For example, MS was providing people with simple and native support for media. The EU says "no-no" and now EU versions of Windows don't have that native support. How is this helping?
The support would still be there, Media Player would not be there. It has already been demonstrated that Windows without Media Player can play back embedded media with a third-party player. MS Media Player is not required.
How does that help? It helps by making it more difficult for MS to become a monopoly in yet another field of technology. Competition is good and it helps consumers. Monopolies kill competition.
I am just trying to find out exactly what the EU thinks they will accomplish due to these sanctions on MS.
Your brain is not functioning or something?
1. They are trying to fix the problems caused by Microsoft. In this case, they are trying to bring back competition that MS has been trying to kill.
2. They are punishing Microsoft. Yes, punishing. Microsoft broke the law, and usually that is followed by a punishment as mandated by the court of law. Are you suggesting that if MS (or some other company for that matter) broke the law, they should not be punished, because it "wouldn't solve anything"? Punishments act as a deterrent. While punishing MS now might now magically fix the problems MS caused in the past, it would deter them from doing it again in the future. Asking them to not do it again is not a deterrent nor a punishment.
I was responding to the claim that Automator was an efficient replacement for bash programming
For my wife it would be. She would be infinitely more productive with Automator than with Bash-programming;).
non-experts generally don't have any more trouble learning well-designed scripting languages than graphical environments.
I beg to differ. With tools like Automator they would get instant visual cues as to what the system does. The system would just make sense. They just set each step accordingly, by choosing from drop-down boxes (with descripitve names of apps and actions) and the like, and it does the rest. It even has nice arrows point that "when this is done, I will move on to this step here". But let's look at your example:
Huh? What is "wget"? What the hell are -nd -r -l 1 -A? How do those tell the user what it's doing? The user would have to spend time going through obscure manuals. With Automator, they could simply tell the system "fetch images from this website, and make an archive out of them".
Of course, if you have the commands memorized, then typing that command is propably faster than doing the same with Automator. But ask regural user who does NOT have that knowledge to do the same with Bash and with Automator. Which will be faster? Which of them will he rather use? If you answer "Bash", you are deluding yourself.
And what is the point of Live MiniCD? Smaller size? Yeah, since CD's are so humungous that carring one around is simply too much... Size of the download? you MIGHT have a point there, but in modern world, it's becoming less and less of an issue.
RAM? The main advantage here is that the files take up little *drive space*. This is optimal for something like a Live MiniCD/Flash drive distro that needs all the space available for killer packages.
Considering that we have Live-CD's that ship with KDE and have lots of killer-packages (hell, some ship with KDE AND OpenOffice!), I REALLY fail to see the point.
I just want to pre-emptively respond to all the posts that are going to say, 'well, as usual, Linux is catching up to Microsoft and Apple a couple years after the fact.'
Apple, perhaps, but not Microsoft. Longhorn will have something like this, but Longhorn is still over a year away (at least). It might very well be that this technology will become available on Linux long before Longhorn ships. In that case, Microsoft would be catching up to Linux;).
Yes, they lost the overall case (although the punishment was minimal in the end). But why weren't they punished for this particular thing separately? Why weren't the relevant lawyers disbarred? Why weren't the people forging evidence dragged before the judge?
I agree, a lot of these implementations are kind of nifty, but not particularly useful. I looked around but couldn't find any information about how resource-intensive this is.
The demos in the website run on either Intel integrated vidcard, or on Ati Mobility Radeon 7500 (both with open-source drivers). Bot are very low-end vid-cards these days.
It seems like part of a loose trend towards bloating Linux for the desktop market.
What "bloat" are you talking about? It seems to me that both major desktops (KDE and Gnome) are getting faster and less memory-hungry with each new release. So I REALLY fail to see your point. But if you are worried about bloet, simply don't enable any of the new features, or use XFCE or something similar! Problem solved! Me? I have vid-card, CPU and memory to spare, bring on the advanced features!
There's some nice ideas in there, and some not so nice ones. The wobbly windows thing looks completely unnecessary (worse still, I get it for free when I try to drag opaque windows on a slow machine;-), and it's hard to see how it can actually improve usability.
It's not meant to improve usability. It's meant to look good and show what the tech is capable of. And I think it achieves both goals quite well.
I'm still wondering why MS got away with that. If I were the judge, and I noticed that one of the parties in the case were actually forging evidence, I would rain fire and brimstone on them! Surely at least the relevant parties could be held in contempt of the court (whatever the actual legal term is)? It seems to me that only punishment MS got for forging evidence, was that they had to apologize and promise not to do it again.
Any lawyers around here? What exactly is the punishment in the US legal system for forging evidence? Why MS got away with it?
If you actually think about it, Rambus got screwed there. They DO have alot of very nice technology. And Infineon now have access to all of it for all eternity, for a measly 47 million dollars! What did Rambus get from the deal? 47 million dollars and.... well, that's just about it. 47 million barely covers their legal-expenses in their case against Infineon!
the reason why I compared the two is that for mormons, homosexuality is apparently a "moral issue", whereas they accept polygamy (well, they stopped doing it due to outside pressure, but deep down they still think it's a good idea). I was merely interested in knowing why homosexuality is a no-no, whereas polygamy is OK. In both cses we have consenting adults. One is OK, the other one is not OK. Why? If mormons can pick and choose what are "moral issues", then they can freely put their noses in just about any issue since they can simply determine it's a "moral issue".
So, let me repeat: why is homosexuality a "moral issue", whereas polygamy is not?
Your parent poster said "except where a serious moral issue is involved", which this is.
Why is homosexuality a "moral issue", whereas polygamy is not? I woulds say that Mormons attempts to limits rights of others (in this case gays), is alot bigger "moral issue" than homosexuality itself could ever be!
Yes, I complain about others who complain. Difference is that the dup-whiners complain all the time. Take my message as constructive criticism: instead of posting 50th message saying "this is a dupe!", why not let it be? What are you guys hoping to accomplish by posting 50 messages saying "this is a dupe!". Do you think I didn't notice the first 49 similar messages? Instead of wasting your time (and mine, if I'm trying to find some relevant comments in the midst of "another dupe!"-messages) whining about the dupe, simply ignore it. You are not required to read all articles on/. you know. Simply ignore the dupes, and your life will be much easier.
But no! Some people get their panties in a bunch and start their crusade of whining. It's like they are mortally offended every time/. posts a dupe.
This is getting ridiculous! And no, I'm not talking about occasional dupe. I'm talking about how much time you guys spend talking about the dupes! Seriously, when you see a dupe, you could just think to yourself "hmmmmm, that piece of news was already posted few days ago", and move on. But no. You start to whine and complain. You tell how much Slashdot sucks because they occasionally post same piece of news twice.
Seriously: what's the problem here? So they repost news on occasion. Well Boo-fucking-hoo! How exactly does that harm you? Are you required th re-read the article in question, are you forced to re-comment on it and re-read the other comments? Why the fuck do you whine so much about it?
"Oh look!/. has AGAIN reposted an article! Instead of just ignoring it and moving on, I'll make some comments on how/. sucks because they repost articles! I'll spend several minutes explaining how disappointed I am and how they should try to avoid these situations! Yes, that's what I'm going to do! And I'll do that again in the next dupe, and again after that, and again after that....".
Again: that's just your opinion. Your opinion is different from my opinion. I liked the old Top Gear. And what are you going to do about it? Punch me in the face?
That's exactly right. The thing you forget to mention is that what you just described is INTENSELY BORING
To you perhaps, but not to me. maybe to you the current show kicks ass, but I find it to be all smoke and mirrors, with very little actual content. But hey, some guys also like to watch WWF-wrestling on TV, so what do I know? You like the show, I dislike the show. You are entitled to your opinion, as I'm to mine.
which is why the viewing figures for the old Top Gear slumped
And we all know that viewing-figures are excellent way to determine quality of a TV-show. "Survivor" has high viewing-figures, it must be good, right? If you target your show for the lowest common nominator, you will get the ratings, not matter how crappy the show is.
If you want facts and figures about cars
Funny, as I recall, the old show wasn't about some guy reading out tech-specs of the car (like you make it sound like).
This is an entertainment programme, not a factual programme.
The old show was both, IMO. The new show is nothing but entertainment, and it's not even very good entertainment.
Don't those all sound ten times better than watching Tiff spray cum all over the cabin of an RX-8 when he tries to describe its handling?
No. The old Top Gear was about the cars. They tested cars, and gave viewers information about cars. The new show is about Jeremy Clarkson. I didn't watch Top Gear because it was "hilarious". I watched it because it was insighful and informative. The new show is just cheap entertainment for the Joe Sixpack. But hey, if you enjoy that type of shows, good for you!
What, the old Top Gear where they'd do highly informative, terribly boring month-long road-tests of sub-one-litre hatchbacks suitable for decomposing pensioners and the like?
The old Top Gear, where they had knowledgeable presenters, who did interesting reviews, had interesting comments and actually gave the viewer interesting information. As opposed to the current Jeremy Clarckson "my penis is bigger than yours"-show.
Useful, maybe, but nothing beats the majesty of the new Top Gear crew attempting to destroy a Toyota Hilux by setting fire to it, drowning it in the sea and finally explosively demolishing a block of flats beneath it.
Information-value of that experiment was close to zero.But hey, I guess Joe Sixpack find it interesting because "hey, it has trucks in it. Ooooh, explosions!".
Fifth Gear is a spinoff, of sorts, of the BBC's very popular Top Gear, and is the best car review programme out there, by far.
I don't get Fifth Gear on TV around here. I used to get Top Gear though. Top Gear kicked ass, but then it turned crappy. Apparently the crew who made the Kick Ass-version of Top Gear went on and made Fifth Gear.
I'm thinking of doing that in the future. But I'm not planning to swith to OS X.
About a week ago I got my Mac Mini (my first Mac!). And for the last week I have been using it as my primary desktop (I even unplugged my main machine, so I would me more or less forced to use and learn OS X). During that week I have made the following observations:
- I absolutely love the hardware! The Mini is sexy, cool and quiet. No cheap-looking plastic or abundance of LED's. Just toned-down coolness. - OS X looks very good. It has lots of eye-candy and chrome. - iLife-apps are very good. - Stability of the system is good - Installation of apps is very easy! - I still like my Linux/KDE-combo more
Yes, I can see why some people think OS X is the greatest thing out there. The OS is very good and it looks gorgerous. But in the end, I noticed that I still missed using KDE. While OS X was good, it simply didn't do it for me.
I can see myself buying a PowerMac sometime in the future, and I can see myself running Linux on it (Well, I would propably use Mac-On-Linux as well).
Slashdot Mirror
The support would still be there, Media Player would not be there. It has already been demonstrated that Windows without Media Player can play back embedded media with a third-party player. MS Media Player is not required.
How does that help? It helps by making it more difficult for MS to become a monopoly in yet another field of technology. Competition is good and it helps consumers. Monopolies kill competition.
Your brain is not functioning or something?
1. They are trying to fix the problems caused by Microsoft. In this case, they are trying to bring back competition that MS has been trying to kill.
2. They are punishing Microsoft. Yes, punishing. Microsoft broke the law, and usually that is followed by a punishment as mandated by the court of law. Are you suggesting that if MS (or some other company for that matter) broke the law, they should not be punished, because it "wouldn't solve anything"? Punishments act as a deterrent. While punishing MS now might now magically fix the problems MS caused in the past, it would deter them from doing it again in the future. Asking them to not do it again is not a deterrent nor a punishment.
Better looking login-screen
For my wife it would be. She would be infinitely more productive with Automator than with Bash-programming
I beg to differ. With tools like Automator they would get instant visual cues as to what the system does. The system would just make sense. They just set each step accordingly, by choosing from drop-down boxes (with descripitve names of apps and actions) and the like, and it does the rest. It even has nice arrows point that "when this is done, I will move on to this step here". But let's look at your example:
wget -nd -r -l 1 -A jpg http://somehost.com/ [somehost.com] zip out.zip *.jpg
Huh? What is "wget"? What the hell are -nd -r -l 1 -A? How do those tell the user what it's doing? The user would have to spend time going through obscure manuals. With Automator, they could simply tell the system "fetch images from this website, and make an archive out of them".
Of course, if you have the commands memorized, then typing that command is propably faster than doing the same with Automator. But ask regural user who does NOT have that knowledge to do the same with Bash and with Automator. Which will be faster? Which of them will he rather use? If you answer "Bash", you are deluding yourself.
Difference between Automator and your example is that Automator is something my wife could use. Your example might as well be written in hebrew.
You mean the movie? no he did not
And what is the point of Live MiniCD? Smaller size? Yeah, since CD's are so humungous that carring one around is simply too much... Size of the download? you MIGHT have a point there, but in modern world, it's becoming less and less of an issue.
Considering that we have Live-CD's that ship with KDE and have lots of killer-packages (hell, some ship with KDE AND OpenOffice!), I REALLY fail to see the point.
KDE4 will propably have stuff like this. It should have double-buffered widgets, OpenGL-acceleration and Cairo-support, among other things.
Apple, perhaps, but not Microsoft. Longhorn will have something like this, but Longhorn is still over a year away (at least). It might very well be that this technology will become available on Linux long before Longhorn ships. In that case, Microsoft would be catching up to Linux
Yes, they lost the overall case (although the punishment was minimal in the end). But why weren't they punished for this particular thing separately? Why weren't the relevant lawyers disbarred? Why weren't the people forging evidence dragged before the judge?
The demos in the website run on either Intel integrated vidcard, or on Ati Mobility Radeon 7500 (both with open-source drivers). Bot are very low-end vid-cards these days.
What "bloat" are you talking about? It seems to me that both major desktops (KDE and Gnome) are getting faster and less memory-hungry with each new release. So I REALLY fail to see your point. But if you are worried about bloet, simply don't enable any of the new features, or use XFCE or something similar! Problem solved! Me? I have vid-card, CPU and memory to spare, bring on the advanced features!
It's not meant to improve usability. It's meant to look good and show what the tech is capable of. And I think it achieves both goals quite well.
I'm still wondering why MS got away with that. If I were the judge, and I noticed that one of the parties in the case were actually forging evidence, I would rain fire and brimstone on them! Surely at least the relevant parties could be held in contempt of the court (whatever the actual legal term is)? It seems to me that only punishment MS got for forging evidence, was that they had to apologize and promise not to do it again.
Any lawyers around here? What exactly is the punishment in the US legal system for forging evidence? Why MS got away with it?
If you actually think about it, Rambus got screwed there. They DO have alot of very nice technology. And Infineon now have access to all of it for all eternity, for a measly 47 million dollars! What did Rambus get from the deal? 47 million dollars and.... well, that's just about it. 47 million barely covers their legal-expenses in their case against Infineon!
Ars has a nice commentary on it here
the reason why I compared the two is that for mormons, homosexuality is apparently a "moral issue", whereas they accept polygamy (well, they stopped doing it due to outside pressure, but deep down they still think it's a good idea). I was merely interested in knowing why homosexuality is a no-no, whereas polygamy is OK. In both cses we have consenting adults. One is OK, the other one is not OK. Why? If mormons can pick and choose what are "moral issues", then they can freely put their noses in just about any issue since they can simply determine it's a "moral issue".
So, let me repeat: why is homosexuality a "moral issue", whereas polygamy is not?
Nope, I get your point quite well, thankyouverymuch.
Why is homosexuality a "moral issue", whereas polygamy is not? I woulds say that Mormons attempts to limits rights of others (in this case gays), is alot bigger "moral issue" than homosexuality itself could ever be!
Yes, I complain about others who complain. Difference is that the dup-whiners complain all the time. Take my message as constructive criticism: instead of posting 50th message saying "this is a dupe!", why not let it be? What are you guys hoping to accomplish by posting 50 messages saying "this is a dupe!". Do you think I didn't notice the first 49 similar messages? Instead of wasting your time (and mine, if I'm trying to find some relevant comments in the midst of "another dupe!"-messages) whining about the dupe, simply ignore it. You are not required to read all articles on /. you know. Simply ignore the dupes, and your life will be much easier.
/. posts a dupe.
But no! Some people get their panties in a bunch and start their crusade of whining. It's like they are mortally offended every time
This is getting ridiculous! And no, I'm not talking about occasional dupe. I'm talking about how much time you guys spend talking about the dupes! Seriously, when you see a dupe, you could just think to yourself "hmmmmm, that piece of news was already posted few days ago", and move on. But no. You start to whine and complain. You tell how much Slashdot sucks because they occasionally post same piece of news twice.
/. has AGAIN reposted an article! Instead of just ignoring it and moving on, I'll make some comments on how /. sucks because they repost articles! I'll spend several minutes explaining how disappointed I am and how they should try to avoid these situations! Yes, that's what I'm going to do! And I'll do that again in the next dupe, and again after that, and again after that....".
Seriously: what's the problem here? So they repost news on occasion. Well Boo-fucking-hoo! How exactly does that harm you? Are you required th re-read the article in question, are you forced to re-comment on it and re-read the other comments? Why the fuck do you whine so much about it?
"Oh look!
Again: that's just your opinion. Your opinion is different from my opinion. I liked the old Top Gear. And what are you going to do about it? Punch me in the face?
To you perhaps, but not to me. maybe to you the current show kicks ass, but I find it to be all smoke and mirrors, with very little actual content. But hey, some guys also like to watch WWF-wrestling on TV, so what do I know? You like the show, I dislike the show. You are entitled to your opinion, as I'm to mine.
And we all know that viewing-figures are excellent way to determine quality of a TV-show. "Survivor" has high viewing-figures, it must be good, right? If you target your show for the lowest common nominator, you will get the ratings, not matter how crappy the show is.
Funny, as I recall, the old show wasn't about some guy reading out tech-specs of the car (like you make it sound like).
The old show was both, IMO. The new show is nothing but entertainment, and it's not even very good entertainment.
No. The old Top Gear was about the cars. They tested cars, and gave viewers information about cars. The new show is about Jeremy Clarkson. I didn't watch Top Gear because it was "hilarious". I watched it because it was insighful and informative. The new show is just cheap entertainment for the Joe Sixpack. But hey, if you enjoy that type of shows, good for you!
The old Top Gear, where they had knowledgeable presenters, who did interesting reviews, had interesting comments and actually gave the viewer interesting information. As opposed to the current Jeremy Clarckson "my penis is bigger than yours"-show.
Information-value of that experiment was close to zero.But hey, I guess Joe Sixpack find it interesting because "hey, it has trucks in it. Ooooh, explosions!".
I don't get Fifth Gear on TV around here. I used to get Top Gear though. Top Gear kicked ass, but then it turned crappy. Apparently the crew who made the Kick Ass-version of Top Gear went on and made Fifth Gear.
I'm thinking of doing that in the future. But I'm not planning to swith to OS X.
About a week ago I got my Mac Mini (my first Mac!). And for the last week I have been using it as my primary desktop (I even unplugged my main machine, so I would me more or less forced to use and learn OS X). During that week I have made the following observations:
- I absolutely love the hardware! The Mini is sexy, cool and quiet. No cheap-looking plastic or abundance of LED's. Just toned-down coolness.
- OS X looks very good. It has lots of eye-candy and chrome.
- iLife-apps are very good.
- Stability of the system is good
- Installation of apps is very easy!
- I still like my Linux/KDE-combo more
Yes, I can see why some people think OS X is the greatest thing out there. The OS is very good and it looks gorgerous. But in the end, I noticed that I still missed using KDE. While OS X was good, it simply didn't do it for me.
I can see myself buying a PowerMac sometime in the future, and I can see myself running Linux on it (Well, I would propably use Mac-On-Linux as well).