I'm sick of people using the name of "progress" to try to justify dictating what you can and can't do. Did we really need a GUI for DOS? Did we really need high-speed Internet access? No, and we don't need handwriting recognition either.
Did we really need automobiles? Did we really need the telephone (cell phones not included:P)? No, but they are pretty nice if you ask me. While I agree with your assessment of replacing the keyboard with a writing pad (bad idea), and that MS should have left DOS at least as an option in WinME, I think your main argument is _very_ over-generalized.
"I am gonna download as much music as I can" Good. Those numbers will be seen not as a protest, but as validity for what the recording industry thinks of you: You are not rebels but thieves and vandals trying to loot a few more songs before the impending shakedown. Do them one better. Do not listen to, record, buy, borrow or download any more of their music. Oh, and convince the "millions of people who do not use the Internet/MP3 technology regularly, and listen to the radio for their music" crowd to do the same.
I agree wholeheartedly with this, and I think this is a big part of the problem. Alot of people see Napster as a form of protest to rising, and already too high, CD prices. But just because you think the price of something is too high does NOT entitle you the right to steal it. Rolex's are too expensive, but people aren't allowed to go and steal those in protest or just because they want one and just don't feel like saving their pennies to buy one.
Of course, alot of people are just theives with no interest in protesting anything. I, personally, like quite a few people here, HAVE increased their CD purchasing since the advent of mp3s, but I believe we are a minority when compared to the Napster-using population as a whole. Just last week, I spent $40 on CDs (CDs of MP3s I already had, btw). While discussing the fact that I could barely afford the CDs, one of my friends asked my other friend whether he thought $40 was alot, Friend B replied "To spend on CDs? Yeah, $40 is way too much considering you can go download all of those songs for free and burn them to a CD."
THIS is why I think Napster is bullshit. Fundamentally, ideally, it's a fantastic thing. In common practice, it's theft.
First of all, what has Pizza Hut REALLY done here that the government hasn't? The US has scraped up whole lot more than 2.5 million over the years.
But I see what you were trying to say, and in response to that I say, the only reason the government has "failed" is because its citizens don't care about space exploration anymore. Noone's really cared much about the space program since we landed on the moon. It's been over 30 years and we haven't attempted anything even close to that since. True, the trip to the moon served very little real purpose, but one would think we'd have done _something_ bigger than we've done by now. Alot of people today just think the space program is a waste of money. "We should be spending all of that money to fix problems here on Earth" they say. They just don't realize that ALOT of modern technology has come from NASA. Space-based experiments have saved lives and improved the quality of a whole lot of others, people just don't realize that at all. It's our responsibility to tell Uncle Sam where we want our money to go, and if NASA isn't getting the funding we all want it to, it's our own fault.
Secondly, I would like to point out that there is virtually nothing that ISN'T commercialized. There's only so much money the government can put up by itself. Can NASA hold patents? I don't know, but I would think if they could, they could be pulling in alot more money from licensing technologies, giving them a bit of return on investment. Maybe they already are, but I honestly have no idea. But anyways, look at railroads, cars, airplanes. All forms of transportation that may have been government subsidized, but still commercially driven. Space travel will join them. Bio-engineering, chemical engineering, etc. all areas of research that may be government subsidized, but again, are mainly commercially driven.
So, in the end, things will be fine. This isn't that dissimilar from what's happened many times before. In fact, I say it's about damn time. Commercialization=more rapid growth, and I'm all for rapid growth of the space program.
I would have to agree with you wholeheartedly. I've run my All-In-Wonder 128 under Win95, Win98 and now Win2k, and NONE of the drivers have been any good. When I tried to play Moto Racer 2 (keep in mind, this came _bundled with the card_) the game would just crash. My fresh new Diablo 2 won't run in Direct3D mode, and when I installed the multimedia and DVD software, my computer got VERY unstable. What really worries me is that the drivers for the Radeon are based on the ones from the Rage 128 chip... New drivers based on drivers that have never ever worked well even on their native chip?... no thanks.
I also own a Voodoo 3 and can say hands down that 3dfx's drivers are by far superior. Until ATI can consistently prove to me that they've changed their ways regarding drivers, I'm avoiding them like the plague.
Seriously... I don't know... but with all the talk of cell phones causing tumors, etc. what's the impact of having EVERYTHING wireless? I know that cell phones are really only a danger when they're right next to your head, being that the power decreases exponentially with distance, etc., but if EVERYTHING goes wireless, won't our bodies be constantly bombarded by these waves? Not that they aren't already...
is the same thing Nintendo and Sega have done with all of their consoles. A smaller, lighter, newer, cheaper PSX. I like the design, and love the small size, but I'm not about to pay $140 for that. If it was actually comparable in portability to other portable gaming systems, I'd be interested... but it's not. Who knows how much that LCD screen is gonna cost on top of that $140... I'd guess it's not gonna be cheap. Gimme a $50 mini-PSX to replace my 4-year-old, falling-apart PSX. I'll buy that.
I have to agree completely on the ease on installation issue. Linux installs are confusing as hell to someone who hasn't used it (i.e. me). While I'm only a casual PC user, I've been using one my whole life (I was weaned on an Apple IIe), so I'm a very competent one.
Maybe it's the fact that I've used an MS OS most of my life (MSDOS 2 anyone?) that it's hard to transition. It's like learning a second language once you've grown up and only spoken one your whole life. MSDOS is like English to me. But when I tried to install Linux (RedHat and Turbolinux), being a Linux novice, I had a bitch of a time. Sure I got it up and running, but I had no idea if I'd actually configured it the way I should have. Which programs do I install? I've never heard of any of these, besides GIMP, Wine, and a couple others... I'm not a programmer, but do I need these development tools to compile programs, or can I do that without them? How DO I compile programs? This filesystem is weird... I've hosed installs (beyond MY ability to repair them. Remember, I'm a novice) just trying to change little things.
It's an AWFUL steep learning curve. I honestly don't have a week to teach myself all of this, nor do I want to spend that much time, nor do I want to dual boot, because that eats alot of my usable disk space. I want an install comparable to my Win2k setup, not a 200 meg command line-only setup.
To summarize:
Linux is hard, even to "experienced" PC users. It's VASTLY different than Windows, from a Linux newbie's point of view. Maybe the similarities pop up as you learn, I dunno, but they're not there when you're starting off.
Windows DOES suck. My PC is getting unstable as I type this because I tried to play an mpg, and SOMETHING (who knows what) went wrong... damn windows. But games are a big reason I'm into PCs, and without Windows, I wouldn't have many games to play. Wine is ideally the answer to that. I eagerly await the day that I can play other cool games besides Quake in Linux.
To summarize further: Most people, including me, will take the evils of bad software over "Office KINDA works in this release...". I think easy-to-use Linux + Wine WILL cause a dramatic shift from MS. It would certainly switch me over. But that time isn't anytime soon, unless some major thing happened tomorrow.
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I'm sick of people using the name of "progress" to try to justify dictating what you can and can't do. Did we really need a GUI for DOS? Did we really need high-speed Internet access? No, and we don't need handwriting recognition either.
:P)? No, but they are pretty nice if you ask me. While I agree with your assessment of replacing the keyboard with a writing pad (bad idea), and that MS should have left DOS at least as an option in WinME, I think your main argument is _very_ over-generalized.
Did we really need automobiles? Did we really need the telephone (cell phones not included
"I am gonna download as much music as I can"
Good. Those numbers will be seen not as a protest, but as validity for what the recording industry thinks of you: You are not rebels but thieves and vandals trying to loot a few more songs before the impending shakedown.
Do them one better. Do not listen to, record, buy, borrow or download any more of their music.
Oh, and convince the "millions of people who do not use the Internet/MP3 technology regularly, and listen to the radio for their music" crowd to do the same.
I agree wholeheartedly with this, and I think this is a big part of the problem. Alot of people see Napster as a form of protest to rising, and already too high, CD prices. But just because you think the price of something is too high does NOT entitle you the right to steal it. Rolex's are too expensive, but people aren't allowed to go and steal those in protest or just because they want one and just don't feel like saving their pennies to buy one.
Of course, alot of people are just theives with no interest in protesting anything. I, personally, like quite a few people here, HAVE increased their CD purchasing since the advent of mp3s, but I believe we are a minority when compared to the Napster-using population as a whole. Just last week, I spent $40 on CDs (CDs of MP3s I already had, btw). While discussing the fact that I could barely afford the CDs, one of my friends asked my other friend whether he thought $40 was alot, Friend B replied "To spend on CDs? Yeah, $40 is way too much considering you can go download all of those songs for free and burn them to a CD."
THIS is why I think Napster is bullshit. Fundamentally, ideally, it's a fantastic thing. In common practice, it's theft.
First of all, what has Pizza Hut REALLY done here that the government hasn't? The US has scraped up whole lot more than 2.5 million over the years.
But I see what you were trying to say, and in response to that I say, the only reason the government has "failed" is because its citizens don't care about space exploration anymore. Noone's really cared much about the space program since we landed on the moon. It's been over 30 years and we haven't attempted anything even close to that since. True, the trip to the moon served very little real purpose, but one would think we'd have done _something_ bigger than we've done by now. Alot of people today just think the space program is a waste of money. "We should be spending all of that money to fix problems here on Earth" they say. They just don't realize that ALOT of modern technology has come from NASA. Space-based experiments have saved lives and improved the quality of a whole lot of others, people just don't realize that at all. It's our responsibility to tell Uncle Sam where we want our money to go, and if NASA isn't getting the funding we all want it to, it's our own fault.
Secondly, I would like to point out that there is virtually nothing that ISN'T commercialized. There's only so much money the government can put up by itself. Can NASA hold patents? I don't know, but I would think if they could, they could be pulling in alot more money from licensing technologies, giving them a bit of return on investment. Maybe they already are, but I honestly have no idea. But anyways, look at railroads, cars, airplanes. All forms of transportation that may have been government subsidized, but still commercially driven. Space travel will join them. Bio-engineering, chemical engineering, etc. all areas of research that may be government subsidized, but again, are mainly commercially driven.
So, in the end, things will be fine. This isn't that dissimilar from what's happened many times before. In fact, I say it's about damn time. Commercialization=more rapid growth, and I'm all for rapid growth of the space program.
I would have to agree with you wholeheartedly. I've run my All-In-Wonder 128 under Win95, Win98 and now Win2k, and NONE of the drivers have been any good. When I tried to play Moto Racer 2 (keep in mind, this came _bundled with the card_) the game would just crash. My fresh new Diablo 2 won't run in Direct3D mode, and when I installed the multimedia and DVD software, my computer got VERY unstable. What really worries me is that the drivers for the Radeon are based on the ones from the Rage 128 chip... New drivers based on drivers that have never ever worked well even on their native chip?... no thanks.
I also own a Voodoo 3 and can say hands down that 3dfx's drivers are by far superior. Until ATI can consistently prove to me that they've changed their ways regarding drivers, I'm avoiding them like the plague.
remember that Intel has been locking processors since the p2-350
Actually, my old P200MMX was clock locked... all I could do was raise the bus speed to 75 giving me a whopping 225mhz... whee!
Seriously... I don't know... but with all the talk of cell phones causing tumors, etc. what's the impact of having EVERYTHING wireless? I know that cell phones are really only a danger when they're right next to your head, being that the power decreases exponentially with distance, etc., but if EVERYTHING goes wireless, won't our bodies be constantly bombarded by these waves? Not that they aren't already...
is the same thing Nintendo and Sega have done with all of their consoles. A smaller, lighter, newer, cheaper PSX. I like the design, and love the small size, but I'm not about to pay $140 for that. If it was actually comparable in portability to other portable gaming systems, I'd be interested... but it's not. Who knows how much that LCD screen is gonna cost on top of that $140... I'd guess it's not gonna be cheap. Gimme a $50 mini-PSX to replace my 4-year-old, falling-apart PSX. I'll buy that.
I have to agree completely on the ease on installation issue. Linux installs are confusing as hell to someone who hasn't used it (i.e. me). While I'm only a casual PC user, I've been using one my whole life (I was weaned on an Apple IIe), so I'm a very competent one.
Maybe it's the fact that I've used an MS OS most of my life (MSDOS 2 anyone?) that it's hard to transition. It's like learning a second language once you've grown up and only spoken one your whole life. MSDOS is like English to me. But when I tried to install Linux (RedHat and Turbolinux), being a Linux novice, I had a bitch of a time. Sure I got it up and running, but I had no idea if I'd actually configured it the way I should have. Which programs do I install? I've never heard of any of these, besides GIMP, Wine, and a couple others... I'm not a programmer, but do I need these development tools to compile programs, or can I do that without them? How DO I compile programs? This filesystem is weird... I've hosed installs (beyond MY ability to repair them. Remember, I'm a novice) just trying to change little things.
It's an AWFUL steep learning curve. I honestly don't have a week to teach myself all of this, nor do I want to spend that much time, nor do I want to dual boot, because that eats alot of my usable disk space. I want an install comparable to my Win2k setup, not a 200 meg command line-only setup.
To summarize:
Linux is hard, even to "experienced" PC users. It's VASTLY different than Windows, from a Linux newbie's point of view. Maybe the similarities pop up as you learn, I dunno, but they're not there when you're starting off.
Windows DOES suck. My PC is getting unstable as I type this because I tried to play an mpg, and SOMETHING (who knows what) went wrong... damn windows. But games are a big reason I'm into PCs, and without Windows, I wouldn't have many games to play. Wine is ideally the answer to that. I eagerly await the day that I can play other cool games besides Quake in Linux.
To summarize further: Most people, including me, will take the evils of bad software over "Office KINDA works in this release...". I think easy-to-use Linux + Wine WILL cause a dramatic shift from MS. It would certainly switch me over. But that time isn't anytime soon, unless some major thing happened tomorrow.