I know I would hate to have to pay for an OS, and then buy a browser,
I prefer Opera to MSIE.
media player,
I prefer RealOne to WMP.
email client,
I prefer Eudora Pro to Outlook Express.
video editor,
I prefer Final Cut to Windows Movie Maker.
messenger.
I prefer AOL Instant Messanger to Windows Messenger.
The reason why few people have a problem with the bundling of an extraordinary array of apps in a Linux distro is because it's still up to the user to decide which app to use -- Emacs and vi and XEmacs and vim are all there. (In fact, the complaint is often that there are TOO MANY choices).
Microsoft's pre-installed applications are a strongarm attempt to make that choice for you.
I had thought that EULA's were deemed illegal, but companies still used them because consumers didn't know any better.
My understanding (and I welcome any citations that prove me wrong) is that there has never been a court case where End User License Agreements were declared to fundamentally violate any law -- there may have been cases where certain EULAs or certain clauses of certain EULAs have been thrown out by the court, and legal pundits may have declared that EULAs are unenforceable and meaningless, but none of that is enough to establish a legal precedent nullifying EULAs entirely.
It is free as in "this software code has been freed from any restrictions, to the point that no man or woman may hide it or stop it from living its life to the fullest".
Don't anthropomorphize code. It hates when you do that.
Maybe bullshit, maybe not. A good OCR library will get you 90% of the way there already.
They can't distort the characters TOO much in the image, or else humans wouldn't be able to recognize them either. And the background patterns to cause interference with OCR sytems could be pretty easy to strip out too; a grid of straight black lines on a white background is fairly trivial to recognize algorithmically, and then removing the lines becomes a simple matter of figuring out where a black pixel is just part of a line, and where it's part of a character.
Whether it's worth all that effort just to be able to automate the submission of a form is debatable.
I think the problem is that people need to move away from Microsoft web deveopment tools until they can learn to play nice and output standards-compliant HTML code. Ever try using the "save as HTML" feature in a Microsoft product? A 100-row table becomes a 2MB plaintext file by the time it makes it to the web...
While MS Office's "save as HTML" feature does not create compact or attractive code, it does not diverge from any HTML or CSS standards that I'm aware of. It just adds MORE tags and attributes to the standards, things for precise formatting control that aren't possible through simple HTML code and that the user agent is expected to ignore if it doesn't understand them.
"Clean" code and "Standards-compliant" code are not the same thing...
Using different stylesheets for different browsers is part of the CSS standard.
In fact, CSS was designed to work with clients that aren't even browsers at all -- like text-to-speech converters, Postscript printers, Braille terminals etc.
All output devices are NOT identical, and CANNOT ever be reasonably expected to be.
Explain why there would be any reason at all to force every child entity 30 pixels to the left of its parent.
Umm, because some browsers indent list child elements about 30px to the right by default, and the desired appearance is to have them be aligned vertically with the parent?
(Note that the Register article did not say EVERY child entity is rendered -30px to parent. Only list items.)
I agree that the stylesheet is badly coded, but not convinced that it was done so intentionally.
Once again, someone tries to use "Ask Slashot" as a substitute for advice from an actual professional in the field of employment law...
First off, throw the "you don't want to work for a company that would treat its employees like that" comments out. The company doesn't want your credit report so they can spy on you and ruin your personal life. They want it because they believe it will be a legitimate tool for gauging your fitness for the position. You disagree. In the scheme of things, this is minor. Neither side is Evil.
I would guess that the company would like you to work for them, because (smart) companies don't hand out offers for Director-level positions willy-nilly. You've made it this far; it's likely that they'd be willing to concede at least partly if you press them to. Their chief argument for requiring you to abide by this policy is "everyone else has to". Doesn't sound to me like they're as firm on this point as they seem to be.
The company certainly has a lawyer, and that lawyer certainly was involved in the drafting of the policy requesting credit checks, and most likely consulted as soon as you indicated a reluctance to agree to that clause. If you don't have a lawyer of your own to help argue your side of the dispute, then you're at a disadvantage.
you make a DIGITAL copy, it costs software co. nothing. and many of the "pirates" wouldn't have bought the software.
If the "pirates" wouldn't have bought the software, then they don't need it. If they do need it and don't pay for it, then it's costing the software publisher money. Your argument is bullshit.
Remember, we're not talking about 16-year-old kids l33ching a copy of Photoshop because they don't have a couple hundred bucks to go out and buy it. These are businesses.
"piracy" reduced the market share of the other two [office suites] to nil
If by "piracy" you mean "Microsoft's strategy of offering OEMs massive discounts if they pre-installed Office on their PCs along with Window", then you're right. But I don't think that's what you mean.
Bottom line: if you don't want to pay for commercial software, either don't use it, or find or make a free alternative and use that. There is no valid legal or moral justification for taking advantage of the fruits of someone's labors but not giving them appropriate compensation.
This is all offtopic though; the subject at hand is the BSA's behavior of investigating alleged software piracy, not the issue of piracy itself.
CDRs are not re-writable, but they can be multi-session. You can burn 400 or more floppy-sized files to a single CDR. So except where you have specific needs for how files are organized on the disc's filesystem, rewritability is not a significant concern when evaluating CD burning solutions against floppies.
Both CDRs and CDRWs are in fact MORE reliable than floppys. Floppy discs have mechanical components that can fail in addition to the media itself. In some conditions the magnetic substrate of floppy disks may be less reliable than the chemical substrate of CDR(W)'s, also.
I hope the prices of Dell PCs will go down by $5 to reflect the manufacturing savings...
Seriously--I can buy an OEM floppy drive and cable for under ten dollars. One can only guess how much cheaper a company like Dell can get them by buying a pallet of them at a time. What's the harm in keeping the floppy drive around?
A computer is a complicated piece of machinery, not unlike your VCR (which may or may not be blinking 12:00 at the moment).
And my grandmother can learn how to work a VCR very easily. Why should a computer be any different?
Or are you suggesting that a license should be required to operate a VCR, as with cars?
Witness the Windows catastrophe.
What Windows catastrophe?
This is not Star Trek, you can't just assume that the Computer "knows" what you want it to do.
Not yet, you can't. But someday it may be possible. Why NOT strive for that goal?
Is there a place for appliance-type systems for word processing, email, games? Yes. There are dedicated machines for this.
Odd that you mention dedicated word processing machines, as general-purpose computers all but replaced those little Brother word processing devices ten years ago.
And dedicated email machines are selling sluggishly, except when geeks figure out how to hack them to run Linux.
The appliance model for consumer electronics is waning. The all-purpose tool is coming into vogue.
Slashdot Mirror
I know I would hate to have to pay for an OS, and then buy a browser,
I prefer Opera to MSIE.
media player,
I prefer RealOne to WMP.
email client,
I prefer Eudora Pro to Outlook Express.
video editor,
I prefer Final Cut to Windows Movie Maker.
messenger.
I prefer AOL Instant Messanger to Windows Messenger.
The reason why few people have a problem with the bundling of an extraordinary array of apps in a Linux distro is because it's still up to the user to decide which app to use -- Emacs and vi and XEmacs and vim are all there. (In fact, the complaint is often that there are TOO MANY choices).
Microsoft's pre-installed applications are a strongarm attempt to make that choice for you.
you cant keep pulling the same company for antitrust violations..
Sure you can, if they keep committing alleged antitrust violations...
wasnt Microsoft supposed to be split up? what ever happened there?
No. Judge Jackson's remedies were thrown out because his actions outside of the courtroom gave the appearance of possible non-impartialness.
Because god knows the UN has proven to be a wise organization, capable of managing almost all the worlds affairs. Preserving peace, etc.
Hmm... how many World Wars were there before the United Nations? Two?
And how many have there been since? None... (yet)
This kind of goes hand-in-hand with the fact that computers don't make mistakes, humans do.
This is not true. Hardware fails sometimes, through no fault of humans.
I had thought that EULA's were deemed illegal, but companies still used them because consumers didn't know any better.
My understanding (and I welcome any citations that prove me wrong) is that there has never been a court case where End User License Agreements were declared to fundamentally violate any law -- there may have been cases where certain EULAs or certain clauses of certain EULAs have been thrown out by the court, and legal pundits may have declared that EULAs are unenforceable and meaningless, but none of that is enough to establish a legal precedent nullifying EULAs entirely.
I live strictly by GREEN CASH ALONE and have nothing at all to do with any financial institute in any form.
This only works if you're poor...
I'm not sure what the hell qualifies this guy to be able to do much of anything in Linux
It should Just Work.
It should Just Work.
I'm going to keep repeating this until you elitist, 3L33Te5t, smug Linux coding wizards "get it" and start caring about user friendliness.
It should Just Work.
It is free as in "this software code has been freed from any restrictions, to the point that no man or woman may hide it or stop it from living its life to the fullest".
Don't anthropomorphize code. It hates when you do that.
Maybe bullshit, maybe not. A good OCR library will get you 90% of the way there already.
They can't distort the characters TOO much in the image, or else humans wouldn't be able to recognize them either. And the background patterns to cause interference with OCR sytems could be pretty easy to strip out too; a grid of straight black lines on a white background is fairly trivial to recognize algorithmically, and then removing the lines becomes a simple matter of figuring out where a black pixel is just part of a line, and where it's part of a character.
Whether it's worth all that effort just to be able to automate the submission of a form is debatable.
But using it just out of sheer desire to propogate the status quo?
You talk about 'status quo' as if it's a bad thing.
Re-inventing the wheel is a waste of time when the Wheel Store is just down the block.
You sir represent everything that is wrong with this world.
Hello there, Ignatius J. Reilly. How's your pyloric valve treating you?
As Dr. Evil once said: put that in your pipe and smoke it. Yeah, I said pipe.
Okay!
$ echo "Dennis Ritchie uses NT" | smoke
What did you think "OS" stood for???
"Operating system"? Pshaw.
Why'd you move the send button, though? It was fine where it was.
I think the problem is that people need to move away from Microsoft web deveopment tools until they can learn to play nice and output standards-compliant HTML code. Ever try using the "save as HTML" feature in a Microsoft product? A 100-row table becomes a 2MB plaintext file by the time it makes it to the web...
While MS Office's "save as HTML" feature does not create compact or attractive code, it does not diverge from any HTML or CSS standards that I'm aware of. It just adds MORE tags and attributes to the standards, things for precise formatting control that aren't possible through simple HTML code and that the user agent is expected to ignore if it doesn't understand them.
"Clean" code and "Standards-compliant" code are not the same thing...
Sheeesh. Write to the standards, not browsers.
Using different stylesheets for different browsers is part of the CSS standard.
In fact, CSS was designed to work with clients that aren't even browsers at all -- like text-to-speech converters, Postscript printers, Braille terminals etc.
All output devices are NOT identical, and CANNOT ever be reasonably expected to be.
Explain why there would be any reason at all to force every child entity 30 pixels to the left of its parent.
Umm, because some browsers indent list child elements about 30px to the right by default, and the desired appearance is to have them be aligned vertically with the parent?
(Note that the Register article did not say EVERY child entity is rendered -30px to parent. Only list items.)
I agree that the stylesheet is badly coded, but not convinced that it was done so intentionally.
Once again, someone tries to use "Ask Slashot" as a substitute for advice from an actual professional in the field of employment law...
First off, throw the "you don't want to work for a company that would treat its employees like that" comments out. The company doesn't want your credit report so they can spy on you and ruin your personal life. They want it because they believe it will be a legitimate tool for gauging your fitness for the position. You disagree. In the scheme of things, this is minor. Neither side is Evil.
I would guess that the company would like you to work for them, because (smart) companies don't hand out offers for Director-level positions willy-nilly. You've made it this far; it's likely that they'd be willing to concede at least partly if you press them to. Their chief argument for requiring you to abide by this policy is "everyone else has to". Doesn't sound to me like they're as firm on this point as they seem to be.
The company certainly has a lawyer, and that lawyer certainly was involved in the drafting of the policy requesting credit checks, and most likely consulted as soon as you indicated a reluctance to agree to that clause. If you don't have a lawyer of your own to help argue your side of the dispute, then you're at a disadvantage.
If you don't remember, the PREMIERE issue of Entertainment Weekly, a dozen or so years ago, had a cover story on the making of the Simpsons.
I guess the show must have lost its relevance when it stopped being shorts on the Tracey Ullman show, then.
you make a DIGITAL copy, it costs software co. nothing. and many of the "pirates" wouldn't have bought the software.
If the "pirates" wouldn't have bought the software, then they don't need it. If they do need it and don't pay for it, then it's costing the software publisher money. Your argument is bullshit.
Remember, we're not talking about 16-year-old kids l33ching a copy of Photoshop because they don't have a couple hundred bucks to go out and buy it. These are businesses.
"piracy" reduced the market share of the other two [office suites] to nil
If by "piracy" you mean "Microsoft's strategy of offering OEMs massive discounts if they pre-installed Office on their PCs along with Window", then you're right. But I don't think that's what you mean.
Bottom line: if you don't want to pay for commercial software, either don't use it, or find or make a free alternative and use that. There is no valid legal or moral justification for taking advantage of the fruits of someone's labors but not giving them appropriate compensation.
This is all offtopic though; the subject at hand is the BSA's behavior of investigating alleged software piracy, not the issue of piracy itself.
It's also a flashlight, keyring, and garden hose!
In fact, it's EVERYTHING EXCEPT a Game Boy Advance. So why did the headline say 'GBA'?
CDRs are not re-writable, but they can be multi-session. You can burn 400 or more floppy-sized files to a single CDR. So except where you have specific needs for how files are organized on the disc's filesystem, rewritability is not a significant concern when evaluating CD burning solutions against floppies.
Both CDRs and CDRWs are in fact MORE reliable than floppys. Floppy discs have mechanical components that can fail in addition to the media itself. In some conditions the magnetic substrate of floppy disks may be less reliable than the chemical substrate of CDR(W)'s, also.
If this goes down, the Business Software Alliance will have to change their catch-phrase!
I have to admit, "Don't Copy That USB Keychain Flash Media Device" doesn't have the same ring as "Don't Copy That Floppy"...
I hope the prices of Dell PCs will go down by $5 to reflect the manufacturing savings...
Seriously--I can buy an OEM floppy drive and cable for under ten dollars. One can only guess how much cheaper a company like Dell can get them by buying a pallet of them at a time. What's the harm in keeping the floppy drive around?
Incidentally, Windows XP Home's undiscounted price is $99 as well.
Nope.
Win XP Home is $199. You can only get the Upgrade version for $99.
A computer is a complicated piece of machinery, not unlike your VCR (which may or may not be blinking 12:00 at the moment).
And my grandmother can learn how to work a VCR very easily. Why should a computer be any different?
Or are you suggesting that a license should be required to operate a VCR, as with cars?
Witness the Windows catastrophe.
What Windows catastrophe?
This is not Star Trek, you can't just assume that the Computer "knows" what you want it to do.
Not yet, you can't. But someday it may be possible. Why NOT strive for that goal?
Is there a place for appliance-type systems for word processing, email, games? Yes. There are dedicated machines for this.
Odd that you mention dedicated word processing machines, as general-purpose computers all but replaced those little Brother word processing devices ten years ago.
And dedicated email machines are selling sluggishly, except when geeks figure out how to hack them to run Linux.
The appliance model for consumer electronics is waning. The all-purpose tool is coming into vogue.