it can even fit on a floppy disk, despite having a GUI
Those of us who still remember floppy disks should also remember that having a GUI with an OS that fits on a floppy is nothing new. For the most recent example, see the QNX floppy demo. (Was QNX written in assembly?)
No software got popular with such a restrictive licence! Heaven forbid they give it away free for personal use, all the most popular OSs are free for all!
(I don't disagree with you that it might seem a pointless licence, depending on what their plans for it are, but I don't think this has much relevance to popularity.)
Oh, yes I fully agree with this point of view. It just felt like there was a pro-patents point of view in general for some of the comments, as opposed to a "ha ha", as you say.
I've had that too. They usually copy and paste replies that only vaguely correspond to what you said, but don't actually address the points you made.
Then there are "consultations" which seem to be "Here's a biased explanation of the situation, and here are some leading questions, inviting you to agree with the option we want to do".
Followed up with "consultation response" which is "Here's a hand-picked biased summary of responses, together with an explanation of why we're going to ignore anyone who disagreed with us".
If it's not true, then why on earth is this newsworthy in the first place? (Lots of phones are number 1 in some particular country - after all, you obviously have one "number 1" per month, per country, which is a lot).
The only possible valid reason I can think this could be news is if the Iphone was selling badly, thus it's midly newsworthy that a bad selling niche phone gets number one (albeit in one country, for one month, on the month it was released in that country).
Thanks for the info - I had no idea that phones could do some of these things.
See, these are the sorts of things it would be good to hear about on tech sites. Instead, I'll probably hear about them in five years' time when it gets added to the Iphone...
MMS support is (or was, at least) useless on the iPhone 3G. My wife MMSed me a photo, and I had to pick it up at a website.
"It Just Works" "It doesn't matter what features it has or doesn't have, what matters is that it 'integrates' them better, and makes them easy for normal people to use them"
I remember having similar problems on a £30 phone I bought nine years ago.
The OP may have been phrased in a flamebait-manner, but it raises a point - why is this news? At first it sounds newsworthy, but the story is "X phone is number one selling phone this month in this country".
But there's always a number one phone!
So are we going to see a Slashdot story per month, per country, on what the number one phone is?
I note that Sharp occupy 4 positions on that list - it would be curious to know how their sales compare overall. Especially how they compared one month ago, or how they'll compare in one month's time. Chances are they were, and will be in future, number one.
So why have I never seen a story about Sharp phones on Slashdot? I didn't even know they made phones. This used to be "news for nerds" - a way to learn interesting news about all kinds of gadgets, not a place that promoted Apple stories.
Agreed - I love how this story gets tagged "astroturf" simply because it presents news that's favourable to Microsoft.
Yet the daily Apple Slashvertisements (including today's news about the Iphone being the number one selling phone in Japan this month - god knows why that's news, we never get stories on all the other phones that are number one selling phones in any country, every month), oh, that's fine.
I could at least understand the pro-Linux / anti-MS stance, as at least that's embracing open solutions. But given that it's Apple - who provide a far more locked down and controlled platform - it makes no sense.
Indeed, although it's just as much a pro-Apple agenda that spread the news: if people don't like a product, it's much better if you can dismiss it as an irrational hatred, rather than considering the possibility that they might *gasp* actually prefer other phones.
For this news, I'd be curious to see market share. Since Apple only have one phone, and Nokia etc have loads of different products, looking at single phone sales whilst useful in some contexts, is not useful for judging who's number one (it's the multiple choice fallacy where votes get split between similar products).
There's also the obvious point that the phone has only just been released - it's misleading to claim "Number One", since this is a figure based on one month's sales, not quarterly or yearly, let alone total phones in existence.
And since the Iphone is the only phone that gets covered on Tech sites like Slashdot (god knows why), it's not surprising that they'll do fairly well. I fear we'll have a self-fulfilling prophecy where we end up with it being the most popular phone, precisely because of the coverage solely on this one phone. And then we'll end up with a monopoly platform on mobile platform that's more locked down and controlled by a single company. Nice one, Slashdot!
For all we know, those other phones may have been number one (indeed, one of them must have been), but we wouldn't have heard about it on Slashdot.
Consider - what was the Number One phone, last month in Japan, and why wasn't there a story about it? Or the Number One phone in the US, come to that? It's only news if it's unusual.
Of course I'll probably be modded down now for providing possible explanations that don't fit in with the pro-Apple viewpoint here.
I don't disagree - but if having actual products doesn't stop one being a patent troll, you should put this point to the people here claiming that i4i can't possibly be patent trolls.
Without patents, the rich get richer and the poor, small software company ALWAYS LOSES.
This is a rare case where the smaller company may benefit. In most cases, the larger company will just point out the numerous patents of theirs that you're infringing, and then tell you how the case will be settled. In more cases still, the new company has no chance of patenting anything, so they're unable to enter the market, or risk being sued, because of the difficulties of bringing a product to market without stepping on every software algorithm and other idea that's already been patented by someone.
And I still don't understand taking their side just because they're smaller. Bad laws are bad laws. When that random company threatened to sue every ISP on the planet because they had a hyperlink patent, was everyone rooting for the little guy then?
Except, people's opposition to patents is not restricted to just the case of patent trolls (although they are one demonstration of the problem). Some people have the radical notion that perhaps an idea can't be owned by one person. And whilst there may be some argument for some kinds of patents, software patents are a particular evil, that I do not believe we should have (and in my country, the UK, we don't have them).
Microsoft have an actual product too. If they really "stole" it from them (you probably meant to say "copied"), then why not sue them for copyright infringement?
Right, I suppose "shuns experts" was a bit vague. Let me clarify. Wikipedia is the place where an expert's credentials and experience are no match for an unknown conspiracy theorist who has decided an article must include certain content _he_ believes is perfectly valid and useful to mankind.
And the conspiracy theorist has reliable 3rd party sources for his claims, and the so-called expert can't find anything to back his argument up? If you say so.
The last time I edited a Wikipedia article in 2006 my changes were reverted by one of those zealous article owners (which I'm told by people like you are not supposed to exist), and I was later banned from editing for three days by one of his administrator buddies. Not by him you understand, by his buddy. I was given the choice to "file a content dispute" or something like that. All over a paragraph added to the article about an 80s rock band from Argentina. With a perfectly acceptable backing source, by the way.
Link please?
And then we have the usual "all the important people don't contribute to Wikipedia, waah". Well, there are other encyclopedias that work via different means - perhaps you should look into http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Citizendium or http://www.scholarpedia.org/ where brilliant experts such as yourself will be welcomed with open arms, and no other expert will ever possibly disagree with what you have to say about an 80s rock band from Argentina, honest.
Now, remind me how well those sites are doing compared to Wikipedia again? Wikipedia is the one struggling to get people to contribute, you say?
Deletionists have a mindset from those pre-web days; an article about paper cutters might very well have been deleted on Sept 10th 2001. If the article you're thinking is on another encyclopedia, then that's no good for your encyclopedia.
I'm no fan of deletion simply for the sake of it, but please let's not invent straw man. There is no reason to think that they would delete an article on a paper cutter simply because it hasn't been involved in a major terrorist attack.
In fact, you are proven wrong: it wasn't paper cutters that were used - the article (rightly) makes no reference to 9/11. According to you, this article should have been deleted - it hasn't, you're wrong.
Also, I've never seen anybody in Academia or Business use wikipedia as a source (this of course is no surprise to anyone). But THE POINT is: if your encyclopedia is NOT a "reliable source"; then WTF is wrong with your encyclopedia?
No - that's not how encyclopedias work. THE POINT is: if your encyclopedia IS a "reliable source"; then WTF is wrong with your encyclopedia? Encyclopedias are not meant to be used as references in themselves, they are meant to be starting points for other sources that they reference in turn. I would hope someone in academia isn't using Britannica as a reference either.
And I'm not sure what you mean by "Business" - that's untrue, as Wikipedia has been referred to for information on numerous occasions by companies.
I want a wikipedia with absolutely everything verifiable in existence in it.
Fixed that for you. This may have been what you meant, but it's an important point - in many cases, material isn't deleted for being non-notable, but because it isn't verifiable - with no reliable 3rd party sources, we have no idea if it's true, or something someone just made up.
But aside from that, I do agree, in that I lean towards the liberal end of notability. I feel that as long as it's got 3rd party reliable sources, I usually don't see any reason to delete it on grounds of non-notability.
IMO, at this rate wikipedia will end up dying, because they need donations, and every time I find something I liked gone I decide not to give them anything. I'm probably not the only one who thinks that way.
Although equally we have people who complain about Wikipedia having "too much non-notable stuff". Indeed, that's why the argument exists in the first place! What makes you think that the "deletionists" don't contribute to the site? You're not the only one who donates.
But this already happens - a lot of the time, although such articles are seemingly "deleted" from Wikipedia, it's because they've been "transwikied" to a more dedicated Wiki for that subject.
If this was done as a standard rule, you'd still have arguments over where each article should go. And do you really mean that everything on something fictional should go on the separate site - even the main article for Star Trek, or a work of Shakespeare? What about other expressions of culture such as articles for well known albums or songs? Or if you mean the less notable ones, then you'll just have the arguments over that...
Note that downloading the entire map on your phone is old news, I've seen people doing that with mapping software on their phones years ago. Of course since it wasn't on the Iphone, it won't have been advertised on Slashdot.
Agreed - I've found there are games today that are far more addictive than the games I played in the 90s, which in turn were far more addictive than the 8 bit games in the 80s.
Nostalgia is a wonderful thing. Plus if he played older games as a child like I did, there's the point that children can be more easily entertained. He should try playing old games through an emulator, to remind him what they were like...
I don't see any evidence that bad gameplay is caused by better graphics. Bad gameplay is just bad gameplay - there are good games today, and there were bad games around 10-20 years ago. Some of those bad games have good graphics, but as you should no, correlation doesn't imply causation. And there have been bad games over the years with bad graphics too, anyway.
Part of the problem is that coming up with playable and original games is hard - a lot harder than a lot of "I've got a great idea for a game" wannabes think it is. Given the money involved, it's not unsurprising that you're going to see rehashes of older ideas with better graphics, or sequels, and so on.
The same argument could be made of movies, or indeed music or books. If you think you've got a great idea, chances are it's already been done.
Er what? Where did he claim that children should only be allowed to use GPL?
He's written something, and he's kindly offered the source code too. If you have a problem with that, it sounds like you are the one trying to put your politics over education. He makes no comments about what people should use.
What if a better package is available that is not GPL?
Then use it.
They do not get a science/physics backing from you? What is more important?
Slashdot Mirror
If having 40 emails open is a problem for your RAM, you need a new email client.
Hell, I was doing that on my Amiga, where the total RAM was measured in a handful of megabytes.
You should ask yourself what tasks you are trying to accomplish.
Develop Windows software.
it can even fit on a floppy disk, despite having a GUI
Those of us who still remember floppy disks should also remember that having a GUI with an OS that fits on a floppy is nothing new. For the most recent example, see the QNX floppy demo. (Was QNX written in assembly?)
No software got popular with such a restrictive licence! Heaven forbid they give it away free for personal use, all the most popular OSs are free for all!
(I don't disagree with you that it might seem a pointless licence, depending on what their plans for it are, but I don't think this has much relevance to popularity.)
Oh, yes I fully agree with this point of view. It just felt like there was a pro-patents point of view in general for some of the comments, as opposed to a "ha ha", as you say.
I've had that too. They usually copy and paste replies that only vaguely correspond to what you said, but don't actually address the points you made.
Then there are "consultations" which seem to be "Here's a biased explanation of the situation, and here are some leading questions, inviting you to agree with the option we want to do".
Followed up with "consultation response" which is "Here's a hand-picked biased summary of responses, together with an explanation of why we're going to ignore anyone who disagreed with us".
If it's not true, then why on earth is this newsworthy in the first place? (Lots of phones are number 1 in some particular country - after all, you obviously have one "number 1" per month, per country, which is a lot).
The only possible valid reason I can think this could be news is if the Iphone was selling badly, thus it's midly newsworthy that a bad selling niche phone gets number one (albeit in one country, for one month, on the month it was released in that country).
Thanks for the info - I had no idea that phones could do some of these things.
See, these are the sorts of things it would be good to hear about on tech sites. Instead, I'll probably hear about them in five years' time when it gets added to the Iphone...
MMS support is (or was, at least) useless on the iPhone 3G. My wife MMSed me a photo, and I had to pick it up at a website.
"It Just Works" "It doesn't matter what features it has or doesn't have, what matters is that it 'integrates' them better, and makes them easy for normal people to use them"
I remember having similar problems on a £30 phone I bought nine years ago.
The OP may have been phrased in a flamebait-manner, but it raises a point - why is this news? At first it sounds newsworthy, but the story is "X phone is number one selling phone this month in this country".
But there's always a number one phone!
So are we going to see a Slashdot story per month, per country, on what the number one phone is?
I note that Sharp occupy 4 positions on that list - it would be curious to know how their sales compare overall. Especially how they compared one month ago, or how they'll compare in one month's time. Chances are they were, and will be in future, number one.
So why have I never seen a story about Sharp phones on Slashdot? I didn't even know they made phones. This used to be "news for nerds" - a way to learn interesting news about all kinds of gadgets, not a place that promoted Apple stories.
Agreed - I love how this story gets tagged "astroturf" simply because it presents news that's favourable to Microsoft.
Yet the daily Apple Slashvertisements (including today's news about the Iphone being the number one selling phone in Japan this month - god knows why that's news, we never get stories on all the other phones that are number one selling phones in any country, every month), oh, that's fine.
I could at least understand the pro-Linux / anti-MS stance, as at least that's embracing open solutions. But given that it's Apple - who provide a far more locked down and controlled platform - it makes no sense.
Indeed, although it's just as much a pro-Apple agenda that spread the news: if people don't like a product, it's much better if you can dismiss it as an irrational hatred, rather than considering the possibility that they might *gasp* actually prefer other phones.
For this news, I'd be curious to see market share. Since Apple only have one phone, and Nokia etc have loads of different products, looking at single phone sales whilst useful in some contexts, is not useful for judging who's number one (it's the multiple choice fallacy where votes get split between similar products).
There's also the obvious point that the phone has only just been released - it's misleading to claim "Number One", since this is a figure based on one month's sales, not quarterly or yearly, let alone total phones in existence.
And since the Iphone is the only phone that gets covered on Tech sites like Slashdot (god knows why), it's not surprising that they'll do fairly well. I fear we'll have a self-fulfilling prophecy where we end up with it being the most popular phone, precisely because of the coverage solely on this one phone. And then we'll end up with a monopoly platform on mobile platform that's more locked down and controlled by a single company. Nice one, Slashdot!
For all we know, those other phones may have been number one (indeed, one of them must have been), but we wouldn't have heard about it on Slashdot.
Consider - what was the Number One phone, last month in Japan, and why wasn't there a story about it? Or the Number One phone in the US, come to that? It's only news if it's unusual.
Of course I'll probably be modded down now for providing possible explanations that don't fit in with the pro-Apple viewpoint here.
I don't disagree - but if having actual products doesn't stop one being a patent troll, you should put this point to the people here claiming that i4i can't possibly be patent trolls.
Without patents, the rich get richer and the poor, small software company ALWAYS LOSES.
This is a rare case where the smaller company may benefit. In most cases, the larger company will just point out the numerous patents of theirs that you're infringing, and then tell you how the case will be settled. In more cases still, the new company has no chance of patenting anything, so they're unable to enter the market, or risk being sued, because of the difficulties of bringing a product to market without stepping on every software algorithm and other idea that's already been patented by someone.
And I still don't understand taking their side just because they're smaller. Bad laws are bad laws. When that random company threatened to sue every ISP on the planet because they had a hyperlink patent, was everyone rooting for the little guy then?
So now that it's Microsoft, software patents are okay, just so long as the company suing are not "trolls"?
Citation needed.
Except, people's opposition to patents is not restricted to just the case of patent trolls (although they are one demonstration of the problem). Some people have the radical notion that perhaps an idea can't be owned by one person. And whilst there may be some argument for some kinds of patents, software patents are a particular evil, that I do not believe we should have (and in my country, the UK, we don't have them).
Microsoft have an actual product too. If they really "stole" it from them (you probably meant to say "copied"), then why not sue them for copyright infringement?
Right, I suppose "shuns experts" was a bit vague. Let me clarify. Wikipedia is the place where an expert's credentials and experience are no match for an unknown conspiracy theorist who has decided an article must include certain content _he_ believes is perfectly valid and useful to mankind.
And the conspiracy theorist has reliable 3rd party sources for his claims, and the so-called expert can't find anything to back his argument up? If you say so.
The last time I edited a Wikipedia article in 2006 my changes were reverted by one of those zealous article owners (which I'm told by people like you are not supposed to exist), and I was later banned from editing for three days by one of his administrator buddies. Not by him you understand, by his buddy. I was given the choice to "file a content dispute" or something like that. All over a paragraph added to the article about an 80s rock band from Argentina. With a perfectly acceptable backing source, by the way.
Link please?
And then we have the usual "all the important people don't contribute to Wikipedia, waah". Well, there are other encyclopedias that work via different means - perhaps you should look into http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Citizendium or http://www.scholarpedia.org/ where brilliant experts such as yourself will be welcomed with open arms, and no other expert will ever possibly disagree with what you have to say about an 80s rock band from Argentina, honest.
Now, remind me how well those sites are doing compared to Wikipedia again? Wikipedia is the one struggling to get people to contribute, you say?
Deletionists have a mindset from those pre-web days; an article about paper cutters might very well have been deleted on Sept 10th 2001. If the article you're thinking is on another encyclopedia, then that's no good for your encyclopedia.
I'm no fan of deletion simply for the sake of it, but please let's not invent straw man. There is no reason to think that they would delete an article on a paper cutter simply because it hasn't been involved in a major terrorist attack.
In fact, you are proven wrong: it wasn't paper cutters that were used - the article (rightly) makes no reference to 9/11. According to you, this article should have been deleted - it hasn't, you're wrong.
(You were probably thinking of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_cutter .)
Also, I've never seen anybody in Academia or Business use wikipedia as a source (this of course is no surprise to anyone). But THE POINT is: if your encyclopedia is NOT a "reliable source"; then WTF is wrong with your encyclopedia?
No - that's not how encyclopedias work. THE POINT is: if your encyclopedia IS a "reliable source"; then WTF is wrong with your encyclopedia? Encyclopedias are not meant to be used as references in themselves, they are meant to be starting points for other sources that they reference in turn. I would hope someone in academia isn't using Britannica as a reference either.
And I'm not sure what you mean by "Business" - that's untrue, as Wikipedia has been referred to for information on numerous occasions by companies.
I want a wikipedia with absolutely everything verifiable in existence in it.
Fixed that for you. This may have been what you meant, but it's an important point - in many cases, material isn't deleted for being non-notable, but because it isn't verifiable - with no reliable 3rd party sources, we have no idea if it's true, or something someone just made up.
But aside from that, I do agree, in that I lean towards the liberal end of notability. I feel that as long as it's got 3rd party reliable sources, I usually don't see any reason to delete it on grounds of non-notability.
I've sometimes tried to invoke the argument more notable than Spells in Harry Potter in deletion debates, but it doesn't always work.
IMO, at this rate wikipedia will end up dying, because they need donations, and every time I find something I liked gone I decide not to give them anything. I'm probably not the only one who thinks that way.
Although equally we have people who complain about Wikipedia having "too much non-notable stuff". Indeed, that's why the argument exists in the first place! What makes you think that the "deletionists" don't contribute to the site? You're not the only one who donates.
But this already happens - a lot of the time, although such articles are seemingly "deleted" from Wikipedia, it's because they've been "transwikied" to a more dedicated Wiki for that subject.
If this was done as a standard rule, you'd still have arguments over where each article should go. And do you really mean that everything on something fictional should go on the separate site - even the main article for Star Trek, or a work of Shakespeare? What about other expressions of culture such as articles for well known albums or songs? Or if you mean the less notable ones, then you'll just have the arguments over that...
Note that downloading the entire map on your phone is old news, I've seen people doing that with mapping software on their phones years ago. Of course since it wasn't on the Iphone, it won't have been advertised on Slashdot.
Agreed - I've found there are games today that are far more addictive than the games I played in the 90s, which in turn were far more addictive than the 8 bit games in the 80s.
Nostalgia is a wonderful thing. Plus if he played older games as a child like I did, there's the point that children can be more easily entertained. He should try playing old games through an emulator, to remind him what they were like...
I don't see any evidence that bad gameplay is caused by better graphics. Bad gameplay is just bad gameplay - there are good games today, and there were bad games around 10-20 years ago. Some of those bad games have good graphics, but as you should no, correlation doesn't imply causation. And there have been bad games over the years with bad graphics too, anyway.
Part of the problem is that coming up with playable and original games is hard - a lot harder than a lot of "I've got a great idea for a game" wannabes think it is. Given the money involved, it's not unsurprising that you're going to see rehashes of older ideas with better graphics, or sequels, and so on.
The same argument could be made of movies, or indeed music or books. If you think you've got a great idea, chances are it's already been done.
Er what? Where did he claim that children should only be allowed to use GPL?
He's written something, and he's kindly offered the source code too. If you have a problem with that, it sounds like you are the one trying to put your politics over education. He makes no comments about what people should use.
What if a better package is available that is not GPL?
Then use it.
They do not get a science/physics backing from you? What is more important?
That we don't make straw man arguments.