" Not enough demand for alternative OS's to make selling and supporting them profitable, which means they don't, which means that the OEMs have to be able to sell Windows, which means MS can (and did) dictate terms to the OEMs.."
Fair point. And it happens. "Use us exclusively or pay $50 a piece more for Windows."
Again, though, this type of problem really is solved by encouraging building of computers. Microsoft isn't the only company 'taxing' everybody.
" how pretty much all PCs come with their product and their "tax" regardless of whether or not you want it."
The tax is easy to avoid, build your computer instead of having it pre-built.
I know Microsoft's done nasty stuff. Not arguing that. However, you can't buy a car without tires just because you don't like Firestone. Why should computers be different? Why's Dell obligated to sell you a computer sans OS? I mean, they could but how would they support it? "Uh, I bought this computer from you, and I installed BeOS on it, and my sound card doesn't work. Why didn't you guys give me a BeOS compatible sound card?!?"
I'm not defending Microsoft here, I just find the MS tax statement to be tired. I've had 3 computers since 2000. I only paid for Windows 2000 once. No, I didn't do anything illegal. Simply a matter of retiring one machine when the next came along. I haven't had to worry about 'tax' because I bought specifically what I wanted. I mean, you could always say "Well if I decide I want a Gateway Computer, I can't buy one without paying Microsoft!!!" To which my response is "You also can't buy a Gateway Computer without paying them to support you. You can't say 'oh I dont want tech support, so pls take that off my bill'"
The tax is there, but it's nowhere near as forced as you make it sound.
"OK, so maybe she was out for a quick fix but after such a kind gesture, why not give here the benefit of the doubt too."
Don't you think I did? I could very easily have told you that she went straight to the liquor store. Instead, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, and told the absolute truth: I did not actually see her enter the store. I haven't painted her as guilty, but my instincts tell me that's exactly what she did. The lady next to me in line had the exact same thought in her head too.
Either way, it was a bad presentation on her part. If I were in need, and I went into a restaraunt and asked for money to feed me, I wouldn't then walk out of that place, let alone head in the direction of a liquor store.
For the record, I'm not saying help shouldn't be provided at all. I don't think my view was clear enough on that matter, judging from the responses so far. What I'd like is a solution to the problem. This solution would not be a single solution in itself, but a series of solutions. Gov't sponsored education would be a good start. "Homeless? Learn a job skill!" Medical care is another problem seeking a solution. We have a number of homeless people here who are mentally very ill. I imagine they're on the street because nobody can afford to take care of them, and mentally ill people often have trouble maintaining a job. Yet another is that there isn't an easy way to maintain housing for people when the weather turns bad. We have yet another problem of runaways. Kids that leave home because.. oh I dunno, maybe Mom took the Nintendo away or something.
It's relatively easy to come up wtih solutions for those problems individually, but then issues of scales arise. How do you provide these services without enticing people to be lazy and drop down into that level of survival? It's one thing to support a handful of people, it's another when the numbers grow too much.
I wish I knew how to solve this. I don't. Sharing the wealth would ease the symptoms, but I'm not convinced it's constructive. There are organizations chewing on that problem here, but they're often overloaded and underfunded. I'm willing to donate there, but I'm a little miffed the government isn't doing more to support them.
In any case, I don't like being accused either directly or indirectly of not caring. I care very much. I don't want people to starve. I don't want people to die. I don't want people to be sad. However, I'm presented with two problems. 1.) Nobody's come up with the perfect solution yet and 2.) I can really only help people who are actively trying to help themselves.
"The real problem is that society, as a whole, just doesn't care enough about the unfortunates enough to do anything."
Funny, when I read this, a memory bubbled to the surface. I was at a fast food joint one night. A homeless woman tapped my shoulder and asked for money to buy food. Thinking "hey, we're in a restaraunt, she'll actually use the money to buy food!" I gave her $5. She turned right around, wandered outside, and headed in the direction of a nearby shopping center complete with liquor store. The woman next to me in line was astonished. I wasn't terribly happy about that.
Can't entirely blame society here. The whole 'teach a man to fish he can eat for a life time' story comes to mind. It's hard to buy a homeless guy a meal and let him go off to bum a meal off of somebody else the next day. I can give him my money, but what will he do to help himself?
Society's not generally being cold hearted here. They are, however, closing themselves off from being taken advantage of. I don't have a solution to the homeless problem, but I'm reasonably confident that feeding them isn't the answer. They need to be made independent. Show me a way I can contribute to that, and I'm all ears.
Don't assume people don't care. They do care. The problem is the solution isn't there.
"Part two begins by introducing some terminology and theory for describing graphics. The principle "Above all else show the data" is formalised as maximization of the data-ink ratio, and illustrated with some "before and after" examples of erasure of redundant or non-data-ink. Tufte excoriates various kinds of "chartjunk": moire vibration (the disconcerting effect caused by repeating patterns), the overuse of grids, and the "ducks" created when the design takes precedence over everything else."
All those words. Man, I can't wait until Slashdot provides IMG support.:P
"I'd like to hear a rebuttal from the dude who modded this post troll."
Modding that as troll was cute, but I am seriously curious as to why the dude with the mod point was bugged by this guy.
Seriously. What parent poster said is the impression I have too. Maybe 'lock' is a strong word, but Apple most definitely wants to entice users to stay with them. So, what exactly so trollish about this guy's comment? Seeking education, not argument here.
" If they would have just let the original stand alone, it would forever go down as one of the top movies of all time."
I doubt it. It was okay, but it wasn't that good, nor was it all that original. The visual style was reasonably unique, but sadly that's the strongest factor in making that movie stand out, and that style's been diluted as of late. Frankly, I'd be stunned if anybody was still talking about the Matrix 10 years from now.
Now, the Animatrix, I could see that living on for a while.
"Oh, you mean by locking customers into expensive, proprietary software? No. They're already worse than that. They lock customers into expensive, proprietary software AND hardware."
I'd like to hear a rebuttal from the dude who modded this post troll.
"Users insist on having the guts hidden away where they're hard to access."
I think we're close to agreement here. I don't think it's that users want the guts hidden away from them. I think what they wanted was for their computer to be easier to understand than a bunch of numbers. Remember how computers were portrayed back in the 80's? Lotsa typetypeticketytacking, the sparse technical language, the blob of numbers and letters that'd fly up the screen that make about as much sense as the crypto symbols in the movie Matrix. It felt like one uneducated move meant breaking everything. Lots of design choices made in Windows were a direct result of trying to de-mystify the computer, make the user feel more comfortable with it. In short, computers felt alien, and the approach was made to bring it to a familiar level. In doing so, some of the guts are hidden.
Sorry to babble, but like I said I don't think we're in harsh disagreement.
"(Think that I'm kidding about the "security problems and bugs" bit related to case sensitivity? Look at some of the changes Tomcat had to implement to operate securely on Windows -- basically, there's a whole bunch of extra code needed to be sure that a rule restricting access to/foobar/baz also applies to/FoObAR/baz; such vulnerabilities are far from uncommon)."
Thanks for spelling that out, it makes sense. Never considered that before.
" but don't dismiss any other approach as wrong just because it's not the one you're used to."
Well poo, I didn't mean to imply the did it wrong in the first place. What I was after was that they some evolving to do now from a user point of view. I used the CLI as an example, though it's not a battle I'd fight hard. Just trying to point out an aspect that is tough on the user.
"What is it that makes Linux more difficult to use for Joe Dummy?"
Too much choice. Now I can't speak for modern incarnations of Linux, but when I tried it a year ago I was presented with a number of non-descript apps that all began with K. Figuring out what did what was a painful process.
I never particularly enjoyed installing apps in Linux, even with RPM support. When an app is installed you get this crptic screen that comes up that bothers you with modules etc.
I was a version behind with Redhat. I forget which number but when I went to isntall Cinepaint, it complained about not having a library file. My response was something along the lines of "WTF do I get that?!"
I never did get sound or dual monitor support to work. Both required mucking around with.CONF files etc.
It never quite felt like apps interoperated very well. Copying and pasting from one app to another never felt quite right. Sorry I can't quantify that better, I remember impressions but not details there.
Everything felt slower. Clicking to start a program always seemed to take forever despite having more than enough RAM. I use Windows 2000 and it's pretty darn responsive compared to KDE on the machines I've used.
I will say again that my experiences are a year old, and that I was using RedHat, so what I say here may not be valid today. It's possible all those problems were addressed. I should also mention RedHat is not the definitive desktop distro of Linux. Any of you switching to Linux should consider Mandrake, SuSE, or even Knoppix. No idea if they address these issues or not, but I have had people drop by and tell me they're much better for desktop experiences.
I do have one other observation to make. Linux is made by geeks for geeks. Geeks don't mind going in and editing.conf files. They don't mind restarting services. They don't mind a CLI that's painfully case sensitive. Until this attitude becomes a little more mass-market friendly, it really is difficult to imagine a distro of Linux that doesn't feel intimidating. Man I wish Apple would release OSX for Intel. I know it's easier said than done, but from what I've read they've got it right.
"I fundamentally disagree that lower costs in music will lead to dramatically lower sales. "
Eh it depends really. The problem with making a generalization like I did is that there are so many people buying music for so many reasons.
Personally, I think initially they will lose money on it. Why? Music hasn't been very good lately. It's hard to imagine albums being sold when in a lot of cases it's the one-hit-top-forty songs that are interesting. Eventually the RIAA and the artists will have to be a lot pickier about how good their songs are when they release them. Otherwise, they have to contend with the consumer's new ability to trim the filler material.
I never meant to imply that'd be a permenant situation. You're absolutely right that they can make it up by selling more music. You're also absolutely right that the price is right to do that. However, I think even with that it's still an uphill battle, and the quality of music will still have to improve.
I can't predict that. Niether could the RIAA, that's why they fought to maintain the traditional sale of CDs. Personally I think they'll end up the better for it. They basically assumed we'd all get away without paying by any means possible, turns out that assumption was wrong.
Singles or not, it's still good news. It proves that the RIAA and Jack Valenti's fears are completely unfounded. At this point, any damage they took to their revenue stream was caused by their own hand.
"Haha, What are you rubbing in the RIAA's face? They get paid regardless of where the music is bought!"
They don't get near as much profit. Their slimey "open your mouth and close your eyes" business model has been cracked. Yes, that's worth laughing at. Now they have to make an honest living where only the good tracks will survive. It used to be they could put 2-3 good songs on an album and sell it pretty well. Since the songs are sold individually now, an album with only 2-3 good songs on it is only going to bring in 2$-3$ instead of $15.
"but they're getting the last laugh, and still getting paid."
No they're not. Part of what sparked this is that the quality of music has gone down. They were making money by selling albums at a premium with only 2-3 songs the listener actually wants to have. That translates to roughly $5 a song. Now it's what, $1 a song? To put it another way, people will spend $10 instead of spending $45.
Over time, it might turn into better revenue, as more and more artists will have less and less pressure to create a whole album. But in the short term, the RIAA risks a huge chunk of their margins.
Slashdot Mirror
"Honestly, who does use Hotmail anyway?"
People who travel a lot.
Next question?
"Is it really that hard to assign one person the task of being responsible for domain renewals?"
That's an awfully presumptuous bit of +5 Interesting babble.
How do you know a bill just wasn't lost somewhere? That kind of thing happens here in the real world, you know.
Modding, not modelling. Sorry, been playing in Lightwave too long today.
"Secondarily, it's arguably wrong. But it's hard to even get to the argument when it's stated like it was."
Fair enough. Just wish he would have come and responded to my naieve question instead of modding me as a troll as well.
Lotsa modelling, not enough discussing.
" Not enough demand for alternative OS's to make selling and supporting them profitable, which means they don't, which means that the OEMs have to be able to sell Windows, which means MS can (and did) dictate terms to the OEMs.."
Fair point. And it happens. "Use us exclusively or pay $50 a piece more for Windows."
Again, though, this type of problem really is solved by encouraging building of computers. Microsoft isn't the only company 'taxing' everybody.
" how pretty much all PCs come with their product and their "tax" regardless of whether or not you want it."
.
The tax is easy to avoid, build your computer instead of having it pre-built
I know Microsoft's done nasty stuff. Not arguing that. However, you can't buy a car without tires just because you don't like Firestone. Why should computers be different? Why's Dell obligated to sell you a computer sans OS? I mean, they could but how would they support it? "Uh, I bought this computer from you, and I installed BeOS on it, and my sound card doesn't work. Why didn't you guys give me a BeOS compatible sound card?!?"
I'm not defending Microsoft here, I just find the MS tax statement to be tired. I've had 3 computers since 2000. I only paid for Windows 2000 once. No, I didn't do anything illegal. Simply a matter of retiring one machine when the next came along. I haven't had to worry about 'tax' because I bought specifically what I wanted. I mean, you could always say "Well if I decide I want a Gateway Computer, I can't buy one without paying Microsoft!!!" To which my response is "You also can't buy a Gateway Computer without paying them to support you. You can't say 'oh I dont want tech support, so pls take that off my bill'"
The tax is there, but it's nowhere near as forced as you make it sound.
"OK, so maybe she was out for a quick fix but after such a kind gesture, why not give here the benefit of the doubt too."
Don't you think I did? I could very easily have told you that she went straight to the liquor store. Instead, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, and told the absolute truth: I did not actually see her enter the store. I haven't painted her as guilty, but my instincts tell me that's exactly what she did. The lady next to me in line had the exact same thought in her head too.
Either way, it was a bad presentation on her part. If I were in need, and I went into a restaraunt and asked for money to feed me, I wouldn't then walk out of that place, let alone head in the direction of a liquor store.
For the record, I'm not saying help shouldn't be provided at all. I don't think my view was clear enough on that matter, judging from the responses so far. What I'd like is a solution to the problem. This solution would not be a single solution in itself, but a series of solutions. Gov't sponsored education would be a good start. "Homeless? Learn a job skill!" Medical care is another problem seeking a solution. We have a number of homeless people here who are mentally very ill. I imagine they're on the street because nobody can afford to take care of them, and mentally ill people often have trouble maintaining a job. Yet another is that there isn't an easy way to maintain housing for people when the weather turns bad. We have yet another problem of runaways. Kids that leave home because.. oh I dunno, maybe Mom took the Nintendo away or something.
It's relatively easy to come up wtih solutions for those problems individually, but then issues of scales arise. How do you provide these services without enticing people to be lazy and drop down into that level of survival? It's one thing to support a handful of people, it's another when the numbers grow too much.
I wish I knew how to solve this. I don't. Sharing the wealth would ease the symptoms, but I'm not convinced it's constructive. There are organizations chewing on that problem here, but they're often overloaded and underfunded. I'm willing to donate there, but I'm a little miffed the government isn't doing more to support them.
In any case, I don't like being accused either directly or indirectly of not caring. I care very much. I don't want people to starve. I don't want people to die. I don't want people to be sad. However, I'm presented with two problems. 1.) Nobody's come up with the perfect solution yet and 2.) I can really only help people who are actively trying to help themselves.
"The real problem is that society, as a whole, just doesn't care enough about the unfortunates enough to do anything."
Funny, when I read this, a memory bubbled to the surface. I was at a fast food joint one night. A homeless woman tapped my shoulder and asked for money to buy food. Thinking "hey, we're in a restaraunt, she'll actually use the money to buy food!" I gave her $5. She turned right around, wandered outside, and headed in the direction of a nearby shopping center complete with liquor store. The woman next to me in line was astonished. I wasn't terribly happy about that.
Can't entirely blame society here. The whole 'teach a man to fish he can eat for a life time' story comes to mind. It's hard to buy a homeless guy a meal and let him go off to bum a meal off of somebody else the next day. I can give him my money, but what will he do to help himself?
Society's not generally being cold hearted here. They are, however, closing themselves off from being taken advantage of. I don't have a solution to the homeless problem, but I'm reasonably confident that feeding them isn't the answer. They need to be made independent. Show me a way I can contribute to that, and I'm all ears.
Don't assume people don't care. They do care. The problem is the solution isn't there.
"Offtopic? Who the hell modded that off topic??? - Gone to plaid is a reference to ludricous speed taken from spaceballs."
I'm surrounded by assholes!
"Do you guys have any idea how much RAM had to be added to the Matrix to extend the simulation out that far?!"
The machines just wanted to show off their new Matrix FX card.
"Part two begins by introducing some terminology and theory for describing graphics. The principle "Above all else show the data" is formalised as maximization of the data-ink ratio, and illustrated with some "before and after" examples of erasure of redundant or non-data-ink. Tufte excoriates various kinds of "chartjunk": moire vibration (the disconcerting effect caused by repeating patterns), the overuse of grids, and the "ducks" created when the design takes precedence over everything else."
:P
All those words. Man, I can't wait until Slashdot provides IMG support.
Well crappy graphics are definitely a way to distinguish your brand. ;)
"I'd like to hear a rebuttal from the dude who modded this post troll."
Modding that as troll was cute, but I am seriously curious as to why the dude with the mod point was bugged by this guy.
Seriously. What parent poster said is the impression I have too. Maybe 'lock' is a strong word, but Apple most definitely wants to entice users to stay with them. So, what exactly so trollish about this guy's comment? Seeking education, not argument here.
" If they would have just let the original stand alone, it would forever go down as one of the top movies of all time."
I doubt it. It was okay, but it wasn't that good, nor was it all that original.
The visual style was reasonably unique, but sadly that's the strongest factor in making that movie stand out, and that style's been diluted as of late. Frankly, I'd be stunned if anybody was still talking about the Matrix 10 years from now.
Now, the Animatrix, I could see that living on for a while.
"Oh, you mean by locking customers into expensive, proprietary software? No. They're already worse than that. They lock customers into expensive, proprietary software AND hardware."
I'd like to hear a rebuttal from the dude who modded this post troll.
"Biologists have linked a mysterious, underwater farting sound to bubbles coming out of a herring's anus."
Man I thought I was reading the Onion for a moment.
"You can't just review it. You have to realize... there is no movie."
Yeah the reviewers are saying that too.
"Users insist on having the guts hidden away where they're hard to access."
/foobar/baz also applies to /FoObAR/baz; such vulnerabilities are far from uncommon)."
I think we're close to agreement here. I don't think it's that users want the guts hidden away from them. I think what they wanted was for their computer to be easier to understand than a bunch of numbers. Remember how computers were portrayed back in the 80's? Lotsa typetypeticketytacking, the sparse technical language, the blob of numbers and letters that'd fly up the screen that make about as much sense as the crypto symbols in the movie Matrix. It felt like one uneducated move meant breaking everything. Lots of design choices made in Windows were a direct result of trying to de-mystify the computer, make the user feel more comfortable with it. In short, computers felt alien, and the approach was made to bring it to a familiar level. In doing so, some of the guts are hidden.
Sorry to babble, but like I said I don't think we're in harsh disagreement.
"(Think that I'm kidding about the "security problems and bugs" bit related to case sensitivity? Look at some of the changes Tomcat had to implement to operate securely on Windows -- basically, there's a whole bunch of extra code needed to be sure that a rule restricting access to
Thanks for spelling that out, it makes sense. Never considered that before.
" but don't dismiss any other approach as wrong just because it's not the one you're used to."
Well poo, I didn't mean to imply the did it wrong in the first place. What I was after was that they some evolving to do now from a user point of view. I used the CLI as an example, though it's not a battle I'd fight hard. Just trying to point out an aspect that is tough on the user.
"What is it that makes Linux more difficult to use for Joe Dummy?"
.CONF files etc.
.conf files. They don't mind restarting services. They don't mind a CLI that's painfully case sensitive. Until this attitude becomes a little more mass-market friendly, it really is difficult to imagine a distro of Linux that doesn't feel intimidating. Man I wish Apple would release OSX for Intel. I know it's easier said than done, but from what I've read they've got it right.
Too much choice. Now I can't speak for modern incarnations of Linux, but when I tried it a year ago I was presented with a number of non-descript apps that all began with K. Figuring out what did what was a painful process.
I never particularly enjoyed installing apps in Linux, even with RPM support. When an app is installed you get this crptic screen that comes up that bothers you with modules etc.
I was a version behind with Redhat. I forget which number but when I went to isntall Cinepaint, it complained about not having a library file. My response was something along the lines of "WTF do I get that?!"
I never did get sound or dual monitor support to work. Both required mucking around with
It never quite felt like apps interoperated very well. Copying and pasting from one app to another never felt quite right. Sorry I can't quantify that better, I remember impressions but not details there.
Everything felt slower. Clicking to start a program always seemed to take forever despite having more than enough RAM. I use Windows 2000 and it's pretty darn responsive compared to KDE on the machines I've used.
I will say again that my experiences are a year old, and that I was using RedHat, so what I say here may not be valid today. It's possible all those problems were addressed. I should also mention RedHat is not the definitive desktop distro of Linux. Any of you switching to Linux should consider Mandrake, SuSE, or even Knoppix. No idea if they address these issues or not, but I have had people drop by and tell me they're much better for desktop experiences.
I do have one other observation to make. Linux is made by geeks for geeks. Geeks don't mind going in and editing
"I fundamentally disagree that lower costs in music will lead to dramatically lower sales. "
Eh it depends really. The problem with making a generalization like I did is that there are so many people buying music for so many reasons.
Personally, I think initially they will lose money on it. Why? Music hasn't been very good lately. It's hard to imagine albums being sold when in a lot of cases it's the one-hit-top-forty songs that are interesting. Eventually the RIAA and the artists will have to be a lot pickier about how good their songs are when they release them. Otherwise, they have to contend with the consumer's new ability to trim the filler material.
I never meant to imply that'd be a permenant situation. You're absolutely right that they can make it up by selling more music. You're also absolutely right that the price is right to do that. However, I think even with that it's still an uphill battle, and the quality of music will still have to improve.
"If you knew anything about economics..."
I didn't read past that. If you're going to offer a contrary view, then don't be an ass about it. Give me a little credit, will ya?
I can't predict that. Niether could the RIAA, that's why they fought to maintain the traditional sale of CDs. Personally I think they'll end up the better for it. They basically assumed we'd all get away without paying by any means possible, turns out that assumption was wrong.
Singles or not, it's still good news. It proves that the RIAA and Jack Valenti's fears are completely unfounded. At this point, any damage they took to their revenue stream was caused by their own hand.
"Haha, What are you rubbing in the RIAA's face? They get paid regardless of where the music is bought!"
They don't get near as much profit. Their slimey "open your mouth and close your eyes" business model has been cracked. Yes, that's worth laughing at. Now they have to make an honest living where only the good tracks will survive. It used to be they could put 2-3 good songs on an album and sell it pretty well. Since the songs are sold individually now, an album with only 2-3 good songs on it is only going to bring in 2$-3$ instead of $15.
Yes, quite amusing.
"but they're getting the last laugh, and still getting paid."
No they're not. Part of what sparked this is that the quality of music has gone down. They were making money by selling albums at a premium with only 2-3 songs the listener actually wants to have. That translates to roughly $5 a song. Now it's what, $1 a song? To put it another way, people will spend $10 instead of spending $45.
Over time, it might turn into better revenue, as more and more artists will have less and less pressure to create a whole album. But in the short term, the RIAA risks a huge chunk of their margins.