If you want to be the next Bill Gates, develop acceptable (to the consumer) VR sexual experiences and the supporting hardware (pun intended) and you'll be there in record time.
Apple is under no obligation whatsover, implied or otherwise, to carry any publisher's books.
No legal obligation, perhaps. What about obligation to their shareholders? They didn't just pull the book they don't care for--they pulled ALL of the books by this publisher. Wiley is a HUGE publisher and publishes the highly-successful "...For Dummies" series as well as many others.
Apple isn't pulling these books for some great social good. They're not protesting anything that anybody can see except, apparently, the audacity of somebody to dare write a book about Steve Jobs. And to make this point they're pulling a successful publisher from their stores which is obviously going to cost them money and, very likely, stock price. Do they have no obligation to those people who own parts of their company?
When Slashdot puts its hand out for subscription money and all we get are these dupes and dumbass spelling mistakes, yeah, I'm gonna bitch and moan about it.
Here is a novel concept: Do not subscribe.
Or another: Go somewhere else. Seriously. If you're so horribly displeased with the way Slashdot is run, find yourself another website to post on or start your own. It's really not hard. Do you think this "utter bullshit" bitching and moaning and arguing every time an editor makes a mistake makes the Slashdot community be perceived any better? You're just compounding the problem that you're supposedly hoping to solve.
At risk of being considered a flamer, I would like to propose that the Startrek vision is now irrelevant.
If what you say is true (not a big Trek fan, for one, nor am I interested in getting into the politics of your statements), wouldn't that make the vision more important? "We're not that way so it makes the vision irrelevant" is silly. That's the purpose of a vision. If it simply reflected reality, it would be just that.
As to whether or not the shows/movies suck, well, that's a different argument. I'll leave that one to actual Trekkies to debate.
I'm not sure why anyone things we should bend over backwards to thank the creators of the proprietary versions for gracing us with their presence.
Because everything begins with small steps. Nero for linux might be trivial, but if what companies see is Nero trying to do something in the linux community and getting their fingers bitten off for not being open enough (which many companies who themselves might offer linux software also are unlikely to be), it is a strong disincentive to even try. And THEIR app might not be so dime a dozen that its loss can simply be written off like that.
Similarly, things like this make linux more attractive to potential converts. Imagine for a moment that you could magically run all of your Windows software on linux. I don't mean something like Wine. Pretend that every single application had a linux port or just plain worked by running the Windows version. Imagine how much easier it would be to convince somebody to switch over. They don't have to re-learn anything, they don't have the huge learning curve--they have everything they had before and they have it in an environment that is more secure.
Why should linux users care if windows l0sers are switching? Because that is what is going to get big companies interested in caring about linux. In just my own limited world view, I know several people who would go into instant orgasms on the spot if, say, Photoshop had a native Linux port all of the sudden. I'm sure there are other lists of applications that would garner similar reactions.
I like linux, but there are still a number of things linux apps don't have that their Windows counterparts do. Voice and video in IM clients comes immediately to mind. Finally, projects like AMSN and gaim-vv are working on them, but their current status appears to be horrid and it is likely to be that way for a while longer yet. I'm not a big fan of that sort of thing myself, but when a friend wants to show you something on his webcam, it's annoying to have to refuse or bid him wait while you reboot into your Windows partition that exists mostly because of little stupid things like that. I'm sure fellow users could easily come up with a tremendous list of things they feel are missing in linux, in whole or in part. Frankly if somebody comes along and fixes (some of) those problems for me, I don't care if they give me the source or not when they do it.
In short, you should thank them because it's not about Nero for linux, or whether Nero for linux is the best CD burning software available or not. You should thank them for taking an interest in linux at all and encourage other companies to do the same. If you don't want to use it, you're free to ignore it--but if all companies like Nero see are the bunch of ungrateful zealots Microsoft likes to portray linux users as, there could very well be long-term consequences.
I think we deserve 50% off for those 12 hours of infomercials.
Customer: This $60/month is ridiculous. We deserve 50% off for those 12 hours of infomercials. [Aside: Twelve hours???]
Cable Rep: You already get it. The non-reduced rate is $79.92, but since we give that discount to all customers we don't bother to even mention it.
Honestly, what annoys me most about cable is that the cable company is paid for the priviledge of selling you to advertisers. It wasn't meant to be that way; cable was supposed to be ad-free because you were already paying.
Don't you think that this guy was effectively slandered by the best buy representative, and that slander is worse than a parking tickit?
No. I see no malice. Lots of stupidity, but no malice--and no proof that they knew what they were saying about the $2 bills being counterfeit was incorrect. Both of which are required for slander.
Judging by many of the responses to this article, I'm not sure how many people even read the article. (I shouldn't be surprised if the answer is zero, should I?) According to the writeup, the clerk's claim is that s/he thought the bills were counterfeit due to smearing of the ink on the bills. Even the police didn't know, so they called in some federal agents who affirmed that the bills were indeed legitimate and that sometimes the ink can smear.
Like I said, there may be a lot of stupidity here, but I don't see anything criminal on the part of Best Buy or the clerk, nor anything that should form the basis of a lawsuit.
And is easier to setup (for most distros) than windows from scratch
Huh?
I've installed, for various periods of time, a number of linux distros. Mandrake, a number of RedHats (6.something through FC2 I believe), and I currently run Gentoo. (For disclosure purposes, I also run XP on my laptop as well as a dual boot on my desktop, but I haven't been in anything but Gentoo on my desktop in ages.)
In no case can I pick any of these systems and say they were easier to set up than Windows. Windows is a truly idiot-proof setup. If you can set the time zone, you can get it installed and humming. All of the linux distros I used had at least some sort of package selection. I'm sure at least some, if not all, had a "just do what you want" option that would have made it basically the same as windows--but certainly not easier.
Once installed, the basics in setting things up for linux and Windows is either the same or tilted toward Windows, in my experience.
I'm really curious how you arrived at the conclusion that linux is easier to set up than Windows.
The purpose of advertising isn't necessarily to inform. That is evident by those commercials where you watch them and really have absolutely no idea what's being sold. Rather, the purpose of ads--and the effect of the overall culture of advertising--is to breed discontent.
In other words, they want to make you unhappy with your life. They want to make you afraid. They want to make you jealous. They want to upset you. They want to show you how much better life can be than whatever it is you have. And then, by some miracle, lo and behold! They just happen to have a product that is going to solve all of that for you.
In this case, AOL is probably better served by menacing customers with lots of technical jargon. Not only does it get the point of the dangers across--probably better so than explaining it in simple terms, just keep saying "identity theft" over and over instead of explaining what you mean by phishing--it also intimidates users. Many (most?) people are intimidated by computers in general for no apparent reason that I can figure out. Keep heaving terms they don't understand at them and they will be both intimidated and overwhelmed. At that point, we've reached the "lo and behold" step--it sure is a good thing that AOL has these blockers installed, FOR FREE!!, that takes care of all of that for you, isn't it?
They don't want you to know that some common sense, a handful of things to look for, a couple of free tools and maybe a different (or better secured) browser would do nearly as well or better. That's not going to frighten people nearly as bad.
(As an aside, it can be argued that we WANT people to be afraid of some of these things, such as phishing. At least then they're more likely to take notice and hopefully do something about it.)
Ehm, even if this case doesn't go to court, but cherry os complies with the GPL, wouldn't it be a strong indication, that the GPL is valid?
Logically? Yes. Legally? No. Legally, all it means is that they either think it is valid (as you state later) or think it a cheaper solution to simply adhere than fight a court battle even if they are likely to prevail in that fight.
That is why people want the GPL to actually go to court. Once a decision is issued about it in a court case, there is a binding legal precedent.
That said, however, aside from not being tested I'm not sure why anybody would think that the GPL would not stand up in court. If I require people to fly over here, meet me and do a gymnastics routine before using my code, so what? It's not likely to be done, but then they can just find some code with a less restrictive license if they are unhappy.
What are the chances that the Slashdot editors accept 100% of Roland's submissions, when they reject the majority of submissions from other people.
Who cares?
The real question is whether or not the articles he submits are worth the time of Slashdotters to read and reply to them. I'm not entirely sure what the conspiracy theory is--that he has some arrangement with the editors to accept the stories is one thing I've heard--but I frankly don't care WHO submits a story or WHERE they link it to as long as it is worth reading.
Now, whether or not they are indeed worth reading is up for debate, but that criticism would at least be on the right track.
because it would cost more to hire a thug to shake down the punk than they would get.
A company as big as Microsoft almost certainly has a team of highly paid lawyers on staff. They wouldn't need to hire anybody, just get them to add one more threatening letter to their batch queue.
The settlement here certain backs the prior poster's assertion that NDA's cannot be ignored. After all, the violator has to apologize publically and pay an undisclosed fine.
The grandparent is correct. The case was settled, so it cannot be said that the NDA is enforceable (and you'll not enforceable was the great-grandparents terminology, not "ignorable"). A court would have had to determine if the NDA was enforceable, all a settlement means is that the parties agreed not to go to court. It might be because the guy knows he would lose, it might be because (as often happens with big corporations) he simply thinks that paying Apple would be cheaper than even a successful defense against them. Also, a nitpick on the terminology: he's paying a settlement, not a fine.
That said, I'm not sure I've ever heard anybody claim an NDA was not enforceable and I'm sure, if the case were a simple decision between enforceable and not, that had the case gone to trial it would have come out in Apple's favor.
Think of the children, please. Maybe some of you guys don't have to worry because you spend 4 hours-a-day actually SEARCHING for porn on the web, but please, a 5 or 6 year old girl, or even a boy?
With all due respect, why is it the state of Utah's job to parent your children? There are a plethora of ways you could filter out things you don't want your children to see and while they're not foolproof, they're likely to keep the 5 or 6 year old child innocently playing on the Internet from stumbling on something.
Now, instead of you implementing your own solution to your own specifications--and out of your own pocket--the tax payers get to do it for you. Because... why?
but I wonder if this recent rise of very conservative religious fundamentalism in the USA and efforts to stop the presentation of things that contradict their view might not lead to the USA eventually falling beind in key sciences, and, as a consquence, losing its edge in the world of technology.
Depends on how broadly you wish to paint with that stroke. I, for example, am already worried about the US falling behind in stem cell research because of the restrictions imposed by those same religious people you mention.
Some will tell you we have enough to work with, some will say otherwise. I don't know, I don't have the answers. But I see what appears to be one of the most promising medical breakthroughs in a long time being restricted and I can't hold back a sigh. I just hope whatever slack these restrictions may cause the US--now or in the future--is being picked up by other nations around the world. It's too important.
Not only "most," but 99%! That's a hell of a statement. And apparently despite the crippling hyperbole and absolutely no hard facts to back it up, he's +5.
I remember a couple of years ago holding many/. posters' opinions in awe. They seemed so well thought-out and reasonable. Now I see the moderation system works based on group-think. I wonder if I've grown up or slashdot has really degenerated that far. Live and learn I guess, either way.
The fact that the moderator doesn't understand C++ Doesn't make the post offtopic
Or it could be that the moderator doesn't see jabs at using a wrong word to be on the topic of the thread. I don't, although I probably wouldn't care enough to use a modpoint on it.
These fine U.S. soldiers of which we speak are in fact putting their lives on the line for the current administration's own geopolitical goals, which is not the same thing as fighting for your country.
I disagree. The soldiers may or may not agree with Bush's goals, but I still believe they are fighting for their country. They're fighting to answer their country's call regardless of the reason the call was made. They're fighting for freedom and many of them no doubt beleive that being in Iraq is a part of securing American freedom--your answer to that or mine aside. They're fighting for their families and their children. They might be in Iraq because of Bush's geopolitical goals, but ask the individual soldiers what they're fighting for and I think you'll get a different picture.
That said, bending the soldiers over on calls home is indeed despicable. I really have a hard time believing that with all the awesome technology the US military has--and all the R&D funding at their disposal--that they can not come up with a good, secure, cheap communications system to let a soldier in Iraq tells his parents he's still alive.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to be the next Bill Gates, develop acceptable (to the consumer) VR sexual experiences and the supporting hardware (pun intended) and you'll be there in record time.
I'd buy it.
...what?
to. The useful applications of VR are very specific, niche apps
VR porn is a pretty big niche!
Apple is under no obligation whatsover, implied or otherwise, to carry any publisher's books.
No legal obligation, perhaps. What about obligation to their shareholders? They didn't just pull the book they don't care for--they pulled ALL of the books by this publisher. Wiley is a HUGE publisher and publishes the highly-successful "...For Dummies" series as well as many others.
Apple isn't pulling these books for some great social good. They're not protesting anything that anybody can see except, apparently, the audacity of somebody to dare write a book about Steve Jobs. And to make this point they're pulling a successful publisher from their stores which is obviously going to cost them money and, very likely, stock price. Do they have no obligation to those people who own parts of their company?
When Slashdot puts its hand out for subscription money and all we get are these dupes and dumbass spelling mistakes, yeah, I'm gonna bitch and moan about it.
Here is a novel concept: Do not subscribe.
Or another: Go somewhere else. Seriously. If you're so horribly displeased with the way Slashdot is run, find yourself another website to post on or start your own. It's really not hard. Do you think this "utter bullshit" bitching and moaning and arguing every time an editor makes a mistake makes the Slashdot community be perceived any better? You're just compounding the problem that you're supposedly hoping to solve.
Much more fun to fuck the article than read it.
and hint hint... treating your people BETTER usually results in BETTER software with BETTER profits...
Ohhh, so Microsoft decided to go with pissed off employees and worse software? Makes sense. Why change what's working for you?
...sorry, I HAD to.
At risk of being considered a flamer, I would like to propose that the Startrek vision is now irrelevant.
If what you say is true (not a big Trek fan, for one, nor am I interested in getting into the politics of your statements), wouldn't that make the vision more important? "We're not that way so it makes the vision irrelevant" is silly. That's the purpose of a vision. If it simply reflected reality, it would be just that.
As to whether or not the shows/movies suck, well, that's a different argument. I'll leave that one to actual Trekkies to debate.
I'm not sure why anyone things we should bend over backwards to thank the creators of the proprietary versions for gracing us with their presence.
Because everything begins with small steps. Nero for linux might be trivial, but if what companies see is Nero trying to do something in the linux community and getting their fingers bitten off for not being open enough (which many companies who themselves might offer linux software also are unlikely to be), it is a strong disincentive to even try. And THEIR app might not be so dime a dozen that its loss can simply be written off like that.
Similarly, things like this make linux more attractive to potential converts. Imagine for a moment that you could magically run all of your Windows software on linux. I don't mean something like Wine. Pretend that every single application had a linux port or just plain worked by running the Windows version. Imagine how much easier it would be to convince somebody to switch over. They don't have to re-learn anything, they don't have the huge learning curve--they have everything they had before and they have it in an environment that is more secure.
Why should linux users care if windows l0sers are switching? Because that is what is going to get big companies interested in caring about linux. In just my own limited world view, I know several people who would go into instant orgasms on the spot if, say, Photoshop had a native Linux port all of the sudden. I'm sure there are other lists of applications that would garner similar reactions.
I like linux, but there are still a number of things linux apps don't have that their Windows counterparts do. Voice and video in IM clients comes immediately to mind. Finally, projects like AMSN and gaim-vv are working on them, but their current status appears to be horrid and it is likely to be that way for a while longer yet. I'm not a big fan of that sort of thing myself, but when a friend wants to show you something on his webcam, it's annoying to have to refuse or bid him wait while you reboot into your Windows partition that exists mostly because of little stupid things like that. I'm sure fellow users could easily come up with a tremendous list of things they feel are missing in linux, in whole or in part. Frankly if somebody comes along and fixes (some of) those problems for me, I don't care if they give me the source or not when they do it.
In short, you should thank them because it's not about Nero for linux, or whether Nero for linux is the best CD burning software available or not. You should thank them for taking an interest in linux at all and encourage other companies to do the same. If you don't want to use it, you're free to ignore it--but if all companies like Nero see are the bunch of ungrateful zealots Microsoft likes to portray linux users as, there could very well be long-term consequences.
I will wager that the INSTANT we get hit with an asteroid that doesnt totally anihilate us, you will see some serious money put into colonising space.
Why? Once we get hit we're safe for another couple billion years right? :P
I think we deserve 50% off for those 12 hours of infomercials.
Customer: This $60/month is ridiculous. We deserve 50% off for those 12 hours of infomercials. [Aside: Twelve hours???]
Cable Rep: You already get it. The non-reduced rate is $79.92, but since we give that discount to all customers we don't bother to even mention it.
Honestly, what annoys me most about cable is that the cable company is paid for the priviledge of selling you to advertisers. It wasn't meant to be that way; cable was supposed to be ad-free because you were already paying.
Don't you think that this guy was effectively slandered by the best buy representative, and that slander is worse than a parking tickit?
No. I see no malice. Lots of stupidity, but no malice--and no proof that they knew what they were saying about the $2 bills being counterfeit was incorrect. Both of which are required for slander.
Judging by many of the responses to this article, I'm not sure how many people even read the article. (I shouldn't be surprised if the answer is zero, should I?) According to the writeup, the clerk's claim is that s/he thought the bills were counterfeit due to smearing of the ink on the bills. Even the police didn't know, so they called in some federal agents who affirmed that the bills were indeed legitimate and that sometimes the ink can smear.
Like I said, there may be a lot of stupidity here, but I don't see anything criminal on the part of Best Buy or the clerk, nor anything that should form the basis of a lawsuit.
And is easier to setup (for most distros) than windows from scratch
Huh?
I've installed, for various periods of time, a number of linux distros. Mandrake, a number of RedHats (6.something through FC2 I believe), and I currently run Gentoo. (For disclosure purposes, I also run XP on my laptop as well as a dual boot on my desktop, but I haven't been in anything but Gentoo on my desktop in ages.)
In no case can I pick any of these systems and say they were easier to set up than Windows. Windows is a truly idiot-proof setup. If you can set the time zone, you can get it installed and humming. All of the linux distros I used had at least some sort of package selection. I'm sure at least some, if not all, had a "just do what you want" option that would have made it basically the same as windows--but certainly not easier.
Once installed, the basics in setting things up for linux and Windows is either the same or tilted toward Windows, in my experience.
I'm really curious how you arrived at the conclusion that linux is easier to set up than Windows.
Of course, how many 'average users' trust everything they read on the internet blindly and would never think to question the information?
Most. But they deserve what they get then.
Yes. And that's exactly what they want to do.
The purpose of advertising isn't necessarily to inform. That is evident by those commercials where you watch them and really have absolutely no idea what's being sold. Rather, the purpose of ads--and the effect of the overall culture of advertising--is to breed discontent.
In other words, they want to make you unhappy with your life. They want to make you afraid. They want to make you jealous. They want to upset you. They want to show you how much better life can be than whatever it is you have. And then, by some miracle, lo and behold! They just happen to have a product that is going to solve all of that for you.
In this case, AOL is probably better served by menacing customers with lots of technical jargon. Not only does it get the point of the dangers across--probably better so than explaining it in simple terms, just keep saying "identity theft" over and over instead of explaining what you mean by phishing--it also intimidates users. Many (most?) people are intimidated by computers in general for no apparent reason that I can figure out. Keep heaving terms they don't understand at them and they will be both intimidated and overwhelmed. At that point, we've reached the "lo and behold" step--it sure is a good thing that AOL has these blockers installed, FOR FREE!!, that takes care of all of that for you, isn't it?
They don't want you to know that some common sense, a handful of things to look for, a couple of free tools and maybe a different (or better secured) browser would do nearly as well or better. That's not going to frighten people nearly as bad.
(As an aside, it can be argued that we WANT people to be afraid of some of these things, such as phishing. At least then they're more likely to take notice and hopefully do something about it.)
Ehm, even if this case doesn't go to court, but cherry os complies with the GPL, wouldn't it be a strong indication, that the GPL is valid?
Logically? Yes. Legally? No. Legally, all it means is that they either think it is valid (as you state later) or think it a cheaper solution to simply adhere than fight a court battle even if they are likely to prevail in that fight.
That is why people want the GPL to actually go to court. Once a decision is issued about it in a court case, there is a binding legal precedent.
That said, however, aside from not being tested I'm not sure why anybody would think that the GPL would not stand up in court. If I require people to fly over here, meet me and do a gymnastics routine before using my code, so what? It's not likely to be done, but then they can just find some code with a less restrictive license if they are unhappy.
What are the chances that the Slashdot editors accept 100% of Roland's submissions, when they reject the majority of submissions from other people.
Who cares?
The real question is whether or not the articles he submits are worth the time of Slashdotters to read and reply to them. I'm not entirely sure what the conspiracy theory is--that he has some arrangement with the editors to accept the stories is one thing I've heard--but I frankly don't care WHO submits a story or WHERE they link it to as long as it is worth reading.
Now, whether or not they are indeed worth reading is up for debate, but that criticism would at least be on the right track.
because it would cost more to hire a thug to shake down the punk than they would get.
A company as big as Microsoft almost certainly has a team of highly paid lawyers on staff. They wouldn't need to hire anybody, just get them to add one more threatening letter to their batch queue.
The settlement here certain backs the prior poster's assertion that NDA's cannot be ignored. After all, the violator has to apologize publically and pay an undisclosed fine.
The grandparent is correct. The case was settled, so it cannot be said that the NDA is enforceable (and you'll not enforceable was the great-grandparents terminology, not "ignorable"). A court would have had to determine if the NDA was enforceable, all a settlement means is that the parties agreed not to go to court. It might be because the guy knows he would lose, it might be because (as often happens with big corporations) he simply thinks that paying Apple would be cheaper than even a successful defense against them. Also, a nitpick on the terminology: he's paying a settlement, not a fine.
That said, I'm not sure I've ever heard anybody claim an NDA was not enforceable and I'm sure, if the case were a simple decision between enforceable and not, that had the case gone to trial it would have come out in Apple's favor.
Think of the children, please. Maybe some of you guys don't have to worry because you spend 4 hours-a-day actually SEARCHING for porn on the web, but please, a 5 or 6 year old girl, or even a boy?
With all due respect, why is it the state of Utah's job to parent your children? There are a plethora of ways you could filter out things you don't want your children to see and while they're not foolproof, they're likely to keep the 5 or 6 year old child innocently playing on the Internet from stumbling on something.
Now, instead of you implementing your own solution to your own specifications--and out of your own pocket--the tax payers get to do it for you. Because... why?
but I wonder if this recent rise of very conservative religious fundamentalism in the USA and efforts to stop the presentation of things that contradict their view might not lead to the USA eventually falling beind in key sciences, and, as a consquence, losing its edge in the world of technology.
Depends on how broadly you wish to paint with that stroke. I, for example, am already worried about the US falling behind in stem cell research because of the restrictions imposed by those same religious people you mention.
Some will tell you we have enough to work with, some will say otherwise. I don't know, I don't have the answers. But I see what appears to be one of the most promising medical breakthroughs in a long time being restricted and I can't hold back a sigh. I just hope whatever slack these restrictions may cause the US--now or in the future--is being picked up by other nations around the world. It's too important.
Sounds better than "In response to some jackass trying to sue us for nothing, we have removed 2 result(s) from this page" though, don't you think?
Not only "most," but 99%! That's a hell of a statement. And apparently despite the crippling hyperbole and absolutely no hard facts to back it up, he's +5.
I remember a couple of years ago holding many /. posters' opinions in awe. They seemed so well thought-out and reasonable. Now I see the moderation system works based on group-think. I wonder if I've grown up or slashdot has really degenerated that far. Live and learn I guess, either way.
Mod offtopic as you wish.
The fact that the moderator doesn't understand C++ Doesn't make the post offtopic
Or it could be that the moderator doesn't see jabs at using a wrong word to be on the topic of the thread. I don't, although I probably wouldn't care enough to use a modpoint on it.
Who wants to buy crippled hardware when non-crippled is available?
Not many. The question is, how many people outside of Slashdot know the difference? Or would think to check even if they did?
These fine U.S. soldiers of which we speak are in fact putting their lives on the line for the current administration's own geopolitical goals, which is not the same thing as fighting for your country.
I disagree. The soldiers may or may not agree with Bush's goals, but I still believe they are fighting for their country. They're fighting to answer their country's call regardless of the reason the call was made. They're fighting for freedom and many of them no doubt beleive that being in Iraq is a part of securing American freedom--your answer to that or mine aside. They're fighting for their families and their children. They might be in Iraq because of Bush's geopolitical goals, but ask the individual soldiers what they're fighting for and I think you'll get a different picture.
That said, bending the soldiers over on calls home is indeed despicable. I really have a hard time believing that with all the awesome technology the US military has--and all the R&D funding at their disposal--that they can not come up with a good, secure, cheap communications system to let a soldier in Iraq tells his parents he's still alive.