would be complete overkill and is $36 for a single one. I imagine you could get if for about half if you ordered a few million?
1gb of integrated ram has GOT to be cheap at this point. If we made a few million, there's no QUESTION you could do this phone for less than $50. Hell, throw in the USB docking station complete with HDMI out and usb mouse/keyboard, and you could still come in way under $100. People can buy any monitor or projector they want separately, or offer them a package deal for $200. This would replace every computer and cell phone on the market, and replace windows and macs and linux for 90% of all consumer uses, and probably a huge percentage of business pcs and cell phones as well.
The realm of the possible has been FUDed by corporations. Seriously, do the math, this phone is possible, I don't know how anyone could be so mentally limited as to moderate me "Funny"./. just proves that technological intellectualism doesn't preclude the sheep mentality of most primates.
*sigh*. People make me sad. Kennedy was murdered by our government. Science > Religion. Steel buildings don't just fall down because of some jet fuel. The "accepted" facts of today are OFTEN the laughable misconceptions of yesterday (frequently after less than a decade!). Ask for the facts and think for yourself. The invisible men in the sky probably don't exist, and if they did, they certainly wouldn't have written all that horse shit that you and our politicians seem to want to base their lives on. I mean seriously, "chosen people"?!?! What kind of racist ignorance is that? I continually expect/. to corroborate human knowledge and reality rather than the typical group think and media FUDD that I can get on Fox "News", and am routinely disappointed. Even the nerds are fucking idiots who can't think for themselves, apparently.
Because there is plenty of room to make a cell phone that does what I want in the market, and for cheap, and yet nobody has done it.
MyDreamPhone:
x86 low power chip. 1gb ram USB charging and connectivity to mouse/keyboard/monitor/speakers through charger/docking station. touchscreen covering whole phone. 1280x1024 camera (with decent color!) geforce to go implementation 5.1 sound when plugged to charger standard headphone jack (switching to stereo headphone mix automagically when headphones plugged in) decent basic joystick (via touch screen?) Firefox Zsnes Project64 FOSS Video chat with speex/H.264 FOSS winamp clone for mp3/ogg/wav/speex beryl when plugged to charger (when in "computer" mode) wine (when in "computer" mode) FOSS mp3/ogg/wav recorder (for voice notes, concert bootlegs). 1-4 gb sdram, upgradeable via cheap sd chip NO DRM easy windows/linux/mac file sharing through wifi Simple Loud Alarm(s) Simple photo album, divx/xvid, online sync Simple VNC with address book/ip lookup (assignable to "full screen" when in "computer mode" and added as an additional desktop that beryl can spin to) Thunderbird MSN/AIM/yahoo/skype/googletalk/myspaceim (maybe via extended gaimlib) Urban Terror (when usb mouse available) gimp with CMYK support (when in "computer" mode) decent OCR via camera, and simple text file creation app instant on OS instant off OS long lasting lithium/ion battery that recharges quickly through the USB port Infrared/bluetooth Multitrack wav/mp3 recording via USB mixer attachment (with phantom power) Basic 640x480 xvid/h.264 recording video camera and easy YouTube upload GCC and other programming tools (when in "computer" mode) Basic SMS/GSM/standard cell phone features (address book with personalized icons/ (mp3/ogg) ringtones.) $50
The sad thing is, 90% of this software exists NOW in the FOSS community. The final 10% would probably be a reasonably cheap programmer hire, maybe a year of dev time. This hardware is dirt cheap with economies of scale, so a $50 price tag IS possible. Then a serious kick ass FOSS standard would exist by which all phones and computers would have to interact with which could beat MS, Mac, Motorola, Sony, and Nokia to market.
This is a project that would make billions, and cost maybe a million initially. But since there is no free market on the planet, it's not going to happen. Some corporation would whack you if you made and started selling this phone. Like DeLorean in the 80's, or Tucker in the 30's.
Too bad, too, because with this phone, a lot of people would get a lot of great things done quickly. Including me.
I did not read the article, but here's my two cents:
Ubuntu is trying to be a Windows killer. And it could be. Wine is "good enough" with the right settings for 90% of what most people want to do coming from a Windows world. Drivers exist. No, they're not FOSS, and I understand why people want FOSS ones, but....
Why doesn't Ubuntu seal the deal?
With beryl, good drivers, and built in FOSS apps that beat MS at every turn (Firefox > IE, Beryl > Aero, Thunderbird > Outlook, and VLC > WMP), it seems like the win would be fast and clear. Nobody wants Vista, especially when you have to pay. Ubuntu comes preconfigured in a way that is over all superior to every Windows that has ever existed. It's more solid and reliable, it has four desktops (though they moronically all have the same wallpaper by default, and it happens to be shit brown), it has a very nice user interface (though *i* and many others feel it could take some design cues from Windows 98 with regards to menu structure and some other minor details), and it's free. Oh yeah, and it's open source, so anybody who doesn't like part of it can fix it themselves.
But nobody has. It's like people take pride in allowing the world of uneducated masses sucking on the corporate tit of MS. I just don't understand it.
Feisty could win the OS wars decisively, but given the over all FOSS community attitude towards ordinary people....
No seriously, why try to get Linux installed? If you're a FOSS fan, start at the beginning: Open Office, Gimp, GAIM, Firefox, Thunderbird, Shareaza, Zsnes.....
Why not just preinstall all the FOSS apps that are really going to allow people to look at beryl/compiz and say, "Hey! That's bad ass, but can I still have the Gimp? Oh, I CAN?!?!!"
I can't think of ONE advantage to allowing Linux preinstalled (maybe desktop linux still isn't ready for primetime?), but I can think of literally hundreds of advantages to familiarizing people with Firefox, Thunderbird, and the other really outstanding FOSS apps that exist in both Linux AND Windows.
Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about an all FOSS world too (Linux obviously being a piece of that), but all the office, teaching, construction, mechanic, and other non techie types *I* know LOVE Firefox, but still find Linux scary, difficult to use, and incompatible with important programs, like "San Andreas". Frankly, at this point I agree with them.
FOSS WILL win, but it will take time, and FireFox, Open Office and the like are way ahead of promoting it over Linux at this point. Hell, if anything, most of the Linux distros I've seen and used go a long way to NOT promoting FOSS.
Well, at least for technology minded types (The common/. ilk, no?!?), not having a reasonably well thought out email program DOES indicate some difficulties in the tech department of a university, and hence, the average/. student MIGHT be better off at a university that has reasonable email.
Not just for the email, but for the other (very likely) problems that would arise based on the administrations fairly glaring technological ignorance.
I mean, imagine what kind of online classes are available at a school that is completely dependent on Windows Live Mail....
I just meant most meetings will be video conference-able in the near term, which is what most business really boils down to these days. Granted, people who do on site work, like insurance adjusters, real estate agents, probably many types of engineers, etc are still going to need to visit locations, until your virtual travel robot and virtual reality setup are far more advanced than just on paper today.
Any meeting involving people will be vid conference-able in the short term, sans sexual meetings, and we should all be mortified about what the MySpace generation is going to start doing on MSN (ekiga, wengo-phone, which ever one goes open source and includes speex and h.264 or whatever first...) very soon, if a lot of them aren't doing it already.....
I'm not saying it will replace all business travel, but I certainly can see it replacing a lot of it.
As Video conferencing becomes more of a reality, and higher quality, actually traveling to locations will be more and more considered prohibitively costly. The latest Windows Live Messenger offers damn good video to the average consumer with a decent 640x480 camera.... It's only a matter of time before the audio improves, and people set up projectors/cameras as virtual windows to other places in the world.
I've been messing around with this for weeks, and I'm just a n00b with a couple of webcams! Imagine when this becomes more prevalent.... 90% of business travel is going to be virtual within the decade.
I haven't been this excited since Al Gore was running as Vice pres after writing "The Earth in Balance". How'd that work out in the end? He did vote for the Kyoto protocol didn't he? Clean air act? I'm sorry, what?!??
Look, I want to be as excited as anybody that there is one political candidate talking actual sense (broadband, in particular, I really don't see the point of ethanol, methanol, or any other of the "methadone" alternatives to our oil addiction. We have solar and laptop batteries right? Remember the EV-1!?!?), but what are the chances that anyone in either major political party is actually going to do ANYTHING not totally in line with the corporate greed and corruption that rules our nation today?
Call me when we actually have elections again, or call me when you're handing out guns.
I dunno... So far MTA has been total crap, but SAMP has been a blast (though buggy as hell). I'll judge the new releases on their respective merits....:D
Well, when it comes to secretive specs on a hardware product that WON'T EVEN WORK without a driver, there is more at issue here than "Hey, drivers are free." My last Nvidia graphics card was $140, so I expect it to work as advertised, and that means it needs a good driver.
Of course I'd rather that driver be open source so I can optimize it myself, but not having ANY available driver, for the PRIMARY OS in use on the planet?
My biggest problem with Vista is the lack of OpenGL. That's just criminal, and about as anti-competitive as you can imagine.
The best way to advocate Linux to Windows people is to give them a faster, prettier drop-in replacement that works with 90% of the windows software AND LSB (Once it's around?) software that exists.
That doesn't exist yet, though, so:
Why not just advocate some OTHER FOSS app?
I recommend Firefox, but frequently impress common non-techie types with GIMP, Open Office, UltraVNC, VLC, Thunderbird, and even ClamWin.
It takes me about 20 seconds to describe the benefits of Open Source: 1. No EULA. 2. It's Free. 3. No stupid DRM, if you buy hardware, this software "just works". 4. Make copies for all your devices! 5. Open Standards. 6. Speed. 7. Stability. 8. To legally own Photoshop costs about $500.
Expand these out for a minute if you want!
Then give them one piece of software, and show them the most apparent immediate benefits:
I choose Firefox, and then show them adblock, the bookmarks toolbar, how to make those bookmarks just the little icon (Right click, Backspace, click OK), Discuss whether Torbutton is a good idea for them, Ctrl+MouseWheel for text scaling, and sometimes even clean their Bookmarks Toolbar up for them.
Everyone I know uses Firefox now.
Everyone.
Make a Linux/Wine hybrid like that, and slipstream the most reliable softwares directly into the distro, and I can get them all on that, too. Hell, you can even put a few bookmarks in the toolbar FOR them:/., Wikipedia, digg, IMDB, Stock Quotes, Mininova, LeperKhanz.com. Send me the link when you're done, thanks.
rhY
PS Can you give it a cool 3d interface like the new one in Vista? I love scrollwheeling through the open windows.
I mean, when record labels refuse to sign ANY kind of talent, for fear of sharing profits at some point, and continually serve up ABSOLUTE CRAP THAT NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD CONSIDER LISTENING TO, MUCH LESS PAYING FOR......
OF COURSE Tower stores are out of business. Maybe if they had had a few CDs worth buying, as opposed to 800 extra creed-clone bands, people would've kept buying cds.
I mean, besides the fact that the RIAA and other industry affiliates have been involved in criminal price fixing (convicted, not just accused!) for years, and that CDs have always cost too much (and still do!), do you REALLY want to buy another whiny awful CD put out by yet another insecure "punk" band, that got it's street cred by going down on a record exec and can't actually play more than the three shitty chords they've used in EVERY GOD AWFUL SONG ABOUT HIS ABUSIVE SLUTTY GF WHO IS ALL OF 18 in real life?
If Tower sold other real musicians, even terrible formulaic ones like Norah Jones and Coldplay, and weren't completely obsessed with whatever flavor of the WEAK that sony seems to want to put out, they'd STILL be in business, EVEN WITH OVER PRICED cds.
Bunch of fuckin' assholes. How DARE THEY accuse anyone of ANYTHING?!? I mean, these are the same people who basically sexually predated on Mariah Carey and Celine Dion as teenagers, gave 'em record deals, and then after a couple of gaffes kicked them to the curb in every way possible (well in the case of Mariah, anyway). These are sick fucks TO THE CORE. No wonder they think it's OK to take 11 year olds to court for downloading some shitty gangster rap that THEY ARE FOISTING ON A GENERATION WHO GETS NO REAL NEWS and can't figure out how INSECURE AND PATHETIC most of the CRAP they are listening to really is. I'm looking at you, Eminem, 50 cent, and pretty much all the latest rap.
These fuckers should all be in jail. Rootkits aside! It's their fault some teenager thought he was tough after listening to "lil thug" or something, got into car stereo jacking, and is now getting ass rammed by a partially retarded former meth addict in JAIL. Some little kid standing up to them in court?!? That's not even the BEGINNING of a reasonable amount of vigilantism. Anybody with even half a conscience oughta drive right over to Celine's husband's house and SHOOT HIM IN THE FUCKING FACE for hooking up with a teenager, even if she's now a multi-millionaire, and hideous middle aged woman, to boot. She was still just a child sex slave for a greasy dirty record producer who oughta be shot on sight.
It's so disgusting that we even debate the finer points of copyright infringement in these corporations defense. If we had a real media, all these corporations would've been shut down for anti-competitive monopolism decades ago. Anybody arguing in favor of these corporations is an absolute moron. Period.
Is there an easy to install, easy to use OS X clone that is actually Linux? I love the interface with the remote control that I saw on my friend's mac yesterday.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm talking about an iPhone killer. Everyone wants an iPhone, but iPhone will actually be worse as it is also not:
8 2E16820211309
8 2E16819112206
/. just proves that technological intellectualism doesn't preclude the sheep mentality of most primates.
/. to corroborate human knowledge and reality rather than the typical group think and media FUDD that I can get on Fox "News", and am routinely disappointed. Even the nerds are fucking idiots who can't think for themselves, apparently.
A. DRM free
B. A completely portable desktop computer
C. Cheap
As to all the haters and their skepticism regarding hardware prices:
Initially you could include a 1gb SD card REALLY CHEAP:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N
You wouldn't need much more than a standard low power Pentium III clone to do all that stuff, and this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N
would be complete overkill and is $36 for a single one. I imagine you could get if for about half if you ordered a few million?
1gb of integrated ram has GOT to be cheap at this point. If we made a few million, there's no QUESTION you could do this phone for less than $50. Hell, throw in the USB docking station complete with HDMI out and usb mouse/keyboard, and you could still come in way under $100. People can buy any monitor or projector they want separately, or offer them a package deal for $200. This would replace every computer and cell phone on the market, and replace windows and macs and linux for 90% of all consumer uses, and probably a huge percentage of business pcs and cell phones as well.
The realm of the possible has been FUDed by corporations. Seriously, do the math, this phone is possible, I don't know how anyone could be so mentally limited as to moderate me "Funny".
*sigh*. People make me sad. Kennedy was murdered by our government. Science > Religion. Steel buildings don't just fall down because of some jet fuel. The "accepted" facts of today are OFTEN the laughable misconceptions of yesterday (frequently after less than a decade!). Ask for the facts and think for yourself. The invisible men in the sky probably don't exist, and if they did, they certainly wouldn't have written all that horse shit that you and our politicians seem to want to base their lives on. I mean seriously, "chosen people"?!?! What kind of racist ignorance is that? I continually expect
rhY
Because there is plenty of room to make a cell phone that does what I want in the market, and for cheap, and yet nobody has done it.
MyDreamPhone:
x86 low power chip.
1gb ram
USB charging and connectivity to mouse/keyboard/monitor/speakers through charger/docking station.
touchscreen covering whole phone.
1280x1024 camera (with decent color!)
geforce to go implementation
5.1 sound when plugged to charger
standard headphone jack (switching to stereo headphone mix automagically when headphones plugged in)
decent basic joystick (via touch screen?)
Firefox
Zsnes
Project64
FOSS Video chat with speex/H.264
FOSS winamp clone for mp3/ogg/wav/speex
beryl when plugged to charger (when in "computer" mode)
wine (when in "computer" mode)
FOSS mp3/ogg/wav recorder (for voice notes, concert bootlegs).
1-4 gb sdram, upgradeable via cheap sd chip
NO DRM
easy windows/linux/mac file sharing through wifi
Simple Loud Alarm(s)
Simple photo album, divx/xvid, online sync
Simple VNC with address book/ip lookup (assignable to "full screen" when in "computer mode" and added as an additional desktop that beryl can spin to)
Thunderbird
MSN/AIM/yahoo/skype/googletalk/myspaceim (maybe via extended gaimlib)
Urban Terror (when usb mouse available)
gimp with CMYK support (when in "computer" mode)
decent OCR via camera, and simple text file creation app
instant on OS
instant off OS
long lasting lithium/ion battery that recharges quickly through the USB port
Infrared/bluetooth
Multitrack wav/mp3 recording via USB mixer attachment (with phantom power)
Basic 640x480 xvid/h.264 recording video camera and easy YouTube upload
GCC and other programming tools (when in "computer" mode)
Basic SMS/GSM/standard cell phone features (address book with personalized icons/ (mp3/ogg) ringtones.)
$50
The sad thing is, 90% of this software exists NOW in the FOSS community. The final 10% would probably be a reasonably cheap programmer hire, maybe a year of dev time. This hardware is dirt cheap with economies of scale, so a $50 price tag IS possible. Then a serious kick ass FOSS standard would exist by which all phones and computers would have to interact with which could beat MS, Mac, Motorola, Sony, and Nokia to market.
This is a project that would make billions, and cost maybe a million initially. But since there is no free market on the planet, it's not going to happen. Some corporation would whack you if you made and started selling this phone. Like DeLorean in the 80's, or Tucker in the 30's.
Too bad, too, because with this phone, a lot of people would get a lot of great things done quickly. Including me.
rhY
Obligatory Office Quote:
Creed: That, is Northern Lights, Cannabis Indica.
Dwight: *Sigh*, No, (pause) it's marijuana.
You just described my college room mate's survival strategy!
MOD PARENT UP
MOD PARENT UP
MOD PARENT UP!!!
Amen to that. I'm so glad somebody else has put what I've been thinking so succinctly! Nicely done!
rhY
I did not read the article, but here's my two cents:
Ubuntu is trying to be a Windows killer. And it could be. Wine is "good enough" with the right settings for 90% of what most people want to do coming from a Windows world. Drivers exist. No, they're not FOSS, and I understand why people want FOSS ones, but....
Why doesn't Ubuntu seal the deal?
With beryl, good drivers, and built in FOSS apps that beat MS at every turn (Firefox > IE, Beryl > Aero, Thunderbird > Outlook, and VLC > WMP), it seems like the win would be fast and clear. Nobody wants Vista, especially when you have to pay. Ubuntu comes preconfigured in a way that is over all superior to every Windows that has ever existed. It's more solid and reliable, it has four desktops (though they moronically all have the same wallpaper by default, and it happens to be shit brown), it has a very nice user interface (though *i* and many others feel it could take some design cues from Windows 98 with regards to menu structure and some other minor details), and it's free. Oh yeah, and it's open source, so anybody who doesn't like part of it can fix it themselves.
But nobody has. It's like people take pride in allowing the world of uneducated masses sucking on the corporate tit of MS. I just don't understand it.
Feisty could win the OS wars decisively, but given the over all FOSS community attitude towards ordinary people....
Damn, gotta catch my plane.....
Sad?
rhY
No seriously, why try to get Linux installed? If you're a FOSS fan, start at the beginning: Open Office, Gimp, GAIM, Firefox, Thunderbird, Shareaza, Zsnes.....
Why not just preinstall all the FOSS apps that are really going to allow people to look at beryl/compiz and say, "Hey! That's bad ass, but can I still have the Gimp? Oh, I CAN?!?!!"
I can't think of ONE advantage to allowing Linux preinstalled (maybe desktop linux still isn't ready for primetime?), but I can think of literally hundreds of advantages to familiarizing people with Firefox, Thunderbird, and the other really outstanding FOSS apps that exist in both Linux AND Windows.
Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about an all FOSS world too (Linux obviously being a piece of that), but all the office, teaching, construction, mechanic, and other non techie types *I* know LOVE Firefox, but still find Linux scary, difficult to use, and incompatible with important programs, like "San Andreas". Frankly, at this point I agree with them.
FOSS WILL win, but it will take time, and FireFox, Open Office and the like are way ahead of promoting it over Linux at this point. Hell, if anything, most of the Linux distros I've seen and used go a long way to NOT promoting FOSS.
rhY
Well I can build just about any computer imaginable, with simple google searches... But good fucking luck with copy and paste in Ubuntu.....
Oh yeah, and if I migrate from any OS, I'd like San Andreas to continue working.
That still doesn't explain why I think that people who talk to invisible men in the sky are idiots.
Well, at least for technology minded types (The common /. ilk, no?!?), not having a reasonably well thought out email program DOES indicate some difficulties in the tech department of a university, and hence, the average /. student MIGHT be better off at a university that has reasonable email.
Not just for the email, but for the other (very likely) problems that would arise based on the administrations fairly glaring technological ignorance.
I mean, imagine what kind of online classes are available at a school that is completely dependent on Windows Live Mail....
They're probably horrifically shoddy at best....
rhY
Those kids are going to have to do the same thing I had to do at a job where their email setup sucked:
Use some other email address. I mean, there are tons of free ones with POP and etc..
If the university that you're paying to attend doesn't offer decent email, maybe you should consider a different university to give your money to....
rhY
I just meant most meetings will be video conference-able in the near term, which is what most business really boils down to these days. Granted, people who do on site work, like insurance adjusters, real estate agents, probably many types of engineers, etc are still going to need to visit locations, until your virtual travel robot and virtual reality setup are far more advanced than just on paper today.
Any meeting involving people will be vid conference-able in the short term, sans sexual meetings, and we should all be mortified about what the MySpace generation is going to start doing on MSN (ekiga, wengo-phone, which ever one goes open source and includes speex and h.264 or whatever first...) very soon, if a lot of them aren't doing it already.....
I'm not saying it will replace all business travel, but I certainly can see it replacing a lot of it.
rhY
As Video conferencing becomes more of a reality, and higher quality, actually traveling to locations will be more and more considered prohibitively costly. The latest Windows Live Messenger offers damn good video to the average consumer with a decent 640x480 camera.... It's only a matter of time before the audio improves, and people set up projectors/cameras as virtual windows to other places in the world.
I've been messing around with this for weeks, and I'm just a n00b with a couple of webcams! Imagine when this becomes more prevalent.... 90% of business travel is going to be virtual within the decade.
rhY
I haven't been this excited since Al Gore was running as Vice pres after writing "The Earth in Balance". How'd that work out in the end? He did vote for the Kyoto protocol didn't he? Clean air act? I'm sorry, what?!??
Look, I want to be as excited as anybody that there is one political candidate talking actual sense (broadband, in particular, I really don't see the point of ethanol, methanol, or any other of the "methadone" alternatives to our oil addiction. We have solar and laptop batteries right? Remember the EV-1!?!?), but what are the chances that anyone in either major political party is actually going to do ANYTHING not totally in line with the corporate greed and corruption that rules our nation today?
Call me when we actually have elections again, or call me when you're handing out guns.
rhY
You mean megacorp + government bureaucracy = incompetence? Man, I had no idea!
If you mean, by criminalizing all civil libertarians like myself who would refuse such an ID card, yes, I suppose it's much easier.
When are we going to officially change our flag to red white and black as it is increasingly being designated?
BLAUSCHEIM BITTE!!!
Maybe it matters WHICH game you are playing. Certainly after about an hour of Dr. Mario, my eyes want to call it a day!
rhY
I dunno... So far MTA has been total crap, but SAMP has been a blast (though buggy as hell). I'll judge the new releases on their respective merits.... :D
rhY
Agreed strongly!! Especially if you consider San Andreas Multi Player, which is INORDINATELY fun, and should be even better with the release of .2.
San Andreas is arguably the greatest game of all time, not just on one platform, either....
rhY
It's all your base ARE belong to us. GOD! IDiot! Sheesh.
Oh wait, MSNBC is THAT MS? Ah.... Now who's asleep mother fucker?!?
Well, when it comes to secretive specs on a hardware product that WON'T EVEN WORK without a driver, there is more at issue here than "Hey, drivers are free." My last Nvidia graphics card was $140, so I expect it to work as advertised, and that means it needs a good driver.
Of course I'd rather that driver be open source so I can optimize it myself, but not having ANY available driver, for the PRIMARY OS in use on the planet?
My biggest problem with Vista is the lack of OpenGL. That's just criminal, and about as anti-competitive as you can imagine.
rhY
The best way to advocate Linux to Windows people is to give them a faster, prettier drop-in replacement that works with 90% of the windows software AND LSB (Once it's around?) software that exists.
/., Wikipedia, digg, IMDB, Stock Quotes, Mininova, LeperKhanz.com. Send me the link when you're done, thanks.
That doesn't exist yet, though, so:
Why not just advocate some OTHER FOSS app?
I recommend Firefox, but frequently impress common non-techie types with GIMP, Open Office, UltraVNC, VLC, Thunderbird, and even ClamWin.
It takes me about 20 seconds to describe the benefits of Open Source:
1. No EULA.
2. It's Free.
3. No stupid DRM, if you buy hardware, this software "just works".
4. Make copies for all your devices!
5. Open Standards.
6. Speed.
7. Stability.
8. To legally own Photoshop costs about $500.
Expand these out for a minute if you want!
Then give them one piece of software, and show them the most apparent immediate benefits:
I choose Firefox, and then show them adblock, the bookmarks toolbar, how to make those bookmarks just the little icon (Right click, Backspace, click OK), Discuss whether Torbutton is a good idea for them, Ctrl+MouseWheel for text scaling, and sometimes even clean their Bookmarks Toolbar up for them.
Everyone I know uses Firefox now.
Everyone.
Make a Linux/Wine hybrid like that, and slipstream the most reliable softwares directly into the distro, and I can get them all on that, too. Hell, you can even put a few bookmarks in the toolbar FOR them:
rhY
PS Can you give it a cool 3d interface like the new one in Vista? I love scrollwheeling through the open windows.
I mean, when record labels refuse to sign ANY kind of talent, for fear of sharing profits at some point, and continually serve up ABSOLUTE CRAP THAT NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD CONSIDER LISTENING TO, MUCH LESS PAYING FOR......
OF COURSE Tower stores are out of business. Maybe if they had had a few CDs worth buying, as opposed to 800 extra creed-clone bands, people would've kept buying cds.
I mean, besides the fact that the RIAA and other industry affiliates have been involved in criminal price fixing (convicted, not just accused!) for years, and that CDs have always cost too much (and still do!), do you REALLY want to buy another whiny awful CD put out by yet another insecure "punk" band, that got it's street cred by going down on a record exec and can't actually play more than the three shitty chords they've used in EVERY GOD AWFUL SONG ABOUT HIS ABUSIVE SLUTTY GF WHO IS ALL OF 18 in real life?
If Tower sold other real musicians, even terrible formulaic ones like Norah Jones and Coldplay, and weren't completely obsessed with whatever flavor of the WEAK that sony seems to want to put out, they'd STILL be in business, EVEN WITH OVER PRICED cds.
Bunch of fuckin' assholes. How DARE THEY accuse anyone of ANYTHING?!? I mean, these are the same people who basically sexually predated on Mariah Carey and Celine Dion as teenagers, gave 'em record deals, and then after a couple of gaffes kicked them to the curb in every way possible (well in the case of Mariah, anyway). These are sick fucks TO THE CORE. No wonder they think it's OK to take 11 year olds to court for downloading some shitty gangster rap that THEY ARE FOISTING ON A GENERATION WHO GETS NO REAL NEWS and can't figure out how INSECURE AND PATHETIC most of the CRAP they are listening to really is. I'm looking at you, Eminem, 50 cent, and pretty much all the latest rap.
These fuckers should all be in jail. Rootkits aside! It's their fault some teenager thought he was tough after listening to "lil thug" or something, got into car stereo jacking, and is now getting ass rammed by a partially retarded former meth addict in JAIL. Some little kid standing up to them in court?!? That's not even the BEGINNING of a reasonable amount of vigilantism. Anybody with even half a conscience oughta drive right over to Celine's husband's house and SHOOT HIM IN THE FUCKING FACE for hooking up with a teenager, even if she's now a multi-millionaire, and hideous middle aged woman, to boot. She was still just a child sex slave for a greasy dirty record producer who oughta be shot on sight.
It's so disgusting that we even debate the finer points of copyright infringement in these corporations defense. If we had a real media, all these corporations would've been shut down for anti-competitive monopolism decades ago. Anybody arguing in favor of these corporations is an absolute moron. Period.
rhY
Is there an easy to install, easy to use OS X clone that is actually Linux? I love the interface with the remote control that I saw on my friend's mac yesterday.
Thanks in advance?