I hope they're not going to let the hardcore fans write the Serenity movie--I watched the Firefly show on DVD and did not end up liking at much as many of my friends did.
Too bad for you, glad your friends enjoyed it.
For me, the Serenity movie is a chance for the Firefly team to show me something different.
Why? You've got Everything else on the planet if you want something different, the idea of the Serenity movie is to be Firefly. If you don't enjoy Firefly then I'm sorry, this movie simply isn't for you but I'm going expecting to see a movie like Firefly.
Wait a sec, if a company decides no to put advertising in a magazine, it is bullying them?
No, if a company decides to withdrawl advertising from a magazine in response to a story it didn't like it is bullying them.
Are they required to put ads into every media that demands so?
Nope, this is more of a moral guideline that consumers (and magazines) will have to hold the companies too. Unlike the other thread I can't really think of a way to make a law that wouldn't cause more harm than good for this scenerio. Since the magazine is putting the stories in the same magazine that your advertisements go in their stories become part of the advertisement. As such if their stories reflect badly on your advertisement you would have the (moral) right to withdrawl your advertisement. All I oppose is when your motive for withdrawling the advertisement is not for the sake of the advertisement but for leverage to influence the magazine to give you more favourable coverage, that is morally wrong.
How do you know? Were you at the board meetings? Do you think it's remotely possible that somebody in those meetings thought "Gosh, this might increase sales for this book." and that didn't wind up mattering?
And that person was probably laughed at quite heartily. Note that Apple has stopped carrying ALL their books, I'm not sure how many sales this will generate but I'm sure it won't make up for the loss of sales if Apple keeps up this boycott. Also note that this media attention very likely is NOT usual for cases like this and when they made the decision there was probably no expectation (on either side) that this would lead to increased overall sales due to media attension.
Your idea of making a law constraining the behavior of any free market actor is STILL a bad one.
You're advocating a pure market economy, no one has that, in fact it's impossible. You know why? In a completely unregulated market there will eventually be a corporation so powerful it will be the government, and they, being unregulated, can put whatever restrictions they want on their "customers" and you now have a regulated market.
If you say something I don't like, I don't have a legal, ethical, or moral obligation to keep letting you use my microphone. I may elect to let you continue, or I might not. You have no right to my stuff, ever.
I just want to specify that these things being said that you don't like are not using your microphone however I still sympathize with your point on a moral and individual level. However when talking about publishers and retailers I feel that is less important. Since retailers exist for profit, not for morals, I think they lose some of the justification for making moral judgements on things. As well the publisher is in fact the one giving people the microphone, it's more of a content carrier than a content producer, therefore it has somewhat less responsibility for the speech than if it produced it itself. I realize that both of these arguments are somewhat grey but you need to acknowledge that there is a fundamental difference between these concepts being applied on a corporate level as opposed to the individual level you are using for your justification.
For Apple? No, it was a matter of using their economic influence to try to force the publisher to not publish the book, that it caught publicity and MIGHT result in the publisher making more money than they will lose was an accident and thus no reprieve for Apple.
Say we implement your law. Now you're requiring (by law, which is backed up by guys with guns) that a retailer stock whatever the publisher decides to foist on them.
You've aquired a bad habit of completely misinterpreting my points (by accident I hope). I was EXPLICIT when I stated the retailer would NOT be forced to carry the book they disagreed with, nor did I say the retailer couldn't drop the books if they had another justified reason for doing so. All I said is the retailer could not drop other books for the purpose of punishing/influencing the publisher to not publish a DIFFERENT book. The retailer isn't forced to stock ANYTHING they don't want unless the only reason they don't want it is to bully the publisher (ie suppress speech).
So Apple should be forced to carry books on its shelves that, for whatever reason, it finds unsuitable?
No I never said they had to carry the books. What I'm saying is that if that choose to leverage their position as a book seller to push their (or their CEO's) own adgenda than we should respond by letting them know we don't approve.
They're not stopping the publishing of this work. They're not even making a meaningful dent in sales. Hell, I betcha this little pissing contest will improve sales.
Again I said since apple wasn't a major book seller I would let them get away with it to an extent since they know that they don't have as big a say as Chapters for instance. The fact that it could improve sales is a complete non-issue since that was certainly not the intention behind apple's actions nor is it the result in the vast majority of cases such as this. How do you propose to force somebody to sell books that they don't want to sell, without infringing on their rights? I certainly wouldn't argue that any corporation has any right to free speech whatsoever, but how is it OK for one publisher to speak, but not OK for a retail outlet to not provide them with a microphone?
I don't propose to do any such thing. I'm saying we as consumers should look at these corporations when they do something to stifle speech and let them know of our disapproval...
Though now that you mention "forcing" I have a bit of an idea. What of a law that a retailer cannot choose to drop books of a publisher due to books the publisher chooses to publish. IE retailer sells books A and B from publisher, publisher decides to publish book C that retailer doesn't like, retailer is not allowed to drop A and B as a response. Retailer is not being forced to carry book C of which it disapproves but still carries A and B (of which it approved of before), they can still stop carrying A and B for others reasons, just as long as they are not as a response to C. Publisher meanwhile is free to publish whatever books they wish without fear of reprisal.
The only slack I give apple is because they aren't a major book seller and thus don't have the same stiffling effect on speech.
In short, business as usual and a BIG yawner:
"It's certainly not unprecedented for a company to protest publication of a book or article it finds unflattering.
IBM, for instance, staged a six-year advertising boycott of Fortune magazine after then-Chief Executive Louis V. Gerstner took exception to a 1997 cover story.
More recently, General Motors withdrew its ads from the Los Angeles Times in protest of an April 6 review of its Pontiac G6."
Ahh yes, major corporations bullying the media is the norm and is something I should be comfortable with. A corporation has no buisness using its advertising dollars for the purchase of advertisments to try and influence positive press outside the scope of the ad itself. I certainly hope that Fortune magazine and the LA Times didn't let that influence their writing.
Yes corporations have a legal obligation to make money however they can, just remember that we have a moral obligation to slap them in the face whenever they attempt to censor speech. I love apple and hate microsoft but I can't help that note that to my knowledge MS hasn't threatened to stop buying ads unless./ runs more positive stories about them.
I know, one of the things I've always found hardest to understand about Movie Reviewers was their habit of continuously stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in "It's a comedy", or "It's a very long movie", or "Oh dear they've adapted this movie from a book and made it really really bad".
GPL software developer suing blatant copyright infringer - GOOD
Music industry suing blatant copyright infringer - BAD
Please note the fundamental difference where one is a non-profit suing a company infringing their copyright for the purposes of making money, while the other is a major corporation suing an individual who's motives were not monetary in nature (I don't consider stealing music they can't convert into money to be monetary).
Placebo's are certainly a lot more effective then most people realize. I don't even bother with medicine when I'm sick anymore, I just have a few placebos and I'm fine!!
There's one problem with your reasoning. You're perceiving solar energy production as a traditional power generation source. You've forgotten that solar energy is provided by solar panels and as a result you don't need a central facility. Now if we start slapping them on top of buildings and car roofs we can make a sizeable reduction in the load on power plants (not to mention reduce some of the central distribution which is a major problem with our current power grid, ie black outs) reducing the fossil fuel consumption or simply allowing alternate power generation tecniques to pick up a greater portion of the remainder.
3.1 M5 Anyway you seem to forgot to mention the biggest change other than gcc, and that is that eclipse is a native application now, using open source java tools like classpath and gcj.
native eclipse == damn cool!! IMHABO (In My Humble And Biased Opinion) I feel that the open source java stack in FC4 is the coolest part. Like it or not java is a major part of the computing landscape and we really shouldn't need to use propietary software if we want to use java.
Yes, or no. They give a shit, what people like you and me think, they only listen to you, if you decide to buy 20.000 copies of MacOS X if they don't include the features you want.
Well they also listen if you're talking to someone who may buy 20,000 copies of OS X, or may be read by 20,000 people who may buy OS X (how many people read/. comments?) or you write a program that is important to 20,000 people and are considering whether to port your app to OS X. It's called word of mouth advertising and it's probably the most important type, why do you think/. gets astroturfed so much? It's commendable that your so dedicated in your response to bad companies but it isn't necessary, complaining without action does have its benefits and I won't forfeit my right to complain just because the offence is not egregious enough to warrent a boycott.
Yes you are sure. But there is a president (a reelected president, I think) which showed as all that everything in the world works this way. And yes, I think you should start a boycott if you are noticing anything. Tell me, which other ways do I have as a consumer?
Heh, I noticed partway though my rant an opportunity to take a shot at Bush but didn't want to risk it:)
Tell me which ways do I have to show a company, that I don't like what they are doing???
Complain. It may not make a huge difference (especially if it's not to them directly) but it does make a difference. Companies pay attention to word of mouth, Microsoft is a perfect example, do you think they would of included a pop-up blocker in IE if it wasn't for the torrent of complaints on places like/. ? Not to mention their odd "gestures" of goodwill (however slight) towards open source recently. Even if you don't get to the company other people hear you. I remember years ago people whinning about windows on/. most of these people probably used windows at the time and many still do, were their rantings pointless? No, they gave me the push I needed to try out linux and eventually boycott MS entirely, and some of them probably talked themselves into doing the same. On the other hand I don't like how easily google rolled over in the area of results censorship and am not quite comfortable with the idea of them being a public company now but I'm certainly not going to boycott them over it. Everybody makes decisions based on a slightly different equation and even if you spot something that doesn't make much of a difference in the conclusion you come to that coefficient might have a much bigger effect for someone else.
p.s. Thanks for not getting turned off by the tone of my previous rant, everyone needs a little vent now and then;)
Oh. This is soooo sweet! How many/.ers are here and rant about evil cooperations and so on. And how many of them are using a PC with IBM/Intel/AMD-CPU, from Dell/Apple/Sony/whatsoever and so on... This is sooo typical: On the one hand ranting about evil cooperations and on the other hand trying to feed from their hands....
So what? Since when did it become mandatory to launch a boycott the moment you noticed a company doing something wrong? What bizarre world do you live in where everything is good or evil? There's nothing that irritates me more than people trying to apply binary logic to a system where it doesn't fit then going on about how easy it is. You know what,
if (company.allegiance() == EVIL)
doesn't make any sense!! There's no company/person/country/thing that's completely evil nor is there one that is completely good, you have varying degrees and standards after which many people apply a label for convenience but it's still not a binary case and if everyone went around acting as if it was binary you'd have one messed up planet. You know what I don't use Microsoft, there's enough combination of evilness in Microsoft and better use with Linux that I won't touch it. However I won't deny that there's some usefullness in Microsoft and some evil in Linux, it's just how it balances out for me. I'll rail all day about all the evils of Monsanto (which surpass Microsoft) but I'm not going to starve myself or get malnutricion boycotting everything in the grocery store I think might be GM. If a company goes a little more evil on my I'll give them a little less money, a little more bad PR, and if you see me give some support to a company whom I've complained about and call me a hypocrite I'll call you an idiot. Stop being so self-rightious and pretending you're on the TRUE side of some binary world.
Sorry for the rant/flame, using clearly fundamentaly flawed agruments to make a point just really bugs me.
The way I figure it is that every Linux user who is also a gamer is dual-booting Windows (or running Windows on another box). Developer makes a Windows game. Linux guy buys it and runs it on Windows. That's one sale. Now what happens if the developer incurs the cost of developing a Linux version? He sells one game to Linux guy who then runs it in Linux and goes "cool!" That's one sale. Where does the developer gain in this scenario?
I don't know how common a scenerio I am but when I originally switched I used to switch back to windows all the time for gaming. As I became more an more comfortable with linux and rebooting to game felt like more and more of a hassle I eventually stopped gaming altogether. I haven't rebooted in about 6 months and over the past two years have probably spent about a total of two weeks using windows (only for gaming) and I expect that number to grow even smaller. Right now I'm just waiting to get a DVD burner to backup windows then I'm going wipe it completely and get some more space for Linux. I know of a lot of games on Linux, however with the shortage of titles and the hassles with drivers so I could play them I just haven't done much gaming in Linux for about the last year.
Why should they make games for Linux? Because if they don't the gamer may eventually get tired of the hassle and then they won't be gamers anymore.
Does that mean you're the anonymous coward removing your mask now?
Sorry, I'm not the poster you're looking for:)
That'll teach me for taking a look at -1, but I was hoping for another mirror site, since the link was apparently already/.ed before the first mirror managed to get a copy. If someone wants to complain about the editors, it might be reasonable to suggest that they set up mirrors and include the links before they publish the URL of those wimpy little servers.
That's a reasonable idea, especially for the easily clobbered sites such as the above, the problem is that/. doesn't want to deal with the legal, and more importantly, bandwidth issues of mirroring, there's http://mirrordot.org/ (I haven't really used them but have seen them in comments) though from their front page I wonder if/. might have legal issues with them. I recall some trouble with http://alterslash.org/ along that grounds some time ago but they seem to have changed their page somewhat since then, they could also just link to the google cache (no images although).
The fact is they have to realize that posting links to small sites without warning just doesn't work for a site of this scale. Before they post these links they really should give the webmaster an advance notice, either to see if something can be arranged to allow for the extra traffic, or to abandon the story altogether. They've resisted advance warning in the past but considering that I cannot recall a single small server that had actual NEWS and not something that could be (and often is;) posted weeks or even months later waiting isn't an option (and gives them more choice on the slow news days). To the abandoning of the story I realize they don't want to drop a story on some cool site because of some wimpy server but the fact is that even if they go ahead and post there still no story on a cool site, just rambling with dead links! Links like this to small sites that die upon impact do nothing but frustrate readers looking for non-existant content and harm the people who run the actual site that was so cool in the first place.
What a dweeb. Say, if you don't like/., how about you just go away?
Yeah, because when something good has problems you should just abandon it instead of trying to correct them. Those who post the stories and comments are the reason/. exists, they have a moral right to partake in its direction.
The main effect of your ranting is to make me rather like "michael", whoever he is. He's certainly an improvement on you.
Ahh, because the messenger defines the message? Just because the messenger isn't perfect does not change the fact that/. has some serious problems with the degree of professionalism demonstrated by some of the editors. There are times I'm surprised that/. hasn't been sued for libel for some of the inaccurate information they've posted in stories where even RTFA'ing would of informed them otherwise. Hundreds of thousands of geeks come here daily and many are inevitably going to give some degree of credence to what they see on the front page. I'm not asking for the New York Times here but at least some basic proofreading and making sure the facts are vaugly right before they post it for everyone to see would be nice.
I was quite surprised when I actually read Beowulf to find out that there's a lot more than just Grendel and Family, that just the first half of the book or so. Later on there's some warring, a lot more speeches, some speeches about warring, then a battle with a dragon. Yet other than some references that came from that latter section I'd never actually been aware of this additional portion of the story, it was quite perplexing while reading the book when I thought it had "finished" and I was only half way through! I can see why they do this, the Grendel bit of action really is pretty cool and is a much easier story to tell, but it changes the subject from the poem where it's a story about Beowulf (which includes a surprising amount of character growth) to the story of his battle with Grendel (which includes a bunch of cocky speeches).
I really doubt it will be the full poem but I can always hope:)
...TWENTY YEARS AGO, when these movies were actually good! Now look at them. He's waiting for THAT?
Well I think it's best explained by this choice quote on the site from some letter he got (emphasis added)
" JEFF WAITED OUTSIDE IN LINE FOR A MOVIE FOR OVER FOUR MONTHS! And now he's at it again!! I don't think any of us can really have an accurate idea of what this entails. The elements, the mental and physical demands alone would surely weed out anyone who was simply crazy or posturing. "
I'm not quite sure if that's the conclusion I'd come to...
After waiting in line for four months for whichever Ep that was the trauma of actually watching it and thinking "I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR MONTHS FOR THIS?!?!" for the entire movie he was force to create an alternate reality in which they were on par with the original, in which case his actions are still insane but in a less scary way.
Either that or he was just really high while watching the first two and thought they were good, now stay with me, I mean REALLY high, high enough that who ever made the drug deserves a nobel prize.
The definition of free was used 'as in beer' well before 'as in speech'. Just because RMS uses 'free' in such a sense doesn't mean everyone must. Actually it was a mistake of RMS by using the same word (he could have used 'liberal' instead).
Sure if he wanted it referred to as "*BLEEP* software" everytime it was mentioned in the American media!!
Slashdot Mirror
the committee recommended closely monitoring the mice's behavior and immediately killing any that display human-like behavior.
You know when considering a solution to that particular ethical dilemma that wasn't the first idea that came to mind...
I hope they're not going to let the hardcore fans write the Serenity movie--I watched the Firefly show on DVD and did not end up liking at much as many of my friends did.
Too bad for you, glad your friends enjoyed it.
For me, the Serenity movie is a chance for the Firefly team to show me something different.
Why? You've got Everything else on the planet if you want something different, the idea of the Serenity movie is to be Firefly. If you don't enjoy Firefly then I'm sorry, this movie simply isn't for you but I'm going expecting to see a movie like Firefly.
I glanced at the title and read
/.?!"
NASA Preparing Manned Hubble Service Mission
as
NASA Preparing Manned Hubble Secret Mission
and thought, "gee if they're trying to keep it secret then why are they announcing it on
Wait a sec, if a company decides no to put advertising in a magazine, it is bullying them?
No, if a company decides to withdrawl advertising from a magazine in response to a story it didn't like it is bullying them.
Are they required to put ads into every media that demands so?
Nope, this is more of a moral guideline that consumers (and magazines) will have to hold the companies too. Unlike the other thread I can't really think of a way to make a law that wouldn't cause more harm than good for this scenerio. Since the magazine is putting the stories in the same magazine that your advertisements go in their stories become part of the advertisement. As such if their stories reflect badly on your advertisement you would have the (moral) right to withdrawl your advertisement. All I oppose is when your motive for withdrawling the advertisement is not for the sake of the advertisement but for leverage to influence the magazine to give you more favourable coverage, that is morally wrong.
How do you know? Were you at the board meetings? Do you think it's remotely possible that somebody in those meetings thought "Gosh, this might increase sales for this book." and that didn't wind up mattering?
And that person was probably laughed at quite heartily. Note that Apple has stopped carrying ALL their books, I'm not sure how many sales this will generate but I'm sure it won't make up for the loss of sales if Apple keeps up this boycott. Also note that this media attention very likely is NOT usual for cases like this and when they made the decision there was probably no expectation (on either side) that this would lead to increased overall sales due to media attension.
Your idea of making a law constraining the behavior of any free market actor is STILL a bad one.
You're advocating a pure market economy, no one has that, in fact it's impossible. You know why? In a completely unregulated market there will eventually be a corporation so powerful it will be the government, and they, being unregulated, can put whatever restrictions they want on their "customers" and you now have a regulated market.
If you say something I don't like, I don't have a legal, ethical, or moral obligation to keep letting you use my microphone. I may elect to let you continue, or I might not. You have no right to my stuff, ever.
I just want to specify that these things being said that you don't like are not using your microphone however I still sympathize with your point on a moral and individual level. However when talking about publishers and retailers I feel that is less important. Since retailers exist for profit, not for morals, I think they lose some of the justification for making moral judgements on things. As well the publisher is in fact the one giving people the microphone, it's more of a content carrier than a content producer, therefore it has somewhat less responsibility for the speech than if it produced it itself. I realize that both of these arguments are somewhat grey but you need to acknowledge that there is a fundamental difference between these concepts being applied on a corporate level as opposed to the individual level you are using for your justification.
Gosh. I wonder if it's a matter of principle.
For Apple? No, it was a matter of using their economic influence to try to force the publisher to not publish the book, that it caught publicity and MIGHT result in the publisher making more money than they will lose was an accident and thus no reprieve for Apple.
Say we implement your law. Now you're requiring (by law, which is backed up by guys with guns) that a retailer stock whatever the publisher decides to foist on them.
You've aquired a bad habit of completely misinterpreting my points (by accident I hope). I was EXPLICIT when I stated the retailer would NOT be forced to carry the book they disagreed with, nor did I say the retailer couldn't drop the books if they had another justified reason for doing so. All I said is the retailer could not drop other books for the purpose of punishing/influencing the publisher to not publish a DIFFERENT book. The retailer isn't forced to stock ANYTHING they don't want unless the only reason they don't want it is to bully the publisher (ie suppress speech).
So Apple should be forced to carry books on its shelves that, for whatever reason, it finds unsuitable?
No I never said they had to carry the books. What I'm saying is that if that choose to leverage their position as a book seller to push their (or their CEO's) own adgenda than we should respond by letting them know we don't approve.
They're not stopping the publishing of this work. They're not even making a meaningful dent in sales. Hell, I betcha this little pissing contest will improve sales.
Again I said since apple wasn't a major book seller I would let them get away with it to an extent since they know that they don't have as big a say as Chapters for instance. The fact that it could improve sales is a complete non-issue since that was certainly not the intention behind apple's actions nor is it the result in the vast majority of cases such as this.
How do you propose to force somebody to sell books that they don't want to sell, without infringing on their rights? I certainly wouldn't argue that any corporation has any right to free speech whatsoever, but how is it OK for one publisher to speak, but not OK for a retail outlet to not provide them with a microphone?
I don't propose to do any such thing. I'm saying we as consumers should look at these corporations when they do something to stifle speech and let them know of our disapproval...
Though now that you mention "forcing" I have a bit of an idea. What of a law that a retailer cannot choose to drop books of a publisher due to books the publisher chooses to publish. IE retailer sells books A and B from publisher, publisher decides to publish book C that retailer doesn't like, retailer is not allowed to drop A and B as a response. Retailer is not being forced to carry book C of which it disapproves but still carries A and B (of which it approved of before), they can still stop carrying A and B for others reasons, just as long as they are not as a response to C. Publisher meanwhile is free to publish whatever books they wish without fear of reprisal.
While interesting,
./ runs more positive stories about them.
- Apple is not the government (therefore, any ridiculous cries of censorship are just a wee tad bit overboard)
Censorship is censorship
The only slack I give apple is because they aren't a major book seller and thus don't have the same stiffling effect on speech.
In short, business as usual and a BIG yawner:
"It's certainly not unprecedented for a company to protest publication of a book or article it finds unflattering.
IBM, for instance, staged a six-year advertising boycott of Fortune magazine after then-Chief Executive Louis V. Gerstner took exception to a 1997 cover story.
More recently, General Motors withdrew its ads from the Los Angeles Times in protest of an April 6 review of its Pontiac G6."
Ahh yes, major corporations bullying the media is the norm and is something I should be comfortable with. A corporation has no buisness using its advertising dollars for the purchase of advertisments to try and influence positive press outside the scope of the ad itself. I certainly hope that Fortune magazine and the LA Times didn't let that influence their writing.
Yes corporations have a legal obligation to make money however they can, just remember that we have a moral obligation to slap them in the face whenever they attempt to censor speech. I love apple and hate microsoft but I can't help that note that to my knowledge MS hasn't threatened to stop buying ads unless
people always laugh at me for being bird brain!
but see we find out what you couldn't!
look who dummys now!
HA HA!!
I know, one of the things I've always found hardest to understand about Movie Reviewers was their habit of continuously stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in "It's a comedy", or "It's a very long movie", or "Oh dear they've adapted this movie from a book and made it really really bad".
GPL software developer suing blatant copyright infringer - GOOD
Music industry suing blatant copyright infringer - BAD
Please note the fundamental difference where one is a non-profit suing a company infringing their copyright for the purposes of making money, while the other is a major corporation suing an individual who's motives were not monetary in nature (I don't consider stealing music they can't convert into money to be monetary).
Placebo's are certainly a lot more effective then most people realize. I don't even bother with medicine when I'm sick anymore, I just have a few placebos and I'm fine!!
There's one problem with your reasoning. You're perceiving solar energy production as a traditional power generation source. You've forgotten that solar energy is provided by solar panels and as a result you don't need a central facility. Now if we start slapping them on top of buildings and car roofs we can make a sizeable reduction in the load on power plants (not to mention reduce some of the central distribution which is a major problem with our current power grid, ie black outs) reducing the fossil fuel consumption or simply allowing alternate power generation tecniques to pick up a greater portion of the remainder.
Eclipse 3.1M5 or 3.01?
3.1 M5
Anyway you seem to forgot to mention the biggest change other than gcc, and that is that eclipse is a native application now, using open source java tools like classpath and gcj.
native eclipse == damn cool!!
IMHABO (In My Humble And Biased Opinion) I feel that the open source java stack in FC4 is the coolest part. Like it or not java is a major part of the computing landscape and we really shouldn't need to use propietary software if we want to use java.
Yes, or no. They give a shit, what people like you and me think, they only listen to you, if you decide to buy 20.000 copies of MacOS X if they don't include the features you want.
Well they also listen if you're talking to someone who may buy 20,000 copies of OS X, or may be read by 20,000 people who may buy OS X (how many people read
Yes you are sure. But there is a president (a reelected president, I think) which showed as all that everything in the world works this way. And yes, I think you should start a boycott if you are noticing anything. Tell me, which other ways do I have as a consumer?
:)
/. ? Not to mention their odd "gestures" of goodwill (however slight) towards open source recently. Even if you don't get to the company other people hear you. I remember years ago people whinning about windows on /. most of these people probably used windows at the time and many still do, were their rantings pointless? No, they gave me the push I needed to try out linux and eventually boycott MS entirely, and some of them probably talked themselves into doing the same. On the other hand I don't like how easily google rolled over in the area of results censorship and am not quite comfortable with the idea of them being a public company now but I'm certainly not going to boycott them over it. Everybody makes decisions based on a slightly different equation and even if you spot something that doesn't make much of a difference in the conclusion you come to that coefficient might have a much bigger effect for someone else.
;)
Heh, I noticed partway though my rant an opportunity to take a shot at Bush but didn't want to risk it
Tell me which ways do I have to show a company, that I don't like what they are doing???
Complain. It may not make a huge difference (especially if it's not to them directly) but it does make a difference. Companies pay attention to word of mouth, Microsoft is a perfect example, do you think they would of included a pop-up blocker in IE if it wasn't for the torrent of complaints on places like
p.s. Thanks for not getting turned off by the tone of my previous rant, everyone needs a little vent now and then
Oh. This is soooo sweet! How many /.ers are here and rant about evil cooperations and so on. And how many of them are using a PC with IBM/Intel/AMD-CPU, from Dell/Apple/Sony/whatsoever and so on... This is sooo typical: On the one hand ranting about evil cooperations and on the other hand trying to feed from their hands....
So what? Since when did it become mandatory to launch a boycott the moment you noticed a company doing something wrong? What bizarre world do you live in where everything is good or evil? There's nothing that irritates me more than people trying to apply binary logic to a system where it doesn't fit then going on about how easy it is. You know what,
if (company.allegiance() == EVIL)
doesn't make any sense!! There's no company/person/country/thing that's completely evil nor is there one that is completely good, you have varying degrees and standards after which many people apply a label for convenience but it's still not a binary case and if everyone went around acting as if it was binary you'd have one messed up planet. You know what I don't use Microsoft, there's enough combination of evilness in Microsoft and better use with Linux that I won't touch it. However I won't deny that there's some usefullness in Microsoft and some evil in Linux, it's just how it balances out for me. I'll rail all day about all the evils of Monsanto (which surpass Microsoft) but I'm not going to starve myself or get malnutricion boycotting everything in the grocery store I think might be GM. If a company goes a little more evil on my I'll give them a little less money, a little more bad PR, and if you see me give some support to a company whom I've complained about and call me a hypocrite I'll call you an idiot. Stop being so self-rightious and pretending you're on the TRUE side of some binary world.
Sorry for the rant/flame, using clearly fundamentaly flawed agruments to make a point just really bugs me.
So it would be iTiVo then?
The way I figure it is that every Linux user who is also a gamer is dual-booting Windows (or running Windows on another box). Developer makes a Windows game. Linux guy buys it and runs it on Windows. That's one sale. Now what happens if the developer incurs the cost of developing a Linux version? He sells one game to Linux guy who then runs it in Linux and goes "cool!" That's one sale. Where does the developer gain in this scenario?
I don't know how common a scenerio I am but when I originally switched I used to switch back to windows all the time for gaming. As I became more an more comfortable with linux and rebooting to game felt like more and more of a hassle I eventually stopped gaming altogether. I haven't rebooted in about 6 months and over the past two years have probably spent about a total of two weeks using windows (only for gaming) and I expect that number to grow even smaller. Right now I'm just waiting to get a DVD burner to backup windows then I'm going wipe it completely and get some more space for Linux. I know of a lot of games on Linux, however with the shortage of titles and the hassles with drivers so I could play them I just haven't done much gaming in Linux for about the last year.
Why should they make games for Linux? Because if they don't the gamer may eventually get tired of the hassle and then they won't be gamers anymore.
Basilisk (based on Fedora)
:)
Okay, so it's not OS X but "kills you when you look at it" is exaggerating just a bit and not exactly the best impression you want to give people
Honestly, when it comes to looks I've seen far worse!
Does that mean you're the anonymous coward removing your mask now?
:)
/.ed before the first mirror managed to get a copy. If someone wants to complain about the editors, it might be reasonable to suggest that they set up mirrors and include the links before they publish the URL of those wimpy little servers.
/. doesn't want to deal with the legal, and more importantly, bandwidth issues of mirroring, there's http://mirrordot.org/ (I haven't really used them but have seen them in comments) though from their front page I wonder if /. might have legal issues with them. I recall some trouble with http://alterslash.org/ along that grounds some time ago but they seem to have changed their page somewhat since then, they could also just link to the google cache (no images although).
Sorry, I'm not the poster you're looking for
That'll teach me for taking a look at -1, but I was hoping for another mirror site, since the link was apparently already
That's a reasonable idea, especially for the easily clobbered sites such as the above, the problem is that
The fact is they have to realize that posting links to small sites without warning just doesn't work for a site of this scale. Before they post these links they really should give the webmaster an advance notice, either to see if something can be arranged to allow for the extra traffic, or to abandon the story altogether. They've resisted advance warning in the past but considering that I cannot recall a single small server that had actual NEWS and not something that could be (and often is;) posted weeks or even months later waiting isn't an option (and gives them more choice on the slow news days). To the abandoning of the story I realize they don't want to drop a story on some cool site because of some wimpy server but the fact is that even if they go ahead and post there still no story on a cool site, just rambling with dead links! Links like this to small sites that die upon impact do nothing but frustrate readers looking for non-existant content and harm the people who run the actual site that was so cool in the first place.
What a dweeb. Say, if you don't like /., how about you just go away?
/. exists, they have a moral right to partake in its direction.
/. has some serious problems with the degree of professionalism demonstrated by some of the editors. There are times I'm surprised that /. hasn't been sued for libel for some of the inaccurate information they've posted in stories where even RTFA'ing would of informed them otherwise. Hundreds of thousands of geeks come here daily and many are inevitably going to give some degree of credence to what they see on the front page. I'm not asking for the New York Times here but at least some basic proofreading and making sure the facts are vaugly right before they post it for everyone to see would be nice.
Yeah, because when something good has problems you should just abandon it instead of trying to correct them. Those who post the stories and comments are the reason
The main effect of your ranting is to make me rather like "michael", whoever he is. He's certainly an improvement on you.
Ahh, because the messenger defines the message? Just because the messenger isn't perfect does not change the fact that
I was quite surprised when I actually read Beowulf to find out that there's a lot more than just Grendel and Family, that just the first half of the book or so. Later on there's some warring, a lot more speeches, some speeches about warring, then a battle with a dragon. Yet other than some references that came from that latter section I'd never actually been aware of this additional portion of the story, it was quite perplexing while reading the book when I thought it had "finished" and I was only half way through! I can see why they do this, the Grendel bit of action really is pretty cool and is a much easier story to tell, but it changes the subject from the poem where it's a story about Beowulf (which includes a surprising amount of character growth) to the story of his battle with Grendel (which includes a bunch of cocky speeches).
:)
I really doubt it will be the full poem but I can always hope
Well I think it's best explained by this choice quote on the site from some letter he got (emphasis added)
"
JEFF WAITED OUTSIDE IN LINE FOR A MOVIE FOR OVER FOUR MONTHS! And now he's at it again!! I don't think any of us can really have an accurate idea of what this entails. The elements, the mental and physical demands alone would surely weed out anyone who was simply crazy or posturing.
"
I'm not quite sure if that's the conclusion I'd come to...
After waiting in line for four months for whichever Ep that was the trauma of actually watching it and thinking "I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR MONTHS FOR THIS?!?!" for the entire movie he was force to create an alternate reality in which they were on par with the original, in which case his actions are still insane but in a less scary way.
Either that or he was just really high while watching the first two and thought they were good, now stay with me, I mean REALLY high, high enough that who ever made the drug deserves a nobel prize.
The definition of free was used 'as in beer' well before 'as in speech'. Just because RMS uses 'free' in such a sense doesn't mean everyone must. Actually it was a mistake of RMS by using the same word (he could have used 'liberal' instead).
Sure if he wanted it referred to as "*BLEEP* software" everytime it was mentioned in the American media!!