Every human being has a right to live a decent life.
Really? Well, there are several hundreds of millions of people throughout the globe dying from starvation, preventable diseases, unclean water and so forth, in case you didn't know -- 40,000 a day, some people estimate.
So give them money, you say. Well, fine in theory; the problem is, if we distributed the entire economic asset base of the planet evenly, it would work out to around $13000 a person.
Which is not enough, probably, to cover what you hand-wavingly pass over as "decent" for a single year.
And the NEXT year, whoops! We have no assets left -- no factories, no production, no pretty much NOTHING! Mass starvation ensues and population collapses to the twelve million or so hunter-gatherers the planet is capable of supporting.
So.
The facts kinda knock your assertion all to hell, don't they now?
Hang out with any free climber or extreme skiier or paraglider for a couple weekends. You'll see them do, repeatedly, things that are FAR more risky than riding this rocket is likely to be.
And we don't even get any prestige out of it, never mind "practical application". It's just FUN.
In a capitalist sense, linux should not exist, because price is indicitive of relative worth.
Well, you might be an awesome historian for all I know, but by God you SURE AIN'T SHITE as an economist, dumbass.
Follow me verrrrry closssseely here now:
PRICE is set by the intersection of SUPPLY and DEMAND.
Like all concepts we refer to by the oxymoron "intellectual property", the SUPPLY of Linux is (for all practical purposes) infinite, absent artificial scarcity of supply enforced by governmental violence (aka "copyright"), which is less artificial in the case of Linux than most "intellectual property" -- less artificial enough that the supply can be treated, economically, as the infinite good that intellecutal concepts theoretically are. As the DEMAND for Linux is less than the inifinite SUPPLY, the PRICE therefore tends to zero.
I mean, come ON here. If you don't grasp this very simple principle, you really, really, should shut your piehole about anything relating to 'capitalism', at least until you read an introductory microeconomics textbook. (Or, alternatively, grow a brain, since the majority of the population grasps the SUPPLY vs. DEMAND = PRICE equation even if they have NO formal education whatsoever -- which implies that the average elementary school dropout drug dealer on the corner has more intrinsic brains than you do.)
But, I hope you get modded down for your complete ignorance and retention of U.S. dogma, and an inability to learn or think for your self. Please, purchase an education, then return to slashdot.
Excellent advice. I strongly suggest you follow it.
I'm all for wiping out Spam, but this law is a giant piece of junk
No, this law is measured, reasoned, and appropriate. If you don't think so, you are a deceptive and fraudulent scam artist who fully deserves to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law -- and beyond it by tattooed burly fellows named Adolf in prison, as well.
Asshat.
I run a small business. I solicit business by email. Lots of people do. Now you're telling me that if I try and solicit any work from a client that happens to reside in Michigan that I'm going to get hit with a $250,000 fine? Nope.
Yep.
You will be in violation of this law only if you do not comply with Sec. 3. For those who don't bite at trolls like you enough to check it out, here's the text:
Sec. 3. A person who intentionally sends or causes to be sent an unsolicited commercial e-mail through an e-mail service provider that the sender knew or should have known is located in this state or to an e-mail address that the sender knew or should have known is held by a resident of this state shall do all of the following:
(a) Include in the e-mail subject line "ADV:" as the first 4 characters.
(b) Conspicuously state in the e-mail all of the following:
(i) The sender's legal name.
(ii) The sender's correct street address.
(iii) The sender's valid internet domain name.
(iv) The sender's valid return e-mail address.
(c) Establish a toll-free telephone number, a valid sender-operated return e-mail address, or another easy-to-use electronic method that the recipient of the commercial e-mail message may call or access by e-mail or other electronic means to notify the sender not to transmit by e-mail any further unsolicited commercial e-mail messages. The notification process may include the ability for the commercial e-mail messages recipient to direct the sender to transmit or not transmit particular commercial e-mail messages based upon products, services, divisions, organizations, companies, or other selections of the recipient's choice. An unsolicited commercial e-mail message shall include, in print as large as the print used for the majority of the e-mail message, a statement informing the recipient of a toll-free telephone number that the recipient may call, or a valid return address to which the recipient may write or access by e-mail, notifying the sender not to transmit to the recipient any further commercial e-mail messages.
(d) Conspicuously provide in the text of the commercial e-mail, in print as large as the print used for the majority of the e-mail, a notice that informs the recipient that the recipient may conveniently and at no cost be excluded from future commercial e-mail from the sender as provided under subdivision (c).
If you do all this, you're cool, and the law has no effect on you, so quitcher whining. If you don't, then you are a Horrid Evil Spammer Who Should Be Repeatedly Anally Raped and fully deserve all the penalties of the law and more. If you disagree that these are reasonable penalties, then you are either a really bad troll, or a complete asshat. Pick one.
...how brilliant/functional is the one-button mouse?
First, add the necessary qualifier here "to the complete novice who thinks of a computer as no more important to them than a screwdriver and they figure should be as easy to use -- which is Apple's default target for a new buyer." (As anyone who isn't in that category can go pick themselves up a Logitech MX700 and get eight buttons, like I did.)
Next, if this clarification still leaves you in any doubt that one is the proper number of buttons for a default shipping mouse, talk to anyone who's spent time manning the support lines for a Windows-serving ISP. I very sincerely doubt you will be able to find a single one of those who would not agree that their job would be immensely simplified if Windows had followed Apple's lead on the number of buttons thing. For that matter, many of them probably would be skeptical of the "double-click" concept as well. I think people like you really don't comprehend that two buttons honest to god(s) really IS quite confusing to the vast majority of the population...
Started out in MacFORTH, then Consulair C, then THINK (later Symantec) Pascal and C, then CodeWarrior. Never touched Mac Pascal ever, and only extremely rarely had anything to do with MPW -- certainly not enough to be any reasonable definition of "familiar" with it.
Heck, I wouldn't even call myself "familiar" with the OS X command line yet... a 'power user' perhaps. At most.
You can't be "unfamiliar with the command line" and a programmer.
Then what do you call those things that ran on Mac OS X and the people who wrote them, if they weren't "programs" and "programmers" respectively? Took me 16 years of shipping commercial software products before I had to use a command line at all, personally.
...whoever comes along with a 35 cent version of a similar service using another format [vorbis.com] and a better bitrate?
Going broke on the difference between the 35 cent retail and the 65 cents label royalty per track is a fairly predictable first consequence, one would think
Dunno what you consider 'professional', but my cell phone the Panasonic TX220 "Duramax"
http://www.cellphones.ca/panasonic/pan33695.html
isn't gaudy or anything and is the ruggedest pocket size dual mode I know of. It's what virtually all the dock workers here in Vancouver carry, which was a quite conclusive recommendation as to its durability as far as I was concerned, and it's taken some pretty darn good whacks, dips in hot tubs, and so forth without a single problem.
Ok, now remove Quicktime from your Mac and replace it with some other media viewer. Can't be done.
Horseshit. Hold down Shift during startup, and presto, no QuickTime on your Mac 9.x box. Replace it with anything you damn well please.
I'm not sure if it's possible to remove QuickTime from OS X completely, having had no reason to ever want to do so, but if you want to use Real or Windows Media or whatever, there's certainly no interference from QuickTime to stop you doing so.
Actually, it doesn't, and Steve etc. want it to be free, really. It's the DVD encoder royalties that make it impracticable to make it freely downloadable like other iApps, nothing diabolical on Apple's part.
I hope you're kidding, right? Not all conservatives hold the same view. Even the most far-right wing, Christian Coalition, fundamentalist, conservative zealot doesn't believe sex is bad,
Er, that's the point of the Catholics' ban on birth control, for one. Sex is bad unless (and ONLY unless) it's being engaged in specifically for procreation. And I believe parent was making an unstated assumption of his own there and should have written "sex for pleasure".
Oh, it's quite possible for both to be addictive after one try, I'm sure. It depends on what your normal state of mind is. I am reminded of a discussion with a cokehead I was having at 5:30 one morning...
TWITCHY COKEHEAD: DUDE! You took the LAST LINE! THERE ISN'T ANY MORE!
ME: Well, chill, the Starbuck's on the corner is open in fifteen minutes, we'll line up a dozen shots of 'spro for you.
TCH: WHAT'S *THAT* GONNA DO?
ME: Well, coke's just like really concentrated caffeine, gets you all energetic and jumpy right?
TCH: BUT DUDE! On coke you feel like you can do ANYTHING you want! The world is YOURS and YOU'RE THE MAN!
ME: Ummmmm... oh. Well, that's how I feel *without* any drugs, actually...
Not being lucky enough to suffer from my normal helping of extreme arrogance shading into mild megalomania, this fellow probably was a prime candidate for instant addiction to cocaine (or any other stimulant, for that matter). I'm generally not much on opiates because they make me feel like a zombie wrapped in a marshmallow which isn't really anywhere I'd want to spend a lot of time, but I can see that if you had big problems with the way your life was turning out this would be a very attractive space. Even just once.
It's not that they won't allow copy protection as such, it's that with the Macintosh Apple has always refused to support direct hardware access of ANY sort after System/driver/hardware upgrades.
After a few rounds of hardware-dependent protection methods breaking with no warning and Apple saying tough luck kids, software publishers generally got the hint.
** Please note that the following is purest, purest speculation. ** It is my personal theory that one of the big reasons we will not be seeing a linux version of quicktime is because...
** Please note that the following is pure fact. **
There are only two reasons that you will not be seeing a Linux version of QuickTime.
A) No one has come up with a revenue model to justify Apple's investment in it. And with no significant portion of either production or consumption of video taking place on Linux desktops, I sincerely doubt anyone ever will.
B) No outside party has offered to provide Apple with the necessary investment. Apple would be more than happy to do so at anyone at all's request (well, the QuickTime team anyway, can't speak for top management but I doubt they'd be offside) it's just that the Red Hats etc. haven't put the dosh up.
The free market fails to account for the fact that most people are stupid,
Actually, technically this is known as 'bounded rationality' and is one of the more active areas of research in economics.
and will buy whatever crap everyone else is buying.
That's a fairly good summation of most of the research to date, actually. It's that whole safety in numbers thing, us having evolved from pack animals and all that. The economists think, anyway.
It's like someone makes a new PI=3 proof and gets newspaper coverage.
What, isn't the word of the Bible good enough for you?
"He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it."
-- 2 Chronicles 4:2, claiming the value of pi is 3.
Re:Innovation? Yes. Better than a scooter? No.
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 2
Who the fuck can't ride a scooter or drive a car? Is there some huge group of uncoordinated retards who cant operate a scooter or a car but can ride an IT?
Probably approaching 40% of the over sixty set, and 80% of the over seventy set. My grandmother springs immediately to mind.
Is that the market for this piece of shit? It's some sort of scooter for the severely challenged?
Well, I don't know if that's the intended market or not, but I do know that the aforementioned grandmother is getting one just as soon as I can slap the credit card down, assuming it really performs as the previews indicate.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, the way we take off at night over high tension wires, into the teeth of thunderstorms, etc. -- trust me, it IS :)
Every human being has a right to live a decent life.
Really? Well, there are several hundreds of millions of people throughout the globe dying from starvation, preventable diseases, unclean water and so forth, in case you didn't know -- 40,000 a day, some people estimate.
So give them money, you say. Well, fine in theory; the problem is, if we distributed the entire economic asset base of the planet evenly, it would work out to around $13000 a person.
Which is not enough, probably, to cover what you hand-wavingly pass over as "decent" for a single year.
And the NEXT year, whoops! We have no assets left -- no factories, no production, no pretty much NOTHING! Mass starvation ensues and population collapses to the twelve million or so hunter-gatherers the planet is capable of supporting.
So.
The facts kinda knock your assertion all to hell, don't they now?
*snort*
Hang out with any free climber or extreme skiier or paraglider for a couple weekends. You'll see them do, repeatedly, things that are FAR more risky than riding this rocket is likely to be.
And we don't even get any prestige out of it, never mind "practical application". It's just FUN.
... and for the record, Mike Hughes is a dumbass.
... there is '>console' at user login screen.
Cause, like
I also do not remember Iraq being a "Socialist" country either.
/. or WHAT??
Jesus H. Christ, is this Official Dumbass Day on
"(baath)(KEY), Arab political party, in Syria and in Iraq. Its main ideological objectives are secularism, SOCIALISM, and pan-Arab unionism."
http://www.bartleby.com/65/ba/Baathpar.html
In a capitalist sense, linux should not exist, because price is indicitive of relative worth.
Well, you might be an awesome historian for all I know, but by God you SURE AIN'T SHITE as an economist, dumbass.
Follow me verrrrry closssseely here now:
PRICE is set by the intersection of SUPPLY and DEMAND.
Like all concepts we refer to by the oxymoron "intellectual property", the SUPPLY of Linux is (for all practical purposes) infinite, absent artificial scarcity of supply enforced by governmental violence (aka "copyright"), which is less artificial in the case of Linux than most "intellectual property" -- less artificial enough that the supply can be treated, economically, as the infinite good that intellecutal concepts theoretically are. As the DEMAND for Linux is less than the inifinite SUPPLY, the PRICE therefore tends to zero.
I mean, come ON here. If you don't grasp this very simple principle, you really, really, should shut your piehole about anything relating to 'capitalism', at least until you read an introductory microeconomics textbook. (Or, alternatively, grow a brain, since the majority of the population grasps the SUPPLY vs. DEMAND = PRICE equation even if they have NO formal education whatsoever -- which implies that the average elementary school dropout drug dealer on the corner has more intrinsic brains than you do.)
But, I hope you get modded down for your complete ignorance and retention of U.S. dogma, and an inability to learn or think for your self. Please, purchase an education, then return to slashdot.
Excellent advice. I strongly suggest you follow it.
I'm all for wiping out Spam, but this law is a giant piece of junk
No, this law is measured, reasoned, and appropriate. If you don't think so, you are a deceptive and fraudulent scam artist who fully deserves to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law -- and beyond it by tattooed burly fellows named Adolf in prison, as well.
Asshat.
I run a small business. I solicit business by email. Lots of people do. Now you're telling me that if I try and solicit any work from a client that happens to reside in Michigan that I'm going to get hit with a $250,000 fine? Nope.
Yep.
You will be in violation of this law only if you do not comply with Sec. 3. For those who don't bite at trolls like you enough to check it out, here's the text:
Sec. 3. A person who intentionally sends or causes to be sent an unsolicited commercial e-mail through an e-mail service provider that the sender knew or should have known is located in this state or to an e-mail address that the sender knew or should have known is held by a resident of this state shall do all of the following:
(a) Include in the e-mail subject line "ADV:" as the first 4 characters.
(b) Conspicuously state in the e-mail all of the following:
(i) The sender's legal name.
(ii) The sender's correct street address.
(iii) The sender's valid internet domain name.
(iv) The sender's valid return e-mail address.
(c) Establish a toll-free telephone number, a valid sender-operated return e-mail address, or another easy-to-use electronic method that the recipient of the commercial e-mail message may call or access by e-mail or other electronic means to notify the sender not to transmit by e-mail any further unsolicited commercial e-mail messages. The notification process may include the ability for the commercial e-mail messages recipient to direct the sender to transmit or not transmit particular commercial e-mail messages based upon products, services, divisions, organizations, companies, or other selections of the recipient's choice. An unsolicited commercial e-mail message shall include, in print as large as the print used for the majority of the e-mail message, a statement informing the recipient of a toll-free telephone number that the recipient may call, or a valid return address to which the recipient may write or access by e-mail, notifying the sender not to transmit to the recipient any further commercial e-mail messages.
(d) Conspicuously provide in the text of the commercial e-mail, in print as large as the print used for the majority of the e-mail, a notice that informs the recipient that the recipient may conveniently and at no cost be excluded from future commercial e-mail from the sender as provided under subdivision (c).
If you do all this, you're cool, and the law has no effect on you, so quitcher whining. If you don't, then you are a Horrid Evil Spammer Who Should Be Repeatedly Anally Raped and fully deserve all the penalties of the law and more. If you disagree that these are reasonable penalties, then you are either a really bad troll, or a complete asshat. Pick one.
...how brilliant/functional is the one-button mouse?
First, add the necessary qualifier here "to the complete novice who thinks of a computer as no more important to them than a screwdriver and they figure should be as easy to use -- which is Apple's default target for a new buyer." (As anyone who isn't in that category can go pick themselves up a Logitech MX700 and get eight buttons, like I did.)
Next, if this clarification still leaves you in any doubt that one is the proper number of buttons for a default shipping mouse, talk to anyone who's spent time manning the support lines for a Windows-serving ISP. I very sincerely doubt you will be able to find a single one of those who would not agree that their job would be immensely simplified if Windows had followed Apple's lead on the number of buttons thing. For that matter, many of them probably would be skeptical of the "double-click" concept as well. I think people like you really don't comprehend that two buttons honest to god(s) really IS quite confusing to the vast majority of the population...
put you at 1987,
... a 'power user' perhaps. At most.
'85, actually.
assuming you were a DOS programmer
Nope, just Mac.
on the Mac, your choices were - Mac Pascal or MPW
Au contraire!
Started out in MacFORTH, then Consulair C, then THINK (later Symantec) Pascal and C, then CodeWarrior. Never touched Mac Pascal ever, and only extremely rarely had anything to do with MPW -- certainly not enough to be any reasonable definition of "familiar" with it.
Heck, I wouldn't even call myself "familiar" with the OS X command line yet
You can't be "unfamiliar with the command line" and a programmer.
Then what do you call those things that ran on Mac OS X and the people who wrote them, if they weren't "programs" and "programmers" respectively? Took me 16 years of shipping commercial software products before I had to use a command line at all, personally.
you could always get a faster PC for less,
Bzzzt, wrong. Thanks for playing, though!
The counterexample is early 1997 when my 225 MHz PPC 604 PowerComputing clone was higher MHz than any Intel box on the market.
...whoever comes along with a 35 cent version of a similar service using another format [vorbis.com] and a better bitrate?
Going broke on the difference between the 35 cent retail and the 65 cents label royalty per track is a fairly predictable first consequence, one would think
Dunno what you consider 'professional', but my cell phone the Panasonic TX220 "Duramax"
l
http://www.cellphones.ca/panasonic/pan33695.htm
isn't gaudy or anything and is the ruggedest pocket size dual mode I know of. It's what virtually all the dock workers here in Vancouver carry, which was a quite conclusive recommendation as to its durability as far as I was concerned, and it's taken some pretty darn good whacks, dips in hot tubs, and so forth without a single problem.
Ok, now remove Quicktime from your Mac and replace it with some other media viewer. Can't be done.
Horseshit. Hold down Shift during startup, and presto, no QuickTime on your Mac 9.x box. Replace it with anything you damn well please.
I'm not sure if it's possible to remove QuickTime from OS X completely, having had no reason to ever want to do so, but if you want to use Real or Windows Media or whatever, there's certainly no interference from QuickTime to stop you doing so.
(only iDVD, which makes sense)
Actually, it doesn't, and Steve etc. want it to be free, really. It's the DVD encoder royalties that make it impracticable to make it freely downloadable like other iApps, nothing diabolical on Apple's part.
I hope you're kidding, right? Not all conservatives hold the same view. Even the most far-right wing, Christian Coalition, fundamentalist, conservative zealot doesn't believe sex is bad,
Er, that's the point of the Catholics' ban on birth control, for one. Sex is bad unless (and ONLY unless) it's being engaged in specifically for procreation. And I believe parent was making an unstated assumption of his own there and should have written "sex for pleasure".
Oh, it's quite possible for both to be addictive after one try, I'm sure. It depends on what your normal state of mind is. I am reminded of a discussion with a cokehead I was having at 5:30 one morning...
... oh. Well, that's how I feel *without* any drugs, actually...
TWITCHY COKEHEAD: DUDE! You took the LAST LINE! THERE ISN'T ANY MORE!
ME: Well, chill, the Starbuck's on the corner is open in fifteen minutes, we'll line up a dozen shots of 'spro for you.
TCH: WHAT'S *THAT* GONNA DO?
ME: Well, coke's just like really concentrated caffeine, gets you all energetic and jumpy right?
TCH: BUT DUDE! On coke you feel like you can do ANYTHING you want! The world is YOURS and YOU'RE THE MAN!
ME: Ummmmm
Not being lucky enough to suffer from my normal helping of extreme arrogance shading into mild megalomania, this fellow probably was a prime candidate for instant addiction to cocaine (or any other stimulant, for that matter). I'm generally not much on opiates because they make me feel like a zombie wrapped in a marshmallow which isn't really anywhere I'd want to spend a lot of time, but I can see that if you had big problems with the way your life was turning out this would be a very attractive space. Even just once.
Actually, you've got it wrong too, agnostics DO believe something: They believe in unknowability.
Agnostic = "I believe is impossible to know whether there is a God."
Some modern commentators call this 'strong' agnosticism as opposed to what you think it is being 'weak' agnosticism, but that's silly.
It's not that they won't allow copy protection as such, it's that with the Macintosh Apple has always refused to support direct hardware access of ANY sort after System/driver/hardware upgrades.
After a few rounds of hardware-dependent protection methods breaking with no warning and Apple saying tough luck kids, software publishers generally got the hint.
** Please note that the following is purest, purest speculation. ** ...
It is my personal theory that one of the big reasons we will not be seeing a linux version of quicktime is because
** Please note that the following is pure fact. **
There are only two reasons that you will not be seeing a Linux version of QuickTime.
A) No one has come up with a revenue model to justify Apple's investment in it. And with no significant portion of either production or consumption of video taking place on Linux desktops, I sincerely doubt anyone ever will.
B) No outside party has offered to provide Apple with the necessary investment. Apple would be more than happy to do so at anyone at all's request (well, the QuickTime team anyway, can't speak for top management but I doubt they'd be offside) it's just that the Red Hats etc. haven't put the dosh up.
END. OF. STORY.
The free market fails to account for the fact that most people are stupid,
Actually, technically this is known as 'bounded rationality' and is one of the more active areas of research in economics.
and will buy whatever crap everyone else is buying.
That's a fairly good summation of most of the research to date, actually. It's that whole safety in numbers thing, us having evolved from pack animals and all that. The economists think, anyway.
He will certainly never get an education, or contribute anything to humanity
Following your logic, we should ALL still be medieval peasants then.
Or are you honestly such an idiot you think First World nations got that way by somehow magically skipping that whole industrialization process?
Wake up and learn some history. A little bit of economics would do you a lot of good too.
It's like someone makes a new PI=3 proof and gets newspaper coverage.
What, isn't the word of the Bible good enough for you?
"He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it."
-- 2 Chronicles 4:2, claiming the value of pi is 3.
Put a 14" screen on the iBook.
Done.
Observe the alt tag second from right.
http://www.apple.com/home/
Who the fuck can't ride a scooter or drive a car? Is there some huge group of uncoordinated retards who cant operate a scooter or a car but can ride an IT?
Probably approaching 40% of the over sixty set, and 80% of the over seventy set. My grandmother springs immediately to mind.
Is that the market for this piece of shit? It's some sort of scooter for the severely challenged?
Well, I don't know if that's the intended market or not, but I do know that the aforementioned grandmother is getting one just as soon as I can slap the credit card down, assuming it really performs as the previews indicate.
I suspect I'm not unique in this sentiment.