Pretty much all of the Asian-made players are this way. Basically, if it lists multiple audio formats (mp3, wma, aac), then it's going to support Ogg Vorbis unless it's from a company that designs their own chipsets. Stock audio decoder chipsets pretty much all include Vorbis these days.
Heck, Microsoft's Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) defines a standard tag for Ogg Vorbis. That pretty much leaves Apple (and perhaps Sony) as the only company(ies) still trying to pretend Ogg doesn't exist.:)
Any files in/usr/local were provided by you, not Ubuntu. I have apache2 installed here on my Ubuntu box, and my/usr/local/lib directory is empty. Debian policy (which Ubuntu is based on) reserves/usr/local 100% for the local admin, and forbids packages from putting anything in that hierarchy except empty directories. (See section 9.1.2.)
Or to put it another way, no,/usr/local/libz.so.1.2.3.3 is not the "right" one. It's another wrong one that happens to be working for you. For now. The right one is/usr/lib/libz.so.1.2.3.3. Next time you upgrade, that/usr/local version is going to bite you in the ass again.
Ubuntu can do a fine job of updating itself, but it's hardly going to be able to upgrade 3rd-party software you installed manually, now, is it?
(Windows is a different case, of course, since Windows doesn't come with any useful software in the first place.):)
Heh, getting a bit off-topic here, but Marc Anddddreeeeeeeeewhatzit of Mozaic/Netscape/Mozilla fame spoke at our local LUG the weekend after the Netscape code went public, and one of the things he mentioned was that the very first patch they received was...one to make blink tags work for images!
Open Source can be a power for great evil as well as for great good!:)
Actually it doesn't say that at all, although that may be the reason. Certainly, dissatisfaction with Microsoft is not uncommon, even among non-geeks. You still might be correct--this may be all it says, so it can't be described as proof of consumer acceptance of Linux, but you might be wrong. The fact is that we don't have enough information to say one way or the other.
I know a lot of people who are sick of Microsoft, but think of Apple as overpriced and pretentious, and are scared of Linux and its reputation as a system only a geek could love. These people could break all sorts of ways. It's an interesting time to live.:)
You're also leaving out "friends of geeks". With no real advertising budget, people who aren't exposed to Linux users are less likely to be aware of or interested in the Linux option, and are more likely to stick with names they've actually heard of, but those who are close to Linux advocates actually have a decent take-up rate in my experience. Decent enough that friends-of-friends-of-geeks may become a factor before too much longer.
Why yes, interpreting words with their everyday meaning is sure to lead to a complete breakdown in our ability to communicate with each other. It probably leads to gay and interracial marriage too.:)
I'm pretty impressed with your post. At least three logical fallacies (begging the question, slippery-slope and a sort of generic ad-hominem) in one short sentence. Not too bad at all. But if you were really ambitious, you could probably have gotten in a few more. How about "my math professor insists that the only correct meaning for 'begging the question' is a circular argument" (appeal to irrelevant authority--math professors are not experts in English, and are, in fact, notorious for their ignorance on the topic). Or maybe "I saw the TV anchorman say 'begging the question' to introduce a question, and he's an idiot, so anyone who does that must be an idiot" (guilt by association). Heck, if you really wanted, I bet you could even Godwin the thread!:)
Encryption, yes, but with DRM, the goal is to provide decrypted data without letting the person in physical control of the machine know how to decrypt it. I can easily provide you with encrypted audio/video files and no key, but that won't be very useful to you since you won't be able to play them. If I want to allow you to listen to/view the files, I have to provide you with the key, so you can decrypt the data. But then it's no longer encrypted (by definition). My only real option at that point is to try to hide the decryption mechanism so you don't know how to apply the key to the data (and may not even know exactly where the key is), and the decryption will only happen behind the scenes, as it were. But if you have the source to the decryption tool, I haven't done a very good job of hiding the decryption mechanism.
The entire problem with DRM is that it's trying to prevent access by the same people that it's trying to grant access to. If you can't see the inherent contradiction there, I don't know how I can make it any more clear.
The most secure key system in the world doesn't help you if you need to give the decryption key to the same people that you're trying to encrypt the data against.
Sure there is. It just doesn't come bundled with the system like it does on Linux. You have to hunt around the Intarwebs to find useful software for XP. Or if you go to brick-and-mortar shops (did you know there were brick-and-mortar shops that carry software?) you'll find that almost all of what they carry is for Windows (emphasizing how limited and useless the base system is). Most of the useful software available for Windows isn't as good as the software that comes with Linux, but it's out there, and a few (very few) of the apps are absolutely top-notch.
The best you can really do is obscure things as much as possible and hope that slows people down. The obvious problem there is that providing the source code doesn't help to obscure things. And if you don't provide source, about the only Linux vendor who's going to work with you is SCO, whose OpenLinux Server is not exactly flying off the shelves these days.:)
Something like TPM can help, but even there, the leading provider of TPM-based systesm (IBM) admits that it doesn't provide real security against people who have access to the hardware. TPM, despite all the paranoia about it, is really more reliable for locking people out than in. Enhanced Tripwire, yes; enhanced DRM, not so much.
Basically, DRM is snake-oil thats being sold to the big content producers. Open-source DRM would simply be inviting them to watch the snakes being squeezed.:)
You, on the other hand, seem to think that just because there's a special meaning to "begs the question" when used without an object, that the words in that phrase lose their common everyday English meaning. Now, I'll grant you that the popularity of the somewhat awkward phrasing used by GP undoubtedly derives from the existence of the specialized meaning of the phrase in a specific context. Doesn't change the fact that the phrase obviously means exactly what he intended it to mean. Anyone who can actually read English and isn't obsessed with feeding their own ego by putting others down can see that with no problem.
Saying that common English words lose their everyday meaning when used in that particular order begs the question: why would they? Telling someone they're wrong because of your theory that these words have magically lost their ordinary meaning begs the question.
A. neither KDE nor Gnome is a window manager. B. I'd try Kubuntu myself, if it weren't for the unfortunate fact that it uses KDE, the absolute worst desktop environment it has ever been my displeasure to encounter.:)
Not that Gnome is going to win any awards from me. It's got a pretty heavy dose of awfulness too, in my opinion. But at least its developers seem to understand that configuration and options are two different things. KDE, IMO, is for the just-enough-knowledge-to-be-dangerous crowd, while Gnome is better for both the newbies and the experts, neither of whom want to be distracted with a thousand options at every step.
In the mean time, I'm still proudly maintaining my.fvwmrc files, which I have to tweak every few years or so.:)
Open source crypto can be exported without restriction as long as you notify the Feds and make sure they have access. When they first changed the rules, Debian decided to notify the Feds about each and every piece of software added to our repositories, saying it might contain crypto. We were expecting the Feds to complain loudly about this (since our unstable repositories can get several dozens of updates per day), but instead they thanked us and started telling others to look to us as a model of how to do it right.
Sheesh!:)
p.s. this post should not be taken as an official guideline. If you're going to be exporting crypto, even open source crypto, I strongly recommend checking the regs for yourself before jumping in.
what vendor *wouldn't* love to lock their users into *their* online services and *their* software to manage content on their portable devices and the like - all the while being able to advertise their other services, products, etc.
But if they decide to adopt a given standard, the first thing you hear on Slashdot is 'Embrace, extend, extinguish!!'. They can't win.
Sure they can. It's simple. All they have to do is stop engaging in dishonest, underhanded, unscrupulous, blatantly anti-competitive behavior for a few years, and blammo, people will gradually stop assuming the worst every time they do something[*]. As long as people who assume the worst of them are right more often than they're wrong, they've got nobody but themselves to blame for the fact that people will tend to assume the worst.
In many places leaving a car unlocked is forbidden by law
WTF? The Blue Book value on my car is probably about US$20, and that only because the value of the dollar has dropped so much recently. If someone wants to get in and scrounge for the empty soda cans on the floor of the back seat, I'd much rather have them do so without breaking a window (the replacement cost for the window is probably more than the car is worth). Why the hell should I be forced to lock my damn car?
If I ever have anything of moderate value in the car, and the car is going to be unattended for more than a couple of minutes, the thing(s) of value are going into the trunk (which locks automatically, is a lot harder to break into, and isn't visible to random passers-by). To bring this back around to an analogy with the original story, if I leave something valuable in the unlocked cabin of the car (public-facing network) rather than safely in the trunk (secure private network), it's my own damn fault if it gets "accessed", and I'd thank someone who stopped to point it out, not sue 'em!:)
Yay, I managed to come up with a car analogy for this story!:)
Although your summary is stupid and irrelevant and ignores the claims made in the actual article (that these features are similar in name only), claims which may or may not be true (the article appears to be heavily based on Internet rumor mills), I would nevertheless have to agree with you.:)
Apple has proven time and time again that they'll act in evil ways if necessary to keep up with the competition. Of course, their competition is so spectacularly evil that I have little doubt that Apple's forays into evil really are necessary for them. Nevertheless, I'm not interested in buying into that, and wouldn't accept an iPhone as a gift. To paraphrase Ben Franklin: those who would give up essential liberties for minor convenience deserve neither.
Google, on the other hand, while hardly as pure as they'd like us to believe, seem to stray into evil only under the most extreme duress and/or by mistake. Even though I work for one of their main competitors, and frequently get angry with them, I have to respect their integrity overall. Despite the fact that they are very hard to compete with, they seem well intentioned, and don't seem to be trying to destroy us outright, which is good because they probably could if they wanted to. I wish they'd be more concerned with people's privacy (an area where I think my company has a big lead), but still, overall, I find them pretty trustworthy. Speaking for myself, not my company, I like and trust Google about 1000x times more than I like and trust Apple. I'm not sure I'd buy an Android box, but unlike the iPhone, it's something I'd actually consider.
It's true that saying "Apple's kill switch is bad; Google's kill switch is good" sounds like rampant hypocrisy, but, given the evidence of these company's past actions, I would have to say that it actually seems quite plausible. TFA hasn't convinced me, and I'll need more evidence before I/we know for sure, but it will certainly come as no shock, at least to me, if it turns out to be true.
Also, there's a mirror in Alexandria
on
Web Singletons?
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The Internet Archive has a mirror in Alexandria (Egypt), and there used to be an EU mirror as well.
The Archive may not be unique (English for "a singleton"), but the number of non-profit organizations with multiple Petabytes of storage and insane amounts of bandwidth is fairly low, for some odd reason.:)
My honest, thought-out answer is that Apple fanboys believe that Apple can do no wrong, and therefore, according to them, any design decisions made by Apple must be the best possible decisions that can be made. Everyone else (by which they generally mean Windows, since they have no experience with anything else) is inferior by definition.
Now I don't have a lot of experience with Windows or Mac, buf from what I have seen, Mac's UI usually is the superior of the two, so to some extent, their blindered arrogance is justified, but they seem to assume that there is a "best" UI rather than a series of trade-offs, like ease-of-use vs. ease-of-learning. In fact, they consistently mistake those two for each other, and seem incapable of recognizing that they can, in many cases, be opposing goals. The case you're describing sounds like a classic example of this syndrome.
But I'm so old-school, I still think Athena scrollbars rule (hard to learn, but so much easier to use once you do), so many people will probably want to take what I say with a grain of salt.:)
And remains pretty blatantly right-wing to many of us within the US too. Just because much of our national media has been taken over by far-right extremists who want to paint moderates and centrists as ultra-"liberal" (usually in complete and utter ignorance of what that term even means) doesn't mean that everyone in the country has been brainwashed by their soviet-style propaganda.
Then again Firefox ships with most versions of Linux that I have downloaded.
Really? I don't think a single one of the Linux servers in our farm has Firefox installed. On the other hand, I think all of our few remaining Windows servers have Firefox installed.:)
As far as I can tell, they're not; this is YAIMSH (Yet Another Ignorant, Misleading Slashdot Headline)—something that occurs so often it really needs an acronym.:)
Really? Where is that? The term is moderately common in the US and nearly universal in the UK. I thought it was widespread in Oz as well, but I can't claim to be fluent in Aussie (or Kiwi). The term "high school" is much more common in the US, but "middle school" is a widely used alternative, and doesn't confuse the Brits, which is why I used the term and why I tend to use it in places where I may have an international audience.
BTW, thanks for the backup. I probably would have ignored the post as obvious flamebait, but your calm, intelligent reply seems to have done well enough. I should point out, however, that singular-they wasn't really considered vulgar or unsophisticated until sometime in the Nineteenth Century. Before that, it was, at least according to most scholars, considered perfectly appropriate for formal speech, as evidenced by (among many others) that impeccable writer and personal favorite, Jane Austen.
It's a fact of life that there is always someone better than you lurking somewhere.
Well, obviously for that to be true, there would have to be an infinite number of people. With a finite number, there's always going to be one best, assuming that whatever we're talking about is something that has a strict ordering.
But yeah, for everybody but that one guy, you're right. So, when you meet someone better, you cut your losses and move on. Fortunately, there's never a shortage of games filled with suckers who think they know poker.
It would seem that the primary skill of successful professional poker players is avoiding one another and finding tables with suckers on them.
Actually, although that's a necessary skill, it's hardly the primary one. First of all, you don't have to avoid other pros completely: most games have multiple winners and multiple losers, and you just need to find a game with enough enthusiastic amateurs (something the poker world never lacks in) to earn yourself a share. Basically, you just need a little common sense: are there a bunch of people here begging for someone to take their money away? More often than not, the answer is yes.
The winner-takes-all tournament play you see on TV is actually pretty rare, and anyway, the money you earn from those has little or nothing to do with the money on the table. Those are sponsored events, like golf tournaments and such.
The primary skills for a professional poker player are exactly what you'd expect: an ability to calculate odds quickly, to read people, and to avoid being read. Surprisingly easy and surprisingly rare.
Like running a casino, being a professional poker player depends on the existence of superstitious, numerically-illiterate fools who think they can beat the odds or have no clue what the odds are in the first place. Fortunately for both the casinos and the poker pros, there's never a shortage of such people.
That's pretty rude. Not to the casinos (I could care less about them), but to the poor, hardworking "cocktail girls". I do more-or-less the same thing when I'm in Vegas, but I make a point to tip the waitrons well. This means: they'll happily keep bringing the drinks; they'll carefully not notice how few nickels you're putting in the slots (as long as you keep up a minimal pretense); and you're still getting drinks at bargain-basement prices.
"Do what you wanna--do what you will; Just don't mess up your neighbor's thrill-- and when you pay the bill, kindly leave a little tip to help the next poor sucker on his one-way trip."
-- Frank Zappa, "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing"
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty much all of the Asian-made players are this way. Basically, if it lists multiple audio formats (mp3, wma, aac), then it's going to support Ogg Vorbis unless it's from a company that designs their own chipsets. Stock audio decoder chipsets pretty much all include Vorbis these days.
Heck, Microsoft's Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) defines a standard tag for Ogg Vorbis. That pretty much leaves Apple (and perhaps Sony) as the only company(ies) still trying to pretend Ogg doesn't exist. :)
Any files in /usr/local were provided by you, not Ubuntu. I have apache2 installed here on my Ubuntu box, and my /usr/local/lib directory is empty. Debian policy (which Ubuntu is based on) reserves /usr/local 100% for the local admin, and forbids packages from putting anything in that hierarchy except empty directories. (See section 9.1.2.)
Or to put it another way, no, /usr/local/libz.so.1.2.3.3 is not the "right" one. It's another wrong one that happens to be working for you. For now. The right one is /usr/lib/libz.so.1.2.3.3. Next time you upgrade, that /usr/local version is going to bite you in the ass again.
Ubuntu can do a fine job of updating itself, but it's hardly going to be able to upgrade 3rd-party software you installed manually, now, is it?
(Windows is a different case, of course, since Windows doesn't come with any useful software in the first place.) :)
Heh, getting a bit off-topic here, but Marc Anddddreeeeeeeeewhatzit of Mozaic/Netscape/Mozilla fame spoke at our local LUG the weekend after the Netscape code went public, and one of the things he mentioned was that the very first patch they received was...one to make blink tags work for images!
Open Source can be a power for great evil as well as for great good! :)
...but, according to the constitution, mathematical algorithms are not supposed to be patentable.
Oh you poor deluded fool. The [US C]onstitution only applies until money is involved! :)
Actually it doesn't say that at all, although that may be the reason. Certainly, dissatisfaction with Microsoft is not uncommon, even among non-geeks. You still might be correct--this may be all it says, so it can't be described as proof of consumer acceptance of Linux, but you might be wrong. The fact is that we don't have enough information to say one way or the other.
I know a lot of people who are sick of Microsoft, but think of Apple as overpriced and pretentious, and are scared of Linux and its reputation as a system only a geek could love. These people could break all sorts of ways. It's an interesting time to live. :)
You're also leaving out "friends of geeks". With no real advertising budget, people who aren't exposed to Linux users are less likely to be aware of or interested in the Linux option, and are more likely to stick with names they've actually heard of, but those who are close to Linux advocates actually have a decent take-up rate in my experience. Decent enough that friends-of-friends-of-geeks may become a factor before too much longer.
Why yes, interpreting words with their everyday meaning is sure to lead to a complete breakdown in our ability to communicate with each other. It probably leads to gay and interracial marriage too. :)
I'm pretty impressed with your post. At least three logical fallacies (begging the question, slippery-slope and a sort of generic ad-hominem) in one short sentence. Not too bad at all. But if you were really ambitious, you could probably have gotten in a few more. How about "my math professor insists that the only correct meaning for 'begging the question' is a circular argument" (appeal to irrelevant authority--math professors are not experts in English, and are, in fact, notorious for their ignorance on the topic). Or maybe "I saw the TV anchorman say 'begging the question' to introduce a question, and he's an idiot, so anyone who does that must be an idiot" (guilt by association). Heck, if you really wanted, I bet you could even Godwin the thread! :)
Encryption, yes, but with DRM, the goal is to provide decrypted data without letting the person in physical control of the machine know how to decrypt it. I can easily provide you with encrypted audio/video files and no key, but that won't be very useful to you since you won't be able to play them. If I want to allow you to listen to/view the files, I have to provide you with the key, so you can decrypt the data. But then it's no longer encrypted (by definition). My only real option at that point is to try to hide the decryption mechanism so you don't know how to apply the key to the data (and may not even know exactly where the key is), and the decryption will only happen behind the scenes, as it were. But if you have the source to the decryption tool, I haven't done a very good job of hiding the decryption mechanism.
The entire problem with DRM is that it's trying to prevent access by the same people that it's trying to grant access to. If you can't see the inherent contradiction there, I don't know how I can make it any more clear.
The most secure key system in the world doesn't help you if you need to give the decryption key to the same people that you're trying to encrypt the data against.
But absolutely no useful software runs on it...
Sure there is. It just doesn't come bundled with the system like it does on Linux. You have to hunt around the Intarwebs to find useful software for XP. Or if you go to brick-and-mortar shops (did you know there were brick-and-mortar shops that carry software?) you'll find that almost all of what they carry is for Windows (emphasizing how limited and useless the base system is). Most of the useful software available for Windows isn't as good as the software that comes with Linux, but it's out there, and a few (very few) of the apps are absolutely top-notch.
a true secure DRM
This is what we in the trade call "an oxymoron. :)
The best you can really do is obscure things as much as possible and hope that slows people down. The obvious problem there is that providing the source code doesn't help to obscure things. And if you don't provide source, about the only Linux vendor who's going to work with you is SCO, whose OpenLinux Server is not exactly flying off the shelves these days. :)
Something like TPM can help, but even there, the leading provider of TPM-based systesm (IBM) admits that it doesn't provide real security against people who have access to the hardware. TPM, despite all the paranoia about it, is really more reliable for locking people out than in. Enhanced Tripwire, yes; enhanced DRM, not so much.
Basically, DRM is snake-oil thats being sold to the big content producers. Open-source DRM would simply be inviting them to watch the snakes being squeezed. :)
You, on the other hand, seem to think that just because there's a special meaning to "begs the question" when used without an object, that the words in that phrase lose their common everyday English meaning. Now, I'll grant you that the popularity of the somewhat awkward phrasing used by GP undoubtedly derives from the existence of the specialized meaning of the phrase in a specific context. Doesn't change the fact that the phrase obviously means exactly what he intended it to mean. Anyone who can actually read English and isn't obsessed with feeding their own ego by putting others down can see that with no problem.
Saying that common English words lose their everyday meaning when used in that particular order begs the question: why would they? Telling someone they're wrong because of your theory that these words have magically lost their ordinary meaning begs the question.
A. neither KDE nor Gnome is a window manager. :)
B. I'd try Kubuntu myself, if it weren't for the unfortunate fact that it uses KDE, the absolute worst desktop environment it has ever been my displeasure to encounter.
Not that Gnome is going to win any awards from me. It's got a pretty heavy dose of awfulness too, in my opinion. But at least its developers seem to understand that configuration and options are two different things. KDE, IMO, is for the just-enough-knowledge-to-be-dangerous crowd, while Gnome is better for both the newbies and the experts, neither of whom want to be distracted with a thousand options at every step.
In the mean time, I'm still proudly maintaining my .fvwmrc files, which I have to tweak every few years or so. :)
Open source crypto can be exported without restriction as long as you notify the Feds and make sure they have access. When they first changed the rules, Debian decided to notify the Feds about each and every piece of software added to our repositories, saying it might contain crypto. We were expecting the Feds to complain loudly about this (since our unstable repositories can get several dozens of updates per day), but instead they thanked us and started telling others to look to us as a model of how to do it right.
Sheesh! :)
p.s. this post should not be taken as an official guideline. If you're going to be exporting crypto, even open source crypto, I strongly recommend checking the regs for yourself before jumping in.
what vendor *wouldn't* love to lock their users into *their* online services and *their* software to manage content on their portable devices and the like - all the while being able to advertise their other services, products, etc.
Um...Debian?
(Just sayin'...) :)
But if they decide to adopt a given standard, the first thing you hear on Slashdot is 'Embrace, extend, extinguish!!'. They can't win.
Sure they can. It's simple. All they have to do is stop engaging in dishonest, underhanded, unscrupulous, blatantly anti-competitive behavior for a few years, and blammo, people will gradually stop assuming the worst every time they do something[*]. As long as people who assume the worst of them are right more often than they're wrong, they've got nobody but themselves to blame for the fact that people will tend to assume the worst.
[*] it worked, more or less, for IBM.
In many places leaving a car unlocked is forbidden by law
WTF? The Blue Book value on my car is probably about US$20, and that only because the value of the dollar has dropped so much recently. If someone wants to get in and scrounge for the empty soda cans on the floor of the back seat, I'd much rather have them do so without breaking a window (the replacement cost for the window is probably more than the car is worth). Why the hell should I be forced to lock my damn car?
If I ever have anything of moderate value in the car, and the car is going to be unattended for more than a couple of minutes, the thing(s) of value are going into the trunk (which locks automatically, is a lot harder to break into, and isn't visible to random passers-by). To bring this back around to an analogy with the original story, if I leave something valuable in the unlocked cabin of the car (public-facing network) rather than safely in the trunk (secure private network), it's my own damn fault if it gets "accessed", and I'd thank someone who stopped to point it out, not sue 'em! :)
Yay, I managed to come up with a car analogy for this story! :)
Although your summary is stupid and irrelevant and ignores the claims made in the actual article (that these features are similar in name only), claims which may or may not be true (the article appears to be heavily based on Internet rumor mills), I would nevertheless have to agree with you. :)
Apple has proven time and time again that they'll act in evil ways if necessary to keep up with the competition. Of course, their competition is so spectacularly evil that I have little doubt that Apple's forays into evil really are necessary for them. Nevertheless, I'm not interested in buying into that, and wouldn't accept an iPhone as a gift. To paraphrase Ben Franklin: those who would give up essential liberties for minor convenience deserve neither.
Google, on the other hand, while hardly as pure as they'd like us to believe, seem to stray into evil only under the most extreme duress and/or by mistake. Even though I work for one of their main competitors, and frequently get angry with them, I have to respect their integrity overall. Despite the fact that they are very hard to compete with, they seem well intentioned, and don't seem to be trying to destroy us outright, which is good because they probably could if they wanted to. I wish they'd be more concerned with people's privacy (an area where I think my company has a big lead), but still, overall, I find them pretty trustworthy. Speaking for myself, not my company, I like and trust Google about 1000x times more than I like and trust Apple. I'm not sure I'd buy an Android box, but unlike the iPhone, it's something I'd actually consider.
It's true that saying "Apple's kill switch is bad; Google's kill switch is good" sounds like rampant hypocrisy, but, given the evidence of these company's past actions, I would have to say that it actually seems quite plausible. TFA hasn't convinced me, and I'll need more evidence before I/we know for sure, but it will certainly come as no shock, at least to me, if it turns out to be true.
The Internet Archive has a mirror in Alexandria (Egypt), and there used to be an EU mirror as well.
The Archive may not be unique (English for "a singleton"), but the number of non-profit organizations with multiple Petabytes of storage and insane amounts of bandwidth is fairly low, for some odd reason. :)
My honest, thought-out answer is that Apple fanboys believe that Apple can do no wrong, and therefore, according to them, any design decisions made by Apple must be the best possible decisions that can be made. Everyone else (by which they generally mean Windows, since they have no experience with anything else) is inferior by definition.
Now I don't have a lot of experience with Windows or Mac, buf from what I have seen, Mac's UI usually is the superior of the two, so to some extent, their blindered arrogance is justified, but they seem to assume that there is a "best" UI rather than a series of trade-offs, like ease-of-use vs. ease-of-learning. In fact, they consistently mistake those two for each other, and seem incapable of recognizing that they can, in many cases, be opposing goals. The case you're describing sounds like a classic example of this syndrome.
But I'm so old-school, I still think Athena scrollbars rule (hard to learn, but so much easier to use once you do), so many people will probably want to take what I say with a grain of salt. :)
[CNN] remains right wing to those outside the US.
And remains pretty blatantly right-wing to many of us within the US too. Just because much of our national media has been taken over by far-right extremists who want to paint moderates and centrists as ultra-"liberal" (usually in complete and utter ignorance of what that term even means) doesn't mean that everyone in the country has been brainwashed by their soviet-style propaganda.
Then again Firefox ships with most versions of Linux that I have downloaded.
Really? I don't think a single one of the Linux servers in our farm has Firefox installed. On the other hand, I think all of our few remaining Windows servers have Firefox installed. :)
Then i don't see why they re-examine the 2nd law.
As far as I can tell, they're not; this is YAIMSH (Yet Another Ignorant, Misleading Slashdot Headline)—something that occurs so often it really needs an acronym. :)
(Spinning rapidly off-topic here, so I'll dump my "karma bonus".)
I googled "waittron definition" and got just one result: Lesbotronic.
That's probably because you misspelled it. The word only has one "t", like "waiter" or "waitress".
* we don't have middle school
Really? Where is that? The term is moderately common in the US and nearly universal in the UK. I thought it was widespread in Oz as well, but I can't claim to be fluent in Aussie (or Kiwi). The term "high school" is much more common in the US, but "middle school" is a widely used alternative, and doesn't confuse the Brits, which is why I used the term and why I tend to use it in places where I may have an international audience.
BTW, thanks for the backup. I probably would have ignored the post as obvious flamebait, but your calm, intelligent reply seems to have done well enough. I should point out, however, that singular-they wasn't really considered vulgar or unsophisticated until sometime in the Nineteenth Century. Before that, it was, at least according to most scholars, considered perfectly appropriate for formal speech, as evidenced by (among many others) that impeccable writer and personal favorite, Jane Austen.
It's a fact of life that there is always someone better than you lurking somewhere.
Well, obviously for that to be true, there would have to be an infinite number of people. With a finite number, there's always going to be one best, assuming that whatever we're talking about is something that has a strict ordering.
But yeah, for everybody but that one guy, you're right. So, when you meet someone better, you cut your losses and move on. Fortunately, there's never a shortage of games filled with suckers who think they know poker.
It would seem that the primary skill of successful professional poker players is avoiding one another and finding tables with suckers on them.
Actually, although that's a necessary skill, it's hardly the primary one. First of all, you don't have to avoid other pros completely: most games have multiple winners and multiple losers, and you just need to find a game with enough enthusiastic amateurs (something the poker world never lacks in) to earn yourself a share. Basically, you just need a little common sense: are there a bunch of people here begging for someone to take their money away? More often than not, the answer is yes.
The winner-takes-all tournament play you see on TV is actually pretty rare, and anyway, the money you earn from those has little or nothing to do with the money on the table. Those are sponsored events, like golf tournaments and such.
The primary skills for a professional poker player are exactly what you'd expect: an ability to calculate odds quickly, to read people, and to avoid being read. Surprisingly easy and surprisingly rare.
Like running a casino, being a professional poker player depends on the existence of superstitious, numerically-illiterate fools who think they can beat the odds or have no clue what the odds are in the first place. Fortunately for both the casinos and the poker pros, there's never a shortage of such people.
That's pretty rude. Not to the casinos (I could care less about them), but to the poor, hardworking "cocktail girls". I do more-or-less the same thing when I'm in Vegas, but I make a point to tip the waitrons well. This means: they'll happily keep bringing the drinks; they'll carefully not notice how few nickels you're putting in the slots (as long as you keep up a minimal pretense); and you're still getting drinks at bargain-basement prices.
"Do what you wanna--do what you will;
Just don't mess up your neighbor's thrill--
and when you pay the bill, kindly leave a little tip
to help the next poor sucker on his one-way trip."
-- Frank Zappa, "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing"