I can't tell if you're trying to be funny. My homepage is set to my.yahoo.com and I've been using Yahoo Mail for something like 15 years now. I won't go into all the reasons why I like Yahoo and especially Yahoo Mail; if you are interested, I've posted about this several times on Slashdot.
But it boils down to (i) I like Yahoo, and (ii) I don't like Google. I am nowhere near as paranoid/conspiracy minded as the average Slashdot reader, but Google's data collection and data mining is far too pervasive for my liking.
All things considered, if a site scores high in search results because it has the most relevant results, I'm okay with scrolling down past the ads that I ignore. If I'm searching for something in a content search engine, it's because I want relevant content; the fluff surrounding that content doesn't really matter to me.
It's all very nice that Google in their infinite wisdom wants to protect me from those harmful ads that I can ignore, but to make the search results less useful is not what I consider an overall positive outcome.
(Mind you, I use Yahoo, so Google needn't listen to me too much.)
Interesting, I hadn't seen this document. Now I know why; it's an incoherent mess. The author has no clue how to construct a cogent argument, but even if he did he'd still fail because he writes about a concept in one paragraph and then in the very next paragraph blatantly twists it.
First, technically it's not being spent on enforcing U.S. laws; it's being spent on answering a cooperation request.
Secondly, as a New Zealander (who currently resides in the U.S.), this is part of being part of a good community. You have agreements with other countries, you play nice, and you expect the same in return. Good example - the ANZUS treaty which stipulated mutual defense pacts between Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S. (or at least it did until David Lange banned nuclear vessels from visiting NZ ports and the NZ/US branch went down the drain).
How would you have felt if Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur had escaped to the U.S. after bombing the Rainbow Warrior and U.S. officials refused to pick them up when New Zealand officials made that request?
all users are warned in Megaupload.comâ(TM)s âoeFrequently Asked Questionsâ and Terms of Service that they should not keep the sole copy of any file on Megaupload.com and that users bear all risk of data loss. The Mega Conspiracyâ(TM)s duty to retain any data for even a premium user explicitly ends when either the premium subscription runs out or Megaupload.com decides, at its sole discretion and without any required notice, to stop operating.
But besides this, Megaupload was not positioned as a legitimate backup site. If that's what people wanted, it sure wasn't competing against Carbonite. Numerous sources describe that if you didn't have a premium account then any files you uploaded got deleted if they weren't downloaded within a 21 day period. That's not for backups; that's purely for sharing files, for transferring files from me to you.
There are a ton of people in this story saying exactly this - if you uploaded your only copy of a file to this (or any other) cloud site, then more fool you.
Finally, my comment was about the poster I replied to talking about people being deprived of real property, and pointing out that the prevailing claim on Slashdot is that data files aren't real. One or a thousand copies of the file - according to posters here, it makes no difference in the real world.
So a data file disappears, forever? So what? Nobody's lost real property, have they? Unless you argue about all the work and effort and time spent to create that work - but now we're back to recognizing that electronic data files, despite not being real, nonetheless have "real" origins, and "real" impacts.
The debate is clearly purely semantic, but it's used constantly on Slashdot when the shoe is on the other foot and it's somehow considered an irrefutable stance.
The legitimate users of the service have lost real property
No they haven't. It has been argued time and time again on this very site that the idea of "intellectual property" is nonsense and that the loss of data does not deprive you of anything real. If it's a legitimate argument for people who download music and movies, then it's a legitimate argument in this case. Or else it's inaccurate in both cases. You can't have it both ways.
if it wants to charge the operator living in another country with some crime then it still needs to go through the normal channels for extraditing someone
shutting the site down and arresting the operators who don't even live there is international terrorism and an assault on freedom that cannot be tolerated by the rest of the world.
They shut the servers down quite legally because it was in the U.S., within their jurisdiction. That's not international terrorism or an assault on freedom. They didn't arrest the operators; they cooperated with local authorities in foreign countries and asked them to arrest the perpertrators, just like you said they should.
Next problem that can be evaporated by reading for five minutes?
I didn't say that. What I meant to strongly imply is that DDoS is totally counterproductive and accomplishes less than nothing. Someone else on here pointed out that airing dirty laundry of the bad guys might at least accomplish something. All this DDoS attack does is stir up the public's fear of anarchy and crime so that their elected representatives can scare them into supporting some nasty bit of freedom-stealing legislation that affects all of us.
Beating down SOPA by rallying all the sheep in the world was a triumph. This DDoS thing is a textbook example of shooting oneself in the foot for no purpose.
Don't forget to lube up before your **IAA masters fuck you, you fucking apologist faggot. Maybe you'll do us all a favor and DDoS your own brain.
Oh good, a mature debate, that'll help.
Perfect example of how people shoot themselves in the foot. Someone puts forward a reasonable commentary pointing out how this attack might be counterproductive and you respond with insults and without any cogent argument. Happens all the time these days on/., is a great way to annoy the wider public and fail to educate them on the issues, and is entirely without merit. Nice one, AC.
The indictment was returned in the Eastern District of Virginia, which claimed jurisdiction in part because some of the alleged pirated materials were hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Va.
To play devil's advocate here: most Slashdot readers contend that music and movie industries should stop complaining and instead "adapt their business models", because their world has been irrevocably changed by technology. You could also say that that same technology has very much changed the way criminals do their dirty work, by allowing a person in one country to administer a server or hack a system on the other side of the world, and law enforcement officials need to adapt accordingly.
This is exactly it. People may (obviously in this audience do, and do so ferociously) believe that copyright infringement laws are anachronistic, but it really ought to be obvious there's a difference, as Morty neatly says.
One situation is a company that's not adapting to legal threats to their business model. The other situation is an industry that's not adapting to illegal threats to their business model. Whether those actions in the latter case should be illegal is a separate issue; copyright infringement today is illegal, and that is the difference.
people like you want to make money by forbidding other people from using their computers / tape recorders / etc. in certain ways
I don't. I want an environment where people are free to choose how they want to engage in business. Some people choose the Red Hat model. Other people choose to sell their software. My point is that that latter group is seeing their freedom being eroded; their freedom to make a business decision and succeed or fail based on supply and demand economics. Pirates break the supply and demand chain by saying "this is worth something to me (or else why bother downloading it), but I don't want to pay for it, and hey I can get away with that."
That's cheating. If you think someone's chosen a poor business model by selling their software, then e-mail them, or find an alternative. But by pirating, you rob them of their freedom to succeed (or fail) honestly. It might be an anachronistic business model, but you're not giving them the chance to find out honestly. Don't dress it up as new technology. The technology is merely an enabler. The "new economy" as you call it is one where people no longer feel ethically obliged to obey the law and enter a contract.
At one time there were no copyrights on music, yet people still sang songs and created music instruments. At one time there were no copyrights on written works, but people still wrote books, to the point where huge libraries could be filled.
What was their incentive? Sometimes religious, often they were independently wealthy, but frequently they were supported by wealthy patrons. How does that work in your new economy, do you think?
The problem with this argument is that the examples you give are of technologies that were superceded by improved and new technologies. That's not the case here; the problem is business models that are failing because it's too easy to break the law.
I do feel sympathy for people whose role becomes an anachronism, but that's human empathy, and at a broader level I don't maintain that we should halt all progress. A more accurate analogy would be to ask if I feel sympathy for stage coach drivers who lost their jobs (or their life) because of highway robbery.
Re:Why people want to KILL SOPA?
on
SOPA and PIPA So Far
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
I can go with those three points - they make sense. I'd go with a 3a or a 4, as well - no matter what happens, something of value will be lost. And that relates directly back to point #1.
Look, I am sorry for someone whose work has been ripped off
At least you have some sense of moral outrage. The vast majority of posters seem not realize that there's anyone behind the work being pirated; it's much more convenient to ascribe everything to the faceless corporations.
Re:Why people want to KILL SOPA?
on
SOPA and PIPA So Far
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Piracy is a real problem
[citation needed]
Slashdot. No, I'm not trying to be funny. Read the articles and the extraordinary amount of self-justification and bragging from people who proudly proclaim their rationales.
No offense, but you need to find a better business model. Take a look at a security engineering text (I recommend Andersen's) for more information on why DRM will always fail you in the end. There is no such thing as a secure device in an insecure environment, and software DRM is even more vulnerable.
You will find no sympathy from me. If DRM+absurdly long copyrights+the DMCA+DHS hijacking DNS records+all the other things we are doing are not enough to keep your revenue stream flowing, then you need to find a different way to make money.
Better business model may eventually equate to a different way of making money may eventually equate to people just giving up and not producing. Pirates/downloaders will sneer and say one of two things: I'm exaggerating, or those who we lose won't matter. And yet look at how many utilities or applications come from tiny little companies or producers that grow into something huge, or never become a breakout hit but still hold a crucial place with their small but dedicated audience.
Sigh...but I'm preaching to the choir, so to speak. People here will never get it, not until they kill the goose that lays the proverbial golden egg and something important to them goes away. And then they'll still find a way to blame it on anyone but themselves.
Re:Why people want to KILL SOPA?
on
SOPA and PIPA So Far
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Nice way to skirt around the issue.
Slashdot readers overwhelmingly don't want to discuss this issue; they just want to protest and protect their own interests. And oh, posters here are ingenious at constructing defensive commentaries and expostulating semantic arguments in their favor.
How is that any different from the big baddies in the movie and music industry?
Anybody running windows on their website is highly likely running it inside.
If you're saying they're likely running it inside in some capacity, agreed. If you're arguing that running your public website on IIS automatically implies you're running all your core business processes on Windows, that's a heck of a stretch. I've never come across a business that's entirely homogeneous.
That's a bit of an overreaction to a sensible and logical post. Why insult the guy?
Consoles and PCs represent two loosely-related tools with differing advantages and disadvantages.
A console is a purpose-built system which has well known and consistent specifications and thereby allows the game designer to extract the maximum performance from it. The disadvantage is it's a very narrowly focused piece of hardware and not designed to run a spreadsheet or a word processor.
A PC is a very generic system which can have a wide spectrum of specifications, with wildly varying specifications for CPU(s), hard drive performance, graphics performance, number of background processes, peripherals, sound output, screen resolution, etc., etc. This means a lot of compromises for a game designer - they either design to the lowest common denominator or accept a reduced target audience (and even then face problems of compatibility). But a PC can run a much wider range of software.
You might just as well make a silly comparison between motorbikes and SUVs and say
So rather then dealing with the easily loaded up luggage space of the SUV, you accept the complete and total absence of luggage space of the motorbike?
SUVs aren't going to get the MPG of a motorbike, motorbikes can't transport as much stuff as an SUV. SUVs give you cover when it rains, motorbikes are more zippy and fun to throw around a corner.
It's not difficult to understand. But apparently you just wanted to be angy for some reason.
4. It's not a vocational school. Unlike traditional vocational schools, this new school will have a rigorous academic component and will prepare students for college.
It's not, at least not yet. I think a bigger problem is you have so many people posturing and proclaiming and acting as experts and simply flat-out speculating (incorrectly and/or uselessly), that the noise to signal ratio makes it less and less useful to read unless I want to spend ages digging through the cruft to figure out what's actually insightful or informative. In too many cases, merely targeting the +4 or +5 moderated posts doesn't guarantee that you're going to read something that is, you know, actually accurate.
Combined with the rampant stories on heavily political issues (copyright infringement comes to mind) where any shred of actual debate gets drowned out by all the "me too" posts, and Slashdot quite often just gets passed over by me. I don't have time.
And yet, I'm still posting here. As are plenty of people with similar (or differing) complaints. That's success for you.
I've been looking for an open source alternative to Dreamweaver, and haven't stumbled upon anything that works the way I need.
You've given a couple of criteria, but the question that I think needs to be asked/answered is why are you looking for an alternative? Is it for ideological reasons, or are you hoping for a cheaper product, or does Dreamweaver not measure up somehow, or...? Knowing the answer to that question could take the discussion on a different path.
This question crops up a lot on Slashdot ("I want an open source alternative to...") and it always generates some interesting discussions, along with mentions of products that may be new to people, and that's good. But it often seems (or is blindingly obvious) that the questioner is really just looking for an open source product "because I want to support open source". And that's fine as far as it goes, but at some point you have to go with "the best tool for the job is abc".
Depending on your context, "best" may change. For some people, the most important criterion is it's affordable. Open source sometimes meets that requirement better than closed source. But just realize that if you go for open source software just because it's open source, you may get something that's inferior in terms of feature set, ease of use, or other measures. If it's for personal use, and you're okay with that, dandy. If it's for business use, however, and you're trying to proselytize, this may not be the way to do it.
I can't see paying full price for software that is used, either. It was written once, and it's been used a zillion times since it was written. Now, the author wants me to pay full price, like it is new or something?
1. You're not paying full price, idiot. Do you have any idea how much it truly costs to develop software? Evidently not. 2. Love the bartering example. Try that at the hardware store, or the grocery store, or, well, almost anywhere. It only works in specific instances. You might just as well claim that the chainsaw you want has already been designed once and copied millions of times, so it's "fair" to only pay the cost of raw materials.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been trolled
I can't tell if you're trying to be funny. My homepage is set to my.yahoo.com and I've been using Yahoo Mail for something like 15 years now. I won't go into all the reasons why I like Yahoo and especially Yahoo Mail; if you are interested, I've posted about this several times on Slashdot.
But it boils down to (i) I like Yahoo, and (ii) I don't like Google. I am nowhere near as paranoid/conspiracy minded as the average Slashdot reader, but Google's data collection and data mining is far too pervasive for my liking.
All things considered, if a site scores high in search results because it has the most relevant results, I'm okay with scrolling down past the ads that I ignore. If I'm searching for something in a content search engine, it's because I want relevant content; the fluff surrounding that content doesn't really matter to me.
It's all very nice that Google in their infinite wisdom wants to protect me from those harmful ads that I can ignore, but to make the search results less useful is not what I consider an overall positive outcome.
(Mind you, I use Yahoo, so Google needn't listen to me too much.)
How about the first link that comes up when I searched (on Yahoo) for violence against Christians?
Interesting, I hadn't seen this document. Now I know why; it's an incoherent mess. The author has no clue how to construct a cogent argument, but even if he did he'd still fail because he writes about a concept in one paragraph and then in the very next paragraph blatantly twists it.
First, technically it's not being spent on enforcing U.S. laws; it's being spent on answering a cooperation request.
Secondly, as a New Zealander (who currently resides in the U.S.), this is part of being part of a good community. You have agreements with other countries, you play nice, and you expect the same in return. Good example - the ANZUS treaty which stipulated mutual defense pacts between Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S. (or at least it did until David Lange banned nuclear vessels from visiting NZ ports and the NZ/US branch went down the drain).
How would you have felt if Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur had escaped to the U.S. after bombing the Rainbow Warrior and U.S. officials refused to pick them up when New Zealand officials made that request?
Fair point. Just remember - two wrongs don't make a right.
A lot of people on /. and elsewhere also do not want the system to work BOTH ways - only the way that is convenient for them.
According to the indictment:
all users are warned in Megaupload.comâ(TM)s âoeFrequently Asked Questionsâ and Terms of Service that they should not keep the sole copy of any file on Megaupload.com and that users bear all risk of data loss. The Mega Conspiracyâ(TM)s duty to retain any data for even a premium user explicitly ends when either the premium subscription runs out or Megaupload.com decides, at its sole discretion and without any required notice, to stop operating.
But besides this, Megaupload was not positioned as a legitimate backup site. If that's what people wanted, it sure wasn't competing against Carbonite. Numerous sources describe that if you didn't have a premium account then any files you uploaded got deleted if they weren't downloaded within a 21 day period. That's not for backups; that's purely for sharing files, for transferring files from me to you.
There are a ton of people in this story saying exactly this - if you uploaded your only copy of a file to this (or any other) cloud site, then more fool you.
Finally, my comment was about the poster I replied to talking about people being deprived of real property, and pointing out that the prevailing claim on Slashdot is that data files aren't real. One or a thousand copies of the file - according to posters here, it makes no difference in the real world.
So a data file disappears, forever? So what? Nobody's lost real property, have they? Unless you argue about all the work and effort and time spent to create that work - but now we're back to recognizing that electronic data files, despite not being real, nonetheless have "real" origins, and "real" impacts.
The debate is clearly purely semantic, but it's used constantly on Slashdot when the shoe is on the other foot and it's somehow considered an irrefutable stance.
The legitimate users of the service have lost real property
No they haven't. It has been argued time and time again on this very site that the idea of "intellectual property" is nonsense and that the loss of data does not deprive you of anything real. If it's a legitimate argument for people who download music and movies, then it's a legitimate argument in this case. Or else it's inaccurate in both cases. You can't have it both ways.
if it wants to charge the operator living in another country with some crime then it still needs to go through the normal channels for extraditing someone
They did. Dotcom, Batato, Ortmann and another individual charged were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand, by local authorities on Thursday and will face extradition hearings, the U.S. Justice Department said.
shutting the site down and arresting the operators who don't even live there is international terrorism and an assault on freedom that cannot be tolerated by the rest of the world.
They shut the servers down quite legally because it was in the U.S., within their jurisdiction. That's not international terrorism or an assault on freedom. They didn't arrest the operators; they cooperated with local authorities in foreign countries and asked them to arrest the perpertrators, just like you said they should.
Next problem that can be evaporated by reading for five minutes?
We should all just roll over and do nothing
I didn't say that. What I meant to strongly imply is that DDoS is totally counterproductive and accomplishes less than nothing. Someone else on here pointed out that airing dirty laundry of the bad guys might at least accomplish something. All this DDoS attack does is stir up the public's fear of anarchy and crime so that their elected representatives can scare them into supporting some nasty bit of freedom-stealing legislation that affects all of us.
Beating down SOPA by rallying all the sheep in the world was a triumph. This DDoS thing is a textbook example of shooting oneself in the foot for no purpose.
Don't forget to lube up before your **IAA masters fuck you, you fucking apologist faggot. Maybe you'll do us all a favor and DDoS your own brain.
Oh good, a mature debate, that'll help.
Perfect example of how people shoot themselves in the foot. Someone puts forward a reasonable commentary pointing out how this attack might be counterproductive and you respond with insults and without any cogent argument. Happens all the time these days on /., is a great way to annoy the wider public and fail to educate them on the issues, and is entirely without merit. Nice one, AC.
The indictment was returned in the Eastern District of Virginia, which claimed jurisdiction in part because some of the alleged pirated materials were hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Va.
To play devil's advocate here: most Slashdot readers contend that music and movie industries should stop complaining and instead "adapt their business models", because their world has been irrevocably changed by technology. You could also say that that same technology has very much changed the way criminals do their dirty work, by allowing a person in one country to administer a server or hack a system on the other side of the world, and law enforcement officials need to adapt accordingly.
Would mod you up if I could.
This is exactly it. People may (obviously in this audience do, and do so ferociously) believe that copyright infringement laws are anachronistic, but it really ought to be obvious there's a difference, as Morty neatly says.
One situation is a company that's not adapting to legal threats to their business model. The other situation is an industry that's not adapting to illegal threats to their business model. Whether those actions in the latter case should be illegal is a separate issue; copyright infringement today is illegal, and that is the difference.
Mmm-hmm...
people like you want to make money by forbidding other people from using their computers / tape recorders / etc. in certain ways
I don't. I want an environment where people are free to choose how they want to engage in business. Some people choose the Red Hat model. Other people choose to sell their software. My point is that that latter group is seeing their freedom being eroded; their freedom to make a business decision and succeed or fail based on supply and demand economics. Pirates break the supply and demand chain by saying "this is worth something to me (or else why bother downloading it), but I don't want to pay for it, and hey I can get away with that."
That's cheating. If you think someone's chosen a poor business model by selling their software, then e-mail them, or find an alternative. But by pirating, you rob them of their freedom to succeed (or fail) honestly. It might be an anachronistic business model, but you're not giving them the chance to find out honestly. Don't dress it up as new technology. The technology is merely an enabler. The "new economy" as you call it is one where people no longer feel ethically obliged to obey the law and enter a contract.
At one time there were no copyrights on music, yet people still sang songs and created music instruments. At one time there were no copyrights on written works, but people still wrote books, to the point where huge libraries could be filled.
What was their incentive? Sometimes religious, often they were independently wealthy, but frequently they were supported by wealthy patrons. How does that work in your new economy, do you think?
The problem with this argument is that the examples you give are of technologies that were superceded by improved and new technologies. That's not the case here; the problem is business models that are failing because it's too easy to break the law.
I do feel sympathy for people whose role becomes an anachronism, but that's human empathy, and at a broader level I don't maintain that we should halt all progress. A more accurate analogy would be to ask if I feel sympathy for stage coach drivers who lost their jobs (or their life) because of highway robbery.
I can go with those three points - they make sense. I'd go with a 3a or a 4, as well - no matter what happens, something of value will be lost. And that relates directly back to point #1.
Look, I am sorry for someone whose work has been ripped off
At least you have some sense of moral outrage. The vast majority of posters seem not realize that there's anyone behind the work being pirated; it's much more convenient to ascribe everything to the faceless corporations.
Piracy is a real problem
[citation needed]
Slashdot. No, I'm not trying to be funny. Read the articles and the extraordinary amount of self-justification and bragging from people who proudly proclaim their rationales.
No offense, but you need to find a better business model. Take a look at a security engineering text (I recommend Andersen's) for more information on why DRM will always fail you in the end. There is no such thing as a secure device in an insecure environment, and software DRM is even more vulnerable.
You will find no sympathy from me. If DRM+absurdly long copyrights+the DMCA+DHS hijacking DNS records+all the other things we are doing are not enough to keep your revenue stream flowing, then you need to find a different way to make money.
Better business model may eventually equate to a different way of making money may eventually equate to people just giving up and not producing. Pirates/downloaders will sneer and say one of two things: I'm exaggerating, or those who we lose won't matter. And yet look at how many utilities or applications come from tiny little companies or producers that grow into something huge, or never become a breakout hit but still hold a crucial place with their small but dedicated audience.
Sigh...but I'm preaching to the choir, so to speak. People here will never get it, not until they kill the goose that lays the proverbial golden egg and something important to them goes away. And then they'll still find a way to blame it on anyone but themselves.
Nice way to skirt around the issue.
Slashdot readers overwhelmingly don't want to discuss this issue; they just want to protest and protect their own interests. And oh, posters here are ingenious at constructing defensive commentaries and expostulating semantic arguments in their favor.
How is that any different from the big baddies in the movie and music industry?
Anybody running windows on their website is highly likely running it inside.
If you're saying they're likely running it inside in some capacity, agreed. If you're arguing that running your public website on IIS automatically implies you're running all your core business processes on Windows, that's a heck of a stretch. I've never come across a business that's entirely homogeneous.
That's a bit of an overreaction to a sensible and logical post. Why insult the guy?
Consoles and PCs represent two loosely-related tools with differing advantages and disadvantages.
A console is a purpose-built system which has well known and consistent specifications and thereby allows the game designer to extract the maximum performance from it. The disadvantage is it's a very narrowly focused piece of hardware and not designed to run a spreadsheet or a word processor.
A PC is a very generic system which can have a wide spectrum of specifications, with wildly varying specifications for CPU(s), hard drive performance, graphics performance, number of background processes, peripherals, sound output, screen resolution, etc., etc. This means a lot of compromises for a game designer - they either design to the lowest common denominator or accept a reduced target audience (and even then face problems of compatibility). But a PC can run a much wider range of software.
You might just as well make a silly comparison between motorbikes and SUVs and say
So rather then dealing with the easily loaded up luggage space of the SUV, you accept the complete and total absence of luggage space of the motorbike?
SUVs aren't going to get the MPG of a motorbike, motorbikes can't transport as much stuff as an SUV. SUVs give you cover when it rains, motorbikes are more zippy and fun to throw around a corner.
It's not difficult to understand. But apparently you just wanted to be angy for some reason.
This sounds like a trade school.
Unless you read the article.
4. It's not a vocational school. Unlike traditional vocational schools, this new school will have a rigorous academic component and will prepare students for college.
It's not, at least not yet. I think a bigger problem is you have so many people posturing and proclaiming and acting as experts and simply flat-out speculating (incorrectly and/or uselessly), that the noise to signal ratio makes it less and less useful to read unless I want to spend ages digging through the cruft to figure out what's actually insightful or informative. In too many cases, merely targeting the +4 or +5 moderated posts doesn't guarantee that you're going to read something that is, you know, actually accurate.
Combined with the rampant stories on heavily political issues (copyright infringement comes to mind) where any shred of actual debate gets drowned out by all the "me too" posts, and Slashdot quite often just gets passed over by me. I don't have time.
And yet, I'm still posting here. As are plenty of people with similar (or differing) complaints. That's success for you.
I've been looking for an open source alternative to Dreamweaver, and haven't stumbled upon anything that works the way I need.
You've given a couple of criteria, but the question that I think needs to be asked/answered is why are you looking for an alternative? Is it for ideological reasons, or are you hoping for a cheaper product, or does Dreamweaver not measure up somehow, or...? Knowing the answer to that question could take the discussion on a different path.
This question crops up a lot on Slashdot ("I want an open source alternative to ...") and it always generates some interesting discussions, along with mentions of products that may be new to people, and that's good. But it often seems (or is blindingly obvious) that the questioner is really just looking for an open source product "because I want to support open source". And that's fine as far as it goes, but at some point you have to go with "the best tool for the job is abc".
Depending on your context, "best" may change. For some people, the most important criterion is it's affordable. Open source sometimes meets that requirement better than closed source. But just realize that if you go for open source software just because it's open source, you may get something that's inferior in terms of feature set, ease of use, or other measures. If it's for personal use, and you're okay with that, dandy. If it's for business use, however, and you're trying to proselytize, this may not be the way to do it.
To each their own.
I can't see paying full price for software that is used, either. It was written once, and it's been used a zillion times since it was written. Now, the author wants me to pay full price, like it is new or something?
1. You're not paying full price, idiot. Do you have any idea how much it truly costs to develop software? Evidently not.
2. Love the bartering example. Try that at the hardware store, or the grocery store, or, well, almost anywhere. It only works in specific instances. You might just as well claim that the chainsaw you want has already been designed once and copied millions of times, so it's "fair" to only pay the cost of raw materials.
So like Bonch said:
Come in handy for what? Piracy?
Why is that good?
Yes, for piracy.
Why is that good?