when you start looking at the larger UNIX Server systems, you are able to perform quite a bit of 'routine maintenance' without needing to any kind of reboot procedure.
You're missing his point - it's a good idea to reboot machines now and then just to make sure they reboot cleanly, with all necessary services running. Better to find out something is broken in a maintenance window than after a power failure at 3am Saturday morning or smack bang in the middle of production time.
XP is based on 2000 which is based on NT 4.0 which is based on NT 3.51. There's no way they could have forseen security being as important to the computer world as it is now.
There's nothing lacking in the design of NT - from the start - with regards to security. It's multiuser, with a very fine grained permissions model.
It's amazing how much people go on about how important XP's SP2 was, when all it really did was twiddle a few default settings and recompile many of the core libraries to protect against buffer overflows. These were not major changes. NT does not need major changes to be "secure".
Do you consider system defaults that can cause the user to perform an action they didn't intend to do (such as launching a hostile executable) a security bug?
How do you propose the OS detect the difference between a regular executable and a "hostile" one ?
Besides, isn't one of the major complaints about Windows the way it tries to guess what you really mean instead of what you just did ?
The current design of windows is so flawed when it comes to security if microsoft actually listened to their customers, would have to revamp their entire security model in the OS breaking just about everything in windows.
The Windows security model is better than that in most unixes. What on Earth makes you think they need to redesign it from scratch ?
Here's the problem with that (and this is from real-world expierence).
Simple solution - give your users some details of a *local* admin account and introduce them to the "Run As" command.
Incidentally, you're better off setting up software distribution via AD such that users can install stuff from the "Add Remove Software" Control Panel rather than pushing software out to them. They can do this without admin privileges.
Why do people put up with crap like that? This is supposed to be a server OS.
Because there's so few regular tasks you should be doing by TSing into the server, the 2-connection limit shouldn't *be* a problem. Think of it as incentive to do it The Right Way.
I'm willing to bet that even SCO, that paragon of proprietary and evil software, doesn't dare cripple their OS as such (I could be wrong, I've never had the pleasure of working with SCO Unix).
You'd be wrong. SCO OpenServer, at least, only allows 5 (I think, might be less) simultaneous logins unless you buy more "CALs".
Either way, using a GUI for admin work is pretty lame in and of itself. For 99% of admin work, the command line is the fastest and most convienient way to get things done and a GUI just acts as a big, tedious anchor holding you back.
Thinking like that is what has resulted in the dearth of good, intuitive, easy to use admin tools for unix (in general) and Linux (in particular).
Oh, god, no. Competitive sport is something that I will run screaming from.
It doesn't *have* to be competitive. I used to play a lot of (very) competitive sport at school, but I've since grown out of it. Now I play sport for fun, and while being "in the zone" on the field can result in some otherwise out-of-character single-mindedness, it all just drops away at the end of the game - I no longer care whether or not I'm on the winning or losing side, merely that it was a good game.
In particular, I've found that moving from "competitive" to "social" sport means a lot of the "thugs" don't play any more because (hopefully, at least) most of the people playing are more interested in having a good time than hurting each other. Additionally, a lot of people simply grow out of their "thug" stage. YMMV, however, I've been lucky enough to find a series of social competitions that are almost completely made up of people like me - still quite good, but now more interested in having a good game than winning.
With what you've said in mind, I would suggest steering more towards sports like squash - possibly even tennis (although I suspect you'll find it "boring") - and volleyball. With the former find someone you know who is interested and then you know you won't get beaten up;). Volleyball is a great team sport because it really is non-contact. Golf can also be surprisingly addictive - and is very much a "self challenge" rather than "win the day" sport - but you need to get into the game itself a bit more rather than just heading around the course once every six months with a few mates and half a carton of beer.
No, I'm not being facetious. Some of us don't have one. I don't, for example; no matter how much I do, no matter how I do it, I find exercise very uncomfortable and utterly boring. I don't phase out, I have to keep concentrating every moment.
Sounds like you need sport, not exercise (I'm the same - hate exercising, love playing sport). I would suggest trying a few sports that are fast and/or complex, with many aspects that need to be tracked simultaneously and/or require very quick analysis and action. I'd suggest table tennis, squash, volleyball, soccer, hockey, basketball or water polo. Sports to avoid (as they're slower and/or relatively simple, you will probably find them boring) would be things like cricket, baseball and tennis.
If you must exercise in a gym, take a book or laptop and jump on one of the cycles.
Not because it was better (though that is arguable) but because being closed only MS could take any advantage of that.
How so ? What part of IE could "only MS" take advantage of that one would reasonably expect anyone else to be able to "take advantage of" ?
And there being a Browser already has an unfair advantadge (the browser, make notice I am talking about the browser, not about an html rendering engine) nobody else could use.
IE is primarily an embeddable web engine. The browser component is very small and (particularly in today's world) very light on features. There are a number of alternate browsers that have sprung up to fill the functionality gap the default IE browser leaves, all using the IE engine.
At the time everyone was confused because nobody understood what MS had done. embedding a browser is different from embeddin an html rendering engine.
No-one who bothered to actually read and comprehend what Microsoft had done was confused. That, of course, only includes a single-digit percentage of Slashdot readers.
Microsoft embedded a browser engine - just like GNOME, KDE and OS X went on to do. One might even say it was innovative.
What was bad is what MS did.
They did exactly the same thing KDE, GNOME and OS X developers went on to do aftrwards.
That people are paying for stuff they could get "free".
Bottled spring water is not the same as tap water [...]
It is in every comparison I've ever seen done (assuming a place with at least somewhat modern infrastructure).
(not to mention that tap water isn't free).
It's as "free" as the bandwidth "downloading stuff" is.
You must live somewhere with quality tap water. Believe me when I tell you that the quality of tap water is pretty damn bad in many parts of the country.
I've yet to visit any remotely civilised area that had undrinkable tap water, or water that was dangerous. Certainly, I've visited many places where the water was somewhat distasteful, but a movie you download off a website usually doesn't look or sound as good as one you see in the cinema, either.
And you can't carry water around in your hands if you're working outside or otherwise not near a tap.
Your attempts to try and score a point are getting ridiculous....
So, you see, you go and grab and *empty bottle* or maybe a *canteen* and fill it up at the tap before you go outside.
The point here is that people are *happily* paying for stuff (water) they can get for "free" - something you insist could never happen.
Oh, I see. Easy. LOL.
If it can be done with _water_, for fuck's sake, it can be done with anything.
You also dismiss out of hand the basis of every single successful marketing campaign ever - *including* the ones that would have gotten people out seeing movies and buying music in the first place - make things attractive enough so that people will spend money on them. Every day I am astounded at people's willingness to pay - often subsantially more than they need to - for something when they could get that same thing (or a 99% as good substitute) for much, much less. Yet for some reason you think this behaviour, that has been consistent for - conservatively - thousands of years, will be changed by "the internet" ?
And I reiterate my statement that your examples sucked.
Your whole argument sucks, but at least I'm trying to make a discussion out of it.
Besides this, marketing isn't free. You're suggesting that the movie companies lower prices and increase costs and that they're going to somehow magically make money this way.
There's nothing "magic" about it. Movie companies aren't exactly running on razor thin margins (yet another indicator the system needs a shakeup).
You seem to be infected with the same ridiculous logic that the RIAA and friends are, where "less profits" == "losing money", ie: "not getting something you might have had" == "loss". Sorry, but this is patently false. Less profits means you aren't making *as much* money, it doesn't mean you're *losing* money.
Technology has moved on, and certain business models have subsequently been obseleted (again). We don't cry for the buggy whip manufacturers or ice cart haulers anymore, either.
Oh don't get me wrong, there will still be people who will pay to watch movies. But whether you want to call that portion of the population "large" or "small" it's still only a fraction of the people who currently pay to watch movies.
And you base this assertion on what, exactly ?
To the extent that P2P provides a cheaper and more viable substitute, demand for the product will decrease.
Right. So why not just make the non-P2P product more attractive ? I mean, if people will pay $2 for a bottle of water that cost maybe 10c to make, and $15 for a meal that cost maybe $5 to make, what makes you think they won't pay $5 for a movie that might cost them $2 in bandwidth charges and inconvenience ?
You're forgetting that the initial costs for blockbuster films is extemely high compared to the marginal costs. It costs $X to make the film, and if you don't have enough people willing to pay for the f
Unless DLLs on Windows aren't "shared libraries" in the same way *.so files are on *nix[1], I think we can safely assume that "every app could load up its own copy" could still imply code sharing.
Uh, my point was that "every app could load up its own copy" *excludes* the idea of code sharing (at least by my interpretation). That's what sparked my comment - if you've got shared libraries, doesn't every app having its own copy of the shared library kind of defeat the purpose of having them ?
Except, I bet (not 100% sure) that OSx, KDE and Gnome are coded in a way that's easy to replace their current browser [...]
It's easy to replace the *browser* in Windows, as well. There are many projects that do so.
[...] and its not dependant on a particular product, it only requires it to follow some standard.
You'd be wrong, as well. Or have you missed the recent kerfuffle the KDE folks have been having with Apple over their khtml fork ?
Probably Windows does that too, except that the standard is secret and cannot be used by anyone else except them (and now perhaps Sun?).
I remember finding a drop-in replacement for the IE HTML engine that uses Gecko in one of my idle web browsing sessions (linked from a comment in/., IIRC). So at least part of IE has been duplicated by a third party.
Replacing substantial chunks of code is a non-trivial affair in *any* OS. That IE is hard to replace in Windows makes it no different to its equivalents on other platforms.
It's also a freakin' nightmare to setup and configure.
(But once you get your head around the weirdness, quite capable - although I only concur with the recommendation due to a dearth of alternative options.)
That's a good point. I'm not too familar with British styles of acting compensation, but if I had royalties, I'd definitely like to hold onto them. Once the time-shifting issue is figured out, I suppose what they'd need to do for pay-per-view is make sure that royalties are properly earmarked for each download. This would give actors a similar income, but probably more frequent payments. Plus, actors might see royalties for shows that have all but disappeared from reruns.
Or maybe actors could just learn that they only deserve to get paid once, for the work the do at the time, like the rest of us poor sods ?
Do you think the "Average Joe" cares whether the back-end http proto handlers are reused by every app or not? Heck, even if it is, the morons behind IE should have had the tiniest sense to ask themselves whether it should be that way...
Well the fact that "everyone else" (OS X, KDE, GNOME) has since gone down that road would suggest is was a reasonably good idea. Code re-use generally *is* considered good programming, after all.
Water is water - that's the point. People are happy to pay for bottled water, despite it not being meaningfully different from the stuff they get for "free" out of the tap. The difference is in their minds, created by an almost incomprehensively successful marketing campaign.
The success of bottled water is truly a triumph of marketing over common sense. Coke has _nothing_ on the guys that can sell people bottles of stuff they can get basically for free out of their taps.
Sure, if they can't obtain the thing for free with the same convenience. You still haven't explained why people are going to pay for movies when they can download and watch them for free.
Easy - simply make them think paying for it is worth it, or make the cost less than the perceived "hassle cost" of doing it free. Again, I point back to my examples where marketing has achieved this quite admirably.
People *will* pay for things they can get free or much cheaper if you can make them think it's worth it, make them think they look "cool" doing it, or if that cost is low enough that the hassle of trying to obtain the same thing for free simply isn't justified.
Right now we can't, at least, it is very inconvenient to do so. But it's obviously going to get easier and easier unless there are some serious changes to the copy protection or legal protection of DVDs.
Not really. In case you hadn't noticed, a rather large proportion of society now has an incredibly low tolerance for "hassle", an even greater urge to "keep up with the Jones's" and substantial disposable incomes (for a better example of this, it's hard to go past Sunbeam's dedicated *egg boiler* appliance, or the mere *existance* of plastic surgery for pets).
To put it bluntly, a rather large chunk of the western world at the moment has more money than it knows what to do with - and you're saying they won't spend a few bucks going out to the movies ?
If people can grab the latest film from a legit source for a price they consider reasonable, most of them will do that rather than trying to find it somewhere for free.
Again, the historical anecdotal evidence for these behaviour patterns is *staggering*. As always, I find it mystifying anyone would argue otherwise in the face of it.
Whoa now, hold on a second. I never said P2P would kill "art". I said that if left unchecked it'll kill most of the profits in making DVDs.
This is a matter of semantics. The principle argument being made (your variation being but one of many) is that "P2P" will make it impossible to make money from films, music, books, etc.
The vast majority of people don't pay for Linux, after all, and those who do pay for it generally don't pay the developers.
Not a good example - nobody[0] *wants* Linux.
So yeah, P2P would never kill art. It'll probably eventually kill the blockbuster (unless we turn into a police state), but it won't kill the independent film.
Of course it won't. It might eat into profit margins somewhat, but people will still be more than happy to go to the movies for a night out, a date, or just to get that experience most of them can't replicate at home.
Again, just look at how much all those people who make Linux worthwhile make.
Many would argue Linux *isn't* worthwhile yet for most things. I certainly wouldn't pay for it (as a general case - we buy RHEL licenses because doing so *does* have sufficient benefits - Oracle support).
We'll still have film, because there are intangible benefits to making a film, but corporate shareholders don't benefit very much from these intangible benefits (maybe if the films get infused with product placement, or something, but the days of the blockbuster are numbered).
Ironically, while you're still pushing the line that "free downloads" will make (large scale) movie creation completely unviable you've just mentioned at
Slashdot Mirror
You're missing his point - it's a good idea to reboot machines now and then just to make sure they reboot cleanly, with all necessary services running. Better to find out something is broken in a maintenance window than after a power failure at 3am Saturday morning or smack bang in the middle of production time.
Like the one NT has had since 1993, you mean ?
[...] the virus would be contained to user level processes and hopefully not compromise the system. The user would lose their crap.
So they'd only lose the most important data ? I'm sure that would be comforting.
There's nothing lacking in the design of NT - from the start - with regards to security. It's multiuser, with a very fine grained permissions model.
It's amazing how much people go on about how important XP's SP2 was, when all it really did was twiddle a few default settings and recompile many of the core libraries to protect against buffer overflows. These were not major changes. NT does not need major changes to be "secure".
Besides, get some perspective here - Win16 was deprecated 10 - 12 years ago. OS9 was only declared dead in 2002.
Let's see how much of a priority OS9 support is for Apple ca. 2012 - 2015 before trying to make any comparisons...
How do you propose the OS detect the difference between a regular executable and a "hostile" one ?
Besides, isn't one of the major complaints about Windows the way it tries to guess what you really mean instead of what you just did ?
The Windows security model is better than that in most unixes. What on Earth makes you think they need to redesign it from scratch ?
Simple solution - give your users some details of a *local* admin account and introduce them to the "Run As" command.
Incidentally, you're better off setting up software distribution via AD such that users can install stuff from the "Add Remove Software" Control Panel rather than pushing software out to them. They can do this without admin privileges.
Nobody forces Windows users to use IE as a browser, either.
And that applies as much to people who use Linux as people who use Windows...
You shouldn't be performing system administration via TS often enough for the 2 connection limit to be a problem.
Because there's so few regular tasks you should be doing by TSing into the server, the 2-connection limit shouldn't *be* a problem. Think of it as incentive to do it The Right Way.
I'm willing to bet that even SCO, that paragon of proprietary and evil software, doesn't dare cripple their OS as such (I could be wrong, I've never had the pleasure of working with SCO Unix).
You'd be wrong. SCO OpenServer, at least, only allows 5 (I think, might be less) simultaneous logins unless you buy more "CALs".
Either way, using a GUI for admin work is pretty lame in and of itself. For 99% of admin work, the command line is the fastest and most convienient way to get things done and a GUI just acts as a big, tedious anchor holding you back.
Thinking like that is what has resulted in the dearth of good, intuitive, easy to use admin tools for unix (in general) and Linux (in particular).
It doesn't *have* to be competitive. I used to play a lot of (very) competitive sport at school, but I've since grown out of it. Now I play sport for fun, and while being "in the zone" on the field can result in some otherwise out-of-character single-mindedness, it all just drops away at the end of the game - I no longer care whether or not I'm on the winning or losing side, merely that it was a good game.
In particular, I've found that moving from "competitive" to "social" sport means a lot of the "thugs" don't play any more because (hopefully, at least) most of the people playing are more interested in having a good time than hurting each other. Additionally, a lot of people simply grow out of their "thug" stage. YMMV, however, I've been lucky enough to find a series of social competitions that are almost completely made up of people like me - still quite good, but now more interested in having a good game than winning.
With what you've said in mind, I would suggest steering more towards sports like squash - possibly even tennis (although I suspect you'll find it "boring") - and volleyball. With the former find someone you know who is interested and then you know you won't get beaten up ;). Volleyball is a great team sport because it really is non-contact. Golf can also be surprisingly addictive - and is very much a "self challenge" rather than "win the day" sport - but you need to get into the game itself a bit more rather than just heading around the course once every six months with a few mates and half a carton of beer.
Sounds like you need sport, not exercise (I'm the same - hate exercising, love playing sport). I would suggest trying a few sports that are fast and/or complex, with many aspects that need to be tracked simultaneously and/or require very quick analysis and action. I'd suggest table tennis, squash, volleyball, soccer, hockey, basketball or water polo. Sports to avoid (as they're slower and/or relatively simple, you will probably find them boring) would be things like cricket, baseball and tennis.
If you must exercise in a gym, take a book or laptop and jump on one of the cycles.
How so ? What part of IE could "only MS" take advantage of that one would reasonably expect anyone else to be able to "take advantage of" ?
And there being a Browser already has an unfair advantadge (the browser, make notice I am talking about the browser, not about an html rendering engine) nobody else could use.
IE is primarily an embeddable web engine. The browser component is very small and (particularly in today's world) very light on features. There are a number of alternate browsers that have sprung up to fill the functionality gap the default IE browser leaves, all using the IE engine.
At the time everyone was confused because nobody understood what MS had done. embedding a browser is different from embeddin an html rendering engine.
No-one who bothered to actually read and comprehend what Microsoft had done was confused. That, of course, only includes a single-digit percentage of Slashdot readers.
Microsoft embedded a browser engine - just like GNOME, KDE and OS X went on to do. One might even say it was innovative.
What was bad is what MS did.
They did exactly the same thing KDE, GNOME and OS X developers went on to do aftrwards.
That people are paying for stuff they could get "free".
Bottled spring water is not the same as tap water [...]
It is in every comparison I've ever seen done (assuming a place with at least somewhat modern infrastructure).
(not to mention that tap water isn't free).
It's as "free" as the bandwidth "downloading stuff" is.
You must live somewhere with quality tap water. Believe me when I tell you that the quality of tap water is pretty damn bad in many parts of the country.
I've yet to visit any remotely civilised area that had undrinkable tap water, or water that was dangerous. Certainly, I've visited many places where the water was somewhat distasteful, but a movie you download off a website usually doesn't look or sound as good as one you see in the cinema, either.
And you can't carry water around in your hands if you're working outside or otherwise not near a tap.
Your attempts to try and score a point are getting ridiculous....
So, you see, you go and grab and *empty bottle* or maybe a *canteen* and fill it up at the tap before you go outside.
The point here is that people are *happily* paying for stuff (water) they can get for "free" - something you insist could never happen.
Oh, I see. Easy. LOL.
If it can be done with _water_, for fuck's sake, it can be done with anything.
You also dismiss out of hand the basis of every single successful marketing campaign ever - *including* the ones that would have gotten people out seeing movies and buying music in the first place - make things attractive enough so that people will spend money on them. Every day I am astounded at people's willingness to pay - often subsantially more than they need to - for something when they could get that same thing (or a 99% as good substitute) for much, much less. Yet for some reason you think this behaviour, that has been consistent for - conservatively - thousands of years, will be changed by "the internet" ?
And I reiterate my statement that your examples sucked.
Your whole argument sucks, but at least I'm trying to make a discussion out of it.
Besides this, marketing isn't free. You're suggesting that the movie companies lower prices and increase costs and that they're going to somehow magically make money this way.
There's nothing "magic" about it. Movie companies aren't exactly running on razor thin margins (yet another indicator the system needs a shakeup).
You seem to be infected with the same ridiculous logic that the RIAA and friends are, where "less profits" == "losing money", ie: "not getting something you might have had" == "loss". Sorry, but this is patently false. Less profits means you aren't making *as much* money, it doesn't mean you're *losing* money.
Technology has moved on, and certain business models have subsequently been obseleted (again). We don't cry for the buggy whip manufacturers or ice cart haulers anymore, either.
Oh don't get me wrong, there will still be people who will pay to watch movies. But whether you want to call that portion of the population "large" or "small" it's still only a fraction of the people who currently pay to watch movies.
And you base this assertion on what, exactly ?
To the extent that P2P provides a cheaper and more viable substitute, demand for the product will decrease.
Right. So why not just make the non-P2P product more attractive ? I mean, if people will pay $2 for a bottle of water that cost maybe 10c to make, and $15 for a meal that cost maybe $5 to make, what makes you think they won't pay $5 for a movie that might cost them $2 in bandwidth charges and inconvenience ?
You're forgetting that the initial costs for blockbuster films is extemely high compared to the marginal costs. It costs $X to make the film, and if you don't have enough people willing to pay for the f
Correct, but Safari != IE. Safari is the equivalent of Windows's iexplore.exe. IE is a lot more than that.
Those functions are built into the OS, but Safari is just another application that uses those functions.
Exactly. Just like IE is built into Windows and the browser is just another application that uses IE.
Uh, my point was that "every app could load up its own copy" *excludes* the idea of code sharing (at least by my interpretation). That's what sparked my comment - if you've got shared libraries, doesn't every app having its own copy of the shared library kind of defeat the purpose of having them ?
It's easy to replace the *browser* in Windows, as well. There are many projects that do so.
[...] and its not dependant on a particular product, it only requires it to follow some standard.
You'd be wrong, as well. Or have you missed the recent kerfuffle the KDE folks have been having with Apple over their khtml fork ?
Probably Windows does that too, except that the standard is secret and cannot be used by anyone else except them (and now perhaps Sun?).
I remember finding a drop-in replacement for the IE HTML engine that uses Gecko in one of my idle web browsing sessions (linked from a comment in /., IIRC). So at least part of IE has been duplicated by a third party.
Replacing substantial chunks of code is a non-trivial affair in *any* OS. That IE is hard to replace in Windows makes it no different to its equivalents on other platforms.
How so ?
MS IE had an advantage over other browsers at that time.
Indeed. Mostly because it was better.
The fact that everyone else does it is just because reusability, in general, is a good idea.
My point exactly - so why is it bad when Microsoft do it ?
(But once you get your head around the weirdness, quite capable - although I only concur with the recommendation due to a dearth of alternative options.)
Or maybe actors could just learn that they only deserve to get paid once, for the work the do at the time, like the rest of us poor sods ?
Kinda defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it ?
Well the fact that "everyone else" (OS X, KDE, GNOME) has since gone down that road would suggest is was a reasonably good idea. Code re-use generally *is* considered good programming, after all.
Water is water - that's the point. People are happy to pay for bottled water, despite it not being meaningfully different from the stuff they get for "free" out of the tap. The difference is in their minds, created by an almost incomprehensively successful marketing campaign.
The success of bottled water is truly a triumph of marketing over common sense. Coke has _nothing_ on the guys that can sell people bottles of stuff they can get basically for free out of their taps.
Sure, if they can't obtain the thing for free with the same convenience. You still haven't explained why people are going to pay for movies when they can download and watch them for free.
Easy - simply make them think paying for it is worth it, or make the cost less than the perceived "hassle cost" of doing it free. Again, I point back to my examples where marketing has achieved this quite admirably.
People *will* pay for things they can get free or much cheaper if you can make them think it's worth it, make them think they look "cool" doing it, or if that cost is low enough that the hassle of trying to obtain the same thing for free simply isn't justified.
Right now we can't, at least, it is very inconvenient to do so. But it's obviously going to get easier and easier unless there are some serious changes to the copy protection or legal protection of DVDs.
Not really. In case you hadn't noticed, a rather large proportion of society now has an incredibly low tolerance for "hassle", an even greater urge to "keep up with the Jones's" and substantial disposable incomes (for a better example of this, it's hard to go past Sunbeam's dedicated *egg boiler* appliance, or the mere *existance* of plastic surgery for pets).
To put it bluntly, a rather large chunk of the western world at the moment has more money than it knows what to do with - and you're saying they won't spend a few bucks going out to the movies ?
If people can grab the latest film from a legit source for a price they consider reasonable, most of them will do that rather than trying to find it somewhere for free.
Again, the historical anecdotal evidence for these behaviour patterns is *staggering*. As always, I find it mystifying anyone would argue otherwise in the face of it.
Whoa now, hold on a second. I never said P2P would kill "art". I said that if left unchecked it'll kill most of the profits in making DVDs.
This is a matter of semantics. The principle argument being made (your variation being but one of many) is that "P2P" will make it impossible to make money from films, music, books, etc.
The vast majority of people don't pay for Linux, after all, and those who do pay for it generally don't pay the developers.
Not a good example - nobody[0] *wants* Linux.
So yeah, P2P would never kill art. It'll probably eventually kill the blockbuster (unless we turn into a police state), but it won't kill the independent film.
Of course it won't. It might eat into profit margins somewhat, but people will still be more than happy to go to the movies for a night out, a date, or just to get that experience most of them can't replicate at home.
Again, just look at how much all those people who make Linux worthwhile make.
Many would argue Linux *isn't* worthwhile yet for most things. I certainly wouldn't pay for it (as a general case - we buy RHEL licenses because doing so *does* have sufficient benefits - Oracle support).
We'll still have film, because there are intangible benefits to making a film, but corporate shareholders don't benefit very much from these intangible benefits (maybe if the films get infused with product placement, or something, but the days of the blockbuster are numbered).
Ironically, while you're still pushing the line that "free downloads" will make (large scale) movie creation completely unviable you've just mentioned at
I have the same problem accessing my FreeBSD samba server (well, maybe - mine just sits there "Connecting..." forever).
Interestingly enough, the RHEL samba server sitting right next to it works fine...