The folks writing Banshee released it with a Free license of their own free will. As long as Mint or Canonical or whoever complies with the terms of the license, what difference does it make? It's not like the little commission was part of the license agreement. If Mint wants to repackage Banshee as "The Banshee Sucks" media player and send all income from it to support Alfred E. Newman for president, it's their business.
I think you're working with a limited sample to base that assumption. For those of us living in very rural areas, this is not a good thing. I have no options that allow me to stream movie length video without incurring costs that are way out of line. I could purchase DVDs for less than streaming a dozen movies a month would cost me in data fees. On top of that, the Netfix streaming catalog is anemic when compared with their DVD options.
I sign up for netflix only during the winter months. During the warmer months I'm too busy with other outside activities to bother watching many movies. When I signed back up this fall, it was very obvious that they don't really care about renting DVDs any more. The DVD plans are basically hidden until you sign up for streaming and then change your plan. I had to call their 800 number to find this out. Many people would look at their signup process and conclude that the DVD-only plans along with the 2 or 3 at a time options are no longer available. After a while of discouraging DVD rentals they'll come back with some statistics that show how few people are on the plans and discontinue it. I'll enjoy it while it lasts.
As an American, I'm impressed with your keen understanding that he speaks for all 310,000,000 of us.
As an American, I'd say he comes pretty close to the sentiment of a significant portion of our population. He did forget to include some liberal bashing and failed to toss around the word "socialism" but otherwise I think he got the general tone right.
... and forcing them cheap 99cent pricing and other things.
Maybe it's just me but 99c for streaming 4mb of bits to my local computer seems a bit excessive. I understand that the artist needs to be compensated and there are production costs, but the effective unit cost for a download heads towards zero pretty quickly for any music that is even moderately successful. A downloaded lossy compressed copy of an album should cost, at most, around $5. Of course, the bloated pigs that run the RIAA member corporations would rather run the industry into the ground rather than recognize that the real value of their product has declined from the heyday of the CD in the early 90s.
I've been Windows free for over a decade but I can certainly understand why people have a difficult time leaving the platform. I'm a Linux admin at work and only use windows in a VM for a few, very specific applications. I probably fire up the VM once a week for about an hour. At home I've run Linux and Mac computers. There are quite a few very nice applications that only run on Windows. As much as I wish it were otherwise, there's no down side to sticking with Windows for the applications themselves. There are very, very few programs on other platforms that do not have an equal or better option on Windows.
I'm not a Mac fan and could easily get away with going 100% Linux if I wanted to - I've been using Linux since 1995. I just don't need the hassle of solving stupid little "issues" with the various apps on Linux; issues that shouldn't exist in the first place. I get enough of that at work. Windows itself actually sucks pretty hard as an OS but it is "good enough" for most people's purposes.
Just like in the real world, security is a very convenient excuse for trampling over people's freedoms. While I don't doubt that eventually there will be some technical ways to circumvent this, it will be yet another barrier for "normal" people to try Linux. How many people would bother if you can't even boot a Linux live CD without having to flip a setting in the BIOS which will likely have some very scary security warnings about not doing so?
Then you have to think, if I work 8 hours and complete 32 hours of work, will they pay me 4 times as much? The answer is no.
Not only is the answer no, what you'll get is an expectation that you will produce 32 hours of work for the same money and if your output drops to a mere 16 hours of work it will be viewed as slacking off. From the employer's perspective, why would you decrease your profits by needlessly rewarding an employee who is already doing more work for less money. Yes, there are employers who really do care about rewarding their employees but they are the exception.
...like many, registered far too late to get a cool, low UID...
What constitutes a cool, low UID? I've never felt like one of the cool ones. I hung around for several weeks before registering to comment. I might have gotten a 4-digit UID if I had been a little quicker.
"The internet has changed dramatically since I started here, and that's part of my reason for leaving..."
I hope that doesn't mean that we're going to see some radical change in direction here. That reads like the money holders want to take the site in a direction that CmdrTaco isn't interested in. Hopefully I'm just being pessimistic.
I've been on since the late 90's myself and I've really enjoyed this site over the years in spite of the spelling and grammar issues. I hope it continues on even without Mr. Malda's influence.
Now watch as the low UIDs to take over the discussion on this post.
If someone was pirating music I would expect that they'd go for some lossless format such as flac rather than garbage mp3s so I don't see where this would be that enticing from that perspective. I'm probably pretty strange since I have a music collection of about 1300 albums and none of which were pirated. I'm interested in this service purely as a backup. $25/year for reasonable quality backups for my 130GB collection is not a bad deal.
I'm not sure what benefit we'd see from this. Unless they want to tie metadata in the file system with the user interface (like OS/2 had with HPFS extended attributes) I don't see what would be gained. Maybe I'm being short sighted.
Either that, or it is another move by the Gnome folks to remove features. Being multi-platform was a feature. We also know that too many features confuse the user. Therefore removing this feature helps reduce confusion. Personally, I'm waiting for Gnome to reduce itself to a short, generic series of animations that requires none of this confusing and stressful interaction on the part of the user.
So if it works for Macs, we need a similar study done on Emacs users.
Any true Emacs user knows that Emacs is operated at the subconscious levels of the brain. Brain imaging of the frontal lobes won't show this activity. The key strokes occur in the brain stem or as reflexes in the spinal cord. When I'm programming in Emacs, I remain unaware of what my fingers are doing. In fact, it's more like an out of body experience. I just simply will the code to be and it appears on the screen.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess they'll have to go back to using grad students.
You mean he's not the Republican front-runner??
The folks writing Banshee released it with a Free license of their own free will. As long as Mint or Canonical or whoever complies with the terms of the license, what difference does it make? It's not like the little commission was part of the license agreement. If Mint wants to repackage Banshee as "The Banshee Sucks" media player and send all income from it to support Alfred E. Newman for president, it's their business.
I think you're working with a limited sample to base that assumption. For those of us living in very rural areas, this is not a good thing. I have no options that allow me to stream movie length video without incurring costs that are way out of line. I could purchase DVDs for less than streaming a dozen movies a month would cost me in data fees. On top of that, the Netfix streaming catalog is anemic when compared with their DVD options.
I sign up for netflix only during the winter months. During the warmer months I'm too busy with other outside activities to bother watching many movies. When I signed back up this fall, it was very obvious that they don't really care about renting DVDs any more. The DVD plans are basically hidden until you sign up for streaming and then change your plan. I had to call their 800 number to find this out. Many people would look at their signup process and conclude that the DVD-only plans along with the 2 or 3 at a time options are no longer available. After a while of discouraging DVD rentals they'll come back with some statistics that show how few people are on the plans and discontinue it. I'll enjoy it while it lasts.
As an American, I'm impressed with your keen understanding that he speaks for all 310,000,000 of us.
As an American, I'd say he comes pretty close to the sentiment of a significant portion of our population. He did forget to include some liberal bashing and failed to toss around the word "socialism" but otherwise I think he got the general tone right.
... and forcing them cheap 99cent pricing and other things.
Maybe it's just me but 99c for streaming 4mb of bits to my local computer seems a bit excessive. I understand that the artist needs to be compensated and there are production costs, but the effective unit cost for a download heads towards zero pretty quickly for any music that is even moderately successful. A downloaded lossy compressed copy of an album should cost, at most, around $5. Of course, the bloated pigs that run the RIAA member corporations would rather run the industry into the ground rather than recognize that the real value of their product has declined from the heyday of the CD in the early 90s.
I guess the editors really have dropped all pretense and have given up on the English language.
I've been Windows free for over a decade but I can certainly understand why people have a difficult time leaving the platform. I'm a Linux admin at work and only use windows in a VM for a few, very specific applications. I probably fire up the VM once a week for about an hour. At home I've run Linux and Mac computers. There are quite a few very nice applications that only run on Windows. As much as I wish it were otherwise, there's no down side to sticking with Windows for the applications themselves. There are very, very few programs on other platforms that do not have an equal or better option on Windows.
I'm not a Mac fan and could easily get away with going 100% Linux if I wanted to - I've been using Linux since 1995. I just don't need the hassle of solving stupid little "issues" with the various apps on Linux; issues that shouldn't exist in the first place. I get enough of that at work. Windows itself actually sucks pretty hard as an OS but it is "good enough" for most people's purposes.
Just like in the real world, security is a very convenient excuse for trampling over people's freedoms. While I don't doubt that eventually there will be some technical ways to circumvent this, it will be yet another barrier for "normal" people to try Linux. How many people would bother if you can't even boot a Linux live CD without having to flip a setting in the BIOS which will likely have some very scary security warnings about not doing so?
Then you have to think, if I work 8 hours and complete 32 hours of work, will they pay me 4 times as much? The answer is no.
Not only is the answer no, what you'll get is an expectation that you will produce 32 hours of work for the same money and if your output drops to a mere 16 hours of work it will be viewed as slacking off. From the employer's perspective, why would you decrease your profits by needlessly rewarding an employee who is already doing more work for less money. Yes, there are employers who really do care about rewarding their employees but they are the exception.
I thought it was an excellent post.
I've been on since the late 90's myself and I've really enjoyed this site over the years in spite of the spelling and grammar issues.
...like the people who write " 90's " instead of " '90s "?
http://www.apostrophe.org.uk/
Sorry, I had to.
If only we had more people (and editors) that could catch that kind of thing. We all do better when held to a higher standard. Thank you!
Now where'd I put those hot grits...
Did you pour them down your pants?
...like many, registered far too late to get a cool, low UID...
What constitutes a cool, low UID? I've never felt like one of the cool ones. I hung around for several weeks before registering to comment. I might have gotten a 4-digit UID if I had been a little quicker.
It was brave of you to suffer through the spelling and grammar issues.
I still struggle with it. It is the artistic content that makes it worthwhile.
The first part was from Craig McPherson, but who originated "hot grits"?
Probably the same guy that started all those goatse links.
Can we please bring back "Troll Tuesdays"?
"The internet has changed dramatically since I started here, and that's part of my reason for leaving..."
I hope that doesn't mean that we're going to see some radical change in direction here. That reads like the money holders want to take the site in a direction that CmdrTaco isn't interested in. Hopefully I'm just being pessimistic.
I've been on since the late 90's myself and I've really enjoyed this site over the years in spite of the spelling and grammar issues. I hope it continues on even without Mr. Malda's influence.
Now watch as the low UIDs to take over the discussion on this post.
Evidence of our slow but inevitable descent towards Idiocracy.
That's not funny!
That's far more criminal than sharing links to TV shows.
yes, off-site.
If someone was pirating music I would expect that they'd go for some lossless format such as flac rather than garbage mp3s so I don't see where this would be that enticing from that perspective. I'm probably pretty strange since I have a music collection of about 1300 albums and none of which were pirated. I'm interested in this service purely as a backup. $25/year for reasonable quality backups for my 130GB collection is not a bad deal.
I'm not sure what benefit we'd see from this. Unless they want to tie metadata in the file system with the user interface (like OS/2 had with HPFS extended attributes) I don't see what would be gained. Maybe I'm being short sighted.
Either that, or it is another move by the Gnome folks to remove features. Being multi-platform was a feature. We also know that too many features confuse the user. Therefore removing this feature helps reduce confusion. Personally, I'm waiting for Gnome to reduce itself to a short, generic series of animations that requires none of this confusing and stressful interaction on the part of the user.
So if it works for Macs, we need a similar study done on Emacs users.
Any true Emacs user knows that Emacs is operated at the subconscious levels of the brain. Brain imaging of the frontal lobes won't show this activity. The key strokes occur in the brain stem or as reflexes in the spinal cord. When I'm programming in Emacs, I remain unaware of what my fingers are doing. In fact, it's more like an out of body experience. I just simply will the code to be and it appears on the screen.
This article sounds like it was written by some heathen.