I can't remember on top of my head, but I recall a Word version 6. Plus Microsoft Office predates Win 3.1, as it existed on MacOS several years before Win 3.1 were even released.
Look, it's not that big a deal is it? When Amazon bought imdb we all thought they'd ruined it but actually it's still pretty good.
Yes and no. It's moving towards suckiness for sure. Now you have to register just to view the forums. Not that I usually don't register at forums I visit frequently, but that's still just plain stupid.
IMDB as a whole works, but it's getting worse.
TV.com on the other hand. First time I saw TV.com I thought I've mispelled tvtome and gotten to a some hijacked domain. When I realized tvtome was gone and sold out, I honest to god tried to use TV.com as I would had it been tvtome. I tried, but the new site just "doesn't work".
I never came back. The site sucks now. I'm glad the goons showed some initiative and a started a new tvtome. Ofcourse it doesn't matter if not enough people contribute to the site.
I was specificly referring to WinAmp3, which everyone knows was a slow, useless resource-hog which offered little new features justifying it. Nobody used it, and in the end we got WinAmp5 (2+3) with the best of both worlds (versions), or so was the plan. We got WA3 features, and it was slightly lighter than WA3, even though it wasn't nearly as light as WA2.
Anyway, since you ask. What is wrong with WinAmp? IMO two things:
1. Get a decent music-collection and watch the memory footprint exceed 50MBs. For something as simple as a mp3-player. Not to mention the VM-allocations can bypass 250MB for some odd reason. This is supposed to be a simple music-player for crying out loud. This is insane. The software is bloated and full of leaks.
2. No unicode support. People have been asking about it since version 2, and they still haven't gotten around to implement it. They have been rather active about dismissing the issues and killing threads about the subject in the Winamp forums though.
That's it really. It's become big and bloated, without adding anything but a new skinning engine and a medialibrary. Apart from that, no new features I can think of.
Plus I need my unicode. Even though it's slightly less "pro" than WinAmp, I find that Foobar2000 takes care of all my music needs. And it uses less resources doing so.
This is of course the Libertarian view -- in my experience it's hard to determine what the libertarian view is as they range from anarchists to those who don't seem all
I see. However the Libertarians seem to have a somewhat difficult task ahead of them communicating who they are and what they stand for. I mean, do you declare yourself a uppercase libertarian when you speak?
ENTERPRISE EDITION:
Same as Small Business Edition, but includes MS SQL server, and a few other services; and allows up to 20 accounts to connect at a time.
I was with you up to this point. With the upcoming MS SQL 2005, do you really believe they wont sell this as a seperate product?
This is after all a badly covered attempt to squeeze more dollars out of their paying customers. The pirates will go for the "ultimate" edition anyway. Not to mention, Vista is supposed to be a client OS, isn't it? I thought Vista Server was coming as a later release, aka WinXP and Win2003 server.
Apart from the SQL part, I may be fully wrong though.
but to truly tap into the whole potential of the EU you would also need to translate and localize into all the official languages
NFW! If I ever see and of my games/movies/whatever translated/dubbed into none-native form I shun it. Subtitles are ok when needed, but in general most games have either a japanese or an english translation. And in most european countries english will do just fine.
Apart from the four countries you mentioned, most europeans speak or understand english more than well enough to drone in front of the TV all day watching crappy american sitcoms, so I doubt they'd be in need of any further translation at all for games where a US release allready exists.
And most people I know shun translated material anyway. Some animated flicks comes in translated versions (for the kids). I've yet to see anyone i know who knows english see a localized version, if no kids were involved. Where I live that's a major no-no if there ever were one.
Alternatively, Europe-launch games could all be released in English ONLY, and things would be simplified immensely.
Bingo! I don't see why anyone would waste time making a product inaccesible to a huge market, simply because a few countries where english as a secondary language isn't really that common need a specific translation. It makes no sense. But still... That is exactly what they do. Not to mention enforce with the über-stupid region-protection. That the WTO haven't intervened when it comes to that... Something else I will never get.
as far as I'm aware, products sold in the EU have to have foreign translations on them
You are right. The 10 page user-manual that comes with a game (the only part that I've ever seen translated, and then ignored) would probably cost one translator one days work at most.
So I guess that explains the 6 month wait.
Might be different for countries like France or Germany. AFAIK ze Germans are crazy and translate/dub literally everything they consume. There's nothing like watching Diamonds are forever and wondering who the real bad guy is, as everyone talk in with funny "dialect" anyway.
(Please don't take that last part as flamebait. I fully comprehend german and think it's an alright language, if not a bit rigid:)
Sharman Networks, despite being aware that their software is mostly used for illegal purposes, takes no steps to prevent this.
Are you serious? Just how would you suggest they do that? Recieve filtering-lists from the various **AAs and implement them uncritically? As far as I can see, that's the only way.
And lemme see... Does this have potential for abuse? "Some indie artist is stealing all our smoke. Yeah, lats ban him from searches as well". "Oh damn. Some perfectly legal DRM-circumventions are floating around the P2Ps. Well, let's ban it none the less".
Your suggestion that Sharman Networks should take action is about as asine as if makers of DVD-bruners were to be suited because they didn't do anything to "prevent illegal purposes".
It's nigh impossible to accomplish fully. Plus it's not their job.
Not to sound like a bitter old man, and not to imply that you parent poster does either, but just how is this informative?
As long as the author of the post doesn't even include a link for people to check out (ie actually doing the advertising he claims he isn't capable of doing), this isn't more than random claims made to infer that WinZip isn't particulary revolutionary (which to I wholeheartedly agree) and that anyone can do better.
Now, if parent poster makes up a link to said software, I'd be more than happy to try it out. As it does in fact sound a hell lot better than WinZip 10.0:)
It's not piracy unless you're on a boat and have an eye patch.
Seriously though. The fact that the various **AAs refuses to use the correct term which is copyright infringement in any given case shows that they are doing their best to spread propaganda.
The fact that people who would argue that "it isn't theft" 5 years ago, now are saying the exact opposite shows that it's working. Sadly. People are sheep.
Personally I don't think they have a moral leg to stand on, as long as they've abolished the public domain, or deprived it any actual use or value. Secondary, seeing eager how the entertainment business is to screw over its own people (for instance by "rewriting" the profits of a highly profitable movie into loss), I don't feel morally obliged to "support the artists", as it seems it is only the big business and the wrongfull copyright owners who seem to reap in.
You may call it theft, you may think it's more or less the same act. I happen to disagree. The law happen to disagree. Tell me one court of law that will treat it as theft. Which is really a pity as theft is punished a lot less severe than copyright infringement.
And don't get me started on people stealing copyrights (copyright theft *sigh*)...
Ok, I'll bite. If I buy anything online, be it music, videos or whatever, I buy it, it's mine. Mine as in mine to do whatever damned I please with it. As in making low-bitrate AACs out of high-bitrate WMAs for fitting more of them on my cellphone.
See, this is legal. Noone nowhere has any business telling me "you can't do that". That's equivalent to saying "So... we wont be seeing you purchasing our products ever again?"
Now, if I tried to pass these files on to others, now that would be copyright infringement, and thus illegal.
I don't want my computer, restricting me from doing stuff with my data because some executives somewhere are afraid I might violate their copyright. No way. No way in hell.
Why does DRM frighten you?
Does it not already exist in Windows XP? Some media files require DRM already. In Vista you'll have a smoother implementation of DRM.
It doesn't frighten me per se, but I dislike the entire idea. If I find out that some media I'm accessing requires DRM, I simply move along to something else.
And I particulary don't like the idea of an OS which has embedded restrictions designed into it. My OS should put me in control of my computer where I manage my data. The OS should not restrict me from doing what I want on my computer. It's as simple as that.
I won't support any attempt of bringing this basic concept to an end. Not even by pirating the product.
Walt Disney made the short film Steam Boat Willy, with Mickey Mouse in it, actually, so what you say makes no sense.
I guess you're right about that part. My bad. Sorry. Posting while working and being hung over may not be the greatest thing ever for coherent slashdot posts:)
Anyway, AFAIK Mickey Mouse/Steamboat Willie was based on works from the public domain. So Disney know the value of a public domain. Heck, it even makes business sense for new startups! Worked like hell for Disney. They just don't want other people to access those values if it means that they can profit indefinetely instead.
Which is in sharp contrast to what copyright was initially set to acomplish.
Can we at least agree on this part?
I would like to see an automatic pricing system where the song price may range from 10c to $2 and the price fluxates automatically according to the number of buyers
This line of pricing works well when there is a limited supply, and people are willing to pay up to ensure that they will get an item they really want.
In the age of digital media there is no such thing as limited supply. This would merely be applying the mechanisms of the traditional market with limited supply to the new market that has no reason for this pricing model what so ever.
Artificial, unnecessary, stupid and point-less.
Note that I'm not saying that all prices must be fixed to the one and holy price which must be 0.99 $local_currency_unit. I'm all for diverse prices for different goods, but IMO what you suggest seems a bit misapropriate for a digital market.
As you may or may not have noticed, I never said artists shouldn't get paid. However the point off copyright isn't that artists should be able to live indefinitely of whatever they create.
Copyright is a legal construct, an artificial monopoly which provides artists a incentive to create, which in turn was meant to benefit society by making society richer (ie the public domain).
Are you going to tell me that Beatles, Miles Davis or whoever weren't going to make that music anyway, if they knew that they would "only" be able to profit from it, say, 35 years? You got to be kidding. If I could strike any deal like that for anything I did, I'd sign up before you could say "showtime".
Had todays copyright regime existed in the time of Beethoven, Bach or Wagner we would have never heard about them at all, as they'd be copyrighted into oblivion. Now we can all enjoy them instead, as they belong to the public. As it should be.
Can you please tell me exactly what copyrighted material has entered the public domain since the creation of Mickey Mouse? Which incidently was based on Steamboat Willie, which incidently also was copyrighted, but happened to have entered the public domain.
Had it not been for the public domain, Disney would never have existed today, nor would your dear Mickey Mouse. Copyright is granted with the intent that the copyrighted material should in the end belong to society. It's simple. There's supposed to be a balance. Now there is not.
With the de-facto end of the public domain, watch me no longer respecting the artifical construct that copyright is.
I have bought a couple of albums because it was still cheaper than buying a CD. As an example, American Pie by Don McLean. A great album of the early 70's (yeah, I'm old)
Great! Really. Except that it should be in the public domain by now. Like most of the music I listen to these days. So you bought stuff. Great! Now watch me not pay for stuff that should be free decades ago.
It seems the **AAs are succesfully wiping the notion of a public domain from people minds.
If you did read my other comment, you would see that I noted that it really isn't fair to linux saying it lacks hardware support, when in reality it is vendors lacking the support.
The end result to the user, however, is still the same: lack of support. That has a huge impact on being "desktop ready".
I've had none of those troubles with any Windows install I've had, and when I did work with support, it was usually clueless users who had broken their system, not Windows subjecting itself to random breakage.
I realize a lot of people have had other experiences. Like every single person I know. But I've never had these issues myself. Maybe I'm just a lucky guy?
Slashdot Mirror
I can't remember on top of my head, but I recall a Word version 6. Plus Microsoft Office predates Win 3.1, as it existed on MacOS several years before Win 3.1 were even released.
Look, it's not that big a deal is it? When Amazon bought imdb we all thought they'd ruined it but actually it's still pretty good.
Yes and no. It's moving towards suckiness for sure. Now you have to register just to view the forums. Not that I usually don't register at forums I visit frequently, but that's still just plain stupid.
IMDB as a whole works, but it's getting worse.
TV.com on the other hand. First time I saw TV.com I thought I've mispelled tvtome and gotten to a some hijacked domain. When I realized tvtome was gone and sold out, I honest to god tried to use TV.com as I would had it been tvtome. I tried, but the new site just "doesn't work".
I never came back. The site sucks now. I'm glad the goons showed some initiative and a started a new tvtome. Ofcourse it doesn't matter if not enough people contribute to the site.
now what's wrong with winamp???
I was specificly referring to WinAmp3, which everyone knows was a slow, useless resource-hog which offered little new features justifying it. Nobody used it, and in the end we got WinAmp5 (2+3) with the best of both worlds (versions), or so was the plan. We got WA3 features, and it was slightly lighter than WA3, even though it wasn't nearly as light as WA2.
Anyway, since you ask. What is wrong with WinAmp? IMO two things:
1. Get a decent music-collection and watch the memory footprint exceed 50MBs. For something as simple as a mp3-player. Not to mention the VM-allocations can bypass 250MB for some odd reason. This is supposed to be a simple music-player for crying out loud. This is insane. The software is bloated and full of leaks.
2. No unicode support. People have been asking about it since version 2, and they still haven't gotten around to implement it. They have been rather active about dismissing the issues and killing threads about the subject in the Winamp forums though.
That's it really. It's become big and bloated, without adding anything but a new skinning engine and a medialibrary. Apart from that, no new features I can think of.
Plus I need my unicode. Even though it's slightly less "pro" than WinAmp, I find that Foobar2000 takes care of all my music needs. And it uses less resources doing so.
I fear that Skype will go the way of ICQ when that happens...
To be honest ICQ went the way of ICQ when ICQ decided to become a big, fat bloated pig that took half a minute to boot.
And MSN (until recent versions anyway) remained quick and functional. ICQ went down because ICQ went the way of WinAmp 3. No need to blame MS on this.
Everyone! Here's a real internet tough-guy!
This is of course the Libertarian view -- in my experience it's hard to determine what the libertarian view is as they range from anarchists to those who don't seem all
I see. However the Libertarians seem to have a somewhat difficult task ahead of them communicating who they are and what they stand for. I mean, do you declare yourself a uppercase libertarian when you speak?
Oh, come on. You were just begging for that one.
ENTERPRISE EDITION: Same as Small Business Edition, but includes MS SQL server, and a few other services; and allows up to 20 accounts to connect at a time.
I was with you up to this point. With the upcoming MS SQL 2005, do you really believe they wont sell this as a seperate product?
This is after all a badly covered attempt to squeeze more dollars out of their paying customers. The pirates will go for the "ultimate" edition anyway. Not to mention, Vista is supposed to be a client OS, isn't it? I thought Vista Server was coming as a later release, aka WinXP and Win2003 server.
Apart from the SQL part, I may be fully wrong though.
but to truly tap into the whole potential of the EU you would also need to translate and localize into all the official languages
NFW! If I ever see and of my games/movies/whatever translated/dubbed into none-native form I shun it. Subtitles are ok when needed, but in general most games have either a japanese or an english translation. And in most european countries english will do just fine.
Apart from the four countries you mentioned, most europeans speak or understand english more than well enough to drone in front of the TV all day watching crappy american sitcoms, so I doubt they'd be in need of any further translation at all for games where a US release allready exists.
And most people I know shun translated material anyway. Some animated flicks comes in translated versions (for the kids). I've yet to see anyone i know who knows english see a localized version, if no kids were involved. Where I live that's a major no-no if there ever were one.
Alternatively, Europe-launch games could all be released in English ONLY, and things would be simplified immensely.
Bingo! I don't see why anyone would waste time making a product inaccesible to a huge market, simply because a few countries where english as a secondary language isn't really that common need a specific translation. It makes no sense. But still... That is exactly what they do. Not to mention enforce with the über-stupid region-protection. That the WTO haven't intervened when it comes to that... Something else I will never get.
as far as I'm aware, products sold in the EU have to have foreign translations on them
You are right. The 10 page user-manual that comes with a game (the only part that I've ever seen translated, and then ignored) would probably cost one translator one days work at most. So I guess that explains the 6 month wait.
Might be different for countries like France or Germany. AFAIK ze Germans are crazy and translate/dub literally everything they consume. There's nothing like watching Diamonds are forever and wondering who the real bad guy is, as everyone talk in with funny "dialect" anyway.
(Please don't take that last part as flamebait. I fully comprehend german and think it's an alright language, if not a bit rigid :)
ms office must support openoffice documents... it's just more reason not to use it
Just like there's "no reason" for MS not to support webstandards. But we all know how that story...
Sharman Networks, despite being aware that their software is mostly used for illegal purposes, takes no steps to prevent this.
Are you serious? Just how would you suggest they do that? Recieve filtering-lists from the various **AAs and implement them uncritically? As far as I can see, that's the only way.
And lemme see... Does this have potential for abuse? "Some indie artist is stealing all our smoke. Yeah, lats ban him from searches as well". "Oh damn. Some perfectly legal DRM-circumventions are floating around the P2Ps. Well, let's ban it none the less".
Your suggestion that Sharman Networks should take action is about as asine as if makers of DVD-bruners were to be suited because they didn't do anything to "prevent illegal purposes".
It's nigh impossible to accomplish fully. Plus it's not their job.
You welcome our
([.]*)[AA]
overlords?
Aka why the hell include lineshifts? Not to mention that that regexp is also otherwise all fsckered up. Behold my double-pedant regexp powers!
Grumble, grumble. And I evidently suck at doing the reading and googling after a long week with 14 hour work-days. Now mod my post into oblivion!
It's not slashdotted per se, it's just compressed with technology you haven't heard about before, so you don't get access to the information.
Either that, or if no-one pleads guilty I guess we can infer that the perpetrator is that anonymous coward guy.
Double the pun in one post! This calls for a -ZipIt!, Lousy compression-based humour mod :)
Not to sound like a bitter old man, and not to imply that you parent poster does either, but just how is this informative?
As long as the author of the post doesn't even include a link for people to check out (ie actually doing the advertising he claims he isn't capable of doing), this isn't more than random claims made to infer that WinZip isn't particulary revolutionary (which to I wholeheartedly agree) and that anyone can do better.
Now, if parent poster makes up a link to said software, I'd be more than happy to try it out. As it does in fact sound a hell lot better than WinZip 10.0 :)
It's not piracy unless you're on a boat and have an eye patch.
Seriously though. The fact that the various **AAs refuses to use the correct term which is copyright infringement in any given case shows that they are doing their best to spread propaganda.
The fact that people who would argue that "it isn't theft" 5 years ago, now are saying the exact opposite shows that it's working. Sadly. People are sheep.
Personally I don't think they have a moral leg to stand on, as long as they've abolished the public domain, or deprived it any actual use or value. Secondary, seeing eager how the entertainment business is to screw over its own people (for instance by "rewriting" the profits of a highly profitable movie into loss), I don't feel morally obliged to "support the artists", as it seems it is only the big business and the wrongfull copyright owners who seem to reap in.
You may call it theft, you may think it's more or less the same act. I happen to disagree. The law happen to disagree. Tell me one court of law that will treat it as theft. Which is really a pity as theft is punished a lot less severe than copyright infringement.
And don't get me started on people stealing copyrights (copyright theft *sigh*)...
Ok, I'll bite. If I buy anything online, be it music, videos or whatever, I buy it, it's mine. Mine as in mine to do whatever damned I please with it. As in making low-bitrate AACs out of high-bitrate WMAs for fitting more of them on my cellphone.
See, this is legal. Noone nowhere has any business telling me "you can't do that". That's equivalent to saying "So... we wont be seeing you purchasing our products ever again?"
Now, if I tried to pass these files on to others, now that would be copyright infringement, and thus illegal.
I don't want my computer, restricting me from doing stuff with my data because some executives somewhere are afraid I might violate their copyright. No way. No way in hell.
Why does DRM frighten you? Does it not already exist in Windows XP? Some media files require DRM already. In Vista you'll have a smoother implementation of DRM.
It doesn't frighten me per se, but I dislike the entire idea. If I find out that some media I'm accessing requires DRM, I simply move along to something else.
And I particulary don't like the idea of an OS which has embedded restrictions designed into it. My OS should put me in control of my computer where I manage my data. The OS should not restrict me from doing what I want on my computer. It's as simple as that.
I won't support any attempt of bringing this basic concept to an end. Not even by pirating the product.
For the ones not reading at 0 :)
Walt Disney made the short film Steam Boat Willy, with Mickey Mouse in it, actually, so what you say makes no sense.
I guess you're right about that part. My bad. Sorry. Posting while working and being hung over may not be the greatest thing ever for coherent slashdot posts :)
Anyway, AFAIK Mickey Mouse/Steamboat Willie was based on works from the public domain. So Disney know the value of a public domain. Heck, it even makes business sense for new startups! Worked like hell for Disney. They just don't want other people to access those values if it means that they can profit indefinetely instead.
Which is in sharp contrast to what copyright was initially set to acomplish. Can we at least agree on this part?
The composite extension for xorg, together with the appropriate drop-shadows/window transparency options in KDE do Just that
I think you may have missed something. GPU-accelerated? Check. Vector-based? Not so. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I would like to see an automatic pricing system where the song price may range from 10c to $2 and the price fluxates automatically according to the number of buyers
This line of pricing works well when there is a limited supply, and people are willing to pay up to ensure that they will get an item they really want.
In the age of digital media there is no such thing as limited supply. This would merely be applying the mechanisms of the traditional market with limited supply to the new market that has no reason for this pricing model what so ever. Artificial, unnecessary, stupid and point-less.
Note that I'm not saying that all prices must be fixed to the one and holy price which must be 0.99 $local_currency_unit. I'm all for diverse prices for different goods, but IMO what you suggest seems a bit misapropriate for a digital market.
As you may or may not have noticed, I never said artists shouldn't get paid. However the point off copyright isn't that artists should be able to live indefinitely of whatever they create.
Copyright is a legal construct, an artificial monopoly which provides artists a incentive to create, which in turn was meant to benefit society by making society richer (ie the public domain).
Are you going to tell me that Beatles, Miles Davis or whoever weren't going to make that music anyway, if they knew that they would "only" be able to profit from it, say, 35 years? You got to be kidding. If I could strike any deal like that for anything I did, I'd sign up before you could say "showtime".
Had todays copyright regime existed in the time of Beethoven, Bach or Wagner we would have never heard about them at all, as they'd be copyrighted into oblivion. Now we can all enjoy them instead, as they belong to the public. As it should be.
Can you please tell me exactly what copyrighted material has entered the public domain since the creation of Mickey Mouse? Which incidently was based on Steamboat Willie, which incidently also was copyrighted, but happened to have entered the public domain.
Had it not been for the public domain, Disney would never have existed today, nor would your dear Mickey Mouse. Copyright is granted with the intent that the copyrighted material should in the end belong to society. It's simple. There's supposed to be a balance. Now there is not.
With the de-facto end of the public domain, watch me no longer respecting the artifical construct that copyright is.
I have bought a couple of albums because it was still cheaper than buying a CD. As an example, American Pie by Don McLean. A great album of the early 70's (yeah, I'm old)
Great! Really. Except that it should be in the public domain by now. Like most of the music I listen to these days. So you bought stuff. Great! Now watch me not pay for stuff that should be free decades ago.
It seems the **AAs are succesfully wiping the notion of a public domain from people minds.
If you did read my other comment, you would see that I noted that it really isn't fair to linux saying it lacks hardware support, when in reality it is vendors lacking the support.
The end result to the user, however, is still the same: lack of support. That has a huge impact on being "desktop ready".
I've had none of those troubles with any Windows install I've had, and when I did work with support, it was usually clueless users who had broken their system, not Windows subjecting itself to random breakage.
I realize a lot of people have had other experiences. Like every single person I know. But I've never had these issues myself. Maybe I'm just a lucky guy?