but not at the expense of easy pronunciation. By now, I think it's too late to change the name. GNU should have come up with a better name several years ago. And I agree that it's not very hard to find out about GNU. The FSF should realize that they need open-source because open-source is what sells. The focus should be on attracting programmers and unifying applications, closing holes in functionality to better compete with other OSs, not arguing about who made what. Leave it to the individual distros to educate their users on the usefulness of Free Software.
Actually that's not really that dumb considering how effortlessly you can change the password on a system you have physical access to. In Debian (and Ubuntu, and probably any other distro with GRUB), select the system recovery option in GRUB. That drops you into a root shell where you can use "passwd " and viola. The only flaw is that, AFAIK, you can't change the password back to the original, so the owner would know someone has been messing around with it.
think that Linux==Free Windows That's really the problem with any comparison between the OSs. Linux is different than Windows and has it's own pros and cons. Though we can only imagine what Linux would be like with the kind of commercial support that Windows has... *wishes*
A well presented and insightful comment. But consider this: what is different about a human brain? What makes it "intelligent"? That's the question that must be asked to form the theories the above commenter was talking about.
Ahh thanks, Google. There was a group called Global Guerrillas that made a device out of a disposable camera that, while technically a high-energy radio frequency "HERF" emitter and not an EMP, was capable of destroying FRID chips. It might just be possible to expand that idea to the GP's purpose. Though I think your basic golf club/big stick will do just fine...
No, that's not what he means. Sporting is where you give the "victim" a fighting chance. It usually has to do with hunting. So the most sporting would be like hand-to-hand combat.
You're using a template!! I've seen that EXACT post elsewhere. Not to mention that you conflate the meanings of "pirate," "stolen," and "cracked." Now I agree that people that make products should be paid by the people that use them. However, in my day I have "pirated" many, many products--a large portion of which I would never have played/used because they were too expensive.(Does ANYBODY have a legal version of Adobe Photoshop but they don't use it to make money [e.g. they use it for making sigs in forums]?) As with pretty much everything in life, it's not exactly black-and-white. Many "pirates" can come up with at least moderately compelling arguments as to why they do what they do.
It's my understanding that that usually means he uses a Mac. Mac users call Windows computers PCs because of the "I'm a Mac" ads. Although... does he not realize the game is available for Mac?
The part I find especially troublesome is that freedom of movement is a fundamental part of the Social Contract (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract), where if you object to your nation's rules you're to leave of your own accord instead of breaking them.
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I see where you're coming from but I have a two points to make about that: Number one, P2P is more efficient that a super powered centralized server. Second it is cheaper for the distributor to use P2P than to maintain a server farm, so theoretically they could lower their prices, which would indirectly reward the people that make it happen (participating clients). In a free market they would indeed lower their prices in order to compete.
The Debian team has already come up with a solution to that threat. Apt has super cow powers! Zing!
Hm.. As a thought experiment, what if someone put a sign on their plate of cookies that is meant to say "Joanna's snacks--please leave them alone", but since Joanna doesn't know how to read she just clipped a piece of a magazine article to use as a sign that actually said "free cookies". If I take a cookie, am I stealing? The sign, which acted on Joanna's behalf, says I can but Joanna doesn't want me to. She was ignorant of what the sign meant to other people.
And never mind that that, in itself, is racism. Egalitarianism doesn't state that minorities deserve more rights than anyone else...
Bullshit. First and foremost, you're not stealing anything. It's more akin to enjoying music someone has playing on the boom-box in their window, or hell, even enjoying someone's shade--they obviously paid for the thing that's blocking the sun, you mooch. Second, by virtue of being able to connect in the first place, the hardware has acted on behalf of the owner to allow you to use their connection--the router says, essentially, "Here I am! My name is Linksys! Connect to me!" and your laptop says "Hi Linksys, gimme some internet access" and the router says (via DHCP) "you're good to go." Also, in the US at least, people buy unlimited (unmetered) access, so they would never even know or ever have to pay extra.
Ah but interestingly... Nobody has every (AFIAK) recommended total prohibition on drugs. It would be disastrous.
Not to be pedantic, but I hope you realize that most (any that I've come across) actually Free Software doesn't have ads or anything else "Faustian". I think you may be confusing Free Software with freeware. Though I see your point about the wolf in OSS sheep's clothing. Google isn't exactly Open Source, no matter how many times someone says it. I wouldn't go so far as to call them evil, but their priorities are to themselves, as a company, first, end users come later.
Nope. He's a nut! Zing! Ha--ha... I'll be going now.
Unfortunately, though, one of Microsoft's vendor lock-in strategies is to offer Windows for, say, $45 per PC sold--including PCs that don't have Windows on them. It is still much cheaper for the vendor than paying the regular price, but it keeps them from selling their PCs for less if they don't have Windows.
That's actually not a demonstration of the Firefox 2 memory leak. It's taking up that much RAM simply because you have so many tabs open--all those pages (which are stored in RAM, for obvious reasons) actually take up that much space (unless, of course, each tab is looking at about:blank... then I guess that would make my post pretty useless). I have seen the memory leak in the past, but I'm not sure how to reproduce it. But it doesn't matter much anymore because Firefox 3 is in public beta and is perfectly usable now (I'm using it right now) and it fixes the leak.
I agree that the UIs are similar enough between XP and Vista so as to not be confusing. However, I believe you're overlooking part of the argument the GP was making--Linux UIs aren't that different either. Going from XP to Gnome, you'll see that the taskbar is on the top, has a clock on the right, a task tray next to the clock, and a "start menu" (though it's split into different tasks) on the left. Nautilus is different than explorer, sure, but IMO it is much better (anyone know of a way to get a nautilus-like file manager for XP?). While it is more different that the changes from XP to Vista, it is far from a dealbreaker, I believe. Gnome is more similar to XPs UI than Office 2007 is to Office 2003 (admittedly I have never used Office 2007, but I've seen lots of people get confused when, for example, trying to use Powerpoint 2007--it looks and works completely different).
Another huge flaw with internet based ads is that they are rarely (in my experience) advertising legit products. All to frequently clicking an ad exposes you to malware and/or scams. If internet based ads showed me things that I would be interested in (I DO NOT mean targeted ads which, IMO, are just more clever attempts to fool me) and were not so annoying I might consider disabling Adblock. Whenever I work on other people's computers I always install Adblock (and Firefox) to keep them from getting infected again.
Actually that's not really that dumb considering how effortlessly you can change the password on a system you have physical access to. In Debian (and Ubuntu, and probably any other distro with GRUB), select the system recovery option in GRUB. That drops you into a root shell where you can use "passwd " and viola. The only flaw is that, AFAIK, you can't change the password back to the original, so the owner would know someone has been messing around with it.
That's the perfect setup for a goatse link! *doesn't put one there because so far I've been lucky enough to never fall for it*
A well presented and insightful comment. But consider this: what is different about a human brain? What makes it "intelligent"? That's the question that must be asked to form the theories the above commenter was talking about.
Ahh thanks, Google. There was a group called Global Guerrillas that made a device out of a disposable camera that, while technically a high-energy radio frequency "HERF" emitter and not an EMP, was capable of destroying FRID chips. It might just be possible to expand that idea to the GP's purpose. Though I think your basic golf club/big stick will do just fine...
I'm afraid the rest of us are out of LSD.
No, that's not what he means. Sporting is where you give the "victim" a fighting chance. It usually has to do with hunting. So the most sporting would be like hand-to-hand combat.
You're using a template!! I've seen that EXACT post elsewhere. Not to mention that you conflate the meanings of "pirate," "stolen," and "cracked." Now I agree that people that make products should be paid by the people that use them. However, in my day I have "pirated" many, many products--a large portion of which I would never have played/used because they were too expensive.(Does ANYBODY have a legal version of Adobe Photoshop but they don't use it to make money [e.g. they use it for making sigs in forums]?) As with pretty much everything in life, it's not exactly black-and-white. Many "pirates" can come up with at least moderately compelling arguments as to why they do what they do.
It's my understanding that that usually means he uses a Mac. Mac users call Windows computers PCs because of the "I'm a Mac" ads. Although... does he not realize the game is available for Mac?
The part I find especially troublesome is that freedom of movement is a fundamental part of the Social Contract (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract), where if you object to your nation's rules you're to leave of your own accord instead of breaking them.
I welcome spellcheckers.
That's EXACTLY how I got stuck with it. I bought my laptop shortly before OEM vendors went back to supporting XP.