I suppose there's a certain start up capital that's required for drug dealing. You'll need guns, boats, vehicles, airplanes, scales, ziplock baggies, and sundry other tools of the trade. Go into drug dealing without the proper tools, and you'd likely not last long. The start up capital for piracy is much lower, so it is at least conceivable that piracy could be used to fund drug dealing.
My thoughts exactly. I tried playing the game for a little while, and I found it rather absurd that I had to constantly tell the characters to shower, eat, take out the trash...then I looked around my apartment. My own body needed showering, my own stomach feeding, and my own trash emptying. And why was none of this taken care of? Because I was playing this silly game! Telling people how to be cleanly is supposed to be fun? I don't get it, but apparently, a lot of people think so.
Bad analogy. There ARE multiple mobile phone service providers available. In my area, I could go with Verizon, Cingular, VoiceStream, Sprint, AT&T, Alltel, Nextel, Powertel...No company holds a monopoly on this market. You're comparing apples to oranges here.
but they have the same right to access what htey want as you do.
No, they don't. Not if Cingular says they don't. Where on earth did you get the idea from? Viewing pornography on a mobible phone is not a God-given right, nor is it a right that the government must protect. It's a right that a private provider can either give or take away. There's only two rights here: The right of Cingular to set their own policies, and the right of the public to either use Cingular's services, or not.
If you want to view porn on your cell phone, find another provider. But the majority of "wireless web" customers will probably be using it for low-bandwidth purposes like e-mail and stock quotes. Those users don't want their network--which they pay for--clogged by mobile perverts. Bandwidth is not an infinite resource, particulaly when it comes to mobile phones.
News for you: The customer is not always right, and Cingular's customers don't own the network. Cingular does (or it leases the network, nitpick, nitpck). Cingular does have the right to filter "objectionable material," and you, if you don't like that, have a right to do business with another company.
It's not for "us" to decide how to Cingular's bandwidth is to be used. Believe it or not, that's up to Cingular. If you don't like Cingular's decision, complain to them, or find another carrier.
Cingular has three options:
Block bandwidth clogging porn.
Give everybody bandwidth limits, or charge additional fees for excess bandwidth usage.
Charge everybody more so a few can view porn on their cell phone, rather than at home from their DSL line, on their high resolution monitor, the way porn was meant to be viewed.
I applaud Cingular for their decision. If I were to use "wireless web" service, which I don't, I'd want to use it for low-bandwidth things, such as e-mail and stock quotes, and I wouldn't want the network, which I would be paying for, slowed down, or my rates to go up, because of some mobile perverts.
The iDrive page, at least, is also broken in IE 5.1 and OmniWeb 4.1b6 for Mac OS X. I can view it just fine, but none of the links work. There seems to be a big transparent GIF that floats over the entire page.
That said, I really doubt that the web page designers were also responsible for the automotive software, so I won't let a poor web page dissuade me from purchasing a 745i. The $70,000 price tag takes care of that already.
First, I think that your assessment of closed-source software as "rel[ying] on bad design" is inaccurate. Modularity, extensibility, abstraction, etc. is just as important for closed- as it is open-source software. And those goals can be just as likely met or missed for either class.
More importantly, though, developing software which solves "a whole class of problems" will take more time and money (at least in the short term) than solving the specific problem that the client is paying to have solved. The client doesn't want to foot the bill so a contractor can give the solution to a competitor (or even just some other organization in another industry who didn't make an investment in the software project). It's absurd that that our starry-eyed "customWorks" might suggest such an idea to a paying client.
A "generalized package" doesn't come for free. If the client truly wants a package that can "solve a whole class of problems," then that needs to be part of the requirements and design goals. But otherwise, the extreme programming credo, "You ain't gonna need it," comes into relevance, and the contractor needs to set aside his dreams of a software development Utopia and complete the task for his client in a timely and cost effective manner. Further, if a client does foot the bill for a software package that can "solve a whole class of problems," this is a significant investment on the part of the client, and one which should give the client a competitive advantage (otherwise, why would they have made such an investment?). Again, to think that they would pay to have such an investment given away is simply absurd.
Words escape me, too. What does he expect, that the "open source community" will support this proprietary application for his client? What's in it for the company or the open source developers? It's if it's a custom application, it's not likely to be of much us (as a whole) to the general public anyway. Besides, the application may, in it's business rules, contain "company secrets" or "competitive advantage." A company would be insane to pay somebody to give away the code. It's just not going to happen.
Me thinks the guy just wanted to get on the front page of Slashdot, and he figured the phrase "open source" was a good way to do so.
While I'm skeptical about calling this "art," you've got to congratulate the guy for saving Californians some cash money by doing for free something that "had to be done." After that Oracle fiasco, they'll need to save every penny of tax dollars they can.
Stop to reflect, for a moment, that corporations are made up of people. If you take away the right of corporate "free speech," you have taken much of that right away from individuals, as well.
Recall that newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, web sites, publishers, movie studios, and so on are also (often) run by corporations. If corporations are not allowed free speech, there is no free speech at all.
I think you misunderstand what elegant code is. Elegant code is just what you ask for--simple, easily readable code that efficiently gets the job done.
Who's ever seen a circular hard drive? Yes, the disks themselves are circular, but every drive I've ever seen has been rectangular. Don't forget that a hard drive also includes the read/write heads, a motor, connections, RAM for the buffer, ICs, and all that other good stuff.
And, yes, note that the iPod, which also contains a hard drive, is rectangular.
I don't think of portable MP3s players as doing any such thing as "siphon[ing] off some more profit from the RIAA," and I don't think to suggest so is constructive. It's the RIAA's largely incorrect belief that this is the effect of such devices that is resulting in their foolish crack down.
Here's the situation...people like to take their music with them. This is why we have and have had for decades portable music devices--radios, tape players, CD players, car stereos, and now, portable MP3 players. People like music, especially when they are on the go. The RIAA surely must realize this, and they profit from it.
If it's convenient to carry a CD with you when you go jogging, it is even more convenient to carry your entire CD collection with you. At least 95% of the MP3s I have on my computer (I'm still holding off on the iPod purchase) are ripped from my own, legally owned CDs (I admit to possessing a few downloaded songs). However,I listen to music far more often while driving than while at home. Once I do get that iPod, and an iPod connection kit, listening to music in my truck will be more convenient. And I'll be able to listen while running. I'll listen to more music. I'll buy more music. RIAA will make more money. And, hopefully, I'll run more often.
So, let's start a grassroots effort here, and let the RIAA know that players MP3 will not decrease their revenue. They're likely to increase revenue, provided the record companies back off their ill conceived copy protection schemes.
Oh, but ME adheres to standards? Whose? Where's that SMP copy of 98 again?
I'm sure that, just like you, the poster would not advocate Windows 98 as a "professional OS with high performance, scalability, stability..." nor would any business looking for those qualities choose Win98. Those businesses, if they were to choose a Microsoft OS, would choose Windows 2000.
Please note that all of this comes from someone who is decidedly not a Microsoft fan. I'm just providing a fair interpretation of the poster's comments. I'll leave it up to you to decide how many minutes you want to spend in the barrel.
...was RFC 3252 (which was not written by the Slashdot folks...coincident, or not?), especially the acronymn: BLOAT, which sums up quite nicely my feelings over the current obsession with everything XML.
A former contractor at my place of work, in a rare moment of insight, said, "XML is one thousand bytes of markup for 10 bytes of data."
That's really a silly question. One could ask, why weren't you working on KDE or GNOME instead of reading and posting to Slashdot? Let the guy do with his time what he likes, just as you are free to do. Besides, the guy is a Mac user; he's already got a polished UI, and KDE and GNOME probably don't even concern him.
I'm going to offer Sun an advertising suggestion, too. And here it is:
No wonder Windows makes you feel boxed in. It ties you to an inflexible system. It requires you to pay for expensive experts. It makes you struggle daily with a server environment that's more complex than ever.
I'm sure I don't need to point out the obvious here (that has never stopped me before, and won't stop me now), but how ironic that the Natural Conservatory would send so much dead-tree matter.
I can pleasantly attest that, after I donated $50 (which is a lot of money for a cheap bastard like me) to the American Red Cross, I only received two e-mail messages from them since mid-September.
I hope you are not honestly espousing a law that would prohibit parents from taking vacations without their children. Such laws would be much more restrictive and frightening than a child tracking device. Fortunately, here in the USA, where, believe it or not, we do still value our personal liberties, such an idea would never get serious consideration. However, even if you are not in favor of such a law, I hope you aren't suggesting that parents don't ever need time away from their kids.
I assume that you do not have children (nor do I), so perhaps it is hard to imagine why parents might actually want to spend just a little time away from their children to preserve their sanity, but think back to your childhood. Didn't you, on occassion, drive you parents crazy? Didn't they benefit from a short vacation where Grandma watched over you? Weren't you a little bit relieved yourself that your parents had the opportunity to let loose for a bit? I know I was.
Re:PC laptop FW has major flaw ...no power pins
on
iPod on Windows
·
· Score: 2, Informative
That truly does sound like a lame move on the part of Sony et al, but there is some solace: The iPod includes a tiny little adaptor that attaches to the Firewire cable and allows you to charge it from a standard outlet. And third parties, such as Dr. Bott sell car-charger adaptors for around $25, as well as kits that allow you to play your iPod (and presumably, other music devices) through your car stereo. Cool!
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose there's a certain start up capital that's required for drug dealing. You'll need guns, boats, vehicles, airplanes, scales, ziplock baggies, and sundry other tools of the trade. Go into drug dealing without the proper tools, and you'd likely not last long. The start up capital for piracy is much lower, so it is at least conceivable that piracy could be used to fund drug dealing.
My thoughts exactly. I tried playing the game for a little while, and I found it rather absurd that I had to constantly tell the characters to shower, eat, take out the trash...then I looked around my apartment. My own body needed showering, my own stomach feeding, and my own trash emptying. And why was none of this taken care of? Because I was playing this silly game! Telling people how to be cleanly is supposed to be fun? I don't get it, but apparently, a lot of people think so.
Bad analogy. There ARE multiple mobile phone service providers available. In my area, I could go with Verizon, Cingular, VoiceStream, Sprint, AT&T, Alltel, Nextel, Powertel...No company holds a monopoly on this market. You're comparing apples to oranges here.
No, they don't. Not if Cingular says they don't. Where on earth did you get the idea from? Viewing pornography on a mobible phone is not a God-given right, nor is it a right that the government must protect. It's a right that a private provider can either give or take away. There's only two rights here: The right of Cingular to set their own policies, and the right of the public to either use Cingular's services, or not.
News for you: The customer is not always right, and Cingular's customers don't own the network. Cingular does (or it leases the network, nitpick, nitpck). Cingular does have the right to filter "objectionable material," and you, if you don't like that, have a right to do business with another company.
Cingular has three options:
- Block bandwidth clogging porn.
- Give everybody bandwidth limits, or charge additional fees for excess bandwidth usage.
- Charge everybody more so a few can view porn on their cell phone, rather than at home from their DSL line, on their high resolution monitor, the way porn was meant to be viewed.
I applaud Cingular for their decision. If I were to use "wireless web" service, which I don't, I'd want to use it for low-bandwidth things, such as e-mail and stock quotes, and I wouldn't want the network, which I would be paying for, slowed down, or my rates to go up, because of some mobile perverts.That said, I really doubt that the web page designers were also responsible for the automotive software, so I won't let a poor web page dissuade me from purchasing a 745i. The $70,000 price tag takes care of that already.
More importantly, though, developing software which solves "a whole class of problems" will take more time and money (at least in the short term) than solving the specific problem that the client is paying to have solved. The client doesn't want to foot the bill so a contractor can give the solution to a competitor (or even just some other organization in another industry who didn't make an investment in the software project). It's absurd that that our starry-eyed "customWorks" might suggest such an idea to a paying client.
A "generalized package" doesn't come for free. If the client truly wants a package that can "solve a whole class of problems," then that needs to be part of the requirements and design goals. But otherwise, the extreme programming credo, "You ain't gonna need it," comes into relevance, and the contractor needs to set aside his dreams of a software development Utopia and complete the task for his client in a timely and cost effective manner. Further, if a client does foot the bill for a software package that can "solve a whole class of problems," this is a significant investment on the part of the client, and one which should give the client a competitive advantage (otherwise, why would they have made such an investment?). Again, to think that they would pay to have such an investment given away is simply absurd.
Me thinks the guy just wanted to get on the front page of Slashdot, and he figured the phrase "open source" was a good way to do so.
While I'm skeptical about calling this "art," you've got to congratulate the guy for saving Californians some cash money by doing for free something that "had to be done." After that Oracle fiasco, they'll need to save every penny of tax dollars they can.
Recall that newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, web sites, publishers, movie studios, and so on are also (often) run by corporations. If corporations are not allowed free speech, there is no free speech at all.
I think you misunderstand what elegant code is. Elegant code is just what you ask for--simple, easily readable code that efficiently gets the job done.
Use Ogg, get free advertising on Slashdot.
And, yes, note that the iPod, which also contains a hard drive, is rectangular.
Here's the situation...people like to take their music with them. This is why we have and have had for decades portable music devices--radios, tape players, CD players, car stereos, and now, portable MP3 players. People like music, especially when they are on the go. The RIAA surely must realize this, and they profit from it.
If it's convenient to carry a CD with you when you go jogging, it is even more convenient to carry your entire CD collection with you. At least 95% of the MP3s I have on my computer (I'm still holding off on the iPod purchase) are ripped from my own, legally owned CDs (I admit to possessing a few downloaded songs). However,I listen to music far more often while driving than while at home. Once I do get that iPod, and an iPod connection kit, listening to music in my truck will be more convenient. And I'll be able to listen while running. I'll listen to more music. I'll buy more music. RIAA will make more money. And, hopefully, I'll run more often.
So, let's start a grassroots effort here, and let the RIAA know that players MP3 will not decrease their revenue. They're likely to increase revenue, provided the record companies back off their ill conceived copy protection schemes.
CowboyNeal has already made his plans for what to do with the subscription money.
I'm sure that, just like you, the poster would not advocate Windows 98 as a "professional OS with high performance, scalability, stability..." nor would any business looking for those qualities choose Win98. Those businesses, if they were to choose a Microsoft OS, would choose Windows 2000.
Please note that all of this comes from someone who is decidedly not a Microsoft fan. I'm just providing a fair interpretation of the poster's comments. I'll leave it up to you to decide how many minutes you want to spend in the barrel.
A former contractor at my place of work, in a rare moment of insight, said, "XML is one thousand bytes of markup for 10 bytes of data."
That's really a silly question. One could ask, why weren't you working on KDE or GNOME instead of reading and posting to Slashdot? Let the guy do with his time what he likes, just as you are free to do. Besides, the guy is a Mac user; he's already got a polished UI, and KDE and GNOME probably don't even concern him.
No wonder Windows makes you feel boxed in. It ties you to an inflexible system. It requires you to pay for expensive experts. It makes you struggle daily with a server environment that's more complex than ever.
I can pleasantly attest that, after I donated $50 (which is a lot of money for a cheap bastard like me) to the American Red Cross, I only received two e-mail messages from them since mid-September.
I assume that you do not have children (nor do I), so perhaps it is hard to imagine why parents might actually want to spend just a little time away from their children to preserve their sanity, but think back to your childhood. Didn't you, on occassion, drive you parents crazy? Didn't they benefit from a short vacation where Grandma watched over you? Weren't you a little bit relieved yourself that your parents had the opportunity to let loose for a bit? I know I was.
That truly does sound like a lame move on the part of Sony et al, but there is some solace: The iPod includes a tiny little adaptor that attaches to the Firewire cable and allows you to charge it from a standard outlet. And third parties, such as Dr. Bott sell car-charger adaptors for around $25, as well as kits that allow you to play your iPod (and presumably, other music devices) through your car stereo. Cool!
Heck, I wish "the woman" would get me a "piece of shit" like an iPod. Instead, I get stuck with cards and stuffed pigs.
If you refuse to boot into Windows...and I don't blame you...there always is another way. You could get a Mac. (: