maybe I'm a Slashbot, maybe not. I started out using a computer less than 2 yrs ago, on Win95. I use Win2k Adv. server, my gf uses Win2K pro, my webserver is FreeBSD, and my linux box is acting as a IP Masq/firewall. I personally think that if it hadnt been for MS and win95, most of us would be out of jobs, there would be no internet boom.
I use what works. Netscape sucks and IE is better and easier to design web sites for, Linux is a great tool and dev platform and I like FreeBSD for servers. And I am tooling around with XP. So what, you wanna be a bigot and shut yourself in a room with The One True OS be my guest, I'll use lots of different stuff and enjoy exploring the world of computing thank you very much -- I like to keep the blinders off.
After consecutive straight weeks of hot-air, nothing gained or accomplished, anti-MS reverse incestuous/. FUD, underpaidISPtech goes batshit....
ARRRGH. C'mon people. Ask yourself, and really think about this. Do you really think that most people are going to switch to Linux, if MS continues with it's smarttags, self-avoiding cookies, subscription models, and forced registration?
I am so sick of all the "linux will win out in the end" fervour. It's not happening anytime soon, guys. Market penetration and an established userbase are working against you. Look, I firmly believe that any MS server platform is and will continue to be utter SHITE. But, most people that use computers are not even interseted in the damn things. It's just part of their job. They go home and vegetate in front of the TV. They are office drones and are concentrating on the BBQ this weekend, not contemplating the IPO of Mandrake. Mandrake what? All they know about Linux is the FUD they will hear about from major online news feeds, and sorry to say, but for the majority of computer (L)users,/. is not their source for news that matters.
They have no idea what the GPL is. Or what a BSD license is. --Now, this next part is crucial-- if they see the words "linux" and "virus" in the same sentence, you can bet that their 6'oclock-news-conditioned brains are going to latch on to that real tight. All the discussion on these MS topics for the last while has been never-ending posts about how wrong MS is and endless justifications about how much better Linux is than windoze. That's nice, but the users DON'T KNOW THAT. Let me state this another way, with extra emphasis -- MOST PEOPLE ARE COMPLETELY IGNORANT ABOUT THEIR COMPUTER. (In fact, 90% of respondants to my fictional survey said they find computers downright uninteresting.) File that away in your brain for future reference please. Because although we are knowledgeable and they are not, they pay our salaries, they make the bulk of the purchases, they run the companies we work for.
Those bad hackers use Linux, hippies use Linux, RMS never showers, chicks dig Windows, Linux is a virus, GPL kills the U.S. economy, GPL kills market innovation, Linux is bad for the ecology, Linux-distro IPO overvalution burst the.com bubble. You name it, MS will say it, people will eat it up. If not MS, someone else would. Hell, I wouldnt be suprised if MS went to court ( on a pretense just to test the GPL in court) and argued that Linux is leveraging it's "free" ( as in beer) status and bundling everything under the fscking sun into its OS, and is therfore anti-competitive to the software industry as a whole.
So the ultimate test is this:
Until Linux as easy to install, use and has the applications that we all know and love (or hate), and is no more confusing or intimidating as Windows, AND have a defensive marketing strategy to fend off whatever crap MS or whoever else is threatened by Linux, OSS, GPL, or whatever, then maybe you have a chance of making MS eat our collective shorts. In short, until the OSS movement IS Microsoft.
P.S. Has anybody used XP yet? It looks like an OS for toddlers. Big, gawdy Fisher-Price/Tonka Truck icons and buttons. Very non-intimidating, and I'm using the professional beta. They really dumbed the OS down. I wonder what the final "server" release will be like? *shudder*
Hah, your response is typical slashbot behaviour. I never said the company was right. The issue is not if Rogers is right. Sounds to me like mrs pirsnickety got a little miffed because she couldnt get online a few times. Par for the course, no technology is 100%. That's why Roggers never advertises their DL rates.
I simply said the judge is making frivilous lawsuit. Only judges and lawyers have the luxury of telling collection agencies to piss off.
I said @home tech support are morons and the judge is a moron, and so are the assholes that fired our staff. I never got fucked by Rogers, the judge did. The cable service I have recieved ( Shaw - Vancouver) for the last two years is without reproach. I hope that @home trounces her in court because her lawsuit is frivilous. I hope my company goes down the tubes, and I will apply at Rogers/Shaw so I too, can sit on my soft ass and make stupid money without a doing a single fuckin thing, and saying. "linux, what's that? No I cannot tell you your IP address".>
I 'm not getting paid shit because I have no talent, I'm getting paid shit because know-nothing customers whose business models rely on a residential email account need me to help them doubleclick the pretty pictures and they don't want to pay for the service. Everyone here is ranting about the shit service they get from Rogers. Fine, do what the judge did, shut up and put all your "illegal" servers back on a dial-up account.
She also says her kids have agreed to testify in court about the deprivation of missing television -- particularly this year's Survivor show -- and its effect on their lives.
Puuull-eeze. Pray tell, what effect would that be? YOU cancelled your television service. The issue was the cable internet service, not TV.
As for breech of contract etc, waiting for hours is standard practice for @home tech support, and they can't wait to get your ass off the phone. I would not classify it as breach of contract, i would call it their standard service policy, along with every other ISP's (see below). Waiting is part and parcel of the game lady. If you want a tech at your beckon call, 24/7, be prepared to pony up the dosh to pay for it, cuz your paltry $40/month don't cut it.
And now for my OT tantrum about @home:
Those know-nothings at Shaw/Rogers make $17.00/hr to basically leave you on hold, and tell you to reboot your computer, or run winipcfg. GAWD! They have none of the shit-work of a normal ISP and yet my company (may they rot in hell) that pays me $9.50/hr just layed off our ENTIRE office. Phew, I *really* needed to get that off my chest.
Oooh, so MS eases off on the OS and office apps market, yay. Why would I want to rejoice? If MS has a stranglehold on a protocol (when pigs fly) and the authentication carried by it, then you and me will be paying alot more that a yearly OS subsription, my friend. How do you feel about your network packets being licensed?
Flash forward to 2002: Semi tech-literate IT worker on his GNU workstation powered by GNU OS,
has his.NET (can you say P2P rebranded?) service yanked from beneath him because he failed to renew his MSAuthTCP/IP license.
Ah well, MS just makes buzzword compliant, corporate intranet technologies anyways. This'll never fly the way they hype it, just think Active Directory.
.Net is tasty and palatable because it has the MS marketing machine behind it.
Pointy-heads and suits like to identify with products, and campaigns..NET is just the thing. They will be much happier purchasing a complete solution is a snazzy, glossy box, with a snazzy, glossy label like ".NET IIAS Server 2002", than cobbling together gnusnorf 0.13beta and gnufroop-2.73 into a custom built app, that performs as well on hardware they already own.
People like to shop, and companies like to drop down bucks on new hardware and shiny new CD's. Tarballs aren't sexy.
As for blind-siding Open Source, pfft. That was just a headline-grabber, nothing more. Online news has discovered that to increase revenues, they need to get posted on/. Just mention the words Microsift and Linux in the same sentence.
C'mon, a full third of this clown's article was devoted to touting his awesome prophetic powers from back in the day.
Ya know, all the responses save but for a few had anything interesting to say. The rest has been nothing but self-satisfying patting on the back for all the slashbots. Wake Up People.
Bill gates couldnt give a shit about Linux or Open Source. Everyone here thinks that because Microsoft has begun to attack the GPL, and called Linux a *competitor* that somehow, Microsoft is on the run and spreading FUD.
Heh, yeah they're spreading FUD all right. But not like you think they are. Microsoft needs to be able to call foul right now, ONLY because of the anti-trust hearings and the pending verdict. Aside from that, linux and the GPL dont even register on Microsoft's radar. Everytime I see an article like this on/. , the bots come out and start talking to themselves in the mirror, almost as if they repeat the mantra enough, Bill will actually listen and care. Guess what? He doesn't. Not a bit. Linux and the GPL and just a tool to keep the supreme court off his ass. The GPL can't make money. Neither can Linux (yes, I read the article about RH. They sell services, not an OS).
Microsoft (licensing) and the GPL serve completely different purposes, to solve diffent problems, One is to amke money, nothing else. The other is for making good software free.You are comparing apples and oranges.
Middle managers and bean-counters read CNET, not slashdot. They eat up the FUD. It's all about marketing. And you think Bill is running scared? PFFT. You are wasting your breath. Can we talk about stuff that matters, and stop feeding this incestuous loop? Microsoft will never convert OK?
You are preaching to the choir here, so can we just *Mooooo*ve along already? Sheesh.
Inflammatory yes, but if you mod it down because you disagree, then you just ruined the Public in public forum. If you disagree, respond, don't react.
There are too many competing vendors. And it is being developed for a wireless infrastructure that is being "rolled out". Vapourware built on vapour-hardware.
Who do you think the CEO's and the Suits identify with? A ruthless, successful capatalist (Gates) or a bunch of smelly, girlfriendless communist nerds (open source).
Microsoft continuesto be succesful because they speak the language and also appeal to the venture capitalists and business managers. I'm not saying it's right, just making an observation that birds of a feather.... well, you know.
I just cant help but wade into this litle flamewar:)
I actually aspire to become a sysadmin.
I dont code. I dont care for it much. But I love tinkering and understanding how things work. I'm sure it is the same thing that drives programmers. It just gets applied in a different fashion.
The masons build the church and the high priests perform their rituals within its walls. In the same way, I feel that he sysadmins ( or janitors as someone referred to them as) maintain the systems that the programmers use to develop and test their *creations*. Either way, I think there is a Zen to both jobs. The need to understand and make things do interesting stuff.
When the shit starts to fly here at work, users start to threaten that they will move to cable.
Cable here in Vancouver is $40/month. Your average unlimited dial-up is $20-25/month plus the cost of the phone line. Most people just see that cable is roughly 2x the cost of dial-up and say to themselves that cable is too much and they dont need that kind of access. But they sure do sing a different song when they cannot get their mail.
Cable is easy to sign -up, get installed and to use reliably. Anyone in a city of 500,000 and up shoul be able to get cable of some sort. Dial-up is fucken useless.
I have both cable and DSL. They are roughly the same in cost, but DSL is unreliable ( I hear all the stories from DSL users -- Luckily I have never had a problem with mine). Cable is much faster, while DSL is throttled down according to how much you pay. DSL allows me to run a legit server, but cable lets me DL *.iso's like a monkey bastard.
This spring we were swallowed up along with another company and now work for a large ISP that is continuing it's aquisition spree. Mainly because the dial-up market is saturated, and they can pick off the little ISPs for a song. The boom is over and the ISP market is settling down.
I can see the authors point, most of the world is not like Canada, but where there are TV's so can there be a more useful net expereinece that more closely resembles the internet we envisioned.
I make shit money
The sales taxes here are killing me
Movies are too expensive
CD's are too expensive
The music sucks
The record industry has gradually been basing more of their business model on *the big hit*. One hit wonders that would previously have sold many albums, are now seen for what they are and the public is savvy. They know the album is shit, the just want the disposable song of the week. Napster happened along at just the time that this disposable music/video travesty is at it's height.
Sales are down because the whole economy is in a recession, and gas prices have skyrocketed. Dont fucken tell me that Napster is to blame when I have no disposable income. Fuck CD's, I need to pay the rent.
Well, i caught this article at the end of the day, but maybe someone will see it.
With all the other dirty tricks played by MS, is it not possible that they can simply outright steal GPL'd code, and publish under their own version of an "innovated" Open Source license?.
Who would be able to stop them from swiping all that yummy stable FREE code? If the laywers get involved, do you think the GPL willstand up in court agains the likes of MS?
I think that the day of reckonong is coming for the GPL, and it will be the MS Behemoth that will challenge it.
Looks like the industry vultures are out and picking bones for scraps, now that Napster is weakened (dead?).
I was on Napster yesterday for the first time since the filters were put in place. Only about 4000 users were online, and I could only search by letters of the alphabet.
Somebody mod the above post up! Can we drop the America-centric viewpoint long enough to recognise the fact that MS has a *global* monopoly on the OS market for much of the world?
All those local dollars/yen/pounds/euro are going straight into the American coffers. I'll be the first to say Linux has NO place on the desktop in the foreseeable future ( not to say it is not worthwile, just that most people dont care how the damn thing works, they expect it to work like TV), but what the hell are countries that arent on good US relations doing with their systems?
sorry, I've tested it out on lots of monitors and it always comes up black text on grey bg. maybe not the best combo, but prettier than yours;P
(that was not a flame, it was in jest)
The other day a poster mentioned that he/she and his/her friends tried to go a weekend without mentioning anything they had heard in mass media.
No whazzup comments or humming tunes used to sell cars and the like.
I have to wonder if we are infringing copyright everytime we whistle *The Simpsons* on the john?
I thought the whole point of advertising was to build brand-awareness, and is that not what the majority of music is these days? Building brand loyalty and awareness? I hate TV, therefore (for me) Napster and friends have become the media advertising machines that replaced TV. I think the media conglomerates are alienating an entire generation of potential revenue.
Pick what you want when you want it.
Listen when you want.
Add, remove at your leisure.
One-off pressings, no large distibution labels.
You don't download and store it, just listen and enjoy it.
All Vinyl.
Free.(open source by definition?)
No RIAA.
follow the link. It's what music should be about. Now if only I could stream it to cars and cellphones....
Simple.
Train them to use the tools. Computers are tools. They are *not* simple. You don't hand a child a hammer and nails, and call him/her a carpenter, despite their simplicity of use.
Same goes for computers. If you have more than 2 boxes in your office and they require internet access, you should shellout the fuckin dosh to pay someone (me) to think about computers FOR YOU -- full-time Mon-Fri. (doubly so if you are using bloody winproxy or some other damn thing that you forgot to tell your secretary about when she calls us).
here it is, 4:50pm PST, and i'm on my lunch, just seeing this for the first time today. Guess I've been too busy helping clueless people to spot the difference between a webpage and their desktop ( yes you can use your computer without being connected to the 'net sir) and responding to support mail. what I know is worth 8.50/hr CDN to these people. Fucking stockbrokers need their quotes and I get the jam.
As much as I wish domain names were first come, first serve, that just is not the way it is. We live in a global market, and there are multinational corps larger than our moralistic dronings about *what is right*. You see it in DeCSS, RIAA vs. Napster, MPAA vs. Gnutella. (Note: Most of these organisations are from the "land of the free")
We may live in democracies, but that is only true for a few days every four years.(barely--witness the American Presidential "elections")
The rest of the time capitalism wins the day, and money greases the wheels of the gears that make it possible to hire (some) of us at inflated salaries.
The Internet no longer belongs to the long-haired phone-phreakers of the days of yore. That is why they *privatized* Internic, because the gov't could no longer subsidize the beast.
We know that webpages and email aren't the internet and that it so much more, which is why we get in a snit about shit pulled by the corporations, but explain that to the majority of users. Napster is about as close as most of them will ever come to realizing the potential of the Internet, and they are more concerned about getting free music. Welcome to the Hive.
(grumble) I must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed today..
Excuse me if this comes off as a troll, -- I think I just did:-( , but why is is that everytime *BSD gets mentioned on Slashdot, there immediately ensues a flamewar between the various camps?
I'll acknowledge the different licensing models, but as I'm not a developer, my main concern is having access to a free (beer) *nix OS that can run on pc hardware. I've used FreeBSD, Redhat, and Debian. Correct me if I'm I'm wrong, but has anybody else noticed they are all *nix based, and therefore *similar*?
Why the hell do people have this urge to seperate themselves into distict camps and fight over who is more 1337? It's a frickin computer, people! Not a religious war. I use windows for some things, linux for others, *BSD for another, and if I have the time, inclination, or disk space, some other *fringe* OS that grabs my fancy. I like to geek out with different OSes. If someone can provide me a flame-free explanation of why it is that geeks have to whip out their dicks over what OS they use, I'd love to hear it.
This post coming to you from MSIE on Win2k, routed through RH Linux, my other box is FreeBSD, and if I had another box, it would probably run on hamsters.
Cheers
Slashdot Mirror
ARRRGH. C'mon people. Ask yourself, and really think about this. Do you really think that most people are going to switch to Linux, if MS continues with it's smarttags, self-avoiding cookies, subscription models, and forced registration?
I am so sick of all the "linux will win out in the end" fervour. It's not happening anytime soon, guys. Market penetration and an established userbase are working against you. Look, I firmly believe that any MS server platform is and will continue to be utter SHITE. But, most people that use computers are not even interseted in the damn things. It's just part of their job. They go home and vegetate in front of the TV. They are office drones and are concentrating on the BBQ this weekend, not contemplating the IPO of Mandrake. Mandrake what? All they know about Linux is the FUD they will hear about from major online news feeds, and sorry to say, but for the majority of computer (L)users, /. is not their source for news that matters.
They have no idea what the GPL is. Or what a BSD license is. --Now, this next part is crucial-- if they see the words "linux" and "virus" in the same sentence, you can bet that their 6'oclock-news-conditioned brains are going to latch on to that real tight. All the discussion on these MS topics for the last while has been never-ending posts about how wrong MS is and endless justifications about how much better Linux is than windoze. That's nice, but the users DON'T KNOW THAT. Let me state this another way, with extra emphasis -- MOST PEOPLE ARE COMPLETELY IGNORANT ABOUT THEIR COMPUTER. (In fact, 90% of respondants to my fictional survey said they find computers downright uninteresting.) File that away in your brain for future reference please. Because although we are knowledgeable and they are not, they pay our salaries, they make the bulk of the purchases, they run the companies we work for.
Those bad hackers use Linux, hippies use Linux, RMS never showers, chicks dig Windows, Linux is a virus, GPL kills the U.S. economy, GPL kills market innovation, Linux is bad for the ecology, Linux-distro IPO overvalution burst the .com bubble. You name it, MS will say it, people will eat it up. If not MS, someone else would. Hell, I wouldnt be suprised if MS went to court ( on a pretense just to test the GPL in court) and argued that Linux is leveraging it's "free" ( as in beer) status and bundling everything under the fscking sun into its OS, and is therfore anti-competitive to the software industry as a whole.
So the ultimate test is this:
Until Linux as easy to install, use and has the applications that we all know and love (or hate), and is no more confusing or intimidating as Windows, AND have a defensive marketing strategy to fend off whatever crap MS or whoever else is threatened by Linux, OSS, GPL, or whatever, then maybe you have a chance of making MS eat our collective shorts. In short, until the OSS movement IS Microsoft.
P.S. Has anybody used XP yet? It looks like an OS for toddlers. Big, gawdy Fisher-Price/Tonka Truck icons and buttons. Very non-intimidating, and I'm using the professional beta. They really dumbed the OS down. I wonder what the final "server" release will be like? *shudder*
I said @home tech support are morons and the judge is a moron, and so are the assholes that fired our staff. I never got fucked by Rogers, the judge did. The cable service I have recieved ( Shaw - Vancouver) for the last two years is without reproach. I hope that @home trounces her in court because her lawsuit is frivilous. I hope my company goes down the tubes, and I will apply at Rogers/Shaw so I too, can sit on my soft ass and make stupid money without a doing a single fuckin thing, and saying. "linux, what's that? No I cannot tell you your IP address".>
I 'm not getting paid shit because I have no talent, I'm getting paid shit because know-nothing customers whose business models rely on a residential email account need me to help them doubleclick the pretty pictures and they don't want to pay for the service. Everyone here is ranting about the shit service they get from Rogers. Fine, do what the judge did, shut up and put all your "illegal" servers back on a dial-up account.
Puuull-eeze. Pray tell, what effect would that be? YOU cancelled your television service. The issue was the cable internet service, not TV.
As for breech of contract etc, waiting for hours is standard practice for @home tech support, and they can't wait to get your ass off the phone. I would not classify it as breach of contract, i would call it their standard service policy, along with every other ISP's (see below). Waiting is part and parcel of the game lady. If you want a tech at your beckon call, 24/7, be prepared to pony up the dosh to pay for it, cuz your paltry $40/month don't cut it.
And now for my OT tantrum about @home:
Those know-nothings at Shaw/Rogers make $17.00/hr to basically leave you on hold, and tell you to reboot your computer, or run winipcfg. GAWD! They have none of the shit-work of a normal ISP and yet my company (may they rot in hell) that pays me $9.50/hr just layed off our ENTIRE office.
Phew, I *really* needed to get that off my chest.
Flash forward to 2002: Semi tech-literate IT worker on his GNU workstation powered by GNU OS, has his .NET (can you say P2P rebranded?) service yanked from beneath him because he failed to renew his MSAuthTCP/IP license.
Ah well, MS just makes buzzword compliant, corporate intranet technologies anyways. This'll never fly the way they hype it, just think Active Directory.
People like to shop, and companies like to drop down bucks on new hardware and shiny new CD's. Tarballs aren't sexy.
As for blind-siding Open Source, pfft. That was just a headline-grabber, nothing more. Online news has discovered that to increase revenues, they need to get posted on /. Just mention the words Microsift and Linux in the same sentence.
C'mon, a full third of this clown's article was devoted to touting his awesome prophetic powers from back in the day.
Wake Up People.
Bill gates couldnt give a shit about Linux or Open Source. Everyone here thinks that because Microsoft has begun to attack the GPL, and called Linux a *competitor* that somehow, Microsoft is on the run and spreading FUD. /. , the bots come out and start talking to themselves in the mirror, almost as if they repeat the mantra enough, Bill will actually listen and care. Guess what? He doesn't. Not a bit. Linux and the GPL and just a tool to keep the supreme court off his ass. The GPL can't make money. Neither can Linux (yes, I read the article about RH. They sell services, not an OS).
Microsoft (licensing) and the GPL serve completely different purposes, to solve diffent problems, One is to amke money, nothing else. The other is for making good software free.You are comparing apples and oranges.
Heh, yeah they're spreading FUD all right. But not like you think they are. Microsoft needs to be able to call foul right now, ONLY because of the anti-trust hearings and the pending verdict. Aside from that, linux and the GPL dont even register on Microsoft's radar. Everytime I see an article like this on
Middle managers and bean-counters read CNET, not slashdot. They eat up the FUD. It's all about marketing. And you think Bill is running scared? PFFT. You are wasting your breath. Can we talk about stuff that matters, and stop feeding this incestuous loop? Microsoft will never convert OK? You are preaching to the choir here, so can we just *Mooooo*ve along already? Sheesh.
Inflammatory yes, but if you mod it down because you disagree, then you just ruined the Public in public forum. If you disagree, respond, don't react.
That gave me the creeps ya know...
Microsoft continuesto be succesful because they speak the language and also appeal to the venture capitalists and business managers. I'm not saying it's right, just making an observation that birds of a feather.... well, you know.
I actually aspire to become a sysadmin.
I dont code. I dont care for it much. But I love tinkering and understanding how things work. I'm sure it is the same thing that drives programmers. It just gets applied in a different fashion.
The masons build the church and the high priests perform their rituals within its walls. In the same way, I feel that he sysadmins ( or janitors as someone referred to them as) maintain the systems that the programmers use to develop and test their *creations*. Either way, I think there is a Zen to both jobs. The need to understand and make things do interesting stuff.
Cable here in Vancouver is $40/month. Your average unlimited dial-up is $20-25/month plus the cost of the phone line. Most people just see that cable is roughly 2x the cost of dial-up and say to themselves that cable is too much and they dont need that kind of access.
But they sure do sing a different song when they cannot get their mail.
Cable is easy to sign -up, get installed and to use reliably. Anyone in a city of 500,000 and up shoul be able to get cable of some sort. Dial-up is fucken useless.
I have both cable and DSL. They are roughly the same in cost, but DSL is unreliable ( I hear all the stories from DSL users -- Luckily I have never had a problem with mine). Cable is much faster, while DSL is throttled down according to how much you pay. DSL allows me to run a legit server, but cable lets me DL *.iso's like a monkey bastard.
This spring we were swallowed up along with another company and now work for a large ISP that is continuing it's aquisition spree. Mainly because the dial-up market is saturated, and they can pick off the little ISPs for a song. The boom is over and the ISP market is settling down.
I can see the authors point, most of the world is not like Canada, but where there are TV's so can there be a more useful net expereinece that more closely resembles the internet we envisioned.
I make shit money
The sales taxes here are killing me
Movies are too expensive
CD's are too expensive
The music sucks
The record industry has gradually been basing more of their business model on *the big hit*. One hit wonders that would previously have sold many albums, are now seen for what they are and the public is savvy. They know the album is shit, the just want the disposable song of the week. Napster happened along at just the time that this disposable music/video travesty is at it's height.
Sales are down because the whole economy is in a recession, and gas prices have skyrocketed. Dont fucken tell me that Napster is to blame when I have no disposable income. Fuck CD's, I need to pay the rent.
With all the other dirty tricks played by MS, is it not possible that they can simply outright steal GPL'd code, and publish under their own version of an "innovated" Open Source license?.
Who would be able to stop them from swiping all that yummy stable FREE code? If the laywers get involved, do you think the GPL willstand up in court agains the likes of MS? I think that the day of reckonong is coming for the GPL, and it will be the MS Behemoth that will challenge it.
I was on Napster yesterday for the first time since the filters were put in place. Only about 4000 users were online, and I could only search by letters of the alphabet.
Can we drop the America-centric viewpoint long enough to recognise the fact that MS has a *global* monopoly on the OS market for much of the world?
All those local dollars/yen/pounds/euro are going straight into the American coffers. I'll be the first to say Linux has NO place on the desktop in the foreseeable future ( not to say it is not worthwile, just that most people dont care how the damn thing works, they expect it to work like TV), but what the hell are countries that arent on good US relations doing with their systems?
sorry, I've tested it out on lots of monitors and it always comes up black text on grey bg. maybe not the best combo, but prettier than yours
No whazzup comments or humming tunes used to sell cars and the like.
I have to wonder if we are infringing copyright everytime we whistle *The Simpsons* on the john?
I thought the whole point of advertising was to build brand-awareness, and is that not what the majority of music is these days? Building brand loyalty and awareness? I hate TV, therefore (for me) Napster and friends have become the media advertising machines that replaced TV. I think the media conglomerates are alienating an entire generation of potential revenue.
Listen when you want.
Add, remove at your leisure.
One-off pressings, no large distibution labels.
You don't download and store it, just listen and enjoy it.
All Vinyl.
Free.(open source by definition?)
No RIAA.
follow the link. It's what music should be about. Now if only I could stream it to cars and cellphones....
Train them to use the tools.
Computers are tools. They are *not* simple. You don't hand a child a hammer and nails, and call him/her a carpenter, despite their simplicity of use.
Same goes for computers. If you have more than 2 boxes in your office and they require internet access, you should shellout the fuckin dosh to pay someone (me) to think about computers FOR YOU -- full-time Mon-Fri. (doubly so if you are using bloody winproxy or some other damn thing that you forgot to tell your secretary about when she calls us).
bitter bitter bitter
Guess I've been too busy helping clueless people to spot the difference between a webpage and their desktop ( yes you can use your computer without being connected to the 'net sir) and responding to support mail.
what I know is worth 8.50/hr CDN to these people. Fucking stockbrokers need their quotes and I get the jam.
We may live in democracies, but that is only true for a few days every four years.(barely--witness the American Presidential "elections")
The rest of the time capitalism wins the day, and money greases the wheels of the gears that make it possible to hire (some) of us at inflated salaries.
The Internet no longer belongs to the long-haired phone-phreakers of the days of yore. That is why they *privatized* Internic, because the gov't could no longer subsidize the beast.
We know that webpages and email aren't the internet and that it so much more, which is why we get in a snit about shit pulled by the corporations, but explain that to the majority of users. Napster is about as close as most of them will ever come to realizing the potential of the Internet, and they are more concerned about getting free music. Welcome to the Hive.
(grumble) I must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed today..
I'll acknowledge the different licensing models, but as I'm not a developer, my main concern is having access to a free (beer) *nix OS that can run on pc hardware. I've used FreeBSD, Redhat, and Debian. Correct me if I'm I'm wrong, but has anybody else noticed they are all *nix based, and therefore *similar*? Why the hell do people have this urge to seperate themselves into distict camps and fight over who is more 1337? It's a frickin computer, people! Not a religious war.
I use windows for some things, linux for others, *BSD for another, and if I have the time, inclination, or disk space, some other *fringe* OS that grabs my fancy.
I like to geek out with different OSes. If someone can provide me a flame-free explanation of why it is that geeks have to whip out their dicks over what OS they use, I'd love to hear it.
This post coming to you from MSIE on Win2k, routed through RH Linux, my other box is FreeBSD, and if I had another box, it would probably run on hamsters. Cheers