How about: they've learned from the Unreal delay, now have a better clue of how much time it takes to do this and that AND they can probably re-use a lot of code. Enough reason?
The problem with that is that there IS no.doc standard; they change it over and over, thereby forcing it's users to continuously buy new versions of an incredibly expensive product that only runs on incredibly expensive platforms. It also keeps any other players away from the market and that abridges our freedom to choose our own software to an unacceptable extent; I don't want to spend more than 1000 EURO on software so I can read/write an occasional document. And I only see these prices go up so if we don't take action now, in a few years we may well be spending a lot more money every year just to type a few lousy documents in a word-processor that has 10 times more features than the average user will ever use but which every user has to pay for over and over and over and....
I can assure you; there are people that really cannot afford one. But I don't think it would be of any use to put a computer in every home, it would be much cheaper and effective to promote the usage of computers in libraries and other public places, the rest of the money can then be spent on people that can help the computer-illiterates using the darn things. I think such an approach would be a lot more effective in getting the ones that are interested to a computer and it'd also be much cheaper. And those that are not interested won't use them anyway.
We may not need flash for regular websites, but the amount of funny movies, extremely cool artwork etc. that's been done in Flash is enough reason for it's existance in my opinion. www.megacar.com, www.kimble.com, AYBABTU, the wassup-flood and this multi-episode manga-like gothic movie of which I can't remember the name etc. etc. Maybe that's not all "culturally correct art", but nearly all of us geeks know about and have watched them... you may consider this waste of bandwidth, but it's pure entertainment and that's what the web is about for the majority of its users. But I agree: Flash is being used way too much where it's not necessary.
The reason anything can get a virus is because programs still have direct control over the IP ( instruction pointer
I might be totally wrong:) But it looks like what you're talking about are vulnerabilities that have to do with buffer-overruns; they work by moving the IP to a data-segment by modifying the stack. To solve that, wouldn't it be enough to separate the data from the code (this is normal under Linux, I believe (?)) and not allow the IP to jump to the data(and stack)-segment AND not allow the code to modify itself. That would solve this problem, wouldn't it?
Virusses don't have much to do with this; they are about modifying executables which has nothing to do with the IP, but can indeed be solved partially by file-system improvements. Partially... users that get infected by virusses usually are users that have permission to install executables that are in the default path (most users on properly designed systems don't run any executables of their own). That's enough for a virus to infect the system. And nothing can be done about it without restricting the users' ability to install new software. And that's - at least partially - solved pretty well under Unix since nearly all executables are owned by the root user. And if a virus gets in via the root-account then that's usually plain stupidness of root:]
Well...it's said that this performance-bug doesn't occure until the device is a few years old. Just get a new one every few years and you should be fine:) There are also rumours that the problems suddenly disappear when the device gets really old, but I haven't been able to confirm this. I've also heard rumours that the performance problems are accompanied by `some other kind of trouble' somewhere around the Communication Unit for Network Troubleshooting. I'm about to investigate this Unit now so I will let you know when I know more about the nature of these problems.
The Ghz-increase that we are seeing with CPU's now has indeed totally left the bus-, memory- and storage-speeds behind, but we'll still need to have fast CPU's. So indeed, at the moment there's not much use for such fast CPU's since the other components are just too slow, but they will catch up. What I was trying to say is that it's a bit narrowminded to say that we don't need such fast systems because the applications we use nowadays don't require them. I didn't mean to say that such speeds have any use for the `normal' user nowadays.
...and...I'm pretty sure there are numerous applications nowadays that DO benefit from such fast CPU's. For example lower latency in music-applications while being able to use a lot of effects [with changing parameters] in realtime at the same time. Such applications will benefit a lot more from fast CPU's than they benefit from faster memory...as long as there's enough cache.
You're absolutely right; nobody needs more than 640K RAM too....
The usage of computers changes along with the possibilities and there's still a lot that's not possible. Think about photo-realistic realtime interactive movies (have you seen the latest Chemical Brothers video-clip "Star Guitar"? THAT's what I want to do in realtime and interactively), multi-track samplers that can do a lot of effects without any latency, predicting the weather more exactly without the use of what we call supercomputers nowadays, SETI, simulations of large neural networks etc. etc. That's why we need the Hz's, not for the stuff we we're doing nowadays. As long as I cannot easily create my own Hollywood-production in 16384:1024 with 16-channel sound on my desktop, create the soundtrack for that with a software sampler with professional quality (latency) etc, we're not there yet.
...and that's the way it should be; sex is usually an act of love, blood is usually the product of violence. Why ban love?
By the way...nude beaches have nothing to do with sex. At least according to nudists that spend time there:) They just like to walk around nude without any sexual meaning whatsoever. People that immediately link nakedness to sex are a bit sick, I think. And those are the people making laws to prohibit things that are only wrong in their own weird way of thinking. That's like banning telephones because someone may get sexually aroused when they see them because they start to think of all the holes you can put them in:)
The ALT tag happens to do that in browsers like Netscape and MSIE. According to the HTML standards, the ALT tag should ONLY be used when a browser doesn't show the image; ALT means ALTERNATIVE. For the tooltip kind of behavior, TITLE should be used. Mozilla does this very well. I am not aware of how it is implemented in other browsers, but this is how it should be. I am very well aware that the alt-tag is usually used for this, but in a world where browsers are becoming more and more standards-compliant, I think it is important to follow these standards, even if it happens to work in another way too. Otherwise we'll never have a standards compliant Internet and will always have to come up with different code for different browsers which is the single most major PITA for all web developers around.
The most important parts of Beos (in my opinion) where it's multi-threading, it's gui and it's multi-media "things". So why exactly does this sound like Beos? It's not even close in my opinion. And they're not rebuilding it; for as far as I know the [plans for] the Hurd are a lot older than Beos. And I think it's fair to say the Hurd is at the end of it's puberty, isn't it?
I think so far GNU has done a lot more for Linux (without GNU there wouldn't be much more than a kernel) than Linux (ONLY a kernel) has done for GNU. It's just the way open source works. The packages you mention may have been written for a specific Linux distribution, but they are not Linux; they are simple some packages written for a specific distribion which happened to run the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel just helped the community grow, which then helped the GNU group etc etc etc. The Linux kernel is only a rather small part of the whole. And without XFree86 (for example) Linux wouldn't be as big as it is now. So now maybe we should start calling Linux GNU/XFree86/Linux. But oh wait...XFree86 was developed using GNU tools. So XFree86 should be called GNU/XFree86 so Linux should be called GNU/GNU/Xfree86 Linux. I think we'd end up with a lot of GNU's in the names of the software we use:]
Hmm you're right (more info). I wasn't aware of that... About the dollar vs euro: I understand the political independance is very important, but that's not what the parent of this thread was talking about at all (so neither was I). The dollar on itself isn't any better than the euro with regard to privacy etc. It's only the political situation of the dollar that makes it better at the moment. And I think the advantages (stimulation of the economy) will outweigh the disadvantages (having to prove the currency again) in the long run. Or should I say "I hope"?:)... Thank you for your clarification.
You have worked 1.5yrs on your thesis? And still fail to mention the real reasons for the Euro? That must be why your comment is rated interesting. *G*
First of all: the Euro was not pushed by the banks. It was done by the governments.
Second: the European currencies have had fixed rates for a few years now and I still have to see any negative effect of that. The countries that are allowed to join in, have to have a very stable currency. Only fluctuation within a very small band was allowed. If a currency would fluctuate too much, the EMU would act upon by buying or selling the currency. It has been like this for many years now and so far this cooperation has only had benefits. In fact the system has even proven to work already waaay before we came up with the Euro. So why is a fixed currency not fair? If we decide we want to cooperate more, why not fix those rates? Or would you rather have a different currency in every state of the US? That would be more fair by your rules, wouldn't it.
Third: I don't see how the Euro allows any more control than the money we had before does. The cash is just the same, it only looks different and has a different value per unit. There is no additional tracking-system AT ALL. The banks don't get any additional control either, they only change Currency X into EURO and that's it. So what exactly are you talking about?
Next: in what way is the dollar any better than the Euro? Please give me some arguments before saying so. They're both just currencies. Money. Something to prevent us from having to trade cows for computers. It's nothing more than that. The ONLY reason why a currency would be any better, would be that it's value is more stable compared to the value of other currencies. Maybe the dollar is more stable (I don't believe it is, but I may be wrong). One thing I can tell you: the Euro is most certainly a lot more stable than 16 different independant currencies. So that would make the Euro better than all currencies we're using now here in the EU.
Last: What does the amount of civil rights organizations have to do with this? Are there really more of such organizations in the US (as compared to the EU)? Please give me some facts. And then think about why this could be....maybe they're simply needed more in the US?
Where am I implying software has no value? What exactly do I lie about? And why do you expect me to buy any software? I've never bought any software except for the shit included with books, magazines or hardware, if you want to know.
Well, I still think you should not compare theft with piracy; when you steal a Corvette, you take away something with value from the legal owner. When you make a copy of something you wouldn't have spent any money on otherwise, this is not good/fair, but it doesn't cause any real damage. Anyway... you can't check afterwards if the software would have been bought and besides that piracy just is not fair, so there has to be a punishment. But to say this is equal to stealing a car would be ridiculous in my opinion and I think the real damage should be taken into consideration when sending someone to jail. I suppose this is done now, but the numbers are waaaay to high for the reasons I've described above (somewhere in this thread).
I did not say it's ok to pirate (which is not stealing). But the situation I described is simply the reality; a lot of money is spent on preventing/fighting piracy, some rather innocent and young lives are destroyed (in prison), all based on the assumption that all software that is pirated would have generated revenue otherwise. I don't see any damage done at all by somebody pirating software which this somebody wouldn't have bought anyway. Sure, it may not be fair, but it doesn't cause any damage. It only causes some extra free exposure of products which will most certainly boost revenue. It's all about money here, not about whether it's right or not. And only those that think pirated software would have generated revenue otherwise think that there's a loss. And those people live in a dreamworld. Don't confuse "not fair" with "causes damage".
By the way. The reason people pirate software is twofold, software is too expensive and it's too much hassle to order it or to go to the shop. So the solution I expect within a decade or so when most people have really fast uplinks, is software for which you pay only when you use it (e.g. $0.10 for any image created with PhotoShop). By giving people dumb terminals and running the applications on some fast computers centrally, the need to install applications will also be gone and you will always have the latest and greatest version. This would most certainly make the lives of avg. computer users a lot more easy, it would also about stop piracy.
Well I guess you don't really get the difference between theft and piracy; with theft you take something from somebody else. This means they don't have it anymore. Piracy (in this case) is about copying. This implicitly means that the legal owner doesn't loose anything.
And most software that is pirated is done so by people that collect warez; most of this software is never used _AT_ALL_ and if it is being used, this is mostly done by people that wouldn't have bought the software anyway; Joe A. User won't go to the computerstore to buy Photoshop; it's waaaay too expensive. He either uses the install at his work or "borrows" it from somebody else. There's no way he's going to buy Photo Shop. So that's another difference between theft and piracy: the losses for the industry a no where near the sum of pirated software. My guess it's less than 1% of the pirated software generates real loss.
Apart from companies, nobody is going to pay a hundred bucks for software they only use every once in a while. Unless they get it "for free" with their new PC. Companies are about the only ones you'd expect to actually buy software and most of them do so.
Conclusion: software piracy is no way near as large a problem as the "government" thinks it is. I am not saying it is good at all, but it just doesn't cause that much damage at all.
I'm in the Netherlands and my gf is in.au. And just before christmas eve all snow started to melt here in.nl. So no white christmas for us. So I called my gf and asked her if she had a white christmas over there. "No", she said, "we have a black christmas over here". Ash all over te place:) But it's said drinking ash (it was in the wine) will guarantee good sex. Too bad my dick isn't 16384km long:P
Well...I don't think all "broadband" users would cancel their subscription if they couldn't publicly share mp3s, movies etc. anymore. Maybe that's true for you (I doubt it), but this most certainly wouldn't mean the end of ISP's. I never use Kazaa or gnutella or whatever but I still have my cablemodem.
Slashdot Mirror
How about: they've learned from the Unreal delay, now have a better clue of how much time it takes to do this and that AND they can probably re-use a lot of code. Enough reason?
The problem with that is that there IS no .doc standard; they change it over and over, thereby forcing it's users to continuously buy new versions of an incredibly expensive product that only runs on incredibly expensive platforms. It also keeps any other players away from the market and that abridges our freedom to choose our own software to an unacceptable extent; I don't want to spend more than 1000 EURO on software so I can read/write an occasional document. And I only see these prices go up so if we don't take action now, in a few years we may well be spending a lot more money every year just to type a few lousy documents in a word-processor that has 10 times more features than the average user will ever use but which every user has to pay for over and over and over and....
I can assure you; there are people that really cannot afford one. But I don't think it would be of any use to put a computer in every home, it would be much cheaper and effective to promote the usage of computers in libraries and other public places, the rest of the money can then be spent on people that can help the computer-illiterates using the darn things. I think such an approach would be a lot more effective in getting the ones that are interested to a computer and it'd also be much cheaper. And those that are not interested won't use them anyway.
We may not need flash for regular websites, but the amount of funny movies, extremely cool artwork etc. that's been done in Flash is enough reason for it's existance in my opinion. www.megacar.com, www.kimble.com, AYBABTU, the wassup-flood and this multi-episode manga-like gothic movie of which I can't remember the name etc. etc. Maybe that's not all "culturally correct art", but nearly all of us geeks know about and have watched them... you may consider this waste of bandwidth, but it's pure entertainment and that's what the web is about for the majority of its users. But I agree: Flash is being used way too much where it's not necessary.
I might be totally wrong:) But it looks like what you're talking about are vulnerabilities that have to do with buffer-overruns; they work by moving the IP to a data-segment by modifying the stack. To solve that, wouldn't it be enough to separate the data from the code (this is normal under Linux, I believe (?)) and not allow the IP to jump to the data(and stack)-segment AND not allow the code to modify itself. That would solve this problem, wouldn't it?
Virusses don't have much to do with this; they are about modifying executables which has nothing to do with the IP, but can indeed be solved partially by file-system improvements. Partially... users that get infected by virusses usually are users that have permission to install executables that are in the default path (most users on properly designed systems don't run any executables of their own). That's enough for a virus to infect the system. And nothing can be done about it without restricting the users' ability to install new software. And that's - at least partially - solved pretty well under Unix since nearly all executables are owned by the root user. And if a virus gets in via the root-account then that's usually plain stupidness of root:]
Please correct me when I'm wrong:)
Well...it's said that this performance-bug doesn't occure until the device is a few years old. Just get a new one every few years and you should be fine:) There are also rumours that the problems suddenly disappear when the device gets really old, but I haven't been able to confirm this. I've also heard rumours that the performance problems are accompanied by `some other kind of trouble' somewhere around the Communication Unit for Network Troubleshooting. I'm about to investigate this Unit now so I will let you know when I know more about the nature of these problems.
...and...I'm pretty sure there are numerous applications nowadays that DO benefit from such fast CPU's. For example lower latency in music-applications while being able to use a lot of effects [with changing parameters] in realtime at the same time. Such applications will benefit a lot more from fast CPU's than they benefit from faster memory...as long as there's enough cache.
The usage of computers changes along with the possibilities and there's still a lot that's not possible. Think about photo-realistic realtime interactive movies (have you seen the latest Chemical Brothers video-clip "Star Guitar"? THAT's what I want to do in realtime and interactively), multi-track samplers that can do a lot of effects without any latency, predicting the weather more exactly without the use of what we call supercomputers nowadays, SETI, simulations of large neural networks etc. etc. That's why we need the Hz's, not for the stuff we we're doing nowadays. As long as I cannot easily create my own Hollywood-production in 16384:1024 with 16-channel sound on my desktop, create the soundtrack for that with a software sampler with professional quality (latency) etc, we're not there yet.
That has nothing to do with communism. There's no way why in a communist society you would not be able to choose which OS you want to use.
So what's the problem with communist mentality? The mentality is great in my opinion. It's just that the implementations so far have been total crap.
By the way...nude beaches have nothing to do with sex. At least according to nudists that spend time there:) They just like to walk around nude without any sexual meaning whatsoever. People that immediately link nakedness to sex are a bit sick, I think. And those are the people making laws to prohibit things that are only wrong in their own weird way of thinking. That's like banning telephones because someone may get sexually aroused when they see them because they start to think of all the holes you can put them in:)
Try Mozilla. It's the only browser I know of that implements ALT correctly. (but I'm sure there are more that do it right).
The ALT tag happens to do that in browsers like Netscape and MSIE. According to the HTML standards, the ALT tag should ONLY be used when a browser doesn't show the image; ALT means ALTERNATIVE. For the tooltip kind of behavior, TITLE should be used. Mozilla does this very well. I am not aware of how it is implemented in other browsers, but this is how it should be. I am very well aware that the alt-tag is usually used for this, but in a world where browsers are becoming more and more standards-compliant, I think it is important to follow these standards, even if it happens to work in another way too. Otherwise we'll never have a standards compliant Internet and will always have to come up with different code for different browsers which is the single most major PITA for all web developers around.
It would be nice if a title-tag was also included so you can see what the pearl does when you mouse over it.
The most important parts of Beos (in my opinion) where it's multi-threading, it's gui and it's multi-media "things". So why exactly does this sound like Beos? It's not even close in my opinion. And they're not rebuilding it; for as far as I know the [plans for] the Hurd are a lot older than Beos. And I think it's fair to say the Hurd is at the end of it's puberty, isn't it?
I think so far GNU has done a lot more for Linux (without GNU there wouldn't be much more than a kernel) than Linux (ONLY a kernel) has done for GNU. It's just the way open source works. The packages you mention may have been written for a specific Linux distribution, but they are not Linux; they are simple some packages written for a specific distribion which happened to run the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel just helped the community grow, which then helped the GNU group etc etc etc. The Linux kernel is only a rather small part of the whole. And without XFree86 (for example) Linux wouldn't be as big as it is now. So now maybe we should start calling Linux GNU/XFree86/Linux. But oh wait...XFree86 was developed using GNU tools. So XFree86 should be called GNU/XFree86 so Linux should be called GNU/GNU/Xfree86 Linux. I think we'd end up with a lot of GNU's in the names of the software we use:]
Hmm you're right (more info). I wasn't aware of that... About the dollar vs euro: I understand the political independance is very important, but that's not what the parent of this thread was talking about at all (so neither was I). The dollar on itself isn't any better than the euro with regard to privacy etc. It's only the political situation of the dollar that makes it better at the moment. And I think the advantages (stimulation of the economy) will outweigh the disadvantages (having to prove the currency again) in the long run. Or should I say "I hope"?:)... Thank you for your clarification.
First of all: the Euro was not pushed by the banks. It was done by the governments.
Second: the European currencies have had fixed rates for a few years now and I still have to see any negative effect of that. The countries that are allowed to join in, have to have a very stable currency. Only fluctuation within a very small band was allowed. If a currency would fluctuate too much, the EMU would act upon by buying or selling the currency. It has been like this for many years now and so far this cooperation has only had benefits. In fact the system has even proven to work already waaay before we came up with the Euro. So why is a fixed currency not fair? If we decide we want to cooperate more, why not fix those rates? Or would you rather have a different currency in every state of the US? That would be more fair by your rules, wouldn't it.
Third: I don't see how the Euro allows any more control than the money we had before does. The cash is just the same, it only looks different and has a different value per unit. There is no additional tracking-system AT ALL. The banks don't get any additional control either, they only change Currency X into EURO and that's it. So what exactly are you talking about?
Next: in what way is the dollar any better than the Euro? Please give me some arguments before saying so. They're both just currencies. Money. Something to prevent us from having to trade cows for computers. It's nothing more than that. The ONLY reason why a currency would be any better, would be that it's value is more stable compared to the value of other currencies. Maybe the dollar is more stable (I don't believe it is, but I may be wrong). One thing I can tell you: the Euro is most certainly a lot more stable than 16 different independant currencies. So that would make the Euro better than all currencies we're using now here in the EU.
Last: What does the amount of civil rights organizations have to do with this? Are there really more of such organizations in the US (as compared to the EU)? Please give me some facts. And then think about why this could be....maybe they're simply needed more in the US?
Where am I implying software has no value? What exactly do I lie about? And why do you expect me to buy any software? I've never bought any software except for the shit included with books, magazines or hardware, if you want to know.
Well, I still think you should not compare theft with piracy; when you steal a Corvette, you take away something with value from the legal owner. When you make a copy of something you wouldn't have spent any money on otherwise, this is not good/fair, but it doesn't cause any real damage. Anyway... you can't check afterwards if the software would have been bought and besides that piracy just is not fair, so there has to be a punishment. But to say this is equal to stealing a car would be ridiculous in my opinion and I think the real damage should be taken into consideration when sending someone to jail. I suppose this is done now, but the numbers are waaaay to high for the reasons I've described above (somewhere in this thread).
I meant thin clients, not dumb terminals...;]
By the way. The reason people pirate software is twofold, software is too expensive and it's too much hassle to order it or to go to the shop. So the solution I expect within a decade or so when most people have really fast uplinks, is software for which you pay only when you use it (e.g. $0.10 for any image created with PhotoShop). By giving people dumb terminals and running the applications on some fast computers centrally, the need to install applications will also be gone and you will always have the latest and greatest version. This would most certainly make the lives of avg. computer users a lot more easy, it would also about stop piracy.
And most software that is pirated is done so by people that collect warez; most of this software is never used _AT_ALL_ and if it is being used, this is mostly done by people that wouldn't have bought the software anyway; Joe A. User won't go to the computerstore to buy Photoshop; it's waaaay too expensive. He either uses the install at his work or "borrows" it from somebody else. There's no way he's going to buy Photo Shop. So that's another difference between theft and piracy: the losses for the industry a no where near the sum of pirated software. My guess it's less than 1% of the pirated software generates real loss.
Apart from companies, nobody is going to pay a hundred bucks for software they only use every once in a while. Unless they get it "for free" with their new PC. Companies are about the only ones you'd expect to actually buy software and most of them do so.
Conclusion: software piracy is no way near as large a problem as the "government" thinks it is. I am not saying it is good at all, but it just doesn't cause that much damage at all.
Merry Chrismas to you all! Elles: I miss you!
Well...I don't think all "broadband" users would cancel their subscription if they couldn't publicly share mp3s, movies etc. anymore. Maybe that's true for you (I doubt it), but this most certainly wouldn't mean the end of ISP's. I never use Kazaa or gnutella or whatever but I still have my cablemodem.