The point is that even if there was better browsers around, 99% of all people would not install it. Frankly, they don't even know how, or that any others exist. A lot of users refer to Internet Explorer as "The Internet".
This means that Microsoft from a near monopoly on OSes, now has a near monopoly on Web-clients. From this platform, they can (and are trying) to achieve server-monopoly, through proprietary add-ins.
I know you love Microsoft-solutions (your signature reveals this), but do you really want a world were one company controls almost the entire Internet?
The argument "Microsoft does not have a monopoly, anyone can choose their Operating System", is not a good one, since a lot of applications are dependent on the Operating System, and almost all OEMs refuse to sell PCs with anything but a Microsoft OS.
This is just untrue. You know that there are utilities that DO the job of removing Internet Explorer from Windows 2000?
They do leave a few DLLs, but all Microsoft have to do, is remove everything else, and if the government still isn't happy, they'll just have to rewrite those DLLs.
It is of course possible to remove ANY component. The only problem is the amount of rewriting you have to do.
Personally I'd be happy to see MS just remove the user-visible parts of Internet Explorer. If MS cannot even remove this, they'll just have to do the rewrite as part of their punishment.
Noone in their right mind would think that E-books have any chance of displacing regular books in the forseeable future. They have very little charm and are very expensive, especially in the sense that you need several expensive units to let the whole family read a book each at the same time.
In addition, books are a very well established symbol of status. People love to have lots of books in their shelfs so they can give the impression that they are well-read people. How can E-books ever fill up your bookshelves?
What CAN be argued is that E-books might become a success in the way that it becomes a reasonable supplement to regular books. I can see this. Instead of bringing several heavy books with you on a trip, you can just bring one reasonable unit.
The books will still have to be considerably cheaper in electronic form, and not just a way to make more money, as the music companies seem to think about downloadable music.
Actually.. not faith in the religious sort of way.
I'm saying that there is no god based on my rational senses and my belief that we do not NEED a god. The existance of a god does nothing to give meaning to the universe, and it makes no sense for a god to exist.
Why do people say that there being a god gives everything meaning? Then what is the meaning behind the god? How did the god exist in the first place. The world makes just as little sense if there is a divine entity.
Believing in a god is an active act of faith. I respect people that believe in a god, and I have to accept the fact that I can never prove them wrong.
This just adds to the list of things we can never prove the non-existance of:
- We can never prove that Star Trek isn't actually REAL.
- We can never prove that the Sun is actually there.
- We cannot prove that such a thing as USA exists. It can all be an illusion, in the best Matrix-sort of way.
The above three, is just as likely to me, as the existance of a god.
The error of calling me agnostic, is just as big as saying that I actually think there is a merit to the above three issues.
I'm actually pretty certain that there is no god. But I would be a fool to suggest that we can ever prove the non-existance of a god.
If I were an agnostic, I would argue that there might be a god, but we will never know.
I'm arguing that there is no god, but I cannot ever prove it.
Disproving the existance of a god is just impossible, because the only way of proving it would be to search the entire existance, and not find any devine powers. But how can we prove that the existance we have searched is the entire existance? Impossible!
There probably isn't a specified limit on what is considered thumbnails or not. This is (as it should be) decided on an individual basis by humans in the court system.
Actually I won't speak for the theory known as creationism, but the general idea behind such thoughts.
I'm personally both an atheist and I view evolution as a well established fact. This new discovery does nothing for me, except fill out a few holes. It also does nothing for the genereal idea of "creationism", except it might discredit people foolishly trying to argue creationism through science or lack of evidence, when they should have gone the path below:
God could just have created the world like this. Look at it as a test. He could have created evolution, people and filled us up with memories, yesterday (or a minute ago), if there were such a being as God. I don't think anything ever can proove the non-existance of God. Of course prooving the existance, would require some seriously visible signs of Godly intervention, which hasn't happened yet.
As someone else has mentioned, science gives people a choice. We no longer have God as the only explanation for everything.
They do NOT standardize on GNOME. GNOME is mentioned ONE time in the entire LSB-document, and that is as an example for a packagename ("lsb-gnome-gnumeric").
They DO however standardize on RPM, which is fine, because almost all distributions use it. Debian probably only have to make sure they support RPMs as well as debs, something they already do through "alien". RPM is also in the Debian-repository.
"Some people will say well what does this does to debian/apt. I say nothing. Apt is not dependant on using deb as evidenced by apt-rpm. Debian can adapt the Connectiva apt-rpm package and switch to rpm's rather easily (unless they are too pig headed)."
They don't _need_ to switch to RPMs. I've earlier argued that there is no point in switching from RPM to Deb-packages, but the reverse is equally true.
All they need to do is make sure "alien" works as it should, and let Debian-users install lsb-based RPM-packages easily. Internally they can and should keep using debs. Debs is what they can, debs is what they do, and switching to RPMs will earn them nothing except a lot of work. Besides I'm willing to bet that at least some of their volunteers would leave the Debian project if someone forced this change.
In addition Debian should make sure that their debs are easily converted into lsb-rpms.
I _really_ want to see software distributors start to offer packages looking like this: gnome-core-2.0.386.lsb.rpm
.. instead of.mdk.rpm, SuSE-rpms, Red Hat-rpms, Connectiva-rpms.. etc..
Wine will most certainly not run properly. This is a totally different architecture from x86, which is the only architecture Wine currently runs any good on.
Even if it was ported to PS 2, you would probably have trouble running existing Windows-binaries.
The speed-up is mostly not trivial. Of course, there isn't any REAL added benefit for rendering for instance, if the app isn't multithreaded, but boy was I glad to have a dual-cpu box when I was doing rendering.
It made sure that I could also do other stuff, which quite frankly is rather difficult in a one-cpu machine when the CPU is totally busy doing very intensive calculations.
Any manufactured item which doesn't have it's guts wide open always have the possibility of stuff like this.
It is actually rather impossible to know wether for instance MS-software does not have government requested back doors.
Free software probably also have some risk, because it would be impossible for someone to be sure that the millions of lines of source code, some which are rather difficult to understand, could not have some small back door.
The P4 also has a less advanced FPU. When it comes to RC5 I guess there aren't as many clever little tricks you can use (like SSE), as the case is in 3d-graphics, so Athlon wins on brute force since it has a much better FPU.
Actually, the whole sentence makes perfect sense in norwegian as well, but translates to something like "calm little old, fat and unimaginative man", which may or may not be more suited for Gnome 2;-).
I've always found it funny how swedish and norwegian are VERY similiar, but sometimes the same words have different meaning.
The problem is that your parallell doesn't work here. RPM is free software, Microsoft does not supply free software. Microsoft is a monopoly, Red Hat is not.
Besides. RPMs are not shoddy technology. It is a good technology, that works and is used by almost everyone in the Linux-arena. Please feel free to advocate, but you won't get anywhere, because there simply IS NO POINT in switching to debs. It will buy you almost nothing, at the expense of a lot of work.
Show me some evidence that switching to debs is worth all the effort, and I'll shut up.
Why should be judge them on technical merit? Both are perfectly adequate, and even though.deb may be technically better, the main reason for people disliking rpm is the amount of incompetently built rpms available.
My point is that.deb may be marginally better technically, but it doesn't matter as long as most projects have chosen.rpm, and the cost of remaking that decision is FAR bigger than any advantages.
I have nothing against debs, I like them. I use Debian a lot. I like it. But there really is no point in advocating that everybody should switch to debs, because it isn't going to happen.
This is not very relevant anymore. Almost all distributions and projects have chosen RPM, and there really isn't much point in remaking the decision.
Besides apt already exists for RPM, and works fine. Since my favourite mirror got APT-enabled I've used it almost exclusively.
I would like to start seeing *.lsb.rpm soon, guaranteed to work on all lsb-compliant distributions. As long as they are competently created they should be debianizable through alien .
"Lets not forget that they dont write anything about norwegian laws ala. 'fair use' in the US. They might not have the right to copy a dvd, and only view it. Depends on the norwegian laws. "
Actually I made a point out of mentioning that we DO. I am norwegian, and we certainly do have fair use rights. Copying for backups (or similiar) is perfectly legal.
I know why "the Norwegians" have decided to make a fuss about it.
It all comes down to parts of the prosecution and government in Norway, trying to be soooo concious about their "international responsibility".
The Norwegian prosecutors have blindly followed the US without questioning if this is actually is even remotely illegal in Norway. Trying a case "just to see if it is illegal" is just BS.
Electronic "shrink wrap"-contracts isn't even VALID in Norway. Not in the least, so this argument cannot even be used.
The courts should just dismiss this case, and give a warning to the prosecutors that the next time they try a case without a clear notion that something illegal has happened, they would be in contempt (is that spelled correctly?) of the court.
This is just seriously bad self-rightous crap that seem to have the notion that everyone is SOOO much more free in the US than in Europe.
Guess what, we actually have privacy laws in Europe. We don't have the DMCA, etc..
Everything is NOT much more free in the US. Some things are more free, some are not.
There is NOTHING wrong with being required to identify yourself when there is probable cause that you have commited a crime. The national-IDs mentioned in other posts are not used by anyone. Shops, amusement parks, etc.. do NOT have access to those cards.
I actually agree with some of your arguments. And some of them (while I do not agree) are perfectly valid. The BS starts when you get on your "high horse" trying to pretend like the US is so much better than anywhere else.
When all this is said, don't get the wrong idea. I like a lot about the US, but it isn't the only "free place" around.
Moderators: please start moderating objectively and realise that even though this is an american site, it has a lot of readers from other places. US-glorification without merit is not insightful, it is naive.
There are huge holes in your arguments. Why isn't it possible to require national ID-cards without requiring people to show it any government officer?
I can see no reason why people cannot be required to show their ID, IF there IS probable cause.
If you come running out a bank just after the alarm has been sounded with a ski-mask on, there sure as hell is probable cause. Not being able to identify yourself in such a case, is most definitely just trying to "get away with it", not just wanting to keep your privacy rights.
Requiring people to show their ID-cards without probable cause could very well stay illegal.
.. and even though IANAL, I think the whole thing is pretty weak. He seems to be charged with paragraphs mostly used for cracking computers.
The norwegian article states that the same laws were used to prosecute people cracking TV-coding so that they could watch TV-signals without paying. The norwegian supreme court concluded that those paragraphs could not be used to punish this incident.
The weakest part to me seems to be the prosecutors words on buying a DVD:
"When you buy a DVD, you buy the right to view it, but not to copy it".
This is blatantly false, as people in Norway also have fair use rights to their purchases.
I was actually a bit shocked to see that he was prosecuted. I would understand it under the DMCA, but Norway does not have these kind of laws.
No.. I don't think the government is capable of producing good video-games, but that does not mean that there shouldn't be a support-budget for people wanting to create low-budget video-games.
BBC is not the only successful government arts project. Not by a long shot. It all depends on the scale.
For instance, the government run television in Scandinavia (at least Norway and Sweden AFAIK) is widely regarded to produce better quality stuff than their commercial counterparts.
The commercial channels know that they will make lots of money from just buying american TV-series , while NRK (the state channel) is the only one that actually produces any quality of its own.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is that even if there was better browsers around, 99% of all people would not install it. Frankly, they don't even know how, or that any others exist. A lot of users refer to Internet Explorer as "The Internet".
This means that Microsoft from a near monopoly on OSes, now has a near monopoly on Web-clients. From this platform, they can (and are trying) to achieve server-monopoly, through proprietary add-ins.
I know you love Microsoft-solutions (your signature reveals this), but do you really want a world were one company controls almost the entire Internet?
The argument "Microsoft does not have a monopoly, anyone can choose their Operating System", is not a good one, since a lot of applications are dependent on the Operating System, and almost all OEMs refuse to sell PCs with anything but a Microsoft OS.
This is just untrue. You know that there are utilities that DO the job of removing Internet Explorer from Windows 2000?
They do leave a few DLLs, but all Microsoft have to do, is remove everything else, and if the government still isn't happy, they'll just have to rewrite those DLLs.
It is of course possible to remove ANY component. The only problem is the amount of rewriting you have to do.
Personally I'd be happy to see MS just remove the user-visible parts of Internet Explorer. If MS cannot even remove this, they'll just have to do the rewrite as part of their punishment.
You are BSing if you think IE cannot be removed.
Noone in their right mind would think that E-books have any chance of displacing regular books in the forseeable future. They have very little charm and are very expensive, especially in the sense that you need several expensive units to let the whole family read a book each at the same time.
In addition, books are a very well established symbol of status. People love to have lots of books in their shelfs so they can give the impression that they are well-read people. How can E-books ever fill up your bookshelves?
What CAN be argued is that E-books might become a success in the way that it becomes a reasonable supplement to regular books. I can see this. Instead of bringing several heavy books with you on a trip, you can just bring one reasonable unit.
The books will still have to be considerably cheaper in electronic form, and not just a way to make more money, as the music companies seem to think about downloadable music.
Actually.. not faith in the religious sort of way.
I'm saying that there is no god based on my rational senses and my belief that we do not NEED a god. The existance of a god does nothing to give meaning to the universe, and it makes no sense for a god to exist.
Why do people say that there being a god gives everything meaning? Then what is the meaning behind the god? How did the god exist in the first place. The world makes just as little sense if there is a divine entity.
Believing in a god is an active act of faith. I respect people that believe in a god, and I have to accept the fact that I can never prove them wrong.
This just adds to the list of things we can never prove the non-existance of:
- We can never prove that Star Trek isn't actually REAL.
- We can never prove that the Sun is actually there.
- We cannot prove that such a thing as USA exists. It can all be an illusion, in the best Matrix-sort of way.
The above three, is just as likely to me, as the existance of a god.
The error of calling me agnostic, is just as big as saying that I actually think there is a merit to the above three issues.
Wrong!
I'm actually pretty certain that there is no god. But I would be a fool to suggest that we can ever prove the non-existance of a god.
If I were an agnostic, I would argue that there might be a god, but we will never know.
I'm arguing that there is no god, but I cannot ever prove it.
Disproving the existance of a god is just impossible, because the only way of proving it would be to search the entire existance, and not find any devine powers. But how can we prove that the existance we have searched is the entire existance? Impossible!
.. and you would most certainly loose.
There probably isn't a specified limit on what is considered thumbnails or not. This is (as it should be) decided on an individual basis by humans in the court system.
Actually I won't speak for the theory known as creationism, but the general idea behind such thoughts.
I'm personally both an atheist and I view evolution as a well established fact. This new discovery does nothing for me, except fill out a few holes. It also does nothing for the genereal idea of "creationism", except it might discredit people foolishly trying to argue creationism through science or lack of evidence, when they should have gone the path below:
God could just have created the world like this. Look at it as a test. He could have created evolution, people and filled us up with memories, yesterday (or a minute ago), if there were such a being as God. I don't think anything ever can proove the non-existance of God. Of course prooving the existance, would require some seriously visible signs of Godly intervention, which hasn't happened yet.
As someone else has mentioned, science gives people a choice. We no longer have God as the only explanation for everything.
They do NOT standardize on GNOME. GNOME is mentioned ONE time in the entire LSB-document, and that is as an example for a packagename ("lsb-gnome-gnumeric").
They DO however standardize on RPM, which is fine, because almost all distributions use it. Debian probably only have to make sure they support RPMs as well as debs, something they already do through "alien". RPM is also in the Debian-repository.
"Some people will say well what does this does to debian/apt. I say nothing. Apt is not dependant on using deb as evidenced by apt-rpm. Debian can adapt the Connectiva apt-rpm package and switch to rpm's rather easily (unless they are too pig headed)."
.mdk.rpm, SuSE-rpms, Red Hat-rpms, Connectiva-rpms.. etc..
They don't _need_ to switch to RPMs. I've earlier argued that there is no point in switching from RPM to Deb-packages, but the reverse is equally true.
All they need to do is make sure "alien" works as it should, and let Debian-users install lsb-based RPM-packages easily. Internally they can and should keep using debs. Debs is what they can, debs is what they do, and switching to RPMs will earn them nothing except a lot of work. Besides I'm willing to bet that at least some of their volunteers would leave the Debian project if someone forced this change.
In addition Debian should make sure that their debs are easily converted into lsb-rpms.
I _really_ want to see software distributors start to offer packages looking like this: gnome-core-2.0.386.lsb.rpm
.. instead of
Wine will most certainly not run properly. This is a totally different architecture from x86, which is the only architecture Wine currently runs any good on.
Even if it was ported to PS 2, you would probably have trouble running existing Windows-binaries.
The speed-up is mostly not trivial. Of course, there isn't any REAL added benefit for rendering for instance, if the app isn't multithreaded, but boy was I glad to have a dual-cpu box when I was doing rendering.
It made sure that I could also do other stuff, which quite frankly is rather difficult in a one-cpu machine when the CPU is totally busy doing very intensive calculations.
.. even software.
Any manufactured item which doesn't have it's guts wide open always have the possibility of stuff like this.
It is actually rather impossible to know wether for instance MS-software does not have government requested back doors.
Free software probably also have some risk, because it would be impossible for someone to be sure that the millions of lines of source code, some which are rather difficult to understand, could not have some small back door.
The P4 also has a less advanced FPU. When it comes to RC5 I guess there aren't as many clever little tricks you can use (like SSE), as the case is in 3d-graphics, so Athlon wins on brute force since it has a much better FPU.
Actually, the whole sentence makes perfect sense in norwegian as well, but translates to something like "calm little old, fat and unimaginative man", which may or may not be more suited for Gnome 2 ;-).
I've always found it funny how swedish and norwegian are VERY similiar, but sometimes the same words have different meaning.
Personally, I like Gnome.
The problem is that your parallell doesn't work here. RPM is free software, Microsoft does not supply free software. Microsoft is a monopoly, Red Hat is not.
Besides. RPMs are not shoddy technology. It is a good technology, that works and is used by almost everyone in the Linux-arena. Please feel free to advocate, but you won't get anywhere, because there simply IS NO POINT in switching to debs. It will buy you almost nothing, at the expense of a lot of work.
Show me some evidence that switching to debs is worth all the effort, and I'll shut up.
I use ftp.uninett.no.. I'm norwegian.
Seems to be only two mirrors so far, listed here:
http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org
Why should be judge them on technical merit? Both are perfectly adequate, and even though .deb may be technically better, the main reason for people disliking rpm is the amount of incompetently built rpms available.
.deb may be marginally better technically, but it doesn't matter as long as most projects have chosen .rpm, and the cost of remaking that decision is FAR bigger than any advantages.
My point is that
I have nothing against debs, I like them. I use Debian a lot. I like it. But there really is no point in advocating that everybody should switch to debs, because it isn't going to happen.
This is not very relevant anymore. Almost all distributions and projects have chosen RPM, and there really isn't much point in remaking the decision.
Besides apt already exists for RPM, and works fine. Since my favourite mirror got APT-enabled I've used it almost exclusively.
I would like to start seeing *.lsb.rpm soon, guaranteed to work on all lsb-compliant distributions. As long as they are competently created they should be debianizable through alien .
Uhm.. while I do like BSD, isn't this posting basically just "I dislike Linux, and want something more BSD".. what exactly is so interesting about it?
If you like BSD better, why not just use it?
"Lets not forget that they dont write anything about norwegian laws ala. 'fair use' in the US. They might not have the right to copy a dvd, and only view it. Depends on the norwegian laws. "
Actually I made a point out of mentioning that we DO. I am norwegian, and we certainly do have fair use rights. Copying for backups (or similiar) is perfectly legal.
I know why "the Norwegians" have decided to make a fuss about it.
It all comes down to parts of the prosecution and government in Norway, trying to be soooo concious about their "international responsibility".
The Norwegian prosecutors have blindly followed the US without questioning if this is actually is even remotely illegal in Norway. Trying a case "just to see if it is illegal" is just BS.
Electronic "shrink wrap"-contracts isn't even VALID in Norway. Not in the least, so this argument cannot even be used.
The courts should just dismiss this case, and give a warning to the prosecutors that the next time they try a case without a clear notion that something illegal has happened, they would be in contempt (is that spelled correctly?) of the court.
This is just seriously bad self-rightous crap that seem to have the notion that everyone is SOOO much more free in the US than in Europe.
Guess what, we actually have privacy laws in Europe. We don't have the DMCA, etc..
Everything is NOT much more free in the US. Some things are more free, some are not.
There is NOTHING wrong with being required to identify yourself when there is probable cause that you have commited a crime. The national-IDs mentioned in other posts are not used by anyone. Shops, amusement parks, etc.. do NOT have access to those cards.
I actually agree with some of your arguments. And some of them (while I do not agree) are perfectly valid. The BS starts when you get on your "high horse" trying to pretend like the US is so much better than anywhere else.
When all this is said, don't get the wrong idea. I like a lot about the US, but it isn't the only "free place" around.
Moderators: please start moderating objectively and realise that even though this is an american site, it has a lot of readers from other places. US-glorification without merit is not insightful, it is naive.
There are huge holes in your arguments. Why isn't it possible to require national ID-cards without requiring people to show it any government officer?
I can see no reason why people cannot be required to show their ID, IF there IS probable cause.
If you come running out a bank just after the alarm has been sounded with a ski-mask on, there sure as hell is probable cause. Not being able to identify yourself in such a case, is most definitely just trying to "get away with it", not just wanting to keep your privacy rights.
Requiring people to show their ID-cards without probable cause could very well stay illegal.
.. and even though IANAL, I think the whole thing is pretty weak. He seems to be charged with paragraphs mostly used for cracking computers.
The norwegian article states that the same laws were used to prosecute people cracking TV-coding so that they could watch TV-signals without paying. The norwegian supreme court concluded that those paragraphs could not be used to punish this incident.
The weakest part to me seems to be the prosecutors words on buying a DVD:
"When you buy a DVD, you buy the right to view it, but not to copy it".
This is blatantly false, as people in Norway also have fair use rights to their purchases.
I was actually a bit shocked to see that he was prosecuted. I would understand it under the DMCA, but Norway does not have these kind of laws.
No.. I don't think the government is capable of producing good video-games, but that does not mean that there shouldn't be a support-budget for people wanting to create low-budget video-games.
BBC is not the only successful government arts project. Not by a long shot. It all depends on the scale.
For instance, the government run television in Scandinavia (at least Norway and Sweden AFAIK) is widely regarded to produce better quality stuff than their commercial counterparts.
The commercial channels know that they will make lots of money from just buying american TV-series , while NRK (the state channel) is the only one that actually produces any quality of its own.