I'm amazed at the hypocrisy on this discussion..How many of you link, download and have taken free music? Never? Please.
Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot that human beings aren't allowed to do something they think is wrong. I forgot we can't support people going after people doing the kinds of things we do. I suppose I'm supposed to hate the State Patrol too, just because they pull over speeders like myself.
Perhaps there's a difference in you and Metallica that you are not respecting. You embrace the idea of freely distributing your work. That is your right. Metallica does not support the idea of their work being freely traded without compensation. Guess what. That's ALSO their right, which you and others on this site deny that they should have.
I have absolutely no problem with the idea of free music traded on-line. I have a problem with people not respecting the artist's rights to restrict the trade of their own work. If someone wants to give something away without compensation, let 'em, but don't try to force those who don't want to give their hard work away.
There have been recent allegations that it was a lawyer or other spokesperson participating in the chat instead of Metallica or that the person answering was giving scripted answer. Evidence to back this up comes from the speed with which some answers came back -- faster than many experienced programmers would type them -- and from their generic irrelevancy to many of the questions asked.
Which members of the band where actually doing the typing if any, or was another person answering for the band?
Actually, you don't actually see anything about Apple when you boot the Mac OS -- just the little cubist smiling Mac logo with "Mac OS" or "Mac OS [version #]" under it nowdays. Odd, that. I guess that, unlike Microsoft, they're confident people using the system actually know who makes it.
(I mean, duh! Who doesn't know Microsoft makes Windows?)
Rights are no less social constructs than laws and have no more or less fundamental of a basis than the general consensus of a body of people that "Hey! No one should be able to stop someone from doing that." Perspectives on "rights" differ from culture to culture as much as morality and is purely subjective. I could always claim that it's my right to kill people that annoy me.
So, while we're talking about rights, what about copyrights? You know, the right to control what happens with the fruit of your own labor. Your contention that his conflict with those laws is a "morally positive action", but what about his contention with the right of the makers of that music to demand compensation for listening to it? Your "morally positive action" may be another person heinous crushing of their rights.
...I prefer downloading the MP3's I wanna play on my computer, iso ripping them myself. So what, that's my right... sue me.
Actually, no it's not your "right."
U.S. law only allows you to make your own copies of your own albums for your own personal use and archival purposes. It is not your right to redistribute those copies to other people or take someone else's copies just because you also own an original. The law's pretty specific in that respect. The good old "delete these files after 24 hrs. if you don't own the original" argument for game ROMs was always an urban myth. Even if you do own it, you can't download it because it's not a copy of the item you own, even though, bit-for-bit, they are identical.
Of course, the RIAA is trying to take that away too with the AHRA, which prohibits making perfect digital copies of music. This piece of legislation got pushed through over DAT recorders and is still being challenged in courts, AFAIK. Personally, I hope it dies hard. It makes no sense to allow us to copy things for "archival purposes" only in degradeable formats.
If I name my "FreeSong" by "Free Cool band" Unforgiven_Metallica.mp3. How will they know?
Now you're just guilty of a different kind of copyright infringement.
If you do it the other way around, then nobody will download them because they don't know they're actually Metallica, and you've become unimportant to the RIAA compared to the more blatant traders. This is only good for trading between friends who know what you actually have, but Napster is an inefficient model for that compared to just setting up an FTP server with user logins. Seems pointless to me unless you're playing a malicious joke on Napster users.
...to this day, I still cannot find a external FireWire-to-TV device...
You don't mean, like the Sony DVMC-DA1, DVMC-MS1, or DVMC-DA2? The original Sony DVMC-DA1 was a hit in the Mac marketplace when Firewire Macs and Final Cut Pro first came out. It's a pretty decent little solution for capturing analog video to DV for non-linear editing and putting it back on tape, though it's no true pro setup. Of course, if you're capturing off of TV, I doubt a $2000+ device is going to help the quality be any better than the DVMC-DA1.
I think the NPSL is more like the LGPL, as I understand the LGPL, anyway. You can embed it with commercial apps, but you have to open source any and all changes made to the open sourced components. The Gecko engine was written with the intention that other companies could embed it in their software. The ability to get people to adopt the Gecko engine (and thus, the Gecko engine's style of web design) would be diminished if the license was viral like the GPL.
Plus, Real wouldn't be stupid enough to accidentally build a large new feature of their product around a piece of code that could potentially make them have to open up all their source without checking the license in detail first. Of course, if they wanted to open source their code...
...they would've made a press release about it and lapped up the OSS PR goodness that other companies seem to be riding right now. However, I don't see them open sourcing their streaming video format's codecs, as that would destroy their authoring software business.
Now I can open my browser, load a plugin that includes a browser that has a plugin that... Talk about "thinking outside the box"! Now Real wants Netscape as a plug-in.
No need to be insulting. There are few things that make a person's arguments look better, relatively speaking, than to have their detractors lose their composure and make fools of themselves. Providing calm, logical arguments helps your side more than silence. Besides, I've seen him make good arguments on other threads, so it's worth giving someone the benefit of the doubt.
Debian itself is just a voluntary, non-profit organization.
OOPS!!!!! <sound of palm being rapidly applied to forehead> I could've said SuSE. I could've said TurboLinux. But, NOOOO. I had to pick the non-profit organization.
My mistake. I keep forgetting that they're non-profit like Slackware.
The Macintosh follows the desktop metaphor. What do you do when you're finish with something on a desktop?
1) Stick it in a drawer or other container. That's already reserved for filing files and data. 2) Discard it from the workspace. In other words, the trash can.
Why no eject button? It's very simple. You do not want users taking out disks in the middle of an I/O operation or before another program is finished with it like you could in DOS. It was an attempt at protecting uneducated users from harming themselves and the system, especially back when the OS booted off a floppy.
To be honest, I agree that the trash can is better reserved for erasing the disk, but there is no other good item in a desktop metaphor for removing something from your workspace completely. Most other items I can think imply the ability to reach in and get the info back.
As to the multi-tasking question, I believe Pinky's response handles that question admirably. Another point about the old system dialogs is that the old Macintosh used to be a single-tasking system like DOS. Only one program could run at a time. When they went to multiple programs, a modal dialog is supposed to represent something you DON'T want two programs potentially messing with at the same time -- something important enough to interrupt the user for. However, there wasn't a clean way at the time to make application-specific dialogs for those messages that should only stop one program. As Pinky points out, though, this has been fixed.
I would like to know in what way either of those examples crosses off "powerful" from the list. Just because awk, sed, and grep on UNIX are horridly counter-intuitive at times doesn't make them less powerful. Just because something might be a little inconvenient doesn't mean it isn't powerful. The UI is powerful because of the wide variety of things you can do with it with little effort on your part. As a whole, the GUI is much cleaner and intuitive than it's competitors.
I asked a silly question (Re: Why against?)
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Why Do Open Source?
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· Score: 2
I always thought Stallman pretty much spoke for the FSF on the philosophy section, but realize I may have made an incorrect assumption. I thought the FSF wanted all software to be free for it's own sake as a free speech issue -- you know, code for it's own sake.
Guess what, the more I try to reconstruct what I was thinking when I posted that line, the less sense it makes. Of course there's no problem with it! <smacks self on forehead>
I also phrased that a bit poorly as it seems I was making the ethics a big issue, when I was really wanting to know how many others got into OSS development for resume building purposes.
Maybe I'm a cynic, but has anyone else considered contributing to an open source project as a way of building up their resume? For example, I'm kind of a Mac guy, and I've considered a number of times working on or starting a port of various popular open source projects to the Mac as a way of learning the APIs and as a way of demonstrating to future employers that I have the skills necessary.
Is it wrong to contribute to open source for those reasons? It seems kind of against the whole FSF philosophy, but I'm a bit too much of a pragmatist anyway. Has anyone else started on open source for these reasons?
Oh, I'm not saying that. There were things for which the Mac was the unquestioned superior platform, but they're growing fewer and fewer as products on Windows come out that whittle the advantage down to being negligible. There are things for which it was never the best for, many of which are strong suits for Linux and other platforms.
However, if you slam on the interface as being powerless, complex, difficult, and unclean, then you haven't used it in an unbiased fashion.
Do you honestly? I mean, what honest competitive advantage does the system have for you if you're comfortable with Linux and don't want a Mac? The board in question isn't outrageously better than competing boards for embedded appication (in fact, Motorola sells better solutions for that), and the processor is a slower, older model, not as good as most modern desktop systems.
Besides, a good $1600 G4 comes with a decent video card, a modest hard drive, on-board support for Firewire, USB, UltraATA/66, Ethernet, and sound. The Motorola board has no video, no sound, and no hard drive with it. It's a decent buy, and you can always add stuff to it. Plus, the hardware that comes with it is far more supported on PPC Linux than whatever random peripherals you decide to stick on the Motorola board.
I don't think you honestly want anything to do with a PowerPC motherboard. You sound like you're just taking the opportunity to bitch about Apple's prices and slam a worthy development effort that seems not to be targetted at you. Well, live with it. There will be users of PPC platforms for years to come, and there will be enough of them interested in Linux to support it. If all you care about it money, go buy an x86 board. Try getting a SPARC or PA-RISC board for less than $2500.
The reality is that Be supports its OS and it won't support something it doesn't have specs to. That seems pretty cut and dried, not to mention a reasonable position.
You make an excellent point -- one which I had forgotten to consider. However, the primary revenue stream of Yellow Dog Linux and LinuxPPC, Inc. is from supporting these same kind of machines running Linux. My point is that Be, especially in their FAQ, used to beat their chest repeatedly that it is all Apple's fault they are not supporting Apple's machines. However, other businesses are basing the majority of their revenue stream on doing the very thing Be claims Apple's lack of spoon-feeding prevents them from doing. The fact remains that Be is eventually pulling out of the PPC market and is happy to try to turn as many Mac/Be users against Apple to keep as many as possible. They are going where the money is currently and making the decision about where they think they can cut the biggest niche.
This seems something to slam Apple for, not Be.
Yeah, in retrospect that seems to be what the original poster was griping about, but I was making a general jab at all the people who immediately got on this thread to flame against supporting the platform, probably mainly because it's primarily the Mac platform, instead of respecting the effort and skills behind the porting work.
If BeOS actually cared about PPC Mac users, they'd hire people to do the same hard work that they LinuxPPC team is doing. The fact of the matter is that Be is targetting a higher marketshare with x86, and is using Apple as a scapegoat for their lack of continuing support for their original, most loyal customers. Plus, Jean-Louis Gassee gets to play the wounded victim of Big Bad Apple again, a part I'm sure he's loving.
Besides, why are you slamming the efforts of a group that has done something you consider far too difficult for Be, Inc.? They're making Linux more available! What's wrong with this? Plus they're helping people not have to switch to a hardware platform many of us consider a shambling horror that just won't die, and they're helping wring extra life out of old machines that might be wasted otherwise.
Shouldn't we be supporting Linux everywhere? I mean, everyone loves it when Linux is ported to a digital camera, a calculator, or a friggin' vending machine. What's so wrong with giving Mac and other PPC users a chance at Linux without having to give up their current machine or get an extra one? Quit slamming people for providing others with a service.
Perhaps you underestimate the niche market. Just look at how many companies are alive making Amiga products still. OS/2 dropped support for PPC because they were already starting to lose profitability in the x86 market. Maintaining two platforms was more than they were willing to fund. PPC NT was dropped for the same reason that Alpha NT was recently dropped -- Microsoft pushed the burden of the development on the hardware manufacturers and charged them huge licenses to continue developing it. In the first case, it was IBM who refused to shoulder the burden after Microsoft put the squeeze on them as a competitor, and in the latter it was Compaq.
None of these say anything against the viability of the PPC platform, which has incredible applications in the embedded (Motorola) and high-end server (IBM) markets. Unfortunately, Apple's stuck in the middle with the desktop market that neither chip supplier really cares intently about focusing on currently. The LinuxPPC and Yellow Dog guys make money the same way Red Hat and Debian do -- support.
You probably disagree with all of those because you've never used it. Of course, you do lose the first 3 if you're Windows or X-fixated and can't approach the machine like a new user. If you give up all your assumptions about how a GUI should work, Mac OS is the easiest to train on. I do get frustrated as a Mac lab assistant at my college when someone panics about how to use a Mac because they're trying to do things the Windows way and can't step back an inch or two to look at the problem.
Of course, your post was simply a troll, so I don't guess you really expected a calm answer, but, yes, the Mac OS has an interface that is all of the above.
I quote the ever wonderful Anime on DVD in reference to the Maison Ikkoku controversy:
"Much like the Star Wars discussions on its lack of DVD, this is another one that always gets a chuckle in my mind. How many other products do you have where the customer is practically throwing their money at the company and the company doesn't release the product. Only the video industry..."
This is foolish and reactionary. The only arrogant one here is the Librarian of Congress who feels it is his place to dictate how we should enjoy reading. It not like sitting with your nose buried in a dead tree version is any less lonely and isolated than the web. I think he's just afraid of the Library losing funding once people no longer need to trek all the way to there to get their books they need for research. He's either cluelessly arrogant or irresponsibly fighting to preserve his job at our expense.
I just hope for all our sakes that they aren't shirking from digitizing the books even if they aren't going on-line. There are many important books in the library that need to be preserved before they physically decay to the point of uselessness. I hope this person's politics don't get in the way of preserving the past for the future's sake.
Yeah, and you can try to make the same excuses for silencers, which are used to mute the sound of gunfire -- which are not terribly useful in legitimate uses of firearms like self-defense and hunting -- and for radar detectors, which are used for no other purpose than to see when the police are looking for speeders to avoid getting caught. The point I am making is that Napster is a tool designed primarily to assist in the commisson of a crime, namely piracy. It's the first use that comes to most people's minds when they hear about the product, unlike a cell phone which usually used in a legit fashion for business and personal communication. As a tool designed primarily for piracy, they can't just claim that they provide a neutral service which a few rouge elements are abusing. People are using the service for what it was intended for -- the trading of MP3s without regard to ownership.
Napster is a huge barrier to anyone else making it big. I'll bet you that in 3 years or less, record sales begin dropping for new artists. Who needs to buy No Doubt's "Return to Saturn" album? I've already got the whole thing off Napster and it isn't even out yet. It's good to see the big boys wading in and trying to stop this threat to their entire industry's source of income.
If you're such a big fan, then why do even care about them going after Napster? You've already bought all their albums, right? Oh, well, I guess that you should shut up then.
By the way, I love your beautiful way of communicating your viewpoint through 4 letter words. I'll bet your one those "hot grits" trolls, aren't you? Next time try taking a stand with a logged in name like a real man. Coward is right.
Digital revolution? Freely sharing digital information?? Just whose "information" do you think it is to share? This isn't mathematical equations or obvious development techniques. This is an artform not everyone can perform. They deserve to get paid for it.
Who died and made you Karl Marx? Just what makes digital media so special that it no longer is beholden to ownership by its originator. Since when did putting something in a digital format make it community property? Copying of digital media that is not yours to distribute IS theft. This isn't about common sense or freedom. This is about greed -- and not the band's greed. This is about the greed of music listeners who want, as always, something for nothing. It's about people who think it's their God-given right to enjoy the hard labor of others at no compensation and who rail against those who did the work for having the the "outright gaul" to expect that they be given something in exchange.
Music piracy is just flat out wrong. It's explotation of other people's hard effort. You think all information should be free? Well here's a piece of wisdom worth remembering: "You get what you pay for." Just try looking for good music on MP3.com sometime. I swear, I've only liked less than 10% of what I've listened to. These people have talent and want to be recognized for it. What the heck is so wrong about that?
Allegance or common sense? What rhetorical nonsense. Who's coming off as the elitist here? What Cid was saying was that back in the days before Napster, people had the conscience to realize that whay they were doing was wrong and illegal and made efforts to hide themselves. Nowdays with Napster and the growing predominance of piracy, people like you come out and say that it's their right to steal and that those who are trying to "protect their rights" to the music they own and made are they greedy ones.
I make my counterpoint thusly: who is the greedy one, the one who works hard and asks for compensation or the one who does nothing and demands the fruits of the first's labor?
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I'm amazed at the hypocrisy on this discussion..How many of you link, download and have taken free music? Never? Please.
Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot that human beings aren't allowed to do something they think is wrong. I forgot we can't support people going after people doing the kinds of things we do. I suppose I'm supposed to hate the State Patrol too, just because they pull over speeders like myself.
Perhaps there's a difference in you and Metallica that you are not respecting. You embrace the idea of freely distributing your work. That is your right. Metallica does not support the idea of their work being freely traded without compensation. Guess what. That's ALSO their right, which you and others on this site deny that they should have.
I have absolutely no problem with the idea of free music traded on-line. I have a problem with people not respecting the artist's rights to restrict the trade of their own work. If someone wants to give something away without compensation, let 'em, but don't try to force those who don't want to give their hard work away.
There have been recent allegations that it was a lawyer or other spokesperson participating in the chat instead of Metallica or that the person answering was giving scripted answer. Evidence to back this up comes from the speed with which some answers came back -- faster than many experienced programmers would type them -- and from their generic irrelevancy to many of the questions asked.
Which members of the band where actually doing the typing if any, or was another person answering for the band?
Actually, you don't actually see anything about Apple when you boot the Mac OS -- just the little cubist smiling Mac logo with "Mac OS" or "Mac OS [version #]" under it nowdays. Odd, that. I guess that, unlike Microsoft, they're confident people using the system actually know who makes it.
(I mean, duh! Who doesn't know Microsoft makes Windows?)
Rights are no less social constructs than laws and have no more or less fundamental of a basis than the general consensus of a body of people that "Hey! No one should be able to stop someone from doing that." Perspectives on "rights" differ from culture to culture as much as morality and is purely subjective. I could always claim that it's my right to kill people that annoy me.
So, while we're talking about rights, what about copyrights? You know, the right to control what happens with the fruit of your own labor. Your contention that his conflict with those laws is a "morally positive action", but what about his contention with the right of the makers of that music to demand compensation for listening to it? Your "morally positive action" may be another person heinous crushing of their rights.
...I prefer downloading the MP3's I wanna play on my computer, iso ripping them myself. So what,
that's my right... sue me.
Actually, no it's not your "right."
U.S. law only allows you to make your own copies of your own albums for your own personal use and archival purposes. It is not your right to redistribute those copies to other people or take someone else's copies just because you also own an original. The law's pretty specific in that respect. The good old "delete these files after 24 hrs. if you don't own the original" argument for game ROMs was always an urban myth. Even if you do own it, you can't download it because it's not a copy of the item you own, even though, bit-for-bit, they are identical.
Of course, the RIAA is trying to take that away too with the AHRA, which prohibits making perfect digital copies of music. This piece of legislation got pushed through over DAT recorders and is still being challenged in courts, AFAIK. Personally, I hope it dies hard. It makes no sense to allow us to copy things for "archival purposes" only in degradeable formats.
If I name my "FreeSong" by "Free Cool band"
Unforgiven_Metallica.mp3. How will they know?
Now you're just guilty of a different kind of copyright infringement.
If you do it the other way around, then nobody will download them because they don't know they're actually Metallica, and you've become unimportant to the RIAA compared to the more blatant traders. This is only good for trading between friends who know what you actually have, but Napster is an inefficient model for that compared to just setting up an FTP server with user logins. Seems pointless to me unless you're playing a malicious joke on Napster users.
"This isn't Barry Manilow? What is this crap??"
...to this day, I still cannot find a external FireWire-to-TV device...
You don't mean, like the Sony DVMC-DA1, DVMC-MS1, or DVMC-DA2? The original Sony DVMC-DA1 was a hit in the Mac marketplace when Firewire Macs and Final Cut Pro first came out. It's a pretty decent little solution for capturing analog video to DV for non-linear editing and putting it back on tape, though it's no true pro setup. Of course, if you're capturing off of TV, I doubt a $2000+ device is going to help the quality be any better than the DVMC-DA1.
I think the NPSL is more like the LGPL, as I understand the LGPL, anyway. You can embed it with commercial apps, but you have to open source any and all changes made to the open sourced components. The Gecko engine was written with the intention that other companies could embed it in their software. The ability to get people to adopt the Gecko engine (and thus, the Gecko engine's style of web design) would be diminished if the license was viral like the GPL.
Plus, Real wouldn't be stupid enough to accidentally build a large new feature of their product around a piece of code that could potentially make them have to open up all their source without checking the license in detail first. Of course, if they wanted to open source their code...
...they would've made a press release about it and lapped up the OSS PR goodness that other companies seem to be riding right now. However, I don't see them open sourcing their streaming video format's codecs, as that would destroy their authoring software business.
Forget the good emulation layering contests.
Now I can open my browser, load a plugin that includes a browser that has a plugin that... Talk about "thinking outside the box"! Now Real wants Netscape as a plug-in.
No need to be insulting. There are few things that make a person's arguments look better, relatively speaking, than to have their detractors lose their composure and make fools of themselves. Providing calm, logical arguments helps your side more than silence. Besides, I've seen him make good arguments on other threads, so it's worth giving someone the benefit of the doubt.
...or was I supposed to be the f---ing MORON?
Debian itself is just a voluntary, non-profit organization.
OOPS!!!!! <sound of palm being rapidly applied to forehead>
I could've said SuSE. I could've said TurboLinux. But, NOOOO. I had to pick the non-profit organization.
My mistake. I keep forgetting that they're non-profit like Slackware.
The Macintosh follows the desktop metaphor. What do you do when you're finish with something on a desktop?
1) Stick it in a drawer or other container. That's already reserved for filing files and data.
2) Discard it from the workspace. In other words, the trash can.
Why no eject button? It's very simple. You do not want users taking out disks in the middle of an I/O operation or before another program is finished with it like you could in DOS. It was an attempt at protecting uneducated users from harming themselves and the system, especially back when the OS booted off a floppy.
To be honest, I agree that the trash can is better reserved for erasing the disk, but there is no other good item in a desktop metaphor for removing something from your workspace completely. Most other items I can think imply the ability to reach in and get the info back.
As to the multi-tasking question, I believe Pinky's response handles that question admirably. Another point about the old system dialogs is that the old Macintosh used to be a single-tasking system like DOS. Only one program could run at a time. When they went to multiple programs, a modal dialog is supposed to represent something you DON'T want two programs potentially messing with at the same time -- something important enough to interrupt the user for. However, there wasn't a clean way at the time to make application-specific dialogs for those messages that should only stop one program. As Pinky points out, though, this has been fixed.
I would like to know in what way either of those examples crosses off "powerful" from the list. Just because awk, sed, and grep on UNIX are horridly counter-intuitive at times doesn't make them less powerful. Just because something might be a little inconvenient doesn't mean it isn't powerful. The UI is powerful because of the wide variety of things you can do with it with little effort on your part. As a whole, the GUI is much cleaner and intuitive than it's competitors.
I always thought Stallman pretty much spoke for the FSF on the philosophy section, but realize I may have made an incorrect assumption. I thought the FSF wanted all software to be free for it's own sake as a free speech issue -- you know, code for it's own sake.
Guess what, the more I try to reconstruct what I was thinking when I posted that line, the less sense it makes. Of course there's no problem with it! <smacks self on forehead>
I also phrased that a bit poorly as it seems I was making the ethics a big issue, when I was really wanting to know how many others got into OSS development for resume building purposes.
Maybe I'm a cynic, but has anyone else considered contributing to an open source project as a way of building up their resume? For example, I'm kind of a Mac guy, and I've considered a number of times working on or starting a port of various popular open source projects to the Mac as a way of learning the APIs and as a way of demonstrating to future employers that I have the skills necessary.
Is it wrong to contribute to open source for those reasons? It seems kind of against the whole FSF philosophy, but I'm a bit too much of a pragmatist anyway. Has anyone else started on open source for these reasons?
Oh, I'm not saying that. There were things for which the Mac was the unquestioned superior platform, but they're growing fewer and fewer as products on Windows come out that whittle the advantage down to being negligible. There are things for which it was never the best for, many of which are strong suits for Linux and other platforms.
However, if you slam on the interface as being powerless, complex, difficult, and unclean, then you haven't used it in an unbiased fashion.
Do you honestly? I mean, what honest competitive advantage does the system have for you if you're comfortable with Linux and don't want a Mac? The board in question isn't outrageously better than competing boards for embedded appication (in fact, Motorola sells better solutions for that), and the processor is a slower, older model, not as good as most modern desktop systems.
Besides, a good $1600 G4 comes with a decent video card, a modest hard drive, on-board support for Firewire, USB, UltraATA/66, Ethernet, and sound. The Motorola board has no video, no sound, and no hard drive with it. It's a decent buy, and you can always add stuff to it. Plus, the hardware that comes with it is far more supported on PPC Linux than whatever random peripherals you decide to stick on the Motorola board.
I don't think you honestly want anything to do with a PowerPC motherboard. You sound like you're just taking the opportunity to bitch about Apple's prices and slam a worthy development effort that seems not to be targetted at you. Well, live with it. There will be users of PPC platforms for years to come, and there will be enough of them interested in Linux to support it. If all you care about it money, go buy an x86 board. Try getting a SPARC or PA-RISC board for less than $2500.
The reality is that Be supports its OS and it won't support something it doesn't have specs to. That seems pretty cut and dried, not to mention a reasonable position.
You make an excellent point -- one which I had forgotten to consider. However, the primary revenue stream of Yellow Dog Linux and LinuxPPC, Inc. is from supporting these same kind of machines running Linux. My point is that Be, especially in their FAQ, used to beat their chest repeatedly that it is all Apple's fault they are not supporting Apple's machines. However, other businesses are basing the majority of their revenue stream on doing the very thing Be claims Apple's lack of spoon-feeding prevents them from doing. The fact remains that Be is eventually pulling out of the PPC market and is happy to try to turn as many Mac/Be users against Apple to keep as many as possible. They are going where the money is currently and making the decision about where they think they can cut the biggest niche.
This seems something to slam Apple for, not Be.
Yeah, in retrospect that seems to be what the original poster was griping about, but I was making a general jab at all the people who immediately got on this thread to flame against supporting the platform, probably mainly because it's primarily the Mac platform, instead of respecting the effort and skills behind the porting work.
Once you start down the dark path, forever will it rule your destiny. UNDERSTAND THAT, DO YOU, SOLDIER?
If BeOS actually cared about PPC Mac users, they'd hire people to do the same hard work that they LinuxPPC team is doing. The fact of the matter is that Be is targetting a higher marketshare with x86, and is using Apple as a scapegoat for their lack of continuing support for their original, most loyal customers. Plus, Jean-Louis Gassee gets to play the wounded victim of Big Bad Apple again, a part I'm sure he's loving.
Besides, why are you slamming the efforts of a group that has done something you consider far too difficult for Be, Inc.? They're making Linux more available! What's wrong with this? Plus they're helping people not have to switch to a hardware platform many of us consider a shambling horror that just won't die, and they're helping wring extra life out of old machines that might be wasted otherwise.
Shouldn't we be supporting Linux everywhere? I mean, everyone loves it when Linux is ported to a digital camera, a calculator, or a friggin' vending machine. What's so wrong with giving Mac and other PPC users a chance at Linux without having to give up their current machine or get an extra one? Quit slamming people for providing others with a service.
Perhaps you underestimate the niche market. Just look at how many companies are alive making Amiga products still. OS/2 dropped support for PPC because they were already starting to lose profitability in the x86 market. Maintaining two platforms was more than they were willing to fund. PPC NT was dropped for the same reason that Alpha NT was recently dropped -- Microsoft pushed the burden of the development on the hardware manufacturers and charged them huge licenses to continue developing it. In the first case, it was IBM who refused to shoulder the burden after Microsoft put the squeeze on them as a competitor, and in the latter it was Compaq.
None of these say anything against the viability of the PPC platform, which has incredible applications in the embedded (Motorola) and high-end server (IBM) markets. Unfortunately, Apple's stuck in the middle with the desktop market that neither chip supplier really cares intently about focusing on currently. The LinuxPPC and Yellow Dog guys make money the same way Red Hat and Debian do -- support.
You probably disagree with all of those because you've never used it. Of course, you do lose the first 3 if you're Windows or X-fixated and can't approach the machine like a new user. If you give up all your assumptions about how a GUI should work, Mac OS is the easiest to train on. I do get frustrated as a Mac lab assistant at my college when someone panics about how to use a Mac because they're trying to do things the Windows way and can't step back an inch or two to look at the problem.
Of course, your post was simply a troll, so I don't guess you really expected a calm answer, but, yes, the Mac OS has an interface that is all of the above.
"Much like the Star Wars discussions on its lack of DVD, this is another one that always gets a chuckle in my mind. How many other products do you have where the customer is practically throwing their money at the company and the company doesn't release the product. Only the video industry..."
This is foolish and reactionary. The only arrogant one here is the Librarian of Congress who feels it is his place to dictate how we should enjoy reading. It not like sitting with your nose buried in a dead tree version is any less lonely and isolated than the web. I think he's just afraid of the Library losing funding once people no longer need to trek all the way to there to get their books they need for research. He's either cluelessly arrogant or irresponsibly fighting to preserve his job at our expense.
I just hope for all our sakes that they aren't shirking from digitizing the books even if they aren't going on-line. There are many important books in the library that need to be preserved before they physically decay to the point of uselessness. I hope this person's politics don't get in the way of preserving the past for the future's sake.
Yeah, and you can try to make the same excuses for silencers, which are used to mute the sound of gunfire -- which are not terribly useful in legitimate uses of firearms like self-defense and hunting -- and for radar detectors, which are used for no other purpose than to see when the police are looking for speeders to avoid getting caught. The point I am making is that Napster is a tool designed primarily to assist in the commisson of a crime, namely piracy. It's the first use that comes to most people's minds when they hear about the product, unlike a cell phone which usually used in a legit fashion for business and personal communication. As a tool designed primarily for piracy, they can't just claim that they provide a neutral service which a few rouge elements are abusing. People are using the service for what it was intended for -- the trading of MP3s without regard to ownership.
Hey, Metallica's already made it big.
Napster is a huge barrier to anyone else making it big. I'll bet you that in 3 years or less, record sales begin dropping for new artists. Who needs to buy No Doubt's "Return to Saturn" album? I've already got the whole thing off Napster and it isn't even out yet. It's good to see the big boys wading in and trying to stop this threat to their entire industry's source of income.
If you're such a big fan, then why do even care about them going after Napster? You've already bought all their albums, right? Oh, well, I guess that you should shut up then.
By the way, I love your beautiful way of communicating your viewpoint through 4 letter words. I'll bet your one those "hot grits" trolls, aren't you? Next time try taking a stand with a logged in name like a real man. Coward is right.
Digital revolution? Freely sharing digital information?? Just whose "information" do you think it is to share? This isn't mathematical equations or obvious development techniques. This is an artform not everyone can perform. They deserve to get paid for it.
Who died and made you Karl Marx? Just what makes digital media so special that it no longer is beholden to ownership by its originator. Since when did putting something in a digital format make it community property? Copying of digital media that is not yours to distribute IS theft. This isn't about common sense or freedom. This is about greed -- and not the band's greed. This is about the greed of music listeners who want, as always, something for nothing. It's about people who think it's their God-given right to enjoy the hard labor of others at no compensation and who rail against those who did the work for having the the "outright gaul" to expect that they be given something in exchange.
Music piracy is just flat out wrong. It's explotation of other people's hard effort. You think all information should be free? Well here's a piece of wisdom worth remembering: "You get what you pay for." Just try looking for good music on MP3.com sometime. I swear, I've only liked less than 10% of what I've listened to. These people have talent and want to be recognized for it. What the heck is so wrong about that?
Allegance or common sense? What rhetorical nonsense. Who's coming off as the elitist here? What Cid was saying was that back in the days before Napster, people had the conscience to realize that whay they were doing was wrong and illegal and made efforts to hide themselves. Nowdays with Napster and the growing predominance of piracy, people like you come out and say that it's their right to steal and that those who are trying to "protect their rights" to the music they own and made are they greedy ones.
I make my counterpoint thusly: who is the greedy one, the one who works hard and asks for compensation or the one who does nothing and demands the fruits of the first's labor?