I don't see how building a television is freedom of expression.
Local ordinances prevent me from doing my own work on the water pipes in my house (for fear of contaminating the supply). Are those ordinance oppressing my freedom of expression?
Not to say that Valenti isn't a hypocrite. But there are better arguments then that.
Those thousand engineers will invent things whether they can rebroadcast television or not. I don't see where this is a valid argument. Shit, a lot of inventors don't even watch TV.
Oh please. No law has ever been written perfectly the first time. The Constitution is only a little over 200 years old and it's been ammended 27 times. Shit, even the Ten Commandments have seen a bit of revision.
The DMCA isn't all bad. In time, the parts that are unconstitutional will be repealed and the parts that are vague will be clarified.
Hey asshole. Drop the "everybody who agrees with the party line must be brainwashed" bullshit. Sometimes, people look at a viewpoint critically and STILL agree with it.
I make art, music, and software and I offer it all on my web page for free. I choose to do so, because it makes me happy. I also do it because I don't work as an artist or a musician and don't feel my shitty work is worth charging for.
However, if it were my job to create art and music, I'd be pretty pissed if some foreign agency started selling my work to Americans for a few cents. I don't think people should have to live in poverty just because art COULD survive it.
Yes, copyright helps corporations. But it ALSO helps independent artists. In fact, I'd say that independents would suffer more from the repeal of copyright (or the "trumping" of copyright that this service represents) than corporate rock would. Indies don't have the clout, the marketting prowess, the distribution network, or anything else BESIDES the copyright to their work.
I know a lot of artists and musicians. I think it's incredibly selfish of you to demand that they all quietly step back and let other people copy and sell their work without their permission. Who cares if technology makes it "trivial"...technology makes it trivial to do a LOT of things that aren't good for society.
If the right side of the copyright fence is a return to artistic feudalism, I'll stay in my FairPlay hell, thanks.
Yeah, I got some money too. I ended up giving it to New York State and my township, both of which raised taxes this year. When taxes coming in do not equate services being provided, by no means should the government be lauded. Give the Dems credit for this at least: they understand that if government's role includes public services, then it should be the government's role to collect money to pay for them.
If the government has less money, that's generally a good thing, because it means they'll have less power.
Now who's being naive. Last year the federal government passed the largest budget ever. Having less money didn't affect that in the least. Much of that money went to private contracts, part of the Republican plan to get fewer bodies in government. The problem is, if a government program doesn't have any money, it can be dissolved. A contracted program has to be paid for, anyway, or the contractor will sue. In this sense, not only does the government seek to do more with less money, we, the people, have less control over what they're doing!
I'll take good old Democratic graft and scandal over this New World Order neoliberalist bullshit any day of the week.
Not a good idea if your network machine might go offline. iTunes had this think as of 4.2 (haven't tried 4.5 yet) where if a network file didn't exist, it would occasionally freeze up while trying to read the network. Even if you WEREN'T tyring to read a file on it!
Something to do with iTunes' magic. One of the problems with Apple is that if you try to do something SLIGHTLY out of line with their Way, there's a good chance it won't work as well as you like.
This is silly. Legalizing immigrant labor won't help anything, because the whole point of immigrant labor is that it's cheaper than paying minimum wage and insurance. Legalize a group of immigrant laborers without imposing stricter labor controls on those who employee such laborers, and another group of immigrants will take its place, leaving the first group to fend for itself in a difficult job market. Remember, if you work full time at minimum wage, you won't pay federal income tax anyway (and may be elligible for the EITC to offset the costs of social security), but you do receive full government benefits. In other words, you cost more to the society than you are worth. This is why you should need to be a skilled laborer to legally immigrate to the US.
However, I think it's obvious that Republicans don't really care about getting taxes anyway. As long as they can borrow against the future and funnel that money into lucrative contracts for corporations, they don't give a whit who pays taxes.
Legalizing immigrants isn't a ploy to stop illegal immigration -- at least, not one that will work. It's a ploy to introduce more laborers willing to work cheap into the "legitimate" workforce and decrease salaries for the rest of us while increasing shareholder returns. We do not *NEED* illegal immigrants. We do not *NEED* cheaper labor. We do not *NEED* increased returns for the wealthy...but as long as cheap labor Republicans are in power, that's exactly what we're going to get.
Which is why I support latching on to the neck of these fatcats and sucking them dry.
There are a lot of reasons for this, though most of them may be too mired in "what things actually cost" for you to understand them. Needless to say, a consumer isn't "screwed" because a major label gives a radio station volume pricing any more than a consumer is screwed when he pays $2 for a small jar of a spice, when on the commodities market a pound of it would only cost him $5. There's less work involved with selling a massive volume of something at wholesale, and so it costs dramatically less. I mean, if YOU want to buy three thousand copies of that new Vines album, you can get a price break too. Those are 3000 copies they don't have to market, distribute or display in a storefront.
Furthermore, radio play is generally considered by labels and artists to be a method of marketing. If they want their songs played more, they needed to decrease the cost to play them. That's why the RIAA lobbied for such cheap radio rates. Their whole goal is to sell you the album; not because they want to SCREW you, but because in a subjective field like that of music sales it's better for the consumer to be the linchpin. That way, the consumer decides what music is made by providing a larger share of the money paid. If it were the other way around, radio stations would have even MORE control over what you hear, and I can't see how that's a good thing.
Anyhow, the "all the money goes to the store, poor artist" argument is very myopic. In a major label release, the artist gets less of a cut, but gets an upfront budget to make the album, and in theory promotion including guaranteed airplay. In an independent label release, generally the artist gets a bigger cut but has to cover all the costs of production and marketing himself. This means that the major label could be a great deal if the promotion comes through. Consider, for example, The Darkness. Thanks to Atlantic's promotion, wardrobe cash and a seriously goofy video, they've sold over 300,000 records. If they had been an indie with that same sound but no exposure, they'd be hoping for 10-30,000 records. The 10x difference in sales more than makes up for the 2-5x inequity in percentage.
Selling an album is no different from any other business venture. As a small business, you take more home off each sale if you can use your own cash and labor where possible...but some investments can take you to the next level while draining a bit of your future profits. RIAA is just a VC protecting its investments. If you're going to hate them, hate them for being so BAD at marketing new acts most of the time that a lot of great, fresh acts have no choice but to go indie.
I'm das megabyte, and I've been known to play music now and then. In fact, I've got a demo coming out soon. I play a very specific genre of music called Surf/Punk/Funk/Folk/Rock/Hip/Ska/Metal.
the BSA and MPAA and RIAA and other IP outfits where these gestapo like organisations control the free flow of information.
Word. I'm also pissed off at the FDA for preventing the free flow of untested drugs, and the FBI for restricting the free flow of raw, uncut heroin. And I'm not a big fan of the "State Police" slowing down the free flow of my neighbour's high deifnition TV into my basement.
Shit, man. The internet is threatening to destroy the viability of creating entertainment because people like you seem to think that just because it's easy to do something that it should be legal too. Remember: a painting is nothing more than some coloured oil on cloth. Can't possibly be worth more than $10. So you'd be a fool to pay more, right?
Right...but think about this. With a grey-market CD, the copy was made overseas, and therefore was subject to that country's copyright laws.
With a download service, the copy is (technically) being made by the downloader in THIS country. They are receiving the bits offered by Russia, and copying them onto a local drive. Ergo, this country's copyright restrictions would apply.
At least I hope they do. $.01 per megabyte is $.65 per MP3 Album...how can that be fair to artists, getting a cut of $.65 for their hard work?
So...what you're saying is that the black market makes it EASIER to steal music, and therefore it's a better solution? That a "fair price" is whatever you decide it is? That you're willing to pay for somebody to help you steal in a more organized fashion?
$.01 per megabyte is obscene. That's $.65 for an album on MP3. An artist makes more than that on a CD sale...what do you think their cut is of this?
My buddy's sunk about $10,000 into his demo so far. They'll be lucky to recoup that selling 1000 CDs at concerts for $10. To recoup it from allofmp3.com -- a service they have never agreed to be a part of, and in Russia they don't have to be -- they'd have to receive nearly 16,0000 downloads. That is not fair. And I know you don't care about artists' costs and think the label is screwing everybody...but this is an amateur produced demo! Music is expensive to make and of limited appeal -- and "legal" overseas services that give it away are bad, bad, BAD for American artists. It's like having your sales outsourced against your will!
And who need to do something with all that money. Do you think they're outsourcing money management or lawyers? Are they relying on cheap Asian labor to build their fast cars and gigantic bungalows?
Nearly every successful person I know has gotten there by knowing people with money and selling things to them. One guy I know quit GE and started his own company doing exactly what he did at GE, hired his former co-workers, and outsourced himself to GE for more money (twice as much, but GE loved it since they weren't "in that field," despite dropping several mil a year into it).
While it's true that trickle down economics don't work, pumping water from upstream generally does.
Anyhow, the Grandfather's assertion that the average wage in the US will be no higher than the average wage in urban China is true, for the most part, but only because the average wage in urban China will go up at the same time ours goes down. That's one easy way to acheive global equality.
Word. Or, just don't install every free program and game demothat comes across your doorstep. That way, you're far less likely to corrupt your installation, and won't ever have to reinstall.
My machine at home has been running the same install of Win2k since January of 2002 when I built it. It's gone through two video card replacements, four hard discs, and a chip swap. I have to rebuild soon, but only because the 30 gig 7200 rpm Maxtor I was running it on is about to S the B.
Last I checked, the majority of US Electricity came from domestic coal, not petroleum. Petroleum DOES make up 35% of the US energy use, but that's in cars and equipment, not in the electrical plants that Fusion would replace. Furthermore, the people INSTALLING these fusion plants are the same ones currently engaged in expensive, dangerous coal mining and burning. They aren't EXPLICTLY evil folks. If they could get the same energy from fusion for the same price, or even a little more, they'd probably move in a heartbeat.
No offence, but your first thought was baseless and silly.
Right. But conversely, not being published certainly adds no cadence to their claims. If anything, an unpublished manuscript should be taken with a few more tablespoons of salt than a published one. Which is the important thing to remember. A lot of pseudoscientists make the claim that their work is being oppressed to give it some kind of folk credibility, when really it's just shitty science. Magnetic wrist bands and Eye Movement Therapists aren't being oppressed by the health car industry, they just don't work and are treated as such.
If after a liberal amount of salt is applied a manuscript is still palatable, then the author's on to something. If it maintains the sour taste of baseless bunk, then it DESERVED to not get published.
Look at the lock-in via proprietary file formats, APIs and protocols.
Okay. I'd love to look at it. Where is it? I run windows, and have no trouble opening MP3s, MPEGS or DivX files, in WMP no less. I have office, and have no trouble opening rtfs, txt files, and so on. OpenGL based games run well on my machine, as do programs that use MILES and other sound systems. And last I checked, I could still use HTTP, FTP, TCP/IP, and well, any other protocol I wished under Windows.
Microsoft doesn't LOCK-IN anybody to anything. This is some serious FUD. Yes, they have a set of defaults which are proprietary and some of which have DRM. Tell me, if you spent six years developing an audio codec, would you make some other guy's codec the default in your program? If you were the biggest software developer in the world, would your default ripping format be something that is a) easy to pirate, thus making you a target for lawsuits or b) something that is harder to pirate, thus making you popular with the music industry?
And as a user, if using a particular file format is bad for what you need to do, then don't use it -- or find ways to preserve your agility. I'm reminded of dealing with QuarkXPress at my last job, which is a very closely guarded file format. You couldn't easily export anything out of it in digital format, because to even SEE what was in the files you had to be working within the Quark program. So most of our clients used it strictly for layout and flow control...doing all of their edits to RTF files.
Look at the way Microsoft forces you to upgrade or get left behind.
This is a fucking stupid argument. 2004 Passats have in-dash CD players standard. That doesn't mean I get to have a free CD player. Now, if there's a recall on my car, I expect them to fix it. But if I didn't pay for a new feature, I don't expect to get it. That's a strictly software concept.
But Microsoft continues to fix problems with their older operating systems (up to 5 years old), they often give out new features for free that work on all of them. Windows Media Player, for example, has a ton of neat features including CD burning that they wrote for Windows XP...but made available for everybody, including people on the deprecated 9X kernel. That is pretty impressive support.
Even Microsoft applications produce files that have compatibility issues with older versions of the software that created them.
Uh, yeah, a lot of open source programs do the same. In fact, dropping compatibility is one of the major causes for a fork in development. Check out Apache 1 vs Apache 2. Are we to poo poo Apache for doing something better? And if not, why should we hate Microsoft? Furthermore, I've never seen this to be a problem, so I'll just assume it's more FUD.
And what's with the blaming of loyal users for helping spread virii and causing all manner of problems because, good heavens, they haven't upgraded to the latest bug fix, oops, version of Windows?
Drop the attitude and find me an example of even one case of a virus that spread as a result of the fix being a forced upgrade. I can wait. But I'll be waiting a long time, because fact is, there's not been a single MS vulnerability -- not a one -- that wasn't already patched at the time of spread.
The patch that fixed the Code Red worm had been released two months earlier. For free, no matter what you might have heard.
I run Windows 2000 and 98 se at home. Both are on the internet with no firewall. Neither have ever gotten a virus or worm because I keep them updated. I suppose I could leave them unpatched, get viruses, and then complain about the deplorable security of Windows. But that would make me an idiot.
Is your baker known for doing something illegal?
No, but neither is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Does your baker have a bad reputation?
No but neither does the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundati
Not if they want a quick and easy way to abstract SQL datasets using a syntax that looks and feels like HTML (so as not to shock the linguistic sensibilities of your graphic artists). CFML is still tops at that.
Though I've seen some JSP tag libraries that come close.
Yes, but Microsoft's marketing is forceful, it's pushing you to pay Microsoft money.
Of course. Because commercials asking us to dream about our kids' future and asking us where we want to go today are the PINNACLE of strong arm marketing.
Most people have already become institutionalized to Windows
So what reason does a library have to change their mind? It's not their job to do so. It's their job to provide information materials and services that people want, because most libraries are publicly supported.
Let me ask you this: my local bakery gives away bread to homeless shelters. Now, it's the baker's day old bread, he doesn't go out and buy a different company's bread. Is this a marketing ploy, or an earnest humanitarian effort? And does the latter excuse the former? In my opinion, of fucking course, don't be an asshole, this guy is feeding people good food when they might otherwise go hungry. The Gates Foundation's doing the same with PCs and without any strings -- if these libraries and schools wanted to turn around and put Linux on them, they could. But they probably won't. Because they don't need it.
Windows is the 'safe' option. Nothing more.
I agree. Unfortunately, 'safe' is more than enough.
Bill Gates is that kind of guy that, if he's going to give money away, he wants to do it (at least in part) in ways which buy him something
This is kind of stupid. Aren't we ALL this kind of guy? I gave my old car to public radio, because i like public radio. I donate to the ACLU and the FSF because I believe in them.
I mean, what's the option? Giving money to groups you don't believe in? Think, man. If you start a foundation, that foundation better do something you like. OBVIOUSLY, Bill Gates likes Windows. His foundation gives away computers that run Windows. That doesn't mean it's some affront to the "poor lost souls in the PC lab," who don't give a shit what OS they're using...they shouldn't HAVE to learn a new user interface to dick around on ebay for a half hour.
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I don't see how building a television is freedom of expression.
Local ordinances prevent me from doing my own work on the water pipes in my house (for fear of contaminating the supply). Are those ordinance oppressing my freedom of expression?
Not to say that Valenti isn't a hypocrite. But there are better arguments then that.
Those thousand engineers will invent things whether they can rebroadcast television or not. I don't see where this is a valid argument. Shit, a lot of inventors don't even watch TV.
It's also possible to make code that is perfectly readable, but doesn't do anything. These guys have been experimenting with it for years!
Oh please. No law has ever been written perfectly the first time. The Constitution is only a little over 200 years old and it's been ammended 27 times. Shit, even the Ten Commandments have seen a bit of revision.
The DMCA isn't all bad. In time, the parts that are unconstitutional will be repealed and the parts that are vague will be clarified.
Right. It's been said that a developer can write ten lines of efficient, bug free code per day. In perl, it's only 15 characters.
Hey asshole. Drop the "everybody who agrees with the party line must be brainwashed" bullshit. Sometimes, people look at a viewpoint critically and STILL agree with it.
I make art, music, and software and I offer it all on my web page for free. I choose to do so, because it makes me happy. I also do it because I don't work as an artist or a musician and don't feel my shitty work is worth charging for.
However, if it were my job to create art and music, I'd be pretty pissed if some foreign agency started selling my work to Americans for a few cents. I don't think people should have to live in poverty just because art COULD survive it.
Yes, copyright helps corporations. But it ALSO helps independent artists. In fact, I'd say that independents would suffer more from the repeal of copyright (or the "trumping" of copyright that this service represents) than corporate rock would. Indies don't have the clout, the marketting prowess, the distribution network, or anything else BESIDES the copyright to their work.
I know a lot of artists and musicians. I think it's incredibly selfish of you to demand that they all quietly step back and let other people copy and sell their work without their permission. Who cares if technology makes it "trivial"...technology makes it trivial to do a LOT of things that aren't good for society.
If the right side of the copyright fence is a return to artistic feudalism, I'll stay in my FairPlay hell, thanks.
Yeah, I got some money too. I ended up giving it to New York State and my township, both of which raised taxes this year. When taxes coming in do not equate services being provided, by no means should the government be lauded. Give the Dems credit for this at least: they understand that if government's role includes public services, then it should be the government's role to collect money to pay for them.
If the government has less money, that's generally a good thing, because it means they'll have less power.
Now who's being naive. Last year the federal government passed the largest budget ever. Having less money didn't affect that in the least. Much of that money went to private contracts, part of the Republican plan to get fewer bodies in government. The problem is, if a government program doesn't have any money, it can be dissolved. A contracted program has to be paid for, anyway, or the contractor will sue. In this sense, not only does the government seek to do more with less money, we, the people, have less control over what they're doing!
I'll take good old Democratic graft and scandal over this New World Order neoliberalist bullshit any day of the week.
Not a good idea if your network machine might go offline. iTunes had this think as of 4.2 (haven't tried 4.5 yet) where if a network file didn't exist, it would occasionally freeze up while trying to read the network. Even if you WEREN'T tyring to read a file on it!
Something to do with iTunes' magic. One of the problems with Apple is that if you try to do something SLIGHTLY out of line with their Way, there's a good chance it won't work as well as you like.
This is silly. Legalizing immigrant labor won't help anything, because the whole point of immigrant labor is that it's cheaper than paying minimum wage and insurance. Legalize a group of immigrant laborers without imposing stricter labor controls on those who employee such laborers, and another group of immigrants will take its place, leaving the first group to fend for itself in a difficult job market. Remember, if you work full time at minimum wage, you won't pay federal income tax anyway (and may be elligible for the EITC to offset the costs of social security), but you do receive full government benefits. In other words, you cost more to the society than you are worth. This is why you should need to be a skilled laborer to legally immigrate to the US.
However, I think it's obvious that Republicans don't really care about getting taxes anyway. As long as they can borrow against the future and funnel that money into lucrative contracts for corporations, they don't give a whit who pays taxes.
Legalizing immigrants isn't a ploy to stop illegal immigration -- at least, not one that will work. It's a ploy to introduce more laborers willing to work cheap into the "legitimate" workforce and decrease salaries for the rest of us while increasing shareholder returns. We do not *NEED* illegal immigrants. We do not *NEED* cheaper labor. We do not *NEED* increased returns for the wealthy...but as long as cheap labor Republicans are in power, that's exactly what we're going to get.
Which is why I support latching on to the neck of these fatcats and sucking them dry.
*sigh*
There are a lot of reasons for this, though most of them may be too mired in "what things actually cost" for you to understand them. Needless to say, a consumer isn't "screwed" because a major label gives a radio station volume pricing any more than a consumer is screwed when he pays $2 for a small jar of a spice, when on the commodities market a pound of it would only cost him $5. There's less work involved with selling a massive volume of something at wholesale, and so it costs dramatically less. I mean, if YOU want to buy three thousand copies of that new Vines album, you can get a price break too. Those are 3000 copies they don't have to market, distribute or display in a storefront.
Furthermore, radio play is generally considered by labels and artists to be a method of marketing. If they want their songs played more, they needed to decrease the cost to play them. That's why the RIAA lobbied for such cheap radio rates. Their whole goal is to sell you the album; not because they want to SCREW you, but because in a subjective field like that of music sales it's better for the consumer to be the linchpin. That way, the consumer decides what music is made by providing a larger share of the money paid. If it were the other way around, radio stations would have even MORE control over what you hear, and I can't see how that's a good thing.
Anyhow, the "all the money goes to the store, poor artist" argument is very myopic. In a major label release, the artist gets less of a cut, but gets an upfront budget to make the album, and in theory promotion including guaranteed airplay. In an independent label release, generally the artist gets a bigger cut but has to cover all the costs of production and marketing himself. This means that the major label could be a great deal if the promotion comes through. Consider, for example, The Darkness. Thanks to Atlantic's promotion, wardrobe cash and a seriously goofy video, they've sold over 300,000 records. If they had been an indie with that same sound but no exposure, they'd be hoping for 10-30,000 records. The 10x difference in sales more than makes up for the 2-5x inequity in percentage.
Selling an album is no different from any other business venture. As a small business, you take more home off each sale if you can use your own cash and labor where possible...but some investments can take you to the next level while draining a bit of your future profits. RIAA is just a VC protecting its investments. If you're going to hate them, hate them for being so BAD at marketing new acts most of the time that a lot of great, fresh acts have no choice but to go indie.
I'm das megabyte, and I've been known to play music now and then. In fact, I've got a demo coming out soon. I play a very specific genre of music called Surf/Punk/Funk/Folk/Rock/Hip/Ska/Metal.
I won't sell it to you for a penny a song though.
The home of stealing goods from other people, selling it against their will, and calling "legal" just because you give them a little back.
I seem to recall a raging black market and powerful mafia in Russia back in the soviet days. It's good to know that pioneering spirit is still alive.
the BSA and MPAA and RIAA and other IP outfits where these gestapo like organisations control the free flow of information.
Word. I'm also pissed off at the FDA for preventing the free flow of untested drugs, and the FBI for restricting the free flow of raw, uncut heroin. And I'm not a big fan of the "State Police" slowing down the free flow of my neighbour's high deifnition TV into my basement.
Shit, man. The internet is threatening to destroy the viability of creating entertainment because people like you seem to think that just because it's easy to do something that it should be legal too. Remember: a painting is nothing more than some coloured oil on cloth. Can't possibly be worth more than $10. So you'd be a fool to pay more, right?
Its high time The People got to enjoy the benefits of our technological advances
Benefits such as hassle free theft of whatever music you want for a penny a megabyte?
Get your communism out of my CD player, man. I prefer my musicians not to die of poverty in the gutter -- unless they're punk, of course.
Right...but think about this. With a grey-market CD, the copy was made overseas, and therefore was subject to that country's copyright laws.
With a download service, the copy is (technically) being made by the downloader in THIS country. They are receiving the bits offered by Russia, and copying them onto a local drive. Ergo, this country's copyright restrictions would apply.
At least I hope they do. $.01 per megabyte is $.65 per MP3 Album...how can that be fair to artists, getting a cut of $.65 for their hard work?
So...what you're saying is that the black market makes it EASIER to steal music, and therefore it's a better solution? That a "fair price" is whatever you decide it is? That you're willing to pay for somebody to help you steal in a more organized fashion?
$.01 per megabyte is obscene. That's $.65 for an album on MP3. An artist makes more than that on a CD sale...what do you think their cut is of this?
My buddy's sunk about $10,000 into his demo so far. They'll be lucky to recoup that selling 1000 CDs at concerts for $10. To recoup it from allofmp3.com -- a service they have never agreed to be a part of, and in Russia they don't have to be -- they'd have to receive nearly 16,0000 downloads. That is not fair. And I know you don't care about artists' costs and think the label is screwing everybody...but this is an amateur produced demo! Music is expensive to make and of limited appeal -- and "legal" overseas services that give it away are bad, bad, BAD for American artists. It's like having your sales outsourced against your will!
And who need to do something with all that money. Do you think they're outsourcing money management or lawyers? Are they relying on cheap Asian labor to build their fast cars and gigantic bungalows?
Nearly every successful person I know has gotten there by knowing people with money and selling things to them. One guy I know quit GE and started his own company doing exactly what he did at GE, hired his former co-workers, and outsourced himself to GE for more money (twice as much, but GE loved it since they weren't "in that field," despite dropping several mil a year into it).
While it's true that trickle down economics don't work, pumping water from upstream generally does.
Anyhow, the Grandfather's assertion that the average wage in the US will be no higher than the average wage in urban China is true, for the most part, but only because the average wage in urban China will go up at the same time ours goes down. That's one easy way to acheive global equality.
Good Year? No, the worst.
Vote for Kerry.
Word. Or, just don't install every free program and game demothat comes across your doorstep. That way, you're far less likely to corrupt your installation, and won't ever have to reinstall.
My machine at home has been running the same install of Win2k since January of 2002 when I built it. It's gone through two video card replacements, four hard discs, and a chip swap. I have to rebuild soon, but only because the 30 gig 7200 rpm Maxtor I was running it on is about to S the B.
Last I checked, the majority of US Electricity came from domestic coal, not petroleum. Petroleum DOES make up 35% of the US energy use, but that's in cars and equipment, not in the electrical plants that Fusion would replace. Furthermore, the people INSTALLING these fusion plants are the same ones currently engaged in expensive, dangerous coal mining and burning. They aren't EXPLICTLY evil folks. If they could get the same energy from fusion for the same price, or even a little more, they'd probably move in a heartbeat.
No offence, but your first thought was baseless and silly.
Right. But conversely, not being published certainly adds no cadence to their claims. If anything, an unpublished manuscript should be taken with a few more tablespoons of salt than a published one. Which is the important thing to remember. A lot of pseudoscientists make the claim that their work is being oppressed to give it some kind of folk credibility, when really it's just shitty science. Magnetic wrist bands and Eye Movement Therapists aren't being oppressed by the health car industry, they just don't work and are treated as such.
If after a liberal amount of salt is applied a manuscript is still palatable, then the author's on to something. If it maintains the sour taste of baseless bunk, then it DESERVED to not get published.
Look at the lock-in via proprietary file formats, APIs and protocols.
Okay. I'd love to look at it. Where is it? I run windows, and have no trouble opening MP3s, MPEGS or DivX files, in WMP no less. I have office, and have no trouble opening rtfs, txt files, and so on. OpenGL based games run well on my machine, as do programs that use MILES and other sound systems. And last I checked, I could still use HTTP, FTP, TCP/IP, and well, any other protocol I wished under Windows.
Microsoft doesn't LOCK-IN anybody to anything. This is some serious FUD. Yes, they have a set of defaults which are proprietary and some of which have DRM. Tell me, if you spent six years developing an audio codec, would you make some other guy's codec the default in your program? If you were the biggest software developer in the world, would your default ripping format be something that is a) easy to pirate, thus making you a target for lawsuits or b) something that is harder to pirate, thus making you popular with the music industry?
And as a user, if using a particular file format is bad for what you need to do, then don't use it -- or find ways to preserve your agility. I'm reminded of dealing with QuarkXPress at my last job, which is a very closely guarded file format. You couldn't easily export anything out of it in digital format, because to even SEE what was in the files you had to be working within the Quark program. So most of our clients used it strictly for layout and flow control...doing all of their edits to RTF files.
Look at the way Microsoft forces you to upgrade or get left behind.
This is a fucking stupid argument. 2004 Passats have in-dash CD players standard. That doesn't mean I get to have a free CD player. Now, if there's a recall on my car, I expect them to fix it. But if I didn't pay for a new feature, I don't expect to get it. That's a strictly software concept.
But Microsoft continues to fix problems with their older operating systems (up to 5 years old), they often give out new features for free that work on all of them. Windows Media Player, for example, has a ton of neat features including CD burning that they wrote for Windows XP...but made available for everybody, including people on the deprecated 9X kernel. That is pretty impressive support.
Even Microsoft applications produce files that have compatibility issues with older versions of the software that created them.
Uh, yeah, a lot of open source programs do the same. In fact, dropping compatibility is one of the major causes for a fork in development. Check out Apache 1 vs Apache 2. Are we to poo poo Apache for doing something better? And if not, why should we hate Microsoft? Furthermore, I've never seen this to be a problem, so I'll just assume it's more FUD.
And what's with the blaming of loyal users for helping spread virii and causing all manner of problems because, good heavens, they haven't upgraded to the latest bug fix, oops, version of Windows?
Drop the attitude and find me an example of even one case of a virus that spread as a result of the fix being a forced upgrade. I can wait. But I'll be waiting a long time, because fact is, there's not been a single MS vulnerability -- not a one -- that wasn't already patched at the time of spread.
The patch that fixed the Code Red worm had been released two months earlier. For free, no matter what you might have heard.
I run Windows 2000 and 98 se at home. Both are on the internet with no firewall. Neither have ever gotten a virus or worm because I keep them updated. I suppose I could leave them unpatched, get viruses, and then complain about the deplorable security of Windows. But that would make me an idiot.
Is your baker known for doing something illegal?
No, but neither is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Does your baker have a bad reputation?
No but neither does the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundati
Not if they want a quick and easy way to abstract SQL datasets using a syntax that looks and feels like HTML (so as not to shock the linguistic sensibilities of your graphic artists). CFML is still tops at that.
Though I've seen some JSP tag libraries that come close.
Yes, but Microsoft's marketing is forceful, it's pushing you to pay Microsoft money.
Of course. Because commercials asking us to dream about our kids' future and asking us where we want to go today are the PINNACLE of strong arm marketing.
Most people have already become institutionalized to Windows
So what reason does a library have to change their mind? It's not their job to do so. It's their job to provide information materials and services that people want, because most libraries are publicly supported.
Let me ask you this: my local bakery gives away bread to homeless shelters. Now, it's the baker's day old bread, he doesn't go out and buy a different company's bread. Is this a marketing ploy, or an earnest humanitarian effort? And does the latter excuse the former? In my opinion, of fucking course, don't be an asshole, this guy is feeding people good food when they might otherwise go hungry. The Gates Foundation's doing the same with PCs and without any strings -- if these libraries and schools wanted to turn around and put Linux on them, they could. But they probably won't. Because they don't need it.
Windows is the 'safe' option. Nothing more.
I agree. Unfortunately, 'safe' is more than enough.
Bill Gates is that kind of guy that, if he's going to give money away, he wants to do it (at least in part) in ways which buy him something
This is kind of stupid. Aren't we ALL this kind of guy? I gave my old car to public radio, because i like public radio. I donate to the ACLU and the FSF because I believe in them.
I mean, what's the option? Giving money to groups you don't believe in? Think, man. If you start a foundation, that foundation better do something you like. OBVIOUSLY, Bill Gates likes Windows. His foundation gives away computers that run Windows. That doesn't mean it's some affront to the "poor lost souls in the PC lab," who don't give a shit what OS they're using...they shouldn't HAVE to learn a new user interface to dick around on ebay for a half hour.