Besides, Dapper is supposed to be the last of the brown releases.
Oh no! Seriously? Because I *love* the brown. In fact, Dapper is already looking a little more orange and less brown than I'd care for. I want an even more earth-toned theme. Why does everything about your computer have to look all metallic and "future"? Can't it be a little more, well... human? (Which, BTW, I thought was the point of the Ubuntu theme, which is why I'm disappointed to hear they're going to change it.)
In fact, just WTF is with all the dancing themes on distributions? I liked the look of Suse 9.3 just fine, and then Suse 10 shows up and they've changed it all around. Doesn't anybody realize that these Linux distributions don't always work that great? They have hardware issues and a lot of the software is in a state of constant devleopment. Wouldn't it be great to have a Linux distribution that concentrates on fixing bugs and adding features, and NOT pulling the rug out from under you every six months, just when you've had a chance to get used to its look and feel? Look at Mac OS X, for example -- regular updates all the time, full point releases... and everything pretty much looks the same (except the steady encroachment of the brushed-metal theme, but I digress).
Part of what makes DeCSS a copy protection scheme is that you can't do bit-for-bit copies of CSS encoded discs. You can't write CSS information to DVD-R media; it doesn't support it, even on the so-called "Authoring" grade media.
OSS people need to think more marketing driven. Had I been the one in charge of making the Ogg Vorbis thing, I probably would have looked at calling it something that made reference to MP3. Call it MP5 maybe, for 5th Gen Music Packer.
But then, that would have been really stupid, because MP3 doesn't stand for "Third Gen Music Packer" and there is no Audio Layer 5 of the MPEG standard, so your name would actually have had nothing to do with MP3. I'll take a silly-sounding brand name over a technically inaccurate one any day.
God knows how long I put off learning the ins and outs of Linux distros because of the Linux catch-22: Linux sackriders go on about the superiority of Linux and insist that you're still living in the Dark Ages if you're using Windows, yet if you even feign interest in wanting to learn and perhaps getting some guidance from them, they shun you for being a newbie.
Yeah? So what else is new?
This isn't really anything to do with Linux. It's "Computer Geek Syndrome," plain and simple -- the feeling of superiority a nerdy, introverted person gets when he realizes he understands something better than someone else does. Some people who only ever use Windows have this same anti-n00b attitude. The only difference is that they don't scare anybody away from using Windows, because all the computers come with Windows installed. Thus, you either put up with that obnoxious nerd when you have computer problems, or you go looking for nicer, knowledgable friends.
Like most large electronics companies, there seem to be a lot of heads working in different directions at Philips. They may be the ones to have invented this ad-locking technology, but they were also among the first to mass-produce DVD players that can play DivX and distribute them to the mass American audience. So in effect, they are helping to make it possible for you to give up on all the ad-saturated channels of media and entertainment and just download those episodes of Lost from BitTorrent sites (like you do now).
Ellison's announcement was not about acquiring Novell--it was an announcement meant to punish Red Hat for acquiring JBoss out from under Oracle's nose. If Ellison can't have JBoss, he's threatening to compete directly against the firm that has it.
"If Ellison can't have JBoss" -- ummmm. Do you really think Red Hat could have stopped Oracle from acquiring JBoss, if that's what Ellison really wanted? Obviously Oracle evaluated the option and passed on it.
When I first installed Rockbox I liked all the features you list here (and especially the gapless playback, something my iRiver H120 won't do) but I didn't really care for the UI.
So I downloaded a few more skins from the homepage. None of those really did it for me either. I was stumped and frustrated. So frustrated I began poking around inside the UI files.
About an hour later I had downloaded a nice, weighty Helvetica font from a Web site and tweaked one of the skin files to have the correct positioning info for the graphical elements to account for the new font metrics -- and voila! That's the Rockbox skin I use to this day. I like it better than the one iRiver ships the device with, in fact.
So to all you haters who don't even own iPods who snicker and moan "why would you want a GPL iPod, who cares" -- well, that's why you care. And believe it or not there once was a time when everything worked that way. As recently as the 1980s, if you had a car and it had engine troubles, you could work on it yourself. In maybe the 1960s and early 1970s, if you bought yourself a battery-powered radio and you went to change the batteries, chances are you might have found a schematic diagram of how the radio was built pasted to the inside of the battery compartment. You think GPL media players are only for dorks? I say being spoon-fed pablum is for babies. This idea that products arrive at your door like the manufacturer built them and you do what the manufacturer wanted you to do with them and when you don't like it anymore you throw it away is fundamentally f'ed up. It's a product of the modern disposable consumer culture that, if you're really a geek, you should be fighting against. The iPod is a very nice device with a great UI -- but if there's something about it that you don't like, then why shouldn't you be empowered to change it?
I bought an iRiver H320 specifically because Rockbox development had advanced to the point that it could reproduce the features of the stock firmware. These days, it's gone lightyears beyond what iRiver had planned.
For the H120, also. Maybe the biggest feature the Rockbox firmware brings is true gapless playback for all formats except MP3 -- and then again, if you encode your MP3s with LAME (and who doesn't?) you can get gapless with those, too. This is a feature that iRiver promised H120 owners but never delivered. Thanks Rockbox!
This sounds really interesting... I think. I just wish I could understand what the hell you were talking about. Maybe you need to bombard me with direct mail so your point gets top of mind and I can remember it and write it down for when a real journal comes in?
I am NOT saying you have made such a claim, but I wonder if you got your examples from those who do.
Nope, I made them up almost at random. Mostly from wondering how the hell evolution arrives at a stick insect and whether anyone had ever found a half-stick insect. (I wouldn't say the difference between a centipede and a stick insect is as big as you say, though -- they're both arthropods, after all, unlike dogs or jellyfish.)
But yours was a pretty good answer; it honestly hadn't occurred to me that you'd have a hard time finding evidence of any of the above.
Serious question for any evolution scientists out there: How come we're always just looking for the "missing link" for the human species? Have we found many other "missing links"?
It seems to me that nature is full of all sorts of implausible creatures -- the stick insect, for example. Have we ever found the missing link between, say, a primordial centipede and the stick insect? Or is there a type of ancient toucan that has a beak that's not quite as big and not quite as colorful as the ones we see today? Are there ancestors of the manta ray that aren't so flat?
How many really obvious "links" are actually out there?
Bottom line: The occasional submission; OK, regular submissions; they're using us.
Using you? Using you how?
I work for a technology magazine that covers news, reviews, and feature articles related to application development, Linux and open source, databases, security and identity management, yadda yadda. If I submit my magazine's articles to Slashdot, am I using you? Maybe I should just wait around for someone else to submit them -- would you feel less "used" then? Suppose I submit stuff for friends who work for other publications -- is it a conspiracy?
The reality is that I submit stories very rarely and when I do they usually get rejected -- just like you. So where's the problem?
Again, instead of saying "Product" or "Service", which is *exactly* what we're discussing here, you'll use the Web 2.0 version, namely "Deliverable".
I'm sorry, but you're just ranting here. The word "deliverable" has nothing to do with Web 2.0. It's business jargon that's been around for years and years. It has nothing to do with products or services either. A deliverable might be a report, an e-mail, or a piece of software that gets installed on a server. It's something that somebody is expected to get done. When it's done, they have delivered it. It's a deliverable.
I've been a computer graphic artist for 20 years. Back when it was SuperPaint, Deluxe Paint, Pixel Paint Pro... I still drew with traditional tools on a very regular basis. Today, my drawing skills are just about shot. I'm having to re-learn basic drawing skills.
I'm not sure I understand this. So... you sit down at the computer, you pick up your Wacom pen and... what's changed?
I, for one, have the bad habit of going for years without using my basic drawing skills, and they never go away... in fact, they actually seem to improve with time.
Rendering skills -- that is, knowing how to use a particular tool to finish a drawing in a particular medium (like drawing lines with a fine-tip paintbrush, for example) -- are something else. Those are sort of like knowing how to play an instrument. It's muscle memory; once you stop, it takes a while to get back to where you were. But I've seen no evidence that drawing skills just "atrophy" for no reason.
Really. A paper-pusher from the public policy department of what is in essence a law firm, getting hired to a government job? Now I've seen everything.
Why does everything have to be all or nothing? There's nothing stopping an Oracle shop from using PostgreSQL here and there. Plus you've got EnterpriseDB, which bolts Oracle compatibility onto PostgreSQL for a little bit of the best of both worlds. Go ahead and pay Oracle for the top end of what their feature set lets you do and use PostgreSQL for the rest.
The more important point is that governments deal in records that are meant to be more or less permanent, or at minimum long-lived. Proprietary formats exist at the whim of a single supplier -- a software company -- and those suppliers are subject to the whims of the market like any other company.
If I buy some paper from the Bienfang company and write a report on it, that report will still exist and be readable possibly for hundreds of years after Bienfang goes out of business. If Microsoft stops making a word processor or (god forbid) goes out of business, the situation may be different.
"So what," you say, "just reverse engineer it." But what if, in the intervening years, Microsoft has successfully lobbied for laws that make that a criminal offense? We're talking about future-proofing data here; whether it's implausible is not really the point. The point is that using a closed format introduced risk.
Another, more likely scenario: Microsoft subtly changes its format, or changes the way that newer versions of its software interprets the older format files. The government is forced to upgrade because Microsoft stops supporting the older version of the program, but the newer version does weird things to all those old records when it opens them.
There are various reasons to choose true open formats and standards beyond ideological ones.
Yes, I consider myself a tech enthusiast and know my way around most things electronic (and mechanical) pretty well. I would not be posting here if I wasn't.
But to make a blanket statement that people who are techies have poor health habits is absurd.
And the funny thing is, for all the people here who seem to be up in arms about the article, nowhere does the author make that statement. All he says is that, in his practice, he sees recurrent themes of health problems that can be attributed to behaviors, behaviors which he thinks of as being part of "the geek lifestyle" based on his own personal experience.
Said health problems can be summed up so:
People who have poor sleep habits have trouble sleeping.
Environmental issues in the office can cause headaches, as can undiagnosed eyesight problems.
Poor attention to ergonomics can also cause back pain.
A work environment that encourages "multitasking" and constant interruptions can lead to mental fatigue and difficulty concentrating.
Nowhere does he say anything about couch potatoes, sedentary lifestyles, eating Cheez Doodles and drinking Mountain Dew, or any of the other things that people assume he's talking about because, as usual, they have not RTFA.
Do you voluntarily support an organization that believes that it has a right to force people to support it?
NPR doesn't believe in any such thing. The government believes it has a right to force people to support it. People pay the government money. That money becomes a pool. NPR is merely opportunistic in asking for some of that pool. I'd certainly rather it went to NPR than to building more robot weapons to exterminate the poor in the Middle East.
What's more, anybody who listens to public radio or watches public TV should know by now that the amount of government money that goes toward public stations is comparatively tiny. More than half of the operating funds of an NPR affiliate come from the members.
So if you really believe that having your taxes support NPR is wrong, you have two imperatives: One, you must lobby, write your Congressional representatives, and vote whenever you can to have public funding for the arts eliminated. And then you must donate to the stations yourself. The more tax money you take away, you should be prepared to increase your own donation.
Right? Because the argument is not that NPR is bad and should go away -- right?
Well, press becomes less of a threat if you treat them nicely, obviously.
Of course. But the standard technique for dealing with press types for whom you have contempt is to try the "baffle them with bullshit" routine -- this guy has no clue what I'm talking about so I'll just make up some big speech and then walk away while his head's still spinning. I didn't get that from Fleury. Does he make with the hard-hittin' business talk? Sure. But I really do think that's what a lot of customers are looking for, particularly when it comes to assuaging their fears about the viability of open source companies.
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In fact, just WTF is with all the dancing themes on distributions? I liked the look of Suse 9.3 just fine, and then Suse 10 shows up and they've changed it all around. Doesn't anybody realize that these Linux distributions don't always work that great? They have hardware issues and a lot of the software is in a state of constant devleopment. Wouldn't it be great to have a Linux distribution that concentrates on fixing bugs and adding features, and NOT pulling the rug out from under you every six months, just when you've had a chance to get used to its look and feel? Look at Mac OS X, for example -- regular updates all the time, full point releases... and everything pretty much looks the same (except the steady encroachment of the brushed-metal theme, but I digress).
Part of what makes DeCSS a copy protection scheme is that you can't do bit-for-bit copies of CSS encoded discs. You can't write CSS information to DVD-R media; it doesn't support it, even on the so-called "Authoring" grade media.
Strongly dislike Ubuntu? I've yet to hear any reason for that other than "the name sounds stupid." So by all means, elaborate.
This isn't really anything to do with Linux. It's "Computer Geek Syndrome," plain and simple -- the feeling of superiority a nerdy, introverted person gets when he realizes he understands something better than someone else does. Some people who only ever use Windows have this same anti-n00b attitude. The only difference is that they don't scare anybody away from using Windows, because all the computers come with Windows installed. Thus, you either put up with that obnoxious nerd when you have computer problems, or you go looking for nicer, knowledgable friends.
Like most large electronics companies, there seem to be a lot of heads working in different directions at Philips. They may be the ones to have invented this ad-locking technology, but they were also among the first to mass-produce DVD players that can play DivX and distribute them to the mass American audience. So in effect, they are helping to make it possible for you to give up on all the ad-saturated channels of media and entertainment and just download those episodes of Lost from BitTorrent sites (like you do now).
I just hope it doesn't return to Earth and go berzerk. Lee Majors is looking a little long in the tooth to do anything about it these days.
When I first installed Rockbox I liked all the features you list here (and especially the gapless playback, something my iRiver H120 won't do) but I didn't really care for the UI.
So I downloaded a few more skins from the homepage. None of those really did it for me either. I was stumped and frustrated. So frustrated I began poking around inside the UI files.
About an hour later I had downloaded a nice, weighty Helvetica font from a Web site and tweaked one of the skin files to have the correct positioning info for the graphical elements to account for the new font metrics -- and voila! That's the Rockbox skin I use to this day. I like it better than the one iRiver ships the device with, in fact.
So to all you haters who don't even own iPods who snicker and moan "why would you want a GPL iPod, who cares" -- well, that's why you care. And believe it or not there once was a time when everything worked that way. As recently as the 1980s, if you had a car and it had engine troubles, you could work on it yourself. In maybe the 1960s and early 1970s, if you bought yourself a battery-powered radio and you went to change the batteries, chances are you might have found a schematic diagram of how the radio was built pasted to the inside of the battery compartment. You think GPL media players are only for dorks? I say being spoon-fed pablum is for babies. This idea that products arrive at your door like the manufacturer built them and you do what the manufacturer wanted you to do with them and when you don't like it anymore you throw it away is fundamentally f'ed up. It's a product of the modern disposable consumer culture that, if you're really a geek, you should be fighting against. The iPod is a very nice device with a great UI -- but if there's something about it that you don't like, then why shouldn't you be empowered to change it?
This sounds really interesting ... I think. I just wish I could understand what the hell you were talking about. Maybe you need to bombard me with direct mail so your point gets top of mind and I can remember it and write it down for when a real journal comes in?
But yours was a pretty good answer; it honestly hadn't occurred to me that you'd have a hard time finding evidence of any of the above.
Serious question for any evolution scientists out there: How come we're always just looking for the "missing link" for the human species? Have we found many other "missing links"?
It seems to me that nature is full of all sorts of implausible creatures -- the stick insect, for example. Have we ever found the missing link between, say, a primordial centipede and the stick insect? Or is there a type of ancient toucan that has a beak that's not quite as big and not quite as colorful as the ones we see today? Are there ancestors of the manta ray that aren't so flat?
How many really obvious "links" are actually out there?
I work for a technology magazine that covers news, reviews, and feature articles related to application development, Linux and open source, databases, security and identity management, yadda yadda. If I submit my magazine's articles to Slashdot, am I using you? Maybe I should just wait around for someone else to submit them -- would you feel less "used" then? Suppose I submit stuff for friends who work for other publications -- is it a conspiracy?
The reality is that I submit stories very rarely and when I do they usually get rejected -- just like you. So where's the problem?
I, for one, have the bad habit of going for years without using my basic drawing skills, and they never go away... in fact, they actually seem to improve with time.
Rendering skills -- that is, knowing how to use a particular tool to finish a drawing in a particular medium (like drawing lines with a fine-tip paintbrush, for example) -- are something else. Those are sort of like knowing how to play an instrument. It's muscle memory; once you stop, it takes a while to get back to where you were. But I've seen no evidence that drawing skills just "atrophy" for no reason.
Really. A paper-pusher from the public policy department of what is in essence a law firm, getting hired to a government job? Now I've seen everything.
Why does everything have to be all or nothing? There's nothing stopping an Oracle shop from using PostgreSQL here and there. Plus you've got EnterpriseDB, which bolts Oracle compatibility onto PostgreSQL for a little bit of the best of both worlds. Go ahead and pay Oracle for the top end of what their feature set lets you do and use PostgreSQL for the rest.
The more important point is that governments deal in records that are meant to be more or less permanent, or at minimum long-lived. Proprietary formats exist at the whim of a single supplier -- a software company -- and those suppliers are subject to the whims of the market like any other company.
If I buy some paper from the Bienfang company and write a report on it, that report will still exist and be readable possibly for hundreds of years after Bienfang goes out of business. If Microsoft stops making a word processor or (god forbid) goes out of business, the situation may be different.
"So what," you say, "just reverse engineer it." But what if, in the intervening years, Microsoft has successfully lobbied for laws that make that a criminal offense? We're talking about future-proofing data here; whether it's implausible is not really the point. The point is that using a closed format introduced risk.
Another, more likely scenario: Microsoft subtly changes its format, or changes the way that newer versions of its software interprets the older format files. The government is forced to upgrade because Microsoft stops supporting the older version of the program, but the newer version does weird things to all those old records when it opens them.
There are various reasons to choose true open formats and standards beyond ideological ones.
Said health problems can be summed up so:
Nowhere does he say anything about couch potatoes, sedentary lifestyles, eating Cheez Doodles and drinking Mountain Dew, or any of the other things that people assume he's talking about because, as usual, they have not RTFA.
What's more, anybody who listens to public radio or watches public TV should know by now that the amount of government money that goes toward public stations is comparatively tiny. More than half of the operating funds of an NPR affiliate come from the members.
So if you really believe that having your taxes support NPR is wrong, you have two imperatives: One, you must lobby, write your Congressional representatives, and vote whenever you can to have public funding for the arts eliminated. And then you must donate to the stations yourself. The more tax money you take away, you should be prepared to increase your own donation.
Right? Because the argument is not that NPR is bad and should go away -- right?