Freenet is NOT just about absolute freedom of speech. You want to make it about absolute freedom of speech? Limit it to just text files. No encoding of binaries just text.
I'm sure I could never foresee a situation where someone had a need to publish any kind of binary data on an anonymous network. It's not like any government around the world would ever think of censoring the publishing of photographs or videos. Unless they were illegal photos or videos, and everyone knows that illegal=="child porn" and nothing else. Never could I conceive of a government that would censor the publishing of photos or videos of its agents committing atrocities on their own citizens or citizens of another country. Nothing like that has ever happened. Therefore anyone who has a desire to be able to publish binary data anonymously MUST be a child pornographer. It's as simple as that. Black and white.
Furthermore, since the presence of any amount of child porn on a network is valid criteria for terminating use of that network, we all have a moral responsibility to immediately cease using email. Indeed, we must cease using the Internet entirely. Anyone who continues to use the Internet henceforth will almost certainly try to justify it as being a freedom of speech issue, but brothers, we all know that since the Internet allows the transmission of binary data, including ENCRYPTED binary data, we all know it's not a freedom of speech issue. Rather, it is all about the illegal distribution of warez and porn (child porn, of course), being defended by flag-waving pedophiles. It is NOT about freedom of speech. If it were, they would have limited the Internet to only allow text transfers. Duh!
LWATCDR, I'm sure your moral duty is as clear as mine, and like me you will never again log into the filthy, child-porn promoting Internet. Why, at this very moment your computer could be hosting a trojan file server containing images of child porn. To be safe, after you disconnect from the Internet you should format your hard drive. I'll be doing the same. It's too bad we won't get another chance to talk, but at least we will all have a clear conscience knowing that we are no longer supporting a P2P networking system that allows the easy distribution of child porn (along with some other stuff that doesn't matter).
Hey, speaking of TVs and cameras, you know how videoconferencing has always been a little awkward because it's difficult for both parties to simultaneously make eye contact? If you look at the image on the screen you will appear to the other person as if you're looking away from the screen (i.e. not making eye contact with them), because the camera is recording you from above the screen (or below, or to the side)? Wouldn't this technique be able to morph the onscreen image so each person appears to be looking directly out of the screen, even though the camera is still recording you from a higher angle? It would be as if the camera is in the center of the screen, which would be the only other way to make it appear as if you were looking directly at the viewer on the other end. Simulated eye-contact by exchanging the position of the light source (TV) and the camera in the projected image.
We have national ID cards in Belgium and I never ever felt they were a threat to my freedom at all. I'm 35 and so far I think I needed that card about 5 times. Other then those 5 times it is just a card that sits in your wallet and doesn't bother me in the slightest bit. I really don't see what freedom has to do with that.
Congratulations on adding absolutely nothing to the conversation. You see, Belgium is not the United States of America. This card, if it is created, will be in use constantly in this country. It will be used to keep you from getting on an airplane, or crossing borders inside or outside the US, or maybe getting a bank account, or a loan, or ordering something online, or any number of other things. When it gets stolen it will give a wealth of identifying information about you to whoever stole it. You see, it will be in use because it's being promoted as something that will protect us from terrorists, even though it will do no such thing. If you travel a lot you will be showing this card quite often, even just to travel without your own state. (That's kind of like traveling from one city in Belgium to another. Are you able to fly inside Belgium without your national ID card? We won't be able to.)
It has to do with freedom because it's exactly the sort of thing we have berated other countries for requiring from their citizens, particularly the old U.S.S.R. It is a precursor to a police state, and many of us would rather not see what is supposedly the free-est nation on Earth degenerate into a police state (as if we don't already, but I digress).
Someone who hasn't lived in the US for a long time really can't comprehend the value we place on protecting our freedoms. We like the fact that we can travel from state to state without a passport, and we dread the day when we hear "papers, please" at any state border or "checkpoint". Checkpoints, the very things we reviled in communist or fascist countries because they restricted freedom.
If you only had to show your card 5 times in your whole life it bears no resemblance to the national ID card we would have. We are seriously on the wrong track in this country, and we have to fight tooth and nail to keep it from getting worse. It's nice to hear that you don't mind having a national ID card, but this is a whole different country with a different government and population with different attitudes toward freedom. Your opinion is irrelevant to our situation.
Having IM is kinda like having everyone at your company working in your cubicle. Anyone can just blurt out some kind of crap without thinking it through.
There are solutions to this sort of situation that don't necessarily involve cutting off a handy communication medium entirely. At least in ICQ, you can make yourself invisible to everyone but certain individuals, or to be slightly less sneaky but still emphasize the point that you're busy and trying to get work done you can make yourself appear as "Busy" or "Do Not Disturb" to the annoying individuals. Kind of like using an answering machine or caller ID to screen your calls, but more versatile.
Now, if not a single person you were chatting with was helping you be more productive, then by all means turn it off.
Relying on ANY software is stupid, by that logic, since if the author decides to screw me around, not fix a bug, or just generally bugger off and move on to a new project, I'm JUST as screwed as if it were MS who did it.
No, you aren't. The difference is, with FOSS you at least have a fighting chance. You may not be a programmer (most people in this world aren't), but if your company is relying on said software to do business you have the ability to pay one or more people who ARE programmers, and they can fix the software for you. This is no big deal for most medium-to-large businesses, or even for small businesses depending on the size of the problem. If it's something that's important to a large number of people it will almost always get taken care of, or a free and often better replacement will be created.
With closed software, you are simply screwed, unless you are big enough to buy the closed source code, and that's assuming the source code still exists in some usable form. With free software, you are NOT "just as screwed" as you are when a closed-source company dies.
You're right about one thing, just because open source CAN be fixed doesn't mean that it WOULD be fixed if it's not a popular bit of software. But "can" is ever so much better than "can't", wouldn't you agree? What you get with orphaned close-source applications is almost always "CAN'T". To avoid getting stuck with orphaned open source software that you can't fix yourself or can't afford to pay someone to fix, you just have to pay a little attention and try to stick with popular software that WILL get fixed. Oh, and taking advantage of actual standards as much as possible is always helpful when you're forced to replace an application with an alternative.
Your statement that developers will ALWAYS eventually abandon a project and that all popular open source software will ALWAYS become non-profitable because everyone will download and compile their own copy is just nonsense. If that were true, Red Hat (and all other commercial Linux distributions, etc.) would have been out of business a long time ago, since you can download their entire OS for free or get the free CentOS or White Box versions. Same software, just relabeled. And yet, companies are still willing to pay thousands per license for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. The reasons range from support to tax write-offs to convenience, but the point being there will always be a market for F/OS software, or at least for quality F/OS software. You're just not understanding the market or the developers.
My point was that you aren't saying the way things actually are, which is that this is entirely Microsoft's fault and has nothing to do with Mozilla or any other web browser developer that doesn't support ActiveX, of which there are many.
Look in the mirror to see the wall. The things you say just keep getting more ridiculous. "Widely accepted standard" my ass. ActiveX is not a bloody standard! It is not Mozilla's "fault" for not supporting a proprietary non-standard. This is exactly why you are getting nowhere trying to convince anyone that Mozilla should support ActiveX. They're busy supporting actual standards that are beneficial to the entire community instead of crap that only supports Microsoft Windows. Thank goodness.
I give up, buddy. Have fun perpetuating your ActiveX "standard". I mean, have fun blaming other software for perpetuating it by not supporting it. I admit it, I am not smart enough to make that logical leap.
" And by perpetuating Windows lock-in, that supports the growth of cross-platform software how, exactly?"
I could not switch to Mozilla because I was locked in with MS.
Mozilla perpetuated the lock-in. Simple simple simple.
Didn't you just basically say something that makes absolutely no sense, which is that Mozilla perpetuates your Windows/ActiveX lock-in by NOT perpetuating Windows/ActiveX lock-in? And thus fail to answer the question on how perpetuating lock-in is a good thing that will support cross-platform growth? I realize it would be convenient for you to have Mozilla support ActiveX on Windows, but how would that NOT perpetuate ActiveX lock-in, and how would it support cross-platform growth? You'd still be locked into the Windows version of Mozilla because of ActiveX, which wouldn't run on the other platforms.
Sure, you couldn't switch to Mozilla because of MS lock-in, but you also couldn't switch to Opera, K-Meleon, Safari, Konqueror, OmniWeb, or any other non-IE browser for the same reason, a reason created by MS. How is all of that Mozilla's fault? Why isn't it Apple's fault? Or Opera's fault? According to your anti-logic they should all be blamed for perpetuating your lock-in. After all, they aren't doing anything to NOT perpetuate your lock-in, so it really must be their fault that Microsoft developed this lock-in technology and your company chose to use it.
Wait, what did I just say? "Microsoft developed this lock-in technology and your company chose to use it." Hmmm... There's something there, some hidden meaning I can't quite grasp... Maybe... Maybe some fault lies with Microsoft themselves for perpetuating your vendor lock-in? But no, that's silly.
I didn't bother reading past that.
It was a comment meant to point out that one part of your statement had nothing to do with the other. Same as your bizarre example above where Microsoft does something and somehow it's Mozilla's fault. I'm hearing you quite clearly, but you seem to have some cognitive dissonance going on on the receiving end. You have managed to convince yourself that it's logical to blame third parties for the actions of Microsoft and the past decisions of your company to use some bad technology. And so, you continue to completely miss the point. And, you continue to perpetuate your vendor lock-in by not moving away from ActiveX. It's the ActiveX that is your problem, not the browser running it.
World domination, huh? Saying that Mozilla is all about killing off IE is probably about as true as saying the point of Linux is to replace Windows on the desktop. Although we all may wish these things were true, they have little bearing on the actual reasons for the existence of these open source projects. Geeks just wanted a better browser, and they didn't want to use IE. If anything can be said to be the whole point of Mozilla, it would be to make a platform-agnostic high quality web browser. So far they have done pretty well at that.
By not supporting a non-cross-platform feature, they're slowing the growth of cross-platform software.
What are you smoking? I can't think of any other way to react to that. Did you even read what you just wrote? And by perpetuating Windows lock-in, that supports the growth of cross-platform software how, exactly? That's right, it doesn't.
Whether or not my previous company was acting intelligently or not, it doesn't have the slightest bearing on the behaviour of the Mozilla development team. It is not my nor my previous company's fault they intentionally chose not to support a feature that has some healthy use in the IE world.
No, as I've been trying to explain, you're looking at this whole situation bass-ackwards. The Mozilla team owes you nothing. It is not the Mozilla development team's fault that your company chose to lock themselves into a proprietary technology, and I'm sure not many other people would ever consider using the word "healthy" in the same sentence with ActiveX. It's more like a cancer that is eating your company's bottom line and destroying the ability to adapt. If it did have good uses there might be a different attitude toward supporting it.
Again, if it's so important to your company to continue using ActiveX while switching to open source, why aren't you employing some developers to code up ActiveX support for the open source projects you want to be using? Obviously the Mozilla developers feel like they have more important cross-platform features to work on. Dare I say, some of the very same features drew you to the software in the first place. Also quite obviously, the vast majority of the community of users does not want Mozilla to inherently support ActiveX. We don't see it as a healthy use of the Mozilla team's time.
I'm sorry, but open source is not solely about replacing or destroying Microsoft. It's about providing alternatives based on open standards. Asking cross-platform open source projects to spend time developing support for lock-in technologies is like asking them to sabotage their own projects. There is already at least one third party group working on an ActiveX plugin, so why don't you go tell them to work faster, or give them some money. You decide which will produce better results. And then if you really think that support for ActiveX will help Mozilla, donate that ability back to the community. Prove us all wrong.
You can sit here and tell me I'm wrong all you want, but at the end of the day there are a lot of people wanting to leave IE and can't.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Therefore, my client is not guilty." Nobody said there aren't a lot of people locked into various Microsoft software, including IE. The problem is how you're going about trying to get that fixed. You're not wrong. You are definitely locked into IE/ActiveX. What's "wrong" is your proposed method of escaping that lock-in, because it's really no escape at all. It serves very little purpose to escape IE and continue to be locked into ActiveX, and it certainly doesn't help the community at large. ActiveX is your main security issue, not IE.
Since the Mozilla team has the power to solve this problem, and won't, the fault is theirs.
I don't know what makes you think it's such an easy fix, and again, the fault is definitely not theirs. Might as well say it's Sun's fault that your screwed up Java applets don't work on Linux because they're using propriet
Instead of ranting and raving about open source, CROSS-PLATFORM software not supporting some proprietary junk that only works on a single platform, maybe you should be ranting and raving at your organization for locking itself into ActiveX in the first place, and doing your best to CONSTRUCTIVELY move them toward a better solution for the future. We realize that it would be all cute and convenient in the SHORT TERM for you to be able to use ActiveX in Firefox, but in the LONG TERM we would be damaging open source and computing choices in general by maintaining AX as if it were a viable choice. The fact that it doesn't work in non-Microsoft environments is an incentive to not use it in the future. I'm sure I'm not alone in the opinion that this is a positive thing.
I think the problem you're having is that many of us geeky open source people are "big picture" folks who put the ideology of freedom of choice and compatibility ahead of everything else because we've seen (or foreseen) the consequences of what happens when you lock yourself into proprietary crap. You're dealing with those consequences right now. Wouldn't you prefer it if future generations didn't have to? Use your energy to convince your organization to move away from ActiveX right now instead of trying to convince open source developers and advocates that there is some benefit to perpetuating proprietary technologies as bad as ActiveX.
I'm sure you realize that it's already possible to set up IE to always prompt the user for permission to run Javascript and ActiveX controls. That would be practically the same level of security as putting a plugin in Firefox. Also the annoyance of constantly having to respond to the prompts can help promote awareness of the fact that ActiveX is a security problem. When the users ask to have the prompts turned off you just explain to them in no uncertain terms that they are there to protect your computing infrastructure. If your supervisors tell you to disable the prompts and stop annoying people in IE, the same thing would happen with Firefox.
So really, no matter how you look at it there is very little point to what you're trying to do, and it's NOT solely because everyone here is a bunch of jerks who like flipping off Microsoft. Some of us actually do think this stuff out, and as far as we are concerned supporting ActiveX is a bad idea. Now, if it's really that important to your organization, I'm sure you'd have no problem with paying some developers to make an ActiveX plugin for Firefox and make it work in OpenOffice. But it would almost certainly be cheaper in the long run and probably even the short run, to pay some developers to help you move away from ActiveX. Strike at the problem, not the symptom.
I realize it's not a fixed price, but I donate annually to the Mozilla foundation for the same reason. Honestly my donation to MoFo is more than Opera would cost me, but I consider it a genuinely usefull charity and a little extra tax writeoff is fine by me. Hell, even my parents donate to MoFo because I suggested they do so if they find the software useful enough.
Wow. You are one big, bad, MoFo... supporter. Baby.
The incredibly amount of work that goes into each new major OS X version easily justifies putting a price tag on them. These aren't Windows 98 to Windows Me steps, these are considerable feature and functionality upgrades.
You forgot one of the best things: speed. Every release of OS X from 10.0 to 10.3 has run faster on the same hardware. Panther runs as well on a 1999 slot-load 350MHz iMac as OS 9 did when the machine was new.
Every release of Windows from 1.0 to XP has run slower on the same hardware, but people continually fork over the cash for the latest version without getting nearly as many new functional features as Apple has managed to pack into each new version of OS X. Compared to the evolution of OS X, going from Windows 95 to Windows XP amounts to a bunch of driver updates and a GUI tweak, along with being forced to buy 2-4 new computers along the way to keep up with the hardware requirements.
Anybody who thinks it's unjust to pay $129 ($99 if you find it on sale) every 18 months for such a powerful tool has a twisted view of things. Hell, I gave Mandrake $120 a year for the last two years because I felt it was important to support a good Linux distro that I happened to be using, and OS X is twice the desktop OS that Linux is. I'll bet a lot of people here pay more than $129 every 90 days to keep their gas tank full. What is the big deal? Apple has made an incredibly good and quickly improving operating system that lets you get things done. They're simultaneously providing competition for Microsoft and motivation for Linux to improve itself so that it can also compete with Microsoft effectively. They're supporting open source technologies like LDAP, CUPS and Samba. I think the deserve some monetary support if you want to use their OS.
So are you honestly going to tell me developers are going to bother developing with features that only 10-20% of their already small userbase can use?
I would think that for the high-end video and graphics applications that CoreImage and CoreVideo will really be useful for, that 10-20% already comprised nearly 100% of their userbase. In other words, the graphics professionals who are going to be using professional graphics applications that make good use of CI/CV will all have high-end Macs which will have the requisite hardware. And, since CI/CV is so cool, more and more graphics professionals will move to the Mac platform, so the userbase will be growing. Also, as someone else said, CI/CV will work on lesser Macs, it will just be a little slower.
I don't see any real problem. I'm sure the average home user will make do just fine with the stock video cards that come installed in the bottom-end machines. You get what you pay for, and the low-end Mac cards already seem to be better than your average low-end PC video card. The form factor is a large part of the draw of both the Mac mini and the iBook anyway, so most owners won't even care that much about the video cards.
Why does silicone rubber (or whatever is used in breast implants) become rock hard?
Answer: It doesn't. In some cases scar tissue forms around the implant and puts pressure on the implant causing it to become hard and round. It also happens with saline implants. The body is reacting to the foreign object, not to the stuff inside it. I read about this on some site that was all about plastic surgery. Nasty stuff. Anyway, search for "capsular contracture" and you'll find out more than you probably wanted to know. They do say massage is supposed to help.
I think we'd all like Linux and open source in general to become the dominant form of software. The flexibility is truly amazing, and it's nice being able to control the software instead of the other way around.
The problem with Linux is that:
- 10 years ago you had to figure out how to do 10,000 different things in order to turn it into a moderately productive desktop OS, and...
- 5 years ago you had to figure out 5,000 different things in order to turn it into a moderately productive desktop OS, and...
- today you still have to figure out 1,500 different little annoying things to make it as productive as a Mac or even Windows.
And once you go through all that you tend to forget the hell that "n00bs" have to go through in order to be productive in Linux, at least at the level that a typical Mac user enjoys five minutes after plugging in a new Mac. Yes, you learned a lot, but what you went through was like being forced to build a car and become a certified mechanic just so you could drive to McDonald's for lunch. It's nice to have a choice to go through that if you're interested, but it shouldn't be a requirement for every single user.
Freedesktop.org and other such standardization projects are a good start, but Linux needs another couple of years and much better cooperation in order to become a really competitive desktop OS. Go Linux!
Like I said, and you just confirmed, there isn't a set of applications for Linux to match iLife/iWork. The smooth integration and usability is half of what makes them so great! You said so yourself. I'm perfectly aware that you can do almost anything with Linux. It just isn't easy. WINE included, and it's still a gamble whether any particular application will work under WINE anyway, even though it has improved drastically in recent years. In the end, Linux really can't compare with a Mac for a general home desktop user who just wants to surf the net, read and send email, edit some photos, and maybe make a slideshow on DVD.
Regarding the file system, you can't treat home desktop users like users on a mainframe. It just doesn't work. Don't tell me I "need not concern myself" with anything outside of/home./mnt is outside of/home, and that's where my drives are. OS X has the/Users folder where you keep your stuff, but they also show you all the drives in the Finder, without making you look for them. Guess what? The drives are all mounted under/Volumes (it's still UNIX after all) but you never need to know that! Any storage device that you connect just magically shows up in the overall file browser, including network drives. They have the concept of the overall computer with physical drives or partitioned drives all being available to the user.
I want quick access to every drive in my computer, including any removable media and network drives. Linux has so far failed to give me that, at least at the same level I've come to enjoy from working with Windows, Mac OS, and BeOS for the last 1.5 decades. Failed utterly. Supposedly Linux can do automounting, but so far I haven't seen a functional automount deamon. Mandrake had some automount thing going on and I always turned it off since it kept doing dumb stuff like making me eject a CD as root after I installed some new packages from it. I had to resort to the command line and knowledge that a new user would never have, in order to retrieve the CD. That's abject failure for a desktop OS aimed at home users, as far as I'm concerned. Come on, most desktop operating systems have let me interact with my drives/volumes more easily since 1990. It was easier to navigate drives in Windows 3.1 than it is in Linux.
Linux has come a long way and I'm still rooting for it, but it has a long way to go for general home desktop users. Notice how it's always a power user of some kind that says Linux is just as good as OS X? You, a power user, can have as many Gentoo boxes as you want, and more power to you. It doesn't make Linux any more appropriate for the common, clueless user. Or even for people like me. I have at least half a clue and I've been using Linux for years, and it's still clunky for me. There are too many things I still can't figure out how to do. It all comes down to usability, which is why my next computer will be a Mac, and why I recommend a Mac to any non-techie that comes to me for advice these days.
I've noticed that Windows users, even the ones that are used to pirating anything and everything and think nothing of it, generally have a change of outlook once they actually use the software the comes with a Mac. It's like they've finally found something worth paying real money for.
And of course pirating software isn't limited to the PC platform, so even if they don't want to pay for it they can often get a copy from their Mac-using buddies. It happens on the Mac side almost as much as on the PC side. And no, it's not theft, but it is copyright infringement, and it can still get you in trouble no matter what platform you're using.
That's right... legally. But in the real world such details are not important. That's also a big obstacle to open source adoption, too. 'Why should I use The Gimp if I have also Photoshop available for free?'
I think questions like that are still overshadowed with questions like, "Why should I use this strange software with a strange name and a really strange interface when I can get Photoshop for free and it doesn't suck?" or "Why should I use this weird GIMP thing when I can own the very usable Photoshop Elements 3.0 legally for $129, which will let me color-correct my photos ten times faster and easier?"
For many people, price is not the main concern, which is why so many are willing to spend $600 on the full version of Photoshop CS. I know this because I'm one of those people. I've used the GIMP and I'd rather pay for Photoshop Elements for personal use, because in my opinion the GIMP sucks. If I had a business where part of what I needed to do to make money was editing graphics, I would pay for Photoshop CS because it would pay for itself. The GIMP simply does not compare, and price doesn't have much to do with it. As free software, the GIMP is amazing. When you compare it with something like Photoshop for real work, it's not so amazing anymore. That's the obstacle, not the price.
Hardly, the performance of your Mini still sucks ass.
For the same price my free-OS system is going to be better as a development machine.
Riiiight. Because your average home user is also a developer interested in squeezing every spare cycle out of his processor for all the compiling he does.
Re:I would buy a Mac...
on
Return of the Mac
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
That's impressive, by in my opinion Linux (which I have used various flavors of for several years for desktops and servers) still doesn't cut it for the average home user. Many users want a few simple apps like Photoshop Elements, and of course they can't have that on Linux. Instead, a bunch of idiots like you and me point them at something called "the GIMP". We say, "Look, it's free!" They say, "I don't care, it sucks, I want Photoshop Elements." We are not necessarily smarter than them.
There definitely isn't a set of applications for Linux to match iLife/iWork. IPhoto alone has no match on Linux. Besides which, we all know what happens with most of these Linspire machines. People buy it for the hardware and throw a pirated copy of Windows and about $1,000 worth of other pirated software on it. Unfortunate but true.
So, I see the machine, but I don't see the legal software and the usability that goes with it. Of course, that's just my opinion, but it's based on direct observation that tells me Linux still isn't quite ready to compete with OS X except in niche markets (where it usually kicks butt). As a general desktop OS it is sorely lacking. I mean, lately I've tried some of the very newest and most "user friendly" distros like Knoppix, Kubuntu and Mandrake 10.1, and none of them will even auto-mount a simple USB key on the desktop!
And I've never yet met a Linux file manager or desktop environment that made it easy to navigate (or even find) the various drives inside and connected to my computer, at least not in any way similar to how it works in the Windows/Mac/BeOS file managers. Linux still seems to be stuck on the whole/dev/hda3 thing instead of translating all that garbage into something a normal person can understand, like a drive icon on the desktop with the volume label displayed under it. What a concept, huh? Of all things, KDE still displays the device name and mount path on the desktop under the drive icon, as if that would actually be useful to the common user! I like KDE in general, but give me a break. "/mnt/storagedrive3 [/dev/sdb2]"? How is that useful to the average person? Volume labels have been around forever. Why aren't we using them, like every other sensible desktop OS?
These kind of things should be considered showstopper bugs if we want average people to use Linux as a desktop. We do want that, don't we? So far I haven't really seen any Linux software even going in the right direction.
Windows users can get all the software they want for free.
No software would include no Windows, and you can't get Windows for free, legally. So you get to start out with a hacked, illegal copy of XP with your new $450 PC with LCD and 512MB RAM (which we still haven't actually seen at that price). To anyone who is willing to do that to save a few bucks, I say "Have fun".
Where do you get off saying something like, "I for one think it's about time"? Did you contribute even a single line of code to get it to this point? Please show a little gratitude to the developers. They're volunteers, after all.
The developers are volunteers, sure. But so are the fans.
Software doesn't live in a vacuum. It's a give and take situation. I'm getting a bit tired of all the comments that say developers who give away free stuff should be able to do whatever the hell they want no matter what. It's sort of like saying a corporation should be able to do whatever it wants in the pursuit of profit, no matter how many people get screwed over. If I decide to use a piece of free software, I'm putting time and effort into it. If I like it, I may even try to advocate for it to be used by more people. If the software dies or stops being updated, it will be like I wasted part of my life. I'll have to find a replacement, and for each replacement there is a chance the developer will cease developing it and leave me in the lurch again. I don't know how to make this clear, but my point is that the users of software are giving something, not just taking something.
There is a relationship in free software between the developers and the users, whether the users are other developers or just plain users. Without this relationship, what's the point in ever releasing your software? So how about we show a little more respect both for developers and for users. Not just developers.
Re:I would buy a Mac...
on
Return of the Mac
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
But lets be honest, if I can get an AMD system with a 15inch LCD screen, Sempron 2200 proc, and half a gig of ram for about 450usd
Show us this marvelous machine that costs $450 and includes a complete operating system and equivalent software to match iLife and AppleWorks (or iWork for another $80), and an LCD monitor that won't make your eyes bleed, and 512MB of RAM that's worth having. Seriously, show us this machine. You were talking about something with no software, right?
how am I gonna convince my wife that I should buy a 600usd mac mini
That's easy, just sit her down in front of one for a few minutes.
, plus 250usd for the monitor, plus the keyboard and the silly one button mouse?
(1) Odds are you already have a perfectly good CRT monitor at home or you can get one for $120. If you want a decent LCD, you'll pay for it whether you get a Mac or a PC. Any monitor with a standard VGA or DVI connector will work with the Mac mini.
(2) Odds are you already have a keyboard. If not, USB keyboards go for about $25. You do not need to buy one from Apple. Any USB keyboard will work with the Mac mini.
(3) OS X has been around for what, five years now? And for five years now, OS X has had context menus and support for mouses with two or more buttons. Mine has 5 buttons including the scroll wheel/button. You do not need to buy a "silly one button mouse" from Apple. Any USB two-button scroll mouse will work with the Mac mini.
In the end, as so many of us have realized already, the cost is now very low, and very well justified.
Last time I checked credit cards are not generic, but (supposed to be) tied to your name and signature. In other words, you have to convince a machine or a person that you are the authorized user of the card in order to use it. I.e., you have to assume my identity to use my card.
I would pretty much call that a type of identity theft, or if you want to be pedantic and picky, a type of identity theft was required in order for the credit card fraud to occur. I'm afraid I can't see the point in disengaging the two. It is the assumption or theft of identity that is the real problem in any case. If the system were working properly no charges could have been made on the cards.
Slashdot Mirror
Freenet is NOT just about absolute freedom of speech. You want to make it about absolute freedom of speech? Limit it to just text files. No encoding of binaries just text.
Yeah, that's a great idea. Very workable. Since text content and binary content are two completely different things that can't possibly be treated as interchangeable data types.
I'm sure I could never foresee a situation where someone had a need to publish any kind of binary data on an anonymous network. It's not like any government around the world would ever think of censoring the publishing of photographs or videos. Unless they were illegal photos or videos, and everyone knows that illegal=="child porn" and nothing else. Never could I conceive of a government that would censor the publishing of photos or videos of its agents committing atrocities on their own citizens or citizens of another country. Nothing like that has ever happened. Therefore anyone who has a desire to be able to publish binary data anonymously MUST be a child pornographer. It's as simple as that. Black and white.
Furthermore, since the presence of any amount of child porn on a network is valid criteria for terminating use of that network, we all have a moral responsibility to immediately cease using email. Indeed, we must cease using the Internet entirely. Anyone who continues to use the Internet henceforth will almost certainly try to justify it as being a freedom of speech issue, but brothers, we all know that since the Internet allows the transmission of binary data, including ENCRYPTED binary data, we all know it's not a freedom of speech issue. Rather, it is all about the illegal distribution of warez and porn (child porn, of course), being defended by flag-waving pedophiles. It is NOT about freedom of speech. If it were, they would have limited the Internet to only allow text transfers. Duh!
LWATCDR, I'm sure your moral duty is as clear as mine, and like me you will never again log into the filthy, child-porn promoting Internet. Why, at this very moment your computer could be hosting a trojan file server containing images of child porn. To be safe, after you disconnect from the Internet you should format your hard drive. I'll be doing the same. It's too bad we won't get another chance to talk, but at least we will all have a clear conscience knowing that we are no longer supporting a P2P networking system that allows the easy distribution of child porn (along with some other stuff that doesn't matter).
Hey, speaking of TVs and cameras, you know how videoconferencing has always been a little awkward because it's difficult for both parties to simultaneously make eye contact? If you look at the image on the screen you will appear to the other person as if you're looking away from the screen (i.e. not making eye contact with them), because the camera is recording you from above the screen (or below, or to the side)? Wouldn't this technique be able to morph the onscreen image so each person appears to be looking directly out of the screen, even though the camera is still recording you from a higher angle? It would be as if the camera is in the center of the screen, which would be the only other way to make it appear as if you were looking directly at the viewer on the other end. Simulated eye-contact by exchanging the position of the light source (TV) and the camera in the projected image.
Or can they do this already somehow?
We have national ID cards in Belgium and I never ever felt they were a threat to my freedom at all. I'm 35 and so far I think I needed that card about 5 times. Other then those 5 times it is just a card that sits in your wallet and doesn't bother me in the slightest bit. I really don't see what freedom has to do with that.
Congratulations on adding absolutely nothing to the conversation. You see, Belgium is not the United States of America. This card, if it is created, will be in use constantly in this country. It will be used to keep you from getting on an airplane, or crossing borders inside or outside the US, or maybe getting a bank account, or a loan, or ordering something online, or any number of other things. When it gets stolen it will give a wealth of identifying information about you to whoever stole it. You see, it will be in use because it's being promoted as something that will protect us from terrorists, even though it will do no such thing. If you travel a lot you will be showing this card quite often, even just to travel without your own state. (That's kind of like traveling from one city in Belgium to another. Are you able to fly inside Belgium without your national ID card? We won't be able to.)
It has to do with freedom because it's exactly the sort of thing we have berated other countries for requiring from their citizens, particularly the old U.S.S.R. It is a precursor to a police state, and many of us would rather not see what is supposedly the free-est nation on Earth degenerate into a police state (as if we don't already, but I digress).
Someone who hasn't lived in the US for a long time really can't comprehend the value we place on protecting our freedoms. We like the fact that we can travel from state to state without a passport, and we dread the day when we hear "papers, please" at any state border or "checkpoint". Checkpoints, the very things we reviled in communist or fascist countries because they restricted freedom.
If you only had to show your card 5 times in your whole life it bears no resemblance to the national ID card we would have. We are seriously on the wrong track in this country, and we have to fight tooth and nail to keep it from getting worse. It's nice to hear that you don't mind having a national ID card, but this is a whole different country with a different government and population with different attitudes toward freedom. Your opinion is irrelevant to our situation.
Having IM is kinda like having everyone at your company working in your cubicle. Anyone can just blurt out some kind of crap without thinking it through.
There are solutions to this sort of situation that don't necessarily involve cutting off a handy communication medium entirely. At least in ICQ, you can make yourself invisible to everyone but certain individuals, or to be slightly less sneaky but still emphasize the point that you're busy and trying to get work done you can make yourself appear as "Busy" or "Do Not Disturb" to the annoying individuals. Kind of like using an answering machine or caller ID to screen your calls, but more versatile.
Now, if not a single person you were chatting with was helping you be more productive, then by all means turn it off.
/. has ads?
Relying on ANY software is stupid, by that logic, since if the author decides to screw me around, not fix a bug, or just generally bugger off and move on to a new project, I'm JUST as screwed as if it were MS who did it.
No, you aren't. The difference is, with FOSS you at least have a fighting chance. You may not be a programmer (most people in this world aren't), but if your company is relying on said software to do business you have the ability to pay one or more people who ARE programmers, and they can fix the software for you. This is no big deal for most medium-to-large businesses, or even for small businesses depending on the size of the problem. If it's something that's important to a large number of people it will almost always get taken care of, or a free and often better replacement will be created.
With closed software, you are simply screwed, unless you are big enough to buy the closed source code, and that's assuming the source code still exists in some usable form. With free software, you are NOT "just as screwed" as you are when a closed-source company dies.
You're right about one thing, just because open source CAN be fixed doesn't mean that it WOULD be fixed if it's not a popular bit of software. But "can" is ever so much better than "can't", wouldn't you agree? What you get with orphaned close-source applications is almost always "CAN'T". To avoid getting stuck with orphaned open source software that you can't fix yourself or can't afford to pay someone to fix, you just have to pay a little attention and try to stick with popular software that WILL get fixed. Oh, and taking advantage of actual standards as much as possible is always helpful when you're forced to replace an application with an alternative.
Your statement that developers will ALWAYS eventually abandon a project and that all popular open source software will ALWAYS become non-profitable because everyone will download and compile their own copy is just nonsense. If that were true, Red Hat (and all other commercial Linux distributions, etc.) would have been out of business a long time ago, since you can download their entire OS for free or get the free CentOS or White Box versions. Same software, just relabeled. And yet, companies are still willing to pay thousands per license for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. The reasons range from support to tax write-offs to convenience, but the point being there will always be a market for F/OS software, or at least for quality F/OS software. You're just not understanding the market or the developers.
My point was that you aren't saying the way things actually are, which is that this is entirely Microsoft's fault and has nothing to do with Mozilla or any other web browser developer that doesn't support ActiveX, of which there are many.
Look in the mirror to see the wall. The things you say just keep getting more ridiculous. "Widely accepted standard" my ass. ActiveX is not a bloody standard! It is not Mozilla's "fault" for not supporting a proprietary non-standard. This is exactly why you are getting nowhere trying to convince anyone that Mozilla should support ActiveX. They're busy supporting actual standards that are beneficial to the entire community instead of crap that only supports Microsoft Windows. Thank goodness.
I give up, buddy. Have fun perpetuating your ActiveX "standard". I mean, have fun blaming other software for perpetuating it by not supporting it. I admit it, I am not smart enough to make that logical leap.
" And by perpetuating Windows lock-in, that supports the growth of cross-platform software how, exactly?"
I could not switch to Mozilla because I was locked in with MS.
Mozilla perpetuated the lock-in. Simple simple simple.
Didn't you just basically say something that makes absolutely no sense, which is that Mozilla perpetuates your Windows/ActiveX lock-in by NOT perpetuating Windows/ActiveX lock-in? And thus fail to answer the question on how perpetuating lock-in is a good thing that will support cross-platform growth? I realize it would be convenient for you to have Mozilla support ActiveX on Windows, but how would that NOT perpetuate ActiveX lock-in, and how would it support cross-platform growth? You'd still be locked into the Windows version of Mozilla because of ActiveX, which wouldn't run on the other platforms.
Sure, you couldn't switch to Mozilla because of MS lock-in, but you also couldn't switch to Opera, K-Meleon, Safari, Konqueror, OmniWeb, or any other non-IE browser for the same reason, a reason created by MS. How is all of that Mozilla's fault? Why isn't it Apple's fault? Or Opera's fault? According to your anti-logic they should all be blamed for perpetuating your lock-in. After all, they aren't doing anything to NOT perpetuate your lock-in, so it really must be their fault that Microsoft developed this lock-in technology and your company chose to use it.
Wait, what did I just say? "Microsoft developed this lock-in technology and your company chose to use it." Hmmm... There's something there, some hidden meaning I can't quite grasp... Maybe... Maybe some fault lies with Microsoft themselves for perpetuating your vendor lock-in? But no, that's silly.
I didn't bother reading past that.
It was a comment meant to point out that one part of your statement had nothing to do with the other. Same as your bizarre example above where Microsoft does something and somehow it's Mozilla's fault. I'm hearing you quite clearly, but you seem to have some cognitive dissonance going on on the receiving end. You have managed to convince yourself that it's logical to blame third parties for the actions of Microsoft and the past decisions of your company to use some bad technology. And so, you continue to completely miss the point. And, you continue to perpetuate your vendor lock-in by not moving away from ActiveX. It's the ActiveX that is your problem, not the browser running it.
World domination, huh? Saying that Mozilla is all about killing off IE is probably about as true as saying the point of Linux is to replace Windows on the desktop. Although we all may wish these things were true, they have little bearing on the actual reasons for the existence of these open source projects. Geeks just wanted a better browser, and they didn't want to use IE. If anything can be said to be the whole point of Mozilla, it would be to make a platform-agnostic high quality web browser. So far they have done pretty well at that.
By not supporting a non-cross-platform feature, they're slowing the growth of cross-platform software.
What are you smoking? I can't think of any other way to react to that. Did you even read what you just wrote? And by perpetuating Windows lock-in, that supports the growth of cross-platform software how, exactly? That's right, it doesn't.
Whether or not my previous company was acting intelligently or not, it doesn't have the slightest bearing on the behaviour of the Mozilla development team. It is not my nor my previous company's fault they intentionally chose not to support a feature that has some healthy use in the IE world.
No, as I've been trying to explain, you're looking at this whole situation bass-ackwards. The Mozilla team owes you nothing. It is not the Mozilla development team's fault that your company chose to lock themselves into a proprietary technology, and I'm sure not many other people would ever consider using the word "healthy" in the same sentence with ActiveX. It's more like a cancer that is eating your company's bottom line and destroying the ability to adapt. If it did have good uses there might be a different attitude toward supporting it.
Again, if it's so important to your company to continue using ActiveX while switching to open source, why aren't you employing some developers to code up ActiveX support for the open source projects you want to be using? Obviously the Mozilla developers feel like they have more important cross-platform features to work on. Dare I say, some of the very same features drew you to the software in the first place. Also quite obviously, the vast majority of the community of users does not want Mozilla to inherently support ActiveX. We don't see it as a healthy use of the Mozilla team's time.
I'm sorry, but open source is not solely about replacing or destroying Microsoft. It's about providing alternatives based on open standards. Asking cross-platform open source projects to spend time developing support for lock-in technologies is like asking them to sabotage their own projects. There is already at least one third party group working on an ActiveX plugin, so why don't you go tell them to work faster, or give them some money. You decide which will produce better results. And then if you really think that support for ActiveX will help Mozilla, donate that ability back to the community. Prove us all wrong.
You can sit here and tell me I'm wrong all you want, but at the end of the day there are a lot of people wanting to leave IE and can't.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Therefore, my client is not guilty." Nobody said there aren't a lot of people locked into various Microsoft software, including IE. The problem is how you're going about trying to get that fixed. You're not wrong. You are definitely locked into IE/ActiveX. What's "wrong" is your proposed method of escaping that lock-in, because it's really no escape at all. It serves very little purpose to escape IE and continue to be locked into ActiveX, and it certainly doesn't help the community at large. ActiveX is your main security issue, not IE.
Since the Mozilla team has the power to solve this problem, and won't, the fault is theirs.
I don't know what makes you think it's such an easy fix, and again, the fault is definitely not theirs. Might as well say it's Sun's fault that your screwed up Java applets don't work on Linux because they're using propriet
Instead of ranting and raving about open source, CROSS-PLATFORM software not supporting some proprietary junk that only works on a single platform, maybe you should be ranting and raving at your organization for locking itself into ActiveX in the first place, and doing your best to CONSTRUCTIVELY move them toward a better solution for the future. We realize that it would be all cute and convenient in the SHORT TERM for you to be able to use ActiveX in Firefox, but in the LONG TERM we would be damaging open source and computing choices in general by maintaining AX as if it were a viable choice. The fact that it doesn't work in non-Microsoft environments is an incentive to not use it in the future. I'm sure I'm not alone in the opinion that this is a positive thing.
I think the problem you're having is that many of us geeky open source people are "big picture" folks who put the ideology of freedom of choice and compatibility ahead of everything else because we've seen (or foreseen) the consequences of what happens when you lock yourself into proprietary crap. You're dealing with those consequences right now. Wouldn't you prefer it if future generations didn't have to? Use your energy to convince your organization to move away from ActiveX right now instead of trying to convince open source developers and advocates that there is some benefit to perpetuating proprietary technologies as bad as ActiveX.
I'm sure you realize that it's already possible to set up IE to always prompt the user for permission to run Javascript and ActiveX controls. That would be practically the same level of security as putting a plugin in Firefox. Also the annoyance of constantly having to respond to the prompts can help promote awareness of the fact that ActiveX is a security problem. When the users ask to have the prompts turned off you just explain to them in no uncertain terms that they are there to protect your computing infrastructure. If your supervisors tell you to disable the prompts and stop annoying people in IE, the same thing would happen with Firefox.
So really, no matter how you look at it there is very little point to what you're trying to do, and it's NOT solely because everyone here is a bunch of jerks who like flipping off Microsoft. Some of us actually do think this stuff out, and as far as we are concerned supporting ActiveX is a bad idea. Now, if it's really that important to your organization, I'm sure you'd have no problem with paying some developers to make an ActiveX plugin for Firefox and make it work in OpenOffice. But it would almost certainly be cheaper in the long run and probably even the short run, to pay some developers to help you move away from ActiveX. Strike at the problem, not the symptom.
That has to be the cleverest sig I've ever seen. Had me confused for quite a few seconds. Very funny.
I realize it's not a fixed price, but I donate annually to the Mozilla foundation for the same reason. Honestly my donation to MoFo is more than Opera would cost me, but I consider it a genuinely usefull charity and a little extra tax writeoff is fine by me. Hell, even my parents donate to MoFo because I suggested they do so if they find the software useful enough.
Wow. You are one big, bad, MoFo... supporter. Baby.
The incredibly amount of work that goes into each new major OS X version easily justifies putting a price tag on them. These aren't Windows 98 to Windows Me steps, these are considerable feature and functionality upgrades.
You forgot one of the best things: speed. Every release of OS X from 10.0 to 10.3 has run faster on the same hardware. Panther runs as well on a 1999 slot-load 350MHz iMac as OS 9 did when the machine was new.
Every release of Windows from 1.0 to XP has run slower on the same hardware, but people continually fork over the cash for the latest version without getting nearly as many new functional features as Apple has managed to pack into each new version of OS X. Compared to the evolution of OS X, going from Windows 95 to Windows XP amounts to a bunch of driver updates and a GUI tweak, along with being forced to buy 2-4 new computers along the way to keep up with the hardware requirements.
Anybody who thinks it's unjust to pay $129 ($99 if you find it on sale) every 18 months for such a powerful tool has a twisted view of things. Hell, I gave Mandrake $120 a year for the last two years because I felt it was important to support a good Linux distro that I happened to be using, and OS X is twice the desktop OS that Linux is. I'll bet a lot of people here pay more than $129 every 90 days to keep their gas tank full. What is the big deal? Apple has made an incredibly good and quickly improving operating system that lets you get things done. They're simultaneously providing competition for Microsoft and motivation for Linux to improve itself so that it can also compete with Microsoft effectively. They're supporting open source technologies like LDAP, CUPS and Samba. I think the deserve some monetary support if you want to use their OS.
So are you honestly going to tell me developers are going to bother developing with features that only 10-20% of their already small userbase can use?
I would think that for the high-end video and graphics applications that CoreImage and CoreVideo will really be useful for, that 10-20% already comprised nearly 100% of their userbase. In other words, the graphics professionals who are going to be using professional graphics applications that make good use of CI/CV will all have high-end Macs which will have the requisite hardware. And, since CI/CV is so cool, more and more graphics professionals will move to the Mac platform, so the userbase will be growing. Also, as someone else said, CI/CV will work on lesser Macs, it will just be a little slower.
I don't see any real problem. I'm sure the average home user will make do just fine with the stock video cards that come installed in the bottom-end machines. You get what you pay for, and the low-end Mac cards already seem to be better than your average low-end PC video card. The form factor is a large part of the draw of both the Mac mini and the iBook anyway, so most owners won't even care that much about the video cards.
Nothing to see here...
Why does silicone rubber (or whatever is used in breast implants) become rock hard?
Answer: It doesn't. In some cases scar tissue forms around the implant and puts pressure on the implant causing it to become hard and round. It also happens with saline implants. The body is reacting to the foreign object, not to the stuff inside it. I read about this on some site that was all about plastic surgery. Nasty stuff. Anyway, search for "capsular contracture" and you'll find out more than you probably wanted to know. They do say massage is supposed to help.
I think we'd all like Linux and open source in general to become the dominant form of software. The flexibility is truly amazing, and it's nice being able to control the software instead of the other way around.
The problem with Linux is that:
- 10 years ago you had to figure out how to do 10,000 different things in order to turn it into a moderately productive desktop OS, and...
- 5 years ago you had to figure out 5,000 different things in order to turn it into a moderately productive desktop OS, and...
- today you still have to figure out 1,500 different little annoying things to make it as productive as a Mac or even Windows.
And once you go through all that you tend to forget the hell that "n00bs" have to go through in order to be productive in Linux, at least at the level that a typical Mac user enjoys five minutes after plugging in a new Mac. Yes, you learned a lot, but what you went through was like being forced to build a car and become a certified mechanic just so you could drive to McDonald's for lunch. It's nice to have a choice to go through that if you're interested, but it shouldn't be a requirement for every single user.
Freedesktop.org and other such standardization projects are a good start, but Linux needs another couple of years and much better cooperation in order to become a really competitive desktop OS. Go Linux!
Like I said, and you just confirmed, there isn't a set of applications for Linux to match iLife/iWork. The smooth integration and usability is half of what makes them so great! You said so yourself. I'm perfectly aware that you can do almost anything with Linux. It just isn't easy. WINE included, and it's still a gamble whether any particular application will work under WINE anyway, even though it has improved drastically in recent years. In the end, Linux really can't compare with a Mac for a general home desktop user who just wants to surf the net, read and send email, edit some photos, and maybe make a slideshow on DVD.
/home. /mnt is outside of /home, and that's where my drives are. OS X has the /Users folder where you keep your stuff, but they also show you all the drives in the Finder, without making you look for them. Guess what? The drives are all mounted under /Volumes (it's still UNIX after all) but you never need to know that! Any storage device that you connect just magically shows up in the overall file browser, including network drives. They have the concept of the overall computer with physical drives or partitioned drives all being available to the user.
Regarding the file system, you can't treat home desktop users like users on a mainframe. It just doesn't work. Don't tell me I "need not concern myself" with anything outside of
I want quick access to every drive in my computer, including any removable media and network drives. Linux has so far failed to give me that, at least at the same level I've come to enjoy from working with Windows, Mac OS, and BeOS for the last 1.5 decades. Failed utterly. Supposedly Linux can do automounting, but so far I haven't seen a functional automount deamon. Mandrake had some automount thing going on and I always turned it off since it kept doing dumb stuff like making me eject a CD as root after I installed some new packages from it. I had to resort to the command line and knowledge that a new user would never have, in order to retrieve the CD. That's abject failure for a desktop OS aimed at home users, as far as I'm concerned. Come on, most desktop operating systems have let me interact with my drives/volumes more easily since 1990. It was easier to navigate drives in Windows 3.1 than it is in Linux.
Linux has come a long way and I'm still rooting for it, but it has a long way to go for general home desktop users. Notice how it's always a power user of some kind that says Linux is just as good as OS X? You, a power user, can have as many Gentoo boxes as you want, and more power to you. It doesn't make Linux any more appropriate for the common, clueless user. Or even for people like me. I have at least half a clue and I've been using Linux for years, and it's still clunky for me. There are too many things I still can't figure out how to do. It all comes down to usability, which is why my next computer will be a Mac, and why I recommend a Mac to any non-techie that comes to me for advice these days.
I've noticed that Windows users, even the ones that are used to pirating anything and everything and think nothing of it, generally have a change of outlook once they actually use the software the comes with a Mac. It's like they've finally found something worth paying real money for.
And of course pirating software isn't limited to the PC platform, so even if they don't want to pay for it they can often get a copy from their Mac-using buddies. It happens on the Mac side almost as much as on the PC side. And no, it's not theft, but it is copyright infringement, and it can still get you in trouble no matter what platform you're using.
That's right... legally. But in the real world such details are not important. That's also a big obstacle to open source adoption, too. 'Why should I use The Gimp if I have also Photoshop available for free?'
I think questions like that are still overshadowed with questions like, "Why should I use this strange software with a strange name and a really strange interface when I can get Photoshop for free and it doesn't suck?" or "Why should I use this weird GIMP thing when I can own the very usable Photoshop Elements 3.0 legally for $129, which will let me color-correct my photos ten times faster and easier?"
For many people, price is not the main concern, which is why so many are willing to spend $600 on the full version of Photoshop CS. I know this because I'm one of those people. I've used the GIMP and I'd rather pay for Photoshop Elements for personal use, because in my opinion the GIMP sucks. If I had a business where part of what I needed to do to make money was editing graphics, I would pay for Photoshop CS because it would pay for itself. The GIMP simply does not compare, and price doesn't have much to do with it. As free software, the GIMP is amazing. When you compare it with something like Photoshop for real work, it's not so amazing anymore. That's the obstacle, not the price.
Hardly, the performance of your Mini still sucks ass.
For the same price my free-OS system is going to be better as a development machine.
Riiiight. Because your average home user is also a developer interested in squeezing every spare cycle out of his processor for all the compiling he does.
That's impressive, by in my opinion Linux (which I have used various flavors of for several years for desktops and servers) still doesn't cut it for the average home user. Many users want a few simple apps like Photoshop Elements, and of course they can't have that on Linux. Instead, a bunch of idiots like you and me point them at something called "the GIMP". We say, "Look, it's free!" They say, "I don't care, it sucks, I want Photoshop Elements." We are not necessarily smarter than them.
/dev/hda3 thing instead of translating all that garbage into something a normal person can understand, like a drive icon on the desktop with the volume label displayed under it. What a concept, huh? Of all things, KDE still displays the device name and mount path on the desktop under the drive icon, as if that would actually be useful to the common user! I like KDE in general, but give me a break. "/mnt/storagedrive3 [/dev/sdb2]"? How is that useful to the average person? Volume labels have been around forever. Why aren't we using them, like every other sensible desktop OS?
There definitely isn't a set of applications for Linux to match iLife/iWork. IPhoto alone has no match on Linux. Besides which, we all know what happens with most of these Linspire machines. People buy it for the hardware and throw a pirated copy of Windows and about $1,000 worth of other pirated software on it. Unfortunate but true.
So, I see the machine, but I don't see the legal software and the usability that goes with it. Of course, that's just my opinion, but it's based on direct observation that tells me Linux still isn't quite ready to compete with OS X except in niche markets (where it usually kicks butt). As a general desktop OS it is sorely lacking. I mean, lately I've tried some of the very newest and most "user friendly" distros like Knoppix, Kubuntu and Mandrake 10.1, and none of them will even auto-mount a simple USB key on the desktop!
And I've never yet met a Linux file manager or desktop environment that made it easy to navigate (or even find) the various drives inside and connected to my computer, at least not in any way similar to how it works in the Windows/Mac/BeOS file managers. Linux still seems to be stuck on the whole
These kind of things should be considered showstopper bugs if we want average people to use Linux as a desktop. We do want that, don't we? So far I haven't really seen any Linux software even going in the right direction.
Windows users can get all the software they want for free.
No software would include no Windows, and you can't get Windows for free, legally. So you get to start out with a hacked, illegal copy of XP with your new $450 PC with LCD and 512MB RAM (which we still haven't actually seen at that price). To anyone who is willing to do that to save a few bucks, I say "Have fun".
Where do you get off saying something like, "I for one think it's about time"? Did you contribute even a single line of code to get it to this point?
Please show a little gratitude to the developers. They're volunteers, after all.
The developers are volunteers, sure. But so are the fans.
Software doesn't live in a vacuum. It's a give and take situation. I'm getting a bit tired of all the comments that say developers who give away free stuff should be able to do whatever the hell they want no matter what. It's sort of like saying a corporation should be able to do whatever it wants in the pursuit of profit, no matter how many people get screwed over. If I decide to use a piece of free software, I'm putting time and effort into it. If I like it, I may even try to advocate for it to be used by more people. If the software dies or stops being updated, it will be like I wasted part of my life. I'll have to find a replacement, and for each replacement there is a chance the developer will cease developing it and leave me in the lurch again. I don't know how to make this clear, but my point is that the users of software are giving something, not just taking something.
There is a relationship in free software between the developers and the users, whether the users are other developers or just plain users. Without this relationship, what's the point in ever releasing your software? So how about we show a little more respect both for developers and for users. Not just developers.
But lets be honest, if I can get an AMD system with a 15inch LCD screen, Sempron 2200 proc, and half a gig of ram for about 450usd
Show us this marvelous machine that costs $450 and includes a complete operating system and equivalent software to match iLife and AppleWorks (or iWork for another $80), and an LCD monitor that won't make your eyes bleed, and 512MB of RAM that's worth having. Seriously, show us this machine. You were talking about something with no software, right?
how am I gonna convince my wife that I should buy a 600usd mac mini
That's easy, just sit her down in front of one for a few minutes.
, plus 250usd for the monitor, plus the keyboard and the silly one button mouse?
(1) Odds are you already have a perfectly good CRT monitor at home or you can get one for $120. If you want a decent LCD, you'll pay for it whether you get a Mac or a PC. Any monitor with a standard VGA or DVI connector will work with the Mac mini.
(2) Odds are you already have a keyboard. If not, USB keyboards go for about $25. You do not need to buy one from Apple. Any USB keyboard will work with the Mac mini.
(3) OS X has been around for what, five years now? And for five years now, OS X has had context menus and support for mouses with two or more buttons. Mine has 5 buttons including the scroll wheel/button. You do not need to buy a "silly one button mouse" from Apple. Any USB two-button scroll mouse will work with the Mac mini.
In the end, as so many of us have realized already, the cost is now very low, and very well justified.
Last time I checked credit cards are not generic, but (supposed to be) tied to your name and signature. In other words, you have to convince a machine or a person that you are the authorized user of the card in order to use it. I.e., you have to assume my identity to use my card.
I would pretty much call that a type of identity theft, or if you want to be pedantic and picky, a type of identity theft was required in order for the credit card fraud to occur. I'm afraid I can't see the point in disengaging the two. It is the assumption or theft of identity that is the real problem in any case. If the system were working properly no charges could have been made on the cards.