Why would there be? We're not talking about prosecuting people (yet...), just about filtering copyright materials that legally people shouldn't be uploading anyway.
You misspelled "fugly". Don't get me wrong, I use MPC from time to time too, but unless it's been updated recently that interface is definitely not "slick".
So the article is also FUD; my point still stands. Slashdot wouldn't post a description of iTunes like this, and if a similarly-worded article was posted, the summary wouldn't be written like that.
It's still FUD, even if it is a quote and directed at someone/something we all hate.
Compared to what, iTunes with its service and executable that run whether iTunes itself is running or not?
a performance as bad as ever, despite computer power having increased ten-fold since back in the days.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here. In an extremely unscientific test, I just double-clicked an mp3 file and timed how long it took WMP to start up and start playing it. Perhaps sub-2 seconds is too slow for you, but that's fine for me. CPU usage is hovering around the 1% - 2% level, and it's using 13meg of RAM. iTunes, by way of comparison, wants 52meg, plus another 4 for the iTunesHelper executable, and another 2 for the iPodService. (I can't compare any other players, as I don't have any installed)
WinAmp and VLC could do things years ago that this sorry excuse of 'convienienceware' will ever be able to do. No?
It's not what's said, it's how it's said. The same could be said for iTunes, which only integrates with iPods, only integrates with iTMS, also supports DRM (and one that Apple has so far refused to licence to anyone else, I might add), and can be downloaded for free.
You'd never see it said that way, however. The whole tone of the submission is anti-WMP and anti-MS, in stark contrast to how a new version of iTunes would be reported.
Just because something is true doesn't mean it isn't FUD; it's all in the delivery.
Please, carry on - I'm just glad I'm not the only person who saw this and thought "Oh, who gives a fuck!?" Between trivia like this and FUD like the IE phishing filter story, I find myself wondering why I come here more and more often.
Did the editors confirm this before accepting the story?
Read the FAQ - the editors do no fact-checking on stories at all. They're more concerned with getting the stories posted as quickly as possible (even when they're months old...)
Also, the US system requires less regulation - the price of a call to a mobile phone always has to be the same amount or you would never know what kind of charges you would incur. For this reason, the US system allows better price competition.
Let me get this straight - because all calls must cost the same, you have better price competition? If they all have to cost the same, then you have no price competition!
Dude, they're subjects of the Crown, and not Free people
If I had a pound for every time I read that rubbish...
As someone else has already pointed out, in my passport it says "citizen", not subject, and at 32 years of age, I have never seen any official document describing us as subjects. The royal family affects my life to the tune of about 20p a year in tax money spent on them, some billions in extra tourism income, and the odd TV program (which I ignore).
I can only assume that we've been moving in different circles; most of the people I know who have expressed an opinion vote $party because they vote $party, or because $otherParty "are a bunch of idiots". I'd love to think that people take a reasoned approach, based on published manifestos, past performance, etc, but I simply can't believe it. Even political "debate" (at least as reported in the press) is just a thinly-disguised name-calling exercise; we could just as well be dealing with a school playground.
A toilet bowl maker spends hours designing a toilet bowl and then producing it. Do you pay him every time you flush it?
No, and I don't pay anyone every time I listen to music, read a book or watch a film, either. I'm not entirely sure where you're going with that analogy.
all my employees know from the past is IRRELEVANT -- it is what they produce TODAY that matters. Been on the job 50 years? Great, apply that knowledge to something profitable TODAY
Without that past knowledge and experience, there is less chance that they'll be able to produce acceptable results today; that's why experience is valued. Or do you, as an employer, pay fresh graduates and proven old hands the same?
That's as may be, but the UK is much closer in attitude to the US than it is to continental Europe. Also, at any given time, at least half the population think the government is a bunch of idiots, as political support tends to be very polarised here - if you vote Labour, you generally can't stand the Tories, and vice versa (despite the differences now being next to insignificant).
Personally, I like (at least the idea of) the NHS and social security; it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to think that at least part of my taxes are going to help those less fortunate than myself. A couple of friends have had serious illnesses that they probably would not have survived if not for the NHS (who, at 20, expects to develop cancer?). I see those who oppose such state-provided facilities funded through taxes as short-sighted and selfish. Opinions differ, of course.
'it is not the music industry's job to decide what rights consumers have. That is the job of government.'
There I was thinking it was the job of society (i.e. the people themselves) to decide what rights people should have, and the job of the government to put into place laws describing and safeguarding (and where appropriate, limiting) those rights.
Nice quotes, but do you have anything in history to point at that either a) substantiates their claim that democracies necessarily live short lives and die violent deaths, or b) point to successful alternative systems of government being implemented?
A snappy quote proves nothing, and you can quote me on that;)
-"I don't like the theme." ORLY well how is that IE theme support working out for you?
I can't get to the article (the server's returning a 403 at the moment), but given that the link contains the word "upgrade", I'm assuming that it's about why people should stick with 1.5. Thus comparisons with IE (or Opera, Konqi, etc) are irrelevant.
-"The anti phishing is weak!" ---compared to what? The antiphishing in 1.5?
Weak security can be worse than no security at all, if it instils false confidence and people come to rely on something that isn't giving sufficient coverage. (Note that I don't know if that's the case here, it's just a general observation.)
-"Extensions did not automagically compatible-ize themselves!" OOOOHHH, well let me switch to that other browser that inherently supports third-party code.
I don't know about Opera, but IE does support third party code (what do you think the Google and Yahoo! toolbars are?), there's just not very much of it. Apart from that I agree with you, although given how long FF2 was in RC it is understandable if people are disappointed that a favourite extension hasn't been updated yet. Give the maintainers time, though, and I'm sure they will be - some of these people are going to be busy doing other things.
-"I don't understand the options screen!" BWAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAAAAA!!!! This can't be serious.
The options dialogue is rather complicated; on the other hand, so is IE's. Personally I'm miffed that so many useful options (such as the ones controlling the new tab behaviour) are hidden away in about:config. I dislike having to search the web to work out how to configure an app, and don't understand why documentation isn't at least included as a readme.
-"I don't like the RSS thingy! IE does it better!"
Judging from an AC's comment here that apparently reposts the list, the issue isn't just that IE7's support is better, but so is FF1.5's; thus this is a regression. Now I don't use the RSS stuff in FF (I use Thunderbird's reader) so I can't really comment, but your comment does not seem to me to address the actual issue.
Comparing a.0 release to an established release, and to Internet Explorer, is just pretty laughable where I am sitting.
How is comparing FF 2.0 to IE 7.0 not fair? Both are.0 releases, and FF built on a much more advanced base than IE did. Besides, are we really supposed to think to ourselves "Of course IE is better, it's at version 7! I'll stick with FF as it's bound to improve!"? I really don't understand this comment; this is a final release, and so should be complete. Just because it's a.0 doesn't (or shouldn't) mean that we should expect problems (or at least, any more than with any other piece of software).
For what it's worth, I'm typing this using FF2, and have never used IE as my main browser (and given that I used Netscape when even I admitted that IE was far superior, I don't see that ever changing).
(Hhhmmm, Ihave just noticed something else that I dislike though - ctrl+an arrow key (to skip a whole word) also skips blank lines, so doing it with the cursor positioned at the start of the word "changing" above, for example, places the cursor before the "Hhhmmm" of this sentence. That's going to annoy me...)
The problem with that theory is that it assumes that "the everyday user" is at all comfortable with the idea of installing an OS. I've recently helped two friends set up/sort out their laptops as they weren't even particularly comfortable with installing applications, or pinning things to the XP Start menu.
What you may well see happen is an increase in consumer demand for PCs with Linux pre-installed; that's part of the reason Windows became so popular at home. Not because people were installing it (although of course some were), but because when they bought a PC, they wanted a Windows one.
Desktop linux in the home isn't going to take off until the OEMs start offering it as a pre-install option. Things like this may well hasten that eventuality, though.
Hhhmmmm, actually it does try to, doesn't it? However, in a small handful of unscientific tests (typing stuff into this textarea then killing the process) it only managed to successfully restore what I typed 1; the other couple of times it was either what was there previously, or something completely different.
So, it may well restore the bulk of a long-ish message, which is certainly better than nothing. I'm not sure I'd want to rely on it, but then so far I've not had any stability issues, so for me it's a moot point.
Meanwhile, here in the UK, I've had transactions on my credit card blocked temporarily as the activity was out of the ordinary. I had to 'phone the provider and confirm that it was indeed legitimate. I also had my card skimmed when I used it at an ATM in France, and was notified of the fact by my bank when they discovered that the machine had been tampered with.
You've been screwed, and need to seek (better!) legal advice. However, while it's generally true that large corporations don't particularly care about any individual customer, they're not all as bad as your experience would imply.
so there's a way to change: go to about:config and change browser.tabs.tabMinWidth
That's one of the few things I dislike about FF - so many useful options hidden in the completely undocumented about:config. I know opinions differ on the subject, but I personally don't think that I should have to search the web to work out how to configure an application I'm using. Would it have killed them to include a readme for it with the browser, or even a (context-sensitive?) help tool within about:config itself? (Yeah, I know, open source, do it yourself; if only I had the time)
Heh, I love the way you dismiss #1 as not being a reason to not use FF, then dismiss #6 as you don't personally use Yahoo! mail.
You also seem to misunderstand #2 - the complaint will be that a weak security measure may well be worse than none at all, as users may come to rely on what is in fact insufficient protection. Imagine a situation in which the filter catches say 70% of malicious sites. If people come to rely on it ("Hey, FF doesn't say this site is bad, so it must be good!") they'll be in more danger than if they were careful about what they did on-line. You're also ignoring the privacy issue he mentions, although I don't know enough about that to comment (never having used Google's toolbar).
#5 - how many of us do such things? I do for one. I imagine that most working people simply don't bother to shut down their work PC; in my case, I'd waste too much time restarting all my apps and getting back to where I was the day before. I often see FF's memory usage exceed a couple of hundred meg. It is getting better (for me at least) though, and I'm having to restart it less and less with each new release.
Personally, I see freezes as being one of the main reasons not to switch. Sure, there's restore session, great. Does it restore the text of the email/post/whatever that I was typing? No, of course not. I can certainly see that being a problem if FF freezes/crashes for you a lot.
Compatible extensions: man, people need some time for updating their extensions, but they are quick, e.g. all my extensions have been upgraded in a few days.Compatible extensions: man, people need some time for updating their extensions, but they are quick, e.g. all my extensions have been upgraded in a few days.
The RCs were available for months. I don't know if there were any changes between them that affected extensions (although given that they were RCs, there shouldn't have been), but there really aren't many excuses for authors not having updated their extensions yet, if they're still actively maintaining them. Note that this is not a criticism of FF, but if an extension you consider important hasn't been updated, why would you switch?
Slashdot Mirror
Will there be a court to deside when it is wrong?
Why would there be? We're not talking about prosecuting people (yet...), just about filtering copyright materials that legally people shouldn't be uploading anyway.
Why would a court be involved?
slick interface,
You misspelled "fugly". Don't get me wrong, I use MPC from time to time too, but unless it's been updated recently that interface is definitely not "slick".
So the article is also FUD; my point still stands. Slashdot wouldn't post a description of iTunes like this, and if a similarly-worded article was posted, the summary wouldn't be written like that.
It's still FUD, even if it is a quote and directed at someone/something we all hate.
A bloated memory and performance hog
Compared to what, iTunes with its service and executable that run whether iTunes itself is running or not?
a performance as bad as ever, despite computer power having increased ten-fold since back in the days.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here. In an extremely unscientific test, I just double-clicked an mp3 file and timed how long it took WMP to start up and start playing it. Perhaps sub-2 seconds is too slow for you, but that's fine for me. CPU usage is hovering around the 1% - 2% level, and it's using 13meg of RAM. iTunes, by way of comparison, wants 52meg, plus another 4 for the iTunesHelper executable, and another 2 for the iPodService. (I can't compare any other players, as I don't have any installed)
WinAmp and VLC could do things years ago that this sorry excuse of 'convienienceware' will ever be able to do. No?
Such as?
It's not what's said, it's how it's said. The same could be said for iTunes, which only integrates with iPods, only integrates with iTMS, also supports DRM (and one that Apple has so far refused to licence to anyone else, I might add), and can be downloaded for free.
You'd never see it said that way, however. The whole tone of the submission is anti-WMP and anti-MS, in stark contrast to how a new version of iTunes would be reported.
Just because something is true doesn't mean it isn't FUD; it's all in the delivery.
Please, carry on - I'm just glad I'm not the only person who saw this and thought "Oh, who gives a fuck!?" Between trivia like this and FUD like the IE phishing filter story, I find myself wondering why I come here more and more often.
Did the editors confirm this before accepting the story?
Read the FAQ - the editors do no fact-checking on stories at all. They're more concerned with getting the stories posted as quickly as possible (even when they're months old...)
Also, the US system requires less regulation - the price of a call to a mobile phone always has to be the same amount or you would never know what kind of charges you would incur. For this reason, the US system allows better price competition.
Let me get this straight - because all calls must cost the same, you have better price competition? If they all have to cost the same, then you have no price competition!
And I squash spiders! And ants! And pretty much any other creepy crawly that won't take the hint and stays around me for too long...
Dude, they're subjects of the Crown, and not Free people
If I had a pound for every time I read that rubbish...
As someone else has already pointed out, in my passport it says "citizen", not subject, and at 32 years of age, I have never seen any official document describing us as subjects. The royal family affects my life to the tune of about 20p a year in tax money spent on them, some billions in extra tourism income, and the odd TV program (which I ignore).
I can only assume that we've been moving in different circles; most of the people I know who have expressed an opinion vote $party because they vote $party, or because $otherParty "are a bunch of idiots". I'd love to think that people take a reasoned approach, based on published manifestos, past performance, etc, but I simply can't believe it. Even political "debate" (at least as reported in the press) is just a thinly-disguised name-calling exercise; we could just as well be dealing with a school playground.
A toilet bowl maker spends hours designing a toilet bowl and then producing it. Do you pay him every time you flush it?
No, and I don't pay anyone every time I listen to music, read a book or watch a film, either. I'm not entirely sure where you're going with that analogy.
all my employees know from the past is IRRELEVANT -- it is what they produce TODAY that matters. Been on the job 50 years? Great, apply that knowledge to something profitable TODAY
Without that past knowledge and experience, there is less chance that they'll be able to produce acceptable results today; that's why experience is valued. Or do you, as an employer, pay fresh graduates and proven old hands the same?
That's as may be, but the UK is much closer in attitude to the US than it is to continental Europe. Also, at any given time, at least half the population think the government is a bunch of idiots, as political support tends to be very polarised here - if you vote Labour, you generally can't stand the Tories, and vice versa (despite the differences now being next to insignificant).
Personally, I like (at least the idea of) the NHS and social security; it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to think that at least part of my taxes are going to help those less fortunate than myself. A couple of friends have had serious illnesses that they probably would not have survived if not for the NHS (who, at 20, expects to develop cancer?). I see those who oppose such state-provided facilities funded through taxes as short-sighted and selfish. Opinions differ, of course.
That's a wonderful theory, except for two things:
1) If anything, it's worse in the US - PATRIOT Act, the DMCA, the repeal of habeus corpus, Guantanamo, etc.
2) I'm a Brit.
They almost got it right:
'it is not the music industry's job to decide what rights consumers have. That is the job of government.'
There I was thinking it was the job of society (i.e. the people themselves) to decide what rights people should have, and the job of the government to put into place laws describing and safeguarding (and where appropriate, limiting) those rights.
Guess I'm just getting old.
if it works, they dont NEED to break it
I think it's a little soon to call this broken; how about waiting until it's actually released before writing it off?
The reason why it's not an "or" proposition is because Apple never does "or".
Excuse me? Desktop or server? Nano or iPod or Shuffle (and once, or Mini)?
I really don't see it as such a big stretch to Audio iPod or Video iPod.
Nice quotes, but do you have anything in history to point at that either a) substantiates their claim that democracies necessarily live short lives and die violent deaths, or b) point to successful alternative systems of government being implemented?
;)
A snappy quote proves nothing, and you can quote me on that
-"I don't like the theme." ORLY well how is that IE theme support working out for you?
.0 release to an established release, and to Internet Explorer, is just pretty laughable where I am sitting.
.0 releases, and FF built on a much more advanced base than IE did. Besides, are we really supposed to think to ourselves "Of course IE is better, it's at version 7! I'll stick with FF as it's bound to improve!"? I really don't understand this comment; this is a final release, and so should be complete. Just because it's a .0 doesn't (or shouldn't) mean that we should expect problems (or at least, any more than with any other piece of software).
I can't get to the article (the server's returning a 403 at the moment), but given that the link contains the word "upgrade", I'm assuming that it's about why people should stick with 1.5. Thus comparisons with IE (or Opera, Konqi, etc) are irrelevant.
-"The anti phishing is weak!" ---compared to what? The antiphishing in 1.5?
Weak security can be worse than no security at all, if it instils false confidence and people come to rely on something that isn't giving sufficient coverage. (Note that I don't know if that's the case here, it's just a general observation.)
-"Extensions did not automagically compatible-ize themselves!" OOOOHHH, well let me switch to that other browser that inherently supports third-party code.
I don't know about Opera, but IE does support third party code (what do you think the Google and Yahoo! toolbars are?), there's just not very much of it. Apart from that I agree with you, although given how long FF2 was in RC it is understandable if people are disappointed that a favourite extension hasn't been updated yet. Give the maintainers time, though, and I'm sure they will be - some of these people are going to be busy doing other things.
-"I don't understand the options screen!" BWAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAAAAA!!!! This can't be serious.
The options dialogue is rather complicated; on the other hand, so is IE's. Personally I'm miffed that so many useful options (such as the ones controlling the new tab behaviour) are hidden away in about:config. I dislike having to search the web to work out how to configure an app, and don't understand why documentation isn't at least included as a readme.
-"I don't like the RSS thingy! IE does it better!"
Judging from an AC's comment here that apparently reposts the list, the issue isn't just that IE7's support is better, but so is FF1.5's; thus this is a regression. Now I don't use the RSS stuff in FF (I use Thunderbird's reader) so I can't really comment, but your comment does not seem to me to address the actual issue.
Comparing a
How is comparing FF 2.0 to IE 7.0 not fair? Both are
For what it's worth, I'm typing this using FF2, and have never used IE as my main browser (and given that I used Netscape when even I admitted that IE was far superior, I don't see that ever changing).
(Hhhmmm, Ihave just noticed something else that I dislike though - ctrl+an arrow key (to skip a whole word) also skips blank lines, so doing it with the cursor positioned at the start of the word "changing" above, for example, places the cursor before the "Hhhmmm" of this sentence. That's going to annoy me...)
In my experience, the first couple of versions of any software, closed source, open source or my own, are probably best to be avoided.
The problem with that theory is that it assumes that "the everyday user" is at all comfortable with the idea of installing an OS. I've recently helped two friends set up/sort out their laptops as they weren't even particularly comfortable with installing applications, or pinning things to the XP Start menu.
What you may well see happen is an increase in consumer demand for PCs with Linux pre-installed; that's part of the reason Windows became so popular at home. Not because people were installing it (although of course some were), but because when they bought a PC, they wanted a Windows one.
Desktop linux in the home isn't going to take off until the OEMs start offering it as a pre-install option. Things like this may well hasten that eventuality, though.
Hhhmmmm, actually it does try to, doesn't it? However, in a small handful of unscientific tests (typing stuff into this textarea then killing the process) it only managed to successfully restore what I typed 1; the other couple of times it was either what was there previously, or something completely different.
So, it may well restore the bulk of a long-ish message, which is certainly better than nothing. I'm not sure I'd want to rely on it, but then so far I've not had any stability issues, so for me it's a moot point.
Nice to see I was wrong though.
Meanwhile, here in the UK, I've had transactions on my credit card blocked temporarily as the activity was out of the ordinary. I had to 'phone the provider and confirm that it was indeed legitimate. I also had my card skimmed when I used it at an ATM in France, and was notified of the fact by my bank when they discovered that the machine had been tampered with.
You've been screwed, and need to seek (better!) legal advice. However, while it's generally true that large corporations don't particularly care about any individual customer, they're not all as bad as your experience would imply.
so there's a way to change: go to about:config and change browser.tabs.tabMinWidth
That's one of the few things I dislike about FF - so many useful options hidden in the completely undocumented about:config. I know opinions differ on the subject, but I personally don't think that I should have to search the web to work out how to configure an application I'm using. Would it have killed them to include a readme for it with the browser, or even a (context-sensitive?) help tool within about:config itself? (Yeah, I know, open source, do it yourself; if only I had the time)
Heh, I love the way you dismiss #1 as not being a reason to not use FF, then dismiss #6 as you don't personally use Yahoo! mail.
You also seem to misunderstand #2 - the complaint will be that a weak security measure may well be worse than none at all, as users may come to rely on what is in fact insufficient protection. Imagine a situation in which the filter catches say 70% of malicious sites. If people come to rely on it ("Hey, FF doesn't say this site is bad, so it must be good!") they'll be in more danger than if they were careful about what they did on-line. You're also ignoring the privacy issue he mentions, although I don't know enough about that to comment (never having used Google's toolbar).
#5 - how many of us do such things? I do for one. I imagine that most working people simply don't bother to shut down their work PC; in my case, I'd waste too much time restarting all my apps and getting back to where I was the day before. I often see FF's memory usage exceed a couple of hundred meg. It is getting better (for me at least) though, and I'm having to restart it less and less with each new release.
Personally, I see freezes as being one of the main reasons not to switch. Sure, there's restore session, great. Does it restore the text of the email/post/whatever that I was typing? No, of course not. I can certainly see that being a problem if FF freezes/crashes for you a lot.
Compatible extensions: man, people need some time for updating their extensions, but they are quick, e.g. all my extensions have been upgraded in a few days.Compatible extensions: man, people need some time for updating their extensions, but they are quick, e.g. all my extensions have been upgraded in a few days.
The RCs were available for months. I don't know if there were any changes between them that affected extensions (although given that they were RCs, there shouldn't have been), but there really aren't many excuses for authors not having updated their extensions yet, if they're still actively maintaining them. Note that this is not a criticism of FF, but if an extension you consider important hasn't been updated, why would you switch?