Getting 6-7 years of useful life out of a Mac is quite common. This is a testament to how well OS X has supported older hardware. (Let's see Vista on a 7 year old machine.)
I'm not sure why this is a problem - Vista is intended to run on new machines. Why are we rating OSs on how well they run on machines released 7 years before the OS is released? If you've got an old machine, you can carry on using the old OS. I'm more concerned with how well an OS runs on machines contempary to its release.
I'm not sure this criticism is accurate anyway - surely a 2002-2003 era PC (bearing in mind that the latest OS X is 2 years older than Vista, so it's not fair to compare to Vista on a 6-7 year old PC) can meet the requirements for Vista?
Anyway, if you want to play that game, then AmigaOS 3.9, released 2000 and last updated 2002 happily runs on 1992 Amigas.
Of course it is possible for geeks, but I think he meant more for the idiot computer user (and Macs are touted as being particularly user-friendly, after all). Even for me, I found it is annoying to have limited access to software, or to have to use virtualisation (and I say this who was using niche non-Windows platforms long before it became trendy to); for someone who doesn't know about computers and expects a piece of software to just work, it's unfortunately going to be a confusing and annoying problem.
I liked the way that the BBC's article had a link to related articles, including this one about a 14 year old girl. Any Slashdotters moaning "OMG PC" willing to take her on, and tell her she could only beat a machine if it wasn't that strong?
True examples of "PC" are indeed annoying, but it shouldn't be a shield for people to hide behind everytime they want to insult everyone in a certain group. If you want to insult people, fine - but you don't get to cry "wahwah PC" if people criticise you back.
And no, I wouldn't stand for generalisations against men - e.g., accusations that we are all violent morons.
As another example, girls outperform boys at exam grades (at least here in the UK). That doesn't mean a guy whose got straight As is going to stand for some thickie[*] girl telling him that boys are stupid, and that he could only pass a test if it was made easy for him.
([*] - I don't know for sure whether the people here are strong or weak themselves, but considering this is Slashdot, let's say the former. Oh I'm sorry, did I make a generalisation?)
Did you ask her how many Olympic events have men competing against women?
On that note, I wonder if he'd be willing to suggest women are weak and incapable of competing in an arm wrestling machine to a woman who competes in Olympic events?
The comment wasn't talking in terms of averages (maybe it was intended to, but it was badly phrased). Even though group X may be on average better than group Y in some area, one would still usually expect that some members of group Y to be better than members of group X, as is the case in arm wrestling. Even if the machine is strong, we would would still expect some women to be able to beat it - perhaps just not as many as the number of men. But the implication is that women can only beat it as a result of the machine being specifically weak.
I wonder how strong the average Slashdotter is compared with the average woman?
But that only applies if the house is obviously private. If I aondered into something that looked like a shop, or indeed was a shop, that may well be a different matter. The owners can't retroactively say "Oh sorry, we didn't intend for people to be able to come in", but still have you arrested for trespass.
The problem is that public wireless networks do exist, but I'm not sure it's always easy to tell the difference.
My own view on this is that I'm not too bothered if children are prevented from seeing things, but I am worried when censorship is forced upon adults, either because it's deemed harmful for them to view too, or because "a child might see it".
Things are worse in the UK in this respect - here the Government is currently trying to criminalise adults privately possessing some images, because "a child might see them". I don't mind having rules about what can be shown on a public television station, but the whole advantage of the Internet is that people can choose what they want to see or not. The UK Government however sees that people downloading from the Internet is merely a "loophole" of obscenity laws, and so plans to criminalise people for possession, rather than publication.
Also, getting back to the topic of video games, here in the UK games can be illegal to sell to adults (e.g, Manhunt 2).
Impossible cartoon violence doesn't bother me.... I don't think it is a good idea for children to be exposed to adult themes without their parents' knowledge!
Yes, it's not like cartoons ever have any violence in them...
I've never understood why "impossible" violence is seen as okay. That somehow it's better if we trivialise violence, or hide the consequences of it?
How is it a troll? Sure, it's not illegal to delete any arbitrary files, but I think that's obvious unless you're reading it pedantically. The point is that there exist files which would be illegal to delete, even if you have no intention of committing the copyright infringement.
Even if everyone supports one standard, the bottom line here is that the data has to centralized somewhere in order to maintain data consistency.
Presumably the point is that that "somewhere" doesn't have to be the same place for everyone.
I mean, it's like saying that email has to be centralised somewhere, because you still need to choose one single server for your email. But the point is we're not all dependent on a single company, you can choose which server to trust, and if you're that paranoid, you can run your own server.
That would be a web server though. There are different types of server, e.g., email server, which need different protocols. Sometimes people come up with new protocols (e.g., OpenID).
Particularly, the use of OpenID. I believe this was the intent of Microsoft Passport (centralized login to all other websites), but I would hardly trust my ONE internet password to Microsoft.
OpenID is decentralised. Being open or a standard doesn't imply centralised (think email - you can email people on other servers, without needing some centralised trustable email server).
Why, exactly, does "every site" need to know my friends? For that matter, why should any sites know my friends? And I don't mean in the Slashdot Friends/Foe sense - I have plenty of both, solely for the purpose of moderation.
Actually, this is the sense that is meant. Usually sites, just like Slashdot, use "Friend" to imply some specific feature, whether it's who you want to see certain personal data, or whose journals or comments you want to read. It's unfortunate that the word "friend" has been overloaded, but Slashdot is just as guilty of this.
Given that LiveJournal - created by the author of this essay - uses "friend" to mean something specific, I imagine the author is talking about "friend" in this sense, whether or not they really are your friends. Though the flaw I think (as I said in another comment) is that since different sites use "friend" differently, who you want as friends on one site may not be the same as who you want as a friend on another.
For the record, I get sick of registering at websites not because it takes too long to come up with fake info, but because for the majority of them, I shouldn't need to create a personalized account in the first place!
Agreed, and OpenID is one way round this (which was created by Brad, as it happens). This just goes one step further, for those sites (like LiveJournal, Facebook - or Slashdot) where you do want to enter this extra information.
That's approx $46.26 per person (according to census.gov numbers).
Although I think you've taken into account the entire population, as opposed to only taxpayers? So it would be even more than that for taxpayers after you've discounted the young, old, students and unemployed.
But think yourself lucky - the UK compulsory ID card will cost I think £30-something for the standalone version, or if you want a passport (which most people in the UK do), it'll cost around an extra £50 from what the passport used to cost (so that's roughly $70 or an extra $100). And the UK version will be paid individually, not out of taxes.
But yes, even $46 is too much (it's interesting that whilst surveys suggest that most people seem okay with an ID card, the support rapidly drops as soon as the cost becomes greater than 0 - even at just £25, there's very little support. Of course, the Governments ignore this issue, instead falsely claiming that people support ID cards).
Whilst IP laws can cover "collections of data", it's hard to see it enforceable in this sense. I mean, by the same logic, would they be mad if I recreated the same friends list manually on a different site? Of course not - it's not unreasonable that my friends are still going to be my friends on a different site. I don't see using an automated tool changes that.
Is it an IP infringement if I list my phone number, email and address on one site, then put it on another site too? Of course not. No matter what their TOS might say, I think it'd be hard to argue they own the IP of your personal information, and you don't.
TFA says: A centralized "owner" of the social graph is bad for the Internet.
It seems to be talking about a system where anyone can run their own server according to the open standard APIs, and hence will not be centralised.
Although he's right that people are tired of readding friends on each network, one flaw is that "friend" has different meanings. On some, it's simply "This person is my friend". On some like Facebook, it also means they can see information about you that others might not. On LiveJournal however (which was created by the author of this article), it goes far beyond simply "friend"; it indicates which journals you want to read, and who can see your "friends only" entries. So conceivably, who I want as a friend on Facebook isn't necessarily the same as who I want as a "friend" on LJ.
Now theoretically this can be handled in that "people whose journals I want to read" could be a subset of anyone I list as my friend (i.e., you have an option for each friend whether you read their entries, whether they can read yours, or whatever is specific for that site). But that's more hassle for individual users.
The problem is why should UK taxpayers pay for people in other countries to have free media that they didn't pay for?
I pay so that I can watch it - preferably without DRM. Contrary to popular anti-piracy beliefs, I am not harmed by someone elsewhere getting to watch it. (If they were happy with an online version, they'd be able to download it off bittorrent now, anyway.)
And anyway, I'm glad if more people around the world are watching more British-produced content. One of the whole points of having a public-funded corporation is to promote British TV. If you're only concerned about maximising profit, go with a private company.
Lastly, the point is that licence payers should have a say in what happens. If they want to protest that the BBC should use DRM, let them. But in this case, they're protesting that the BBC shouldn't use DRM.
Is there a central point, somewhere, from which we may hang an anchor
Nope, there's no fixed reference point at all. Velocities have to be given relative to an arbitrary reference point. This makes comparisons to a speeding bullet all the more pointless - all objects in space tend to be moving extremely fast, relative to the centre of the galaxy, or to some other galaxy.
The BBC is partially funded by a compulsory licence fee. In addition to this, they have other revenue sources, not the least of which is selling programmes on to foreign markets and CD/DVD releases, etc. Putting unrestricted versions of such content out there themselves will kill off these revenue streams. Putting time (and possibly geographically) restricted versions out will not.... If you would like unrestricted access to their programmes over the Internet, be prepared for a hike in the licence fee to cover the revenue they will lose by doing so.
Firstly, no one here is objecting to geographical restrictions such as IP checking. The argument is about Microsoft-only DRM.
Secondly, how do you explain that before the BBC was able to increase its revenue by selling DVDs, the licence fee didn't have to be higher back then?
I think the BBC is a good thing. But that doesn't mean the BBC has a right to make as much money as it can, by also taking money from me. If it can make more money by selling DVDs, great, but it's purpose first and foremost should be producing content accessable to all citizens. There's no need for the BBC to be making as much money as possible, that's why we have the public-funded BBC instead of relying on private companies.
A similar argument could be made for advertising - perhaps the BBC should have adverts, to make yet more money? But the whole point of making the BBC public-funded is to avoid the sorts of problems that a private company would do, whether it's adverts or DRM! If the BBC wants to be like a private company, then fine. I'll expect a refund of my licence fee in return.
It will make it almost impossible for any game to be postponed until the next day because once there is a postponement, a player could, in theory, simply use a PC to analyze his game and find a sequence of moves where he cannot lose if he plays them correctly.... And how much worse they will be when the day comes that everybody can use a PC to analyze his game and find a way to never lose?
Except that won't be possible. It's not as simple as remembering a sequence, because you have to also memorise all possible combinations depending on what moves the opponent then plays. At any given point in a game, the number of moves you'll have to remember increases exponentially with each move (just like at the start of the game).
Just because computers may solve chess is no help to a human, who has no hope of remembering every possible game!
Yes, you could cheat by using a computer to find what the perfect next move, and possibly a few moves after that if you assume the opponent will play perfectly. Though this sort of analysis/cheating is possible without computers, for example, you could ask a grandmaster what move you should take.
Nobody believes in freedom of speech. If I stood outside your house shouting obscenities at your family, you'd soon object.
At best, people agree with the freedom of people to say or express things they approve of, or in a way in which they approve.
What liberals can't stand is that some people disagree with them about what is suitable for public consumption. Children are particularly choiceless consumers, and the public sphere has to be shared with all. So liberals accuse conservatives of all kinds of anti-Constitutional behaviour, forgetting their freedoms to share the public arena.
Their hypocrisy soon becomes apparent when you wear a T-Shirt objecting to abortion or homosexuality, and they soon become pretty damn un-freedom-of-speech.
What's that I see? Oh yes, it's a great big Strawman.
You're so stubborn with your ideas, that you can't even comprehend that other people might support your right to speech, even if they disagree with what you are saying.
Slashdot Mirror
Getting 6-7 years of useful life out of a Mac is quite common. This is a testament to how well OS X has supported older hardware. (Let's see Vista on a 7 year old machine.)
I'm not sure why this is a problem - Vista is intended to run on new machines. Why are we rating OSs on how well they run on machines released 7 years before the OS is released? If you've got an old machine, you can carry on using the old OS. I'm more concerned with how well an OS runs on machines contempary to its release.
I'm not sure this criticism is accurate anyway - surely a 2002-2003 era PC (bearing in mind that the latest OS X is 2 years older than Vista, so it's not fair to compare to Vista on a 6-7 year old PC) can meet the requirements for Vista?
Anyway, if you want to play that game, then AmigaOS 3.9, released 2000 and last updated 2002 happily runs on 1992 Amigas.
Of course it is possible for geeks, but I think he meant more for the idiot computer user (and Macs are touted as being particularly user-friendly, after all). Even for me, I found it is annoying to have limited access to software, or to have to use virtualisation (and I say this who was using niche non-Windows platforms long before it became trendy to); for someone who doesn't know about computers and expects a piece of software to just work, it's unfortunately going to be a confusing and annoying problem.
Can you cite a case where someone demanded a warning label because they nearly burned their tongue?
I liked the way that the BBC's article had a link to related articles, including this one about a 14 year old girl. Any Slashdotters moaning "OMG PC" willing to take her on, and tell her she could only beat a machine if it wasn't that strong?
True examples of "PC" are indeed annoying, but it shouldn't be a shield for people to hide behind everytime they want to insult everyone in a certain group. If you want to insult people, fine - but you don't get to cry "wahwah PC" if people criticise you back.
And no, I wouldn't stand for generalisations against men - e.g., accusations that we are all violent morons.
As another example, girls outperform boys at exam grades (at least here in the UK). That doesn't mean a guy whose got straight As is going to stand for some thickie[*] girl telling him that boys are stupid, and that he could only pass a test if it was made easy for him.
([*] - I don't know for sure whether the people here are strong or weak themselves, but considering this is Slashdot, let's say the former. Oh I'm sorry, did I make a generalisation?)
Did you ask her how many Olympic events have men competing against women?
On that note, I wonder if he'd be willing to suggest women are weak and incapable of competing in an arm wrestling machine to a woman who competes in Olympic events?
The comment wasn't talking in terms of averages (maybe it was intended to, but it was badly phrased). Even though group X may be on average better than group Y in some area, one would still usually expect that some members of group Y to be better than members of group X, as is the case in arm wrestling. Even if the machine is strong, we would would still expect some women to be able to beat it - perhaps just not as many as the number of men. But the implication is that women can only beat it as a result of the machine being specifically weak.
I wonder how strong the average Slashdotter is compared with the average woman?
But that only applies if the house is obviously private. If I aondered into something that looked like a shop, or indeed was a shop, that may well be a different matter. The owners can't retroactively say "Oh sorry, we didn't intend for people to be able to come in", but still have you arrested for trespass.
The problem is that public wireless networks do exist, but I'm not sure it's always easy to tell the difference.
My own view on this is that I'm not too bothered if children are prevented from seeing things, but I am worried when censorship is forced upon adults, either because it's deemed harmful for them to view too, or because "a child might see it".
Things are worse in the UK in this respect - here the Government is currently trying to criminalise adults privately possessing some images, because "a child might see them". I don't mind having rules about what can be shown on a public television station, but the whole advantage of the Internet is that people can choose what they want to see or not. The UK Government however sees that people downloading from the Internet is merely a "loophole" of obscenity laws, and so plans to criminalise people for possession, rather than publication.
Also, getting back to the topic of video games, here in the UK games can be illegal to sell to adults (e.g, Manhunt 2).
Impossible cartoon violence doesn't bother me. ... I don't think it is a good idea for children to be exposed to adult themes without their parents' knowledge!
Yes, it's not like cartoons ever have any violence in them...
I've never understood why "impossible" violence is seen as okay. That somehow it's better if we trivialise violence, or hide the consequences of it?
The article title is pure troll.
How is it a troll? Sure, it's not illegal to delete any arbitrary files, but I think that's obvious unless you're reading it pedantically. The point is that there exist files which would be illegal to delete, even if you have no intention of committing the copyright infringement.
Even if everyone supports one standard, the bottom line here is that the data has to centralized somewhere in order to maintain data consistency.
Presumably the point is that that "somewhere" doesn't have to be the same place for everyone.
I mean, it's like saying that email has to be centralised somewhere, because you still need to choose one single server for your email. But the point is we're not all dependent on a single company, you can choose which server to trust, and if you're that paranoid, you can run your own server.
I think that's called HTTP. :-)
That would be a web server though. There are different types of server, e.g., email server, which need different protocols. Sometimes people come up with new protocols (e.g., OpenID).
"Half a decade ago".
Particularly, the use of OpenID. I believe this was the intent of Microsoft Passport (centralized login to all other websites), but I would hardly trust my ONE internet password to Microsoft.
OpenID is decentralised. Being open or a standard doesn't imply centralised (think email - you can email people on other servers, without needing some centralised trustable email server).
Why, exactly, does "every site" need to know my friends? For that matter, why should any sites know my friends? And I don't mean in the Slashdot Friends/Foe sense - I have plenty of both, solely for the purpose of moderation.
Actually, this is the sense that is meant. Usually sites, just like Slashdot, use "Friend" to imply some specific feature, whether it's who you want to see certain personal data, or whose journals or comments you want to read. It's unfortunate that the word "friend" has been overloaded, but Slashdot is just as guilty of this.
Given that LiveJournal - created by the author of this essay - uses "friend" to mean something specific, I imagine the author is talking about "friend" in this sense, whether or not they really are your friends. Though the flaw I think (as I said in another comment) is that since different sites use "friend" differently, who you want as friends on one site may not be the same as who you want as a friend on another.
For the record, I get sick of registering at websites not because it takes too long to come up with fake info, but because for the majority of them, I shouldn't need to create a personalized account in the first place!
Agreed, and OpenID is one way round this (which was created by Brad, as it happens). This just goes one step further, for those sites (like LiveJournal, Facebook - or Slashdot) where you do want to enter this extra information.
That's approx $46.26 per person (according to census.gov numbers).
Although I think you've taken into account the entire population, as opposed to only taxpayers? So it would be even more than that for taxpayers after you've discounted the young, old, students and unemployed.
But think yourself lucky - the UK compulsory ID card will cost I think £30-something for the standalone version, or if you want a passport (which most people in the UK do), it'll cost around an extra £50 from what the passport used to cost (so that's roughly $70 or an extra $100). And the UK version will be paid individually, not out of taxes.
But yes, even $46 is too much (it's interesting that whilst surveys suggest that most people seem okay with an ID card, the support rapidly drops as soon as the cost becomes greater than 0 - even at just £25, there's very little support. Of course, the Governments ignore this issue, instead falsely claiming that people support ID cards).
Whilst IP laws can cover "collections of data", it's hard to see it enforceable in this sense. I mean, by the same logic, would they be mad if I recreated the same friends list manually on a different site? Of course not - it's not unreasonable that my friends are still going to be my friends on a different site. I don't see using an automated tool changes that.
Is it an IP infringement if I list my phone number, email and address on one site, then put it on another site too? Of course not. No matter what their TOS might say, I think it'd be hard to argue they own the IP of your personal information, and you don't.
TFA says: A centralized "owner" of the social graph is bad for the Internet.
It seems to be talking about a system where anyone can run their own server according to the open standard APIs, and hence will not be centralised.
Although he's right that people are tired of readding friends on each network, one flaw is that "friend" has different meanings. On some, it's simply "This person is my friend". On some like Facebook, it also means they can see information about you that others might not. On LiveJournal however (which was created by the author of this article), it goes far beyond simply "friend"; it indicates which journals you want to read, and who can see your "friends only" entries. So conceivably, who I want as a friend on Facebook isn't necessarily the same as who I want as a "friend" on LJ.
Now theoretically this can be handled in that "people whose journals I want to read" could be a subset of anyone I list as my friend (i.e., you have an option for each friend whether you read their entries, whether they can read yours, or whatever is specific for that site). But that's more hassle for individual users.
The problem is why should UK taxpayers pay for people in other countries to have free media that they didn't pay for?
I pay so that I can watch it - preferably without DRM. Contrary to popular anti-piracy beliefs, I am not harmed by someone elsewhere getting to watch it. (If they were happy with an online version, they'd be able to download it off bittorrent now, anyway.)
And anyway, I'm glad if more people around the world are watching more British-produced content. One of the whole points of having a public-funded corporation is to promote British TV. If you're only concerned about maximising profit, go with a private company.
Lastly, the point is that licence payers should have a say in what happens. If they want to protest that the BBC should use DRM, let them. But in this case, they're protesting that the BBC shouldn't use DRM.
Is there a central point, somewhere, from which we may hang an anchor
Nope, there's no fixed reference point at all. Velocities have to be given relative to an arbitrary reference point. This makes comparisons to a speeding bullet all the more pointless - all objects in space tend to be moving extremely fast, relative to the centre of the galaxy, or to some other galaxy.
Almost all computers come with Windows, so no, it's not an additional fee. Besides, you can pirate Windows anyway to view the content.
So the BBC, and Windows, are free as in beer, because they come with what you pay for anyway, or because you can get them illegally without paying?
You have an odd definition of free-as-in-beer.
The BBC is partially funded by a compulsory licence fee. In addition to this, they have other revenue sources, not the least of which is selling programmes on to foreign markets and CD/DVD releases, etc. Putting unrestricted versions of such content out there themselves will kill off these revenue streams. Putting time (and possibly geographically) restricted versions out will not. ... If you would like unrestricted access to their programmes over the Internet, be prepared for a hike in the licence fee to cover the revenue they will lose by doing so.
Firstly, no one here is objecting to geographical restrictions such as IP checking. The argument is about Microsoft-only DRM.
Secondly, how do you explain that before the BBC was able to increase its revenue by selling DVDs, the licence fee didn't have to be higher back then?
I think the BBC is a good thing. But that doesn't mean the BBC has a right to make as much money as it can, by also taking money from me. If it can make more money by selling DVDs, great, but it's purpose first and foremost should be producing content accessable to all citizens. There's no need for the BBC to be making as much money as possible, that's why we have the public-funded BBC instead of relying on private companies.
A similar argument could be made for advertising - perhaps the BBC should have adverts, to make yet more money? But the whole point of making the BBC public-funded is to avoid the sorts of problems that a private company would do, whether it's adverts or DRM! If the BBC wants to be like a private company, then fine. I'll expect a refund of my licence fee in return.
It will make it almost impossible for any game to be postponed until the next day because once there is a postponement, a player could, in theory, simply use a PC to analyze his game and find a sequence of moves where he cannot lose if he plays them correctly. ... And how much worse they will be when the day comes that everybody can use a PC to analyze his game and find a way to never lose?
Except that won't be possible. It's not as simple as remembering a sequence, because you have to also memorise all possible combinations depending on what moves the opponent then plays. At any given point in a game, the number of moves you'll have to remember increases exponentially with each move (just like at the start of the game).
Just because computers may solve chess is no help to a human, who has no hope of remembering every possible game!
Yes, you could cheat by using a computer to find what the perfect next move, and possibly a few moves after that if you assume the opponent will play perfectly. Though this sort of analysis/cheating is possible without computers, for example, you could ask a grandmaster what move you should take.
Nobody believes in freedom of speech. If I stood outside your house shouting obscenities at your family, you'd soon object.
At best, people agree with the freedom of people to say or express things they approve of, or in a way in which they approve.
What liberals can't stand is that some people disagree with them about what is suitable for public consumption. Children are particularly choiceless consumers, and the public sphere has to be shared with all. So liberals accuse conservatives of all kinds of anti-Constitutional behaviour, forgetting their freedoms to share the public arena.
Their hypocrisy soon becomes apparent when you wear a T-Shirt objecting to abortion or homosexuality, and they soon become pretty damn un-freedom-of-speech.
What's that I see? Oh yes, it's a great big Strawman.
You're so stubborn with your ideas, that you can't even comprehend that other people might support your right to speech, even if they disagree with what you are saying.