I'm a bit of a Google fanboy, but I chekced out the Calendar and was nonplussed. I've been using Kiko (http://www.kiko.com/ for a while now, and it does everything Google Calendar currently does, in a nicer interface (at least in my opinion). iCal import and RSS subscription, flexible AJAX-y interface, etc. But the appointment creation interface is niftier to me: I can just write 'Fill out reports' and then add in catgories, locations, and contact invitations later as in the Google version, or I can write:
Fill Out Reports @Office +bob@mywork.com [Work]
And Kiko knows what to do, creates my appointment and sets the Location as 'Office', the category as 'Work', and invites Bob via email, with no extra clciking or form filling on my end. Also, I can create an appointment and write 'Pay Phone Bill Every Month', or 'Call Accountant Every Week' and it does the Right Thing and creates automatically repeating appointments with no extra work on my part.
It can also send appointment reminders via email, IM (AOL only at this point), or even SMS, which is handy as heck when I'm out of the office. Calendar sharing with contacts or the poublic at large is dead easy too.
Plus, there's more features, such as syncing, coming. If you like Google Calendar, do yourself a favor and check out Kiko. It's free too and I, at least, like it a lot better right now. (And, no I don't work for them, but I have corresponded with a couple of the Kiko folks over email, and they are *very* responsive, quick, and nice, so I'm rooting for them.:)
I'm sorry, if I allready paid for the machine, and on top of that, I'm paying a monthly fee for the service, I do *not* find it acceptable to have the service push ads at me. If you're going to be pushing ads at me, then start refunding my monthly fee. That's the way things work for me. I'm willing to pay you for your service, no problem. But I'm going to pay you in *either* cash or ads, not both. And seeing as part of the reason I got a Tivo was to skip ads, then replacing those ads with other ads is *not* acceptable to me.
Looks like it's time to finally sit down and build that MythTV box I've been thinking about.
You do make a good point there, actually. I've left my home Linux machine (running KDE) on and had friends who use Windows and don't know the first thing about Linux sit at it, and after a bit of fumbling through the menus to find my Firefox, or simply clicking the Firefox icon on my desktop, they're happily surfing along and barely even notice they're not on Windows, they just figure I must be using some funky 'skin' on my Windows desktop. The one thing that always gets them is the double-clicking thing, since I have it set to the usual Linux single-click mode of operation, so they often end up opening the same program twice.
That having been said, however, although they may not normally care what OS is running so long as their apps run, the moment you mention that they're using Linux, or simply that it's not *windows* their machine is running, they immeditely become freakin' morons. "Oh, I don't know how to use that Leenooks stuff. I heard it's hard.". Likewise, if you offer them a computer, the moment you mention it's not running Windows, they get a scared look in their eyes, start going on about how they don't know anything about how to use that Linux stuff, and start reiterating over and over that what they use at work/home/grandma's house is Windows.
Despite the fact that if they just sit down with it for 5 minutes, the average Windows user can pick up a KDE desktop with little or no effort, the word 'Windows' has become a sort of security blanket for a lot of them. Since they've used it before, they *think* they know it.. And they always want what they allready know. Linux is new, it's different, it's strange. It's not even spelled anything at all like Windows.;) And they generally will resist it, at least in my experience. They want their Windows, they think it's what makes their computer work, and they think they know how to use it and that they won't know how to use anything else. The reality is otherwise, of course, but in this case, perception matters as much, if not more.
As to how to change this perception/mindset? No clue. But I'm working on it.:)
Actually, I think it's you who's missing the point. First off, to get it out of the way, I hate MS, I use Linux at home, blah blah blah.
Anyway... have you ever worked for a large company, say, a bank or large corporate office, with procurement policies? I think you haven't, otherwise you would know that just telling them "Just buy a couple hundred motherboards, HDD's, CPU's, RAM sticks, cases, monitors, keyboards and mice and have your techie guy working in the basement put them together for you over your lunch break and install Linux on them." just ain't gonna fly. They are large companies, they do business, their business is not computers, but they need computers to run their business, so they look for other large companies that assure them that they are getting solid computers that will get the job done. They're going to buy Dell, or HP, or IBM. They are *not* going to show up at Bob's Discount Linux Shop and order a couple hundred desktops. And they are not going to give their one IT guy back in the server room a pile of components. They are going to go with a large supplier who will deliver a bunch of pre-built, pr-econfigured machines that they can plug into their network, put their username and password in, and get to work.
As for mom and dad and grandma, you try telling them to buy the components and build it themselves. Or telling them to go to Bob's Discount Linux Shop when they can get the same computer with an OS they allready know, and often for a couple hundred dollars less thanks to the discounts the big companies offer that small shops just can't match. They want a computer thay can buy, plug in, and start sharing pictures. They don't know, or care, about Linux or wether it's better/cheaper/sexier. They didn't buy a windows machine. They bought a Dell.
The point the guy makes in the article is completely valid: Unless and until large suppliers like Dell/HP/IBM make computers preconfigured with some flavour of Linux available, and make them cheaper than a comparable Windows box, then Linux will never be 'cheaper' or 'free' to the 99% of people out there who aren't geeks like us.
As a bit of background on me, I also work with Windows 2000-2003 *and* Linux servers for a living, in an environment where we have all our outward-facing machines running Linux and acting as webservers/webapp servers/firewalls/VPN server, and inside the network itself we've got several Windows 2000 and 2003 servers running Active Directory, Exchange, and several proprietary apps that require a server component running on a Windows NT-variant, and a client component running on a Windows desktop. Point is, I work with both Windows and Linux servers and desktops on a daily basis, I have some idea what I'm talking about.
Actually, I went and looked at the demo on their site right now and it's the same one I've got on my site, there's a column with a link to the.torrent file itself right before the 'Easy Downloader' link, and the same text on the page.. maybe when you looked they still had an old version up.
Anyway, I do agree with you that it would be nice if they did something like the Blizzard Downloader that just downloads that one file and that's it, but I don't think that's what they're aiming for. It looks like they're trying to introduce bittorrent to the non-techies, people who probably don't have Bittorrent installed yet. If you've allready got a torrent client installed and download torrents all the time, you're not really the audience they're aiming for (although I do like how simple it is to upload a torrent to the system with it), and even then, you can just click on the.torrent link to download it with no problems. It's mainly aimed at the grandma and grandpa crowds by just letting them click once and have the bittorrent client download and start fetching their file without them having to know anything technical, figure out what Bittorrent is, or how it works. All they want to know is 'I clicked on the link and my file started downloading', that's really the audience they're going for.
That said, I dunno how succesful they'll be Bittorrent's great, but it's not all that simple all the time either. And since it mostly shines when you've got a couple dozen or hundred people downloading the same file, I don't know how much it can help the target audience who propbably has one or two people at most who would be interested in downloading their home movies.
Seeing as it's downhillbattle.org, and their main thing is the whole copyfight bit, I can see the Blogtorrent thing as much more useful for people like small bands who have a regular following, so they can distribute their records on MP3 for free without hosing their bandwith.. Small museums or performance artists.. you know, people who actually have soem material that people download allready. For Joe Blogger who just wants to put up videos of his cat, however, this system won't really help much, I think. I mean, I have a blog myself. I installed the system to check it out cause it looked interesting.. but I'm probably never gonna use it. I know my blog is read by like 4 people, and they're all my friends. If I need to show them something funny my cat's doing, I can always just IM them and point the webcam at the cat.:)
Okay, I know you're trolling, but I'll bite, simply because it really sucks when people make completely false statements about something they know nothing about and then no one calls them on it:
If you'd bothered to actually take a look at the 'BlogTorrent' thing (I hate the name, by the way, but what can you do?), you'd see that it *DOES* include separately hosting the.torrent for those of us with a favorite Torrent client. In fact, since I actually have it installed on my server and have been trying it out, I can copy and paste the text on the page:
How do I download a file?
If you've never used BitTorrent before, just click on the "Easy Downloader" link next to the file you want. Open the Easy Downloader (by clicking "open" in your browser, or by saving it to your Desktop and double clicking on it). That will install the Blog Torrent plugin and begin downloading the file you want. Note: if you already have a BitTorrent client installed, you do not need the Easy Downloader, just click on the.torrent file.(Emphasis added)
I was gonna post up Cory's response as soon as I saw this on Slashdot, but glad somebody beat me to it. I love Gizmodo, but when it comes to knowing about how eBooks will or won't work, I'll take the word of the guy who's been very succesful releasing at least 3 of his books in eBook form, rather than the random technology blogger. I've met Cory, and the man knows what he's about, so when he talks about this stuff, I'm much more willing to give his words greater weight in this debate. It should be required reading for anyone who reads the original article.
Erm.. actually, no. IANAL, of course, but knowing a tiny bit of how Skype is supposed to work (that is, as a P2P application), what that part of the licence is saying is that you allow Skype to use your CPU and bandwith, yes, but for the purprose of helping other Skype users make their calls. Basically, by agreeing to that part of the licence, you're allowing the program to do what it says it was gonna do, integrate your computer into a P2P network of machines that shuttle encrypted voice data back and forth. There's no way to get 'See, it's spyware!' from that part of the license, seriously. Show me the part where it claims the right to install third party software without having to inform you, or the part where it lays claim to a goodly chunk of your hard drive for storing ads for other companies, and then we'll talk.
Just a note, I'm fairly anal about spyware/adware. I have AdAware, Spybot S&D, and SpywareBlaster on my Windows PC, and I keep them updated on a daily basis, and scan the computer before and after installation of just about any program, not to mention on a weekly basis no matter what.
I've been using Skype on my Windows PC for aboout 3 weeks now on a pretty regular basis to talk to some friends, and so far, it's worked pretty much as advertised, no complaints here, in fact, I'm pretty pleased with it, especially compared to previous VoIP programs I've used before. In that time, before and after installation and updates, none of my spyware scanner programs have detected any spyware, at least, none that I can trace to it. So, so far at least, the 'No Spyware or Adware' button on their website seems to be legit.
Dunno about the Linux version, but I figure it's pretty much the same way. And the fact that they were willing to change their Linux EULA over spyware concerns gives me a bit of faith in them. Sure, it's from the same folk as Kazaa, but at least so far, it doesn't seem to have fallen into the same trap as the official Kazaa client.
I actually agree with you on this. On my original post I said I supported efforts by Google to filter blog results, after all. The thing is, blogs *can* be a valid source of information. I actually get a decent amount of my tech news from this blog-like site, you might have heard of it, Slashdot?:)
My point is, sometimes you *want* to know what's being written in blogs about Subject X.. and sometimes you don't. I agree that it would be nice for Google to have a 'Weblogs' tab that you could turn on and off. As for the people who would whine, hey, let 'em. That's part of what blogs are for, to whine to your heart's content. If the 'Blog Tab' is turned on in Google, you won't have to hear their whining anyway.
As for the 'incestious linking', I really don't see the problem with it.. Some of the best blogs out there are actually riddled with hyperlinks to a plethora of resources about whatever they're talking about, be they other blogs or regular pages. That's fine. Hell, that's freakin' *great*. It's exactly *why* the Web was designed with hyperlinking in mind. So that as you write you could link any part of your text to additional or related information elswhere in the web. It's not the blog writer's fault for doing exactly what the web protocols allow them to do. If doing this skews search results on a search engine like google because of the algorithm Google chose to rank their webpages, then it's Google's choice and responsibility to adapt to it and either change their algorithm or filter out the 'offending' sites.
Whether you like them or not, blogs are a fairly natural outgrowth of the Net's capabilities. As many here often say about any changes that affect other companies: adapt or die. Find a way to filter blogs from search results, and provide that option to those users who want it, or wait until someone else does it and watch them get your users.
Cute, but no cigar. I actually own my own domain, pay for my own webhosting, installed my own weblog software, and manage it myself (with daily backups). I also pay for my own bandwith, which is part of why I feel little need to point the ravening hordes of/. at it. Frankly, it's nothing but a personal sit eof no interest to anyone but me and my friends, full of things like 'LOL, Van Helsing was the worst movie I've seen in ages! You *have* to buy me the DVD!', and 'Oooh, this shiny new gadget came out, I lust after it.'. If you're not allready among the small crowd who stops by there once a week or so to see if I'm still alive, I doubt you'd have any interest in it. Ergo, no linky. I *do* take offense with the people who try to ram their blog down everyone's throats. I don't care about your fluffy kitty, and you don't care about my 'review' of Bubba Ho-Tep, so I don't read your stuff, and you don't read mine. The web's a big place, pick your content. What I take issue with is the attitude many folks cop about blogs, when, really, no one is hijacking your freakin' browser and forcing you to read about what I had for breakfast. And if you do accidentally stumble across it, hey, your browser has all these nifty buttons, like the bookmark list, the back button, even a full address bar! So many ways to escape from the horrible tedium of my rambling! Go for it!
Oh, and just as an aside, yeah, my username's real common, Mr. or Ms. 'geek4ever'. Real smooth of you to notice... say, you ever hear the story about the Pot? Seems he called the Kettle black.
Honestly, the amount of snarky comments along the lines of 'Oh, blogs suck anyway, who cares.', and 'It's all idiotic blabbing anyway.' are getting on my nerves. Really, no one thinks you're one of the cool kids now just because you think blogs are passe. Stop trying to be a post-ironic hipster type who's oh-so-tired of it all. Posting on Slashdot won't get you laid. Neither will having a blog, of course, but that's my point.
I don't understand the level of hostility against blogs. No one's putting a gun to your head and making you read them. I actually support efforts by Google and other search engines to separate blog results from regular webpage results. Sometimes I don't want to have my search results skewed by blogs, and sometimes I really want to know how the 'blogosphere' feels about a particular issue. But while that happens, just ignore them. If you hate them so much, don't read them. But, really, infantile attacks don't make you superior in any way to the bloggers.
I know most blogs are, indeed, just self-centered rambling, or 15 year old girls talking about their latest dream with N'Sync and a pony, but on the other hand, they're valid outlets for a lot of people to just vent, express themselves, and give their opinions on issues. If you don't want to hear those opinions, then just don't visit their blogs. It's that simple.
And yes, I do have a blog of my own, no, I'm not giving out the address here, since it's basically just a self-centered little website that's read by me and maybe 2 friends, and that's fine by me.
Actually, there's a funny story about that... heh.. you see, I've actually been reading the notes on the treaty for the past couple of days, and a whole bunch of nations, notably Brazil and several others, are quite opposed to this treaty, out and out stating that it's a danger to creativity, the free flow of information, etc. etc. etc., and they repeatedly keep asking for this treaty, or at least several particularly nasty parts of it, to be removed. Only a few nations seem to be eager to see this mess go through, and chief among them is the US: the US delegates keep harping on about how industry needs the protection that this treaty will give it, and how the other nations just don't *understand* the real meaning of the many nasty clauses in the treaty. So, basically, it's the US that is doing most of the pushing to get this treaty passed as is, with all the nastyness. Keep in mind that most of the stuff on this treaty wouldn't affect the government itself. It wouldn't be illegal for the NSA to use encryption. It *would* be illegal for normal citizens to use it, or attempt to crack or understand it. The US government, and a large chunk of big business, would love nothing better than to see this treaty go through, since all of it benefits them, and none of it benefits the average joe.
Recently, I've seen companies try to scare you into not altering what you buy through voiding warranties and placing intimidating stickers on access panels.
While I agree with most of your statement, I have to say that there's a reason for those 'scary stickers' and the voiding of the warranty if you open up the machine and screw around with it.
The company I work for does a little bit of everything, including general computer repair. All computers we fix have a 90 day warranty. And we put one of those stickers on the back of the case, so that if you open the case, you have to break or tear off the sticker, making it obvious you opened it. Why? We have no problem with you opening up your box and peeing all over all the components if you like, but we also have no desire to fix your computer a second time for free if you do that.
We've had customers take away a perfectly working computer one day, and come back a week later saying that it's broken again and they want their warranty honored, and then we notice the sticker's been torn loose, and when we look inside, the damn thing has a different motherboard and a P4 instead of the Athlon it had last week. Needless to say, we did not honor his warranty. We did, however, fix his problem, and he left a couple days later with a fully wokring P4 system. Variations on this have happened way too often.
We have nothing against you modyfying your hardware, open it up, look around, whatever. But don't expect your warranty to still be there when you close that case up again. We can't be held responsible for whatever screw ups you may inflict on the machine while you're in there.
As always: mod all you want, so long as you either: a) know exactly what you're doing, or b)don't mind losing your warranty and paying for service or a replacement when it breaks. If you can't handle those two conditions, then don't mod. Things are tight enough without having to fix some idiot's overclocked GeForce FX for free.
Linux is good. It's better, faster, and more stable than it's been in years. The level of quality on existing applications has gone up considerably, and new applications are being worked on everyday. You can use it as an everyday desktop as easily as you can use it for web/file/print serving. Systems such as Debian, Gentoo, and, yes, even Red Hat, make installing applications and keeping them updated a breeze. You don't have to worry about viruses, and spam and pop up fighting is integrated into most available web browsers and mail clients. However: it's not perfect. And it still caters to a different type of person than what Windows usually caters to.
Here's the deal: a lot of things in Linux still require you to know about your computer, and the things that go in it. They require you to at least understand a lot about the inner workings of your machine and the software on it. This, however, means that your average Linux user must spend some time and effort learning these things and fiddling about with them, dropping into the command line, etc. etc. This is fine and good if you, like me, enjoy messing about with the guts of your OS. But most people, frankly, don't want to learn about their computers. They don't want to have to know anything about their system, its commands and file structures and methods and formats. They just want things to work, simply and with as little hassle as possible. And, for the most part, Windows provides that hassle-free day to day experience much better than Linux does.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't mean it as an attack, or in a condescending way, when I say most people can't be bothered to learn more about their computers and spend time learning the format of some arcane commands. It may seem strange to geeks like me, but most people do have better things to do. If you're, say, a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant or, hell, even a housewife, there's a thousand things in your day and in your life that are more important than trying to figure out just what command paramater will enable you to finally view that picture of your grandkids that your daughter in law emailed you. These people, most people, in fact, want convenience. They want to sit down and have their machine work hassle free, and they dont' want ten billion options and configuration parameters, they just want a button they can click that will do what they want, or close enough to it that it doesn't matter. And I can't say I blame them.
Sure, Linux is free, both cost wise and speech wise. And that's a big draw for a lot of us. But it's still not as easy to use as your average Joe and Jane want it to be, and it won't be for a short while longer, at least. Because of thise, while you might not spend money on it, you'll certainly have to spend more time with it, both in education and work to get it to do the things you want to do. Linux can do anything Windows can, and then some... it's just that it's not always as easy as it is over in Windows land. Most people simply don't have the time or patience to deal with that, and they're willing to pay to have things just work, rather than use free apps that require you to spend a week learning them. Why spend hours trying to figure out how transcode, vcdimager, and k3b work and getting around each app's quirks just to put an AVI movie on a VCD, when on Windows, Nero Burning Rom can grab an AVI and slap it on a VCD in three clicks. Sure, Nero costs money, whereas transcode and its ilk are free, but with Nero you click three times and you're done, while even a computer geek like me has to spend a whole morning trying to figure out the command line formats of each command before I can even begin, and then spend time experimenting with it until I get it right. Most people would rather pay for convenience than have to suffer for a free program.
So here's the deal: I'm no longer going to hold Windows against Windows users. If you know about Linux but still want to use Windows, it's your choice. There are risks and costs in that, of course, such as exposure to
But I've been using and reading e-books for years now, and I love them, to the point where I barely buy paperbacks anymore. I read them all the time on my old Ahndspring, and a while ago when I upgraded to a Zaurus, I kept right on reading them. I've been an avid reader since early childhood, and am often reading several books at once. Carrying several paperbakcs in my bags all the time tended to create some serious wear and tear on the books after a short while.. the bookmarks would fall out of step if I bounced my bag a bit to much (which happened a lot during my college years), and I generally found paperbacks to be somewhat inconvenient.
Enter the e-book. Now I carry a whole reference library (Dictionary, thesaurus, etc.), plus 5-7 random SF, Fantasy, and other novels and books, all in one pocket, in my Zaurus' CF card. When the urge to read strikes, I just hit a button to turn it on (instant bootup PDA), and within seconds I can choose any one of the books I'm reading, and they pick up exactly where I left off (qtreader is great), I can have multiple bookmarks, and I can search those books that need searching. Reading is comfortable and easy with the Zaurus' high-contrast screen (and I use glasses with a fairly high (-7) level of miopia, but I still find it easy to read and adjust the font size while still fitting ina couple of paragraphs of text on a screen), and if I don't want to keep hitting the 'down' button to flip pages, I can set it to a comfortable level ofauto-scroll and just lay back and let the text wash over my eyes.
In short, I love e-books, and I'm exactly the sort of person ebook publishers should be trying to target. However, the vast majority of e-books I have, I will admit, are pirated. I do have paper copies of a lot of the books in my e-book collection, but e-books are so much more convenient for me than regular books, that I'd rather have an electronic version than a paper one. And for the most part, most books I want to read are simply not released in e-book formats. I *want* to have e-book versions of the books I own. However, due to the small availability and constant format/DRM wars, there are very few places online where I can buy an e-book in a format that I can read on my Zaurus. Meanwhile, the folks in newsgroups and several places online are busy scanning and typing in hundreds of thousands of books and putting them online for free.
To e-book publishers: while you wrangle and try to find a way to lock down the user and make 'sure' that no one pirates your e-books or gives them away or lends them or does anything out of your control, there's a whole bunch of folks out there happily scanning the paper editions of your books and putting them online for free in simple, unlocked formats. While you continue to deny those of us who *Want* e-books the freedom to choose what platform we want to read on and what we want to do with our books, these people will continue to provide your product for free without your permission. Make books available in electronic formats, formats that are compatible across all platforms, with a minimum of hassle and DRM, and give them away free with the paper edition of the books, or sell them at a substantially reduced price from the paper edition (face it, they cost a lot less to produce in e-book format, and I can't help but laugh whenever I see an e-book version of a book selling for as much, or sometimes more, than the paper version), and let me choose what I do with my books, and you will have an eager customer for life.
*sigh*... while your rather pedantic comments are corrections are, technically, valid, your grasp of my arguments seems fairly weak. It appears that, rather than reading my post and agreeing or disagreeing with the spirit and message of it, you chose to instead focus on one technical detail and let it cloud your vision. Your assertion that "Your little rant about how this thing is *not* an RPG is completely inaccurate." is not only a fairly childish, 'rules lawyer'-esque argument (see, I know about rules lawyers, I'm a roleplaying expert too!), it's one that misses the entire point I was trying to address.
You see, while your argument is technically correct, it fails to take into account that what I was trying to address is the general perception of what MMORPGS are, that is, Everquest, Ultima Online, and its ilk. To most people, calling something an 'RPG' immediately brings to mind images of swords and sorcery, elves and mosnters. To a few more, it can also bring images of sci-fi, futuristic games as well. And judging from the comments I had read up until the time of my post, I saw that that was the impression that most people got, without knowing what Second Life really was, they immediately started blabbering about swords and spells, because the term MMORPG was used. Since Second Life, while having a strong 'role playing' element to it, is not defined by those classic fantasy elements that form most MMORPGS, I attempted to distance Second Life from those expressions by explaining what actually goes into the game. As part of that distancing, I felt it neccesary to separate it from the general MMORPG term and the associations it has gathered.
As much as it may pain you to accept this, language is actually fluid, shifting.. words don't mean what the dictionary says they mean.. the dictionary simply attempts to catalogue the meaning currently associated with a specific word. Therefore, while your pedantic definition of the term MMORPG might be technically correct, when it comes to the actual associations and images called up by that term for most people, the meaning has changed. It is that meaning that I am attempting to distance Second Life from. However, thank you for posting and bringing up this point, and therefore giving me the opportunity to refute it.
And yes, I understand that you have thoroughly trolled me, and I fell for it, but what the heck, how can I resist the opportunity to set the record straight about such an important distinction, no?
The taxes are, actually, fairly high, and you get taxed on both the land you own and the objects you have rezzed (created) out in the world. However, they're not cripplignly high. Basically, they're just high enough to discourage you from littering th elandscape with hundreds of lovingly modeled goatse guys, but not so high that you shy away from creating a really kickass home for yourself with all sorts of doodads and gizmos. The game also has a series of ways for making money that encourages the creation of unique, interesting items. Besides just being able to sell copies of the items you make (and place permissions on those items to allow or disallow further copying, modification, etc.) the game also has what's called 'dwell', which basically pays you money if people spend X amount of time or more on your property. So while you may get taxed more for a house that's very complex (the taxes are based on how many 'prims', or individual, Lego-like objects, your creations are made out of), if it attracts people to it and they stick around examining it, you can make that money back and then some thanks to 'dwell'.
As a further note, L$3500 is a decent sum, but not vast riches either. As an example, buying an article of clothing from someone else can vary from anywhere around L$20 to L$500, depending on how prim-heavy the clothing is and how much the seller thinks they can get away with. Things like flying cars can cost L$1000 or more. But L$3500 and the stipend are enough to keep you comfortable and buying interesting things without having to build or sell a single thing if you don't want to.. while at the same time, if you want to create something really ambitious, then you have to have some sort of 'business' to make up for the taxes you'll be charged.
Question: have you ever played Second Life or done any modelling in it? The controls are actually quite simple, and after a couple of hours goofing around with it you can become quite proficient. Case in point: My fiancee recently began to play it as well, since she found it really interesting. She has only basic computer skills, and she's a psychology major, so she's never touched a 3D Cad program in her life. However, within a couple of days in the game she was cranking out truly interesting items, houses, dolls, wings, clothing, hats, just about anything she can imagine, she can create with surprisingly little effort and no previous 3D skills.
It's not perfect, of course: she can't code her way out of a wet paper bag, so she isn't able to assign complex actions to those objects, and usually depends on me to do the coding for her. But the actual object creation is very straightforward and intuitive, easy for someone with absolutely no 3D modeling experience to pick up and create with, but still deep enough for those with the inclination to do so to create some very complex objects. Basically, don't think Belnder or 3D Studio Max, think more along the lines of Legos and you get a better idea of what the 3D modeling system in game is like and why it's much easier to pick up for an average person.
Allright, really quick now, let me dispell some myths and doubts, since I've noticed that almost no posters even know what Second Life is, since they keep referring to it as an MMORPG and talking about swords and monsters and PK'ing and being able to 'patent your inventory'.
Second Life is *not* an RPG, there are no monsters or quests or anything. It does *not* have PK-ing, tjhe ability to steal other people's objects, or damage other's property (although you could code all these behaviours and more into objects you create, with the tools the game gives you). At its base, it's a glorified chat room, where you create an avatar and then fly around the world, meeting people, chatting with them, etc. However, certain things set it apart, the biggest one being that you have the freedom and ability to create 3D objects in the game, import textures and sounds, and use a specialized scripting language to assign actions, movements, behaviours, etc. to those objects and to your avatar. The depth of this creation system is absolutely stunning, and limited really only by your skill (and that's *your* skill as the person behind the keyboard doing the modeling and coding, not your character's artificial skill stats) and imagination. While a lot of people limit themselves ot just making things like t-shirts, paintings, and simple houses, I've seen very large, complex creations around the Second Life world, including entire floating cities, RPG systems coded in game with the scripting language, dragons, roller coaster and amusement park rides, sports arenas, game shows, and a lot more, all fully created by the players.
All these creations require time, effort and skill from the person making them. If you create a sword in Second Life, you actually model the thing, create the polygons, upload and tweak the textures, and script its actions.. you don't find the sword after killing a rabbit or roll you 'swordmaking' skill for the 'crafting' aspect of the game. You spend real time and effort to make it. You can imagine how much time some people have invested in their more ambitious creations.
That's, I think, what makes the difference here. The reason why IP should matter in a game like Second Life, as opposed to, say, Everquest or any of the other MMORPG's, even those with 'crafting' components, is that effort involved in the actual creation of the item. I don't mind a game company telling me that I can't sell a sword I won after battling a dragon in Everquest for real money because they own the IP on that sword. It's their right, they made the sword, they coded it and made the art etc. etc. etc. For all the effort I put into killing that dragon, I earn the right to use that sword of theirs in the game and reap its benefits, in game. However, when you're talking about a sword I crafted myself from bare polygons and scripts, that I spent hours on the Gimp or Photoshop tweaking the textures for, and you tell me that that item isn't mine and I can't sell it for real money if I want to, that's another matter entirely.
I personally applaud Second Life and their staff for recognizing this, that the effort and dedication that the players pour into the game with their creations makes the game itself better, and they deserve the fruits of their labour, and to keep the rights to their own creations. Second Life is far from perfect, it's got its bugs, its griefers, and its issues.. but with moves like this from their staff, it's also taking several very large steps towards setting itself apart from all the other MMO games and creating soemthing truly unique. Kudos to the founders for this decision.
ACtually, I know everyone's ignoring this post because it's by an AC, but he's got a very good point. Knoppix makes a Debian install absolutely brainless. I've used other distros before (Red Hat, Mandrake, Lycoris, mostly user-friendly desktop distros, I'm a Linux fan but not a hardcore Linux hacker, I just want an Open Source/Free desktop that *works*), but friends and net people kept telling me how much Debian rocked, how apt-get was better than sex, etc. etc. etc., so when I got my hands on a old PII machine, I decide to try and install Debian on it. I downloaded the official Debian CD's, and tried to do the installation, and suffered through the whole thing, muddling through as best I could. Even having set things up as well asI could, I ened up with a nearly unbootable system, X wouldn't start properly, and I was sorely dissapointed.
Then I remebered my trusty Knoppix Cd, which I sue to caryr around a Linux desktop everywhere and to show people that Linux *is* indeed useable for everyday tasks (I've gotten a few converts that way;), and I remembered that there was an option somewhere in there to do a HD install from the CD, and that it basically turned into Debian when you were done, except with a whole bunch of handy apps installed allready. A bti of googling later, and I had the recipe for it. Needless to say, the install went without a hitch, and was very easy. Knoppix took care of all the sticky hardware config issues, and I just had to set a few prefs, before I ende dup with a perfectly usable Debian system. Some editing of my apt sources and one apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade later, and I was running the latest bleeding-edge Debian unstable, and finally experiencing the coolness of Debian for myself.
Frankly, the Debian folks would do well to take a cue from Knoppix and integrate its kickass hardware detection into their own installer (with an option to do the usual manual install and config for those geeks who actually know what theyre doing.;)
Actually, Knoppix 3.2 allready has that. You can save your home dir to a USB keychain, a spot on the hard disk, or even just a floppy, as well as your desktop settings and preferences, and have them all be there next time you boot the CD, by passing a short command line param when you boot up (something like knoppix home=/mnt/usb0 or something like that)
/me looks down at his utility belt holding a pager, a celphone, Leatherman, and other assorted geek toys, blinks at his nice black DeCSS t-shirt, and glances over at his beloved Zaurus running Ethereal... Ya think he means *me*?
Seriously, though, I do agree with you. While the letter itself was a fun read, sorta left me going 'Woo! You go get 'em, cowboy!', after the initial moments of exultation you start to thinking if this is really the image we wanna portray to the rest of the world. It's more like something that's good for rallying the troops and getting them worked up to fight the evil SCO, rah rah rah, but not something you'd hand out at a press conference.
Still, gotta think, he *is* posting that on his personal blog, and people *are* allowed to have personal opinions on things. I'd be more worried if he placed that on the main OSI homepage or something of the sort.
Now someone just needs to add return of the money to everyone who purchases a copy to the end of a lawsuit.
Screw that, man. The way I see it, if you or your company was dumb enough to fall for SCO's FUD and pony up the cash for one of their 'licenses', you *deserve* to lose that money. Have that money be donated to starving coders or something. I'll give you my Paypal details so you can forward some of that over this way.;)
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I'm a bit of a Google fanboy, but I chekced out the Calendar and was nonplussed. I've been using Kiko (http://www.kiko.com/ for a while now, and it does everything Google Calendar currently does, in a nicer interface (at least in my opinion). iCal import and RSS subscription, flexible AJAX-y interface, etc. But the appointment creation interface is niftier to me: I can just write 'Fill out reports' and then add in catgories, locations, and contact invitations later as in the Google version, or I can write:
:)
Fill Out Reports @Office +bob@mywork.com [Work]
And Kiko knows what to do, creates my appointment and sets the Location as 'Office', the category as 'Work', and invites Bob via email, with no extra clciking or form filling on my end. Also, I can create an appointment and write 'Pay Phone Bill Every Month', or 'Call Accountant Every Week' and it does the Right Thing and creates automatically repeating appointments with no extra work on my part.
It can also send appointment reminders via email, IM (AOL only at this point), or even SMS, which is handy as heck when I'm out of the office. Calendar sharing with contacts or the poublic at large is dead easy too.
Plus, there's more features, such as syncing, coming. If you like Google Calendar, do yourself a favor and check out Kiko. It's free too and I, at least, like it a lot better right now. (And, no I don't work for them, but I have corresponded with a couple of the Kiko folks over email, and they are *very* responsive, quick, and nice, so I'm rooting for them.
I'm sorry, if I allready paid for the machine, and on top of that, I'm paying a monthly fee for the service, I do *not* find it acceptable to have the service push ads at me. If you're going to be pushing ads at me, then start refunding my monthly fee. That's the way things work for me. I'm willing to pay you for your service, no problem. But I'm going to pay you in *either* cash or ads, not both. And seeing as part of the reason I got a Tivo was to skip ads, then replacing those ads with other ads is *not* acceptable to me.
Looks like it's time to finally sit down and build that MythTV box I've been thinking about.
You do make a good point there, actually. I've left my home Linux machine (running KDE) on and had friends who use Windows and don't know the first thing about Linux sit at it, and after a bit of fumbling through the menus to find my Firefox, or simply clicking the Firefox icon on my desktop, they're happily surfing along and barely even notice they're not on Windows, they just figure I must be using some funky 'skin' on my Windows desktop. The one thing that always gets them is the double-clicking thing, since I have it set to the usual Linux single-click mode of operation, so they often end up opening the same program twice.
;) And they generally will resist it, at least in my experience. They want their Windows, they think it's what makes their computer work, and they think they know how to use it and that they won't know how to use anything else. The reality is otherwise, of course, but in this case, perception matters as much, if not more.
:)
That having been said, however, although they may not normally care what OS is running so long as their apps run, the moment you mention that they're using Linux, or simply that it's not *windows* their machine is running, they immeditely become freakin' morons. "Oh, I don't know how to use that Leenooks stuff. I heard it's hard.". Likewise, if you offer them a computer, the moment you mention it's not running Windows, they get a scared look in their eyes, start going on about how they don't know anything about how to use that Linux stuff, and start reiterating over and over that what they use at work/home/grandma's house is Windows.
Despite the fact that if they just sit down with it for 5 minutes, the average Windows user can pick up a KDE desktop with little or no effort, the word 'Windows' has become a sort of security blanket for a lot of them. Since they've used it before, they *think* they know it.. And they always want what they allready know. Linux is new, it's different, it's strange. It's not even spelled anything at all like Windows.
As to how to change this perception/mindset? No clue. But I'm working on it.
Actually, I think it's you who's missing the point. First off, to get it out of the way, I hate MS, I use Linux at home, blah blah blah.
Anyway... have you ever worked for a large company, say, a bank or large corporate office, with procurement policies? I think you haven't, otherwise you would know that just telling them "Just buy a couple hundred motherboards, HDD's, CPU's, RAM sticks, cases, monitors, keyboards and mice and have your techie guy working in the basement put them together for you over your lunch break and install Linux on them." just ain't gonna fly. They are large companies, they do business, their business is not computers, but they need computers to run their business, so they look for other large companies that assure them that they are getting solid computers that will get the job done. They're going to buy Dell, or HP, or IBM. They are *not* going to show up at Bob's Discount Linux Shop and order a couple hundred desktops. And they are not going to give their one IT guy back in the server room a pile of components. They are going to go with a large supplier who will deliver a bunch of pre-built, pr-econfigured machines that they can plug into their network, put their username and password in, and get to work.
As for mom and dad and grandma, you try telling them to buy the components and build it themselves. Or telling them to go to Bob's Discount Linux Shop when they can get the same computer with an OS they allready know, and often for a couple hundred dollars less thanks to the discounts the big companies offer that small shops just can't match. They want a computer thay can buy, plug in, and start sharing pictures. They don't know, or care, about Linux or wether it's better/cheaper/sexier. They didn't buy a windows machine. They bought a Dell.
The point the guy makes in the article is completely valid: Unless and until large suppliers like Dell/HP/IBM make computers preconfigured with some flavour of Linux available, and make them cheaper than a comparable Windows box, then Linux will never be 'cheaper' or 'free' to the 99% of people out there who aren't geeks like us.
As a bit of background on me, I also work with Windows 2000-2003 *and* Linux servers for a living, in an environment where we have all our outward-facing machines running Linux and acting as webservers/webapp servers/firewalls/VPN server, and inside the network itself we've got several Windows 2000 and 2003 servers running Active Directory, Exchange, and several proprietary apps that require a server component running on a Windows NT-variant, and a client component running on a Windows desktop. Point is, I work with both Windows and Linux servers and desktops on a daily basis, I have some idea what I'm talking about.
Actually, I went and looked at the demo on their site right now and it's the same one I've got on my site, there's a column with a link to the .torrent file itself right before the 'Easy Downloader' link, and the same text on the page.. maybe when you looked they still had an old version up.
.torrent link to download it with no problems. It's mainly aimed at the grandma and grandpa crowds by just letting them click once and have the bittorrent client download and start fetching their file without them having to know anything technical, figure out what Bittorrent is, or how it works. All they want to know is 'I clicked on the link and my file started downloading', that's really the audience they're going for.
:)
Anyway, I do agree with you that it would be nice if they did something like the Blizzard Downloader that just downloads that one file and that's it, but I don't think that's what they're aiming for. It looks like they're trying to introduce bittorrent to the non-techies, people who probably don't have Bittorrent installed yet. If you've allready got a torrent client installed and download torrents all the time, you're not really the audience they're aiming for (although I do like how simple it is to upload a torrent to the system with it), and even then, you can just click on the
That said, I dunno how succesful they'll be Bittorrent's great, but it's not all that simple all the time either. And since it mostly shines when you've got a couple dozen or hundred people downloading the same file, I don't know how much it can help the target audience who propbably has one or two people at most who would be interested in downloading their home movies.
Seeing as it's downhillbattle.org, and their main thing is the whole copyfight bit, I can see the Blogtorrent thing as much more useful for people like small bands who have a regular following, so they can distribute their records on MP3 for free without hosing their bandwith.. Small museums or performance artists.. you know, people who actually have soem material that people download allready. For Joe Blogger who just wants to put up videos of his cat, however, this system won't really help much, I think. I mean, I have a blog myself. I installed the system to check it out cause it looked interesting.. but I'm probably never gonna use it. I know my blog is read by like 4 people, and they're all my friends. If I need to show them something funny my cat's doing, I can always just IM them and point the webcam at the cat.
If you'd bothered to actually take a look at the 'BlogTorrent' thing (I hate the name, by the way, but what can you do?), you'd see that it *DOES* include separately hosting the
I was gonna post up Cory's response as soon as I saw this on Slashdot, but glad somebody beat me to it. I love Gizmodo, but when it comes to knowing about how eBooks will or won't work, I'll take the word of the guy who's been very succesful releasing at least 3 of his books in eBook form, rather than the random technology blogger. I've met Cory, and the man knows what he's about, so when he talks about this stuff, I'm much more willing to give his words greater weight in this debate. It should be required reading for anyone who reads the original article.
I dunno.. Kill Bill 2 made removing a person's eyeball seem pretty easy.. (I know, I know.. burn, karma, burn!)
Erm.. actually, no. IANAL, of course, but knowing a tiny bit of how Skype is supposed to work (that is, as a P2P application), what that part of the licence is saying is that you allow Skype to use your CPU and bandwith, yes, but for the purprose of helping other Skype users make their calls. Basically, by agreeing to that part of the licence, you're allowing the program to do what it says it was gonna do, integrate your computer into a P2P network of machines that shuttle encrypted voice data back and forth. There's no way to get 'See, it's spyware!' from that part of the license, seriously. Show me the part where it claims the right to install third party software without having to inform you, or the part where it lays claim to a goodly chunk of your hard drive for storing ads for other companies, and then we'll talk.
Just a note, I'm fairly anal about spyware/adware. I have AdAware, Spybot S&D, and SpywareBlaster on my Windows PC, and I keep them updated on a daily basis, and scan the computer before and after installation of just about any program, not to mention on a weekly basis no matter what.
I've been using Skype on my Windows PC for aboout 3 weeks now on a pretty regular basis to talk to some friends, and so far, it's worked pretty much as advertised, no complaints here, in fact, I'm pretty pleased with it, especially compared to previous VoIP programs I've used before. In that time, before and after installation and updates, none of my spyware scanner programs have detected any spyware, at least, none that I can trace to it. So, so far at least, the 'No Spyware or Adware' button on their website seems to be legit.
Dunno about the Linux version, but I figure it's pretty much the same way. And the fact that they were willing to change their Linux EULA over spyware concerns gives me a bit of faith in them. Sure, it's from the same folk as Kazaa, but at least so far, it doesn't seem to have fallen into the same trap as the official Kazaa client.
I actually agree with you on this. On my original post I said I supported efforts by Google to filter blog results, after all. The thing is, blogs *can* be a valid source of information. I actually get a decent amount of my tech news from this blog-like site, you might have heard of it, Slashdot? :)
My point is, sometimes you *want* to know what's being written in blogs about Subject X.. and sometimes you don't. I agree that it would be nice for Google to have a 'Weblogs' tab that you could turn on and off. As for the people who would whine, hey, let 'em. That's part of what blogs are for, to whine to your heart's content. If the 'Blog Tab' is turned on in Google, you won't have to hear their whining anyway.
As for the 'incestious linking', I really don't see the problem with it.. Some of the best blogs out there are actually riddled with hyperlinks to a plethora of resources about whatever they're talking about, be they other blogs or regular pages. That's fine. Hell, that's freakin' *great*. It's exactly *why* the Web was designed with hyperlinking in mind. So that as you write you could link any part of your text to additional or related information elswhere in the web. It's not the blog writer's fault for doing exactly what the web protocols allow them to do. If doing this skews search results on a search engine like google because of the algorithm Google chose to rank their webpages, then it's Google's choice and responsibility to adapt to it and either change their algorithm or filter out the 'offending' sites.
Whether you like them or not, blogs are a fairly natural outgrowth of the Net's capabilities. As many here often say about any changes that affect other companies: adapt or die. Find a way to filter blogs from search results, and provide that option to those users who want it, or wait until someone else does it and watch them get your users.
Cute, but no cigar. I actually own my own domain, pay for my own webhosting, installed my own weblog software, and manage it myself (with daily backups). I also pay for my own bandwith, which is part of why I feel little need to point the ravening hordes of /. at it. Frankly, it's nothing but a personal sit eof no interest to anyone but me and my friends, full of things like 'LOL, Van Helsing was the worst movie I've seen in ages! You *have* to buy me the DVD!', and 'Oooh, this shiny new gadget came out, I lust after it.'. If you're not allready among the small crowd who stops by there once a week or so to see if I'm still alive, I doubt you'd have any interest in it. Ergo, no linky. I *do* take offense with the people who try to ram their blog down everyone's throats. I don't care about your fluffy kitty, and you don't care about my 'review' of Bubba Ho-Tep, so I don't read your stuff, and you don't read mine. The web's a big place, pick your content. What I take issue with is the attitude many folks cop about blogs, when, really, no one is hijacking your freakin' browser and forcing you to read about what I had for breakfast. And if you do accidentally stumble across it, hey, your browser has all these nifty buttons, like the bookmark list, the back button, even a full address bar! So many ways to escape from the horrible tedium of my rambling! Go for it!
Oh, and just as an aside, yeah, my username's real common, Mr. or Ms. 'geek4ever'. Real smooth of you to notice... say, you ever hear the story about the Pot? Seems he called the Kettle black.
Honestly, the amount of snarky comments along the lines of 'Oh, blogs suck anyway, who cares.', and 'It's all idiotic blabbing anyway.' are getting on my nerves. Really, no one thinks you're one of the cool kids now just because you think blogs are passe. Stop trying to be a post-ironic hipster type who's oh-so-tired of it all. Posting on Slashdot won't get you laid. Neither will having a blog, of course, but that's my point.
I don't understand the level of hostility against blogs. No one's putting a gun to your head and making you read them. I actually support efforts by Google and other search engines to separate blog results from regular webpage results. Sometimes I don't want to have my search results skewed by blogs, and sometimes I really want to know how the 'blogosphere' feels about a particular issue. But while that happens, just ignore them. If you hate them so much, don't read them. But, really, infantile attacks don't make you superior in any way to the bloggers.
I know most blogs are, indeed, just self-centered rambling, or 15 year old girls talking about their latest dream with N'Sync and a pony, but on the other hand, they're valid outlets for a lot of people to just vent, express themselves, and give their opinions on issues. If you don't want to hear those opinions, then just don't visit their blogs. It's that simple.
And yes, I do have a blog of my own, no, I'm not giving out the address here, since it's basically just a self-centered little website that's read by me and maybe 2 friends, and that's fine by me.
Actually, there's a funny story about that... heh.. you see, I've actually been reading the notes on the treaty for the past couple of days, and a whole bunch of nations, notably Brazil and several others, are quite opposed to this treaty, out and out stating that it's a danger to creativity, the free flow of information, etc. etc. etc., and they repeatedly keep asking for this treaty, or at least several particularly nasty parts of it, to be removed. Only a few nations seem to be eager to see this mess go through, and chief among them is the US: the US delegates keep harping on about how industry needs the protection that this treaty will give it, and how the other nations just don't *understand* the real meaning of the many nasty clauses in the treaty. So, basically, it's the US that is doing most of the pushing to get this treaty passed as is, with all the nastyness. Keep in mind that most of the stuff on this treaty wouldn't affect the government itself. It wouldn't be illegal for the NSA to use encryption. It *would* be illegal for normal citizens to use it, or attempt to crack or understand it. The US government, and a large chunk of big business, would love nothing better than to see this treaty go through, since all of it benefits them, and none of it benefits the average joe.
Recently, I've seen companies try to scare you into not altering what you buy through voiding warranties and placing intimidating stickers on access panels.
While I agree with most of your statement, I have to say that there's a reason for those 'scary stickers' and the voiding of the warranty if you open up the machine and screw around with it.
The company I work for does a little bit of everything, including general computer repair. All computers we fix have a 90 day warranty. And we put one of those stickers on the back of the case, so that if you open the case, you have to break or tear off the sticker, making it obvious you opened it. Why? We have no problem with you opening up your box and peeing all over all the components if you like, but we also have no desire to fix your computer a second time for free if you do that.
We've had customers take away a perfectly working computer one day, and come back a week later saying that it's broken again and they want their warranty honored, and then we notice the sticker's been torn loose, and when we look inside, the damn thing has a different motherboard and a P4 instead of the Athlon it had last week. Needless to say, we did not honor his warranty. We did, however, fix his problem, and he left a couple days later with a fully wokring P4 system. Variations on this have happened way too often.
We have nothing against you modyfying your hardware, open it up, look around, whatever. But don't expect your warranty to still be there when you close that case up again. We can't be held responsible for whatever screw ups you may inflict on the machine while you're in there.
As always: mod all you want, so long as you either: a) know exactly what you're doing, or b)don't mind losing your warranty and paying for service or a replacement when it breaks. If you can't handle those two conditions, then don't mod. Things are tight enough without having to fix some idiot's overclocked GeForce FX for free.
Linux is good. It's better, faster, and more stable than it's been in years. The level of quality on existing applications has gone up considerably, and new applications are being worked on everyday. You can use it as an everyday desktop as easily as you can use it for web/file/print serving. Systems such as Debian, Gentoo, and, yes, even Red Hat, make installing applications and keeping them updated a breeze. You don't have to worry about viruses, and spam and pop up fighting is integrated into most available web browsers and mail clients. However: it's not perfect. And it still caters to a different type of person than what Windows usually caters to.
Here's the deal: a lot of things in Linux still require you to know about your computer, and the things that go in it. They require you to at least understand a lot about the inner workings of your machine and the software on it. This, however, means that your average Linux user must spend some time and effort learning these things and fiddling about with them, dropping into the command line, etc. etc. This is fine and good if you, like me, enjoy messing about with the guts of your OS. But most people, frankly, don't want to learn about their computers. They don't want to have to know anything about their system, its commands and file structures and methods and formats. They just want things to work, simply and with as little hassle as possible. And, for the most part, Windows provides that hassle-free day to day experience much better than Linux does.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't mean it as an attack, or in a condescending way, when I say most people can't be bothered to learn more about their computers and spend time learning the format of some arcane commands. It may seem strange to geeks like me, but most people do have better things to do. If you're, say, a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant or, hell, even a housewife, there's a thousand things in your day and in your life that are more important than trying to figure out just what command paramater will enable you to finally view that picture of your grandkids that your daughter in law emailed you. These people, most people, in fact, want convenience. They want to sit down and have their machine work hassle free, and they dont' want ten billion options and configuration parameters, they just want a button they can click that will do what they want, or close enough to it that it doesn't matter. And I can't say I blame them.
Sure, Linux is free, both cost wise and speech wise. And that's a big draw for a lot of us. But it's still not as easy to use as your average Joe and Jane want it to be, and it won't be for a short while longer, at least. Because of thise, while you might not spend money on it, you'll certainly have to spend more time with it, both in education and work to get it to do the things you want to do. Linux can do anything Windows can, and then some... it's just that it's not always as easy as it is over in Windows land. Most people simply don't have the time or patience to deal with that, and they're willing to pay to have things just work, rather than use free apps that require you to spend a week learning them. Why spend hours trying to figure out how transcode, vcdimager, and k3b work and getting around each app's quirks just to put an AVI movie on a VCD, when on Windows, Nero Burning Rom can grab an AVI and slap it on a VCD in three clicks. Sure, Nero costs money, whereas transcode and its ilk are free, but with Nero you click three times and you're done, while even a computer geek like me has to spend a whole morning trying to figure out the command line formats of each command before I can even begin, and then spend time experimenting with it until I get it right. Most people would rather pay for convenience than have to suffer for a free program.
So here's the deal: I'm no longer going to hold Windows against Windows users. If you know about Linux but still want to use Windows, it's your choice. There are risks and costs in that, of course, such as exposure to
But I've been using and reading e-books for years now, and I love them, to the point where I barely buy paperbacks anymore. I read them all the time on my old Ahndspring, and a while ago when I upgraded to a Zaurus, I kept right on reading them. I've been an avid reader since early childhood, and am often reading several books at once. Carrying several paperbakcs in my bags all the time tended to create some serious wear and tear on the books after a short while.. the bookmarks would fall out of step if I bounced my bag a bit to much (which happened a lot during my college years), and I generally found paperbacks to be somewhat inconvenient.
Enter the e-book. Now I carry a whole reference library (Dictionary, thesaurus, etc.), plus 5-7 random SF, Fantasy, and other novels and books, all in one pocket, in my Zaurus' CF card. When the urge to read strikes, I just hit a button to turn it on (instant bootup PDA), and within seconds I can choose any one of the books I'm reading, and they pick up exactly where I left off (qtreader is great), I can have multiple bookmarks, and I can search those books that need searching. Reading is comfortable and easy with the Zaurus' high-contrast screen (and I use glasses with a fairly high (-7) level of miopia, but I still find it easy to read and adjust the font size while still fitting ina couple of paragraphs of text on a screen), and if I don't want to keep hitting the 'down' button to flip pages, I can set it to a comfortable level ofauto-scroll and just lay back and let the text wash over my eyes.
In short, I love e-books, and I'm exactly the sort of person ebook publishers should be trying to target. However, the vast majority of e-books I have, I will admit, are pirated. I do have paper copies of a lot of the books in my e-book collection, but e-books are so much more convenient for me than regular books, that I'd rather have an electronic version than a paper one. And for the most part, most books I want to read are simply not released in e-book formats. I *want* to have e-book versions of the books I own. However, due to the small availability and constant format/DRM wars, there are very few places online where I can buy an e-book in a format that I can read on my Zaurus. Meanwhile, the folks in newsgroups and several places online are busy scanning and typing in hundreds of thousands of books and putting them online for free.
To e-book publishers: while you wrangle and try to find a way to lock down the user and make 'sure' that no one pirates your e-books or gives them away or lends them or does anything out of your control, there's a whole bunch of folks out there happily scanning the paper editions of your books and putting them online for free in simple, unlocked formats. While you continue to deny those of us who *Want* e-books the freedom to choose what platform we want to read on and what we want to do with our books, these people will continue to provide your product for free without your permission. Make books available in electronic formats, formats that are compatible across all platforms, with a minimum of hassle and DRM, and give them away free with the paper edition of the books, or sell them at a substantially reduced price from the paper edition (face it, they cost a lot less to produce in e-book format, and I can't help but laugh whenever I see an e-book version of a book selling for as much, or sometimes more, than the paper version), and let me choose what I do with my books, and you will have an eager customer for life.
*sigh* ... while your rather pedantic comments are corrections are, technically, valid, your grasp of my arguments seems fairly weak. It appears that, rather than reading my post and agreeing or disagreeing with the spirit and message of it, you chose to instead focus on one technical detail and let it cloud your vision. Your assertion that "Your little rant about how this thing is *not* an RPG is completely inaccurate." is not only a fairly childish, 'rules lawyer'-esque argument (see, I know about rules lawyers, I'm a roleplaying expert too!), it's one that misses the entire point I was trying to address.
You see, while your argument is technically correct, it fails to take into account that what I was trying to address is the general perception of what MMORPGS are, that is, Everquest, Ultima Online, and its ilk. To most people, calling something an 'RPG' immediately brings to mind images of swords and sorcery, elves and mosnters. To a few more, it can also bring images of sci-fi, futuristic games as well. And judging from the comments I had read up until the time of my post, I saw that that was the impression that most people got, without knowing what Second Life really was, they immediately started blabbering about swords and spells, because the term MMORPG was used. Since Second Life, while having a strong 'role playing' element to it, is not defined by those classic fantasy elements that form most MMORPGS, I attempted to distance Second Life from those expressions by explaining what actually goes into the game. As part of that distancing, I felt it neccesary to separate it from the general MMORPG term and the associations it has gathered.
As much as it may pain you to accept this, language is actually fluid, shifting.. words don't mean what the dictionary says they mean.. the dictionary simply attempts to catalogue the meaning currently associated with a specific word. Therefore, while your pedantic definition of the term MMORPG might be technically correct, when it comes to the actual associations and images called up by that term for most people, the meaning has changed. It is that meaning that I am attempting to distance Second Life from. However, thank you for posting and bringing up this point, and therefore giving me the opportunity to refute it.
And yes, I understand that you have thoroughly trolled me, and I fell for it, but what the heck, how can I resist the opportunity to set the record straight about such an important distinction, no?
The taxes are, actually, fairly high, and you get taxed on both the land you own and the objects you have rezzed (created) out in the world. However, they're not cripplignly high. Basically, they're just high enough to discourage you from littering th elandscape with hundreds of lovingly modeled goatse guys, but not so high that you shy away from creating a really kickass home for yourself with all sorts of doodads and gizmos. The game also has a series of ways for making money that encourages the creation of unique, interesting items. Besides just being able to sell copies of the items you make (and place permissions on those items to allow or disallow further copying, modification, etc.) the game also has what's called 'dwell', which basically pays you money if people spend X amount of time or more on your property. So while you may get taxed more for a house that's very complex (the taxes are based on how many 'prims', or individual, Lego-like objects, your creations are made out of), if it attracts people to it and they stick around examining it, you can make that money back and then some thanks to 'dwell'.
As a further note, L$3500 is a decent sum, but not vast riches either. As an example, buying an article of clothing from someone else can vary from anywhere around L$20 to L$500, depending on how prim-heavy the clothing is and how much the seller thinks they can get away with. Things like flying cars can cost L$1000 or more. But L$3500 and the stipend are enough to keep you comfortable and buying interesting things without having to build or sell a single thing if you don't want to.. while at the same time, if you want to create something really ambitious, then you have to have some sort of 'business' to make up for the taxes you'll be charged.
Question: have you ever played Second Life or done any modelling in it? The controls are actually quite simple, and after a couple of hours goofing around with it you can become quite proficient. Case in point: My fiancee recently began to play it as well, since she found it really interesting. She has only basic computer skills, and she's a psychology major, so she's never touched a 3D Cad program in her life. However, within a couple of days in the game she was cranking out truly interesting items, houses, dolls, wings, clothing, hats, just about anything she can imagine, she can create with surprisingly little effort and no previous 3D skills.
It's not perfect, of course: she can't code her way out of a wet paper bag, so she isn't able to assign complex actions to those objects, and usually depends on me to do the coding for her. But the actual object creation is very straightforward and intuitive, easy for someone with absolutely no 3D modeling experience to pick up and create with, but still deep enough for those with the inclination to do so to create some very complex objects. Basically, don't think Belnder or 3D Studio Max, think more along the lines of Legos and you get a better idea of what the 3D modeling system in game is like and why it's much easier to pick up for an average person.
Allright, really quick now, let me dispell some myths and doubts, since I've noticed that almost no posters even know what Second Life is, since they keep referring to it as an MMORPG and talking about swords and monsters and PK'ing and being able to 'patent your inventory'.
Second Life is *not* an RPG, there are no monsters or quests or anything. It does *not* have PK-ing, tjhe ability to steal other people's objects, or damage other's property (although you could code all these behaviours and more into objects you create, with the tools the game gives you). At its base, it's a glorified chat room, where you create an avatar and then fly around the world, meeting people, chatting with them, etc. However, certain things set it apart, the biggest one being that you have the freedom and ability to create 3D objects in the game, import textures and sounds, and use a specialized scripting language to assign actions, movements, behaviours, etc. to those objects and to your avatar. The depth of this creation system is absolutely stunning, and limited really only by your skill (and that's *your* skill as the person behind the keyboard doing the modeling and coding, not your character's artificial skill stats) and imagination. While a lot of people limit themselves ot just making things like t-shirts, paintings, and simple houses, I've seen very large, complex creations around the Second Life world, including entire floating cities, RPG systems coded in game with the scripting language, dragons, roller coaster and amusement park rides, sports arenas, game shows, and a lot more, all fully created by the players.
All these creations require time, effort and skill from the person making them. If you create a sword in Second Life, you actually model the thing, create the polygons, upload and tweak the textures, and script its actions.. you don't find the sword after killing a rabbit or roll you 'swordmaking' skill for the 'crafting' aspect of the game. You spend real time and effort to make it. You can imagine how much time some people have invested in their more ambitious creations.
That's, I think, what makes the difference here. The reason why IP should matter in a game like Second Life, as opposed to, say, Everquest or any of the other MMORPG's, even those with 'crafting' components, is that effort involved in the actual creation of the item. I don't mind a game company telling me that I can't sell a sword I won after battling a dragon in Everquest for real money because they own the IP on that sword. It's their right, they made the sword, they coded it and made the art etc. etc. etc. For all the effort I put into killing that dragon, I earn the right to use that sword of theirs in the game and reap its benefits, in game. However, when you're talking about a sword I crafted myself from bare polygons and scripts, that I spent hours on the Gimp or Photoshop tweaking the textures for, and you tell me that that item isn't mine and I can't sell it for real money if I want to, that's another matter entirely.
I personally applaud Second Life and their staff for recognizing this, that the effort and dedication that the players pour into the game with their creations makes the game itself better, and they deserve the fruits of their labour, and to keep the rights to their own creations. Second Life is far from perfect, it's got its bugs, its griefers, and its issues.. but with moves like this from their staff, it's also taking several very large steps towards setting itself apart from all the other MMO games and creating soemthing truly unique. Kudos to the founders for this decision.
ACtually, I know everyone's ignoring this post because it's by an AC, but he's got a very good point. Knoppix makes a Debian install absolutely brainless. I've used other distros before (Red Hat, Mandrake, Lycoris, mostly user-friendly desktop distros, I'm a Linux fan but not a hardcore Linux hacker, I just want an Open Source/Free desktop that *works*), but friends and net people kept telling me how much Debian rocked, how apt-get was better than sex, etc. etc. etc., so when I got my hands on a old PII machine, I decide to try and install Debian on it. I downloaded the official Debian CD's, and tried to do the installation, and suffered through the whole thing, muddling through as best I could. Even having set things up as well asI could, I ened up with a nearly unbootable system, X wouldn't start properly, and I was sorely dissapointed.
;), and I remembered that there was an option somewhere in there to do a HD install from the CD, and that it basically turned into Debian when you were done, except with a whole bunch of handy apps installed allready. A bti of googling later, and I had the recipe for it. Needless to say, the install went without a hitch, and was very easy. Knoppix took care of all the sticky hardware config issues, and I just had to set a few prefs, before I ende dup with a perfectly usable Debian system. Some editing of my apt sources and one apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade later, and I was running the latest bleeding-edge Debian unstable, and finally experiencing the coolness of Debian for myself.
;)
Then I remebered my trusty Knoppix Cd, which I sue to caryr around a Linux desktop everywhere and to show people that Linux *is* indeed useable for everyday tasks (I've gotten a few converts that way
Frankly, the Debian folks would do well to take a cue from Knoppix and integrate its kickass hardware detection into their own installer (with an option to do the usual manual install and config for those geeks who actually know what theyre doing.
Actually, Knoppix 3.2 allready has that. You can save your home dir to a USB keychain, a spot on the hard disk, or even just a floppy, as well as your desktop settings and preferences, and have them all be there next time you boot the CD, by passing a short command line param when you boot up (something like knoppix home=/mnt/usb0 or something like that)
/me looks down at his utility belt holding a pager, a celphone, Leatherman, and other assorted geek toys, blinks at his nice black DeCSS t-shirt, and glances over at his beloved Zaurus running Ethereal... Ya think he means *me*?
Seriously, though, I do agree with you. While the letter itself was a fun read, sorta left me going 'Woo! You go get 'em, cowboy!', after the initial moments of exultation you start to thinking if this is really the image we wanna portray to the rest of the world. It's more like something that's good for rallying the troops and getting them worked up to fight the evil SCO, rah rah rah, but not something you'd hand out at a press conference.
Still, gotta think, he *is* posting that on his personal blog, and people *are* allowed to have personal opinions on things. I'd be more worried if he placed that on the main OSI homepage or something of the sort.
Now someone just needs to add return of the money to everyone who purchases a copy to the end of a lawsuit.
;)
Screw that, man. The way I see it, if you or your company was dumb enough to fall for SCO's FUD and pony up the cash for one of their 'licenses', you *deserve* to lose that money. Have that money be donated to starving coders or something. I'll give you my Paypal details so you can forward some of that over this way.