I'm kinda hoping your trying to be amusing here, if you are though its gone under my humour radar today (and I apologise if I seem like an arse)
Yes most "professionals" will have backups of their data (which is what I presume you are alluding to) however it's not always the case that those backups will be literally up to the minute, and sometimes its just less hassle to recover any lost "recent" data then it is to just cycle to the last backup and deal with the shortfall. Also its not exactly uncommon for "professionals" to be asked to help recover data for NON-professionals.
IMHO game publishers are coming at this from the wrong angle - they should be looking at the second hand market as an opportunity rather than a threat. Over the last year or two there has been a growing trend for games to have paid-for DLC (see Guitar Hero/Rock Band as prime examples). Since this content doesn't get resold when the game does the new owner may well then re-buy the DLC.
So although yes they might miss out on the profit from the original game sale (assuming that the person who bought it second hand would otherwise have bought a new copy) they ARE still making money.
Also don't forget trade ins - many console owners I know (myself included) will trade old games for money off new ones, often allowing us to buy more NEW games then we would have done otherwise. Why not embrace this? Publishers could offer incentives if people trade in one their older games for a sequel, or a direct competitor to their game - say trading in Guitar Hero for Rock Band etc.
When the music market changed under them (i.e. the internet) the industry tried to fight the change rather than embracing it as a new opportunity, that didn't work out too well did it?
Seriously I just don't get on with the damn things. I find them very restrictive on how I manage my desktop real estate and they can make it quite awkward for me to find a specific page view that I'm looking for. Fortunately both IE and FF let me turn it off!
Anyway I know I'm a very small minority on this but it has given me a perspective on this question, and what I would say to the Mozilla devs is do what ever you want but make sure you still give the user the power to choose. As long as users can choose the work flow that suits them then I think its all good for them to be offering new solutions for organising things.
I can see why they are angry.. I can even see why they might want to sue but aren't they leaving a bit late? 3DR has already gone bankrupt, so they unlikely to be able to pay them any substantial cash anyway.
The whole DNF failure is largely 3DR's fault - they were the guys with their fingers on the keys, but Take Two have got to accept some responsibility for letting them get away with consistently failing to produce the goods for such a long time - I mean a few delays are to be expected in any project of this size but surely t some point you've got to get the distinct impression that all is not well. And I would have thought that would have been, y'know - in less than twelve years. Surely if nothing else the continual industry ridicule must have been a small clue?
it might not be "enough" to fully fund the work they are doing but it is certainly a substantial chunk of cash and if the work shows promise they might continue to fund it?
Also it will raise the profile of the work which might lead to further donations from other parties.
Ahh the rallying cry of those who want to freeload off someone else's hard work.
Seriously though, this guy is an idiot. In a broad sense he is all for "freedom" as long as that freedom isn't in the hands of the original developers. As things stand those developing original software have lots of choices in how they send their creation out into the world. They can choose what to do with the source - There's closed source, open source, there's the various open source licences. Same with name they can choose to TM the name or not. And if they do choose to TM it then they can still choose to let people use it. Where's the problem?
From reading TFA it sounds like the guy got his wrists lightly slapped over slapping Ubuntu branding everywhere and now has his panties in a serious bunch. Since when were cry-babies like this news?!?
I reckon they are deliberately screwing with the user experience to make windows look more favourable, and I think they are being stupid in doing that
I was waiting for that... of course vendors that are inexperienced at selling Linux machines could NEVER have just screwed up and done a crap job. No they are doing it because they are being paid by Microsoft to "bring Linux down". After all they all LOVE dealing with returns and negative press!
Now if either grow the hell up or put the keyboard away and get yourself a nice tinfoil hat.
* driver signing that automatically excludes most OSS drivers on windows boxes
well given that most seriously unstable windows systems I've seen have been that way due to badly written 3rd Party Drivers. However all the user sees is that "Windows has crashed again" and blames MS so I can't say I blame them for trying to ensure some QA on drivers. Also while I'm not sure on Vista and 7 I know that on XP you could happily install non-signed drivers - the system just warned you.
I have two questions for you:
1) What happens to ZFS now? Is it more or less likely now to see it come to Linux (the kernel) one day?
2) In general, is this a better outcome than IBM buying Sun?
1) Well traditionally Oracle has made various contributions to Linux to try and help it establish itself as an enterprise platform for its products. Whereas now it might prefer to use Sun's platforms instead. However as ZFS is OSS anyway it doesn't mean someone else couldn't do it. Anyway I think that the Lustre FS will be of more interest to Oracle than plain old ZFS
2) That really depends on which side is asking the question. I would suggest its better for some parts of Sun (somehow I think MySQL conflicts less with Oracle's DB then it does with DB2) and call me an optimist but I think the consumer will be better off.
Re:What will happen to the Sun corporate culture?
on
Oracle Buys Sun
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· Score: 1
I think you'll see the culture at Sun become very much sublimated by that of Oracle - after all you could argue that the way that Sun has been run has contributed to them needing a buyer in the first place. Hopefully Oracle will be able to keep the "good bits" - the ones that lead to the innovation that Sun was traditionally known for. I won't however be holding my breath.
Congratulations Apple - you've now managed to get the iPhone to be ALMOST the phone I wanted 18 months ago. Too bad the tech hasn't stood still in that time eh?
*sigh*
still, I'm sure it will continue to sell in droves and within a month I will have to threaten bodily harm to some goon who tries to tell me how great it is that they can now send MMS!
I've got to give kudos to them for patching older phones and not just forcing a new purchase though - that's very un-Apple and I'm almost impressed enough to completely ignore the continuing gouge against the iPod Touch owners, so this is great for the existing fools that bought a crippled phone but I for one won't be rushing out to get one.
You're right - it is by no means a certainty that firefox will continue its decline, and even though its never been my broswer of choice I hope it does rally round - I have the utmost respect
for all the hard work that'd gone into it and I would hate to see that go to waste but on the evidence already out there IE is slowly improving and FF is declining.
Regarding IE's support for complex applications you are right in that it has nothing to do with being a standards compliant browser but then the web standards don't cover this sort of thing. While ActiveX may have been a complete train wreck at least it showed that browers can be more than a window to display content. Silverlight is a step in the right direction but its still early days - so far however I'm not seeing where the real "next step" is coming from in terms of FireFox
The rest of the internet didn't play along, so now Google owns search, IE is irrelevant and it will soon be possible to do most desktop tasks in the cloud. Since all you need for cloud computing is a browser, the OS it runs on is irrelevant, too.
Firefox may not be what it once was, but it's still better than IE and right now that's all that matters.
I would hardly call IE "irrelevant" with its current market share - that share isn't going to dissappear overnight and at the rate which the quality of firefox is declining by the time it's even equalled IE's share its going to be thoroughly rubbish.
Also, assuming for the moment that you are right and the "cloud" will soon be the be-all and end-all of desktop computing (which IMO is a long way off) I think its worth pointing out that traditionally speaking IE has been the better platform for complex browser based applications while firefox has been better at "traditional" web browsing tasks so surely a move towards a more productivity based web browser would only play to Microsoft's strengths?
Shhh... you do realise this is slashdot don't you? You're not allowed to say anything bad about firefox (especially when its 100% true) - *they* will burn your entrails on a stick!
Actually I think you'll find that both platforms are very similar in this regard - as long as the code was well written and adhered to the "rules" it should run just fine on the later revisions. And yes I've seen this in action!
The problem is that its easy to get away with writing sh*t code for Windows apps because devs know that people will just blame Microsoft when it breaks. Of the "big three" Apple are the biggest culprits at forcing old code out the door.
So despite this being a long standing (and seemingly well reported issue) neither vendor has managed a fix or even seems interested in doing one.
However since this is FOSS the much vaunted "community" has managed to make a fix widely available and has submitted to the distros etc right? Er.. no. Instead people are happily sat here blaming the users (for actually daring to attempt to make use of the usability features the developers have provided) and Microsoft (who are like evil predators with their sweet candy [or usuability features as the case may be] leading the innocent linux desktop developers astray from the pious path of hard to use software that no one likes).
Sounds like for all the bluster and noise when open source software has a vulnerability its the same old story as with closed. Pretty pathetic eh?
Slashdot Mirror
Who cares that web/dns servers etc keep running if there are no clients to make use of them?
I'm kinda hoping your trying to be amusing here, if you are though its gone under my humour radar today (and I apologise if I seem like an arse)
Yes most "professionals" will have backups of their data (which is what I presume you are alluding to) however it's not always the case that those backups will be literally up to the minute, and sometimes its just less hassle to recover any lost "recent" data then it is to just cycle to the last backup and deal with the shortfall. Also its not exactly uncommon for "professionals" to be asked to help recover data for NON-professionals.
I have to say that is hands-down the single best post I've ever read on open source.
as if there isn't enough outrage from the genuine stuff!
I'm confused here - In what way is MySQL not a "true" open source project?
I do however agree with you that proper abstraction layers are a good practice and help reduce reliance on any particular DBMS.
IMHO game publishers are coming at this from the wrong angle - they should be looking at the second hand market as an opportunity rather than a threat. Over the last year or two there has been a growing trend for games to have paid-for DLC (see Guitar Hero/Rock Band as prime examples). Since this content doesn't get resold when the game does the new owner may well then re-buy the DLC.
So although yes they might miss out on the profit from the original game sale (assuming that the person who bought it second hand would otherwise have bought a new copy) they ARE still making money.
Also don't forget trade ins - many console owners I know (myself included) will trade old games for money off new ones, often allowing us to buy more NEW games then we would have done otherwise. Why not embrace this? Publishers could offer incentives if people trade in one their older games for a sequel, or a direct competitor to their game - say trading in Guitar Hero for Rock Band etc.
When the music market changed under them (i.e. the internet) the industry tried to fight the change rather than embracing it as a new opportunity, that didn't work out too well did it?
I hate tabbed browsing
Seriously I just don't get on with the damn things. I find them very restrictive on how I manage my desktop real estate and they can make it quite awkward for me to find a specific page view that I'm looking for. Fortunately both IE and FF let me turn it off!
Anyway I know I'm a very small minority on this but it has given me a perspective on this question, and what I would say to the Mozilla devs is do what ever you want but make sure you still give the user the power to choose. As long as users can choose the work flow that suits them then I think its all good for them to be offering new solutions for organising things.
Fanboy. Next!
I can see why they are angry.. I can even see why they might want to sue but aren't they leaving a bit late? 3DR has already gone bankrupt, so they unlikely to be able to pay them any substantial cash anyway.
The whole DNF failure is largely 3DR's fault - they were the guys with their fingers on the keys, but Take Two have got to accept some responsibility for letting them get away with consistently failing to produce the goods for such a long time - I mean a few delays are to be expected in any project of this size but surely t some point you've got to get the distinct impression that all is not well. And I would have thought that would have been, y'know - in less than twelve years. Surely if nothing else the continual industry ridicule must have been a small clue?
it might not be "enough" to fully fund the work they are doing but it is certainly a substantial chunk of cash and if the work shows promise they might continue to fund it? Also it will raise the profile of the work which might lead to further donations from other parties.
Ahh the rallying cry of those who want to freeload off someone else's hard work.
Seriously though, this guy is an idiot. In a broad sense he is all for "freedom" as long as that freedom isn't in the hands of the original developers. As things stand those developing original software have lots of choices in how they send their creation out into the world. They can choose what to do with the source - There's closed source, open source, there's the various open source licences. Same with name they can choose to TM the name or not. And if they do choose to TM it then they can still choose to let people use it. Where's the problem?
From reading TFA it sounds like the guy got his wrists lightly slapped over slapping Ubuntu branding everywhere and now has his panties in a serious bunch. Since when were cry-babies like this news?!?
I was waiting for that... of course vendors that are inexperienced at selling Linux machines could NEVER have just screwed up and done a crap job. No they are doing it because they are being paid by Microsoft to "bring Linux down". After all they all LOVE dealing with returns and negative press!
Now if either grow the hell up or put the keyboard away and get yourself a nice tinfoil hat.
* driver signing that automatically excludes most OSS drivers on windows boxes
well given that most seriously unstable windows systems I've seen have been that way due to badly written 3rd Party Drivers. However all the user sees is that "Windows has crashed again" and blames MS so I can't say I blame them for trying to ensure some QA on drivers. Also while I'm not sure on Vista and 7 I know that on XP you could happily install non-signed drivers - the system just warned you.
Me and a friend at uni always knew we were on a proper epic coding run when one of us would say "the damn birds have started"
I have two questions for you: 1) What happens to ZFS now? Is it more or less likely now to see it come to Linux (the kernel) one day? 2) In general, is this a better outcome than IBM buying Sun?
1) Well traditionally Oracle has made various contributions to Linux to try and help it establish itself as an enterprise platform for its products. Whereas now it might prefer to use Sun's platforms instead. However as ZFS is OSS anyway it doesn't mean someone else couldn't do it. Anyway I think that the Lustre FS will be of more interest to Oracle than plain old ZFS
2) That really depends on which side is asking the question. I would suggest its better for some parts of Sun (somehow I think MySQL conflicts less with Oracle's DB then it does with DB2) and call me an optimist but I think the consumer will be better off.
I think you'll see the culture at Sun become very much sublimated by that of Oracle - after all you could argue that the way that Sun has been run has contributed to them needing a buyer in the first place. Hopefully Oracle will be able to keep the "good bits" - the ones that lead to the innovation that Sun was traditionally known for. I won't however be holding my breath.
I've got to give kudos to them for patching older phones and not just forcing a new purchase though - that's very un-Apple and I'm almost impressed enough to completely ignore the continuing gouge against the iPod Touch owners, so this is great for the existing fools that bought a crippled phone but I for one won't be rushing out to get one.
Regarding IE's support for complex applications you are right in that it has nothing to do with being a standards compliant browser but then the web standards don't cover this sort of thing. While ActiveX may have been a complete train wreck at least it showed that browers can be more than a window to display content. Silverlight is a step in the right direction but its still early days - so far however I'm not seeing where the real "next step" is coming from in terms of FireFox
The rest of the internet didn't play along, so now Google owns search, IE is irrelevant and it will soon be possible to do most desktop tasks in the cloud. Since all you need for cloud computing is a browser, the OS it runs on is irrelevant, too.
Firefox may not be what it once was, but it's still better than IE and right now that's all that matters.
I would hardly call IE "irrelevant" with its current market share - that share isn't going to dissappear overnight and at the rate which the quality of firefox is declining by the time it's even equalled IE's share its going to be thoroughly rubbish.
Also, assuming for the moment that you are right and the "cloud" will soon be the be-all and end-all of desktop computing (which IMO is a long way off) I think its worth pointing out that traditionally speaking IE has been the better platform for complex browser based applications while firefox has been better at "traditional" web browsing tasks so surely a move towards a more productivity based web browser would only play to Microsoft's strengths?
Shhh... you do realise this is slashdot don't you? You're not allowed to say anything bad about firefox (especially when its 100% true) - *they* will burn your entrails on a stick!
Actually I think you'll find that both platforms are very similar in this regard - as long as the code was well written and adhered to the "rules" it should run just fine on the later revisions. And yes I've seen this in action! The problem is that its easy to get away with writing sh*t code for Windows apps because devs know that people will just blame Microsoft when it breaks. Of the "big three" Apple are the biggest culprits at forcing old code out the door.
So despite this being a long standing (and seemingly well reported issue) neither vendor has managed a fix or even seems interested in doing one. However since this is FOSS the much vaunted "community" has managed to make a fix widely available and has submitted to the distros etc right? Er.. no. Instead people are happily sat here blaming the users (for actually daring to attempt to make use of the usability features the developers have provided) and Microsoft (who are like evil predators with their sweet candy [or usuability features as the case may be] leading the innocent linux desktop developers astray from the pious path of hard to use software that no one likes). Sounds like for all the bluster and noise when open source software has a vulnerability its the same old story as with closed. Pretty pathetic eh?