Speaking of FreeBSD, I'd love to see Gentoo's Portage ported to FreeBSD. I know about ports, but I just like how Portage works. Feels more elegant to me.
It seems the most common complaint is the time it takes Gentoo to compile anything. The flexibility this system provides is well worth the extra few minutes rather than installing *.deb or *.rpm files and entering dependency hell.
Not to mention that Portage readily installs binary packages just fine if you do a Stage 3 install.
I think it's insane to reformat and reinstall a Linux distro every year a new version comes out.
The way Gentoo is set up, you never have to do that, ever. You upgrade as you go. Gentoo 2004.1 came out, but that's just the installation CDs...I installed using 1.4 CDs months ago, and I'm up to date as one would be if they installed this weekend (I love doing "emerge -upD world" and seeing what's new).
Mods should visit Anti-Slash daily to see a running list of posts to avoid. They have a list of trick posts on their front page for their amusement.
You'd be amazed at the amount of duped +5 posts from the past that get modded up again and again, thanks to their database tool that stores +5 posts from every article. Trolls repost past +5s to get more karma for their troll accounts.
The major hurdle is that there is still no binary installation/uninstallation API so that a printer vendor can ship an Autplay CD installer and safely install utility apps and drivers.
And XFree86, not to mention KDE and GNOME, are bastions of incorrect ideas about desktop and GUI design. X itself is rife with inconsistencies and extensions that conflict with each other.
Until a seamless, integrated solution is released--Apple has proved it can be done by melding their GUI on top of UNIX--Windows will always, always be ahead, no matter what. I'm talking sane API in the vein of.NET and Cocoa, sane binary installation, the abolishment of Win98-alike "start" menus and taskbars, the works.
Are you kidding? That's the tip of the iceberg
on
What Lies Ahead For Linux
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Anyone remember that study put out that showed Linux was the most-breached OS on the Internet? The headline was magically changed to "Most Attacked" on the Internet.
Or that big headline breathlessly declaring that "Microsoft Violates Human Rights In China," because the oppressive Chinese government uses Windows. Never mind that China has its own custom Linux distribution, and Red Hat changed flags to sell there. But we never got an "OSS Violates Human Rights" article.
Or when a new user-ran executable mail attachment worm comes out, and the headline is "New Microsoft Hole" (real article).
Before I'm accused of being a Microsoft lackey, I use Gentoo and FreeBSD 5.2.1, and I think Linux is fun to play with, but yes, I do switch to Windows to get things done. I even use it to code PHP and SQL using Dreamweaver MX 2004. Just saying I use whatever gets the job done, be it Linux, BSD, or Windows.
What bugs me is that Taco says Slashdot is his hobby site, completely ignoring that it declares itself as "news" and has become the bastion for geek tech opinion on the Internet. A lot of newbies come here and form their worldview based entirely on Slashdot headlines, hence the foaming-at-the-mouth anti-"M$" and "file sharing is free advertising" zealots. To ignore the influence of this website (it takes out entire sites just by posting their links!) and continue to post misleading articles, often rife with falsehoods, typos, and duplicates, is just silly. But then again, here I am reading it.
What people will care about is, "Can this run my digital camera? Can I run the Sims on this? No? Oh. Convicted monopolist? I don't care, I don't use my computer that much anyway. I just want to play games and use my camera..."
Now, I haven't played the game, but if that means it's an eight-hour movie with a little "Okay, move from point A to point B now" thrown in.. no thanks.
It doesn't. You're pre-judging.
A lot of narration happens as you're playing. It's neat and very noir. Go up to a locked door, and suddenly it narrates, "The door was locked when I tried it." It feels like you're playing a noir flashback.
At least check it out. I thought it was a neat and different game, and as an aside, the first game I played with actual realistic physics (having just come from Invisible War).
Deus Ex, absolutely. Deus Ex was one of those games I bought expecting a standard Unreal-tech shooter of the time.
Spoilers. It even started out boring. You're just an agent. The only hint of a unique focus on backstory is the conversation with the NSF leader in the statue, who rattles on with historical taxation statistics.
But once you finish the statue mission and enter UNATCO HQ, you start meeting the characters, start getting hints of something greater. By the time you're out of New York and Paul has turned to the side of the NSF, you've tapped into these greater realities woven into the game, and eventually you're flying to Hong Kong, infiltrating VersaLife, destroying a nanotech constructor, and so forth.
The game starts out as a standard "agent" game with some interesting takes on aiming and skill systems, and ends up as a vast conspiracy game with Illuminati, Knights Templar churches, and weird alien laboratories. Not to mention Area 51.
One of those games that "feels" completely different by the time you reach the end, like it's a whole new game instead of what it was when you bought it. I really enjoy games like that.
This community bashes Microsoft UI all the time, then embraces start menus, task bars, and integrated filesystem and HTML browsers. I guess because Windows 98 did it.
All those people online are merely "sampling" all the "free advertising" going on. Your musical interests grew, and you attribute it to piracy instead of just attributing it to the fact your musical interests grew at that time. One anecdotal story doesn't justify everybody ripping people off.
Not sure what exactly I'm trying to say with this post, but these are a few of my random observations on this:
Many/most people today (especially young people), do not view file sharing of music and videos as wrong.
Doesn't mean anything. It's wrong. If this website was made up of musicians and not Linux geeks, the entire opinion of the hivemind would change.
The entertainment industry has done more in the past 50 years to promote a youthful recklessness/lawlessness and a 'fuck the man' attitude. Now that it's turning around and hurting their own profits, they're resorting to strongarm tactics to scare kids into line.
Haha...good ol' Slashdot propaganda spin. Protecting someone's copyrights by suing the downloader--EXACTLY WHAT SLASHDOTTERS SAID THEY SHOULD DO FOUR YEARS AGO--is somehow "strong arm tactics."
Remind me of that again when some company violates the copyright of the GPL. Is it "strongarm tactics" to enforce the law then?
This puts a cloud of fear over my and other's perception of the entertainment industry. Entertainment is supposed to be a light distraction from real life - it's not a requirement like food, clothing, and shelter. As such, I feel like people are being treated like cattle, and are being force-fed 'entertainment'.
This is where you veer off into bizarre territory. How in the hell are you being force-fed entertainment like cattle because the RIAA is suing some random people online who were sharing copyrighted materials? My god, the emotive propaganda and lack of logic around here is staggering.
The percieved value of music and other types of media is dropping. I personally laugh at the idea of buying a $10-$20 CD anymore - it no longer seems worth it. $1 per mp3/aac/whatever is equally laughable.
If you think a damn dollar a song is "laughable," you'll never be happy.
I'd personally be willing to pay about 10 cents a song (with no DRM).
I don't think you'll be happy unless everything is free.
I have no idea if this is even economically feasible. But that still doesn't change what I'm willing to pay.
They don't pay for any. But don't pirate it either. That's illegal and immoral. They don't owe you anything. Like you said, music is just entertainment and is not a right. Which means people around here who justify it as some sort of innate right to pirate music because it's too expensive are wrong by your own argument.
Slashdotters have yet to legally or morally justify pirating an artist's music. Notice nobody mentions the artists--it's all RIAA. The artists are forgotten in this equation, their music ripped off and not paid for by anybody. And people complain about the homogenization of music without realizing they're causing it by making it unsafe to sign riskier acts that aren't guaranteed to bring in a lot of sales in order to recoup expenses.
What a great business model. You cant sell CD's because there nothing good coming out these days, and they are drastically over priced.
$11.99 a pop at my store. Or, USE ITUNES!! 99 cents a song. Sigh.
I love when someone on Slashdot pipes off about how "nothing good is coming out these days." A bunch of old fogies complaining about today's music--sounds like my parents. Guess what, today's generation LOVES Disturbed, Britney, Maroon 5, etc. etc. But, as usual someone here assumes their little individual niche opinion on music magically represents a verifiable fact that all of society agrees on.
So to stay economically viable you sue everyone.
They are suing to stay economically viable. You are correct. People are pirating the fuck out of everything. Entire discographies are RARed up now and thrown around on eMule. I'm sorry, "sampled" on eMule.
This way you dont havet to pay the artist and keep the money for yourself.
People love to say this, but I'm not feeling sorry for the artists in their big mansions with their classic car collections and gold toilets.
Besides--ARTISTS WILLINGLY SIGN THEIR CONTRACTS. Stop acting like you're some protector of their rights. You've never spoken to one of these artists. You don't know any and have never asked one what they thought, and what their reaction is to people throwing their music around online so that nobody is paying money for them and ripping them off.
I don't mind the RIAA getting *something* for the bits that were downloaded for free, what about 0.99$ US per provably non-fair use download plus court costs for their time?
How about you just not illegally download in the first place and use that 0.99$ US to grab a legal tune off the newly updated iTunes?
Well, they see uploads and downloads coming from an IP address. They sue it, and you can challenge it in court. But, most people just settle because they really were downloading. I mean, come on, if I was accused and I wasn't downloading, I'd fight it and make a big public deal out of it and prove my case and win.
I'm sure someone will reply and somehow paint the RIAA as evil for protecting their copyrights, though, so I'll shut up for now and let the hivemind speak. But there is nothing wrong going on here. And yes, piracy is wrong.
I always hated the principle to sue a few people, 'as an example', with in mind the idea that if they are severely punished, nobody else will do it again.
It's called enforcing the law and showing people that it is being enforced in order to discourage them from doing it. It's a tactic as old as time.
It only shows one thing : the RIAA does not care about people. They could destroy one's life, they don't care if it can bring them $$$.
Huh? How does it "only show one thing", that they don't care about people? Any company suing somebody to protect their copyrights doesn't care about people?
Are you saying nobody should bother protecting their copyrights because, goshdarn it, they put people first?
Does that also mean the copyright of the GPL is invalid? After all, nobody should care if the GPL is violated, because dammit I care about people. Not following the law and protecting the fruits of one's labor.
Note one thing missing in all the discussion following this article--mention the artists. Nobody here gives a shit about the artists--it's all about RIAA, RIAA, RIAA. Nobody cares about what the artists think, nobody's asked them, nobody here knows any. Somehow, they've become the silent voice when it comes to everyone pirating the fuck out of their music, because the RIAA has been painted as as an evil scapegoat in order to distract the issue from the fact that what's going on is immoral and wrong. Artists willingly sign their contracts.
You have it completely ass-backwards. Somehow, the more people they sue, the smaller news item it becomes, and the less meaning the lawsuits have?
Maybe at Slashdot.
If they end up suing up to 10,000 people, that'll be a bit of a news item, don't you think? It'll have meaning to people thinking about illegally pirating the new Maroon 5...
Or is there a bitterness around here toward the RIAA for the fact they're shutting down the free ride?
Slashdotters have yet to legally or morally justify pirating an artist's music. It just doesn't make sense to be upset that they're going after downloaders. If you buy CDs ($11.99 a pop at my store), use iTunes (new version out as Slashdot reported today), or even listen to the radio, you don't know or care about the RIAA going after people downloading music illegally. The only reason one would be upset is if they're a downloader themselves, and if you are, you must admit what you are doing has no legal or moral basis (or you'd be a hypocrite). Even if you're "sampling," it's still not legal, and the other 99% of the users there aren't "sampling" tunes from you. It's not "free advertising" either--you don't have the right to think someone's copyright magically transfers to the p2p network to "advertise" to the the other million users on there.
Millions of users, all "advertising" "samples" to each other. All the propaganda makes my head spin. Meanwhile, GPL copyright violations are really, really bad...right? And SCO is evil. Oh, and "M$" too. The Slashdot hivemind speaks.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of FreeBSD, I'd love to see Gentoo's Portage ported to FreeBSD. I know about ports, but I just like how Portage works. Feels more elegant to me.
It seems the most common complaint is the time it takes Gentoo to compile anything. The flexibility this system provides is well worth the extra few minutes rather than installing *.deb or *.rpm files and entering dependency hell.
Not to mention that Portage readily installs binary packages just fine if you do a Stage 3 install.
I think it's insane to reformat and reinstall a Linux distro every year a new version comes out.
The way Gentoo is set up, you never have to do that, ever. You upgrade as you go. Gentoo 2004.1 came out, but that's just the installation CDs...I installed using 1.4 CDs months ago, and I'm up to date as one would be if they installed this weekend (I love doing "emerge -upD world" and seeing what's new).
Mods should visit Anti-Slash daily to see a running list of posts to avoid. They have a list of trick posts on their front page for their amusement.
You'd be amazed at the amount of duped +5 posts from the past that get modded up again and again, thanks to their database tool that stores +5 posts from every article. Trolls repost past +5s to get more karma for their troll accounts.
And yes it sucks. The storyline feels irrelevant.
Granted Deus Ex did force you into picking sides, but it was at the benefit of allowing the story to make it relevant and captivating.
The major hurdle is that there is still no binary installation/uninstallation API so that a printer vendor can ship an Autplay CD installer and safely install utility apps and drivers.
.NET and Cocoa, sane binary installation, the abolishment of Win98-alike "start" menus and taskbars, the works.
And XFree86, not to mention KDE and GNOME, are bastions of incorrect ideas about desktop and GUI design. X itself is rife with inconsistencies and extensions that conflict with each other.
Until a seamless, integrated solution is released--Apple has proved it can be done by melding their GUI on top of UNIX--Windows will always, always be ahead, no matter what. I'm talking sane API in the vein of
Anyone remember that study put out that showed Linux was the most-breached OS on the Internet? The headline was magically changed to "Most Attacked" on the Internet.
Or that big headline breathlessly declaring that "Microsoft Violates Human Rights In China," because the oppressive Chinese government uses Windows. Never mind that China has its own custom Linux distribution, and Red Hat changed flags to sell there. But we never got an "OSS Violates Human Rights" article.
Or when a new user-ran executable mail attachment worm comes out, and the headline is "New Microsoft Hole" (real article).
Before I'm accused of being a Microsoft lackey, I use Gentoo and FreeBSD 5.2.1, and I think Linux is fun to play with, but yes, I do switch to Windows to get things done. I even use it to code PHP and SQL using Dreamweaver MX 2004. Just saying I use whatever gets the job done, be it Linux, BSD, or Windows.
What bugs me is that Taco says Slashdot is his hobby site, completely ignoring that it declares itself as "news" and has become the bastion for geek tech opinion on the Internet. A lot of newbies come here and form their worldview based entirely on Slashdot headlines, hence the foaming-at-the-mouth anti-"M$" and "file sharing is free advertising" zealots. To ignore the influence of this website (it takes out entire sites just by posting their links!) and continue to post misleading articles, often rife with falsehoods, typos, and duplicates, is just silly. But then again, here I am reading it.
Welcome to the value of Mono and .NET.
What people will care about is, "Can this run my digital camera? Can I run the Sims on this? No? Oh. Convicted monopolist? I don't care, I don't use my computer that much anyway. I just want to play games and use my camera..."
The only reason someone modded you as "Overrated" is because you dared say Linux won't be the magical successor to Windows and OS X.
Also, Overrated" and "Underrated," don't get metamodded. It's a convenient loophole for when you want to silence an opinion without consequence.
"PATRIOT Act"? Damn you, Orwell and your Newspeak!
Kind of like "information sharing" and "Copyright Enforcement Militia" and "free advertising" when it comes to piracy, huh?
Now, I haven't played the game, but if that means it's an eight-hour movie with a little "Okay, move from point A to point B now" thrown in.. no thanks.
It doesn't. You're pre-judging.
A lot of narration happens as you're playing. It's neat and very noir. Go up to a locked door, and suddenly it narrates, "The door was locked when I tried it." It feels like you're playing a noir flashback.
At least check it out. I thought it was a neat and different game, and as an aside, the first game I played with actual realistic physics (having just come from Invisible War).
Deus Ex, absolutely. Deus Ex was one of those games I bought expecting a standard Unreal-tech shooter of the time.
Spoilers. It even started out boring. You're just an agent. The only hint of a unique focus on backstory is the conversation with the NSF leader in the statue, who rattles on with historical taxation statistics.
But once you finish the statue mission and enter UNATCO HQ, you start meeting the characters, start getting hints of something greater. By the time you're out of New York and Paul has turned to the side of the NSF, you've tapped into these greater realities woven into the game, and eventually you're flying to Hong Kong, infiltrating VersaLife, destroying a nanotech constructor, and so forth.
The game starts out as a standard "agent" game with some interesting takes on aiming and skill systems, and ends up as a vast conspiracy game with Illuminati, Knights Templar churches, and weird alien laboratories. Not to mention Area 51.
One of those games that "feels" completely different by the time you reach the end, like it's a whole new game instead of what it was when you bought it. I really enjoy games like that.
This community bashes Microsoft UI all the time, then embraces start menus, task bars, and integrated filesystem and HTML browsers. I guess because Windows 98 did it.
I'd work for Microsoft if I could as well.
In fact, if you asked around, I bet a lot of the developers around here would if they could. It's a living and it pays well.
What does this have to do with the fact that he recognizes good technology and so ports it to Linux for everyone to use?
The entire post was an unknowing illustration of the very mindsets mocked in the list.
And, it's got a pointless K prefix and a meaningless name. "Kst." It rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?
Welcome to the brilliance of OSS marketing.
Ah, the lame "free marketing" argument.
All those people online are merely "sampling" all the "free advertising" going on. Your musical interests grew, and you attribute it to piracy instead of just attributing it to the fact your musical interests grew at that time. One anecdotal story doesn't justify everybody ripping people off.
Congratulations, you're a music pirate. How do you justify it?
If I'm an artist, are you going to tell me you have the right to rip me off because you hate paying for things? That's called being a freeloader.
Not sure what exactly I'm trying to say with this post, but these are a few of my random observations on this:
Many/most people today (especially young people), do not view file sharing of music and videos as wrong.
Doesn't mean anything. It's wrong. If this website was made up of musicians and not Linux geeks, the entire opinion of the hivemind would change.
The entertainment industry has done more in the past 50 years to promote a youthful recklessness/lawlessness and a 'fuck the man' attitude. Now that it's turning around and hurting their own profits, they're resorting to strongarm tactics to scare kids into line.
Haha...good ol' Slashdot propaganda spin. Protecting someone's copyrights by suing the downloader--EXACTLY WHAT SLASHDOTTERS SAID THEY SHOULD DO FOUR YEARS AGO--is somehow "strong arm tactics."
Remind me of that again when some company violates the copyright of the GPL. Is it "strongarm tactics" to enforce the law then?
This puts a cloud of fear over my and other's perception of the entertainment industry. Entertainment is supposed to be a light distraction from real life - it's not a requirement like food, clothing, and shelter. As such, I feel like people are being treated like cattle, and are being force-fed 'entertainment'.
This is where you veer off into bizarre territory. How in the hell are you being force-fed entertainment like cattle because the RIAA is suing some random people online who were sharing copyrighted materials? My god, the emotive propaganda and lack of logic around here is staggering.
The percieved value of music and other types of media is dropping. I personally laugh at the idea of buying a $10-$20 CD anymore - it no longer seems worth it. $1 per mp3/aac/whatever is equally laughable.
If you think a damn dollar a song is "laughable," you'll never be happy.
I'd personally be willing to pay about 10 cents a song (with no DRM).
I don't think you'll be happy unless everything is free.
I have no idea if this is even economically feasible. But that still doesn't change what I'm willing to pay.
They don't pay for any. But don't pirate it either. That's illegal and immoral. They don't owe you anything. Like you said, music is just entertainment and is not a right. Which means people around here who justify it as some sort of innate right to pirate music because it's too expensive are wrong by your own argument.
Slashdotters have yet to legally or morally justify pirating an artist's music. Notice nobody mentions the artists--it's all RIAA. The artists are forgotten in this equation, their music ripped off and not paid for by anybody. And people complain about the homogenization of music without realizing they're causing it by making it unsafe to sign riskier acts that aren't guaranteed to bring in a lot of sales in order to recoup expenses.
But go ahead, hivemind. Pirate away.
What a great business model. You cant sell CD's because there nothing good coming out these days, and they are drastically over priced.
$11.99 a pop at my store. Or, USE ITUNES!! 99 cents a song. Sigh.
I love when someone on Slashdot pipes off about how "nothing good is coming out these days." A bunch of old fogies complaining about today's music--sounds like my parents. Guess what, today's generation LOVES Disturbed, Britney, Maroon 5, etc. etc. But, as usual someone here assumes their little individual niche opinion on music magically represents a verifiable fact that all of society agrees on.
So to stay economically viable you sue everyone.
They are suing to stay economically viable. You are correct. People are pirating the fuck out of everything. Entire discographies are RARed up now and thrown around on eMule. I'm sorry, "sampled" on eMule.
This way you dont havet to pay the artist and keep the money for yourself.
People love to say this, but I'm not feeling sorry for the artists in their big mansions with their classic car collections and gold toilets.
Besides--ARTISTS WILLINGLY SIGN THEIR CONTRACTS. Stop acting like you're some protector of their rights. You've never spoken to one of these artists. You don't know any and have never asked one what they thought, and what their reaction is to people throwing their music around online so that nobody is paying money for them and ripping them off.
I don't mind the RIAA getting *something* for the bits that were downloaded for free, what about 0.99$ US per provably non-fair use download plus court costs for their time?
How about you just not illegally download in the first place and use that 0.99$ US to grab a legal tune off the newly updated iTunes?
Well, they see uploads and downloads coming from an IP address. They sue it, and you can challenge it in court. But, most people just settle because they really were downloading. I mean, come on, if I was accused and I wasn't downloading, I'd fight it and make a big public deal out of it and prove my case and win.
I'm sure someone will reply and somehow paint the RIAA as evil for protecting their copyrights, though, so I'll shut up for now and let the hivemind speak. But there is nothing wrong going on here. And yes, piracy is wrong.
I always hated the principle to sue a few people, 'as an example', with in mind the idea that if they are severely punished, nobody else will do it again.
It's called enforcing the law and showing people that it is being enforced in order to discourage them from doing it. It's a tactic as old as time.
It only shows one thing : the RIAA does not care about people. They could destroy one's life, they don't care if it can bring them $$$.
Huh? How does it "only show one thing", that they don't care about people? Any company suing somebody to protect their copyrights doesn't care about people?
Are you saying nobody should bother protecting their copyrights because, goshdarn it, they put people first?
Does that also mean the copyright of the GPL is invalid? After all, nobody should care if the GPL is violated, because dammit I care about people. Not following the law and protecting the fruits of one's labor.
Note one thing missing in all the discussion following this article--mention the artists. Nobody here gives a shit about the artists--it's all about RIAA, RIAA, RIAA. Nobody cares about what the artists think, nobody's asked them, nobody here knows any. Somehow, they've become the silent voice when it comes to everyone pirating the fuck out of their music, because the RIAA has been painted as as an evil scapegoat in order to distract the issue from the fact that what's going on is immoral and wrong. Artists willingly sign their contracts.
But hey, GPL and P2P good, RIAA bad. Next.
You have it completely ass-backwards. Somehow, the more people they sue, the smaller news item it becomes, and the less meaning the lawsuits have?
Maybe at Slashdot.
If they end up suing up to 10,000 people, that'll be a bit of a news item, don't you think? It'll have meaning to people thinking about illegally pirating the new Maroon 5...
Or is there a bitterness around here toward the RIAA for the fact they're shutting down the free ride?
Slashdotters have yet to legally or morally justify pirating an artist's music. It just doesn't make sense to be upset that they're going after downloaders. If you buy CDs ($11.99 a pop at my store), use iTunes (new version out as Slashdot reported today), or even listen to the radio, you don't know or care about the RIAA going after people downloading music illegally. The only reason one would be upset is if they're a downloader themselves, and if you are, you must admit what you are doing has no legal or moral basis (or you'd be a hypocrite). Even if you're "sampling," it's still not legal, and the other 99% of the users there aren't "sampling" tunes from you. It's not "free advertising" either--you don't have the right to think someone's copyright magically transfers to the p2p network to "advertise" to the the other million users on there.
Millions of users, all "advertising" "samples" to each other. All the propaganda makes my head spin. Meanwhile, GPL copyright violations are really, really bad...right? And SCO is evil. Oh, and "M$" too. The Slashdot hivemind speaks.