Noticed that, too. On the planet these people live on, it must be common to spend $1500 for a little box so you can watch movie commercials. On this planet, I wouldn't spend $15.00 on it.
Too bad so many rich IT folks want to turn it into showbiz.
Doesn't the fact that: (A) open source software costs little or nothing, and, (B) several alternative versions of most application types are available, make it easy for unhappy users to staty silent move on to something else?
When I use free software, I don't have the same motivivation to complain or suggest that I do when I'm using software I bought. It's the difference in seeing yourself (and being seen as) a user rather than a customer. The commercial software folks know they're dependent on customers, while some open source and free folks appear tp be debating whether "users" should influence the direction of their "movements".
Agree, but the problem is that the software industry, and, it seems to me, especially developers, are slow, if not resistant, to change. It is an industry where GUI tweaks count as "innovation". (Lest someone point to the web, it's now just about ten years old.) The industry works within the confines of an immense installed based of legacy hardware and software. Innovation that threatens that status quo -- and the livelihoods of many -- is unlikely to reach the desktops of users.
They buy bandwidth to push their data out, but I buy bandwidth to pull it down to my machine. One alternative is for my ISP to bill/. for the bandwidth I use on their network to read Slashdot.
No troll. If you're actually selling something, you can pass costs on to customers. If you're trying to make money by giving something away, you have another problem.
Of course, more bandwidth is taken up by the downlink from/., so they're, as well as others, are getting a free ride. I.e., their bits move via my ISP, but I'm the one billed.
In point of fact, almost all of Slashdot's content is provided at no cost to OSDN.
Let the web content producer pay their customers' ISP's for the bandwidth used to access their site and buy their stuff, passing it on to their individual customers as part of the price of their products. If I don't want what they sell, I don't use or pay for the bandwidth.
Seems preferable to me paying increased ISP bills for bandwidth I may not actually use.
>>...If suddenly IE only worked with IIS powered servers, and IIS would refuse to send to anything that wasn't IE...
That would generally be considered A Bad Thing, but I'm suggesting that with 90+ percent of computer users in the world using IE on Windows there'd be a very strong financial incentive for businesses to buy that restrictive version of IIS. Someday, MS may very well tack on some compelling goodie to the IIS/IE/Windows triumvirate that will bring about that scenario anyway.
What I'm suggesting is that standards -- by the W3C or whatever -- are overwhelmed by the market.
This story will provoke angst about standards, but, to be sure, why should an end user worry about standards? If the 90+ percent of the world that use IE are satisfied with its performance, what relevance have standrds for them?
Standards make life easier for developers, but not necessarily for users. Isn't there some truth in the fact that standards tend to be the refuge of people who can't sell enough product?
Who said anything about being anti-social? I'm just struck by the naivete of people who are upset when corporations act out of financial motives. That's why people form corporations: to make money. Personally, I don't see that this fuss has much at all to do with ethics.
Why should Apple be termed a failure if it doesn't supplant Microsoft? This kind of bogus corporate warfare is largely a product of media hype. Magazines sell better if their covers are emblazoned with headlines touting "Windows versus Mac; We Decide the Winner". (It's a direct parallel to car magazines, complete with detailed reviews packed with numbers and data, but little real information.)
OS X exists to help sell Apple computers. By controlling the OS and GUI as tightly as they do, they ensure that they -- and not someone else -- control what customers get when they buy a Mac. Odds are, Apple will never market a port to the X86. Why would they try to destroy their own business?
Apple sells computers. Porting OS X to a non-Apple platform just means that they'd be in the business of competing with themselves. I.e., why buy a Mac if you can simply buy OS X to run on your Intel box? It doesn't business sense for Apple to do this.
Money is always hard to come by, but why get so upset about Mac prices? Apple is under no obligation to anyone about their prices. They can set their prices anywhere they wish, and the market will take care of itself. It's a business, not a community or culture.
>>...admitting that you want OSX on Intel is admitting that the Linux movement has FAILED
Hear, hear!
Every Apple story on/. seems to attract dozens of annoying off-topic whiners yapping that "it's too expensive","too slow" and "just eye candy".
I'm posting this on my iMac, and not on the Intel Linux box sitting unplugged for months over in the corner. Why? Linux cost me too much time, doesn't appear subjectively faster than OS X (I'm a desktop user, if I can't see a difference, why care about benchmarks?), and uses GUI's that jurt my eyes.
Not really. You aren't required to reveal new insights on a daily basis, just say something that supplements, rather than duplicates, what's in the required reading.
Well, me for one. Because I'd been using a 3-button mouse for years before moving to OS X. By the same token, if I'd moved to traditional Unix and X after years on a Mac, I would have bemoaned the need to use a 3-button mouse.
Using a 1-button mouse in an app designed for it, i.e., per Apple standards, presents no problem. I found that no functionality -- none, zip, nada -- was lost, though, with a 1-button mouse on non-Apple apps.
One, the Chinese have been launching satellites for decades. They seem to have guidance in hand.
Two, any ICBM is capable of launching a satellite by extending the boost phase a few seconds more. This increases terminal velocity from the approx 15,000 mph of a weapons-carrying ICBM to the approx 18,000 mph needed for orbit. By, extension, any rocket designed as a satellite launcher can carry a warhead.
All that is true, but the the real failure is the inability to decide where to go. The Shuttle is, indeed, a politically compromised piece of 1970's engineering designed to cheaply haul stuff to orbit. Turns out it's not cheap, but now we have a truck whose only purpose is to build a truck stop (ISS). It's as if Lewis and Clark spent their budget building a houseboat moored at St Louis rather than setting out to the West.
Better to set a goal -- a destination -- and build the infrastructure needed to get there. Go to Mars? Fine, then build the boosters and spacecraft to get there. Establish a permanent presence on the Moon? Fine, then do it.
Whether the metaphor is "Back" or "Up" is immaterial if the underlying capability is the same. And that capability hasn't appeared to have changed since Mosaic. Prior to the web's commercialization, when most sites were static, the "Back" button wasn't so annoying. Moving retrospectively through too much useless crap is as much a waste of time as trying to use a browser to find something in the first place.
The "History" file won't cut it, either, because it, too, forces you to move backwards through everything.
Often, I want to move back to a specific URL I saw earlier in a session, but I don't want to bokmark it. How about allowing users to build their own breadcrumb trails?
Don't know how computers fit into the curricula in the UK, but here in the states an awful lot of third-rate vocational training is foisted off as "learning aout computers". Too many high schools and colleges cobble up "computer science" courses on Office, Photoshop, Linux, Windows and other packages. by hiring part-time instructors who simply paraphrase the paperback third-party book they tell their students to buy.
In any case, we should be talking about 'learning with computers", not "learning about computers".
Whenever I jump into something completely new -- like Linux several years ago -- I tend to go out and buy several books on the subject. Contrary to two perennial/. comments about books of this nature, their readers are not idiots, nor do they find that the web offers a convenient, coherent and error-free substitute.
So-called "bible" volumes are intended to package enough information to allow a completely new user to move from installation and configuration to moderately sophisticated use. One of their most useful attributes is that they help the neophyte begin to understand all the capabilities available in Linux (and how to exploit them via the inevitable distribution-specific foibles).
On a second note,/. book reviews would be more useful if they'd concentrate on the book itself, rather than trying to prove their assertion that the book doesn't need to exist. Leave that for the self-inflated/. posters who castigate the "idiots" who might actually buy the book.
Slashdot Mirror
Noticed that, too. On the planet these people live on, it must be common to spend $1500 for a little box so you can watch movie commercials. On this planet, I wouldn't spend $15.00 on it.
Too bad so many rich IT folks want to turn it into showbiz.
>> ...they just go "oh, well" and look elsewhere.
Doesn't the fact that: (A) open source software costs little or nothing, and, (B) several alternative versions of most application types are available, make it easy for unhappy users to staty silent move on to something else?
When I use free software, I don't have the same motivivation to complain or suggest that I do when I'm using software I bought. It's the difference in seeing yourself (and being seen as) a user rather than a customer. The commercial software folks know they're dependent on customers, while some open source and free folks appear tp be debating whether "users" should influence the direction of their "movements".
Agree, but the problem is that the software industry, and, it seems to me, especially developers, are slow, if not resistant, to change. It is an industry where GUI tweaks count as "innovation". (Lest someone point to the web, it's now just about ten years old.) The industry works within the confines of an immense installed based of legacy hardware and software. Innovation that threatens that status quo -- and the livelihoods of many -- is unlikely to reach the desktops of users.
They buy bandwidth to push their data out, but I buy bandwidth to pull it down to my machine. One alternative is for my ISP to bill /. for the bandwidth I use on their network to read Slashdot.
No troll. If you're actually selling something, you can pass costs on to customers. If you're trying to make money by giving something away, you have another problem.
/., so they're, as well as others, are getting a free ride. I.e., their bits move via my ISP, but I'm the one billed.
Of course, more bandwidth is taken up by the downlink from
In point of fact, almost all of Slashdot's content is provided at no cost to OSDN.
Let the web content producer pay their customers' ISP's for the bandwidth used to access their site and buy their stuff, passing it on to their individual customers as part of the price of their products. If I don't want what they sell, I don't use or pay for the bandwidth.
Seems preferable to me paying increased ISP bills for bandwidth I may not actually use.
>> ...If suddenly IE only worked with IIS powered servers, and IIS would refuse to send to anything that wasn't IE...
That would generally be considered A Bad Thing, but I'm suggesting that with 90+ percent of computer users in the world using IE on Windows there'd be a very strong financial incentive for businesses to buy that restrictive version of IIS. Someday, MS may very well tack on some compelling goodie to the IIS/IE/Windows triumvirate that will bring about that scenario anyway.
What I'm suggesting is that standards -- by the W3C or whatever -- are overwhelmed by the market.
This story will provoke angst about standards, but, to be sure, why should an end user worry about standards? If the 90+ percent of the world that use IE are satisfied with its performance, what relevance have standrds for them?
Standards make life easier for developers, but not necessarily for users. Isn't there some truth in the fact that standards tend to be the refuge of people who can't sell enough product?
Who said anything about being anti-social? I'm just struck by the naivete of people who are upset when corporations act out of financial motives. That's why people form corporations: to make money. Personally, I don't see that this fuss has much at all to do with ethics.
Of course, it's about money. Why wouldn't it be?
/. posters seem to think they've got an exclusive on ethics?
Why do so many
Why should Apple be termed a failure if it doesn't supplant Microsoft? This kind of bogus corporate warfare is largely a product of media hype. Magazines sell better if their covers are emblazoned with headlines touting "Windows versus Mac; We Decide the Winner". (It's a direct parallel to car magazines, complete with detailed reviews packed with numbers and data, but little real information.)
OS X exists to help sell Apple computers. By controlling the OS and GUI as tightly as they do, they ensure that they -- and not someone else -- control what customers get when they buy a Mac. Odds are, Apple will never market a port to the X86. Why would they try to destroy their own business?
Apple sells computers. Porting OS X to a non-Apple platform just means that they'd be in the business of competing with themselves. I.e., why buy a Mac if you can simply buy OS X to run on your Intel box? It doesn't business sense for Apple to do this.
Money is always hard to come by, but why get so upset about Mac prices? Apple is under no obligation to anyone about their prices. They can set their prices anywhere they wish, and the market will take care of itself. It's a business, not a community or culture.
>> ...admitting that you want OSX on Intel is admitting that the Linux movement has FAILED
/. seems to attract dozens of annoying off-topic whiners yapping that "it's too expensive","too slow" and "just eye candy".
Hear, hear!
Every Apple story on
I'm posting this on my iMac, and not on the Intel Linux box sitting unplugged for months over in the corner. Why? Linux cost me too much time, doesn't appear subjectively faster than OS X (I'm a desktop user, if I can't see a difference, why care about benchmarks?), and uses GUI's that jurt my eyes.
Not really. You aren't required to reveal new insights on a daily basis, just say something that supplements, rather than duplicates, what's in the required reading.
I
This is this week's version of staring out of the the windows.
But...
1. Students ought not to be able to pass unless they pay attention in class.
2. Teachers ought to say something not available elsewhere.
OhMiGod! No 3rd party themes for my iMac!!!
Now there's a problem I'll stay up nights fretting about.
Well, me for one. Because I'd been using a 3-button mouse for years before moving to OS X. By the same token, if I'd moved to traditional Unix and X after years on a Mac, I would have bemoaned the need to use a 3-button mouse.
Using a 1-button mouse in an app designed for it, i.e., per Apple standards, presents no problem. I found that no functionality -- none, zip, nada -- was lost, though, with a 1-button mouse on non-Apple apps.
An inane post.
One, the Chinese have been launching satellites for decades. They seem to have guidance in hand.
Two, any ICBM is capable of launching a satellite by extending the boost phase a few seconds more. This increases terminal velocity from the approx 15,000 mph of a weapons-carrying ICBM to the approx 18,000 mph needed for orbit. By, extension, any rocket designed as a satellite launcher can carry a warhead.
All that is true, but the the real failure is the inability to decide where to go. The Shuttle is, indeed, a politically compromised piece of 1970's engineering designed to cheaply haul stuff to orbit. Turns out it's not cheap, but now we have a truck whose only purpose is to build a truck stop (ISS). It's as if Lewis and Clark spent their budget building a houseboat moored at St Louis rather than setting out to the West.
Better to set a goal -- a destination -- and build the infrastructure needed to get there. Go to Mars? Fine, then build the boosters and spacecraft to get there. Establish a permanent presence on the Moon? Fine, then do it.
Whether the metaphor is "Back" or "Up" is immaterial if the underlying capability is the same. And that capability hasn't appeared to have changed since Mosaic. Prior to the web's commercialization, when most sites were static, the "Back" button wasn't so annoying. Moving retrospectively through too much useless crap is as much a waste of time as trying to use a browser to find something in the first place.
The "History" file won't cut it, either, because it, too, forces you to move backwards through everything.
Often, I want to move back to a specific URL I saw earlier in a session, but I don't want to bokmark it. How about allowing users to build their own breadcrumb trails?
Thanks, Michael. That'll certainly pump up the ad impressions today. Maybe a link to a flat earth site can be next?
Don't know how computers fit into the curricula in the UK, but here in the states an awful lot of third-rate vocational training is foisted off as "learning aout computers". Too many high schools and colleges cobble up "computer science" courses on Office, Photoshop, Linux, Windows and other packages. by hiring part-time instructors who simply paraphrase the paperback third-party book they tell their students to buy.
In any case, we should be talking about 'learning with computers", not "learning about computers".
Whenever I jump into something completely new -- like Linux several years ago -- I tend to go out and buy several books on the subject. Contrary to two perennial /. comments about books of this nature, their readers are not idiots, nor do they find that the web offers a convenient, coherent and error-free substitute.
/. book reviews would be more useful if they'd concentrate on the book itself, rather than trying to prove their assertion that the book doesn't need to exist. Leave that for the self-inflated /. posters who castigate the "idiots" who might actually buy the book.
So-called "bible" volumes are intended to package enough information to allow a completely new user to move from installation and configuration to moderately sophisticated use. One of their most useful attributes is that they help the neophyte begin to understand all the capabilities available in Linux (and how to exploit them via the inevitable distribution-specific foibles).
On a second note,
...a large black obelisk orbiting Jupiter.