P2P really needs to have a critical mass of users to be useful. That's why I say things like Gnutella are relatively useless. There's not a critical mass of users that makes it easy (or fast) enough to find what I want. Sure, Fast Track may have 5,000,000 copies of a Britney Spears recording, but I've also had great luck finding what I like. I've got a nice little collection of WW2 era big band singers going now. And, there are enough different kinds of FastTrack users now that it's not all one kind of music, either. I'm also steadily working on my 1980's music videos collection with Fast Track, and so far, I've been able to find everything that I've wanted.
And your point is? Kazaa still has many, many many times more content of all types than any P2P network to date. Gnutella is about as relevant as so many OSS projects: it's not.
Cross platform compatibility is ithe most over-hyped crock of shit in IT today. The chances of a company changing platforms in any given year is very fucking slim. Companies change platforms every 10-15 years, if that often. This article is yet another piece of garbage from the Register, which sound like it was paid for by Sun (ie: cross-compatibility = Java), which makes it not journalism at all, but an advertisement. The Register is nothing but a fucking tabloid, and, not even a good tabloid at that.
Well let me tell ya'... a woman who doesn't mind you running a porn site, looking at thousands of pictures and videos of gorgeous chicks (and guys) every day is a one sign that you've got a cool one.
will have better luck getting a job or starting a business these days.
Getting a job for me is irrelevant. I saw the writing on the wall a few years ago, and I bailed from IT. That ended up being a good move. I, in turn, started my own "brick-and-mortar" business. If I had decided to "learn computers" by using all OSS software, I'd still be working on starting, 5 months later. It would be stupid, and a tremendous waste of time and money to learn the ins and outs of computers when I can buy software for a few thousand that does what I need. IP address? I know what one is, but how exactly does that make me a better businessman? I'd much rather pay someone else to worry about that. If you'd ever had a business, you'd know that you don't spend time dicking around with little stuff like that. You pay someone to handle it, and get on with the important parts. Any businessperson that's not in IT that's foolish enough to waste a significant amount of time "understanding computers" is gonna fail. Why? Again, unless he's in IT, it's irrelevant to the business. I could've also spent 6 months learning how to acid stain my concrete floors and a few years learning carpentry to build my shelving, and I'd still be learning. It's called specialization. It's how modern society works. If nobody specialized, we'd all still be a nation of subsistence farmers.
Re:The really cool chicks: a retrospective
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Well, the porn site's a business. It has no bearing whatsoever on my real life. I'm actually a former geek with a hot, very cool wife.
Ah, little do you know that the chicks athletes get are the boring blond bimbos that are just waiting for the boring house in the suburbs with the boring SUV full of boring kids. While those who "smoke and refuse to participate" are the ones that get the really cool chicks.
Well, you may be right, but what I question is how much, exactly, is first to market going to be worth? Without patent protection, it would have to be worth more than all of the R&D, plus consumer education. I'm not a chemist, so I have no idea how easy it is to reverse-engineer a drug. My *guess* is that the first to market wouldn't necessarily be worth the R&D. Hence, no reasonable company would want to stick it's neck out for R&D.
Whoa! Looks like we're up to level RED! Seriously, drop a line to the FBI notifying them of "terrorists" that attempted to hack into your machine with false information. Let the FBI kick their doors down. I'd do the same, but unfortunately, they didn't check any of my FTP sites:( (I just checked my logs for the past few months).
I also believe that *somebody* should come up with a system to prevent world hunger, AIDS, and the pet overpopulation problems. Why hasn't anybody fixed these problems yet? Golly gee whiz, it must be all of the money. That's it.
Obviously, the drug research is important, so any replacement system would have to have a way to employ and pay those who are actually developing the new drugs.)
And don't you think that if there were some kind of system to do so that somebody would have come up with it already, or it would have already been implemented, Captain Obvious?
Here's a great case where good old laissez-faire capitalism would work better.
OK, but how would it work? A company develops a drug, and every other drug company reverse engineers it for 1/1000 of the cost of the R&D, and the first company can't compete. They go out of business. All other companies in the industry see this, and so they all sit on their hands waiting for the other guy to develop a drug so they can copy it? That doesn't sound too good to me. If I got some kind of disease, I'll happily fork over the cash to get it fixed. *Happily*
If I eliminate drug patents, I will also eliminate all the new drugs I was trying to make afforadable, the argument will go. Well, maybe, but it's not so obvious to me
Nice way to shrug off the core of the problem. Your rant is pretty much all fluff if you don't even address the issue. Yes, we all know that people not getting drugs to cure disease is bad. That's obvious. Any suggestions?
Your assumption is that everyone should learn how computers work. That's ridiculous. That's borderign on insane. That's like me saying that everyone should know the ins and outs of HVAC just because everyone has an air conditioner. I have interests in things other than computers, and I don't want to waste time doing something as boring as trying to figure out how to get my computer to recognize my network card. I spend time learning plenty... just not arbitrary shit that has no value to me. I'd MUCH rather pay someone else to worry about that (and my heat pump/AC) so that I can spend time doing things that matter to me. To me, spending a week getting a computer running properly, and many more months learning the intracacies of compiling kernels is a complete waste of time. To me, $1000 in software to run my business is a tiny price to pay to avoid having to spend months learning about the damned computer, which while important, is not my business.
Open Source is the be-all-end-all of software for those with an infinite amount of time, patience, and lack of a life. My short time on this planet is valuable, thus I'd rather not spend it trying to figure out how to use some boring piece of software. I'd much rather buy software than waste time.
Erm, it CAN'T be the "universal standard" by definition if it only works on a few machines (WinPC and Mac). Get real. "Get real"? Yo'ure the one saying that Windows PCs and Macs only amount to a "few machines". Call me nuts, but I thought that 99+% market share WAS generally considered a "standard".
Jeez, that's tough. I can't afford a Humvee, so I'd better just steal one. I *need* one to do my job. Either that, or the gov't should force the company to lower their prices so I'm not *forced* to steal one to do my job. What a crock of horseshit. MS should just stop selling in Taiwan altogether.
The fact is that most people LIKE Microsoft. You may be talking about the OSS geek microcosm on/., or even the relatively small geek microcosm, but survey after survey shows that most people in general *love* Microsoft. I looked up a bunch of 'em for a post a few months ago, I don't feel like finding 'em again.
Wow. A kid who doesn't know the difference between XP and W2K running a warez server that gets hacked, then claims that somehow the filesystem was corrupted to the point where things "couldn't be deleted", even when using scandisk, which doesn't exist in W2K. That's an incredible story! Have you heard the one about these magic beans?
So then, you're saying that if a hacker couldn't get a super-secret XP recover disk, he could use a much more readily accessable W2K disk? Wow. Now I'm nervous.
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P2P really needs to have a critical mass of users to be useful. That's why I say things like Gnutella are relatively useless. There's not a critical mass of users that makes it easy (or fast) enough to find what I want. Sure, Fast Track may have 5,000,000 copies of a Britney Spears recording, but I've also had great luck finding what I like. I've got a nice little collection of WW2 era big band singers going now. And, there are enough different kinds of FastTrack users now that it's not all one kind of music, either. I'm also steadily working on my 1980's music videos collection with Fast Track, and so far, I've been able to find everything that I've wanted.
Kazaa only works on Windows
And your point is? Kazaa still has many, many many times more content of all types than any P2P network to date. Gnutella is about as relevant as so many OSS projects: it's not.
Cross platform compatibility is ithe most over-hyped crock of shit in IT today. The chances of a company changing platforms in any given year is very fucking slim. Companies change platforms every 10-15 years, if that often. This article is yet another piece of garbage from the Register, which sound like it was paid for by Sun (ie: cross-compatibility = Java), which makes it not journalism at all, but an advertisement. The Register is nothing but a fucking tabloid, and, not even a good tabloid at that.
Well let me tell ya'... a woman who doesn't mind you running a porn site, looking at thousands of pictures and videos of gorgeous chicks (and guys) every day is a one sign that you've got a cool one.
will have better luck getting a job or starting a business these days.
Getting a job for me is irrelevant. I saw the writing on the wall a few years ago, and I bailed from IT. That ended up being a good move. I, in turn, started my own "brick-and-mortar" business. If I had decided to "learn computers" by using all OSS software, I'd still be working on starting, 5 months later. It would be stupid, and a tremendous waste of time and money to learn the ins and outs of computers when I can buy software for a few thousand that does what I need. IP address? I know what one is, but how exactly does that make me a better businessman? I'd much rather pay someone else to worry about that. If you'd ever had a business, you'd know that you don't spend time dicking around with little stuff like that. You pay someone to handle it, and get on with the important parts. Any businessperson that's not in IT that's foolish enough to waste a significant amount of time "understanding computers" is gonna fail. Why? Again, unless he's in IT, it's irrelevant to the business. I could've also spent 6 months learning how to acid stain my concrete floors and a few years learning carpentry to build my shelving, and I'd still be learning. It's called specialization. It's how modern society works. If nobody specialized, we'd all still be a nation of subsistence farmers.
Well, the porn site's a business. It has no bearing whatsoever on my real life. I'm actually a former geek with a hot, very cool wife.
Ah, little do you know that the chicks athletes get are the boring blond bimbos that are just waiting for the boring house in the suburbs with the boring SUV full of boring kids. While those who "smoke and refuse to participate" are the ones that get the really cool chicks.
Well, you may be right, but what I question is how much, exactly, is first to market going to be worth? Without patent protection, it would have to be worth more than all of the R&D, plus consumer education. I'm not a chemist, so I have no idea how easy it is to reverse-engineer a drug. My *guess* is that the first to market wouldn't necessarily be worth the R&D. Hence, no reasonable company would want to stick it's neck out for R&D.
Whoa! Looks like we're up to level RED! Seriously, drop a line to the FBI notifying them of "terrorists" that attempted to hack into your machine with false information. Let the FBI kick their doors down. I'd do the same, but unfortunately, they didn't check any of my FTP sites :( (I just checked my logs for the past few months).
I also believe that *somebody* should come up with a system to prevent world hunger, AIDS, and the pet overpopulation problems. Why hasn't anybody fixed these problems yet? Golly gee whiz, it must be all of the money. That's it.
Wow. How very insightful.
Oh, I found where you suggested a solution!:
Obviously, the drug research is important, so any replacement system would have to have a way to employ and pay those who are actually developing the new drugs.)
And don't you think that if there were some kind of system to do so that somebody would have come up with it already, or it would have already been implemented, Captain Obvious?
Here's a great case where good old laissez-faire capitalism would work better.
OK, but how would it work? A company develops a drug, and every other drug company reverse engineers it for 1/1000 of the cost of the R&D, and the first company can't compete. They go out of business. All other companies in the industry see this, and so they all sit on their hands waiting for the other guy to develop a drug so they can copy it? That doesn't sound too good to me. If I got some kind of disease, I'll happily fork over the cash to get it fixed. *Happily*
If I eliminate drug patents, I will also eliminate all the new drugs I was trying to make afforadable, the argument will go. Well, maybe, but it's not so obvious to me
Nice way to shrug off the core of the problem. Your rant is pretty much all fluff if you don't even address the issue. Yes, we all know that people not getting drugs to cure disease is bad. That's obvious. Any suggestions?
Another time I wish I had mod points. You're exactly right.
And who's going to pay for all of these wonderful, magical humanity-saving discoveries? The tooth fairy?
And I'm going to pay for bandwidth how, exactly?
Your assumption is that everyone should learn how computers work. That's ridiculous. That's borderign on insane. That's like me saying that everyone should know the ins and outs of HVAC just because everyone has an air conditioner. I have interests in things other than computers, and I don't want to waste time doing something as boring as trying to figure out how to get my computer to recognize my network card. I spend time learning plenty... just not arbitrary shit that has no value to me. I'd MUCH rather pay someone else to worry about that (and my heat pump/AC) so that I can spend time doing things that matter to me. To me, spending a week getting a computer running properly, and many more months learning the intracacies of compiling kernels is a complete waste of time. To me, $1000 in software to run my business is a tiny price to pay to avoid having to spend months learning about the damned computer, which while important, is not my business.
Open Source is the be-all-end-all of software for those with an infinite amount of time, patience, and lack of a life. My short time on this planet is valuable, thus I'd rather not spend it trying to figure out how to use some boring piece of software. I'd much rather buy software than waste time.
Erm, it CAN'T be the "universal standard" by definition if it only works on a few machines (WinPC and Mac). Get real. "Get real"? Yo'ure the one saying that Windows PCs and Macs only amount to a "few machines". Call me nuts, but I thought that 99+% market share WAS generally considered a "standard".
Jeez, that's tough. I can't afford a Humvee, so I'd better just steal one. I *need* one to do my job. Either that, or the gov't should force the company to lower their prices so I'm not *forced* to steal one to do my job. What a crock of horseshit. MS should just stop selling in Taiwan altogether.
Good point.
I was a member of Safari about two years ago. I know I wasn't the first. Is something that happened two years ago generally considered "news"?
The fact is that most people LIKE Microsoft. You may be talking about the OSS geek microcosm on /., or even the relatively small geek microcosm, but survey after survey shows that most people in general *love* Microsoft. I looked up a bunch of 'em for a post a few months ago, I don't feel like finding 'em again.
Wow. A kid who doesn't know the difference between XP and W2K running a warez server that gets hacked, then claims that somehow the filesystem was corrupted to the point where things "couldn't be deleted", even when using scandisk, which doesn't exist in W2K. That's an incredible story! Have you heard the one about these magic beans?
So then, you're saying that if a hacker couldn't get a super-secret XP recover disk, he could use a much more readily accessable W2K disk? Wow. Now I'm nervous.