No software effort on this planet exists in a vacumm. Without the assistance of other developers a project won't get anywhere. Now Debian can if they want continue with the anti-social behaviour that has served them so badly for so many years and continue to lose users and developers at which point future releases will continue to lag for longer and longer periods of time or it can change its tune. Stubborn is as stubborn does however. I seriously doubt that even when Debian shrinks down to 10 or 20 "meaningful" (meaningful means programmers who's contributions are major and not miniscule) developers they'll still stick to pissing everyone else off.
So to simplify, the whole Debian "too cool to care about creating a great environment for developers and users" attitude is self-defeating. In order to build ANY software including free softare you gotta be nice. Software thats only used by a few people isn't free. Its non-existent.
Making better software won't matter if no one uses it because all the naming schemes and licensing protocols are so damn confusing that no one can figure them out.
And the only way to defeat Microsoft is by making better software. So thats a given.
You are missing the point. Debian's dedication to ANYTHING won't matter if no one runs it. The desire to see Linux gain marketshare isn't just about making capitalist profits. Its to make sure open source software in general thrives instead of mererely survives in a murky backwater where largely no one knows about it.
What are you doing that managing the files is such a herculean task? I have about 25GB of MP3s and everything on my main computer is backed up to an external hard drive on a daily basis. These are just basic sound nerd/geek computing principles. If you have everything on your computers backed up then what do you have to worry about? And in about 5 years I've had maybe 3 MP3s go corrupt.
Your friends were right. You are in fact paranoid. The overwhelming majority of people will suffer no ill consequences from having their passports read by an RFID reader.
The burden is on you to show what bad things will happen.
You are correct it is a pipe dream and for many reasons.
1. The government would never let anyone or any corporation buy up that much land. 2. Robots can't replace all segements of the economy because then people would be BORED. The main central problem with socialism is it does not provide for more than people's basic needs. People have dreams and ambitions too. Believe it or not there are people out there who actually DO want to work and labor and struggle. Since you think robots would be doing everything such people would leave your "project", so many so that you'd have very few humans there. 3. EMPs. 4. Do you think the entire world would be lagging behind on robotic technology, military ordinance and the like? If it came down to it your project could be nuked.
If you have to explain to people why they should be angry about something you are never going to get a sufficient amount of them pissed to accomplish anything worthwhile.
Simply put, not all DRM is as bad as its made out to be. Unless you honeslty think the tens of millions of people who have bought iTunes AAC tracks want to use them on non-iPod MP3 players than we have a non-issue here. Basically you are trying to enlist the rage of those who really wouldn't care otherwise to assist you in combating something that personally angers you (or a small subset of the population known as geeks).
The issue is not whether or not people really care. The issue is whether or not they know what DRM is. I am dead serious on that. Do what I said, go outside and ask 10 random strangers what DRM is. If you go and do that I will take at face value what you tell me is the actual response. Please understand that if you live/work in a school or a tech company that that is not an accurate sample. Thats why I say "go outside" not merely ask your co-workers depending on where you work.
I'm not being elitist. I also don't think most people know that you can burn your iTunes tracks to CD to escape the DRM. Why? Because who would do such a thing when you can just put your music onto an iPod? Who the hell still listens to audio CDs? Your estimate of 5 out of 10 people knowing what DRM is is ridiculous. Thats half of all people. So you seriously think that of the 300 million people in the US that 150 million of them know what DRM is? I doubt the majority of iPod users even know that the tracks downloaded from the iTunes Music Store aren't MP3s, they're actually AAC files. They wouldn't know because most don't try to move them to other devices. If you have a computer and an iPod you're covered as far as AACs go. So Apple's DRM limitations simply DO NOT AFFECT MOST PEOPLE.
Yes the world is in fact filled with hapless technodweebs right out of the movie Hackers. I can't for the live of me get any of my co-workers to use Firefox or Open Office or Linux. Its a non-starter. Windows and IE and MS Office "Just work" and none of them could care less about the alternatives. Where do you live that half the population around you is so technically savvy? Me myself I'm in Boston, MA.
You're one of those funny Slashdot people who thinks the masses would care about DRM even if they knew what it was in the first place, aren't you?
Think about what you just said. "abandon DRM loudly and publicly." Go outside your home or office right now and run up to 10 people and ask them if they know what DRM means. Help them out even, let them know DRM stands for Digital RIghts Management but tell them nothing more. You'll be lucky to find one person who can tell you what DRM means. So how exactl would your suggestion help Sony again? And why is Apple so successful despite its use of DRM with iTunes?
Its not hard to judge excellence at all. Whoever makes the best stuff is excellent. Its that simple. If you are the only person who wants a feature worked on vs 20,000 people wanting some other feature worked on, it should also be simple to decide whats more valuable. Open Source can't be good for anyone if its not good to begin with. Take Linux for example. What use is it that its free and available to everyone if the GUI sucks so badly (as it does) that pretty much no one wants to use it? How is that helping anyone?
So a hammer isn't real? Or a nail? Or a screwdriver? They're all tools. When you aren't using them to build something or get something done they aren't much but are you saying they aren't actually real? That they don't exist? And the same for money?
Its amazing that you can make a distinction WITHIN distros between different versions (such as Enterprise, Desktop.....etc) in terms of support and quality and that you can't make the same distinctions BETWEEN distros. You may think you've avoided becoming a second or lower class citizen by sticking with Debian, but while Debian might have been a leading edge distro at some point it has become the laggard. You are now using THE Quintessential second class distribution of Linux itself. Ubuntu, Gentoo, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSE, Mandriva have all passed it by. The only distro Debian seems to hold its own with in terms of being up today on its "stable" edition is Slackware.
The proposal of paying developers is a possible solution to this. Provide developers with the time and means to develop and perhaps Debian will have releases more often than once a epoch. Why you think this is a bad idea, I can't figure out.
A defensive military isn't enough. Its in our own best interests to have a stake in world affairs. That means direct involvement. Its not about being fair. Its about making sure nothing will ever become a threat to us. And we don't spend half our GDP on the military. Not even close.
As for drugs, non-violent drug use has victims too. The broken homes and families where someone becomes an addict and ruins their life. I'm quite happy to spend my tax dollars for prisons and cops.
The whole point of "Getting It" is to dominate. If your offering is only purchased by a small niche then no, despite first mover advantage, your company does not "Get It"
You've got to be kidding. You seriously want people to abandon their popular culture just to protest licensing terms? Why not just committ suicide right now? Afterall by living you have to buy stuff to stay alive, purchases that fuel other corporations.....
I realize you are just going for shock value here. Most of your posts share the same theme of proposing outrageous solutions to problems that no one would ever really impliment but do you have any suggestions to the issue that people WOULD perhaps impliment?
Its not about being interested in naturalization. They just really have no choice. Until Mexico improves there's not much point in going back. If someone immigrates to America and gets high up enough they'll get used to what we have and won't want to abandon it. Would you rather raise your kids in the public school systems of Mexico or the US? I believe this is one of the only areas where our public school system compares favorably.;-)
Also by the time someone is 2nd or 3rd generation American they have lost a lot of their mother tongue. So they're far more American than Mexican at that point.
And you honestly see the German way of doing things as better? Who's paying for that unemployed person's vacation? Would YOU like to pay more in taxes so I could quit my job and yet still take 2 vacations a year?
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Its all about the Psilons son. Their homeworld of Mentat will rule all of creation someday.
No software effort on this planet exists in a vacumm. Without the assistance of other developers a project won't get anywhere. Now Debian can if they want continue with the anti-social behaviour that has served them so badly for so many years and continue to lose users and developers at which point future releases will continue to lag for longer and longer periods of time or it can change its tune. Stubborn is as stubborn does however. I seriously doubt that even when Debian shrinks down to 10 or 20 "meaningful" (meaningful means programmers who's contributions are major and not miniscule) developers they'll still stick to pissing everyone else off.
So to simplify, the whole Debian "too cool to care about creating a great environment for developers and users" attitude is self-defeating. In order to build ANY software including free softare you gotta be nice. Software thats only used by a few people isn't free. Its non-existent.
Making better software won't matter if no one uses it because all the naming schemes and licensing protocols are so damn confusing that no one can figure them out.
And the only way to defeat Microsoft is by making better software. So thats a given.
You are missing the point. Debian's dedication to ANYTHING won't matter if no one runs it. The desire to see Linux gain marketshare isn't just about making capitalist profits. Its to make sure open source software in general thrives instead of mererely survives in a murky backwater where largely no one knows about it.
Yeah because Wal-Mart does things no other company you patron doesn't already do.
What are you doing that managing the files is such a herculean task? I have about 25GB of MP3s and everything on my main computer is backed up to an external hard drive on a daily basis. These are just basic sound nerd/geek computing principles. If you have everything on your computers backed up then what do you have to worry about? And in about 5 years I've had maybe 3 MP3s go corrupt.
Onboard video? Are you stupid or something?
Are you completely and totally unaware they any serious gaming rig from Dell or HP comes with a real dedicated video card?
I mean are you seriously thinking Dell and HP only sell computers with onboard video? And proprietary memory? WTF?
Yeah and when you stop paying Rhapsody you lose all your music.
Besides haven't you read the latest reports? The majority of music on MP3 players doesn't come from ANY online store. It comes from people's CDs.
Your friends were right. You are in fact paranoid. The overwhelming majority of people will suffer no ill consequences from having their passports read by an RFID reader.
The burden is on you to show what bad things will happen.
You are correct it is a pipe dream and for many reasons.
1. The government would never let anyone or any corporation buy up that much land.
2. Robots can't replace all segements of the economy because then people would be BORED. The main central problem with socialism is it does not provide for more than people's basic needs. People have dreams and ambitions too. Believe it or not there are people out there who actually DO want to work and labor and struggle. Since you think robots would be doing everything such people would leave your "project", so many so that you'd have very few humans there.
3. EMPs.
4. Do you think the entire world would be lagging behind on robotic technology, military ordinance and the like? If it came down to it your project could be nuked.
If you have to explain to people why they should be angry about something you are never going to get a sufficient amount of them pissed to accomplish anything worthwhile.
Simply put, not all DRM is as bad as its made out to be. Unless you honeslty think the tens of millions of people who have bought iTunes AAC tracks want to use them on non-iPod MP3 players than we have a non-issue here. Basically you are trying to enlist the rage of those who really wouldn't care otherwise to assist you in combating something that personally angers you (or a small subset of the population known as geeks).
The issue is not whether or not people really care. The issue is whether or not they know what DRM is. I am dead serious on that. Do what I said, go outside and ask 10 random strangers what DRM is. If you go and do that I will take at face value what you tell me is the actual response. Please understand that if you live/work in a school or a tech company that that is not an accurate sample. Thats why I say "go outside" not merely ask your co-workers depending on where you work.
I'm not being elitist. I also don't think most people know that you can burn your iTunes tracks to CD to escape the DRM. Why? Because who would do such a thing when you can just put your music onto an iPod? Who the hell still listens to audio CDs? Your estimate of 5 out of 10 people knowing what DRM is is ridiculous. Thats half of all people. So you seriously think that of the 300 million people in the US that 150 million of them know what DRM is? I doubt the majority of iPod users even know that the tracks downloaded from the iTunes Music Store aren't MP3s, they're actually AAC files. They wouldn't know because most don't try to move them to other devices. If you have a computer and an iPod you're covered as far as AACs go. So Apple's DRM limitations simply DO NOT AFFECT MOST PEOPLE.
Yes the world is in fact filled with hapless technodweebs right out of the movie Hackers. I can't for the live of me get any of my co-workers to use Firefox or Open Office or Linux. Its a non-starter. Windows and IE and MS Office "Just work" and none of them could care less about the alternatives. Where do you live that half the population around you is so technically savvy? Me myself I'm in Boston, MA.
You're one of those funny Slashdot people who thinks the masses would care about DRM even if they knew what it was in the first place, aren't you?
Think about what you just said. "abandon DRM loudly and publicly." Go outside your home or office right now and run up to 10 people and ask them if they know what DRM means. Help them out even, let them know DRM stands for Digital RIghts Management but tell them nothing more. You'll be lucky to find one person who can tell you what DRM means. So how exactl would your suggestion help Sony again? And why is Apple so successful despite its use of DRM with iTunes?
Installed IE? Its a part of the OS. You can't install Windows XP without installing IE.
Its not hard to judge excellence at all. Whoever makes the best stuff is excellent. Its that simple. If you are the only person who wants a feature worked on vs 20,000 people wanting some other feature worked on, it should also be simple to decide whats more valuable. Open Source can't be good for anyone if its not good to begin with. Take Linux for example. What use is it that its free and available to everyone if the GUI sucks so badly (as it does) that pretty much no one wants to use it? How is that helping anyone?
So a hammer isn't real? Or a nail? Or a screwdriver? They're all tools. When you aren't using them to build something or get something done they aren't much but are you saying they aren't actually real? That they don't exist? And the same for money?
Its amazing that you can make a distinction WITHIN distros between different versions (such as Enterprise, Desktop.....etc) in terms of support and quality and that you can't make the same distinctions BETWEEN distros. You may think you've avoided becoming a second or lower class citizen by sticking with Debian, but while Debian might have been a leading edge distro at some point it has become the laggard. You are now using THE Quintessential second class distribution of Linux itself. Ubuntu, Gentoo, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSE, Mandriva have all passed it by. The only distro Debian seems to hold its own with in terms of being up today on its "stable" edition is Slackware.
The proposal of paying developers is a possible solution to this. Provide developers with the time and means to develop and perhaps Debian will have releases more often than once a epoch. Why you think this is a bad idea, I can't figure out.
"as long as it doesn't start a business like environment where salaries evolve to powerful and wealthy positions."
Do you realize how socialist that sounds? Excellence is rewarded. Medocrity is not. What exactly is so wrong with that?
A defensive military isn't enough. Its in our own best interests to have a stake in world affairs. That means direct involvement. Its not about being fair. Its about making sure nothing will ever become a threat to us. And we don't spend half our GDP on the military. Not even close.
As for drugs, non-violent drug use has victims too. The broken homes and families where someone becomes an addict and ruins their life. I'm quite happy to spend my tax dollars for prisons and cops.
You seemed to have overlooked Apple's iTV which is only $300.
The whole point of "Getting It" is to dominate. If your offering is only purchased by a small niche then no, despite first mover advantage, your company does not "Get It"
You've got to be kidding. You seriously want people to abandon their popular culture just to protest licensing terms? Why not just committ suicide right now? Afterall by living you have to buy stuff to stay alive, purchases that fuel other corporations.....
I realize you are just going for shock value here. Most of your posts share the same theme of proposing outrageous solutions to problems that no one would ever really impliment but do you have any suggestions to the issue that people WOULD perhaps impliment?
Its not about being interested in naturalization. They just really have no choice. Until Mexico improves there's not much point in going back. If someone immigrates to America and gets high up enough they'll get used to what we have and won't want to abandon it. Would you rather raise your kids in the public school systems of Mexico or the US? I believe this is one of the only areas where our public school system compares favorably. ;-)
Also by the time someone is 2nd or 3rd generation American they have lost a lot of their mother tongue. So they're far more American than Mexican at that point.
And you honestly see the German way of doing things as better? Who's paying for that unemployed person's vacation? Would YOU like to pay more in taxes so I could quit my job and yet still take 2 vacations a year?