That's how we'll get Open Source and/or Free Software to become widly used, by promoting copyright violations on proprietary software.
Personally I do without what I am not willing to pay for in software. Not because I think copying is morally wrong, but becuase I don't want to be complacent in Microsoft's market domination. If we all copy MS products illegally, then we can't complain that the Free eqivalents aren't up to snuff, they wouldn't have any users!
And this isn't even a political free software point, consider the smaller comercail programs, or shareware authors.
I use Dia for diagraming and I love it. Of course I don't do anything complex or super important with it, so for all I know its not full featured enough. I do not know if the windows port is any good as I don't run windows, you can check it out here http://dia-installer.sourceforge.net/
I've never used Kivio as I also don't run KDE, so I can not compare the two, although I am sure I will get at least one response that says Kivio is much better and vice versa:)
Once you start running GNU/Linux you will have no reason to run Windows. Who would want to run Windows along side Linux ? If a business is going to make the switch to GNU they will not keep Windows around for some legacy apps, they will port them (or get equivalent software) otherwise why switch to Linux?
I can see having diferent divisions run GNU/Linux and Windows, but on the same Machine? IT would not be happy, and you would get NONE of the cash savings.
Now the home user is a different story. the only reason at all for a home user to stay with Windows TODAY are games that they want to play that have not been ported. And for non-gaming home users the only reason is that the computer cam with Windows preinstalled, and a non-geek isnt about to re-install when they *can* do everything they are doing in Windows.
Quite frankly i get vastly more techish questions from poeple who run Windows than those who run Linux (and I am referring to the non-geek people that I have converted to GNU/Linux) - oddly the biggest gripe with GNU/Linux in most reviews is the install and these folks are going to get me to install Windows for them anyway (because they find that frightening), so I install Debian, show them apt-get / apt-cache. and they are perfectly OK.
Not even mentioning how assinine it is that they expect a user to have t obuy another more expensive product from Apple or Microsoft to play the stupid CD. I have no interrest in doing busingess with either of those companies too. I'll stick with Debian and wait for the record companies to release in Ogg Vorbis.:)
If at least one day of the 18 month long post production involves a large barrel full of kersene, all known prints of episode 2 and a match.
Please god after seeing episode 2 I don;t know if I could survive another dose. Although I now know what "Plan 9 From Outer Space" could have been with a budget. Oh, wait Plan 9 had the bad writing, but the acting was MUCH better.....
I would support a government mandate that tech companies have to use binary SI prefixes on labels. Mandating the current use of gigabyte but that it means 10^9 is too trouble some, but saying gibibytes is simple, people that don't care will either read it as "giga" not realizing, or be told by sales-people that its "the same thing". and they won't be surprised when the drive is the wrong size.
We have mandates on product labeling for many other products I think its time we force the industry to be upfront. Don't think this is an accident, the drive manufacturers knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they started using standard SI meanings for the prefixes, rather than the industry accepted practice.
I've been looking for a decent keyboard for months and have yet to find one that is better that the cheapo keyboard I have. I wish there was a company that let you customize the layout and features of a keyboard for a reasonable price. that might be nice, I personally have many complaints with the standard keyboard layout, before I even get to the headaches you speak of.
The extra "not" in that post made it almost impossible to understand since it gave the most important sentance the exact OPPOSITE meaning (although in poor english).
took me a while to understand what the heck was going on there.
we do have a tax like that in the US. and its not a tax its extortion of the hardware manufacturers by an industry with more political clout. and the consumer loses once again.
I can't understand the logic, if your accepting piracy and deciding that the cost is X amount per CD, why complain when the consumer uses the CD for it.
Am I the only person that whenever I look at licenses or think about how to license a piece of code thinks "damn, why can't I just say 'use common sense'?"
Everyone is so concerned with parsing out every detail of every license, I so wish I lived in a sane world where I could say "This is Free Software" and not have to explain to every cheating idiot al the details of what is and is not allowed.
License are a legal matter, and the legal system works because everything is interpretable, but we have gotten to the point where they are infecting technical issues. Technology works and science works because it is rock solid. When one writes a web browser one does not try to interpret the HTML standard to squeeze every advantage out of it. You simply try to be as true to it as possible. Why oh why do we have a society where we can't do that with licensing.
I want to see a study of what percentage of time or Free or OS projects are spent parsing, choosing, explaining, and debating licenses.
BTW- this is precisely the reason that Debian has a totally seperate mailing list for legal issues, and 99% of the time anything that belongs there which is posted to another list will be told to "ask debian-legal" - because those that don't want to answer, or have the expertise to answer such questions won't bother.
I have often found it odd that a lot of poeple find "engrish" extremely funny (and some in an offensive derogetory way) but have no problem butchering other languages or thinking its 'hip' to have a random chinese character that they can not read tattooed on them.
I ussually hate the slippery slop arguement more than anyone, but this issue is the perfect case to point it out. We are trending towards a society in which no one is ever held responsible for their actions. I know addiction is a serious problem for people but where do we draw the line? Adults have to be treated like adults.
Now that I have a small child I cannot possibly fathom doing anything to harm his wellbeing. Everyday I wake up I have the urge to earn the most I can and provide the best I can for My son, and when I see negligence like this I can't understand how it happens. I don't think there is an addictive substance or activity that would ever have greater sway over me than my son. I can't explain the bond, and I don't try to, but neglecting him to play a game?
What happened to the responsibility people used to have for their children? We live in a world where far to many parents feel like they are entitled to entertainment of some kind and the child be damned if it gets in the way? People constantly drag their kids to places they shouldn't, they constantly bitch about poor teachers when they don't care themselves. I used to feel this way and think to my self that maybe my perspective would change when I had a child. Now I am even more disgusted when I see they way kids are treated/ignored in public and the lack of responsibility people take for them.
Things change. There is no static "open internet" that is going to 'end' abruptly one day. All social and technological systems are in a constant state of flux. Maybe the internet looks less open now than it was 'then' and maybe it looks to be trending away from the great utopia it never was, But the system is above all of this ultimately. Maybe for most people the techno-utopia will cease, but that is because that is what most people wanted.
All societies, including the 'internet society' are emergent phenomena. One thinks the 'network' is dying because they idealized it in another form, not in a 'better' form or a 'worse' form just their form. Simply put it is a case of the "good old days" syndrome, people constantly complain about society pointing out how great it once was, and they will continue to do so. If we let the internet die it is because collectively we didn't care to have it live. Sure there will always be complainers with valid points because it is very easy in hindsight to pick out what was better than you have now, while glossing over what was worse.
Sure I'd like to see Usenet and IRC be as good as I remember them, and I'd like everyone to pretned Flash was never invented and stop using it, but am I willing to give up on all the things (graphics, non-console interfaces, high-speed, mass access, etc) that both killed Usenet and brought about Flash? NO.
Well thats a little harsh, since I havent read the article. But all I can say is that my GNOME desktops are vastly more "usable" than any windows machine I sit down at. First off the windows widgets are so ugly that every 3rd party developer make their own pretty skin (which mean you can never figure out how to use app app based familiarity) just look at Norton AV, McAfee AV, Nero 6, Zonealarm for four different apps with for different widget sets, that all suck. (notice how the only apps I even run in windows are firwalls and anti-virus scanners:)
now add to that the absurdity of the dialog layouts and you have a mess. Invariably when someone wants to "tweak" some feature it involves finding a control panel icon, then clicking on at least one tab, then diggin through a scrollable list with checkboxes and radio buttons intermixed, or perhaps an "Advanced" button and a second or third dialog each with six tabs, it goes on and on. (don't even get me started on the registry editor if god forbid you have to fix/change something in there.
I am absolutely dumbfounded that people call windows "usable" when it has these major faults that make it confusing and annoying at every turn. here is a little example a coworker wanted to re-associate PDF files with acrobat today, so I had to: 1) open a folder 2) click "view" 3) click "Folder Options" 4) click the "File types" tab 5) search through a list, only to NOT find an entry for PDF files 6) remember that you can Shift-RightClick a file and choose what to open it with. 7) close all those windows and find a PDF file, then shift-click it and choose acrobat, and check the "alays use this program..." box. 8) click OK, then close acrobat.
I just did it on my machine to see what it would take:
1) Click "Applications" AKA "the foot menu" 2) select "Desktop Prefs->Advanced->Filetypes" 3) Select from a simple list "Documents" 4) under docuements I choose "published materials" 5) BINGO next I see "PDF document" and select that 6) Click edit.
All my choices for PDF files are available right there. And I have never edited a file association in GNOME before, yet after doing it many times in windows I still had to try two different methods.
"Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)" Joke Joke, n. L. jocus. Cf Jeopardy, Jocular, Juggler.
1. Something said for the sake of exciting a laugh; something
witty or sportive (commonly indicating more of hilarity or
humor than jest); a jest; a witticism; as, to crack
good-natured jokes.
Man all this about the "big" party candidates buygin elections, and being afraid to take a stand on real issues. and then she drops the "both" bomb on the vi/emacs question....
I swear talk about not taking a stand on important issues, whatthe hell kind of a geek is she if she can't choose vi or emacs and has to use both. I think it was a little too much of a token "bone" to pick GNU Emacs over XEmacs, especially after skirting the real issue.
Its like she said "I am both for and against the death penalty, but I am against wrongful convictions"
Our generator worked fine (we were powerless till about 5am friday) and a dedicated line to Motient stayed up the entire time. But our UUNET T1 was down until about 6pm friday. and the entire time it was impossible to even get a Worldcom person on the phone to find out if they even had an idea as to when they would get thier act together. so basically I give Motient an A+ (well they were outside the blacked out area but I still got updated on thier network status inside the area) and I give Worldcom a big fat F.
I know I switched a machine over to gentoo. Within two months I am back to debian and could not be happier. Gentoo is all hype. I have a machine that has run debian since 1996, and I have NEVER had an apt-get update; apt-get upgrade fail. NOT ONCE. Gentoo was a major pain in the ass, compile for an hour only to find out that the app doesn't work, then google, then find out that one other person somewhere says the app can't compile with "-Os" or some other optimization your using, rince change repeat. in two months I had three times where an emerge failed for no reason whatsoever that I could find, all I know is it would invariably be 90% complete with a 3 hour compile when it failed, oh and would work fine when tried a second or third time with no changes.
The only apt-get related failures I've come accross were because I purposely did things apt said not to (ie - install packages without dependancies etc) not to mention the Freeness of Debian, it is reassuring having the license conditions for every package available in the same locations. Not to mention knowning that if I run Debian main they take care of all the legal crap for me, I know that all my software meets stringent requirements and has had the license scrutinized but at least a few Debian devels. And when I 'need' some non-free I have vrms to keep me in check.
I also like the fact that not all Debian devels are free software zealots, its good to have disagreement, but its also good that all of them want the best Froo OS there is.
This age old fight really bothers me.
on
Flavor vs. Flavour
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You get arguments like this all over the net. Although I read this thread and save for a couple of jokes it was not anything otehr than a brief patch discussion with no arguing or flaming.
But this really bothers me, I am american so I naturally leave off the u, but it doesn't matter to me when people add a "u" or reverse an "er" or switch a "z" and an "s" or say lorry.
Why do so many americans act like some foriegner is destroying their language whenever this happens? And why do so many British English speakers smuggly act like their spelling or phrasing is clearly more intelligent, refined or whatever? Do you all act the same way to non-english words? you have to assume that spelling will either homogenize, or that multiple spellings will become universally accepted, with the internet bringing all these english speakers together and whatnot. I recently heard a piece on the radio about South Africa which made the claim that it was becoming much more common for youths to intermix various words from the various languages in the country, because since the end of apartheid people are being brought together much more.
Of course recently I've been listening to the BBC World Service at night and it did take a few days to get used to the reporters fondness for the word "row" as in "argument" which I had never heard before, not to mention a use of the term "washing-up liquid" that I found quite humorous:)
I'd love to be able to mount my home directory on a pen drive, that way I automatically have everything I need, and can login to the same setup on the various Debian boxes I use.
Probably not really a feasable use, (version differences in any apps would cause config file hell) but a nice thought.
Slashdot Mirror
That's how we'll get Open Source and/or Free Software to become widly used, by promoting copyright violations on proprietary software.
Personally I do without what I am not willing to pay for in software. Not because I think copying is morally wrong, but becuase I don't want to be complacent in Microsoft's market domination. If we all copy MS products illegally, then we can't complain that the Free eqivalents aren't up to snuff, they wouldn't have any users!
And this isn't even a political free software point, consider the smaller comercail programs, or shareware authors.
I use Dia for diagraming and I love it. Of course I don't do anything complex or super important with it, so for all I know its not full featured enough. I do not know if the windows port is any good as I don't run windows, you can check it out here http://dia-installer.sourceforge.net/
:)
I've never used Kivio as I also don't run KDE, so I can not compare the two, although I am sure I will get at least one response that says Kivio is much better and vice versa
It has nothing to do with taxis or blind drivers. Its the Americans with Disabilities Act, all ATMs have to have braille on them.
Once you start running GNU/Linux you will have no reason to run Windows. Who would want to run Windows along side Linux ? If a business is going to make the switch to GNU they will not keep Windows around for some legacy apps, they will port them (or get equivalent software) otherwise why switch to Linux?
I can see having diferent divisions run GNU/Linux and Windows, but on the same Machine? IT would not be happy, and you would get NONE of the cash savings.
Now the home user is a different story. the only reason at all for a home user to stay with Windows TODAY are games that they want to play that have not been ported. And for non-gaming home users the only reason is that the computer cam with Windows preinstalled, and a non-geek isnt about to re-install when they *can* do everything they are doing in Windows.
Quite frankly i get vastly more techish questions from poeple who run Windows than those who run Linux (and I am referring to the non-geek people that I have converted to GNU/Linux) - oddly the biggest gripe with GNU/Linux in most reviews is the install and these folks are going to get me to install Windows for them anyway (because they find that frightening), so I install Debian, show them apt-get / apt-cache. and they are perfectly OK.
no. Episode one was a standard crappy action movie. Episode two was the steaming pile of unwatchable crap.
Not even mentioning how assinine it is that they expect a user to have t obuy another more expensive product from Apple or Microsoft to play the stupid CD. I have no interrest in doing busingess with either of those companies too. I'll stick with Debian and wait for the record companies to release in Ogg Vorbis. :)
I don't know who this Anthony Hamilton is, but I certainly won't be buying his CD. Oh wait, I wasn't buying any CDs anyway.
Oh, and I am not going to download his music either. I can do without music produced by those corporations, thank you.
How about telling IT that it doesn't include that virus trap Outlook ?
If at least one day of the 18 month long post production involves a large barrel full of kersene, all known prints of episode 2 and a match.
Please god after seeing episode 2 I don;t know if I could survive another dose. Although I now know what "Plan 9 From Outer Space" could have been with a budget. Oh, wait Plan 9 had the bad writing, but the acting was MUCH better.....
I would support a government mandate that tech companies have to use binary SI prefixes on labels.
Mandating the current use of gigabyte but that it means 10^9 is too trouble some, but saying gibibytes is simple, people that don't care will either read it as "giga" not realizing, or be told by sales-people that its "the same thing". and they won't be surprised when the drive is the wrong size.
We have mandates on product labeling for many other products I think its time we force the industry to be upfront. Don't think this is an accident, the drive manufacturers knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they started using standard SI meanings for the prefixes, rather than the industry accepted practice.
I've been looking for a decent keyboard for months and have yet to find one that is better that the cheapo keyboard I have. I wish there was a company that let you customize the layout and features of a keyboard for a reasonable price. that might be nice, I personally have many complaints with the standard keyboard layout, before I even get to the headaches you speak of.
The extra "not" in that post made it almost impossible to understand since it gave the most important sentance the exact OPPOSITE meaning (although in poor english).
took me a while to understand what the heck was going on there.
we do have a tax like that in the US. and its not a tax its extortion of the hardware manufacturers by an industry with more political clout. and the consumer loses once again.
I can't understand the logic, if your accepting piracy and deciding that the cost is X amount per CD, why complain when the consumer uses the CD for it.
Am I the only person that whenever I look at licenses or think about how to license a piece of code thinks "damn, why can't I just say 'use common sense'?"
Everyone is so concerned with parsing out every detail of every license, I so wish I lived in a sane world where I could say "This is Free Software" and not have to explain to every cheating idiot al the details of what is and is not allowed.
License are a legal matter, and the legal system works because everything is interpretable, but we have gotten to the point where they are infecting technical issues. Technology works and science works because it is rock solid. When one writes a web browser one does not try to interpret the HTML standard to squeeze every advantage out of it. You simply try to be as true to it as possible. Why oh why do we have a society where we can't do that with licensing.
I want to see a study of what percentage of time or Free or OS projects are spent parsing, choosing, explaining, and debating licenses.
BTW- this is precisely the reason that Debian has a totally seperate mailing list for legal issues, and 99% of the time anything that belongs there which is posted to another list will be told to "ask debian-legal" - because those that don't want to answer, or have the expertise to answer such questions won't bother.
I have often found it odd that a lot of poeple find "engrish" extremely funny (and some in an offensive derogetory way) but have no problem butchering other languages or thinking its 'hip' to have a random chinese character that they can not read tattooed on them.
I ussually hate the slippery slop arguement more than anyone, but this issue is the perfect case to point it out. We are trending towards a society in which no one is ever held responsible for their actions. I know addiction is a serious problem for people but where do we draw the line? Adults have to be treated like adults.
Now that I have a small child I cannot possibly fathom doing anything to harm his wellbeing. Everyday I wake up I have the urge to earn the most I can and provide the best I can for My son, and when I see negligence like this I can't understand how it happens. I don't think there is an addictive substance or activity that would ever have greater sway over me than my son. I can't explain the bond, and I don't try to, but neglecting him to play a game?
What happened to the responsibility people used to have for their children? We live in a world where far to many parents feel like they are entitled to entertainment of some kind and the child be damned if it gets in the way? People constantly drag their kids to places they shouldn't, they constantly bitch about poor teachers when they don't care themselves. I used to feel this way and think to my self that maybe my perspective would change when I had a child. Now I am even more disgusted when I see they way kids are treated/ignored in public and the lack of responsibility people take for them.
Things change. There is no static "open internet" that is going to 'end' abruptly one day. All social and technological systems are in a constant state of flux. Maybe the internet looks less open now than it was 'then' and maybe it looks to be trending away from the great utopia it never was, But the system is above all of this ultimately. Maybe for most people the techno-utopia will cease, but that is because that is what most people wanted.
All societies, including the 'internet society' are emergent phenomena. One thinks the 'network' is dying because they idealized it in another form, not in a 'better' form or a 'worse' form just their form. Simply put it is a case of the "good old days" syndrome, people constantly complain about society pointing out how great it once was, and they will continue to do so. If we let the internet die it is because collectively we didn't care to have it live. Sure there will always be complainers with valid points because it is very easy in hindsight to pick out what was better than you have now, while glossing over what was worse.
Sure I'd like to see Usenet and IRC be as good as I remember them, and I'd like everyone to pretned Flash was never invented and stop using it, but am I willing to give up on all the things (graphics, non-console interfaces, high-speed, mass access, etc) that both killed Usenet and brought about Flash? NO.
Well thats a little harsh, since I havent read the article. But all I can say is that my GNOME desktops are vastly more "usable" than any windows machine I sit down at. First off the windows widgets are so ugly that every 3rd party developer make their own pretty skin (which mean you can never figure out how to use app app based familiarity) just look at Norton AV, McAfee AV, Nero 6, Zonealarm for four different apps with for different widget sets, that all suck. (notice how the only apps I even run in windows are firwalls and anti-virus scanners :)
now add to that the absurdity of the dialog layouts and you have a mess. Invariably when someone wants to "tweak" some feature it involves finding a control panel icon, then clicking on at least one tab, then diggin through a scrollable list with checkboxes and radio buttons intermixed, or perhaps an "Advanced" button and a second or third dialog each with six tabs, it goes on and on. (don't even get me started on the registry editor if god forbid you have to fix/change something in there.
I am absolutely dumbfounded that people call windows "usable" when it has these major faults that make it confusing and annoying at every turn.
here is a little example a coworker wanted to re-associate PDF files with acrobat today, so I had to:
1) open a folder
2) click "view"
3) click "Folder Options"
4) click the "File types" tab
5) search through a list, only to NOT find an entry for PDF files
6) remember that you can Shift-RightClick a file and choose what to open it with.
7) close all those windows and find a PDF file, then shift-click it and choose acrobat, and check the "alays use this program..." box.
8) click OK, then close acrobat.
I just did it on my machine to see what it would take:
1) Click "Applications" AKA "the foot menu"
2) select "Desktop Prefs->Advanced->Filetypes"
3) Select from a simple list "Documents"
4) under docuements I choose "published materials"
5) BINGO next I see "PDF document" and select that
6) Click edit.
All my choices for PDF files are available right there. And I have never edited a file association in GNOME before, yet after doing it many times in windows I still had to try two different methods.
"Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)"
Joke Joke, n. L. jocus. Cf Jeopardy, Jocular, Juggler.
1. Something said for the sake of exciting a laugh; something
witty or sportive (commonly indicating more of hilarity or
humor than jest); a jest; a witticism; as, to crack
good-natured jokes.
Man all this about the "big" party candidates buygin elections, and being afraid to take a stand on real issues. and then she drops the "both" bomb on the vi/emacs question....
I swear talk about not taking a stand on important issues, whatthe hell kind of a geek is she if she can't choose vi or emacs and has to use both. I think it was a little too much of a token "bone" to pick GNU Emacs over XEmacs, especially after skirting the real issue.
Its like she said "I am both for and against the death penalty, but I am against wrongful convictions"
Our generator worked fine (we were powerless till about 5am friday) and a dedicated line to Motient stayed up the entire time. But our UUNET T1 was down until about 6pm friday. and the entire time it was impossible to even get a Worldcom person on the phone to find out if they even had an idea as to when they would get thier act together. so basically I give Motient an A+ (well they were outside the blacked out area but I still got updated on thier network status inside the area) and I give Worldcom a big fat F.
is that new? I have purchased region two dvds from them in the past. Havent in in many months though...
I know I switched a machine over to gentoo. Within two months I am back to debian and could not be happier. Gentoo is all hype. I have a machine that has run debian since 1996, and I have NEVER had an apt-get update; apt-get upgrade fail. NOT ONCE. Gentoo was a major pain in the ass, compile for an hour only to find out that the app doesn't work, then google, then find out that one other person somewhere says the app can't compile with "-Os" or some other optimization your using, rince change repeat. in two months I had three times where an emerge failed for no reason whatsoever that I could find, all I know is it would invariably be 90% complete with a 3 hour compile when it failed, oh and would work fine when tried a second or third time with no changes.
The only apt-get related failures I've come accross were because I purposely did things apt said not to (ie - install packages without dependancies etc) not to mention the Freeness of Debian, it is reassuring having the license conditions for every package available in the same locations. Not to mention knowning that if I run Debian main they take care of all the legal crap for me, I know that all my software meets stringent requirements and has had the license scrutinized but at least a few Debian devels. And when I 'need' some non-free I have vrms to keep me in check.
I also like the fact that not all Debian devels are free software zealots, its good to have disagreement, but its also good that all of them want the best Froo OS there is.
You get arguments like this all over the net. Although I read this thread and save for a couple of jokes it was not anything otehr than a brief patch discussion with no arguing or flaming.
:)
But this really bothers me, I am american so I naturally leave off the u, but it doesn't matter to me when people add a "u" or reverse an "er" or switch a "z" and an "s" or say lorry.
Why do so many americans act like some foriegner is destroying their language whenever this happens? And why do so many British English speakers smuggly act like their spelling or phrasing is clearly more intelligent, refined or whatever? Do you all act the same way to non-english words? you have to assume that spelling will either homogenize, or that multiple spellings will become universally accepted, with the internet bringing all these english speakers together and whatnot. I recently heard a piece on the radio about South Africa which made the claim that it was becoming much more common for youths to intermix various words from the various languages in the country, because since the end of apartheid people are being brought together much more.
Of course recently I've been listening to the BBC World Service at night and it did take a few days to get used to the reporters fondness for the word "row" as in "argument" which I had never heard before, not to mention a use of the term "washing-up liquid" that I found quite humorous
I'd love to be able to mount my home directory on a pen drive, that way I automatically have everything I need, and can login to the same setup on the various Debian boxes I use.
Probably not really a feasable use, (version differences in any apps would cause config file hell) but a nice thought.