violent and irrational behavior... WTF are you talking about? I have never met a violent stoner. By and large, stoners are the most laid-back people I know... Now, when you throw alcohol or other drugs into the mix, then that's a different story... but I've never known marijuana to make someone violent.
However, when it comes to the question of wether or not MS abused it's monopoly by also distributing a tcp/ip stack, a web browser, a media player, notepad, etc... I have to disagree with people. All they were doing was giving people features they want.
If you really believe that, you're naive. Ask yourself this question: Why was Office never included with Windows? Is it because people don't want it? Or is it because MS already had a dominant position in the office suite market and could make more money selling it separately? Note that for every new feature they've bundled (IE, WMP, TCP/IP stack), they were coming from behind in the market and using their monopoly to force users to use their products. This isn't a case of giving users what the users want... it's a case of MS giving users what MS wants.
Yes, I'll argue that. You're trying to tell me that the phrase "may provide upgrades or fixes to the OS Product" means MS can delete your files? Give me a fuckin' break.
They can certainly provide "upgrades or fixes" which make all of your current mp3s (obtained legally or not) unplayable. All they need to do is "upgrade" you to WMP-DRM and remove and forbid the future install of any mp3 player which doesn't respect their DRM scheme. So they may not delete your mp3s, but you can't play them...
My first reaction, cynical as it is, is that the reason that this is happening is that no one really uses hotmail except as a junk mail account
That may be true among the./ "literati", but it's not true of the general public. My mom and my girlfriend's mom use Hotmail almost exclusively*, even though they have real accounts through their ISPs. They like it because it's easier and available from anywhere and they're familiar with the interface. They've learned to live with spam as just one of those things that happens, kinda like their computer crashing.
* == I've just recently switched my mom to using Netscape mail and being very careful with her email address (i.e. only I have it). My girlfriend's mom is hopeless: she still clicks on spam regularly.
What is OUR solution to the (perceived) crisis of "piracy" that is today's filesharing world?
A three-fold strategy:
Cut prices in half...
Provide a value-add beyond just the music. Concept albums and/or albums with extensive artwork, liner notes, etc. are two ideas. Access to exclusive online content (keyed by UPC and revoked if used from more than 3 different geographic regions (just like the porn sites do)) is another.
Provide custom-order CDs with customer-selected tracks for $2 a song or so.
The bottom line is that you need to give people a reason to buy your content instead of downloading it.
The more dangerous computer criminals (no, I won't call them "hackers") are in the eyes of the public, the more respect non-criminal computer experts, like most of us here on Slashdot, will get.
When we choose to use our skills for good rather than evil, we will be seen as the benevolent protectors of society, much as the police and military (trained in the arts of combat, just like criminals) are seen today.
No, you'll be treated with suspicion and fear, because you're "extremely dangerous" and most importantly, you're something they don't understand. How is Joe Noob supposed to figure out who's a "good hacker" and who's a "bad hacker"? That's right, he won't... he'll just treat all computer professionals with the same level of suspicion (or worse), because you never really know...
Have you even played civ3? It's gameplay is better than freciv after you get used to the changes and graphically it kicks the crap out of freeciv. Seriously for being one of "the best" games out there for linux they really need to do some thing about those graphics.
Does CivIII have something other than the butt-ugly isometric view?
You can build city walls even though you have Great Wall wonder.
Can someone explain why this was done?
Probably because the Great Wall wonder is obsoleted pretty early in the game. If you build also build a city wall around some of your cities, they won't be unprotected when it gets obsoleted.
I seem to remember that all of the math books we have from the "Greeks" were meant to show results, not problems: most of them are some sorts of summae where somebody expose everything that is known about some subject, with more or less comments and precisations.
Even so, it seems strange that they wouldn't indicate what definitely isn't known about a subject, to differentiate it from what is known but not said (because something will always be left out). Perhaps that's a modern development, though...
the fibonacci series don't date back very far...only to about fibonacci.
Fibonacci died in 1250... well before the Renaissance started. The Fibonacci numbers represent the only novel mathematics I can think of that was done in the middle ages. Everything else seems to come from the Renaissance or the Greeks.
don't forget the guy walking around with a parrot on his johnson.
Haha... I'd forgotten all about that... here I was figuring everyone and their brother would be threatening to kick somebody's ass if they ever meet them.
If someone spends 4 hours learning how to use Mozilla they have brought very little value to the company (After all, what does Mozilla have that IE doesn't.. and they already have sunk the cost of learning IE)
Let's see:
Tabbed browsing
Pop-up blocking
Mouse gestures
Security
None of those will take you an hour to learn, but they will boost your productivity (at least, they will if you do any serious websurfing at work (and yes, there are some jobs (such as mine) where serious browsing is important)).
Sounds an awful lot like the Internet bubble all over again, I know.
Actually, like the Internet bubble, the biotech bubble (Dec. 2000 - Apr. 2001) already burst. There are a large number of biotechs (including LION and Incyte) whose market cap is less than their current cash.
In addition, there is a distinct lack of bearded linux hippies in biotech, making it a much more attractive market segment to the general public.
This is not true at all. Bioinformatics needs large amounts of computational power, and Linux clusters are perfect for this task. The biotech company I work for uses Linux extensively, and we're porting all of our proprietary tools to Linux (most of them already run under multiple unices anyway...). The microarray lab I was visiting on Friday also use Linux extensively. They're using a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) system to pool information between labs with a flexibility that simply isn't available in the commercial offerings (a similar but less flexible commercial system runs $20,000).
Microsoft isn't going to lose their marketshare without a seriously inferior product, and at the moment, it a hell of a lot better than Netscape's offering.
I haven't used NS 7.0 yet, but Mozilla is a far superior browser to IE. Not only is it faster and more stable, it has three features that IE doesn't which are essential to power web-surfing: tabs, popup-killing, and gestures. Using IE or NS4.x are horrendously painful compared to Moz (or Galeon, which is even better than Moz).
5) Laws - We dont have a DMCA, and Switzerland is usually OK, not even being a UN member I believe.
Is it true that Switzerland (or maybe some city therein) has a law that you can't flush a toilet after 10:00pm? Someone told me this the other week, and I couldn't believe it, but they weren't the type to make stuff like that up...
On Linux, I'd choose Mozilla 1.0 without hesitation, clearly the best.
Except for Galeon, which is far better in three important aspects:
Middle-click opens tabs immediately to the right of the current tab
Block image from server actually tells you the name of the server you'd be blocking from... this way, you can get rid of the Doubleclick ads on Slashdot, but not completely b0rk the site by blocking ads from images.slashdot.org.
It's lighter and faster
About the only thing I miss is configurable mouse gestures and a Bookmark menu which doesn't scroll off the end of the screen...
Windows 2000, IE6 is the no-brainer.
Hmmm... I guess I don't have a brain then, because I use Mozilla on Win2k. Does IE have tabbed browsing, popup stopping and mouse gestures? Why the hell not? These are IMO must-have features for any serious web browsing (which I haven't had to do until lately at work...).
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to define "fundamentals" so narrowly, then the same is true for scientific inquiry as well.
If you really believe that, you're naive. Ask yourself this question: Why was Office never included with Windows? Is it because people don't want it? Or is it because MS already had a dominant position in the office suite market and could make more money selling it separately? Note that for every new feature they've bundled (IE, WMP, TCP/IP stack), they were coming from behind in the market and using their monopoly to force users to use their products. This isn't a case of giving users what the users want... it's a case of MS giving users what MS wants.
They can certainly provide "upgrades or fixes" which make all of your current mp3s (obtained legally or not) unplayable. All they need to do is "upgrade" you to WMP-DRM and remove and forbid the future install of any mp3 player which doesn't respect their DRM scheme. So they may not delete your mp3s, but you can't play them...
That may be true among the ./ "literati", but it's not true of the general public. My mom and my girlfriend's mom use Hotmail almost exclusively*, even though they have real accounts through their ISPs. They like it because it's easier and available from anywhere and they're familiar with the interface. They've learned to live with spam as just one of those things that happens, kinda like their computer crashing.
* == I've just recently switched my mom to using Netscape mail and being very careful with her email address (i.e. only I have it). My girlfriend's mom is hopeless: she still clicks on spam regularly.
A three-fold strategy:
- Cut prices in half...
- Provide a value-add beyond just the music. Concept albums and/or albums with extensive artwork, liner notes, etc. are two ideas. Access to exclusive online content (keyed by UPC and revoked if used from more than 3 different geographic regions (just like the porn sites do)) is another.
- Provide custom-order CDs with customer-selected tracks for $2 a song or so.
The bottom line is that you need to give people a reason to buy your content instead of downloading it.You must have a strange definition of circle...
No, you'll be treated with suspicion and fear, because you're "extremely dangerous" and most importantly, you're something they don't understand. How is Joe Noob supposed to figure out who's a "good hacker" and who's a "bad hacker"? That's right, he won't... he'll just treat all computer professionals with the same level of suspicion (or worse), because you never really know...
Does CivIII have something other than the butt-ugly isometric view?
Can someone explain why this was done?
Probably because the Great Wall wonder is obsoleted pretty early in the game. If you build also build a city wall around some of your cities, they won't be unprotected when it gets obsoleted.
Why? My mom uses Windows... guess what... She didn't do the install. HP did it. 99.999999% of Windows users didn't install their OS.
IOW, a perfect question for Slashdot...
Even so, it seems strange that they wouldn't indicate what definitely isn't known about a subject, to differentiate it from what is known but not said (because something will always be left out). Perhaps that's a modern development, though...
Why exactly is it a stupid question?
Fibonacci died in 1250... well before the Renaissance started. The Fibonacci numbers represent the only novel mathematics I can think of that was done in the middle ages. Everything else seems to come from the Renaissance or the Greeks.
Haha... I'd forgotten all about that... here I was figuring everyone and their brother would be threatening to kick somebody's ass if they ever meet them.
What if you just want to read the articles?
Let's see:
- Tabbed browsing
- Pop-up blocking
- Mouse gestures
- Security
None of those will take you an hour to learn, but they will boost your productivity (at least, they will if you do any serious websurfing at work (and yes, there are some jobs (such as mine) where serious browsing is important)).Good idea... got any suggestions as to where that might be?
Actually, like the Internet bubble, the biotech bubble (Dec. 2000 - Apr. 2001) already burst. There are a large number of biotechs (including LION and Incyte) whose market cap is less than their current cash.
In addition, there is a distinct lack of bearded linux hippies in biotech, making it a much more attractive market segment to the general public.
This is not true at all. Bioinformatics needs large amounts of computational power, and Linux clusters are perfect for this task. The biotech company I work for uses Linux extensively, and we're porting all of our proprietary tools to Linux (most of them already run under multiple unices anyway...). The microarray lab I was visiting on Friday also use Linux extensively. They're using a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) system to pool information between labs with a flexibility that simply isn't available in the commercial offerings (a similar but less flexible commercial system runs $20,000).
I haven't used NS 7.0 yet, but Mozilla is a far superior browser to IE. Not only is it faster and more stable, it has three features that IE doesn't which are essential to power web-surfing: tabs, popup-killing, and gestures. Using IE or NS4.x are horrendously painful compared to Moz (or Galeon, which is even better than Moz).
What the fuck are you talking about? MS charged for IE at some point? You're an idiot.
Yeah, they told me about that one as well, but I couldn't remember it when I wrote the post... what a frickin' weird country!
Is it true that Switzerland (or maybe some city therein) has a law that you can't flush a toilet after 10:00pm? Someone told me this the other week, and I couldn't believe it, but they weren't the type to make stuff like that up...
Except for Galeon, which is far better in three important aspects:
- Middle-click opens tabs immediately to the right of the current tab
- Block image from server actually tells you the name of the server you'd be blocking from... this way, you can get rid of the Doubleclick ads on Slashdot, but not completely b0rk the site by blocking ads from images.slashdot.org.
- It's lighter and faster
About the only thing I miss is configurable mouse gestures and a Bookmark menu which doesn't scroll off the end of the screen...Windows 2000, IE6 is the no-brainer.
Hmmm... I guess I don't have a brain then, because I use Mozilla on Win2k. Does IE have tabbed browsing, popup stopping and mouse gestures? Why the hell not? These are IMO must-have features for any serious web browsing (which I haven't had to do until lately at work...).