I would say that if you are working as a developer with a company who's main idea of a windowing toolkit is Microsoft Internet Explorer, it is time to bale. Not out of principle, but with an eye on job security.
"PDF is an open format. The specifications are available for free download and no license fee is required to implement it."
According to the download page, I need Adobe software to even be able to read the specifications. Of course, you could stretch the meaning of "open" even further to include the necessity of using a closed standard to read the specifications.
" Until you wake up and have to do graphics for a *living*.. Not just simple hobby stuff at home.
Don't get me wrong, GIMP can do nice things, but it does not replace photoshop for professional production work."
I am a professional web-developer, and I use the GIMP professionally. Photoshop (and/or Imageready) has never been very well suited to web imagery.
Last week I was working on-site at a customer's. The customer was willing to install the GIMP for me, but I told him to not bother, as he had Photoshop installed already. I figured a long time had passed since PS 5.5, and the program simply could not be so horrid anymore in the web graphics department.
Workflow was a bit slower due to missing functionality, but the functions may have been there with me unable to find them. It wasn't bad.
However it seems that PS 7 (which a lot of "professionals" still use) changes colour values when you save as PNG. For some reasons, the graphical elements that I was slicing from the original graphical designs came out the wrong colour when saved as PNG.
So now I am working on a Sunday evening, with my trusty GIMP of course, to repair a job that Photoshop couldn't do.
When you say program A is better than program B, or when you refute that claim, make damn sure you mention about which areas you are talking about.
If Napolean was a European (as opposed to a Frenchman or Corsican), then by extension Americans are Europeans too, and all the USA's wrongdoings of the recent past should be written on Europe's tab too.
You appear to be a bit of thicky, so why bother, but I'll try again: we were comparing actions of nations, not those of continents. (Continents don't do much in the way of killing.) Nations are often tied to states, and states have budgets and borders. One state can negotiate with another state, and a state can decide not to deal with another state because of its undemocratic and hostile behaviour.
As I said before, Europe as an entity to be bargained with (and to accept or dismiss over past atrocities and current political behaviour) hasn't existed for more than 40 years.
"If you asked more people in the world to rank governments in decreasing order of hostility, the Europeans would come out as the most hostile people *ever* to walk the earth"
"The Europeans" as an entity even remotely approaching a people hasn't existed for more than 40 years. I don't think we as Europeans have conquered or killed that much.
As Dutchmen... ah, well, that's a whole other story. Still, my great-great-great-great grandfather has been dead way too long to still be blamed for much misdoings. Now, if we were looking for a hostile people still alive...
But let me guess, Bill O'Reilly won't allow you to entertain such thoughts.
"The record company is at risk of losing money, but the artist is not."
That is because the artist, at this point, has already lost money. Or do you figure those songs create themselves? No, the artist must spend time, time which cannot be spent on making money, but during which the rent will still have to be paid, to create songs.
It's a great idea to limit holdership (only the public really owns works) to only the authors and cut the middlemen out. Only problem is, the middlemen will find a way around it.
You trust your money with a bank that specifically piggy-backs onto IE's browser bugs for its online banking interface? Dude, you deserve IE and everything that comes with it.
I am sure the shareholders of your work are thrilled to hear that systems administration not only installs broken software, but when notified of that, they shift blame. Sounds like a real dandy place to work.
The site: "The images from Titan are jointly copyrighted by The University of Arizona, the European Space Agency, and the National Aerodynamics and Space Administration."
Methinks somebody has left the glue pot open for too long.
The film industry will soon have a much bigger problem on their hands, when their blockbusters have to compete with movies starring computer generated actors. (Well, maybe not soon, but it will happen.)
"I'm not saying people won't do things for personal enjoyment, but people get paid for their novels, and if they dont they can take them many years, if not decades, to write."
You have a funny view of the publishing industry. Only "successful" authors earn any money writing novels, and often it is hardly enough to offset their costs of living.
A lot of novel writers, though, are even willing to pay people to publish their books. This is what has spawned the successful con industry that is known as POD publishing.
Yes, you read that right. Taking it one step further than coders who program for free, there are writers who actually pay third parties thousands of dollars for the promise of having their works distributed.
Again, you are using gobs of free software that people have spent "a good portion of [their lives] working on" to make your point. Surely, you can see the problem with that?
In the Netherlands, business have to file e-tax forms starting this month.
I tried to get some people to work on FOSS tax reporting software, but no-one was interested. "We'll use Windows," some said. "We'll use the online forms," others said. Ah, well.
(I did manage to get registered as a developer, though, but haven't done anything with it. So far, the online forms for VAT seem accessible enough.)
"the studio probably loses more sales to cheapo Asian DVD knock-offs"
Losing a sale. It sounds like an intriguing concept, but I am afraid I do not "get" it. Please explain to me how you lose a sale. Presumable, you first had that sale, right? For instance, how did you have that sale with those Asian customers, whose monthly salary is likely to be only a few times more money than what a legal copy of the DVD costs?
"What's also true, certainly for the US and most of Europe is that it's legal to download anything for preview/evaluation purposes, just as long as you buy it or delete it after a period of 24 hours. Once the time limit is up, you may download it again, if you wish to continue your preview/evaluation."
No, that's actually a big fat lie.
Please point out in any current copyright law where it says "evaluation" and "24 hours".
Since when do the RIAAA represent the copyright holders? Since when are end-users called pirates? (There was a time when this word was reserved for publishers.)
And most importantly: since when are you not allowed to question a wrong, solely when it is used to counter another wrong?
"It looks more like a great Bond film than a realistic hazard although it is without a doubt a terrorists dream. Prime time tv coverage for several hours of the wave racing towards New York, unavoidable carnage, powerless governments and all the rest."
Oh goody! Will there be footage of president Bush doing something to a goat? (Again?)
Slashdot Mirror
I would say that if you are working as a developer with a company who's main idea of a windowing toolkit is Microsoft Internet Explorer, it is time to bale. Not out of principle, but with an eye on job security.
"These guys want a picture of normal, actual internet users that they can count. Neither search engines nor porn will provide that."
Excuse me?
"PDF is an open format. The specifications are available for free download and no license fee is required to implement it."
According to the download page, I need Adobe software to even be able to read the specifications. Of course, you could stretch the meaning of "open" even further to include the necessity of using a closed standard to read the specifications.
" Until you wake up and have to do graphics for a *living*.. Not just simple hobby stuff at home.
Don't get me wrong, GIMP can do nice things, but it does not replace photoshop for professional production work."
I am a professional web-developer, and I use the GIMP professionally. Photoshop (and/or Imageready) has never been very well suited to web imagery.
Last week I was working on-site at a customer's. The customer was willing to install the GIMP for me, but I told him to not bother, as he had Photoshop installed already. I figured a long time had passed since PS 5.5, and the program simply could not be so horrid anymore in the web graphics department.
Workflow was a bit slower due to missing functionality, but the functions may have been there with me unable to find them. It wasn't bad.
However it seems that PS 7 (which a lot of "professionals" still use) changes colour values when you save as PNG. For some reasons, the graphical elements that I was slicing from the original graphical designs came out the wrong colour when saved as PNG.
So now I am working on a Sunday evening, with my trusty GIMP of course, to repair a job that Photoshop couldn't do.
When you say program A is better than program B, or when you refute that claim, make damn sure you mention about which areas you are talking about.
If Napolean was a European (as opposed to a Frenchman or Corsican), then by extension Americans are Europeans too, and all the USA's wrongdoings of the recent past should be written on Europe's tab too.
You appear to be a bit of thicky, so why bother, but I'll try again: we were comparing actions of nations, not those of continents. (Continents don't do much in the way of killing.) Nations are often tied to states, and states have budgets and borders. One state can negotiate with another state, and a state can decide not to deal with another state because of its undemocratic and hostile behaviour.
As I said before, Europe as an entity to be bargained with (and to accept or dismiss over past atrocities and current political behaviour) hasn't existed for more than 40 years.
"If you asked more people in the world to rank governments in decreasing order of hostility, the Europeans would come out as the most hostile people *ever* to walk the earth"
... ah, well, that's a whole other story. Still, my great-great-great-great grandfather has been dead way too long to still be blamed for much misdoings. Now, if we were looking for a hostile people still alive ...
"The Europeans" as an entity even remotely approaching a people hasn't existed for more than 40 years. I don't think we as Europeans have conquered or killed that much.
As Dutchmen
But let me guess, Bill O'Reilly won't allow you to entertain such thoughts.
Why would you want to be a superhero by night when you can screw millions out of their earnings by day? What a loser!
"The record company is at risk of losing money, but the artist is not."
That is because the artist, at this point, has already lost money. Or do you figure those songs create themselves? No, the artist must spend time, time which cannot be spent on making money, but during which the rent will still have to be paid, to create songs.
It's a great idea to limit holdership (only the public really owns works) to only the authors and cut the middlemen out. Only problem is, the middlemen will find a way around it.
"Do You have permission to post this copy-righted image?"
Aw shucks, it's copyrighted? Does that also go for the bukake versions made later that session?
"Remember... dont be a pirate."
Arrr!
You trust your money with a bank that specifically piggy-backs onto IE's browser bugs for its online banking interface? Dude, you deserve IE and everything that comes with it.
I am sure the shareholders of your work are thrilled to hear that systems administration not only installs broken software, but when notified of that, they shift blame. Sounds like a real dandy place to work.
The site: "The images from Titan are jointly copyrighted by The University of Arizona, the European Space Agency, and the National Aerodynamics and Space Administration."
Methinks somebody has left the glue pot open for too long.
The film industry will soon have a much bigger problem on their hands, when their blockbusters have to compete with movies starring computer generated actors. (Well, maybe not soon, but it will happen.)
"I'm not saying people won't do things for personal enjoyment, but people get paid for their novels, and if they dont they can take them many years, if not decades, to write."
You have a funny view of the publishing industry. Only "successful" authors earn any money writing novels, and often it is hardly enough to offset their costs of living.
A lot of novel writers, though, are even willing to pay people to publish their books. This is what has spawned the successful con industry that is known as POD publishing.
Yes, you read that right. Taking it one step further than coders who program for free, there are writers who actually pay third parties thousands of dollars for the promise of having their works distributed.
Again, you are using gobs of free software that people have spent "a good portion of [their lives] working on" to make your point. Surely, you can see the problem with that?
In the Netherlands, business have to file e-tax forms starting this month.
I tried to get some people to work on FOSS tax reporting software, but no-one was interested. "We'll use Windows," some said. "We'll use the online forms," others said. Ah, well.
(I did manage to get registered as a developer, though, but haven't done anything with it. So far, the online forms for VAT seem accessible enough.)
"the studio probably loses more sales to cheapo Asian DVD knock-offs"
Losing a sale. It sounds like an intriguing concept, but I am afraid I do not "get" it. Please explain to me how you lose a sale. Presumable, you first had that sale, right? For instance, how did you have that sale with those Asian customers, whose monthly salary is likely to be only a few times more money than what a legal copy of the DVD costs?
"What's also true, certainly for the US and most of Europe is that it's legal to download anything for preview/evaluation purposes, just as long as you buy it or delete it after a period of 24 hours.
Once the time limit is up, you may download it again, if you wish to continue your preview/evaluation."
No, that's actually a big fat lie.
Please point out in any current copyright law where it says "evaluation" and "24 hours".
"Protection of one's property is not a vigilante action."
According to that logic, I could start gunning down kids in high-schools as a pre-emptive measure, because I know they tend to file-share.
" "Yes offcifer, I'd like to report a theft. My house was broken into last night and 3 pounds of marijuana were stolen. . .""
I don't see the problem in that. Of course, I will talk Dutch to the policeman.
(Downloading is legal in the Netherlands, attacking with viruses or spyware is not and can lead to a prison sentence, IIRC, of up to four years.)
Aren't you the cutest trollboy? There's nothing illegal per se about filesharing.
Since when do the RIAAA represent the copyright holders? Since when are end-users called pirates? (There was a time when this word was reserved for publishers.)
And most importantly: since when are you not allowed to question a wrong, solely when it is used to counter another wrong?
"It looks more like a great Bond film than a realistic hazard although it is without a doubt a terrorists dream. Prime time tv coverage for several hours of the wave racing towards New York, unavoidable carnage, powerless governments and all the rest."
Oh goody! Will there be footage of president Bush doing something to a goat? (Again?)
Less censorship good, four legs baaaaad.