If you look at the Linux demographic, we're not really a cheap bunch. We generally have disposable income, and generally are well-educated. But the reason we come across as a bunch of cheapskates is that we don't spend our money on Linux software. The hundreds of dollars I didn't spend on Windows 2000 server, Office 2000/XP, Photoshop, MS Exchange, and so on all went towards my car, a car stereo mp3 player, my home receiver, my Playstation2, my DVD player, some Shure 57 microphones, rent on a better apartment, and good beer. Not to mention the computer hardware... And I still had enough money left over to download a half dozen ISOs and install on my souped-up computer.
Linux users still spend money, but usually it's on other stuff - stuff they wouldn't buy if they had to drop $100 every time Microsoft released a new version of its OS (and much more if you want to run a server). I'm not saying we shouldn't occasionally donate $50 to SuSE or whoever and get a shiny box with prettier discs (unless you're a big fan of Sharpie Art). But more industries benefit from Linux users than the software industry.
I agree with most of your rant here, but I want to make the point that "Flash" is definitely *not* a standards-based technology. In principle, a Macromedia dominated web would be no better than a Microsoft dominated web.
Of course it isn't a standards-based technology. I never said it was. The reason I suggest flash as an alternative is that is is supported under popular browsers in Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Also, the swf file format is open, so that you can actually create swf files with other tools, such as PHP.
I play video games all the time (and I'm pretty damn good at it too) and I've gotten in 3 accidents and gotten 2 speeding tickets. I'm 17.
I think being 17 trumps the video game factor. Who here was a good driver at 17? Granted, most of us weren't as bad as you but I don't think it's the fault of the video games.
How do you still have your license? Seriously - three accidents and you've had your license for less than two years? And what police officer wouldn't have had your license revoked after the second ticket, at only 17? Even after hitting a school bus??
Either you're lying, your parents are wealthy, or your local law enforcement is corrupt/incompetent. But if I was as bad a driver as you, I wouldn't tell anyone about it and I'd spend most of my free time bui
Oh come on, you've never seen a site get slashdotted? As soon as somebody finds a site that everybody should see, it gets posted to slashdot so that nobody can see it.
Perhaps it was rejected because your link gets redirected to a "choose your geographical area" page, after which you are dumped on a "local" newspaper's page (I put local in quotes because it is completely irrelevant). The AP uses a cookie to store that, so the second time you follow the link it pulls up the correct story. That could be why they rejected it, but who really cares? Karma isn't everything. Or anything, for that matter.
I can understand why the guy went back to using Windows after his troubles in the Linux world - but I can also understand why so many people go to Linux after the headaches in the Windows world. Let's face it, no OS to come out yet is perfect, and until one is, there will always be people leaving OS A for OS B.
But really, if you enjoy the free-as-in-speech aspect of Linux, then it shouldn't really bother you if somebody else would rather use Windows. The freedom to do whatever you want to do with Linux includes the freedom to not use Linux on the desktop. You can still use Linux wherever you please; it is not affected in any way by this other person's choice. Even if nobody else uses Linux, you can still use all the open source software that exists today, plus modify any of it.
I am glad to hear that he liked SuSE, though, as I am planning on installing 8.0 myself within the next few days.
I have posted a mirror of the article at http://www.birdlandmedia.com/archives/000021.html. The article can be freely distributed, provided that you link back to her site. I'm keeping a copy of it for reference - and since I design web sites for musicians, I can direct them to the article if they are wondering about whether or not they should provide free music downloads.
The site was actually listed on Blue's News on Saturday (scroll down, it's the image of the day). The site choked from the Blue's News traffic, and they had already made plans to upgrade. I don't think they were expecting the slashdot link.
I see a lot of comments here along the lines of "we're still going to use IE because thats what 99.99% of my users use and added development time costs money" and that just sickens me. Why? Because if coding a site to standards is even a question, then you shouldn't be in that line of work. Doing the job correctly is part of doing your job. If you write proper xhtml (all your attributes are quoted, every tag is properly closed including <p> and <li>, etc.) then your site will usually look correct. If you learn how to do a "neat trick" by looking at code generated by a Microsoft editor, then you'll have problems.
But, but, but... most of my users use Internet Explorer! If everybody tailored their work to "most" of their audience, there would be no handicapped spaces in parking lots, restaurants would not have vegetarian menu items, record stores would only carry "Top 40" music, and bars wouldn't serve Guiness. I don't want to live in that kind of world.
But coding to standards is more work! Yeah, and not falling down the stairs is more work than walking down. But that's the way it should be done. If you can't do it right, don't be surprised when somebody who takes pride in his/her work shows up and gets your job.
But I want to use those special IE-only features! Most of the world can do without page transitions. If you need some special eye candy, it can most likely be done with Java, Flash, or plain old DHTML coded properly. The flash plugin exists for the major browsers (and works under linux too) and can be done properly, but again that takes some work on the developers part.
And to those who are hiding behind their huge IE user bases, think about this: What if some other browser begins to get significant market share? Maybe current users will generally not notice that the gecko engine can't render your site the way you want it to look, but users next year might have some problems (especially if AOL does indeed incorporate the gecko engine in an upcoming release). Is it better to learn how to write proper HTML/XHTML now, or write quick semi-correct HTML now and then have to fix it in a year? And chances are, if you aren't writing proper HTML now, you're not commenting your code eaither.
In conclusion, I agree that blame should be placed on web developers who only want to develop for IE because that's easiest. If you don't want to do the job right, then too f-ing bad. That's why they call it work. If it was supposed to be easy, then they wouldn't pay you - they'd pay the neighbor kid because "he's good at computers." Do the job you're paid to do. People might not find out if you slack, but the more you slack, the harder it will be to correct it when the time comes.
Disclaimer: My site (listed above) is not currently XHTML compliant. There is a new version being developed which will be compliant, though. And if you see browser-specific features, that's because the template for the site is chosen based on the user agent string.
Well, the most obvious reason I can see, ignoring everything else, is the fact that to get acceptable quality video, a movie is going to take up several gigabytes of disk space. This may not seem like much to the average slashdotter, since we no doubt have our cable modems and 100 gig hard drives, but a lot of consumers are still working with their 4-20 gig hard drives and 56K modems. To these people, the size of these movies are inconceivable and the time it would take to download them is just too long. And DVD burners are still too expensive (and they probably don't let you copy DVDs anyway) to justify purchasing one instead of a legitimate copy of the movie.
Then there are the P2P apps which just aren't reliable enough for consumers to download the entire movie that they want. You can usually get a song with minimal trouble, but try downloading a 1200 megabyte file - they're rare enough that you can't usually download from multiple sources, and there's a really good chance you'll lose the connection anyway.
We've got the technology, but we don't have the critical mass of users with broadband and huge hard drives who also share movies on the same P2P network and leave their computers running all the time. There isn't much point in considering the other reasons people are listing here because the difficulty of digitally pirating movies is enough to eclipse other motivating factors. Although, incidentally, I agree that DVDs are much more worth their price for the quality of the product.
Additionally, why the hell are so damn many people happy to pay $8.50 to watch a movie, just to be inundated with commercials before, and durring the movie you paid to see?
You're forgetting the forced donations before the movie starts - I'm all in favor of helping little kids with cancer, but if the movie theaters really cared they'd donate some of the $3 I have to spend for a bag of M&M's. Seriously, they charge such enormously high prices for food/drinks at the theater, don't let you bring in your own food, and then they guilt you into giving them more money. I now don't go into the theater until five minutes after the "start" time.
I've found that you can use the mouse with either hand, regardless of whether you're left- or right-handed. When I first started using a mouse (Amiga 2000), I set it on the left side, and used it without a problem. Then, when everybody else started using a mouse, I noticed that the mouse was always on the right side. I made the switch easily enough, and moved my mouse at home to the right so things would be consistent. It's all about what you're used to using.
Yes, he stole the review from Amazon. But apparently this guy does everything half-assed - look at his website! Real geeks don't need parsed PHP script, we just read the source!!
With sales of new PCs in their worst slump in decades,...
Since decade is plural, we can assume 2 or more decades, right? Which puts us back to at least 1982. Is this "journalist" actually trying to say that PC sales are lower than they were in 1982? I know the C-64 and the TRS-80 were popular machines, but surely any store that sold computers in 1982 and are still selling them today would testify that sales today are higher than they were in 1982.
a radically new version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, which, if all goes well, will come out sometime after 2005
So "sometime after 2005" means, what, 2006 at the earliest? The big Software Assurance plan MS has been trying to force us into only provides upgrades for the first 3-1/2 years for client software, and four years for server software. But wait, this new version isn't coming out for at least 3-1/2 years, and that's just if all goes well. Like, if the XBox doesn't crash-and-burn, the courts decide that MS was right after all, virus writers get bored with Outlook, worm writers get bored with IIS, and there are no more terrorist attacks. Then, maybe Longhorn will be released just after this first software assurance period ends. Of course Service Pack 1 wouldn't come out for another five months (which addresses the "faulty product activation" vulnerability that refuses to authenticate your license on all versions), and by then MS will start calling them point releases, so we'll have to re-subscribe.
Yes, I know the plan covers other stuff like Office, but the other software tends to coincide with Windows releases (Win95 - Office for Win95, Win98 - Office97, WinME/2K - Office2K, WinXP - OfficeXP). I hope a lot of companies get pissed at MS for not releasing any new software during this first cycle of "Software Assurance."
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but this only applies to the ssh server, not the clients. The vulnerability seems like it doesn't matter what software the client is using, in fact I doubt there is even a need for the client to be connected. Think of it like an Apache vulnerability - if you patch the server, then the oldest, buggiest web browser in the world wouldn't make it easier to break in to the server.
I know there may be 100% legal uses of P2P networks, but the scenario described in the game doesn't come close to any of them.
Sure it does - the Secret Irises may have given fans permission to share the music on a P2P network. This is not likely if the band is signed to a major label (we don't really know in this example), but if the band is unsigned or on a small label, they may prefer the exposure possible with free music to "protecting their intellectual property". In my old band, we made mp3's and shared them on Napster because we could make more money if more people heard our music than if we charged $10-$15 for a CD (which you wouldn't buy unless you heard the band first, usually). The recordings were a tool to get people to come to the shows, where a big crowd could get us $400-$500 dollars, just for playing music and drinking free-as-in-beer beer.
But of course, if the band is owned by a label, then they don't get any say in distribution and they have to make do with eight to twelve cents per sale.
my warning to those considering an audigy
on
The State of PC Audio
·
· Score: 3, Informative
If anybody is considering buying an Audigy because of the remote, think again. I don't think the article made any mention of the remote (which I believe is only available in the Platinum or better) , but it is just about worthless if used in conjunction with anything else that uses a remote.
I had set up a small tower in my living room, complete with wireless keyboard/mouse and an ATI All-in-wonder, and I upgraded from the SB Live to the Audigy for several reasons- better inputs/outputs mounted on the front were important, but the remote control was extremely important. After all, if I could use this remote to control winamp and other programs (possibly including the ATI TV app), I wouldn't need the keyboard or mouse 90% of the time.
Unfortunately, every other remote I have interfered with the audigy - I couldn't use the DVD player, TV, stereo, or even the PS2 remote without royally pissing off the Audigy Remote app (even when pointing the remotes in the opposite direction, it still picked up signals far more often than the devices that were supposed to get the signal). Ironically, the Audigy remote caused the least amount of response from the Audigy, and no problems with the rest of the entertainment center. And the Audigy Remote app is such a horribly bloated app that I had to disable it entirely (which is almost as difficult to do as disabling RealPlayer or removing all the AOL icons).
I like the sound that comes out of the card, I like the 1/4" input jacks (which lets you plug a guitar directly in the front, for example), and I like the fact that there are so many controls and inputs that are mounted on the front (with the platinum version). But the remote was such a disappointment; don't buy this card for that feature - you may get better results, but don't raise your hopes.
Slashdot Mirror
If you look at the Linux demographic, we're not really a cheap bunch. We generally have disposable income, and generally are well-educated. But the reason we come across as a bunch of cheapskates is that we don't spend our money on Linux software. The hundreds of dollars I didn't spend on Windows 2000 server, Office 2000/XP, Photoshop, MS Exchange, and so on all went towards my car, a car stereo mp3 player, my home receiver, my Playstation2, my DVD player, some Shure 57 microphones, rent on a better apartment, and good beer. Not to mention the computer hardware... And I still had enough money left over to download a half dozen ISOs and install on my souped-up computer.
Linux users still spend money, but usually it's on other stuff - stuff they wouldn't buy if they had to drop $100 every time Microsoft released a new version of its OS (and much more if you want to run a server). I'm not saying we shouldn't occasionally donate $50 to SuSE or whoever and get a shiny box with prettier discs (unless you're a big fan of Sharpie Art). But more industries benefit from Linux users than the software industry.
Of course it isn't a standards-based technology. I never said it was. The reason I suggest flash as an alternative is that is is supported under popular browsers in Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Also, the swf file format is open, so that you can actually create swf files with other tools, such as PHP.
How do you still have your license? Seriously - three accidents and you've had your license for less than two years? And what police officer wouldn't have had your license revoked after the second ticket, at only 17? Even after hitting a school bus??
Either you're lying, your parents are wealthy, or your local law enforcement is corrupt/incompetent. But if I was as bad a driver as you, I wouldn't tell anyone about it and I'd spend most of my free time bui
My karma was only 40, now it's also excellent. But spelled correctly for me. Does that mean mine is better than yours?
Since it's so excellent I guess I can post a little offtopic too. It will still be excellent! Yay!
Oh come on, you've never seen a site get slashdotted? As soon as somebody finds a site that everybody should see, it gets posted to slashdot so that nobody can see it.
I can understand why the guy went back to using Windows after his troubles in the Linux world - but I can also understand why so many people go to Linux after the headaches in the Windows world. Let's face it, no OS to come out yet is perfect, and until one is, there will always be people leaving OS A for OS B.
But really, if you enjoy the free-as-in-speech aspect of Linux, then it shouldn't really bother you if somebody else would rather use Windows. The freedom to do whatever you want to do with Linux includes the freedom to not use Linux on the desktop. You can still use Linux wherever you please; it is not affected in any way by this other person's choice. Even if nobody else uses Linux, you can still use all the open source software that exists today, plus modify any of it.
I am glad to hear that he liked SuSE, though, as I am planning on installing 8.0 myself within the next few days.
Um... do you realize the irony of what you just wrote?
I have posted a mirror of the article at http://www.birdlandmedia.com/archives/000021.html. The article can be freely distributed, provided that you link back to her site. I'm keeping a copy of it for reference - and since I design web sites for musicians, I can direct them to the article if they are wondering about whether or not they should provide free music downloads.
The site was actually listed on Blue's News on Saturday (scroll down, it's the image of the day). The site choked from the Blue's News traffic, and they had already made plans to upgrade. I don't think they were expecting the slashdot link.
Proof again that Spaceballs predicted the future with oh-so-much accuracy...
You call this thing a radar?
No, sir, actually we call it Mr. Coffee....
Of course their coffee maker was simply adjacent to their radar, this is one step better. Just wait till somebody tries to jam the computer.
I see a lot of comments here along the lines of "we're still going to use IE because thats what 99.99% of my users use and added development time costs money" and that just sickens me. Why? Because if coding a site to standards is even a question, then you shouldn't be in that line of work. Doing the job correctly is part of doing your job. If you write proper xhtml (all your attributes are quoted, every tag is properly closed including <p> and <li>, etc.) then your site will usually look correct. If you learn how to do a "neat trick" by looking at code generated by a Microsoft editor, then you'll have problems.
But, but, but... most of my users use Internet Explorer! If everybody tailored their work to "most" of their audience, there would be no handicapped spaces in parking lots, restaurants would not have vegetarian menu items, record stores would only carry "Top 40" music, and bars wouldn't serve Guiness. I don't want to live in that kind of world.
But coding to standards is more work! Yeah, and not falling down the stairs is more work than walking down. But that's the way it should be done. If you can't do it right, don't be surprised when somebody who takes pride in his/her work shows up and gets your job.
But I want to use those special IE-only features! Most of the world can do without page transitions. If you need some special eye candy, it can most likely be done with Java, Flash, or plain old DHTML coded properly. The flash plugin exists for the major browsers (and works under linux too) and can be done properly, but again that takes some work on the developers part.
And to those who are hiding behind their huge IE user bases, think about this: What if some other browser begins to get significant market share? Maybe current users will generally not notice that the gecko engine can't render your site the way you want it to look, but users next year might have some problems (especially if AOL does indeed incorporate the gecko engine in an upcoming release). Is it better to learn how to write proper HTML/XHTML now, or write quick semi-correct HTML now and then have to fix it in a year? And chances are, if you aren't writing proper HTML now, you're not commenting your code eaither.
In conclusion, I agree that blame should be placed on web developers who only want to develop for IE because that's easiest. If you don't want to do the job right, then too f-ing bad. That's why they call it work. If it was supposed to be easy, then they wouldn't pay you - they'd pay the neighbor kid because "he's good at computers." Do the job you're paid to do. People might not find out if you slack, but the more you slack, the harder it will be to correct it when the time comes.
Disclaimer: My site (listed above) is not currently XHTML compliant. There is a new version being developed which will be compliant, though. And if you see browser-specific features, that's because the template for the site is chosen based on the user agent string.
Well, the most obvious reason I can see, ignoring everything else, is the fact that to get acceptable quality video, a movie is going to take up several gigabytes of disk space. This may not seem like much to the average slashdotter, since we no doubt have our cable modems and 100 gig hard drives, but a lot of consumers are still working with their 4-20 gig hard drives and 56K modems. To these people, the size of these movies are inconceivable and the time it would take to download them is just too long. And DVD burners are still too expensive (and they probably don't let you copy DVDs anyway) to justify purchasing one instead of a legitimate copy of the movie.
Then there are the P2P apps which just aren't reliable enough for consumers to download the entire movie that they want. You can usually get a song with minimal trouble, but try downloading a 1200 megabyte file - they're rare enough that you can't usually download from multiple sources, and there's a really good chance you'll lose the connection anyway.
We've got the technology, but we don't have the critical mass of users with broadband and huge hard drives who also share movies on the same P2P network and leave their computers running all the time. There isn't much point in considering the other reasons people are listing here because the difficulty of digitally pirating movies is enough to eclipse other motivating factors. Although, incidentally, I agree that DVDs are much more worth their price for the quality of the product.
Even the lyrics are the same! Compare: The Planets' lyrics and John Cage's lyrics.
I've found that you can use the mouse with either hand, regardless of whether you're left- or right-handed. When I first started using a mouse (Amiga 2000), I set it on the left side, and used it without a problem. Then, when everybody else started using a mouse, I noticed that the mouse was always on the right side. I made the switch easily enough, and moved my mouse at home to the right so things would be consistent. It's all about what you're used to using.
Yes, he stole the review from Amazon. But apparently this guy does everything half-assed - look at his website! Real geeks don't need parsed PHP script, we just read the source!!
Since decade is plural, we can assume 2 or more decades, right? Which puts us back to at least 1982. Is this "journalist" actually trying to say that PC sales are lower than they were in 1982? I know the C-64 and the TRS-80 were popular machines, but surely any store that sold computers in 1982 and are still selling them today would testify that sales today are higher than they were in 1982.
na na na na na na na na Leader!
So "sometime after 2005" means, what, 2006 at the earliest? The big Software Assurance plan MS has been trying to force us into only provides upgrades for the first 3-1/2 years for client software, and four years for server software. But wait, this new version isn't coming out for at least 3-1/2 years, and that's just if all goes well. Like, if the XBox doesn't crash-and-burn, the courts decide that MS was right after all, virus writers get bored with Outlook, worm writers get bored with IIS, and there are no more terrorist attacks. Then, maybe Longhorn will be released just after this first software assurance period ends. Of course Service Pack 1 wouldn't come out for another five months (which addresses the "faulty product activation" vulnerability that refuses to authenticate your license on all versions), and by then MS will start calling them point releases, so we'll have to re-subscribe.
Yes, I know the plan covers other stuff like Office, but the other software tends to coincide with Windows releases (Win95 - Office for Win95, Win98 - Office97, WinME/2K - Office2K, WinXP - OfficeXP). I hope a lot of companies get pissed at MS for not releasing any new software during this first cycle of "Software Assurance."
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but this only applies to the ssh server, not the clients. The vulnerability seems like it doesn't matter what software the client is using, in fact I doubt there is even a need for the client to be connected. Think of it like an Apache vulnerability - if you patch the server, then the oldest, buggiest web browser in the world wouldn't make it easier to break in to the server.
"Open" has always been an adjective.
Except when it's a verb - "Open that source!"
Sure it does - the Secret Irises may have given fans permission to share the music on a P2P network. This is not likely if the band is signed to a major label (we don't really know in this example), but if the band is unsigned or on a small label, they may prefer the exposure possible with free music to "protecting their intellectual property". In my old band, we made mp3's and shared them on Napster because we could make more money if more people heard our music than if we charged $10-$15 for a CD (which you wouldn't buy unless you heard the band first, usually). The recordings were a tool to get people to come to the shows, where a big crowd could get us $400-$500 dollars, just for playing music and drinking free-as-in-beer beer.
But of course, if the band is owned by a label, then they don't get any say in distribution and they have to make do with eight to twelve cents per sale.
If anybody is considering buying an Audigy because of the remote, think again. I don't think the article made any mention of the remote (which I believe is only available in the Platinum or better) , but it is just about worthless if used in conjunction with anything else that uses a remote.
I had set up a small tower in my living room, complete with wireless keyboard/mouse and an ATI All-in-wonder, and I upgraded from the SB Live to the Audigy for several reasons- better inputs/outputs mounted on the front were important, but the remote control was extremely important. After all, if I could use this remote to control winamp and other programs (possibly including the ATI TV app), I wouldn't need the keyboard or mouse 90% of the time.
Unfortunately, every other remote I have interfered with the audigy - I couldn't use the DVD player, TV, stereo, or even the PS2 remote without royally pissing off the Audigy Remote app (even when pointing the remotes in the opposite direction, it still picked up signals far more often than the devices that were supposed to get the signal). Ironically, the Audigy remote caused the least amount of response from the Audigy, and no problems with the rest of the entertainment center. And the Audigy Remote app is such a horribly bloated app that I had to disable it entirely (which is almost as difficult to do as disabling RealPlayer or removing all the AOL icons).
I like the sound that comes out of the card, I like the 1/4" input jacks (which lets you plug a guitar directly in the front, for example), and I like the fact that there are so many controls and inputs that are mounted on the front (with the platinum version). But the remote was such a disappointment; don't buy this card for that feature - you may get better results, but don't raise your hopes.
A-ha! It's called a TAX!
Well, if they can charge a tax, then I expect to see Hilary Rosen out there doing costruction work on I-787. My tax dollars at work, right?