"But they don't improve fast enough, compared to the massively parallel development of OSS."
OSS has Microsoft to copy off of. Let's just see what happens when they catch up to MS and actually have to create something. If the other OSS apps I've used are any indication, then OSS is in deep trouble for lack of systems analysts.
"Have you ever used Windows ME? What did they improve with that one? I guess if you consider the extra breaks one gets to take throughout the day a feature, that's one big improvement they made.. "
Windows ME was a descendent of Windows 98, not Windows 2000.
I agree, though, ME was a piece of shit. But compare that to 98, and it's probably a little better.
"t's interesting to see that we look at the amount of money a company has in order to figure out who is most likely to come out on top when it comes to litigation. "
"On the other hand, if it's a steaming pile of shit like Pearl Harbour (Thank heaven I didn't pay to see that abortion), I'll delete it immediately and contemplate sending a bill the the studio for the wasted time/bandwidth/disk space. "
Kinda sucks that the content industries don't guarantee satisfaction, doesn't it? I'm surprised they can get away with that. If you watch a movie and it's the biggest pile-o-poop you've ever seen, but have no way to express that, then what's to stop more crap from coming along?
Unfortunately, there are strikingly obvious problems with offering refunds to watch movies, so I won't pitch that as my solution.
Hmm.. too bad they won't just give the first 20 minutes of a movie away. I'd pay $10 for a magazine that contained a DVD with 10-20 minutes of a bunch of different movies coming out. Beats the hell out of teasers, doesn't it?
The MPAA is missing the same opportunity that the RIAA ignored. Years ago, the RIAA should have noticed people downloading music and looking into why people do it. They then could have provided a better service and made a profit off it. Nope, they labeled it as thievery and attacked. Now they face a massive boycott. Lovely. That boycott will do more damage than P2P piracy ever could.
The MPAA has a little more time, seeing as how movies are 700 megs or so. Upload caps are still at 256k roughly so they've got some time to come up with their own service. And to an extent, they do. I found a site last night where I could 'rent' movies to watch on my computer. Damn cool really. I've been aching to watch Terminator again, and that'll only cost me $3. I won't even have to worry about returning a tape!
They're going to need to do more, though. The on-line equivalent of HBO would be nice. Pay $10 a month and get access to some movies. Heck, I'd pay my $30 month cable bill to a VoD service. Maybe more if their selection is really good, even with commercials.
The point is that if movie downloading is so popular, despite how painful it is, they need to look at WHY. Are prices too high? Are people obnoxious in theaters? Do people have time to sit and watch a 2.5 hour movie? Do people want to spend $8 to watch an iffy movie? (Sort of like the prices are too high, but it did suck that Star Trek Nemesis fell to the bottom of the heap when Two Towers, Harry Potter, and James Bond blew a gaping crater into people's movie budgets.) Can college students even make the time to go see a movie?
With the answers to these questions, the MPAA could do something shocking, like provide supply for the demand. Who'd want to download a movie off of P2P when they could spend $5 and get the Hulk streaming down like right away? I know that in my house, a good deal more money would go into watching movies. Right now I have to pick and choose a movie in the same way I pick and choose a new computer. That sucks.
"The fact that vulnerabilities get found and fixed on linux is hardly a blackmark."
It's not wonderful either. You still have to go get fixes and install them. I've been watching the software engineers run around trying to get a fix for Redhat installed without breaking the whole machine. It's scary, really.
"or anybody out there making a living writing free software. how do you pay your bills? or do you all live in your parent's basement? "
Flamebait? I'm curious myself. The best answer I can come up with is under the direction of hobby. Can't say I like that answer, though. The problem with hobbies is that people get bored with them and drop out. Also, people tend to do just the fun part of hobbies.
This reasoning alone makes me rather wary of Open Source projects that aren't about something everybody needs. (Mozilla, Apache, and OpenOffice would be exempt from that comment because everybody wants and needs those to work...)
Can somebody ease my mind? I'm not attacking Open Source here, but I would like some reasoning that would affect my view here.
"Why would I want to buy something that I can get for free? "
Here's a list of typical reasons:
- Convenience: If you pay $100 for an OS and the company makes sure it's available in stores and/or on a website with really good bandwidth, then you get more faster. Example? Go to Microsoft.com and download something. When my company had a 7 mbit connection, MS's site was the only one that maxed it out. That's an extreme case, though.
- Support: You can pay a support team to keep you up and running. That's been mentioned, though.
- Development: They want you to keep spending money on them, so they keep doing new things to keep you interesrted.
- Media/Packaging/Manual: Well, you don't want to download again, right? Packaging's not such a big deal, but at least you can keep track of where you can buy it should the need arise. And, face facts, Linux needs a manual. A big one.
"can you explain exactly how actors, directors, cinematographers, writers, or even key grips get paid when you pirate a movie and don't pay a dime for it? "
a.) Not everybody downloads movies to avoid paying for anything. Who'd want to wait that long to download a sub-quality movie? Somebody who's seriously broke perhaps? (Hint: Ticket prices are too high.)
b.) Movie downloading is competition just like anything else. The directors, actors, and writers really need to think about what would drive somebody to download a movie in lieu of paying for it.
For the record, I work in 3D. I'm not very far from the movie industry, I certainly have every vested interest in its success. However, I'm annoyed that the MPAA is not listening to its customers. They should be figuring out why somebody would opt to spend all that time and trouble downloading a movie and responding to it instead of worrying about how many millions of dollars to pay Arnie.
" I saw in the theatre (T3) had a commerical for one of the local broadband providers with the tag line "listen to music online". Talk about mixed messages eh?"
Not really. Go download Winamp and you can listen to streamed music legally and for free.
' In this specific case, that situation is even amplified, because this technology has practically no redeming factors compared to bluetooth, whereas most older technology still has some interesting benefit over it's replacement."
I'll never forget describing Day of the Tentacle while having dinner with the family. My aunt, uncle, and grandmother were in town and so we had this big dinner. And I described to them about how there's one part to where you dess up as an American flag so ya look like a giant striped tentacle. Everybody had a stunned look on their face! I didn't realize I had called it "Day of the Testicle."
Example: Somebody installed Linux where they work and found they could answer email and visit Slashdot, thus claiming that the OS can replace the ever popular Windows.
Origins: Slashdot is the home of a number of self-righteous Linux zealots who...
Ya know, I really wanted to continue writing this but I'm not sure how to dodge a Troll moderation!
"Right, and what the article says is the word of God right? Any slight variation from the summary will be punishable by death..."
Not even close, sorry. Nice attempt to try whore karma points by attacking my statement in the most Jerry Springer'ish way.
"Saying it's useless for just about everything is quite insightful."
Nope, completely unhelpful. It is in no way insightful. It is a waste of everybody's time. If this was the general attitude people had, then computers would never have gotten off the ground. They'd never do video, they'd never do 3D, heck they'd never do sound. "Who would buy a 'sound card' just to hear midi crap?" Again, there is nothing insightful at all by saying something can't do something.
" It might be half the price, but it is a tiny fraction of the speed of bluetooth, and incompatible with bluetooth as well... "
It still does stuff, therefore it is not useless.
"I can't see any reason that it will be used for anything, quite frankly."
This gets back to your "Saying it's useless for just about everything is quite insightful" comment. You stopped thinking about it. Never mind the benefits to cost and battery life, you've wiped it out.
"Sure, it could be used for many things, but in the real world, it won't be. "
If people say "it won't it won't it won't", then you are right, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Never mind what it could be used for, it doesn't instantly wow people so just forget it. Heh.
Already did. You tried to limit my comment to a small segment of people. I opened the scope up again. Seeing as how that pretty much refutes your point, I don't see the need to restate it again.
"You sound like a parrot."
Whatever. I don't really care. I don't think you're listening, I think you're just arguing.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, Wired magazine had a sharp drop in sales in the month of July when customers confused the cover featuring the cloned horse for Janet Reno.
"It's 4GB you pedantic nerd. It was fairly obvious to anyone who has the slightest capacity for understanding the context of what they are reading."
Pedantic nerds shouldn't live in glass houses.
"But they don't improve fast enough, compared to the massively parallel development of OSS."
OSS has Microsoft to copy off of. Let's just see what happens when they catch up to MS and actually have to create something. If the other OSS apps I've used are any indication, then OSS is in deep trouble for lack of systems analysts.
"Have you ever used Windows ME?
What did they improve with that one? I guess if you consider the extra breaks one gets to take throughout the day a feature, that's one big improvement they made.. "
Windows ME was a descendent of Windows 98, not Windows 2000.
I agree, though, ME was a piece of shit. But compare that to 98, and it's probably a little better.
"They can count on all the money I can spare."
;) *meant in fun*
Wait a sec, now you guys can start spending money?
"t's interesting to see that we look at the amount of money a company has in order to figure out who is most likely to come out on top when it comes to litigation. "
More money = longer legal processes.
"What about hexadecimal and dvorak (or other more efficient layouts)? Let's transition there first. "
Yeah, let's move the buttons around on the keyboard before we give people tactile-less keybords!
Seriously, though, I don't see why we need to transition to antyhing first. Qwerty is defacto and nobody is complaining about it.
"On the other hand, if it's a steaming pile of shit like Pearl Harbour (Thank heaven I didn't pay to see that abortion), I'll delete it immediately and contemplate sending a bill the the studio for the wasted time/bandwidth/disk space. "
Kinda sucks that the content industries don't guarantee satisfaction, doesn't it? I'm surprised they can get away with that. If you watch a movie and it's the biggest pile-o-poop you've ever seen, but have no way to express that, then what's to stop more crap from coming along?
Unfortunately, there are strikingly obvious problems with offering refunds to watch movies, so I won't pitch that as my solution.
Hmm.. too bad they won't just give the first 20 minutes of a movie away. I'd pay $10 for a magazine that contained a DVD with 10-20 minutes of a bunch of different movies coming out. Beats the hell out of teasers, doesn't it?
The MPAA is missing the same opportunity that the RIAA ignored. Years ago, the RIAA should have noticed people downloading music and looking into why people do it. They then could have provided a better service and made a profit off it. Nope, they labeled it as thievery and attacked. Now they face a massive boycott. Lovely. That boycott will do more damage than P2P piracy ever could.
The MPAA has a little more time, seeing as how movies are 700 megs or so. Upload caps are still at 256k roughly so they've got some time to come up with their own service. And to an extent, they do. I found a site last night where I could 'rent' movies to watch on my computer. Damn cool really. I've been aching to watch Terminator again, and that'll only cost me $3. I won't even have to worry about returning a tape!
They're going to need to do more, though. The on-line equivalent of HBO would be nice. Pay $10 a month and get access to some movies. Heck, I'd pay my $30 month cable bill to a VoD service. Maybe more if their selection is really good, even with commercials.
The point is that if movie downloading is so popular, despite how painful it is, they need to look at WHY. Are prices too high? Are people obnoxious in theaters? Do people have time to sit and watch a 2.5 hour movie? Do people want to spend $8 to watch an iffy movie? (Sort of like the prices are too high, but it did suck that Star Trek Nemesis fell to the bottom of the heap when Two Towers, Harry Potter, and James Bond blew a gaping crater into people's movie budgets.) Can college students even make the time to go see a movie?
With the answers to these questions, the MPAA could do something shocking, like provide supply for the demand. Who'd want to download a movie off of P2P when they could spend $5 and get the Hulk streaming down like right away? I know that in my house, a good deal more money would go into watching movies. Right now I have to pick and choose a movie in the same way I pick and choose a new computer. That sucks.
"The fact that vulnerabilities get found and fixed on linux is hardly a blackmark."
It's not wonderful either. You still have to go get fixes and install them. I've been watching the software engineers run around trying to get a fix for Redhat installed without breaking the whole machine. It's scary, really.
"or anybody out there making a living writing free software. how do you pay your bills? or do you all live in your parent's basement? "
Flamebait? I'm curious myself. The best answer I can come up with is under the direction of hobby. Can't say I like that answer, though. The problem with hobbies is that people get bored with them and drop out. Also, people tend to do just the fun part of hobbies.
This reasoning alone makes me rather wary of Open Source projects that aren't about something everybody needs. (Mozilla, Apache, and OpenOffice would be exempt from that comment because everybody wants and needs those to work...)
Can somebody ease my mind? I'm not attacking Open Source here, but I would like some reasoning that would affect my view here.
"Why would I want to buy something that I can get for free? "
Here's a list of typical reasons:
- Convenience: If you pay $100 for an OS and the company makes sure it's available in stores and/or on a website with really good bandwidth, then you get more faster. Example? Go to Microsoft.com and download something. When my company had a 7 mbit connection, MS's site was the only one that maxed it out. That's an extreme case, though.
- Support: You can pay a support team to keep you up and running. That's been mentioned, though.
- Development: They want you to keep spending money on them, so they keep doing new things to keep you interesrted.
- Media/Packaging/Manual: Well, you don't want to download again, right? Packaging's not such a big deal, but at least you can keep track of where you can buy it should the need arise. And, face facts, Linux needs a manual. A big one.
Did I miss anything?
"can you explain exactly how actors, directors, cinematographers, writers, or even key grips get paid when you pirate a movie and don't pay a dime for it? "
a.) Not everybody downloads movies to avoid paying for anything. Who'd want to wait that long to download a sub-quality movie? Somebody who's seriously broke perhaps? (Hint: Ticket prices are too high.)
b.) Movie downloading is competition just like anything else. The directors, actors, and writers really need to think about what would drive somebody to download a movie in lieu of paying for it.
For the record, I work in 3D. I'm not very far from the movie industry, I certainly have every vested interest in its success. However, I'm annoyed that the MPAA is not listening to its customers. They should be figuring out why somebody would opt to spend all that time and trouble downloading a movie and responding to it instead of worrying about how many millions of dollars to pay Arnie.
" I saw in the theatre (T3) had a commerical for one of the local broadband providers with the tag line "listen to music online". Talk about mixed messages eh?"
Not really. Go download Winamp and you can listen to streamed music legally and for free.
Doesn't the term unit define a unit in time?
' In this specific case, that situation is even amplified, because this technology has practically no redeming factors compared to bluetooth, whereas most older technology still has some interesting benefit over it's replacement."
Except battery life and cost...
I'll never forget describing Day of the Tentacle while having dinner with the family. My aunt, uncle, and grandmother were in town and so we had this big dinner. And I described to them about how there's one part to where you dess up as an American flag so ya look like a giant striped tentacle. Everybody had a stunned look on their face! I didn't realize I had called it "Day of the Testicle."
Claim: Linux can replace Windows as a desktop OS
Status: False
Example: Somebody installed Linux where they work and found they could answer email and visit Slashdot, thus claiming that the OS can replace the ever popular Windows.
Origins: Slashdot is the home of a number of self-righteous Linux zealots who...
Ya know, I really wanted to continue writing this but I'm not sure how to dodge a Troll moderation!
Just curious. Did you read my other post?
Bootable Knoppix CD.
... that GTA 3 would be an awesome setting for a MMORPG. Frankly, I'm sick of being a wizard or Jedi.
Hhe. Where were you when I was moving out?
"Right, and what the article says is the word of God right? Any slight variation from the summary will be punishable by death..."
Not even close, sorry. Nice attempt to try whore karma points by attacking my statement in the most Jerry Springer'ish way.
"Saying it's useless for just about everything is quite insightful."
Nope, completely unhelpful. It is in no way insightful. It is a waste of everybody's time. If this was the general attitude people had, then computers would never have gotten off the ground. They'd never do video, they'd never do 3D, heck they'd never do sound. "Who would buy a 'sound card' just to hear midi crap?" Again, there is nothing insightful at all by saying something can't do something.
" It might be half the price, but it is a tiny fraction of the speed of bluetooth, and incompatible with bluetooth as well... "
It still does stuff, therefore it is not useless.
"I can't see any reason that it will be used for anything, quite frankly."
This gets back to your "Saying it's useless for just about everything is quite insightful" comment. You stopped thinking about it. Never mind the benefits to cost and battery life, you've wiped it out.
"Sure, it could be used for many things, but in the real world, it won't be. "
If people say "it won't it won't it won't", then you are right, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Never mind what it could be used for, it doesn't instantly wow people so just forget it. Heh.
" I don't think you're listening, I think you're just arguing. "
I meant to say discussing, not listening. Sorry, been working a lot of overtime. Tired.
" Please, at least ADDRESS what I wrote."
Already did. You tried to limit my comment to a small segment of people. I opened the scope up again. Seeing as how that pretty much refutes your point, I don't see the need to restate it again.
"You sound like a parrot."
Whatever. I don't really care. I don't think you're listening, I think you're just arguing.