I'm sorry for ranting, but I'm sick of how Ask Slashdot is being done. Most people don't have an "answer," so they criticize the question. Or in other cases, they attempt to give the obvious answer, regardless of being covered in one of the links! People don't Ask Slashdot to get majorly dissed.
As the person that primarily runs this section, if you have ideas to improve how Ask Slashdot is run, I'd be glad to hear them. E-mail is preferred, but that journal entry would work just as well.
...between "constructive criticism" and "cussing out", or "flame the ass".
So why is it that I don't see an example of either coming form Microsoft customers? Many people have already made a good point: that working thru your rep would be the first step, but what happens when said rep isn't working for you, or isn't serving you as well as could be because of company mandated policies?
Please do not discount this question because there seems to be an obvious answer when you look at the extremes. Everyone with a clue can figure that bit out. It's legitimate criticism that concerns me. Microsoft is deserving of a lot of it, yet aside from places like Slashdot (and other, more extreme sites), it's rarely given.
Actually, the Search engine is now indexing words of 3 or more chars, and has been for about a month now. Methinks someone hasn't gotten around to updating the wording on the search pages, yet.;D
good ole slashdot. 'of course its an xbox problem'.
Note that I tried to redirect this from such in the posting by sharing my all too real situation with my old PS2. I tried using one of those disc cleaners as well and it did not fix the problem, so I think this issue may go deeper than cleaning.
And your link didn't go through. This should though: here it is
If the major music labels started doing this tomorrow then I'd finally believe they would be on the road to recovery. However the chances of this are miniscule, and I fear the RIAA is dead as a doornail unless they can convince Shrub (and the rest of the Arboretum that is the Legislative Branch of the US Government) to make their business model into a national institution, as opposed to being innovative and *gasp* giving the customer what they want, and in fact asking for, for years.
One small simple thing. It would cost less than one million dollars to produce the system and the initial content (if that!). For a billion-dollar industry to pass up this chance for low-cost, high-return profit, is just plain criminal!
Criminal!
In a word, that's how I'm going to start describing the music industry. For a group with the gall to call their own customers a "nation of thieves", I only have to say: "It takes one to know one."
This concept of "out-of-print" has always amazed me. I can not count how many times I've wanted to buy an album or song only to have my efforts thwarted by those three depressing words.
Of course, times change, and so do old justifications. I'll posit that "out-of-print" is as obsolete as 8-track tapes and that the RIAA are sitting there hording the art instead of looking into other revenue streams. This allows them to blame new technologies like P2P and home CD burning for lost sales.
Put simply, there is no reason why anything has to be "out-of-print" now, and certainly no reason why the record labels should get away with sitting on their asses for the last 4-5 years complaining that their business model is now in jeopardy due to the acts of "ingrates, thieves and college students". They could have had a working system online by now whose sole purpose would be to dole out "out-of-print" tunes for $0.99 to $1.99 a pop (allowing you to mix and match them on a custom CD). The overhead for such a system is minimal compared to the outlay of capital they have paid on lawyers over that same time frame.
This outlines the RIAA's motives, quite nicely, of course. Last person on the "proirity-totem-poll" is you and me. A few steps up is "the musician", whomever that may be. Above that? Every other link in the music distribution chain.
I've said this once and I'll say it again: the name of the game here is "evolve or die", and the RIAA has refused to "evolve" so now it's time to do our best to kill them off. Everyone on all sides of the equation (artists, producers, and listeners) need to think about looking into other alternatives for our music enjoyment. It will be hard, but in the long run, it may be better than what we currently have.
Re:The more I think on it...
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Portable Hubs?
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· Score: 2
This is the reason I hate it when people just up and throw out "Use Google", when the truth is, I did use the bloody thing and came up empty: and I'm usually good with keywords, except my '"battery power" hubs' (note the quotes) pulled out only a pair (which wasn't what I was looking for), while your 'battery powered ethernet hubs' pulled out a flush.
The moral of this posting: Don't think someone DIDN'T check Google because you found something they didn't. This too is one of the primary reasons I do Ask Slashdot.
PS - Thanks for finding the right keyword set for this, I'll be digging around on my own, this weekend, to see if I can find something that suits me.
PPS - Re: lame submissions -- Yes, I do get my fair share of those. I've tried to let readers see the kind of stuff that I get that DOESN'T hit the pages every April 1st, but I have to give up that practice for something more original this next year because people hate it when I do that. (I wonder if I should start doing this on Halloween instead as a "trick" instead of the usual "treat".... nah.... I don't look good in digital tomato...)
The more I think on it...
on
Portable Hubs?
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· Score: 2
the more I really want of these!
How difficult would it be to coble together some form of power delivery device that one could carry in a backpack. Total wait of the entire contraption (hub + power device/battery) should not exceed 30lbs (I'm being generous).
Bonus points will be given for: integrated solutions, solutions under 15 pounds, solutions under 5 pounds, solutions with integrated firewall and/or 802.11b support and grand mal bonus points for something that's recharge-able.
First person to market wins my undying loyalty, gratitude and all the beer, soda and junk food I can provide on my meager salary.
I'm sorry, I should have explained this further in the writeup, but I thought the last Passport fiasco would have still been in people's minds.
Put simply, for an ID service that is expected to be used as an umbrella authentication for a lot of web services, Passport's security seems rather lax. Which is exactly what you do not want when it comes to privacy on the web.
Verizon's switch to a system that hasn't exactly gained a reputation for being secure, for use by their wireless customers seems like a not-so-well-thought-out move to me. Especially considering that Verizon already had a system in place for their wireless customers.
I think some things that would have made it a lot better would be making everything from warp speed to weapons systems more complex to operate, less reliable, and less effective. The handheld communicators should have been at least four times as big as the ones from ST:TOS. They should have had range and quality problems. Sickbay should be a lot less capable. The list goes on and on.
So, I wholeheartedly agree with your comments in this regard. Nonetheless, when evaluating the show in its own right, I find the characters, stories, and special effects to be compelling.
This, is what I was hoping for. I was hoping to see the crew of the Enterprise struggling to eck out a place for themselves in this "brave new world" into which they had suddenly been thrust, but all too quickly it turned into "formulaic Trek" where the crew could solve things with magical devices and loads of technobabble.
In other words, I was hoping they would take risks and be different...and this is the exact reason I like Farscape. Too many times I've seen Trek rehash an old plot, only to see Farscape do it, and do them one better. I don't know how well Enterprise's own continuity holds up but one thing that was common with most Trek is that you rarely got to see the consequences of character's actions over the course of the show. Farscape did this and did it well.
On the other hand: Yes, I do agree with you that it's a good show, and it would be one that I could really get into once I get past
the glaring anacronisms. Since DirecTV is being anal and not providing me with a UPN feed, I don't get to see it very often. Things could have drastically improved with the show since I last saw it, and I'll admit that this was a long time ago.
Actually, it would be a damned good show if it was something original and not mired in the byzantine-continuity-hell that is today's Star Trek, but then again, I don't think they would have been able to get away with calling it Enterprise, now would they? =)
I guess now I'll have to pour all of my hopes into Whedon's Firefly but Fox's track record with me is questionable at best. Would you trust the network that cancelled VR-5 for Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire and the genre that followed? =)
but I think what you are trying to say, is that when you flip it to Farscape, there aren't always 30 ships zipping around each other.
No, what I refer to are the poor production values, cheesy sets, melodramatic acting, dreary lighting, and a cast of characters that spend all of their time scheming and double-crossing one another -- much like a daytime soap opera.
I've seen more innovative work come out of scenes from Farscape than I have scenes of Enterprise. Poor production values? I think not.
To be fair, I think people need to realize thaet comparisons between these shows is unfair, they have different "attitudes" and this affects the way the show looks on screen, as well it should.
Farscape, is a show that sets a better mood than I've ever seen Enterprise do. Ignore the flashy sets and glizy backgrounds of Enterprise; low-lighting and innovative camera tricks do more to set-up a scene than all the CGI and expensive sets in the world. I also have to say that as long as the story is strong and the production work good enough to add to rather than detract from the story, then I'm happy.
Too many times, the scenes on Enterprisefail because I think Berman and crew did an absolute dismal job on setting the period of the show. This show is supposed to take place before kirk yet, at-a-glance I have problems placing it anywhere before any of the TOS Movies: this is a problem. If you are trying to set up a movie in the 1920s, having a 2001 Corvette show up in the frame is going to be a bit jarring. This happens to me whenever I see the NX01 on screen, which get in the way of me enjoying the show. There are other issues in the show where I have a problem with Berman and company being a bit revisionist as well...for one thing, most of the crew on board the Enterprise act like they have been in the Federation for years yet the UFP doesn't exist yet, another thing that gets in my way of enjoying the show, and I'm hoping this is something that gets addressed in future eps.
So for me, I just find Farscape a better fit for it's setting. A hint, folks: life is a soap-opera. Sometimes it's nice to see your characters be true to themselves and not act in ways you expect of your typical protagonist. Farscape excels here, while Enterprise still feels like a fish out of water.
Despite this, I hope it gets the standard 7 year run. If Voyager did, then Enterprise damned well should. With Farscape gone, the amount of even passably decent shows on TV is dwindling at a precarious rate.
We all know the problem with today's music industry, this is not the place for that horse-pill.
I would have called the music industry a different horse product, myself....
I would too, I'd use a lot of Carlin's Dirty Words, if we were discussing this in a barl; and I'd use scathing and indicting text if it had to be witten.
But I wasn't speaking about the music industry in that context, rather I was talking about the discussion that would result around such.
Please pardon this Mac-illiterate, but would someone please tell me (and any other confused souls) what "LAPD" means (asside from the obvious Los Angeles references, please).
I've been using an Archos Jukebox Studio 20 for about a year, now and aside from a few annoying issues (the major one being that it unexpectedly cuts off when I'm walking, and it takes some 4 seconds of holding down the power switch to turn it back on again) it's held up pretty well. And you can't sneeze at 20G of tunes on your belt, either.
Looks like Archos has actually revamped this product, because mine doesn't look like the one displayed at the above link. Has anyone used one of these particular models before and can tell me if they've improved on the problem bits that I've mentioned?
If they have, I'd surely recommend this model to anyone who is in the market for an MP3 player.
My example was just that, an example. It may not work in practice, but my point was trying to find a way to absolve confusion. Your elitist attitudes aside, I firmly believe that usability issues are crucial in getting Unix accepted by a wider market.
Dispite what you feel, I don't believe a person's inability to deal with case sensitivity makes them "an idiot". Computers can be difficult to use, even for Ph.D's. It's these little details that will catch people, and if they are going to think about Unix (Linux, specifically) it's these little things that will serve as a barrier for use.
What I'm saying is that this issue deserves some thought. Can this issue be solved without expecting the user to "learn his environment"? Let me clue you in: if the interface isn't intuitive then people won't use it. If people don't expect case sensitivity based on what they've used before, or how they think it should work, then they won't use it. It's this kind of thinking that keeps people going back to Microsoft, and believe it or not, Microsoft is where it is because they do pay attention to issues like this.
If you do think they are stupid and aren't worth your time, then fine. Ignore this issue, and go about whatever it is you do and let the people who do want to talk about it discuss things in pease. You may be surprised at what they come up with.
Flame-bait or not, this topic has received over 300 comments in less than a day, and this issue wasn't even posted to the main page! I think it sounds like the majority of Slashdot does want to discuss this. I'm sorry if this disappoints you, I can't please everyone with my article selection, but that's the way the system works.
Why don't we ask: "Should the convention for tapping threads in metal be switched to left hand threads by default?"
Nothing will change as a result of the discussion, and nothing should change. It's the 'simplify UNIX and destroy it in the process' arguement all over again.
Good grief.
I'm sorry you feel that way. That was not the intent when I posted the question and I feel that I need to be a bit defensive here. Whether you agree with me after this...well, that is up to you.
My point is that getting Unix (and it's variants) adopted by more users may require a change in how data is presented to them. We don't need to lose case sensitivity in the file system, and in many cases we shouldn't. When I posted this question I didn't even mean to imply that such a change should be made at such a low level. I implied a shell change. Nothing more.
Your analogy above regarding thread tapping is highly misleading and incorrect. There is nothing stopping someome from correcting this problem, and it's need not be as complex as changing ext2/3 or any filesystem for that matter, but the actual piece of software that interracts with the user!
For files like "LETTER.TXT", "Letter.Txt" and "letter.txt", what's stopping a "basic shell" from presenting these as "Letter.Txt(1)", "Letter.Txt(2)", and "Letter.Txt(3)". Note that we follow a standard case template for all files displayed and just add a counter which is easier for people to distinguish rather than differing case? These are all interface issues. The shell itself could disallow for creation of a filename that is a mixed-case version of something is already on the system (meaning that the display above need only occur if such files exist on the underlying file system).
This allows for Granny to have her own portion of the hard drive, while you can continue to use bash and it's ilk without effect. That's the trick here, trying to accomodate others without affecting anyone else, and hence the reason why I posted it.
I figure anything we can do to make Unix more appealing and intersting to use for the masses (without affecting ourselves) we should do. Please don't assume that a question is "stupid" or "impossible" solely because you don't see a workable solution. There are many heads here. Let's put them together and see if we can come up with something agreeable for everyone.
This is the purpose of Ask Slashdot in a nutshell.
I also disagree that change can't occur due to discussion. I instead posit that discussion is an essential trigger for change, and I respectfully challenge you to prove me wrong on that point.
Re:Hobos with shopping carts
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P2P Streaming Radio
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm so saddened by the loss of internet radio for precisely the reasons you mentioned. Did the copyright office ever give a specific justification for their rates? (I never bothered to read the ruling...I've been too disgusted with this whole deal. I'll have to suck up and read that damned thing soon, though).
My point is that it's funny that they should
standardize on the same rate as broadcasters when the barrier to entries for webcasting is lower than it is for radio. What's this? If you want to play music for people you have to destroy it by inserting inane yakking, and loud commercials into the flow, just so sponsors get their oh-so-importaint "air time"?
("What? No commercials? That's un-American!" [well, at least maybe non-capitalistic, but I digress]).
Ever since the shutdown, I've gone back to listening to my own CD collection, but for a long time I was listening one of the various SomaFM streams, sitting back, coding, and occasionally writing down the name of a new group or album that I had never heard. I have made dozens of CD purchases based on that list. That source is gone now, and the list (along with CD purchasing for a few months, it looks like) frozen with its departure.
Another funny anecdote: While driving (the only time I ever consider subjecting myself to broadcast radio) recently, I actually heard a song I liked. Missed the name of the artist, but I paid close attention to the lyrics to see if I could pick out keywords. Went home, logged in to the nearest P2P network and had that exact song in less than 30 minutes.
If someone would develop a system with that kind of response time, that would allow me to download what I want by the song, I'd pay for that. The RIAA has had at least half a decade to develop such a system, yet instead they have tried to legislate the technology back into Pandora's Box.
This disgusts me to no end, and I think I'm now fed up enough where this will now become a Personal Crusade for me. These leeches do the public, and the arts no good. They've refused to evolve, so now it's time for their extinction.
So...
...who wants to build an island 13 miles off the Montery penninsula with an OC-192 hooked up to it? We could be Sealand
Redux.
Actually, dselect has been known to drive users the hell away from Debian. Its interface is rotten, and the authors agree. It's unfortunate, since dselect and apt really do good things. It just takes a bit of adjustment to get used to dselect.
dselect was an honorable attempt to solve a difficult problem. It's unfortunate that it failed miserably.
Aptitude looks to have learned some of the lessons of dselect and provides a decent text based package management solution that isn't so confusing. The one drawback with aptitude is that it can't be used for single package installs (unless your system is completely up to date), but then again, that's what "apt-get" is for.
If given enough data storage space, a person will find the data to fill it, whether it be DVDs, CDs, texts, web pages, code, or what have you. Remember when Bill G said "640k should be enough for everyone", back then he was (almost) right. Now it's not unusual to see machines with 1000 times that amount of RAM and 100,000 times that amount in hard drive space. As time progresses, I don't expect this to change.
I actually think this bit is human nature, as if you take this example and apply it into the physical realm, it almost holds true there as well. If you give a person as much space as they want, they'll fill it as they accumulate stuff. Some people make a conscious effort to cull down their stuff after a while, but many don't unless there's a huge prevailing need to.
As other people have mentioned, these numbers are extremely misleading and doesn't even factor in the "follow-thru" effect. That is, once a person gets a chance to download a piece of music, and find that they like it, they then go thru and "follow-up" on that artist, more often than not buying the original media for the song they had downloaded earlier, and other products by that artist they may have missed before.
This is what I do when I download music. Recently, however, the process has been:
If I like what I hear, I buy it. If not, it usually ends up in the bit bucket.
Does this behavior ever occur to the RIAA? Nope. "You download MP3s, you must be a pirate".
Anyone who has ever seem my CD collection would know that this couldn't be further from the truth. If anything, I'm an ardent music fan.
It amazes me that the RIAA can hem and haw about representing artists, yet when it comes to underground artists like the ones normally relegated to dance clubs and underground internet radio stations like Soma...the RIAA is virtually invisible in such positive representation. Do they actually do anything for a DJ Krust, a Dom & Roland, or a Grooverider? Not that I can see, and the clubs do well enough in this aspect. Actually, they have involved themselves in one aspect of Internet Radio: the introduction of the
Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) to address the issue of royalty paments. If these recommendations pass, it would basically signal the end of Internet Radio as we know it.
So in yet another instance, the RIAA is actually hurting those it claims it represents. I'm really hoping the government will shine a big bright spotlight on the Music Industry, as the more I hear about it, the less I like.
Tell me, why havent the RIAA been able to get together with some ambitious geeks and come up with a create-your-own-mix-CD type service? Don't think they could put up with the competition of people burning their own CDs for free, so instead of offering a better service, they sic the government on their own customers instead of trying to work with them.
Real smart, and how so very, very typical of Corporate America, isn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
OK, just to beat some of y'all to the punch.
;)
<COMIC BOOK GUY>
Worst. Topic. Ever.
</COMIC BOOK GUY>
Please take this humor in good spirits. Move along, now.
[Yes, I do expect to be moderated accordingly...]
So why is it that I don't see an example of either coming form Microsoft customers? Many people have already made a good point: that working thru your rep would be the first step, but what happens when said rep isn't working for you, or isn't serving you as well as could be because of company mandated policies?
Please do not discount this question because there seems to be an obvious answer when you look at the extremes. Everyone with a clue can figure that bit out. It's legitimate criticism that concerns me. Microsoft is deserving of a lot of it, yet aside from places like Slashdot (and other, more extreme sites), it's rarely given.
Actually, the Search engine is now indexing words of 3 or more chars, and has been for about a month now. Methinks someone hasn't gotten around to updating the wording on the search pages, yet. ;D
One small simple thing. It would cost less than one million dollars to produce the system and the initial content (if that!). For a billion-dollar industry to pass up this chance for low-cost, high-return profit, is just plain criminal!
Criminal!
In a word, that's how I'm going to start describing the music industry. For a group with the gall to call their own customers a "nation of thieves", I only have to say: "It takes one to know one."
Of course, times change, and so do old justifications. I'll posit that "out-of-print" is as obsolete as 8-track tapes and that the RIAA are sitting there hording the art instead of looking into other revenue streams. This allows them to blame new technologies like P2P and home CD burning for lost sales.
Put simply, there is no reason why anything has to be "out-of-print" now, and certainly no reason why the record labels should get away with sitting on their asses for the last 4-5 years complaining that their business model is now in jeopardy due to the acts of "ingrates, thieves and college students". They could have had a working system online by now whose sole purpose would be to dole out "out-of-print" tunes for $0.99 to $1.99 a pop (allowing you to mix and match them on a custom CD). The overhead for such a system is minimal compared to the outlay of capital they have paid on lawyers over that same time frame.
This outlines the RIAA's motives, quite nicely, of course. Last person on the "proirity-totem-poll" is you and me. A few steps up is "the musician", whomever that may be. Above that? Every other link in the music distribution chain.
I've said this once and I'll say it again: the name of the game here is "evolve or die", and the RIAA has refused to "evolve" so now it's time to do our best to kill them off. Everyone on all sides of the equation (artists, producers, and listeners) need to think about looking into other alternatives for our music enjoyment. It will be hard, but in the long run, it may be better than what we currently have.
The moral of this posting: Don't think someone DIDN'T check Google because you found something they didn't. This too is one of the primary reasons I do Ask Slashdot.
PS - Thanks for finding the right keyword set for this, I'll be digging around on my own, this weekend, to see if I can find something that suits me.
PPS - Re: lame submissions -- Yes, I do get my fair share of those. I've tried to let readers see the kind of stuff that I get that DOESN'T hit the pages every April 1st, but I have to give up that practice for something more original this next year because people hate it when I do that. (I wonder if I should start doing this on Halloween instead as a "trick" instead of the usual "treat".... nah.... I don't look good in digital tomato...)
How difficult would it be to coble together some form of power delivery device that one could carry in a backpack. Total wait of the entire contraption (hub + power device/battery) should not exceed 30lbs (I'm being generous).
Bonus points will be given for: integrated solutions, solutions under 15 pounds, solutions under 5 pounds, solutions with integrated firewall and/or 802.11b support and grand mal bonus points for something that's recharge-able.
First person to market wins my undying loyalty, gratitude and all the beer, soda and junk food I can provide on my meager salary.
Put simply, for an ID service that is expected to be used as an umbrella authentication for a lot of web services, Passport's security seems rather lax. Which is exactly what you do not want when it comes to privacy on the web.
Verizon's switch to a system that hasn't exactly gained a reputation for being secure, for use by their wireless customers seems like a not-so-well-thought-out move to me. Especially considering that Verizon already had a system in place for their wireless customers.
In other words, I was hoping they would take risks and be different...and this is the exact reason I like Farscape. Too many times I've seen Trek rehash an old plot, only to see Farscape do it, and do them one better. I don't know how well Enterprise's own continuity holds up but one thing that was common with most Trek is that you rarely got to see the consequences of character's actions over the course of the show. Farscape did this and did it well.
On the other hand: Yes, I do agree with you that it's a good show, and it would be one that I could really get into once I get past the glaring anacronisms. Since DirecTV is being anal and not providing me with a UPN feed, I don't get to see it very often. Things could have drastically improved with the show since I last saw it, and I'll admit that this was a long time ago.
Actually, it would be a damned good show if it was something original and not mired in the byzantine-continuity-hell that is today's Star Trek, but then again, I don't think they would have been able to get away with calling it Enterprise, now would they? =)
I guess now I'll have to pour all of my hopes into Whedon's Firefly but Fox's track record with me is questionable at best. Would you trust the network that cancelled VR-5 for Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire and the genre that followed? =)
To be fair, I think people need to realize thaet comparisons between these shows is unfair, they have different "attitudes" and this affects the way the show looks on screen, as well it should.
Farscape, is a show that sets a better mood than I've ever seen Enterprise do. Ignore the flashy sets and glizy backgrounds of Enterprise; low-lighting and innovative camera tricks do more to set-up a scene than all the CGI and expensive sets in the world. I also have to say that as long as the story is strong and the production work good enough to add to rather than detract from the story, then I'm happy.
Too many times, the scenes on Enterprise fail because I think Berman and crew did an absolute dismal job on setting the period of the show. This show is supposed to take place before kirk yet, at-a-glance I have problems placing it anywhere before any of the TOS Movies: this is a problem. If you are trying to set up a movie in the 1920s, having a 2001 Corvette show up in the frame is going to be a bit jarring. This happens to me whenever I see the NX01 on screen, which get in the way of me enjoying the show. There are other issues in the show where I have a problem with Berman and company being a bit revisionist as well...for one thing, most of the crew on board the Enterprise act like they have been in the Federation for years yet the UFP doesn't exist yet, another thing that gets in my way of enjoying the show, and I'm hoping this is something that gets addressed in future eps.
So for me, I just find Farscape a better fit for it's setting. A hint, folks: life is a soap-opera. Sometimes it's nice to see your characters be true to themselves and not act in ways you expect of your typical protagonist. Farscape excels here, while Enterprise still feels like a fish out of water.
Despite this, I hope it gets the standard 7 year run. If Voyager did, then Enterprise damned well should. With Farscape gone, the amount of even passably decent shows on TV is dwindling at a precarious rate.
But I wasn't speaking about the music industry in that context, rather I was talking about the discussion that would result around such.
I'm guessing that the submittor made a typo and that it's "LDAP" not "LAPD". The text in the story has been changed, so this comment is unnecessary.
Nothing to see here, move along!
Please pardon this Mac-illiterate, but would someone please tell me (and any other confused souls) what "LAPD" means (asside from the obvious Los Angeles references, please).
If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss your fair use rights good-bye.
I think I will end this before I start stringing together several run-on sentences comprised solely of Carlin's Seven Words you Don't Say...
Music industry indeed. Why not call it like it is and start calling them the Music Mafia? Oops. That's insulting the mafia...I shouldn't do that.
Looks like Archos has actually revamped this product, because mine doesn't look like the one displayed at the above link. Has anyone used one of these particular models before and can tell me if they've improved on the problem bits that I've mentioned?
If they have, I'd surely recommend this model to anyone who is in the market for an MP3 player.
Dispite what you feel, I don't believe a person's inability to deal with case sensitivity makes them "an idiot". Computers can be difficult to use, even for Ph.D's. It's these little details that will catch people, and if they are going to think about Unix (Linux, specifically) it's these little things that will serve as a barrier for use.
What I'm saying is that this issue deserves some thought. Can this issue be solved without expecting the user to "learn his environment"? Let me clue you in: if the interface isn't intuitive then people won't use it. If people don't expect case sensitivity based on what they've used before, or how they think it should work, then they won't use it. It's this kind of thinking that keeps people going back to Microsoft, and believe it or not, Microsoft is where it is because they do pay attention to issues like this.
If you do think they are stupid and aren't worth your time, then fine. Ignore this issue, and go about whatever it is you do and let the people who do want to talk about it discuss things in pease. You may be surprised at what they come up with.
Flame-bait or not, this topic has received over 300 comments in less than a day, and this issue wasn't even posted to the main page! I think it sounds like the majority of Slashdot does want to discuss this. I'm sorry if this disappoints you, I can't please everyone with my article selection, but that's the way the system works.
My point is that getting Unix (and it's variants) adopted by more users may require a change in how data is presented to them. We don't need to lose case sensitivity in the file system, and in many cases we shouldn't. When I posted this question I didn't even mean to imply that such a change should be made at such a low level. I implied a shell change. Nothing more.
Your analogy above regarding thread tapping is highly misleading and incorrect. There is nothing stopping someome from correcting this problem, and it's need not be as complex as changing ext2/3 or any filesystem for that matter, but the actual piece of software that interracts with the user!
For files like "LETTER.TXT", "Letter.Txt" and "letter.txt", what's stopping a "basic shell" from presenting these as "Letter.Txt(1)", "Letter.Txt(2)", and "Letter.Txt(3)". Note that we follow a standard case template for all files displayed and just add a counter which is easier for people to distinguish rather than differing case? These are all interface issues. The shell itself could disallow for creation of a filename that is a mixed-case version of something is already on the system (meaning that the display above need only occur if such files exist on the underlying file system).
This allows for Granny to have her own portion of the hard drive, while you can continue to use bash and it's ilk without effect. That's the trick here, trying to accomodate others without affecting anyone else, and hence the reason why I posted it.
I figure anything we can do to make Unix more appealing and intersting to use for the masses (without affecting ourselves) we should do. Please don't assume that a question is "stupid" or "impossible" solely because you don't see a workable solution. There are many heads here. Let's put them together and see if we can come up with something agreeable for everyone.
This is the purpose of Ask Slashdot in a nutshell.
I also disagree that change can't occur due to discussion. I instead posit that discussion is an essential trigger for change, and I respectfully challenge you to prove me wrong on that point.
Done. Thanks for the pointer.
My point is that it's funny that they should standardize on the same rate as broadcasters when the barrier to entries for webcasting is lower than it is for radio. What's this? If you want to play music for people you have to destroy it by inserting inane yakking, and loud commercials into the flow, just so sponsors get their oh-so-importaint "air time"?
("What? No commercials? That's un-American!" [well, at least maybe non-capitalistic, but I digress]).
Ever since the shutdown, I've gone back to listening to my own CD collection, but for a long time I was listening one of the various SomaFM streams, sitting back, coding, and occasionally writing down the name of a new group or album that I had never heard. I have made dozens of CD purchases based on that list. That source is gone now, and the list (along with CD purchasing for a few months, it looks like) frozen with its departure.
Another funny anecdote: While driving (the only time I ever consider subjecting myself to broadcast radio) recently, I actually heard a song I liked. Missed the name of the artist, but I paid close attention to the lyrics to see if I could pick out keywords. Went home, logged in to the nearest P2P network and had that exact song in less than 30 minutes.
If someone would develop a system with that kind of response time, that would allow me to download what I want by the song, I'd pay for that. The RIAA has had at least half a decade to develop such a system, yet instead they have tried to legislate the technology back into Pandora's Box.
This disgusts me to no end, and I think I'm now fed up enough where this will now become a Personal Crusade for me. These leeches do the public, and the arts no good. They've refused to evolve, so now it's time for their extinction.
So...
Count me in on that undertaking. Oh yeah.Aptitude looks to have learned some of the lessons of dselect and provides a decent text based package management solution that isn't so confusing. The one drawback with aptitude is that it can't be used for single package installs (unless your system is completely up to date), but then again, that's what "apt-get" is for.
I actually think this bit is human nature, as if you take this example and apply it into the physical realm, it almost holds true there as well. If you give a person as much space as they want, they'll fill it as they accumulate stuff. Some people make a conscious effort to cull down their stuff after a while, but many don't unless there's a huge prevailing need to.
More pondering, but hey, you did ask. :)
As other people have mentioned, these numbers are extremely misleading and doesn't even factor in the "follow-thru" effect. That is, once a person gets a chance to download a piece of music, and find that they like it, they then go thru and "follow-up" on that artist, more often than not buying the original media for the song they had downloaded earlier, and other products by that artist they may have missed before.
This is what I do when I download music. Recently, however, the process has been:
Does this behavior ever occur to the RIAA? Nope. "You download MP3s, you must be a pirate".
Anyone who has ever seem my CD collection would know that this couldn't be further from the truth. If anything, I'm an ardent music fan.
It amazes me that the RIAA can hem and haw about representing artists, yet when it comes to underground artists like the ones normally relegated to dance clubs and underground internet radio stations like Soma...the RIAA is virtually invisible in such positive representation. Do they actually do anything for a DJ Krust, a Dom & Roland, or a Grooverider? Not that I can see, and the clubs do well enough in this aspect. Actually, they have involved themselves in one aspect of Internet Radio: the introduction of the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) to address the issue of royalty paments. If these recommendations pass, it would basically signal the end of Internet Radio as we know it.
So in yet another instance, the RIAA is actually hurting those it claims it represents. I'm really hoping the government will shine a big bright spotlight on the Music Industry, as the more I hear about it, the less I like.
Tell me, why havent the RIAA been able to get together with some ambitious geeks and come up with a create-your-own-mix-CD type service? Don't think they could put up with the competition of people burning their own CDs for free, so instead of offering a better service, they sic the government on their own customers instead of trying to work with them.
Real smart, and how so very, very typical of Corporate America, isn't it?