You claim iOS "is where the money is", and then complain that "Apple won't give us a share of their money".
And your claim to entitlement of that money? A run of the mill ebook app.
It sounds more like you want to play the mafia boss, extorting money from established businesses by selling mostly valueless crap and demanding a share of the profits.
Sure, I know you (and other app whiners) are the underdog, but it doesn't make your intentions more noble, unless "I want to be the mafia boss and I can't! Not fair!!!!" is a worthy of sympathy.
Google is also keeping all of the money for itself, and is not passing any of it on to the users who supplied the data. If your smartphone paid you cash for every day you allow them to track your data, people would not be objecting so loudly.
Duh. You get this "free" and "open" (whatever it means these days) Android platform. Which is why people seem to complain less about Google doing this than Apple with iPhone/iOS, because those things are "expensive".
If your claim is only that "you lose nothing extra" since Apple and Facebook already sells your info, then you *may* have a point.
But all is lost when you say Google handles it with a "good track record". What makes you think that? Sure, with Facebook you're literally giving away your private information, but Google works very hard to build a profile of you, without you noticing, and has an established business in selling these information to advertisers.
I'm not saying Apple and Facebook are saints when it comes to these matters, but you're truly tending towards fanboy-dom when you think that Google, which almost solely relies on such things to survive, is any better than the other two.
I mean, I hope you're not those who reads this news and think "meh, what's the big deal, Apple does it too" -- while being outraged at the evil Apple empire a week ago when the news about iPhone location tracking surfaced.
#1. For a technically sane, and security aware user, most antivirus software only exists to make the system hog slow.
#2. Antivirus software is used as a placebo to make users feel they are safer. If anything, I suspect it would make users feel less responsible for their own actions because some AV software is supposedly protecting them.
#3. How is a Linux user supposed to run AV? With WINE? I know there is clamav, but it's not intended for those "active monitoring/scanning" things you have on Windows. Maybe the "shell script" placebo* will work equally well at "educating users" if that's what you want. No point in making a system slow.
[Ouch. I've already moderated, but couldn't replying...]
I don't know what this DKoS is, but "Free Speech" does not necessarily mean an obligation for anybody to publish such speech. If anyone wants to exercise the right to freedom of speech, (s)he can set up a blog which nobody reads. Yes, that misses the point of making any speech, but nobody has a right to force other people to hear them out, nor the right to force publishers to publish their opinions.
You probably remember the days where the slashdot moderation system was being called "censorship" because not everybody gets +5 Insightful.
The "mob mentality" and xenophobia, I believe, is another matter (and I don't like it at all). It's part human nature, and part culture, which seemingly isn't relevant to how much a group believes in "free speech".
The academic environment in USA, despite all the whining here, is like heaven when compared to that in China. All sorts of ridiculous things happen in academia in China, you just couldn't imagine.
Don't know about India, but can't imagine it can be better than the US.
Outsourcing is a threat because senior managers are under financial pressure and think engineers are a fungible commodity. They don't learn the truth until they wreck or nearly wreck their company going down that road.
That is a real concern, if working for idiots is the only option. Then the whole IT industry would have already collapsed.
From what I see though, competent people still have plenty of choices of sensible employers.
I hate to sound arrogant, but really wanted to get this off my mind. Sorry if I offended you or anybody.
In a free market, if consumers are willing to pay the costs + premium, there should be a market for it.
I'm perfectly willing to pay prices slightly above the DVD prices for movies I want to watch. I don't get them.
Do you know how outrageous it is to not be able to buy music online because of idiot "rights holders" that are still living in the previous century? I actually had to ask a friend to get a iTunes gift card from the US because there's no way to buy music online here in Hong Kong.
Sorry, I do live in my parents' basement I guess, but why are they giving up a potentially huge profitable market, and making it hell for everybody who doesn't subscribe to their business model that's half a century old?
That *you* like to wait for the holy copyright holders to grant you your daily entertainment does not mean the system is sane.
I believe in a more SchrÃdinger's Cat model of the law -- before it is decided, the law is half dead and half alive...:)
But seriously, even if the law existed before the decision, fewer similar cases will be filed against "infringers", which will make their lives easier.
Not everybody has the will or the means to fight this in court, even if they are actually "right".
Saying you don't choose to be gay is like saying you don't choose to be an engineer. I happen to be an engineer, but I don't believe that I had to be one, or that I could not put down my computer and pick a paintbrush or a hammer tomorrow if I wanted to.
Sure. A gay person can of course have sex with a woman. It's just that he'll probably feel awful about it, particularly if he's forced to have sex with women instead of men for the rest of his life.
And yes, I know how it feels to "choose" something that you lack a "spark". I could have chosen to become a lawyer instead of an engineer, after six years of law school (seemingly endlessly deferred graduation, almost dropped out), yes, I could still have chosen a career path that I will probably hate.
By why would you want somebody to try being somebody who they are not, instead of accepting who they are?
Yeah, maybe we should stop the waste, and employ human operators to send telegraphs like they did in the good old days, scribes to write documents by hand....
A book isn't the same as a piece of source code. How about if you sneak into someone's house, find a patent application, memorize it, and then file the patent yourself?
Given the number of dead obvious patents filed and accepted, and upheld... I thought this was legit.
Nobody said the OSS people are "nice". For example, Torvalds is known to be a git sometimes, and RMS is a known crazy fanatic. etc. etc. etc.
None of them are trying to get on any "most ethical person list", nor claiming to be saviors of the world by dumping billions onto "charitable causes".
And I, for one, avoids reiserfs like the plague, as I have for years ever since ext3 came out (which was years before Hans was even a murder suspect).
Slashdot Mirror
You claim iOS "is where the money is", and then complain that "Apple won't give us a share of their money".
And your claim to entitlement of that money? A run of the mill ebook app.
It sounds more like you want to play the mafia boss, extorting money from established businesses by selling mostly valueless crap and demanding a share of the profits.
Sure, I know you (and other app whiners) are the underdog, but it doesn't make your intentions more noble, unless "I want to be the mafia boss and I can't! Not fair!!!!" is a worthy of sympathy.
Microsoft was unable to completely kill off alternative browsers because it's an open platform.
I would have never imagined a seasoned slashdotter to utter this phrase.
What does "open" mean these days? Anything that's not closed, and closed === Apple?
...except I am always free to shop at a Walmart competitor.
That option does not exist in Apple's brave new world.
Walmart only makes it harder for competitors to survive. It doesn't BAN them outright.
WTF? There are no competitors to the iPad? What about all the self-proclaimed "iPad killers"? And Apple bans their competitors?
Which idiot modded you up?
Google is also keeping all of the money for itself, and is not passing any of it on to the users who supplied the data. If your smartphone paid you cash for every day you allow them to track your data, people would not be objecting so loudly.
Duh. You get this "free" and "open" (whatever it means these days) Android platform. Which is why people seem to complain less about Google doing this than Apple with iPhone/iOS, because those things are "expensive".
If your claim is only that "you lose nothing extra" since Apple and Facebook already sells your info, then you *may* have a point.
But all is lost when you say Google handles it with a "good track record". What makes you think that? Sure, with Facebook you're literally giving away your private information, but Google works very hard to build a profile of you, without you noticing, and has an established business in selling these information to advertisers.
I'm not saying Apple and Facebook are saints when it comes to these matters, but you're truly tending towards fanboy-dom when you think that Google, which almost solely relies on such things to survive, is any better than the other two.
I mean, I hope you're not those who reads this news and think "meh, what's the big deal, Apple does it too" -- while being outraged at the evil Apple empire a week ago when the news about iPhone location tracking surfaced.
You must work in IT support.
My personal experience is:
#1. For a technically sane, and security aware user, most antivirus software only exists to make the system hog slow.
#2. Antivirus software is used as a placebo to make users feel they are safer. If anything, I suspect it would make users feel less responsible for their own actions because some AV software is supposedly protecting them.
#3. How is a Linux user supposed to run AV? With WINE? I know there is clamav, but it's not intended for those "active monitoring/scanning" things you have on Windows. Maybe the "shell script" placebo* will work equally well at "educating users" if that's what you want. No point in making a system slow.
* http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2119134&cid=35997968
[Ouch. I've already moderated, but couldn't replying...]
I don't know what this DKoS is, but "Free Speech" does not necessarily mean an obligation for anybody to publish such speech. If anyone wants to exercise the right to freedom of speech, (s)he can set up a blog which nobody reads. Yes, that misses the point of making any speech, but nobody has a right to force other people to hear them out, nor the right to force publishers to publish their opinions.
You probably remember the days where the slashdot moderation system was being called "censorship" because not everybody gets +5 Insightful.
The "mob mentality" and xenophobia, I believe, is another matter (and I don't like it at all). It's part human nature, and part culture, which seemingly isn't relevant to how much a group believes in "free speech".
And why would they want to return home?
The academic environment in USA, despite all the whining here, is like heaven when compared to that in China. All sorts of ridiculous things happen in academia in China, you just couldn't imagine.
Don't know about India, but can't imagine it can be better than the US.
Outsourcing is a threat because senior managers are under financial pressure and think engineers are a fungible commodity. They don't learn the truth until they wreck or nearly wreck their company going down that road.
That is a real concern, if working for idiots is the only option. Then the whole IT industry would have already collapsed.
From what I see though, competent people still have plenty of choices of sensible employers.
I hate to sound arrogant, but really wanted to get this off my mind. Sorry if I offended you or anybody.
Most of those uber-geniuses were not yet even born in 1970 :)
Proteins and Fat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_diet
One of them 4.7
In a free market, if consumers are willing to pay the costs + premium, there should be a market for it.
I'm perfectly willing to pay prices slightly above the DVD prices for movies I want to watch. I don't get them.
Do you know how outrageous it is to not be able to buy music online because of idiot "rights holders" that are still living in the previous century? I actually had to ask a friend to get a iTunes gift card from the US because there's no way to buy music online here in Hong Kong.
Sorry, I do live in my parents' basement I guess, but why are they giving up a potentially huge profitable market, and making it hell for everybody who doesn't subscribe to their business model that's half a century old?
That *you* like to wait for the holy copyright holders to grant you your daily entertainment does not mean the system is sane.
Sometimes you don't want to go out to buy a single DVD in the middle of the night when you want to watch a show impromptu.
There is more to user satisfaction than quantified specs and review ratings.
That you value specs and reviews more than other subtle things, eg. "looks", "user experience", or even "trendiness", does not make it a cult.
This one is new for me. I've never heard of such blanket bans, though I know many techie friends who have dealings in China.
I personally have used ssh quite a few times in China, and I am not aware that "legitimate" uses of it are banned or disapproved.
So, any source for your claims?
I can carry around a 15kg desktop+monitor if I wanted to. Why would one settle for anything less than that?
they have a moral obligation to intervene
The White Man's burden?
should that be a reason for a country to sit back and do nothing?
Yes. Particularly when your country has shown time and again that it messes things up for the worse.
Ah. Jurisprudence.......
I believe in a more SchrÃdinger's Cat model of the law -- before it is decided, the law is half dead and half alive... :)
But seriously, even if the law existed before the decision, fewer similar cases will be filed against "infringers", which will make their lives easier.
Not everybody has the will or the means to fight this in court, even if they are actually "right".
Saying you don't choose to be gay is like saying you don't choose to be an engineer. I happen to be an engineer, but I don't believe that I had to be one, or that I could not put down my computer and pick a paintbrush or a hammer tomorrow if I wanted to.
Sure. A gay person can of course have sex with a woman. It's just that he'll probably feel awful about it, particularly if he's forced to have sex with women instead of men for the rest of his life.
And yes, I know how it feels to "choose" something that you lack a "spark". I could have chosen to become a lawyer instead of an engineer, after six years of law school (seemingly endlessly deferred graduation, almost dropped out), yes, I could still have chosen a career path that I will probably hate.
By why would you want somebody to try being somebody who they are not, instead of accepting who they are?
Yeah, maybe we should stop the waste, and employ human operators to send telegraphs like they did in the good old days, scribes to write documents by hand....
A book isn't the same as a piece of source code. How about if you sneak into someone's house, find a patent application, memorize it, and then file the patent yourself?
Given the number of dead obvious patents filed and accepted, and upheld... I thought this was legit.
Imagine a developer with legit games too who just posted that infringing game because his mother needs an operation.
You lost me right there.
Nobody said the OSS people are "nice". For example, Torvalds is known to be a git sometimes, and RMS is a known crazy fanatic. etc. etc. etc.
None of them are trying to get on any "most ethical person list", nor claiming to be saviors of the world by dumping billions onto "charitable causes".
And I, for one, avoids reiserfs like the plague, as I have for years ever since ext3 came out (which was years before Hans was even a murder suspect).
And of course, then there's your special "Expected polynomial time". Yeah, I saw the one that used infinite memory to do it.
You're going to claim the millenium prize by showing us all idiots how to use up infinite memory in expected polynomial time.