Look, while I understand that people don't like the idea of having the government read their e-mail, I think that a lot of people frankly overestimate their importance in the grand scheme of things. There are millions upon millions of people in this country. And yet some little schmoe from Asshole, Indiana thinks that he is so important that the "gummint" has got dozens of agents watching his every move and reading every little piece of mail that he gets.
It's not that at all, you are missing the point. As soon as somebody uses encryption today, they are immediately unusual. The use of encryption alone could provoke further investigation. If everybody (and yes, that includes those guys in Indiana) used encryption, then encryption itself would be more secure. There was a good explanation involving envelopes vs. postcards, but I can't find it now. Anybody got a link?
Basically, the average person does not gain from using encryption routinely. The people who need to use encryption gain from the average people using encryption routinely.
So I work 40 hours in my workshop and end up with a oak table. Someone pays me $100 for it. If someone just came and took it without paying me, that would be staeling.
So I work 40 hours in my studio and end up with a song on DAT. I offer to sell the rights for $100. If someone came along and took it from me without paying, that would be "liberating the information that wants to be free"?
Nope, that would be stealing too. In both cases, you are depriving the original owner of his/her own property. However, this is a flawed analogy, since the original owner can still listen to and sell the music that they own if somebody copies (not takes) the music.
That's probably why most consumers, when asked, describe CDs as a good value. At the same time, when asked directly whether CDs cost too much, some consumers will say yes! Why the contradiction?
Probably because the latter was a leading question. Or maybe because the concept of value and cost are not identical?
Because some consumers don't understand why the sales tag on a CD is so much higher than the cost of producing the actual physical disc, a cost, which in fact, has decreased over the years.
Obviously it's decreased over the years. There was obviously a time when CDs were first being developed when it was expensive to make a CD. However, I don't remember a drop in the price of an album in the last seven or eight years, in fact singles cost more now.
Of course, the most important component of a CD is the artist's effort in developing that music.
For example, when you hear a song played on the radio -- that didn't just happen!
So let me get this straight, you are moaning about how hard it is to get the music listened to, and then turn around and sue the people who can make it easier for you to do that?
New technology such as the Internet offers new ways for artists to reach music fans, but it still requires that some entity, whether it is a traditional label or another kind of company, market and promote that artist so that fans are aware of new releases.
Hmm... so lets see. There still needs to be a company between the artist and the public, that has to deal with promotion etc. Well I don't see "traditional" labels embracing the internet - so I guess you could consider Napster and MP3.com to be competition, in fact, competition that has a significant head-start on the traditional labels. Those lawsuits musta come in handy, huh?
Another factor commonly overlooked in assessing CD prices is to assume that all CDs are equally profitable. In fact, the vast majority is never profitable.
Wouldn't it be handy if there was a way of promoting and distributing the music for less, so that taking on artists would be less risky? Hold on a sec, what about the internet?
Between 1983 and 1996, the average price of a CD fell by more than 40%. Over this same period of time, consumer prices... rose nearly 60%.
Yeah, that's the new technology premium for you. The fall in price can probably be attributed to the fact that in 1983, CDs were high-tech, and were commonplace in 1996.
While the price of CDs has fallen, the amount of music provided on a typical CD has increased substantially,
Not that I've noticed. I'll admit, I've not been buying CDs since 1983, but I can't remember a time when albums didn't have at least twelve tracks on them.
along with higher quality in terms of fidelity, durability, ease of use,
EASE OF USE?
and range of choices, including multi-media material, such as music videos, interviews and discographies.
Bullshit. I never see two different CDs on the shelf, one with videos, one without. Sometimes there are exceptions, but they are few and far between. And there is no choice in the matter, you either get an "enhanced" CD, or you don't.
Content of this type often requires considerable production expense and adds a whole new dimension that goes beyond conventional audio.
Now, I find it hard to believe that I can quite easily produce a music CD with a video on it, with minimal effort, yet you cannot. The video is already made for TV, so why not just stick it on the CD in MPEG format? It's not hard or expensive.
This has the same tone to it as Microsoft's "Linux is bad, mkay?" Linux Myths page.
And, as a side note, why do so many peoplethink that mail/news are usuless.
Nobody is claiming that they are useless. I (and others) just feel that if we want to read mail/news, we can fire up a mail/newsreader. They are almost completely different activities, so why should they be in the same app?
who are you people to decide what's useful for a browser client?
That's the whole point - everybody wants a decent browser - there are already xp toolkits, there are already mail clients, there are already newsreaders, there are already xterms and IRC clients - you get my point. There is a severe shortage of cross-platform, standards-compliant graphical browsers.
uhhh, if the Filmmakers did not release things giving you the privilege of watching their films you would have nothing to fairly use, and no argument, which is my point.
That's not a privilege, that's business. We give them money, they give us DVDs. Copyright allows them to restrict us from doing some things with those DVDs once they belong to us. The things that they aren't allowed to restrict us from doing is covered by fair use (and other things, IIRC). They don't have to grant any privilege in order for people to play the movies.
We are losing a right by not being able to watch a movie.
No you are losing a privelege(sp).
Did you not read anything he wrote? The basic system of copyright is a privilege granted to people who create things so that they may restrict what the public does with it. There are exceptions to exactly what they may restrict, which falls under fair use. If copyright did not give the creators the privilege, then you would be free to do whatever you wanted with it. You have the two concepts mixed up - it's the copyright holders that have the privilege, not the public.
B) What about DevFS? How are people going to upgrade to that? Do you just nuke/dev and run a new copy of MAKEDEV?
You don't need to nuke anything. Compile in devfs support, mounting/dev automatically, and compile & install devfsd. There is enough documentation with devfsd and in/usr/src/linux/Documentation/fs/devfs to make this easy. Then reboot. First/dev will be mounted, and then devfsd will create symlinks for all the old device names, so that your configuration won't break (depending on what's in/etc/devfsd.conf). You may need to pass 'root=/dev/whatever' to the kernel, but I can't quite remember. It's all in the documentation.
They are just trying to create a market for themselves. Trying to keep tabs on the whole internet just in case a page moves every now and again is a silly idea. The right approach is for each site author to use cron to check the links every now and again. As soon as a page moves, update your link.
I agree, it's a short-term hack until the QPL is fixed. But so far, Troll-Tech hasn't really done anything. All you have to do to fix things this way is get RMS to agree that yes, it would be nice to be able to legally combine two free pieces of software into one.
4) RMS rewrites the GPL to allow linking against QPL licensed libraries as well as GPL(LGPL) licensed libraries
Actually, that's not a bad idea. Most (L)GPLed software uses the standard "version 2 of the (L)GPL or later" wording, doesn't it? Then, if RMS just brings out (L)GPL 2.01 with an exception to the current QPL, then it would have the effect of relicensing most GPL software to include a QPL exception, wouldn't it?
Transhumanist? I was once allured by that philosophy, but after a while found it arrogant and sterile. I am a human, not a borg. Thank you, but I think I'll remain human...for whatever meat-based flaws that means I'll have to endure (oh the humanity).
So let me get this straight... you would refuse a pacemaker if you needed one?
I emailed Lucasarts about porting Monkey Island for free, closed source. They didn't even bother to reply. If they don't want to know about simple ports, how likely are they to want to give them away altogether?
I'm talking about replacing Explorer.exe with a seperate shell. Several shell replacements for windows are out there, most significantly Litestep which is an After/Open/NeXTStep clone...
The trouble with this is that a lot of Windows apps make assumptions that Explorer is the shell, including Explorer itself - IIRC, last time I used Litestep, when I ran Explorer to use as a file manager, it started up the taskbar etc.
No, you fail to read English correctly. The original post stated that changing look and feel is an essential part of a usable User Interface. I replied with facts stating how this is not true.
Really? I must have missed those facts, because all I saw was your opinion.
Changing look and feel is the same as choosing between different UIs - look and feel is usually identical across a UI, even with tweaks, so there will be no inconsistency between apps which is what you seem to be claiming.
And let me ask: what usabilities studies have you conducted/read that back up these statements? I think I can answer this one for you: none. Why are you choosing to attack Microsoft with such a erronous statement?
First of all, I didn't mention Linux at all in my post.
If my statement about MS is so wrong, then please point out the number of UIs they provide with Windows, how to alter those UIs to, for example, put the close button in a different position, or how to define different UIs for different users.
...and I can state that consistency is better if trying to achieve a usable interface for many.
Yes, consistency is good *within* a UI. But consistency *across* UIs is useless, as users will typically pick one UI and stick with it for a relatively long time.
Users look for commonalities in menu/button placement, wording and overall look and feel.
Which I am not denying them. That is perfectly possible to achieve within a UI, whilst still being able to offer alternative UIs.
Different window manager are one of the weak points of unices, which is very much different from the lies you are trying to spread.
Please, keep your Linux zealot FUD out of this...
Which lies would they be then? FWIW, you look more of a wacko than me in this thread, accusing me of 'lying to protect my precious Linux'.
Recognise that one interface cannot possibly be the best thing for everyone in every situation. What I need from an interface is significantly different from what my mother needs. Also, my needs change depending on the task at hand.
Having different interfaces (e.g. voice recognition/GUI/command line) is vital for a usable computer. So is being able to change the interfaces you are given. MS (as well as other companies) don't seem to be aware of this fact.
One of the better-known cases which went all the way to the verdict was the McLibel trial, in which everyone's favorite multinational food chain sued two unemployed activists for handing out a pamphlet. Attempting to prove the truth of every single statement in the brief factsheet took the vegetarians two years.
God forbid they check their facts *before* handing out libellous material...
Um... Who got the book? I don't read Stephen King but one of my friends tried to get the book and he couldn't... Another of my friends only got the book because he signed up for some PDF mailing list somewhere.
I signed up to the PDF list as well. The deal was that the server was overloaded, and if you sent them your email address they would email you a PDF of the book. Two days ago they emailed me a link to download the Windows-only e-book, with no mention of the PDF. Oh, and I had to remove myself from an automatic opt-in spam list.
Did anybody get the PDF, or was it just a pack of lies to get loads of email addresses to spam?
And the common "their encryption sucks, it's their fault" argument is trash.
Is it? This software is based on a block list isn't it? In that case, why do they need encyption at all? Can't they just use a one-way hash, like/etc/shadow?
It looks like they have basic security in place to avoid ballot-stuffing, but there is no way they can stop people buying votes now, is there? When you vote, you usually get the privacy to vote for what you like, no matter who tries to bribe you. But under this system, I don't see any way to stop somebody buying your vote, and making sure that you follow through by watching you as you vote over the net.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, while I understand that people don't like the idea of having the government read their e-mail, I think that a lot of people frankly overestimate their importance in the grand scheme of things. There are millions upon millions of people in this country. And yet some little schmoe from Asshole, Indiana thinks that he is so important that the "gummint" has got dozens of agents watching his every move and reading every little piece of mail that he gets.
It's not that at all, you are missing the point. As soon as somebody uses encryption today, they are immediately unusual. The use of encryption alone could provoke further investigation. If everybody (and yes, that includes those guys in Indiana) used encryption, then encryption itself would be more secure. There was a good explanation involving envelopes vs. postcards, but I can't find it now. Anybody got a link?
Basically, the average person does not gain from using encryption routinely. The people who need to use encryption gain from the average people using encryption routinely.
So I work 40 hours in my workshop and end up with a oak table. Someone pays me $100 for it. If someone just came and took it without paying me, that would be staeling.
So I work 40 hours in my studio and end up with a song on DAT. I offer to sell the rights for $100. If someone came along and took it from me without paying, that would be "liberating the information that wants to be free"?
Nope, that would be stealing too. In both cases, you are depriving the original owner of his/her own property. However, this is a flawed analogy, since the original owner can still listen to and sell the music that they own if somebody copies (not takes) the music.
That's probably why most consumers, when asked, describe CDs as a good value. At the same time, when asked directly whether CDs cost too much, some consumers will say yes! Why the contradiction?
Probably because the latter was a leading question. Or maybe because the concept of value and cost are not identical?
Because some consumers don't understand why the sales tag on a CD is so much higher than the cost of producing the actual physical disc, a cost, which in fact, has decreased over the years.
Obviously it's decreased over the years. There was obviously a time when CDs were first being developed when it was expensive to make a CD. However, I don't remember a drop in the price of an album in the last seven or eight years, in fact singles cost more now.
Of course, the most important component of a CD is the artist's effort in developing that music.
Then why don't they get the majority of the profits?
For example, when you hear a song played on the radio -- that didn't just happen!
So let me get this straight, you are moaning about how hard it is to get the music listened to, and then turn around and sue the people who can make it easier for you to do that?
New technology such as the Internet offers new ways for artists to reach music fans, but it still requires that some entity, whether it is a traditional label or another kind of company, market and promote that artist so that fans are aware of new releases.
Hmm... so lets see. There still needs to be a company between the artist and the public, that has to deal with promotion etc. Well I don't see "traditional" labels embracing the internet - so I guess you could consider Napster and MP3.com to be competition, in fact, competition that has a significant head-start on the traditional labels. Those lawsuits musta come in handy, huh?
Another factor commonly overlooked in assessing CD prices is to assume that all CDs are equally profitable. In fact, the vast majority is never profitable.
Wouldn't it be handy if there was a way of promoting and distributing the music for less, so that taking on artists would be less risky? Hold on a sec, what about the internet?
Between 1983 and 1996, the average price of a CD fell by more than 40%. Over this same period of time, consumer prices ... rose nearly 60%.
Yeah, that's the new technology premium for you. The fall in price can probably be attributed to the fact that in 1983, CDs were high-tech, and were commonplace in 1996.
While the price of CDs has fallen, the amount of music provided on a typical CD has increased substantially,
Not that I've noticed. I'll admit, I've not been buying CDs since 1983, but I can't remember a time when albums didn't have at least twelve tracks on them.
along with higher quality in terms of fidelity, durability, ease of use,
EASE OF USE?
and range of choices, including multi-media material, such as music videos, interviews and discographies.
Bullshit. I never see two different CDs on the shelf, one with videos, one without. Sometimes there are exceptions, but they are few and far between. And there is no choice in the matter, you either get an "enhanced" CD, or you don't.
Content of this type often requires considerable production expense and adds a whole new dimension that goes beyond conventional audio.
Now, I find it hard to believe that I can quite easily produce a music CD with a video on it, with minimal effort, yet you cannot. The video is already made for TV, so why not just stick it on the CD in MPEG format? It's not hard or expensive.
This has the same tone to it as Microsoft's "Linux is bad, mkay?" Linux Myths page.
And, as a side note, why do so many peoplethink that mail/news are usuless.
Nobody is claiming that they are useless. I (and others) just feel that if we want to read mail/news, we can fire up a mail/newsreader. They are almost completely different activities, so why should they be in the same app?
who are you people to decide what's useful for a browser client?
That's the whole point - everybody wants a decent browser - there are already xp toolkits, there are already mail clients, there are already newsreaders, there are already xterms and IRC clients - you get my point. There is a severe shortage of cross-platform, standards-compliant graphical browsers.
uhhh, if the Filmmakers did not release things giving you the privilege of watching their films you would have nothing to fairly use, and no argument, which is my point.
That's not a privilege, that's business. We give them money, they give us DVDs. Copyright allows them to restrict us from doing some things with those DVDs once they belong to us. The things that they aren't allowed to restrict us from doing is covered by fair use (and other things, IIRC). They don't have to grant any privilege in order for people to play the movies.
We are losing a right by not being able to watch a movie.
No you are losing a privelege(sp).
Did you not read anything he wrote? The basic system of copyright is a privilege granted to people who create things so that they may restrict what the public does with it. There are exceptions to exactly what they may restrict, which falls under fair use. If copyright did not give the creators the privilege, then you would be free to do whatever you wanted with it. You have the two concepts mixed up - it's the copyright holders that have the privilege, not the public.
They do a good job of opposing the RIP bill.
http://www.stand.org.uk/
Whoops, that should be ...Documentation/filesystems/...
/dev back.
Also, I forgot to mention that if something goes wrong, you can just pass devfs=nomount to the kernel at boot time, and get your old
B) What about DevFS? How are people going to upgrade to that? Do you just nuke /dev and run a new copy of MAKEDEV?
You don't need to nuke anything. Compile in devfs support, mounting /dev automatically, and compile & install devfsd. There is enough documentation with devfsd and in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/fs/devfs to make this easy. Then reboot. First /dev will be mounted, and then devfsd will create symlinks for all the old device names, so that your configuration won't break (depending on what's in /etc/devfsd.conf). You may need to pass 'root=/dev/whatever' to the kernel, but I can't quite remember. It's all in the documentation.
They are just trying to create a market for themselves. Trying to keep tabs on the whole internet just in case a page moves every now and again is a silly idea. The right approach is for each site author to use cron to check the links every now and again. As soon as a page moves, update your link.
I agree, it's a short-term hack until the QPL is fixed. But so far, Troll-Tech hasn't really done anything. All you have to do to fix things this way is get RMS to agree that yes, it would be nice to be able to legally combine two free pieces of software into one.
4) RMS rewrites the GPL to allow linking against QPL licensed libraries as well as GPL(LGPL) licensed libraries
Actually, that's not a bad idea. Most (L)GPLed software uses the standard "version 2 of the (L)GPL or later" wording, doesn't it? Then, if RMS just brings out (L)GPL 2.01 with an exception to the current QPL, then it would have the effect of relicensing most GPL software to include a QPL exception, wouldn't it?
Jabber - open source messaging. No doubt somebody else is posting this as I type, so sorry if it's redundant :)
I compile new kernels frequently (two yesterday, one today so far) and I don't like running LILO every time I want to use a new kernel.
Use GRUB instead.
Transhumanist? I was once allured by that philosophy, but after a while found it arrogant and sterile. I am a human, not a borg. Thank you, but I think I'll remain human...for whatever meat-based flaws that means I'll have to endure (oh the humanity).
So let me get this straight... you would refuse a pacemaker if you needed one?
I emailed Lucasarts about porting Monkey Island for free, closed source. They didn't even bother to reply. If they don't want to know about simple ports, how likely are they to want to give them away altogether?
The trouble with this is that a lot of Windows apps make assumptions that Explorer is the shell, including Explorer itself - IIRC, last time I used Litestep, when I ran Explorer to use as a file manager, it started up the taskbar etc.
Really? I must have missed those facts, because all I saw was your opinion.
Changing look and feel is the same as choosing between different UIs - look and feel is usually identical across a UI, even with tweaks, so there will be no inconsistency between apps which is what you seem to be claiming.
First of all, I didn't mention Linux at all in my post.
If my statement about MS is so wrong, then please point out the number of UIs they provide with Windows, how to alter those UIs to, for example, put the close button in a different position, or how to define different UIs for different users.
Yes, consistency is good *within* a UI. But consistency *across* UIs is useless, as users will typically pick one UI and stick with it for a relatively long time.
Users look for commonalities in menu/button placement, wording and overall look and feel.
Which I am not denying them. That is perfectly possible to achieve within a UI, whilst still being able to offer alternative UIs.
Different window manager are one of the weak points of unices, which is very much different from the lies you are trying to spread.
Please, keep your Linux zealot FUD out of this...
Which lies would they be then? FWIW, you look more of a wacko than me in this thread, accusing me of 'lying to protect my precious Linux'.
Having different interfaces (e.g. voice recognition/GUI/command line) is vital for a usable computer. So is being able to change the interfaces you are given. MS (as well as other companies) don't seem to be aware of this fact.
God forbid they check their facts *before* handing out libellous material...
I signed up to the PDF list as well. The deal was that the server was overloaded, and if you sent them your email address they would email you a PDF of the book. Two days ago they emailed me a link to download the Windows-only e-book, with no mention of the PDF. Oh, and I had to remove myself from an automatic opt-in spam list.
Did anybody get the PDF, or was it just a pack of lies to get loads of email addresses to spam?
Is it? This software is based on a block list isn't it? In that case, why do they need encyption at all? Can't they just use a one-way hash, like /etc/shadow?
It looks like they have basic security in place to avoid ballot-stuffing, but there is no way they can stop people buying votes now, is there? When you vote, you usually get the privacy to vote for what you like, no matter who tries to bribe you. But under this system, I don't see any way to stop somebody buying your vote, and making sure that you follow through by watching you as you vote over the net.