I totally respect your way of doing things, but most regular non-geek folks see your way of doing things as well, bad.
If you have a ton of songs its simpler (for them) to load up iTunes, plug in their iPod and use the iTunes interface to manage transfers. Another bonus of using iTunes is you get easy playlist management, party shuffle, quick auto made playlists like Top Rated, Most Played...etc.
How do you do all of this when your MP3 player is only treated as a mass storage device? Doesn't it get tedious with hundreds or thousands of songs?
"If vcast/treo/etc (every fucking phone plays mp3s) didn't kill the market for a standalone player, why would iPhone?"
Because the VCast and Treo aren't made by Apple. The iPhone is. You see, Apple "gets" simplicity. Its something a geek couldn't understand if it pulled down a geek's pants and blew em.
This is why the iPod dominated the already present MP3 player market, and why the iPhone will do the same to the Smartphone market.
I totally get what you are saying. There seems to be a sect within the environmentalist movement that isn't environmentalist at all. They're just using the cloak of environmentalism to spout off anti-capitalist/anti-consumerist ideas that very few people in the general public are comfortable with. Its really annoying and distracts from the main environmental message and also makes environmentalism as a whole largely unpalatable to regular folks.
Why can't such a person just integrate at a new job? Whats wrong with identifying yourself through your new workplace after you get fired from your old one?
It will last as long as these things contribute to keeping Google at the head of the pack. Right now these perks serve mainly as recruitement and retention tools. Once you get a geek to work at Google you have to KEEP them working at Google. Cut back on the perks and you'll suffer the same fate as Microsoft, incurring an exodus of their best workers to other companies.
This argument is kind of moot if you are developing GPL code because any distro can take your code whether its a democratically run distro or an authortarian run distro.
As for Debian's developer count, 1. Its an old distro and I think thats the reason it has as many developers as it has and 2. Its a very slow moving distro. So the great numbers of developers doesn't really help them release as frequently as well ANY of the other distros.
If I were a developer I'd first and foremost would want my code to be USED. It just seems that there's a higher chance of that happening with Ubuntu, or SuSE or Red Hat or Mandriva than there is with Debian. Just because Debian is used on a lot of servers.....well thats just not that impressive to me. To me the desktop is just as important. Plus over time I think you're going to see all of the aforementioned distros surpass Debian in user base.
That is a paraphrase of the original phrase "tyranny of the majority" which points out that even in a democracy that people can be oppressed, mainly the minority or outsiders.
So in this case Ubuntu would be not exactly oppressing but neglecting those Gentoo/ Linux From Scratch type geeks who want to do everything the hard way for no real reason.
With beryl, good drivers, and built in FOSS apps that beat MS at every turn (Firefox > IE, Beryl > Aero, Thunderbird > Outlook, and VLC > WMP), it seems like the win would be fast and clear. Nobody wants Vista, especially when you have to pay. Ubuntu comes preconfigured in a way that is over all superior to every Windows that has ever existed. It's more solid and reliable, it has four desktops (though they moronically all have the same wallpaper by default, and it happens to be shit brown), it has a very nice user interface (though *i* and many others feel it could take some design cues from Windows 98 with regards to menu structure and some other minor details), and it's free. Oh yeah, and it's open source, so anybody who doesn't like part of it can fix it themselves."
Oh really? So I can just fix whatever part of it I don't like myself? I didn't know I knew how to program! Good thing you told me or I would have never known! And I personally use 3 OS's, OS X, XP and Kubuntu and I did not know that Kubuntu with Beryl was better than Windows. Silly me! Don't get me wrong, Kubuntu is pretty awesome but its still not on par with Windows JUST YET. Did you know I had to do something EXTRA after installing Kubuntu 6.10 to get my video codecs to work? Crazy thing. I didn't have to do that with Windows. I've never had to do that with Mac OS X. Then there was the wifi card in my laptop, which I also had to install after installing the OS. Did you know XP and OS X have built in wifi drivers? If you are using Windows on centrino its no issue at all. With Kubuntu I had to install KNetworkManager to get WPA functionality.
I don't mean to insult you here or anything but you are coming off sounding like a socialist here. The business needs of the business are paramount here, and the business is owned by the shareholdres/venture capitalists and the execs are the management directly hired by the owners to run said company. With all of the workplace laws that have been built up in this country over the last 150 years I think workers are sufficiently protected from any abuses. That leaves salary, perks and benefits as the only thing an employee needs to worry about in regards to THEIR business needs. Obviously a company has to also meet the needs of its customers or it goes out of business.
Thus for the employee if you don't like what your company is offering, look for work elsewhere. Unless of course you are advocating that employeees should be getting something other and in addition too their overall compensation that they currently get. I don't mean to put words in your mouth but it seems to me that you are implying that workers are unpaid workers providing slave labor or something.
Who's the real retard? The folks who pirate Vista or the geeks who can't understand why someone would want to pirate Windows over the oh so easy to use Linux?
No, keeping tabs on half (or even all) of the globe is NOT evil. If you don't want anyone to keep tabs on you then you always have the simple and easy option of committing suicide.
If you don't, then either you don't mind Google keeping tabs on you, or you are a wuss.
You aren't getting my point about the free market. If its so unnatractive that NO ONE buys this stuff then the companies will have to loosen the terms. So unless the law is going to force people to buy content that they don't even want in the first place I don't see how DRM escapes the bounds of the market.
Why not let the market take care of it? If these overly restrictive DRM terms turn off enough people then the market itself will force these companies to open up their systems more. Why is this something we need to fight? If these DRM terms do NOT lead to lower sales then it reflects the people don't really care about their media being free in the first place.
Is this a case of "fair use" activists trying to genuinely protect our rights or perhaps thinking they speak for everyone when they really don't?
Then why are so many non-CS grads employed by tech companies as programmers? What happens to all the chock full of theory CS guys? Where do they end up?
Competition is pointless and useless if it doesn't produce anything of value. I'd very much like to be locked into something that works REALLY WELL which is why I can't wait for Apple's iPhone.
Java on mobile devices sucks. I have a Treo 700p and Opera Mini for it just doesn't work as well as a native app would. It friggin asks me everytime I start to use it do I want to connect to the internet. No I opened up a web browser so I could NOT connect to the internet. WTF?
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I totally respect your way of doing things, but most regular non-geek folks see your way of doing things as well, bad.
If you have a ton of songs its simpler (for them) to load up iTunes, plug in their iPod and use the iTunes interface to manage transfers. Another bonus of using iTunes is you get easy playlist management, party shuffle, quick auto made playlists like Top Rated, Most Played...etc.
How do you do all of this when your MP3 player is only treated as a mass storage device? Doesn't it get tedious with hundreds or thousands of songs?
"If vcast/treo/etc (every fucking phone plays mp3s) didn't kill the market for a standalone player, why would iPhone?"
Because the VCast and Treo aren't made by Apple. The iPhone is. You see, Apple "gets" simplicity. Its something a geek couldn't understand if it pulled down a geek's pants and blew em.
This is why the iPod dominated the already present MP3 player market, and why the iPhone will do the same to the Smartphone market.
It hasn't been cancelled yet. The final episodes air this spring/summer.
I totally get what you are saying. There seems to be a sect within the environmentalist movement that isn't environmentalist at all. They're just using the cloak of environmentalism to spout off anti-capitalist/anti-consumerist ideas that very few people in the general public are comfortable with. Its really annoying and distracts from the main environmental message and also makes environmentalism as a whole largely unpalatable to regular folks.
Why can't such a person just integrate at a new job? Whats wrong with identifying yourself through your new workplace after you get fired from your old one?
You would fire someone just because they wear a suit and tie?
It will last as long as these things contribute to keeping Google at the head of the pack. Right now these perks serve mainly as recruitement and retention tools. Once you get a geek to work at Google you have to KEEP them working at Google. Cut back on the perks and you'll suffer the same fate as Microsoft, incurring an exodus of their best workers to other companies.
It never gave me any problems with spyware.
Have you ever checked out StyleXP for Windows XP?
When I ran WinXP full time I used it to install a OS X/Aqua type theme.
Now I use the Vista Transformation Pack to make XP look as much like Vista as is possible.
There's a difference between having a democracy as a form of government and a democracy as a form of project administration.
In other words, it works for the former and sucks for the latter.
If Apple or Microsoft or the Linux kernel were run by democracies none of them would be as successful as they are today.
Thats the whole point of being an elitist though isn't it? Never gaining the maturity to grow beyond childish behavior into adulthood.
Adults compromise.
Children never will.
In this regard Debian is Forever Young.
This argument is kind of moot if you are developing GPL code because any distro can take your code whether its a democratically run distro or an authortarian run distro.
As for Debian's developer count, 1. Its an old distro and I think thats the reason it has as many developers as it has and 2. Its a very slow moving distro. So the great numbers of developers doesn't really help them release as frequently as well ANY of the other distros.
If I were a developer I'd first and foremost would want my code to be USED. It just seems that there's a higher chance of that happening with Ubuntu, or SuSE or Red Hat or Mandriva than there is with Debian. Just because Debian is used on a lot of servers.....well thats just not that impressive to me. To me the desktop is just as important. Plus over time I think you're going to see all of the aforementioned distros surpass Debian in user base.
That is a paraphrase of the original phrase "tyranny of the majority" which points out that even in a democracy that people can be oppressed, mainly the minority or outsiders.
So in this case Ubuntu would be not exactly oppressing but neglecting those Gentoo/ Linux From Scratch type geeks who want to do everything the hard way for no real reason.
"Why doesn't Ubuntu seal the deal?
With beryl, good drivers, and built in FOSS apps that beat MS at every turn (Firefox > IE, Beryl > Aero, Thunderbird > Outlook, and VLC > WMP), it seems like the win would be fast and clear. Nobody wants Vista, especially when you have to pay. Ubuntu comes preconfigured in a way that is over all superior to every Windows that has ever existed. It's more solid and reliable, it has four desktops (though they moronically all have the same wallpaper by default, and it happens to be shit brown), it has a very nice user interface (though *i* and many others feel it could take some design cues from Windows 98 with regards to menu structure and some other minor details), and it's free. Oh yeah, and it's open source, so anybody who doesn't like part of it can fix it themselves."
Oh really? So I can just fix whatever part of it I don't like myself? I didn't know I knew how to program! Good thing you told me or I would have never known! And I personally use 3 OS's, OS X, XP and Kubuntu and I did not know that Kubuntu with Beryl was better than Windows. Silly me! Don't get me wrong, Kubuntu is pretty awesome but its still not on par with Windows JUST YET. Did you know I had to do something EXTRA after installing Kubuntu 6.10 to get my video codecs to work? Crazy thing. I didn't have to do that with Windows. I've never had to do that with Mac OS X. Then there was the wifi card in my laptop, which I also had to install after installing the OS. Did you know XP and OS X have built in wifi drivers? If you are using Windows on centrino its no issue at all. With Kubuntu I had to install KNetworkManager to get WPA functionality.
But maybe I'm just imagining these things.
I don't mean to insult you here or anything but you are coming off sounding like a socialist here. The business needs of the business are paramount here, and the business is owned by the shareholdres/venture capitalists and the execs are the management directly hired by the owners to run said company. With all of the workplace laws that have been built up in this country over the last 150 years I think workers are sufficiently protected from any abuses. That leaves salary, perks and benefits as the only thing an employee needs to worry about in regards to THEIR business needs. Obviously a company has to also meet the needs of its customers or it goes out of business.
Thus for the employee if you don't like what your company is offering, look for work elsewhere. Unless of course you are advocating that employeees should be getting something other and in addition too their overall compensation that they currently get. I don't mean to put words in your mouth but it seems to me that you are implying that workers are unpaid workers providing slave labor or something.
So is that a good or bad thing, and good or bad from who's point of view?
Who's the real retard? The folks who pirate Vista or the geeks who can't understand why someone would want to pirate Windows over the oh so easy to use Linux?
Thats the way its supposed to be. If the CIA didn't own people then they would have to be shutdown for negligence.
No, keeping tabs on half (or even all) of the globe is NOT evil. If you don't want anyone to keep tabs on you then you always have the simple and easy option of committing suicide.
If you don't, then either you don't mind Google keeping tabs on you, or you are a wuss.
You aren't getting my point about the free market. If its so unnatractive that NO ONE buys this stuff then the companies will have to loosen the terms. So unless the law is going to force people to buy content that they don't even want in the first place I don't see how DRM escapes the bounds of the market.
Why not let the market take care of it? If these overly restrictive DRM terms turn off enough people then the market itself will force these companies to open up their systems more. Why is this something we need to fight? If these DRM terms do NOT lead to lower sales then it reflects the people don't really care about their media being free in the first place.
Is this a case of "fair use" activists trying to genuinely protect our rights or perhaps thinking they speak for everyone when they really don't?
Which is it?
So in other words, promoted beyond their competency?
Then why are so many non-CS grads employed by tech companies as programmers? What happens to all the chock full of theory CS guys? Where do they end up?
Its simple.
1 iPhone for your car. 1 iPhone for your person. 1 Smaller iPhone for the gym (smaller iPods are solid state. 1 iPod for the home music system.
Thats like the bare minimum I can think of. Some folks have like 6 or 7.
Competition is pointless and useless if it doesn't produce anything of value. I'd very much like to be locked into something that works REALLY WELL which is why I can't wait for Apple's iPhone.
Java on mobile devices sucks. I have a Treo 700p and Opera Mini for it just doesn't work as well as a native app would. It friggin asks me everytime I start to use it do I want to connect to the internet. No I opened up a web browser so I could NOT connect to the internet. WTF?