YOU PAY £25 PER MONTH FOR CABLE TV So now explain again what we're "getting for free"?
Commercial TV content. It's completely, utterly free, at least in the US. I know in the UK-- apparently where you're from-- there's some kind of television fee or tax, but I don't know how that works, so I'm not going to talk about it.
When you buy a TV, you can take it home and attach it to an antenna and get oodles of free programming. Hell, you can even get free high-definition programming with digital surround sound. This content is paid for by advertising. You don't have to pay anything at all to get it.
When you get cable TV, you pay for the wire that comes to your house. The content itself-- premium and pay-per-view channels excepted-- is still free, and advertiser supported. Same thing with satellite TV, in which case you're paying for use of the satellite transmission. You're paying for the medium, not the content.
Sure he can. It's his business proposal to TV networks. He watches what he wants, and they don't ad-spam him. Well, if TV moguls don't like his offer, they can take a hike.
How does that qualify as having it both ways? There's no business model that I'm aware of under which you get free TV without commercials. It just doesn't work that way.
Saying that you're going to excuse yourself from the whole transaction is not the same as getting what you want.
No, you're not wrong. All of what you said is true. I guess I was oversimplifying when I said that a TiVo without a subscription is just a VCR.
But I stand by my opinion that a TiVo without the service is pretty pitiful compared to what you get from a TiVo with the service. Just the "season pass" feature alone is worth the price of admission; instead of scheduling recordings, you just tell the TiVo to record Spongebob Squarepants whenever it's on, and the TiVo takes care of the rest for you.
If you're going to get a TiVo, I think you'll find your experience dramatically improved if you shell out the $200 or so-- I don't remember the exact number-- for the service.
So my anecdotal evidence is "demonstrably false" in the face of yours? Hmmm...
My evidence is anecdotal only from your point of view. You said something like, "My friends who own TiVos have told me..." while my point was that I have personally witnessed something different. That's not anecdotal; that's empirical.
The monthly fee entitles you to get program schedule data. If you don't subscribe, you can use the TiVo just like a VCR, telling it what to record and when, and specifying things like recurring items and whatnot.
You can skip the monthly fee buy spending a couple of hundred bucks and getting a lifetime subscription. As long as that particular TiVo exists, you'll get program data during the regular phone calls.
A TiVo without TiVo service is nothing more than an expensive VCR. I'd suggest you not waste your money.
Every TiVo has space reserved for paid push content. It could reuse that space to record content I want. Since that'd be easy to support and useful to me but they won't do it, it's fair to say they have intentionally crippled my property.
Every car has space reserved for cargo. It could reuse that space to carry passengers. Since that'd be easy to support and useful to me but they won't do it, it's fair to say they have intentionally crippled my property.
Have I made my point through the time-honored tradition of reducto ad absurdum? No? Then let me phrase it this way. Making a design choice that differs from the preferences that might be expressed by a subset of your customer base does not warrant the use of the word "crippleware."
As for spam, what else can you call indiscriminate distribution of unsolicited content that I can't even get rid of?
Commercials.
To say that TiVo spams their customers is simply false. They don't send unsolicited commercial email, and they don't (to my knowledge) post ads to Usenet.
The Tivo users I know have told me that the clock doesn't do a real 24 hour day. Unless it constantly phones home to reset itself, you won't be recording the shows you're looking for. In order to sell more subscriptions, Tivo crippled their clock. Crippleware.
Demonstrably false. My friend recently, through a little accounting snafu, let his subscription lapse. He was without TiVo service for about three months. He used his TiVo like a VCR, manually specifiying times and channels to record programs he wanted to watch. The TiVo is not crippled in the way that you describe.
Spam in unsolicited commercial email.
Yes, and we're not talking about any form of email here.
This is, to the user, functionally not very different from TiVo Suggestions, which are programs that the user hasn't explicitly asked be recorded. They're chosen using some kind of algorithm that predicts programs the user might want to watch based on what he has watched in the past. Sometimes it works eerily well, but most often not so much.
The fact that these programs are recorded based on different criteria doesn't make much of a difference to the user experience. If the user chooses to watch, he can. If the user doesn't, he doesn't have to. Ignore them and they go away.
Maybe you're just annoyed at the fact that somebody (in this case, the BBC) paid TiVo for access to your eyeballs. If so, then I guess TiVo just isn't for you. Then again, neither is television. Or radio. Or newspapers, or magazines. Or the Internet, most especially Slashdot. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
I'm in touch with time and energy right now because my cable company just threw more channels at me and changed the menu system into something totally unusable. It would rather give me highlights of what they're getting kickbacks to feature and what's on PPV than let me see what's on one channel for the next two days.
There are lots of ways for you to get information about what programming is scheduled when. You could buy a TiVo, for instance....;-)
I'll pay the same amount- okay, I'd rather have them knock off $10/month, for the 8 channels that I want.
But you cost the cable company the same whether you receive 8 channels or 800. The wire costs the same. The equipment costs the same.
I'll reiterate a point I made in a previous post: you're not paying for the content. You're paying for the delivery of that content.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is this: your complaints are unrealistic. Quitcher bitchin.
But you don't pay for broadcast TV content. You pay only for the medium of delivery. The content itself is free.
That's the irony. The poster complained-- loudly, and in strong language-- about commercials, but also complained about the cost of TV. You can't have it both ways, you know. Somebody, somewhere, has to foot the bill for those hundreds of hours of free programming you get every day.
Um. If you only watch 8 out of 200 channels, how does that cost you in terms of time or energy? It doesn't I get the Game Show channel on my satellite dish. I know this, because I saw the name on the channel listing when I signed up. I haven never tuned in to it. Having it hasn't cost me a thing in either time or energy.
So you're obviously talking about not wanting to pay for 200 channels. Again, we're back to "I want it free or very cheap."
I don't want to buy a crippleware Tivo that needs a subscription to work properly and be insulted by spam.
You know, using words like "crippleware" and "spam" in situations in which they simply don't apply makes you sound like a loon. Might want to keep an eye on that in the future.
Next thing you know, a good idea (Tivo), gets consumed by a bad idea (forced infomercials) and it sucks for everyone.
Gee, it's a good thing that I didn't buy the special "Got-A-View" option when I got my Tivo. I didn't get the special chair with the leather straps that you seem to have received with yours.
Either that, or you're way off the mark when you use the word "forced."
I'd be very interested in knowing, from Tivo owners, if the advertiser-mandated download pushed off any content you were archiving.
RTFA. Tivo reps have said, in various postings on the web, that this feature-- or whatever you want to call it; don't get semantic on me-- stores its data in a reserved partition. Because you could never have recorded user content on it in the first place, putting promo content on it has zero effect on your programs.
This is clearly spelled out in the third link off the post.
It obviously does use your space unless they somehow magicly enlarged the available storage in the unit to create the extra space.
That's basically what they did! When the hard drive was originally partitioned, a chunk of it was set aside for user content; that's the 40 hours or whatever that you were expecting to get. A different chunk was set aside for stuff like network showcases and, yes, promos. This is space that you never had access to, and that could never have been used to store user content.
Basically, it wasn't "yours" to begin with, in that sense.
And having a Pepsi logo tattood on your forehead, would never get in your way, either. You would never even notice. It would cost you nothing. Pepsi might even pay you to do it. So why don't you? There's no downside, right?
And this has what to do with anything? Nobody is requiring-- or even asking-- you to be a shill. Are you just opposing this practice on moral grounds, or something? If you have a TiVo, chances are you enjoy it enough that you hope TiVo doesn't go out of business. So why begrudge them the extra revenue? (If you don't have a TiVo, of course, you need to just shut the fuck up right now. This goes without saying.)
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is the best form of advertising I know of so far. I don't have to watch it if I don't want to, and it goes away if I ignore it. And it's not intrusive; no bells or gongs, just a menu item with a gold star by it.
Basically, dude, I think your post was just meaningless FUD.
One: I stopped watching TV because the ads enraged me.
Two: I've been keeping an eye on the Tivo on the off chance television ever becomes economical (eg- I can get sci fi without having to get 37 other channels I never watch)
Does anybody else see the irony, here? For somebody who seems to want his entertainment for free or very little cost, you sure do bitch a lot about commercials. You can't have it both ways, man.
First of all, while this incident happened only in the UK, TiVo has been doing this sort of thing in the US for some time now. Just a couple of days ago I had some Sheryl Crow thing on my TiVo. I didn't watch it, so I couldn't say what it was. After a few days, it disappeared by itself.
That's kind of the point, really. You're not required to watch this content. It's recorded for you only if you're not already recording or watching something else. And it goes away by itself if you ignore it. Why all the uproar? What less intrusive or obnoxious form of advertising can you imagine?
Are you gonna make be break out the Simpsons quotes on you?
To stop those monsters 1-2-3 Here's a fresh new way that's trouble free It's got Paul Anka's guarantee... Guarantee void in Tennessee! Just don't look! Just don't look! Just don't look! Just don't look!
Read the article for some great detailed information, but don't bother trying to skip to the bottom to see the conclusions. There really aren't any. The Xserve is more expensive than some servers, and less than others. If you want to compare Xserve with Mac OS X Server to an Intel-based box with Windows 2000 Server, Xserve is a lot cheaper. If you compare it to a box with Linux, Xserve is about the same or a little bit more. Strangely, if you compare it to a Sun, Xserve is a lot more expensive. Which seems wrong, somehow....
That's why we have software like Mozilla, Emacs, KDE, GNOME, Open Office, GIMP, XFree86, Linux, LaTeX, Perl, etc.
I really don't want to get into an argument here, but the programs you named fall neatly into two categories: good software written mostly by one person, and bad software written in teams.
Emacs, Linux, TeX, and Perl were all developed to a state of stable usefulness by a single person, with only occasional or limited help from others. These are outstanding.
Mozilla, KDE, Gnome, Open Office, and GIMP are all really bad applications. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. They may be neat examples of software design-- hell, Mozilla itself is almost Turing-complete-- but they're pretty crappy from the user experience point of view. And they're not getting better. Just bigger and uglier.
XFree86 is the odd exception, though. It's hard to say whether it's good or bad because it appears to match X bug-for-bug, misfeature-for-misfeature.;-)
You, sir, are an idiot. Did you even read my post before launching into your skreed, or did you just hear about it from a friend?
I stand by my assertion that open source programmers (i.e., "hobbyists") should get themselves organized and try to finish something, rather than just perpetuating the cycle of "develop, abandon, develop, abandon."
And to think that just yesterday we were discussing the fact-- not so clear-cut after all-- that open source software leads to less duplicated effort and more code reuse! What a crock!
Maybe it's a quality issue. Open source programmers (i.e., "hobbyists") lack any sort of engineering methodology, so it's inevitable that their software will leave a lot to be desired in the quality department. So when a new guy decides he wants to work on a window manager, maybe he looks around for a project to join, only to find that they're all crap. "Oh, well. I'll just start from scratch!"
This is all just cementing my opinion that there will never be any acceptable noncommercial end-user software. Server or developer software maybe; administrators or developers are willing to accept bad HCI design in things like Apache or GCC. But end-user applications? Never. That kind of software requires a degree of fit and polish that open source programmers (i.e., "hobbyists") just can't achieve. Instead of taking feedback and improving their methods or products, they just respond to their critics with multi-paragraph sarcasm.
Things aren't looking too good for the "revolution."
The world needs one full-assed solution, not 400 half-assed solutions. That's the eternal problem with free software / open source development. Quit bickering about which one is better and which one to use; pick one, stick with it, and get it done.
I absolutely agree with you. I get so discouraged when I run into things like the 90 items listed under "Window Managers" on Freshmeat, and not a one of 'em especially useful.
That's the problem with the current state of open source development. Rather than putting 10,000 brains on one project, you put one brain each on 10,000 projects. Net result: almost zero result for a vast amount of work.
Maybe the only way to get programmers organized is to get a bunch of them in one place and wrap a company around them.
Is Sun going to become a reseller and drop its last products?
Um... at last count, sun is selling at least 17 (!) models of Sparc-based servers, and four different Sparc-based workstations. They have six products in the Cobalt line. I don't think you're quite right when you refer to Sun's Sparc-based systems as "its last products."
Others far wiser than I have put forth a different notion, that of the source code should always be available for software. Thus, like a book, you will know how the software was constructed and you can learn from it so as to advance the knowledge of programming. But like a book, you cannot plagarize or cut-n-paste passages to place in your own book. You can only read it, take notes, and then re-formulate the ideas into your own words for use in your own software.
I agree with the "far wiser than I" part, but nonetheless I have an opinion on this subject. (Surprise!)
It seems to me that, while software can be thought of like a book, it can also be thought of like a process or formula. Coca-cola has a forumla for producing Coke, and probably a process for it, too. These are valuable trade secrets; at least, they believe they're valuable, and who am I to argue with them? I'm drinking a Diet Coke with Lemon right now!
I think this comparison holds up pretty well. A formula is an intangible thing; it could theoretically be copied and implemented many times, at very little cost. What Coca-cola actually sells isn't the formula (i.e., source code) but the soda itself (i.e., executable program).
Nobody would argue that it's entirely reasonable for Coca-cola to keep their formula secret. If anybody could manufacture Coke, what would you need Coca-cola for? Similarly, if anybody could manufacture (i.e., compile) my software product, then what would you need me for? So why is it so unreasonable to the FSF guys that I should want to keep my source code secret? RMS, in his writings and statements, makes it sound like a crime against all that's good and right in the world!
Programming is as much of a science as biology, or medicine, or engineering.
Oh, NOW I get it. You have no understanding of what the word "science" means. If you did, you wouldn't try to characterize such pursuits as programming and engineering under the label "science."
Science is the pursuit of knowledge. Period. It has nothing to do with solving problems. The word, which comes from the same root that gives us "scalpel" and "schism," carries with it connotations of the precise extraction of facts from a complex world.
On top of the basic meaning, we have the scientific method. This tradition, honed over hundreds of years, defines a set of protocols that have been found to yield good results. These protocols include things like testing against a control. They are fairly rigorous.
Programming, and engineering for that matter, are not sciences. Engineering is often an application of knowledge gained from science-- the engineer builds the plane, but the scientist learned how wings work-- but programming is not. The knowledge collectively referred to as "computer science" is not knowledge of the natural world at all. Data structures and algorithms are constructs and the ill-named "computer science" defines the observed characteristics of those constructs. But most of all, "computer science" differs from science in the absence of the application of the scientific method.
It costs you *nothing* to release your code. NOTHING.
Of course it costs something. Right now, I am looking at the source code to a program. It's not a big program, so I can see all of the source on the screen at once. I am the only person in the world who has ever seen this code, because I have just written it, right now.
If I were to post this program on a web site, I would be losing something. I would lose exclusivity, and I would lose the ability to make unilateral decisions about my program. I would lose the ability to eradicate my program forever, because other people would have copies that I couldn't control.
Maybe these are important things. Maybe they're not. It depends on the situation. But people who say that it costs nothing to share code are liars and frauds.
By hording, you force someone to have to re-solve the problem that you have already completed. You force duplication of effort.
I understand that you're using the word hoarding because you wish to invoke negative connotations. But your use of the word is incorrect.
I own my source code. It's mine. The fact that I keep it in my own house isn't hoarding by any definition, any more than I'm hoarding my couch or my collection of poems.
Furthermore, I-- and I wish to make this perfectly clear-- I do not give a rat's ass about duplication of effort. I do not accept that I have an obligation to help you solve your problems.
This is where programming and applied science differ most widely. My aforementioned girlfriend considers it her responsibility to cure cancer. (She's not actually working on cancer; that's just an example.) She accepts for herself that responsibility. So she participates in the scientific community, with the sharing of results and all that.
I have accepted no responsibility to help you solve your... whatever. MP3 catalogging problem. So any attempt to invoke in me a moral response is bound to fail.
THIS is the true poison that the code-for-sale people have injected into our industry. It has changed us from being scientists working together to solve problems, and reduced us to used car salesman.
Please don't be offended, but I think that you have too high an opinion of yourself. I don't know you, and I don't know what you do, but chances are that you're not a scientist at all. It sounds to me like you're a computer programmer who likes to believe his work is somehow important to the world as a whole.
You know what? Maybe your work is important. Maybe you're working on curing cancer, for all I know. But that doesn't change the fact that you're wrong to tell anyone that they have an obligation to share their code.
Remember, "require" can mean two things in this context.
You've left me dizzy with your artful display of circular reasoning.
That is a very engineering-oriented view of science. I recognize it, being an engineer. But it isn't true. We learn about the body because we are driven to.
Please don't confuse motivation with justification. Why do we study the body? Who knows? A compulsion inherent in human nature, maybe. But the question before the committee is why should we study the body?
Actually, the real question was why should we share code. A poster said that we should share code for the same reasons that scientists should share data; that is, free software is based on the same principles as the scientific method. I refute this, because the moral foundation of the scientific method and the moral foundation of the free software movement couldn't be more different from one another.
The practices of the scientific community are the way they are because it is the best way to advance the collective body of knowlege. The same for programming.
But in saying this you're trying to attach a value to "advancing the art," or as you say it, the "collective body of knowledge."
I attach no value to the collective body of knowledge in and of itself. Period. If you tell me that I should do X because it advances the art, I will react the same way as if you said I should do X because it makes florns more smooly. I have no opinion on florns, or their collective smooliness. So I just don't care.
Likewise, I just don't care about advancing the art. Computer programs give me no pleasure, and they don't-- by themselves-- improve the world in any meaningful way.
It is of course possible to improve the world through the careful application of computer programs. The same can be said of just about anything. But in order to translate that into a moral argument, you'd have to make some connection between what I do and the ultimate improvement of the world through computer programs derived from or inspired by what I do. Basically it turns into a "but for" argument. In the absence of my code, the world misses out on some important program that, when properly applied, could do something good. (Good in the moral sense, I mean.)
But another poster already made the point that the fact that I don't share my code basically means nothing. Somebody, somewhere, will come up with the same things I've come up with. So the "but for" argument fails. The world gets the benefit of my code even if I don't release it, because somebody out there will think of it independently.
Unless, of course, I'm some kind of genius. Anybody out there think I'm some kind of genius?;-)
You don't have to tell anyone about your program, but just like a scientist doing research who never publishes, you do nothing for the community. That's fine. Don't. But the reason to do so is the same as it is in science.
Again, you're thinking too shallowly. Why is it a moral good for us to advance science and understanding? Because through science and understanding we can directly improve our world, and do good for other people. Simple.
Why is it a moral good for us to advance the art of programming?
Note here my use of the phrase "moral good." I chose it quite deliberately. A moral good is something that should result in a compulsion to action in a moral person. Saving a drowning person is a moral good, so a moral person when faced with a drowning person will be compelled to throw a life preserver. What moral good can we think of that would produce in a moral person a compulsion to release his or her source code?
Since this conversation started with the idea of an obligation to share code, I think it's reasonable to expect there to be some moral justification for that obligation. So far, I've seen none.
By releasing your code, your work becomes part of the larger whole, where it may be used to solve other problems and provide other services. By not releasing your code, it stagnates and dies.
Isn't that an easy choice?
Yup. It sure is. You worry about your code, and I'll worry about mine.
What is it, exactly, that so excites you about telling other people what to do with their code?
Slashdot Mirror
YOU PAY £25 PER MONTH FOR CABLE TV So now explain again what we're "getting for free"?
Commercial TV content. It's completely, utterly free, at least in the US. I know in the UK-- apparently where you're from-- there's some kind of television fee or tax, but I don't know how that works, so I'm not going to talk about it.
When you buy a TV, you can take it home and attach it to an antenna and get oodles of free programming. Hell, you can even get free high-definition programming with digital surround sound. This content is paid for by advertising. You don't have to pay anything at all to get it.
When you get cable TV, you pay for the wire that comes to your house. The content itself-- premium and pay-per-view channels excepted-- is still free, and advertiser supported. Same thing with satellite TV, in which case you're paying for use of the satellite transmission. You're paying for the medium, not the content.
It's an important distinction.
Sure he can. It's his business proposal to TV networks. He watches what he wants, and they don't ad-spam him. Well, if TV moguls don't like his offer, they can take a hike.
How does that qualify as having it both ways? There's no business model that I'm aware of under which you get free TV without commercials. It just doesn't work that way.
Saying that you're going to excuse yourself from the whole transaction is not the same as getting what you want.
No, you're not wrong. All of what you said is true. I guess I was oversimplifying when I said that a TiVo without a subscription is just a VCR.
But I stand by my opinion that a TiVo without the service is pretty pitiful compared to what you get from a TiVo with the service. Just the "season pass" feature alone is worth the price of admission; instead of scheduling recordings, you just tell the TiVo to record Spongebob Squarepants whenever it's on, and the TiVo takes care of the rest for you.
If you're going to get a TiVo, I think you'll find your experience dramatically improved if you shell out the $200 or so-- I don't remember the exact number-- for the service.
So my anecdotal evidence is "demonstrably false" in the face of yours? Hmmm...
My evidence is anecdotal only from your point of view. You said something like, "My friends who own TiVos have told me..." while my point was that I have personally witnessed something different. That's not anecdotal; that's empirical.
The monthly fee entitles you to get program schedule data. If you don't subscribe, you can use the TiVo just like a VCR, telling it what to record and when, and specifying things like recurring items and whatnot.
You can skip the monthly fee buy spending a couple of hundred bucks and getting a lifetime subscription. As long as that particular TiVo exists, you'll get program data during the regular phone calls.
A TiVo without TiVo service is nothing more than an expensive VCR. I'd suggest you not waste your money.
Every TiVo has space reserved for paid push content. It could reuse that space to record content I want. Since that'd be easy to support and useful to me but they won't do it, it's fair to say they have intentionally crippled my property.
Every car has space reserved for cargo. It could reuse that space to carry passengers. Since that'd be easy to support and useful to me but they won't do it, it's fair to say they have intentionally crippled my property.
Have I made my point through the time-honored tradition of reducto ad absurdum? No? Then let me phrase it this way. Making a design choice that differs from the preferences that might be expressed by a subset of your customer base does not warrant the use of the word "crippleware."
As for spam, what else can you call indiscriminate distribution of unsolicited content that I can't even get rid of?
Commercials.
To say that TiVo spams their customers is simply false. They don't send unsolicited commercial email, and they don't (to my knowledge) post ads to Usenet.
The Tivo users I know have told me that the clock doesn't do a real 24 hour day. Unless it constantly phones home to reset itself, you won't be recording the shows you're looking for. In order to sell more subscriptions, Tivo crippled their clock. Crippleware.
;-)
Demonstrably false. My friend recently, through a little accounting snafu, let his subscription lapse. He was without TiVo service for about three months. He used his TiVo like a VCR, manually specifiying times and channels to record programs he wanted to watch. The TiVo is not crippled in the way that you describe.
Spam in unsolicited commercial email.
Yes, and we're not talking about any form of email here.
This is, to the user, functionally not very different from TiVo Suggestions, which are programs that the user hasn't explicitly asked be recorded. They're chosen using some kind of algorithm that predicts programs the user might want to watch based on what he has watched in the past. Sometimes it works eerily well, but most often not so much.
The fact that these programs are recorded based on different criteria doesn't make much of a difference to the user experience. If the user chooses to watch, he can. If the user doesn't, he doesn't have to. Ignore them and they go away.
Maybe you're just annoyed at the fact that somebody (in this case, the BBC) paid TiVo for access to your eyeballs. If so, then I guess TiVo just isn't for you. Then again, neither is television. Or radio. Or newspapers, or magazines. Or the Internet, most especially Slashdot. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
I'm in touch with time and energy right now because my cable company just threw more channels at me and changed the menu system into something totally unusable. It would rather give me highlights of what they're getting kickbacks to feature and what's on PPV than let me see what's on one channel for the next two days.
There are lots of ways for you to get information about what programming is scheduled when. You could buy a TiVo, for instance....
I'll pay the same amount- okay, I'd rather have them knock off $10/month, for the 8 channels that I want.
But you cost the cable company the same whether you receive 8 channels or 800. The wire costs the same. The equipment costs the same.
I'll reiterate a point I made in a previous post: you're not paying for the content. You're paying for the delivery of that content.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is this: your complaints are unrealistic. Quitcher bitchin.
But you don't pay for broadcast TV content. You pay only for the medium of delivery. The content itself is free.
That's the irony. The poster complained-- loudly, and in strong language-- about commercials, but also complained about the cost of TV. You can't have it both ways, you know. Somebody, somewhere, has to foot the bill for those hundreds of hours of free programming you get every day.
Um. If you only watch 8 out of 200 channels, how does that cost you in terms of time or energy? It doesn't I get the Game Show channel on my satellite dish. I know this, because I saw the name on the channel listing when I signed up. I haven never tuned in to it. Having it hasn't cost me a thing in either time or energy.
So you're obviously talking about not wanting to pay for 200 channels. Again, we're back to "I want it free or very cheap."
I don't want to buy a crippleware Tivo that needs a subscription to work properly and be insulted by spam.
You know, using words like "crippleware" and "spam" in situations in which they simply don't apply makes you sound like a loon. Might want to keep an eye on that in the future.
Next thing you know, a good idea (Tivo), gets consumed by a bad idea (forced infomercials) and it sucks for everyone.
Gee, it's a good thing that I didn't buy the special "Got-A-View" option when I got my Tivo. I didn't get the special chair with the leather straps that you seem to have received with yours.
Either that, or you're way off the mark when you use the word "forced."
I'd be very interested in knowing, from Tivo owners, if the advertiser-mandated download pushed off any content you were archiving.
RTFA. Tivo reps have said, in various postings on the web, that this feature-- or whatever you want to call it; don't get semantic on me-- stores its data in a reserved partition. Because you could never have recorded user content on it in the first place, putting promo content on it has zero effect on your programs.
This is clearly spelled out in the third link off the post.
It obviously does use your space unless they somehow magicly enlarged the available storage in the unit to create the extra space.
That's basically what they did! When the hard drive was originally partitioned, a chunk of it was set aside for user content; that's the 40 hours or whatever that you were expecting to get. A different chunk was set aside for stuff like network showcases and, yes, promos. This is space that you never had access to, and that could never have been used to store user content.
Basically, it wasn't "yours" to begin with, in that sense.
And having a Pepsi logo tattood on your forehead, would never get in your way, either. You would never even notice. It would cost you nothing. Pepsi might even pay you to do it. So why don't you? There's no downside, right?
And this has what to do with anything? Nobody is requiring-- or even asking-- you to be a shill. Are you just opposing this practice on moral grounds, or something? If you have a TiVo, chances are you enjoy it enough that you hope TiVo doesn't go out of business. So why begrudge them the extra revenue? (If you don't have a TiVo, of course, you need to just shut the fuck up right now. This goes without saying.)
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is the best form of advertising I know of so far. I don't have to watch it if I don't want to, and it goes away if I ignore it. And it's not intrusive; no bells or gongs, just a menu item with a gold star by it.
Basically, dude, I think your post was just meaningless FUD.
One: I stopped watching TV because the ads enraged me.
Two: I've been keeping an eye on the Tivo on the off chance television ever becomes economical (eg- I can get sci fi without having to get 37 other channels I never watch)
Does anybody else see the irony, here? For somebody who seems to want his entertainment for free or very little cost, you sure do bitch a lot about commercials. You can't have it both ways, man.
First of all, while this incident happened only in the UK, TiVo has been doing this sort of thing in the US for some time now. Just a couple of days ago I had some Sheryl Crow thing on my TiVo. I didn't watch it, so I couldn't say what it was. After a few days, it disappeared by itself.
That's kind of the point, really. You're not required to watch this content. It's recorded for you only if you're not already recording or watching something else. And it goes away by itself if you ignore it. Why all the uproar? What less intrusive or obnoxious form of advertising can you imagine?
Are you gonna make be break out the Simpsons quotes on you?
To stop those monsters 1-2-3
Here's a fresh new way that's trouble free
It's got Paul Anka's guarantee...
Guarantee void in Tennessee!
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
Read the article for some great detailed information, but don't bother trying to skip to the bottom to see the conclusions. There really aren't any. The Xserve is more expensive than some servers, and less than others. If you want to compare Xserve with Mac OS X Server to an Intel-based box with Windows 2000 Server, Xserve is a lot cheaper. If you compare it to a box with Linux, Xserve is about the same or a little bit more. Strangely, if you compare it to a Sun, Xserve is a lot more expensive. Which seems wrong, somehow....
That's why we have software like Mozilla, Emacs, KDE, GNOME, Open Office, GIMP, XFree86, Linux, LaTeX, Perl, etc.
;-)
I really don't want to get into an argument here, but the programs you named fall neatly into two categories: good software written mostly by one person, and bad software written in teams.
Emacs, Linux, TeX, and Perl were all developed to a state of stable usefulness by a single person, with only occasional or limited help from others. These are outstanding.
Mozilla, KDE, Gnome, Open Office, and GIMP are all really bad applications. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. They may be neat examples of software design-- hell, Mozilla itself is almost Turing-complete-- but they're pretty crappy from the user experience point of view. And they're not getting better. Just bigger and uglier.
XFree86 is the odd exception, though. It's hard to say whether it's good or bad because it appears to match X bug-for-bug, misfeature-for-misfeature.
(Don't bother reading. Just mod me down.)
You, sir, are an idiot. Did you even read my post before launching into your skreed, or did you just hear about it from a friend?
I stand by my assertion that open source programmers (i.e., "hobbyists") should get themselves organized and try to finish something, rather than just perpetuating the cycle of "develop, abandon, develop, abandon."
And to think that just yesterday we were discussing the fact-- not so clear-cut after all-- that open source software leads to less duplicated effort and more code reuse! What a crock!
Maybe it's a quality issue. Open source programmers (i.e., "hobbyists") lack any sort of engineering methodology, so it's inevitable that their software will leave a lot to be desired in the quality department. So when a new guy decides he wants to work on a window manager, maybe he looks around for a project to join, only to find that they're all crap. "Oh, well. I'll just start from scratch!"
This is all just cementing my opinion that there will never be any acceptable noncommercial end-user software. Server or developer software maybe; administrators or developers are willing to accept bad HCI design in things like Apache or GCC. But end-user applications? Never. That kind of software requires a degree of fit and polish that open source programmers (i.e., "hobbyists") just can't achieve. Instead of taking feedback and improving their methods or products, they just respond to their critics with multi-paragraph sarcasm.
Things aren't looking too good for the "revolution."
I remeber using the language... uhm.. was it called Basic? No... Logix? No....damn.
You're thinking of Logo. I had a lot of fun with Logo back in the early 80s. Those were the days.
The world needs one full-assed solution, not 400 half-assed solutions. That's the eternal problem with free software / open source development. Quit bickering about which one is better and which one to use; pick one, stick with it, and get it done.
I absolutely agree with you. I get so discouraged when I run into things like the 90 items listed under "Window Managers" on Freshmeat, and not a one of 'em especially useful.
That's the problem with the current state of open source development. Rather than putting 10,000 brains on one project, you put one brain each on 10,000 projects. Net result: almost zero result for a vast amount of work.
Maybe the only way to get programmers organized is to get a bunch of them in one place and wrap a company around them.
Is Sun going to become a reseller and drop its last products?
Um... at last count, sun is selling at least 17 (!) models of Sparc-based servers, and four different Sparc-based workstations. They have six products in the Cobalt line. I don't think you're quite right when you refer to Sun's Sparc-based systems as "its last products."
In other words, no.
Others far wiser than I have put forth a different notion, that of the source code should always be available for software. Thus, like a book, you will know how the software was constructed and you can learn from it so as to advance the knowledge of programming. But like a book, you cannot plagarize or cut-n-paste passages to place in your own book. You can only read it, take notes, and then re-formulate the ideas into your own words for use in your own software.
I agree with the "far wiser than I" part, but nonetheless I have an opinion on this subject. (Surprise!)
It seems to me that, while software can be thought of like a book, it can also be thought of like a process or formula. Coca-cola has a forumla for producing Coke, and probably a process for it, too. These are valuable trade secrets; at least, they believe they're valuable, and who am I to argue with them? I'm drinking a Diet Coke with Lemon right now!
I think this comparison holds up pretty well. A formula is an intangible thing; it could theoretically be copied and implemented many times, at very little cost. What Coca-cola actually sells isn't the formula (i.e., source code) but the soda itself (i.e., executable program).
Nobody would argue that it's entirely reasonable for Coca-cola to keep their formula secret. If anybody could manufacture Coke, what would you need Coca-cola for? Similarly, if anybody could manufacture (i.e., compile) my software product, then what would you need me for? So why is it so unreasonable to the FSF guys that I should want to keep my source code secret? RMS, in his writings and statements, makes it sound like a crime against all that's good and right in the world!
Programming is as much of a science as biology, or medicine, or engineering.
Oh, NOW I get it. You have no understanding of what the word "science" means. If you did, you wouldn't try to characterize such pursuits as programming and engineering under the label "science."
Science is the pursuit of knowledge. Period. It has nothing to do with solving problems. The word, which comes from the same root that gives us "scalpel" and "schism," carries with it connotations of the precise extraction of facts from a complex world.
On top of the basic meaning, we have the scientific method. This tradition, honed over hundreds of years, defines a set of protocols that have been found to yield good results. These protocols include things like testing against a control. They are fairly rigorous.
Programming, and engineering for that matter, are not sciences. Engineering is often an application of knowledge gained from science-- the engineer builds the plane, but the scientist learned how wings work-- but programming is not. The knowledge collectively referred to as "computer science" is not knowledge of the natural world at all. Data structures and algorithms are constructs and the ill-named "computer science" defines the observed characteristics of those constructs. But most of all, "computer science" differs from science in the absence of the application of the scientific method.
It costs you *nothing* to release your code. NOTHING.
Of course it costs something. Right now, I am looking at the source code to a program. It's not a big program, so I can see all of the source on the screen at once. I am the only person in the world who has ever seen this code, because I have just written it, right now.
If I were to post this program on a web site, I would be losing something. I would lose exclusivity, and I would lose the ability to make unilateral decisions about my program. I would lose the ability to eradicate my program forever, because other people would have copies that I couldn't control.
Maybe these are important things. Maybe they're not. It depends on the situation. But people who say that it costs nothing to share code are liars and frauds.
By hording, you force someone to have to re-solve the problem that you have already completed. You force duplication of effort.
I understand that you're using the word hoarding because you wish to invoke negative connotations. But your use of the word is incorrect.
I own my source code. It's mine. The fact that I keep it in my own house isn't hoarding by any definition, any more than I'm hoarding my couch or my collection of poems.
Furthermore, I-- and I wish to make this perfectly clear-- I do not give a rat's ass about duplication of effort. I do not accept that I have an obligation to help you solve your problems.
This is where programming and applied science differ most widely. My aforementioned girlfriend considers it her responsibility to cure cancer. (She's not actually working on cancer; that's just an example.) She accepts for herself that responsibility. So she participates in the scientific community, with the sharing of results and all that.
I have accepted no responsibility to help you solve your... whatever. MP3 catalogging problem. So any attempt to invoke in me a moral response is bound to fail.
THIS is the true poison that the code-for-sale people have injected into our industry. It has changed us from being scientists working together to solve problems, and reduced us to used car salesman.
Please don't be offended, but I think that you have too high an opinion of yourself. I don't know you, and I don't know what you do, but chances are that you're not a scientist at all. It sounds to me like you're a computer programmer who likes to believe his work is somehow important to the world as a whole.
You know what? Maybe your work is important. Maybe you're working on curing cancer, for all I know. But that doesn't change the fact that you're wrong to tell anyone that they have an obligation to share their code.
Remember, "require" can mean two things in this context.
;-)
You've left me dizzy with your artful display of circular reasoning.
That is a very engineering-oriented view of science. I recognize it, being an engineer. But it isn't true. We learn about the body because we are driven to.
Please don't confuse motivation with justification. Why do we study the body? Who knows? A compulsion inherent in human nature, maybe. But the question before the committee is why should we study the body?
Actually, the real question was why should we share code. A poster said that we should share code for the same reasons that scientists should share data; that is, free software is based on the same principles as the scientific method. I refute this, because the moral foundation of the scientific method and the moral foundation of the free software movement couldn't be more different from one another.
The practices of the scientific community are the way they are because it is the best way to advance the collective body of knowlege. The same for programming.
But in saying this you're trying to attach a value to "advancing the art," or as you say it, the "collective body of knowledge."
I attach no value to the collective body of knowledge in and of itself. Period. If you tell me that I should do X because it advances the art, I will react the same way as if you said I should do X because it makes florns more smooly. I have no opinion on florns, or their collective smooliness. So I just don't care.
Likewise, I just don't care about advancing the art. Computer programs give me no pleasure, and they don't-- by themselves-- improve the world in any meaningful way.
It is of course possible to improve the world through the careful application of computer programs. The same can be said of just about anything. But in order to translate that into a moral argument, you'd have to make some connection between what I do and the ultimate improvement of the world through computer programs derived from or inspired by what I do. Basically it turns into a "but for" argument. In the absence of my code, the world misses out on some important program that, when properly applied, could do something good. (Good in the moral sense, I mean.)
But another poster already made the point that the fact that I don't share my code basically means nothing. Somebody, somewhere, will come up with the same things I've come up with. So the "but for" argument fails. The world gets the benefit of my code even if I don't release it, because somebody out there will think of it independently.
Unless, of course, I'm some kind of genius. Anybody out there think I'm some kind of genius?
You don't have to tell anyone about your program, but just like a scientist doing research who never publishes, you do nothing for the community. That's fine. Don't. But the reason to do so is the same as it is in science.
Again, you're thinking too shallowly. Why is it a moral good for us to advance science and understanding? Because through science and understanding we can directly improve our world, and do good for other people. Simple.
Why is it a moral good for us to advance the art of programming?
Note here my use of the phrase "moral good." I chose it quite deliberately. A moral good is something that should result in a compulsion to action in a moral person. Saving a drowning person is a moral good, so a moral person when faced with a drowning person will be compelled to throw a life preserver. What moral good can we think of that would produce in a moral person a compulsion to release his or her source code?
Since this conversation started with the idea of an obligation to share code, I think it's reasonable to expect there to be some moral justification for that obligation. So far, I've seen none.
By releasing your code, your work becomes part of the larger whole, where it may be used to solve other problems and provide other services. By not releasing your code, it stagnates and dies.
Isn't that an easy choice?
Yup. It sure is. You worry about your code, and I'll worry about mine.
What is it, exactly, that so excites you about telling other people what to do with their code?