>> On the same day that yet another shuttle launch was postponed...
So, the private sector can now control the weather? Storms in Florida are keeping the Shuttle on the pad this week. If Elon Musk was launching a vehicle with people and it was storming at the launch site, he'd postpone, too. Go ask him what would happen to his fortune if he launched his first manned vehicle on a stormy day and lost the crew.
In terms of manned flight, the private sector is 40 years behind.
Photos cannot, by their nature, copy a painting. And, whether or not someone may call something "art" has no bearing on its copyright status. Copyright does not depend on artistic merit.
If you think otherwise, then feel free to try an change the law. I look forward to your Court of Artistic Merit. UNtil then, what you think "should" happen is of little relevance.
>>... users are clueless about what they really want...
That's absurd on the face of it. In my experience, users almost always know exactly what they want. The problem is that the don't speak tech, and techies don't know how, and often don't want, to communicate usefully with users. Techies keep using words like "specs" and "requirements", etc. Write the specs and then move on to the real fun. They want to use tech to measure all sorts of irrelevant things, as if people really decide they like or hate some piece of software because their mouse moves 0.54 centimeters less. People don't even notice things like that.
The way to find out what users want is to pay attention to how they do the job they want the software to do. Learn how users spend their time. Learn what they see as important. Learn the roadblocks. Sit with them at their desks 8 hours a day for a week. Take lots of notes. Then, go off and think. When you're done, come back with a rough sketch of what your code could do for them. Ask things like, "If you could do this, would that be useful?". Take more notes. Rinse and repeat. Write real code. Enlist willing users to test code, not to see if it works -- you better already know that -- but to see if they like it. Rinse and repeat some more.
Well said. In fact, there are people who actually like to work in a darkroom, considering it the most important part of the process. See Ansel Adams.
If someone thinks the purpose of a photo is merely to capture a perfectly accurate image of the scene in front of you, cheap digitals at low ISO's are just fine, especially if you only display the images at small size on the web. If you need to print those images or display them at large sizes on the web, then you need the capabilities of an expensive digital.
Putting lens quality aside, film and user skill primarily determine the images a film camera produces, i.e., things that are independent of the camera. That's not the case for digitals, where sensor size and quality as well as the vendor's software code are vital.
Read my post. Besides, go ask photographers how many images they make at ISO 6400. Beyond a certain arbitrary point, high ISO numbers are silly sales gimmicks that sucker naive buyers, just like big megapixel numbers. Neither attribute will help you make a good image, just lke buying a $500 set of knives will not make you a good cook.
ISO 800 is absolutely and easily within film's capabilities. I've got rolls of ISO 800, and 1600, in my fridge right now. Whether using film or digital, I consistently shoot at ISO's of 50-400, with 800 reserved for nighttime with artificial lighting.
I've got several cameras, digital and film. Among them is a $400 high-end digital point- and-shoot and a 20-year-old film point-and-shoot I bought for $80. The digital is useless above ISO 400 (noise) but the film camera happily shoots any kind of film I feed it.
If digitals at high ISO do not create noise, why do digitals contain noise-reduction routines and why is there a thriving after-market in noise-reduction software? Why are forums devoted to expensive digital cameras full of chatter about noise?
A $200 digital point-and-shoot will typically produce more noise at ISO's of say, 800 and up than an equivalently priced film point-and-shoot.
The fact that the very best digitals are capable of extreme ISO settings is relevant only to the few who can afford them.
Beyond that, film vs. digital is a pointless discussion. On the one hand, some diehards refuse to see any value in digital, and, on the other, some folks always equate "digital" with "better". Both positions are wrong.
There remains a strong community of film users. Whether film is "better" is not the point. The point is they like film. People who are cellphone shooters and think everything about photography can be summed up in megapixels and resolution might not understand.
Film still beats digital in low-light, high-ISO situations. If you just snap pix with your phone, you won't care. If you make a living with your camers, you will.
Yes, the very best digital cameras are very good, but their film equivalents are significantly cheaper.
>>....the technological problems yet like getting people to back things up.../i.
That's not a technological problem. It's the way people behave. How many of us have placed our vital pper documents in a fireproof box in a secure facility outside our residence?
Someday, someone will get smart and offer backup in the OS. Apple is very close.
That's how developers think. Linux users -- customers -- mean the everything that the distribution installs when they say "Linux".
The notion of employing user testing is patently obvious. It is a sign of the state of Linux -- 15 years or so in -- that suggesting such a thing can be controversial.
The perception is that video games are for kids. As is the case for every medium, parents will decide that they do not want their kids seeinig certain images or hearing certain language regardless of the artistic intent or value of those images or words.
You can disagree all you want, or poke fun at the "Think of the Children!" syndrome, but you can't fight human nature.
Aside: The quest for video games to be accepted as art would acquire more credibility if people heard about it in some context other than attempts to include explicit sex and violence.
>> I'd agree with the parent that the GP is incorrect in his statement of "the fate of a nation is determined by its people"> In western (particularly American) thought, there is an additional prerequsite to that claim: a citizen must do what is necessary to protect his citizenship. This means, through logical conclusion, that he is armed.
False premise, false conclusion.
Citizenship does not convey any rights. It cannot because all humans are born with equal rights. States can only protect or thwart the exercise of those rights.
>> An armed citizenry is not something your average tyrant is likely to find too pleasant.
Seldom seen in actual practice. The Middle East is awash with privately held weapons and also awash in tyrants. Such weapons are powerless against the resources of a modern totalitarian state, which includes far more than just arms.
I specifically oppose the notion of an armed and militarized citizenry because it leads to the replacement of one tyrant with another.
>> n the absence of an external interfering force (e. g., the army of the Soviet Union), the fate of a nation is determined by its people.
Wrong. An internal interfering force is even more able to determine a nation's fate. That's the nature of totalitarianism. It is naive in the extreme, and ethically deficient, to blithely assume that unarmed civilians can bring down a regime willing to slaughter its citizens to retain power.
All the choice inherent in Linux -- meaning the choice for developers to go their own way -- increases the difficulty of achieving the level of standardization that allows any software platform to play well with others.
You really think Microsoft makes decisions based on Ballmer's moods?
Are you denying what I said about that page? Did you look at it? Do you really think enough people know and care about Linux that the know that machine as a Linux machine? Despite everything, only a small minority of people know about Linux, and not all of them would use it. I've known many people who would not run it because, they say, they don't want to run software built by a bunch of amateur geeks.
Being a fan I understand. The rest I don't. Nor do I think Microsoft's "corporate culture" or Ballmer's personality has anything to do with how they might react. You enforce contracts. Any rational business would do the same.
The Asus page doesn't contain the word "Linux" and clearly states it is about a pre-loaded Windows machine. Anyone other than a hardcore Linux fanboy would see or infer no subtext.
>>... you concede that Microsoft would most likely feel they'd been wronged in the matter, and accordingly, they'd start the lawyers..
"Wronged" in a legal, not moral, sense. If you don't enforce all your contracts all the time, you'll lose when you do try to enforce something. It's just rational business practice.
Would anyone at Microsoft consider that they'd been offended or see it as a "slap in the face?" No.
I don't expect people not to discuss this. I do expect people to have enough maturity to avoid setting themselves up for unnecessary angst and disappointment. That's exactly what they do when they frame Linux in terms of a movement, a community, and of people supporting it. You can't "support" software anymore than you can "support" a toaster.
I just fail to see why people would care if Asus tells people how to put Windows on a Linux pre-load. Asus owes nothing to Linux fans and Linux fans should have no expectations of Asus or any other vendor.
The link: The Techgeist piece linked to in the post that started this thread links to the alleged nefarious page. However, it's a page about a machine that is pre-loaded with Windows.
Well, I suppose Microsoft would first look to see if Asus had violated any contractual arrangements and then proceed accordingly. If that wasn't the case, they'd probably do whatever they thought would work best for the bottom line, including doing nothing.
Microsoft would not launch into a rant about the Evilness of it all.
As I said, the notion that Asus was "supporting" Linux when it launched a Linux pre-install machine is bogus. People support causes and missions, and obviously a lot of people see Linux as a cause and a mission. They tend to paint any vendor's release of a Linux product as joining them in a crusade. Asus, et al, don't see it that way. They just see a chance to make a few bucks selling into a niche market.. I.e., they are explicitly not making a commitment.
Look, I used Linux on my desktop for the better part of a decade. I stopped using it when I bought hardware it couldn't support (built a machine specifically to run Linux using parts allegedly Linux-compatible. Or so said the people who wrote the Linux drivers. I've also got an iMac G5 sitting in the corner on which I planned to run Ubuntu when Apple put it out to pasture. But, Ubuntu stopped releasing for Mac's.).
But I've never understood this kind of reaction to some company's business decision. Linux is a piece of software, an operating system, not a new way of life.
BTW, when I use the link provided, I see a page for a Windows-based Asus machine.
I suspect there's a typo in your question. I'm not sure what it is you are trying to ask.
In any case, I'm trying to figure out why you guys think this is a moral issue in the first place. It's an ad.
This entire habit of using phrases like "Asus supported Linux" just shows how out of step most of the Linux community really is. Businesses don't "support" anything. They follow their noses to profit. Asus no more supports Windows or Linux than it supports me. Asus sells hardware. They'd pre-install Apple Basic if they thought it would help sales.
If I had to guess, Asus is disappointed by sales of the Linux machine and had a fair number of people complain when they found Linux on the machines they bought, not Windows. LIke it it not, rather a lot of people have never heard of Linux and expect any PC to come with Windows as a matter of course. Even if they saw the "Linux pre-installed" stuff, they likely thought it was just some off-the-wall Windows program they could delete.
You'll need to explain what is "morally grey" about all this.
Asus sells a pre-loaded Linux machine. Now they've got a site telling people how to put Windows on it. What's offensive about that? Is it a secret that those machines can run Windows?
Methinks this morning's Kool-Aid had an extra dose of Delusional Expectation in it.
An interesting assumption, but predictions of someone else's future behavior in an imagined scenario aren't relelant.
>>...they're talking out both sides of their mouth and can't be trusted...
How is Asus being hypocritical when it sells a Linux machine and also runs ads telling people how to put Windows on that machine? Asus is not in the business of doing missionary work for Linux. It is a fact that many people will reject a machine that is not running Windows. Are they Evil when they delete Linux and add Windows to their own hardware?
Slashdot Mirror
>> ... the police like to spend their time trawling our private information on Facebook...
Some poor sod posts something on a public site and expects it to be private?
What's wrong with this picture?
>> On the same day that yet another shuttle launch was postponed...
So, the private sector can now control the weather? Storms in Florida are keeping the Shuttle on the pad this week. If Elon Musk was launching a vehicle with people and it was storming at the launch site, he'd postpone, too. Go ask him what would happen to his fortune if he launched his first manned vehicle on a stormy day and lost the crew.
In terms of manned flight, the private sector is 40 years behind.
Photos cannot, by their nature, copy a painting. And, whether or not someone may call something "art" has no bearing on its copyright status. Copyright does not depend on artistic merit.
If you think otherwise, then feel free to try an change the law. I look forward to your Court of Artistic Merit. UNtil then, what you think "should" happen is of little relevance.
>> ... users are clueless about what they really want...
That's absurd on the face of it. In my experience, users almost always know exactly what they want. The problem is that the don't speak tech, and techies don't know how, and often don't want, to communicate usefully with users. Techies keep using words like "specs" and "requirements", etc. Write the specs and then move on to the real fun. They want to use tech to measure all sorts of irrelevant things, as if people really decide they like or hate some piece of software because their mouse moves 0.54 centimeters less. People don't even notice things like that.
The way to find out what users want is to pay attention to how they do the job they want the software to do. Learn how users spend their time. Learn what they see as important. Learn the roadblocks. Sit with them at their desks 8 hours a day for a week. Take lots of notes. Then, go off and think. When you're done, come back with a rough sketch of what your code could do for them. Ask things like, "If you could do this, would that be useful?". Take more notes. Rinse and repeat. Write real code. Enlist willing users to test code, not to see if it works -- you better already know that -- but to see if they like it. Rinse and repeat some more.
>> ... consider the Heritage Foundation to be an excellent source of truth...
Heh.
Even better, assume the Heritage Foundation is a bunch of ideologues who parse their words to advance an agenda.
Well said. In fact, there are people who actually like to work in a darkroom, considering it the most important part of the process. See Ansel Adams.
If someone thinks the purpose of a photo is merely to capture a perfectly accurate image of the scene in front of you, cheap digitals at low ISO's are just fine, especially if you only display the images at small size on the web. If you need to print those images or display them at large sizes on the web, then you need the capabilities of an expensive digital.
Putting lens quality aside, film and user skill primarily determine the images a film camera produces, i.e., things that are independent of the camera. That's not the case for digitals, where sensor size and quality as well as the vendor's software code are vital.
Read my post. Besides, go ask photographers how many images they make at ISO 6400. Beyond a certain arbitrary point, high ISO numbers are silly sales gimmicks that sucker naive buyers, just like big megapixel numbers. Neither attribute will help you make a good image, just lke buying a $500 set of knives will not make you a good cook.
ISO 800 is absolutely and easily within film's capabilities. I've got rolls of ISO 800, and 1600, in my fridge right now. Whether using film or digital, I consistently shoot at ISO's of 50-400, with 800 reserved for nighttime with artificial lighting.
I've got several cameras, digital and film. Among them is a $400 high-end digital point- and-shoot and a 20-year-old film point-and-shoot I bought for $80. The digital is useless above ISO 400 (noise) but the film camera happily shoots any kind of film I feed it.
If digitals at high ISO do not create noise, why do digitals contain noise-reduction routines and why is there a thriving after-market in noise-reduction software? Why are forums devoted to expensive digital cameras full of chatter about noise?
A $200 digital point-and-shoot will typically produce more noise at ISO's of say, 800 and up than an equivalently priced film point-and-shoot.
The fact that the very best digitals are capable of extreme ISO settings is relevant only to the few who can afford them.
Beyond that, film vs. digital is a pointless discussion. On the one hand, some diehards refuse to see any value in digital, and, on the other, some folks always equate "digital" with "better". Both positions are wrong.
There remains a strong community of film users. Whether film is "better" is not the point. The point is they like film. People who are cellphone shooters and think everything about photography can be summed up in megapixels and resolution might not understand.
Film still beats digital in low-light, high-ISO situations. If you just snap pix with your phone, you won't care. If you make a living with your camers, you will.
Yes, the very best digital cameras are very good, but their film equivalents are significantly cheaper.
>> ....the technological problems yet like getting people to back things up.../i.
That's not a technological problem. It's the way people behave. How many of us have placed our vital pper documents in a fireproof box in a secure facility outside our residence?
Someday, someone will get smart and offer backup in the OS. Apple is very close.
>> "When you say "Linux" I think Linux kernel..."
That's how developers think. Linux users -- customers -- mean the everything that the distribution installs when they say "Linux".
The notion of employing user testing is patently obvious. It is a sign of the state of Linux -- 15 years or so in -- that suggesting such a thing can be controversial.
The perception is that video games are for kids. As is the case for every medium, parents will decide that they do not want their kids seeinig certain images or hearing certain language regardless of the artistic intent or value of those images or words.
You can disagree all you want, or poke fun at the "Think of the Children!" syndrome, but you can't fight human nature.
Aside: The quest for video games to be accepted as art would acquire more credibility if people heard about it in some context other than attempts to include explicit sex and violence.
>> I'd agree with the parent that the GP is incorrect in his statement of "the fate of a nation is determined by its people"> In western (particularly American) thought, there is an additional prerequsite to that claim: a citizen must do what is necessary to protect his citizenship. This means, through logical conclusion, that he is armed.
False premise, false conclusion.
Citizenship does not convey any rights. It cannot because all humans are born with equal rights. States can only protect or thwart the exercise of those rights.
>> An armed citizenry is not something your average tyrant is likely to find too pleasant.
Seldom seen in actual practice. The Middle East is awash with privately held weapons and also awash in tyrants. Such weapons are powerless against the resources of a modern totalitarian state, which includes far more than just arms.
I specifically oppose the notion of an armed and militarized citizenry because it leads to the replacement of one tyrant with another.
>> n the absence of an external interfering force (e. g., the army of the Soviet Union), the fate of a nation is determined by its people.
Wrong. An internal interfering force is even more able to determine a nation's fate. That's the nature of totalitarianism. It is naive in the extreme, and ethically deficient, to blithely assume that unarmed civilians can bring down a regime willing to slaughter its citizens to retain power.
All the choice inherent in Linux -- meaning the choice for developers to go their own way -- increases the difficulty of achieving the level of standardization that allows any software platform to play well with others.
You really think Microsoft makes decisions based on Ballmer's moods?
Are you denying what I said about that page? Did you look at it? Do you really think enough people know and care about Linux that the know that machine as a Linux machine? Despite everything, only a small minority of people know about Linux, and not all of them would use it. I've known many people who would not run it because, they say, they don't want to run software built by a bunch of amateur geeks.
Being a fan I understand. The rest I don't. Nor do I think Microsoft's "corporate culture" or Ballmer's personality has anything to do with how they might react. You enforce contracts. Any rational business would do the same.
The Asus page doesn't contain the word "Linux" and clearly states it is about a pre-loaded Windows machine. Anyone other than a hardcore Linux fanboy would see or infer no subtext.
>> ... you concede that Microsoft would most likely feel they'd been wronged in the matter, and accordingly, they'd start the lawyers..
"Wronged" in a legal, not moral, sense. If you don't enforce all your contracts all the time, you'll lose when you do try to enforce something. It's just rational business practice.
Would anyone at Microsoft consider that they'd been offended or see it as a "slap in the face?" No.
I don't expect people not to discuss this. I do expect people to have enough maturity to avoid setting themselves up for unnecessary angst and disappointment. That's exactly what they do when they frame Linux in terms of a movement, a community, and of people supporting it. You can't "support" software anymore than you can "support" a toaster.
I just fail to see why people would care if Asus tells people how to put Windows on a Linux pre-load. Asus owes nothing to Linux fans and Linux fans should have no expectations of Asus or any other vendor.
The link: The Techgeist piece linked to in the post that started this thread links to the alleged nefarious page. However, it's a page about a machine that is pre-loaded with Windows.
Well, I suppose Microsoft would first look to see if Asus had violated any contractual arrangements and then proceed accordingly. If that wasn't the case, they'd probably do whatever they thought would work best for the bottom line, including doing nothing.
Microsoft would not launch into a rant about the Evilness of it all.
As I said, the notion that Asus was "supporting" Linux when it launched a Linux pre-install machine is bogus. People support causes and missions, and obviously a lot of people see Linux as a cause and a mission. They tend to paint any vendor's release of a Linux product as joining them in a crusade. Asus, et al, don't see it that way. They just see a chance to make a few bucks selling into a niche market.. I.e., they are explicitly not making a commitment.
Look, I used Linux on my desktop for the better part of a decade. I stopped using it when I bought hardware it couldn't support (built a machine specifically to run Linux using parts allegedly Linux-compatible. Or so said the people who wrote the Linux drivers. I've also got an iMac G5 sitting in the corner on which I planned to run Ubuntu when Apple put it out to pasture. But, Ubuntu stopped releasing for Mac's.).
But I've never understood this kind of reaction to some company's business decision. Linux is a piece of software, an operating system, not a new way of life.
BTW, when I use the link provided, I see a page for a Windows-based Asus machine.
I suspect there's a typo in your question. I'm not sure what it is you are trying to ask.
In any case, I'm trying to figure out why you guys think this is a moral issue in the first place. It's an ad.
This entire habit of using phrases like "Asus supported Linux" just shows how out of step most of the Linux community really is. Businesses don't "support" anything. They follow their noses to profit. Asus no more supports Windows or Linux than it supports me. Asus sells hardware. They'd pre-install Apple Basic if they thought it would help sales.
If I had to guess, Asus is disappointed by sales of the Linux machine and had a fair number of people complain when they found Linux on the machines they bought, not Windows. LIke it it not, rather a lot of people have never heard of Linux and expect any PC to come with Windows as a matter of course. Even if they saw the "Linux pre-installed" stuff, they likely thought it was just some off-the-wall Windows program they could delete.
What does Steve Ballmer's happiness have to do with the morality of Asus running an ad?
You'll need to explain what is "morally grey" about all this.
Asus sells a pre-loaded Linux machine. Now they've got a site telling people how to put Windows on it. What's offensive about that? Is it a secret that those machines can run Windows?
Methinks this morning's Kool-Aid had an extra dose of Delusional Expectation in it.
Isn't what?
>> ...the people behind it would own up to it.
An interesting assumption, but predictions of someone else's future behavior in an imagined scenario aren't relelant.
>> ...they're talking out both sides of their mouth and can't be trusted...
How is Asus being hypocritical when it sells a Linux machine and also runs ads telling people how to put Windows on that machine? Asus is not in the business of doing missionary work for Linux. It is a fact that many people will reject a machine that is not running Windows. Are they Evil when they delete Linux and add Windows to their own hardware?
If Asus and Torvalds had put up a site to help people put Linux on Windows machines, would it be as Evil?