"I think the handwriting's been on the wall on this one for quite a while. It's become more mainstream to carry your laptop around and or your cell phone has the ability to store all your addresses and such"
While you're undoubtedly right that this is true for many people, I know several friends who go through cell upgrades often enough *not* to want their personal data on one since it's a pain to do all that migration. That's why 3 of my friends got PDAs - the phones come and go, but the PDAs are both cheaper and much smaller than a laptop, and they last for years. Plus, compared to the cells I've seen, PDAs are infinitely more standards-based with peripherals and software.
"I've stopped using mine about a year ago in favour of my iPod. Granted I have to enter everything via my computer, but that doesn't bother me too much. I don't feel the need to carry around another $400 device just so I can have the luxury of scribbling in a name or two in my device on the fly."
iPods are better than OK, but FWIW, I prefer the Dell Exim PDA with a 4GB compact flash full of mp3s - better battery life, still small, and lots of features that the iPod doesn't offer (not that it should, it's a player, not a PDA).
One of the things that excites me about Pocket PC PDAs is the pretty-quick upswing in compact flash tech. A super-expensive 4GB Type II compact flash was first introduced for sale in August 2003, and less than 12 months later, it can be bought for $199 in a Muvo 2 MP3 player. Also, less than a year after the first 4GB CF chip, a super-expensive 12GB CF chip has been announced for later in 2004. Given these Moorian advances, will it really be more than 3 years before people can buy a 20-30gb CF chip for their MP3 player or PDA?
Thanks for the tip, I'm especially checking out its features and background at the mythtv.com web site. Here's to hoping that this works out for him since he also just got a new job.
Chuck
Re:I'm dual booting windows and FC2 without proble
on
Fedora Core 2 Dud or Dodo?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
" It work here very well. Maybe he should help out to try to solve his problem instead of writing inflammatory articles."
Your experience isn't necessarily indicative of all or even *most* people's experiences with FC2. I mean, I've been running Windows 95A, 98SE or 2000 Pro continuously since 1995 with a ton of peripherals and software without any viruses, worms, corrupt registries or other problems besides the occassionally rare crash (especially since 2KPro). By your logic, I should blast everyone on Slashdot who says inflammatory things about Windows, but I don't since it's clear that my experiences aren't others'.
While this little project is interesting enough, I caught a link from this piece to Media Car:
Media Car (mostly in French, but the screenshots do it justice)
It seems to be a do-it-all for multimedia software, but it looks bleeding edge enough to warrant wariness. I'd be interested in this if it could run on BSD or Linux and supported a remote.
"That depends on the GB you get for $150. Keep in mind that Microsoft can get insanely expensive in the realm of handhelds and tablet PCs, and this would be no different."
I'm guessing that unless they go with a hard drive solution in the 20-60gb range, they'll be hard pressed to match the price of the 4GB compact-flash iPod mini at $249 unless they feel like starting yet another loss-leader device (like their Xbox). Good point about MS tech in PDAs - except for the Dell Axim, most Pocket PCs are pretty expensive.
"Still, if they *really* want to spank Apple, I'll be glad to take one for really cheap so long as it played all formats without any stupid DRM-only type restrictions."
With Microsoft being what they are, I doubt they'll participate in any music service that doesn't have DRM, especially when you figure that the music rights holders will insist on it for fear of loss to 'theft.' Now, if I were competing with MS, I *might* shit my pants if they could get sign-off on non-DRM music from the labels since no one else is doing that besides eMusic. Combining non-DRM music with WMA would be a major selling point for people who otherwise wouldn't give a sh*t about WMA. Luckily, does anyone really see that happening?
"I have a large CD collection that I've ripped and stored and don't want to go through that all over again because they want WMA-only."
Well, besides iTunes and eMusic, all the other services have been stupid enough to go with really lame DRM formats that are a pain in the ass. If those others are dumb enough to do that, why wouldn't MS? Fortunately, going that route would designate them to the same 2nd-tier status that Apple's competitors exist in.
Otherwise, I'm springing for the iPod.
Small tip - buy Apple Care for $59 for your device, it gives you 36 months' coverage after your battery has probably died within 12-18 months. Otherwise, after your 12 months of basic coverage ends, you're looking at $99 to have Apple replace the battery. With the Apple Care, you won't have to pay to replace the battery until after 3 years expire.
"it would be nice if Slashdot would at least pretend to be a news site every now and then instead of just trying to sell us ads by playing off of reactionary attitudes on this site."
Why? Your major and local media do the same thing on a daily basis. In that sense, Slashdot is as every bit a news organization as you pretend they're not.
I agree with you, dude. I also think everything ought to be privatized, and we should do away with government, taxes, rights, and everything else. Let the market decide everything! Oh, woooops, that's right, the market decided that there's a place for NPR. Tough fucking day for us tax misers, eh?
Opinions and assholes, everybody has one. I disagree with yours.
"Currently Mozilla is the most powerful browing suite on earth. Problem is people don't care about all those features, we just want speed"
While you're right about Mozilla, your second sentence is straight from CrackLand. If everyone is clammering for few-feature, speedy-browsing, why isn't Lynx the #1 browser? It dusts *everything*. I happen to love the fact that Moz comes with so many tools. So do the ~10 people whose PCs I've installed it on.
So developers what do you plan to do to make XUL faster? How do you plan to reduce the memory footprint? How about reducing CPU load? What about actually speeding up the rendering of websites ?
Websites render super lickety-fast on my cable modem, even non-standards compliant ones. As for the rest, I'll assume they're working on it, but why not help out and send them some money so that they can spend more time doing it? Heck, I'll make it easy, click this link.
"And if you are going to add new features, try intergrating bit torrent into mozilla since it seems to be the new default download format why the hell are you upgrading FTP?"
I always appreciate better FTP and HTTP transfer performance. As for bit torrent, it may be growing in popularity, and it would be nice if support for it was built into Mozilla, but 95% of my non-p2p downloads and download GB are via http or ftp. Bit Torrent is barely on that radar.
I could be wrong, and since I'm posting on Slashdot, I probably am, but perhaps the reason why that Canon 300D is so much more in the UK or mainland Europe is because of government import taxes that are attached to it before it goes on sale.
Every government charges differently, and since Amazon has to abide by their laws, the pre-sales tax cost will be different. Either that, or Amazon thinks UK shoppers are suckers.;-)
"Actually, the original Star Wars was a sleeper. Meaning that it didn't get released with a lot of fanfair in May of 1977."
I was 12 and growing up in Columbus Ohio before the movie came out in May 1977, and I can tell you that it definitely a *huge* deal, marketing or no marketing.
I was pulled out of school early so that we could go see it on its opening day near where I lived on the east side. By the time we pulled into the driving lot of this huge 1-screen theater, there was a loooooong line forming outside the doors, so I was pushed out of the car to stand in line while the car was parked.:-)
Call me silly, but 1-3 block lines of people standing outside the theater before the first show don't strike me as symptoms of a sleeper.
"The only intuitive thing in the world is the nipple, everything else is learned."
That said, expecting most people to delineate the difference between intuitiveness and familiarity in a PC-based GUI is a grand act of self-delusion. I mean, how many people don't know the basic difference between there, their and they're, as well as how to use them?
As for familiarity, I don't think emulating Windows is a bad idea when your other options are the CLI or a UI standard that doesn't exist amongst Linux vendors.
Having thought about this problem, I think I came up with a decent solution to cover my ass. I normally rip my CDs to wav and mp3 files as soon as I open the CD. The mp3s go to my portable player for playing, the wavs to a 2nd hard drive for home use, and the CDs back into their cases.
While neither CDs, DVDs nor hard drives last forever, having the.wavs in a hard-drive backup means the only way I will ever lose any music (outside of crime or catastrophe) is if the CDs and hard drive all die together before I can replace them. It could happen, but the odds are against it.
This is off-topic, but I'm also looking forward to the day when portable players have advanced to the 400gb-1 terabyte storage level so that encoding in lossy formats like AAC, MP3, or WMA aren't necessary. Plain old wavs with their higher fidelity, boo-yah! One can dream,:-)
"Please tell me who they would call for service/support on Windows 98 or NT in the year 2004? Certainly not Microsoft... so the library being concerned about "Offical Vendor" support doesn't seem to be a factor here as they were running old, unsupported software to begin with."
Actually, speaking from experience here in Cincinnati/N. Kentucky, the library would be calling their library system tech support if the "reboot the computer" solution didn't work. Now, given that that's the solution for most of their program bugs, there's no reason why a library couldn't switch to Linux except fear, cost, transition bugs, and lack of library-specific software.
The problem occurs if rebooting the machine/doesn't/ work. With Windows, there are bazillions of Windows techies of varying quality and salary demands to full a library system tech support staff. With Linux, there are a couple of magnitudes fewer Linux techies. Frankly, it's easier to find Windows techies, and since there's more competition in that field, it's easier to pay them less than their Linux techie counterparts.
You know, that's a pretty damn good idea since any long-range space exploration is going to require that human nature and human faults be dealt with en route to the mission objectives.
Maybe you should be in the group that's writing up pre-requisites for astronaut entrance.:-)
What, your car, local transit system and beach have Wi-Fi installed for your online comic pleasure? That's when I really DIG having a book in hand instead of two in the bush.
Myself, for truly seminal works like The LOTR, the BOFH series and "If Chins Could Kill," no less than supremely processed and artificially colored books will do.:-D
To answer your topic question, why have a phone at all? Speaking personally, I think cellphones are OK at best, but with cellphone companies having their heads up their ass over cost, coverage and signal reliability, I genuinely appreciate *not* having an integrated phone and its related pain-in-the-assedness built into my PDA.
There's something to be said for not being reachable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.:-)
OK, I missed that. I originally brought up my points because I myself do use Creative Commons licenses for my digital photography and explicitly allow commercial use of my photos as long as they're not resold (e.g., don't compete with me in sales, but it's OK to use my photos in your ads or trade pub).
As good as the artist's license is, I wasn't sure if his pre-4/24/04 license allowed greater liberties for commercial use, in which case changing his license after the fact would be somewhat sleazy.
Thanks for the pointer, hopefully Linspire will act accordingly now since the original art was covered by traditional copyright.
"Eh? The rasta art is credited (to "Colin F." at colin-f.com). The credit screen appears at the end of the Flash movie.
Unless they just added that credit in the last hour..."
Clearly, the Evil Minions in Legal have been tripping over themselves in tracking the Slashdot comments on this story, so it's obvious they only added that credit to the end of the video in the last hour or so...
"Copyright is generally a neutral thing. It's neither good nor bad."
So you agree that limited copyright per the U.S. Constitution should last 500 years per work? That wouldn't be bad, eh?
"But no one that I know is against artists getting compensated"
As long as you don't count the millions and millions of people who've used Napster, Kazaa, LimeWire, etc, to get free music, but if Linspire does it, HIGH HOLY HELL!, that's copyright infringement! Baaaaad, baaaaaaad!
"Here, we have someone who is giving his art away, but with the restiction that if you use it to make money"
Well, the artist changed his art license on Saturday, 4/24/04 - just under three business days ago, and there's nothing indicating what his license was before then. So, in actuality, there were no known restrictions before then, thus nothing to negotiate.
"A company has decided to use his work for just that purpose. So now people are upset."
No, people are upset because paying attention to details is a lot less convenient when you want to assign blame to a situation where the full story isn't known.
"As of April 24th, the images are licensed under the Creative Commons License (Attribution/NonCommercial) which explicitly states that the work may not be used for commercial purposes, unless permission is provided by the author"
This is extremely interesting on many levels since the artist changed the licensing terms for his art 2.5 business days ago. What were the licensing terms before then? The artist doesn't say, and neither does his web site. I'm not saying the artist is right and Linspire is wrong, but these questions are entirely unanswered:
1. What were the pre-4/24 Creative Commons licensing terms? Did the artist change the terms after Linspire had already grabbed the art and used it? If so, it's pretty oily for an artist to change the licensing terms for their art *after the fact.* I'm not saying this happened, but to be blunt, there's no documentation either way.
2. By default, the user isn't obliged or required to notify the person whose art they're using as long as they abide by the CC license. Look it up and see for yourself on creativecommons.org.
3. The person posting this story says "not once has Linspire requested permission to use these images in their ad campaign." Uh, no shit Sherlock. If the artist's pre-4/24/04 license didn't forbid their use in a commercial medium, Linspire isn't required to get his permission - it's self-evident in the license.
Sorry, but until there are more details, the person posting this story may either be 100% right or 100% f*cked-in-the-head. For now, I'd hold off on crucifying Linspire until all the details are reported. So far, they haven't been...
Did you get your pot-smoking buddies to mod you up, because that's one of the few things that might explain Score:4, Insightful.
"Why aren't there software-piracy raids?"
There are, but unless the media is invited along, they are not widely reported.
"I mean I understand about the RIAA having huge lobbying power and all, but if you do the math, you'll no doubt find that there is more money lost to software piracy every year than there is to MP3-trading."
Yes, they're both bad, but it's obvious that law enforcement is heeding the advice of Slashdot posters and placing a higher emphasis on more serious crime. You can't please everybody.
"A song has been valued at 99 cents recently, but a Windows license is typically 300 dollars, and I'm sure there are millions of pirated copies of Windows out there."
Are you Canadian or something, because that's the only way I can see a Windows license costing more than $300. As for millions of pirated copies of Windows, uhhhhhhhh, so what? Do you think it would be cost effective for law enforcement to raid every home with an illegal copy of Windows in their place? I don't.
"Why aren't there more software-audits?"
There are literally MILLIONS of software audits taking place annually by businesses, software vendors, the IRS and the BSA, but you're not going to know anything about it because it's not sexy Slashdot news.
"Why are governments placing a disproportionate amount of emphasis on something like music-piracy?"
You already answered that above - $$ and lobbying. Additionally, if you depend on Slashdot for your perception of government and law enforcement, you're blatantly missing about 90% of all the other stuff that goes on which is given a higher priority. Believe it or not, your local precinct aren't all sitting on their asses waiting for YOU to download an MP3 so that they can jump on you.
With all due respect to your thoughts, "Score:5, Insightful" my ass.
"It runs on (almost) all hardware architectures and supports a huge open-source application library which can be recompiled for all hardware architectures."
Absolutely true and absolutely meaningless unless multi-purpose PCs drop dead and are all replaced by specialized Linux-based thin clients that the other 97.5% of the public market will use.
"Mindshare, application library and number of users will continue to increase in all computing, yes even on the desktop."
Big F*cking Deal. As countless Slashdotters have previously pointed out, all those increasing numbers don't mean sh*t since most Linux developers aren't working on something to help Joe Public to use Linux, they're working on the latest pre-beta 0.3.2.27.5 release of some CLI program that scratches their itch and doesn't come with help or documentation.
Also, which part of those ever increasing numbers will be writing drivers for the reliable installation of a soundcard (pick any soundcard) under Linux? For all the publicity, momentum and technical advantages that GNU/Linux offers over Windows or Macintosh, you'd figure soundcards, games, and widespread vendor support would be a shoo-in. hahahahaa....
Philosophically, I love the GPL and the spirit of Linux, and I loathe Microsoft for the repeat Federal Felons they are, but when I buy my next new PC, there's a reason why I'm buying my first Mac - I won't support MS anymore, and Linux is still not ready.
Slashdot Mirror
"I think the handwriting's been on the wall on this one for quite a while. It's become more mainstream to carry your laptop around and or your cell phone has the ability to store all your addresses and such"
While you're undoubtedly right that this is true for many people, I know several friends who go through cell upgrades often enough *not* to want their personal data on one since it's a pain to do all that migration. That's why 3 of my friends got PDAs - the phones come and go, but the PDAs are both cheaper and much smaller than a laptop, and they last for years. Plus, compared to the cells I've seen, PDAs are infinitely more standards-based with peripherals and software.
"I've stopped using mine about a year ago in favour of my iPod. Granted I have to enter everything via my computer, but that doesn't bother me too much. I don't feel the need to carry around another $400 device just so I can have the luxury of scribbling in a name or two in my device on the fly."
iPods are better than OK, but FWIW, I prefer the Dell Exim PDA with a 4GB compact flash full of mp3s - better battery life, still small, and lots of features that the iPod doesn't offer (not that it should, it's a player, not a PDA).
One of the things that excites me about Pocket PC PDAs is the pretty-quick upswing in compact flash tech. A super-expensive 4GB Type II compact flash was first introduced for sale in August 2003, and less than 12 months later, it can be bought for $199 in a Muvo 2 MP3 player. Also, less than a year after the first 4GB CF chip, a super-expensive 12GB CF chip has been announced for later in 2004. Given these Moorian advances, will it really be more than 3 years before people can buy a 20-30gb CF chip for their MP3 player or PDA?
Hey Y,
Thanks for the tip, I'm especially checking out its features and background at the mythtv.com web site. Here's to hoping that this works out for him since he also just got a new job.
Chuck
" It work here very well. Maybe he should help out to try to solve his problem instead of writing inflammatory articles."
Your experience isn't necessarily indicative of all or even *most* people's experiences with FC2. I mean, I've been running Windows 95A, 98SE or 2000 Pro continuously since 1995 with a ton of peripherals and software without any viruses, worms, corrupt registries or other problems besides the occassionally rare crash (especially since 2KPro). By your logic, I should blast everyone on Slashdot who says inflammatory things about Windows, but I don't since it's clear that my experiences aren't others'.
While this little project is interesting enough, I caught a link from this piece to Media Car:
Media Car (mostly in French, but the screenshots do it justice)
It seems to be a do-it-all for multimedia software, but it looks bleeding edge enough to warrant wariness. I'd be interested in this if it could run on BSD or Linux and supported a remote.
"That depends on the GB you get for $150. Keep in mind that Microsoft can get insanely expensive in the realm of handhelds and tablet PCs, and this would be no different."
I'm guessing that unless they go with a hard drive solution in the 20-60gb range, they'll be hard pressed to match the price of the 4GB compact-flash iPod mini at $249 unless they feel like starting yet another loss-leader device (like their Xbox). Good point about MS tech in PDAs - except for the Dell Axim, most Pocket PCs are pretty expensive.
"Still, if they *really* want to spank Apple, I'll be glad to take one for really cheap so long as it played all formats without any stupid DRM-only type restrictions."
With Microsoft being what they are, I doubt they'll participate in any music service that doesn't have DRM, especially when you figure that the music rights holders will insist on it for fear of loss to 'theft.' Now, if I were competing with MS, I *might* shit my pants if they could get sign-off on non-DRM music from the labels since no one else is doing that besides eMusic. Combining non-DRM music with WMA would be a major selling point for people who otherwise wouldn't give a sh*t about WMA. Luckily, does anyone really see that happening?
"I have a large CD collection that I've ripped and stored and don't want to go through that all over again because they want WMA-only."
Well, besides iTunes and eMusic, all the other services have been stupid enough to go with really lame DRM formats that are a pain in the ass. If those others are dumb enough to do that, why wouldn't MS? Fortunately, going that route would designate them to the same 2nd-tier status that Apple's competitors exist in.
Otherwise, I'm springing for the iPod.
Small tip - buy Apple Care for $59 for your device, it gives you 36 months' coverage after your battery has probably died within 12-18 months. Otherwise, after your 12 months of basic coverage ends, you're looking at $99 to have Apple replace the battery. With the Apple Care, you won't have to pay to replace the battery until after 3 years expire.
Chuck
Nope, my theory is that, with rare exceptions, covering news like Slashdot or the media does is inherently bottom of the barrel.
Peace.
"it would be nice if Slashdot would at least pretend to be a news site every now and then instead of just trying to sell us ads by playing off of reactionary attitudes on this site."
Why? Your major and local media do the same thing on a daily basis. In that sense, Slashdot is as every bit a news organization as you pretend they're not.
Chuck
I agree with you, dude. I also think everything ought to be privatized, and we should do away with government, taxes, rights, and everything else. Let the market decide everything! Oh, woooops, that's right, the market decided that there's a place for NPR. Tough fucking day for us tax misers, eh?
Chuck
Hey,
While you're right to a point, I put together a little shorthand guide to the best of free Indie downloads and paid Indie CDs here:
http://fatchuck.com/z1.html
FWIW, it's a quick hack, but it'll have to suffice until something better comes along.
Chuck
"Mozilla needs more speed and less power."
Opinions and assholes, everybody has one. I disagree with yours.
"Currently Mozilla is the most powerful browing suite on earth. Problem is people don't care about all those features, we just want speed"
While you're right about Mozilla, your second sentence is straight from CrackLand. If everyone is clammering for few-feature, speedy-browsing, why isn't Lynx the #1 browser? It dusts *everything*. I happen to love the fact that Moz comes with so many tools. So do the ~10 people whose PCs I've installed it on.
So developers what do you plan to do to make XUL faster? How do you plan to reduce the memory footprint? How about reducing CPU load? What about actually speeding up the rendering of websites ?
Websites render super lickety-fast on my cable modem, even non-standards compliant ones. As for the rest, I'll assume they're working on it, but why not help out and send them some money so that they can spend more time doing it? Heck, I'll make it easy, click this link.
"And if you are going to add new features, try intergrating bit torrent into mozilla since it seems to be the new default download format why the hell are you upgrading FTP?"
I always appreciate better FTP and HTTP transfer performance. As for bit torrent, it may be growing in popularity, and it would be nice if support for it was built into Mozilla, but 95% of my non-p2p downloads and download GB are via http or ftp. Bit Torrent is barely on that radar.
Peace,
Chuck
I could be wrong, and since I'm posting on Slashdot, I probably am, but perhaps the reason why that Canon 300D is so much more in the UK or mainland Europe is because of government import taxes that are attached to it before it goes on sale.
;-)
Every government charges differently, and since Amazon has to abide by their laws, the pre-sales tax cost will be different. Either that, or Amazon thinks UK shoppers are suckers.
"Actually, the original Star Wars was a sleeper. Meaning that it didn't get released with a lot of fanfair in May of 1977."
:-)
I was 12 and growing up in Columbus Ohio before the movie came out in May 1977, and I can tell you that it definitely a *huge* deal, marketing or no marketing.
I was pulled out of school early so that we could go see it on its opening day near where I lived on the east side. By the time we pulled into the driving lot of this huge 1-screen theater, there was a loooooong line forming outside the doors, so I was pushed out of the car to stand in line while the car was parked.
Call me silly, but 1-3 block lines of people standing outside the theater before the first show don't strike me as symptoms of a sleeper.
Chuck
"Verisign sued ICANN for making them take down Sitefinder, but the judge said that their case was 'awfully vague.'"
Hey!, I'm in a smartass mood today, WTF is wrong with "awfully vague?" It seems to work for the DMCA and a lot of other bogus legislation.
Chuck
"The only intuitive thing in the world is the nipple, everything else is learned."
That said, expecting most people to delineate the difference between intuitiveness and familiarity in a PC-based GUI is a grand act of self-delusion. I mean, how many people don't know the basic difference between there, their and they're, as well as how to use them?
As for familiarity, I don't think emulating Windows is a bad idea when your other options are the CLI or a UI standard that doesn't exist amongst Linux vendors.
Having thought about this problem, I think I came up with a decent solution to cover my ass. I normally rip my CDs to wav and mp3 files as soon as I open the CD. The mp3s go to my portable player for playing, the wavs to a 2nd hard drive for home use, and the CDs back into their cases.
.wavs in a hard-drive backup means the only way I will ever lose any music (outside of crime or catastrophe) is if the CDs and hard drive all die together before I can replace them. It could happen, but the odds are against it.
:-)
While neither CDs, DVDs nor hard drives last forever, having the
This is off-topic, but I'm also looking forward to the day when portable players have advanced to the 400gb-1 terabyte storage level so that encoding in lossy formats like AAC, MP3, or WMA aren't necessary. Plain old wavs with their higher fidelity, boo-yah! One can dream,
Peace.
"Please tell me who they would call for service/support on Windows 98 or NT in the year 2004? Certainly not Microsoft... so the library being concerned about "Offical Vendor" support doesn't seem to be a factor here as they were running old, unsupported software to begin with."
/doesn't/ work. With Windows, there are bazillions of Windows techies of varying quality and salary demands to full a library system tech support staff. With Linux, there are a couple of magnitudes fewer Linux techies. Frankly, it's easier to find Windows techies, and since there's more competition in that field, it's easier to pay them less than their Linux techie counterparts.
Actually, speaking from experience here in Cincinnati/N. Kentucky, the library would be calling their library system tech support if the "reboot the computer" solution didn't work. Now, given that that's the solution for most of their program bugs, there's no reason why a library couldn't switch to Linux except fear, cost, transition bugs, and lack of library-specific software.
The problem occurs if rebooting the machine
Chuck
You know, that's a pretty damn good idea since any long-range space exploration is going to require that human nature and human faults be dealt with en route to the mission objectives.
:-)
Maybe you should be in the group that's writing up pre-requisites for astronaut entrance.
What, your car, local transit system and beach have Wi-Fi installed for your online comic pleasure? That's when I really DIG having a book in hand instead of two in the bush.
:-D
Myself, for truly seminal works like The LOTR, the BOFH series and "If Chins Could Kill," no less than supremely processed and artificially colored books will do.
To answer your topic question, why have a phone at all? Speaking personally, I think cellphones are OK at best, but with cellphone companies having their heads up their ass over cost, coverage and signal reliability, I genuinely appreciate *not* having an integrated phone and its related pain-in-the-assedness built into my PDA.
:-)
There's something to be said for not being reachable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
OK, I missed that. I originally brought up my points because I myself do use Creative Commons licenses for my digital photography and explicitly allow commercial use of my photos as long as they're not resold (e.g., don't compete with me in sales, but it's OK to use my photos in your ads or trade pub).
As good as the artist's license is, I wasn't sure if his pre-4/24/04 license allowed greater liberties for commercial use, in which case changing his license after the fact would be somewhat sleazy.
Thanks for the pointer, hopefully Linspire will act accordingly now since the original art was covered by traditional copyright.
"Eh? The rasta art is credited (to "Colin F." at colin-f.com). The credit screen appears at the end of the Flash movie.
Unless they just added that credit in the last hour..."
Clearly, the Evil Minions in Legal have been tripping over themselves in tracking the Slashdot comments on this story, so it's obvious they only added that credit to the end of the video in the last hour or so...
Really!
"Copyright is generally a neutral thing. It's neither good nor bad."
So you agree that limited copyright per the U.S. Constitution should last 500 years per work? That wouldn't be bad, eh?
"But no one that I know is against artists getting compensated"
As long as you don't count the millions and millions of people who've used Napster, Kazaa, LimeWire, etc, to get free music, but if Linspire does it, HIGH HOLY HELL!, that's copyright infringement! Baaaaad, baaaaaaad!
"Here, we have someone who is giving his art away, but with the restiction that if you use it to make money"
Well, the artist changed his art license on Saturday, 4/24/04 - just under three business days ago, and there's nothing indicating what his license was before then. So, in actuality, there were no known restrictions before then, thus nothing to negotiate.
"A company has decided to use his work for just that purpose. So now people are upset."
No, people are upset because paying attention to details is a lot less convenient when you want to assign blame to a situation where the full story isn't known.
"As of April 24th, the images are licensed under the Creative Commons License (Attribution/NonCommercial) which explicitly states that the work may not be used for commercial purposes, unless permission is provided by the author"
This is extremely interesting on many levels since the artist changed the licensing terms for his art 2.5 business days ago. What were the licensing terms before then? The artist doesn't say, and neither does his web site. I'm not saying the artist is right and Linspire is wrong, but these questions are entirely unanswered:
1. What were the pre-4/24 Creative Commons licensing terms? Did the artist change the terms after Linspire had already grabbed the art and used it? If so, it's pretty oily for an artist to change the licensing terms for their art *after the fact.* I'm not saying this happened, but to be blunt, there's no documentation either way.
2. By default, the user isn't obliged or required to notify the person whose art they're using as long as they abide by the CC license. Look it up and see for yourself on creativecommons.org.
3. The person posting this story says "not once has Linspire requested permission to use these images in their ad campaign." Uh, no shit Sherlock. If the artist's pre-4/24/04 license didn't forbid their use in a commercial medium, Linspire isn't required to get his permission - it's self-evident in the license.
Sorry, but until there are more details, the person posting this story may either be 100% right or 100% f*cked-in-the-head. For now, I'd hold off on crucifying Linspire until all the details are reported. So far, they haven't been...
Did you get your pot-smoking buddies to mod you up, because that's one of the few things that might explain Score:4, Insightful.
"Why aren't there software-piracy raids?"
There are, but unless the media is invited along, they are not widely reported.
"I mean I understand about the RIAA having huge lobbying power and all, but if you do the math, you'll no doubt find that there is more money lost to software piracy every year than there is to MP3-trading."
Yes, they're both bad, but it's obvious that law enforcement is heeding the advice of Slashdot posters and placing a higher emphasis on more serious crime. You can't please everybody.
"A song has been valued at 99 cents recently, but a Windows license is typically 300 dollars, and I'm sure there are millions of pirated copies of Windows out there."
Are you Canadian or something, because that's the only way I can see a Windows license costing more than $300. As for millions of pirated copies of Windows, uhhhhhhhh, so what? Do you think it would be cost effective for law enforcement to raid every home with an illegal copy of Windows in their place? I don't.
"Why aren't there more software-audits?"
There are literally MILLIONS of software audits taking place annually by businesses, software vendors, the IRS and the BSA, but you're not going to know anything about it because it's not sexy Slashdot news.
"Why are governments placing a disproportionate amount of emphasis on something like music-piracy?"
You already answered that above - $$ and lobbying. Additionally, if you depend on Slashdot for your perception of government and law enforcement, you're blatantly missing about 90% of all the other stuff that goes on which is given a higher priority. Believe it or not, your local precinct aren't all sitting on their asses waiting for YOU to download an MP3 so that they can jump on you.
With all due respect to your thoughts, "Score:5, Insightful" my ass.
"It runs on (almost) all hardware architectures and supports a huge open-source application library which can be recompiled for all hardware architectures."
Absolutely true and absolutely meaningless unless multi-purpose PCs drop dead and are all replaced by specialized Linux-based thin clients that the other 97.5% of the public market will use.
"Mindshare, application library and number of users will continue to increase in all computing, yes even on the desktop."
Big F*cking Deal. As countless Slashdotters have previously pointed out, all those increasing numbers don't mean sh*t since most Linux developers aren't working on something to help Joe Public to use Linux, they're working on the latest pre-beta 0.3.2.27.5 release of some CLI program that scratches their itch and doesn't come with help or documentation.
Also, which part of those ever increasing numbers will be writing drivers for the reliable installation of a soundcard (pick any soundcard) under Linux? For all the publicity, momentum and technical advantages that GNU/Linux offers over Windows or Macintosh, you'd figure soundcards, games, and widespread vendor support would be a shoo-in. hahahahaa....
Philosophically, I love the GPL and the spirit of Linux, and I loathe Microsoft for the repeat Federal Felons they are, but when I buy my next new PC, there's a reason why I'm buying my first Mac - I won't support MS anymore, and Linux is still not ready.
Peace.