Miguel has been fascinated with Microsoft since long before he started writing Gnome, and that fascination shows no signs of having waned. Unfortunately, while it allows him to see the good things MS has done in a clearer way than many of those in the free software world, it also tends to give him a bit of a blind spot where some of their deficiencies are concerned.
This "feature" makes it unsuitable for sites that allow users to add content.
To the contrary, this feature makes it perfect for sites which allow users to add content.
I wrote my first web site content management system about six years ago; the first couple of versions let basically any tag soup through, and it was a constant headache dealing with the ways people found to break it.
I decided to enforce the rule that all content must be XHTML 1.0 Strict (note that it doesn't have to start out that way, but must be before being committed to the database), and I can't even begin to tell you how easy life has been since. I have a robust workflow which happens at the server which makes sure everything which goes into the database is exactly what is allowed, no more, no less; no disallowed tags, no disallowed attributes or attribute values, I can (and do) even do things like enforcing the rule that all blocks of text must be contained in a block element. Try guaranteeing that with tag soup (I have... it's a herculean task), then again with XHTML; it's trivial by comparison.
I see over and over the mantra that XHTML has no advantages over HTML; all that tells me is that the person speaking truly has no idea what they're talking about. If you stay with a workflow developed for HTML 4 and expect moving to XHTML to save you from yourself, yes, you will be sorely disappointed. If, however, you accept the fundamental tenet of XHTML (it must be well-formed XML) and write (or use) your tools accordingly, you'll quickly find that its advantages are considerable.
I think that needs a bit of clarification. You're probably right, but only as it pertains to technical restrictions. IOW, just because you can copy and distribute something doesn't mean it will be (or should be) legal to do so.
Which would put us right back where we started, which, all things considered, has worked pretty well. Then perhaps some semblance of sense could be brought back to the length and breadth of copyright terms, and wonder of wonders you'd have a situation where everybody benefits and nobody really loses.
Not terribly. Several years ago, after I first got broadband, I set up my own mail server because my ISP's was constantly going down. I've run it since then with no trouble.
Several weeks ago, I started getting bounces on mail I sent to AOL addresses. Turns out AOL uses lists of IP addresses that are known to belong to ISPs but not be their mail servers and refuses connections from them.
Their attitude is that I have no business running my own mail server, that I should use my ISP's instead (gee, maybe if my ISP's didn't suck I would). So, yes, I can say that at least a few of those 1 billion are legitimate mail.
I've seen this thing about PNG being smaller than GIF, and I'd like to believe in it, but I haven't found it to be true.
What program are you using to create them? It turns out that the implementation of the compression in PNG makes a difference. I did a series of tests a while back, and PNGs created in Photoshop were about 10% larger than the equivalent GIFs, while PNGs created in Gimp were about 20% smaller (all tests done with the same starting image originating as PSD).
At one time that bug said it was targeted for 0.9.7, so I don't put too much stock in that. I'd love to see it, but I'll be more surprised if it shows up than if it doesn't.
It's a shame this has been such a PITA with them; all the pieces appear to be there, they just haven't been put together. I've set out on a number of occasions to see if I could do something myself, but when you look at the sheer amount you need to learn about Mozilla internals just to get started, I just can't justify the time. Not when I have an already working alternative which is available on the OS that the majority of my customers are running anyway.
For whatever reason the Mozilla people just don't seem to see the utility in this. Reading through the forums and bugzilla, you'll see dozens of requests for a contenteditable feature, followed by a bunch of waffling about why they can't be bothered (it's usually along the lines of "we're concentrating on end user features"). Meanwhile end users by the thousands are passing Mozilla by because it can't do this.
I wrote an in browser WYSIWYG editor which can be invoked on any block in a page. It works beautifully. It's 90% cross platform (most of the development was done in Mozilla on Linux). However, it only functions fully in IE because there isn't any good way to create a contenteditable block in Mozilla. You can hack it in (as some projects mentioned here have done, and I've done myself), but it is hackish, doesn't work reliably, and tends to break with new Moz versions. As proof of concept it's fine, but as a production feature it just ain't there.
Mozilla could make itself the browser of choice almost overnight for potentially millions of users just by making this possible. Why they won't is beyond me, but their stubbornness on the issue is costing them users every day.
This has been true for the nightlies, so I assume it's so for 1.0 as well, but you can get an installer package which contains everything in a single tarball then still pick which pieces you want just like you do with the 'net install.
Not *exactly* what you were asking for, but close enough I would think.
Reopen the bug. Include a nice little note: "This bug is still present in current builds"
Did that. Weeks ago.
You failed to include why the bug was closed, which makes me suspect they had a valid reason for closing it. And not verifying it with a build from the exact day you filed the bug is an acceptable reason.
It was a "works for me". Which means he either had a build somehow different than all the ones I tried it on, or he didn't follow the instructions I gave to trigger it. And yes, I verified it in and filed the bug report from the nightly I had just downloaded.
so it's only reasonable for you to go d/l the latest build (making sure to note it in your bug report, so they KNOW that it's a valid bug) when you comment on a bug.
I've downloaded the latest nightly, verified it's still there, and added a comment to that effect to the bug report twice since the original report. Nothing but silence on the other end. For whatever reason, they don't think it's worth fixing. Their call. I've found a workaround for it, and while it's kludgy and I shouldn't have to do it, it works. The main effects it'll have on me now is the time to put the workaround into my pages (which I can recover from the time that I won't be wasting filing bug reports) and that I'll no longer be recommending it to people who are upgrading their browsers.
Hmmm, practically the first thing it says on that page is to give feedback and bug reports. Been there, done that, didn't work. There's a layout bug in Mozilla that was introduced after 0.9.4 and has been in every release (nightly and milestone) that I've tried since then (just verified it's still in 0.9.7).
I was a good little Mozilla user and filed a detailed bug report, including instructions on how to trigger it. After several days, I got a suggestion to try a newer build and the bug was closed. Great. Way to go. I now have sites that validate perfectly at W3's validator (so bad HTML likely ain't to blame) and render perfectly in all other browsers including older versions of Mozilla, but are broken in the newest versions. I gotta hand it to you guys, I was really starting to think I could forget about all the stupid little workarounds I have to do to deal with stupid little layout bugs. So much for that.
My wife heard on the radio yesterday that in a poll 70% of those surveyed said they were willing to give up some of their freedoms to prevent something like Tuesday's attacks from happening again.
I heard that as "70% of Americans are willing to let terrorists tell us how to run our country". It's all well and good to talk about how the government is doing what's best for us, and that giving up some "minor" freedoms (clue: there is no such thing) is worth it to prevent this sort of thing; I'm sure it makes the people who say it feel better. It's also hopelessly naive.
Few, if any, of the airport restrictions put in place in the last week would have had any effect on this attack. None of them would have prevented it. There is already a movement afoot in Congress to outlaw crypto which doesn't have a back door installed for government use. Are you really so naive as to believe that backdoor won't be used improperly, or be compromised by people outside the government? And if you are that naive, you can't possibly be so naive as to believe that the people who carried out Tuesday's attacks are somehow incapable of writing (or having written) their own crypto software which contains no such back doors.
The fact is that there are people all over America who are unscrupulously using these events to further their own agendas, whether it be gas station owners hiking prices through the roof or Falwell and Robertson spouting their hatred. Some of these people are in Congress, and they will take advantage of your complacency and ignorance. It's always been true, but especially so now; be very, very careful what you ask for, because you will get it.
Several years ago, I got so fed up with Windows that I decided to try to write myself an operating system. Very, very basic, not at all fancy, but something I'd have control of, and that I could fix problems with as they came up.
About that time, on a whim I picked up a book which had a Linux CD in the back. I installed it, played around a bit, and I've never looked back.
Now you can only imagine the complete lack of functionality my home brewed OS would have had relative to Linux. But with Linux, I have all this amazing functionality, and with all the control and ability to change things I would have with a home brewed system; the only caveat is that if I do make an improvement, I should contribute it back to the community. That is a small, small price to pay for what I'm receiving.
As well, how many people have the time to write a system like Linux on their own, even if they have the knowledge? Not many. But by being willing to contribute what time they do have to a larger effort, they get a far better system than they could ever hope to have otherwise. Practically speaking, it's a no brainer.
I find that NEdit has a near magical combination of ease of use and power. Using it for web development, I've set it up to syntax highlight the appropriate scripting language/html combinations, update my cvs repository, stage the site to a staging area on my local server and load the page into Netscape to verify everything's okay, then upload it to a remote webserver. And it's all attached to a hotkey combination; I can do all this without leaving the editor. Outstanding. Yet my wife can use the exact same setup and never know it does anything more than Notepad; all this doesn't get in her way in the slightest.
How did you achieve this balance? What design decisions were made in the beginning that facilitated this, and how have changes been made during NEdit's evolution such that this balance hasn't been disturbed?
The law has determined that you need to be held responsible for the actions of any individual who works for you, which requires draconian privacy invasion in order to protect yourself.
So do it.
However, make sure your employees know why you're doing it. Tell them you have no interest in their activities, but must monitor them in order to avoid very expensive lawsuits. Then give them a list of phone numbers and addresses, and let them know if the liability can be changed, so will your policy. You'd be surprised at how many otherwise disinterested people will take an active role in politics (if only by making sure to vote or writing their congressman every so often) when you bring it home to them how these laws affect them on a day to day basis.
A good way to get them motivated would be to explain that most of these laws are created from the standpoint that employees are pretty much considered to be 'company property', and have no inherent privileges or rights; only those granted by the employer (which is why companies can be held liable for any activities which employees engage in, even sometimes outside business hours).
Do a good job of informing your workforce, and they'll think twice about voting for that yo-yo who says he's only trying to "protect the children".
Don't know about TwinVQ, but AAC (I'm assuming that's what you meant) has positively brutal licensing terms.
Let's look at the situation for mp3...
If you want to sell a program that decodes mp3's, it'll cost you 50 cents/unit shipped, with a $15,000 annual minimum royalty (if you give it away no licensing fee is necessary). Should you want to ship an encoder, free or not, it'll cost you $2.50/unit if you develop your own software, or $5.00/unit if you use Frauenhofer's, again with a $15,000 annual minimum.
So, what if you're a musician and you want to sell your music on the net in mp3 format? Hey, it'll only cost you 1% of the price you charge per mp3 (1 cent minimum), again with that pesky $15,000 annual minimum. Such a bargain.
Now, compare that with an encoder/decoder that costs you exactly $0, and makes better sounding files to boot. The musician makes an extra $15,000/year minimum just for switching formats. Diamond gets to keep another $0.50 per Rio (and this in an industry where they spend millions to whittle a few cents off the per unit price); those selling encoders get to keep an extra $2.50 - $5.00 per unit. Do you really think the Vorbis guys will have a hard time getting people to use their format?
It may take a while for the finale to come, but I think it's a good bet that mp3 is already the walking dead.
The connection is mathematics. Most people don't realize it, but music is based entirely on mathematics (Mozart was a math prodigy as well;).
My kids currently attend a school that has a mandatory music program because of studies that show kids with music education learn math more quickly and easily.
Since programming is also largely a mathematical pursuit, it should come as no surprise that the two are related. Most of the engineers I know are also musicians...
I'm really curious about what you don't like about PHP's documentation; I find it to be outstanding. I had an appointment book/calendaring application I had written in Python, and decided (as a learning experience) to redo it in PHP. Using the online documentation, I had most of the functionality duplicated in a weekend. You can't beat that with a stick.
I should also point out that while I know how to program (to an extent, anyway) I am no programmer; I don't do it for a living and never have. I have a passing familiarity with C, I know no Perl, and PHP was a dead cinch to pick up. Have you actually given it a try, or are you relying on something someone else told you? I should think anyone with even a little programming background (and since it appears you do this for a living I would hope that includes you) would find it easy.
Did I say anything about whether or not you own your comment? I said that by posting to a public forum, you have given implicit permission to have that post disseminated to the public. If anything, it presumes you do have ownership (or the implicit grant of permission wouldn't be needed).
I can't speak to the emails that were used for this book, but I think some people here need to get a clue. This is a public message board; by posting here, you have given implicit permission for your post to be disseminated. If you don't like that, rather than putting juvenile disclaimers in your.sig or complaining about being exploited, don't post.
I'm also really amazed by the attitude so many here seem to have that "if somebody is making money from something that includes my post, I want some". First off, Rob has made millions (at least on paper) from your posts; when's the last time you hit him up for some cash? As well, to see this attitude on the same site where people are constantly complaining that musicians and programmers might actually want to get paid for their work is downright offensive. Yes, I know people with all kinds of attitudes post here, but I have seen posts complaining about the possibility of being used in a 'Slashdot compilation' from the same people who say musicians should give away their recordings and make money from touring (easy to say when you don't play, I suppose).
Can we please get over the wanting something for nothing attitudes and just get on with things?
You're missing the point. They're giving it away on Linux to build market share on that platform.
Say Linux goes on to explode on the desktop the way it has on the server market. When Joe graphics artist leaves Windows behind and goes to ask his Linux using buddy what graphics program he recommends, his buddy will tell him he uses Canvas (which he got for free several months ago) and it's awesome. So Joe goes to pick up Canvas, which is now $375. Also, when Joe's buddy goes to upgrade, he will most likely stick with Canvas, the program he knows, and pick up the new version at the upgrade price. So one copy of the program given away early on can translate into several copies sold down the road (or so goes the theory).
It's actually a very common strategy, and often quite successful. Whether it will be successful on Linux where there may be several 'good enough' free competitors will be interesting to see.
I think the problem is social, not technical. How many users will learn to upgrade that new web-enabled cell phone themselves, or how many will want to spend a $25 service charge to upgrade a phone they got for free with their service?
Note that I realize we are talking about much more than cell phones; I just picked that as the most obvious (to me) example of something people wouldn't be likely to upgrade.
What, like Windows? Seen on a box of shrinkwrap software a few days ago:
System Requirements: Windows 95 OSR2 or Windows98 or WindowsNT 4.0 SP4 or higher
So much for standards. If I have an original version of Windows 95 or NT4, I'm forced to change the operating system or download a 70 MB service pack. By contrast, if I get something for Linux that has specific requirements, I can just update that specific thing and be done with it.
People need to stop thinking that something is better just because that's how Windows does (or purports to do) it. In this example, the Linux way is better.
Let me say up front that I think this whole 'computer as toaster' ease of use mantra is a crock. Computers are not toasters. They do require some thought to use. Nothing is going to change that. Trying to make 'one standard' in service of that is a mistake. Does this mean that GUI's are bad, or making computers easier to use is wrong? Not at all. But it does mean that to use a computer properly, you will always need to know something about how it works.
I would also point out that most of the people saying 'Linux needs a standardized desktop' are from companies hoping to be the ones to control that desktop; and don't make the mistake of thinking that because the standard desktop is GPL'ed, one company can't control it. All it takes is one company's version of GNOME or KDE to get substantial market share, and they can do whatever they want with it and the market will follow. The community can make whatever changes and additions they want, but if nobody uses them, what good will they be?
Having said that, I think that five years from now, the people that this mythical 'easy to use standard desktop' that everybody is trying to remake Linux for are going to be using something fitting the model of 'internet appliance'. It'll be a black box with defined functions, one way to accomplish those functions, and a user interface simple enough to use while driving (not that that will be recommended practice;).
The way to get your grandmother into computing is not to try to shoehorn the computer into a model it doesn't fit. It's to build a new kind of computer that fits that model from the beginning.
Often the next logical stage is to reverse engineer that feature to get a better understanding of it, especially if the method used is not obvious. Yes this is illegal
No it's not. The only thing that even remotely forbids this is the provision in most EULA's that prohibits it, but most companies with a reasonable legal budget will have no problem getting that shot down should the need arise.
I think the big thing here is that the software industry wants an exception to law that no other industry gets; reverse engineering is actually protected by law in this country. The software industry is still just trotting out the tired old 'software is different' mantra that keeps them out of trouble with things like the consumer protection laws, and unfortunately, people are still falling for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Miguel has been fascinated with Microsoft since long before he started writing Gnome, and that fascination shows no signs of having waned. Unfortunately, while it allows him to see the good things MS has done in a clearer way than many of those in the free software world, it also tends to give him a bit of a blind spot where some of their deficiencies are concerned.
This "feature" makes it unsuitable for sites that allow users to add content.
To the contrary, this feature makes it perfect for sites which allow users to add content.
I wrote my first web site content management system about six years ago; the first couple of versions let basically any tag soup through, and it was a constant headache dealing with the ways people found to break it.
I decided to enforce the rule that all content must be XHTML 1.0 Strict (note that it doesn't have to start out that way, but must be before being committed to the database), and I can't even begin to tell you how easy life has been since. I have a robust workflow which happens at the server which makes sure everything which goes into the database is exactly what is allowed, no more, no less; no disallowed tags, no disallowed attributes or attribute values, I can (and do) even do things like enforcing the rule that all blocks of text must be contained in a block element. Try guaranteeing that with tag soup (I have... it's a herculean task), then again with XHTML; it's trivial by comparison.
I see over and over the mantra that XHTML has no advantages over HTML; all that tells me is that the person speaking truly has no idea what they're talking about. If you stay with a workflow developed for HTML 4 and expect moving to XHTML to save you from yourself, yes, you will be sorely disappointed. If, however, you accept the fundamental tenet of XHTML (it must be well-formed XML) and write (or use) your tools accordingly, you'll quickly find that its advantages are considerable.
Which would put us right back where we started, which, all things considered, has worked pretty well. Then perhaps some semblance of sense could be brought back to the length and breadth of copyright terms, and wonder of wonders you'd have a situation where everybody benefits and nobody really loses.
Naah, never happen.
Not terribly. Several years ago, after I first got broadband, I set up my own mail server because my ISP's was constantly going down. I've run it since then with no trouble.
Several weeks ago, I started getting bounces on mail I sent to AOL addresses. Turns out AOL uses lists of IP addresses that are known to belong to ISPs but not be their mail servers and refuses connections from them.
Their attitude is that I have no business running my own mail server, that I should use my ISP's instead (gee, maybe if my ISP's didn't suck I would). So, yes, I can say that at least a few of those 1 billion are legitimate mail.
What program are you using to create them? It turns out that the implementation of the compression in PNG makes a difference. I did a series of tests a while back, and PNGs created in Photoshop were about 10% larger than the equivalent GIFs, while PNGs created in Gimp were about 20% smaller (all tests done with the same starting image originating as PSD).
At one time that bug said it was targeted for 0.9.7, so I don't put too much stock in that. I'd love to see it, but I'll be more surprised if it shows up than if it doesn't.
It's a shame this has been such a PITA with them; all the pieces appear to be there, they just haven't been put together. I've set out on a number of occasions to see if I could do something myself, but when you look at the sheer amount you need to learn about Mozilla internals just to get started, I just can't justify the time. Not when I have an already working alternative which is available on the OS that the majority of my customers are running anyway.
For whatever reason the Mozilla people just don't seem to see the utility in this. Reading through the forums and bugzilla, you'll see dozens of requests for a contenteditable feature, followed by a bunch of waffling about why they can't be bothered (it's usually along the lines of "we're concentrating on end user features"). Meanwhile end users by the thousands are passing Mozilla by because it can't do this.
I wrote an in browser WYSIWYG editor which can be invoked on any block in a page. It works beautifully. It's 90% cross platform (most of the development was done in Mozilla on Linux). However, it only functions fully in IE because there isn't any good way to create a contenteditable block in Mozilla. You can hack it in (as some projects mentioned here have done, and I've done myself), but it is hackish, doesn't work reliably, and tends to break with new Moz versions. As proof of concept it's fine, but as a production feature it just ain't there.
Mozilla could make itself the browser of choice almost overnight for potentially millions of users just by making this possible. Why they won't is beyond me, but their stubbornness on the issue is costing them users every day.
Not *exactly* what you were asking for, but close enough I would think.
Did that. Weeks ago.
You failed to include why the bug was closed, which makes me suspect they had a valid reason for closing it. And not verifying it with a build from the exact day you filed the bug is an acceptable reason.
It was a "works for me". Which means he either had a build somehow different than all the ones I tried it on, or he didn't follow the instructions I gave to trigger it. And yes, I verified it in and filed the bug report from the nightly I had just downloaded.
so it's only reasonable for you to go d/l the latest build (making sure to note it in your bug report, so they KNOW that it's a valid bug) when you comment on a bug.
I've downloaded the latest nightly, verified it's still there, and added a comment to that effect to the bug report twice since the original report. Nothing but silence on the other end. For whatever reason, they don't think it's worth fixing. Their call. I've found a workaround for it, and while it's kludgy and I shouldn't have to do it, it works. The main effects it'll have on me now is the time to put the workaround into my pages (which I can recover from the time that I won't be wasting filing bug reports) and that I'll no longer be recommending it to people who are upgrading their browsers.
Hmmm, practically the first thing it says on that page is to give feedback and bug reports. Been there, done that, didn't work. There's a layout bug in Mozilla that was introduced after 0.9.4 and has been in every release (nightly and milestone) that I've tried since then (just verified it's still in 0.9.7).
I was a good little Mozilla user and filed a detailed bug report, including instructions on how to trigger it. After several days, I got a suggestion to try a newer build and the bug was closed. Great. Way to go. I now have sites that validate perfectly at W3's validator (so bad HTML likely ain't to blame) and render perfectly in all other browsers including older versions of Mozilla, but are broken in the newest versions. I gotta hand it to you guys, I was really starting to think I could forget about all the stupid little workarounds I have to do to deal with stupid little layout bugs. So much for that.
I heard that as "70% of Americans are willing to let terrorists tell us how to run our country". It's all well and good to talk about how the government is doing what's best for us, and that giving up some "minor" freedoms (clue: there is no such thing) is worth it to prevent this sort of thing; I'm sure it makes the people who say it feel better. It's also hopelessly naive.
Few, if any, of the airport restrictions put in place in the last week would have had any effect on this attack. None of them would have prevented it. There is already a movement afoot in Congress to outlaw crypto which doesn't have a back door installed for government use. Are you really so naive as to believe that backdoor won't be used improperly, or be compromised by people outside the government? And if you are that naive, you can't possibly be so naive as to believe that the people who carried out Tuesday's attacks are somehow incapable of writing (or having written) their own crypto software which contains no such back doors.
The fact is that there are people all over America who are unscrupulously using these events to further their own agendas, whether it be gas station owners hiking prices through the roof or Falwell and Robertson spouting their hatred. Some of these people are in Congress, and they will take advantage of your complacency and ignorance. It's always been true, but especially so now; be very, very careful what you ask for, because you will get it.
Several years ago, I got so fed up with Windows that I decided to try to write myself an operating system. Very, very basic, not at all fancy, but something I'd have control of, and that I could fix problems with as they came up.
About that time, on a whim I picked up a book which had a Linux CD in the back. I installed it, played around a bit, and I've never looked back.
Now you can only imagine the complete lack of functionality my home brewed OS would have had relative to Linux. But with Linux, I have all this amazing functionality, and with all the control and ability to change things I would have with a home brewed system; the only caveat is that if I do make an improvement, I should contribute it back to the community. That is a small, small price to pay for what I'm receiving.
As well, how many people have the time to write a system like Linux on their own, even if they have the knowledge? Not many. But by being willing to contribute what time they do have to a larger effort, they get a far better system than they could ever hope to have otherwise. Practically speaking, it's a no brainer.
How did you achieve this balance? What design decisions were made in the beginning that facilitated this, and how have changes been made during NEdit's evolution such that this balance hasn't been disturbed?
The law has determined that you need to be held responsible for the actions of any individual who works for you, which requires draconian privacy invasion in order to protect yourself.
So do it.
However, make sure your employees know why you're doing it. Tell them you have no interest in their activities, but must monitor them in order to avoid very expensive lawsuits. Then give them a list of phone numbers and addresses, and let them know if the liability can be changed, so will your policy. You'd be surprised at how many otherwise disinterested people will take an active role in politics (if only by making sure to vote or writing their congressman every so often) when you bring it home to them how these laws affect them on a day to day basis.
A good way to get them motivated would be to explain that most of these laws are created from the standpoint that employees are pretty much considered to be 'company property', and have no inherent privileges or rights; only those granted by the employer (which is why companies can be held liable for any activities which employees engage in, even sometimes outside business hours).
Do a good job of informing your workforce, and they'll think twice about voting for that yo-yo who says he's only trying to "protect the children".
Let's look at the situation for mp3...
If you want to sell a program that decodes mp3's, it'll cost you 50 cents/unit shipped, with a $15,000 annual minimum royalty (if you give it away no licensing fee is necessary). Should you want to ship an encoder, free or not, it'll cost you $2.50/unit if you develop your own software, or $5.00/unit if you use Frauenhofer's, again with a $15,000 annual minimum.
So, what if you're a musician and you want to sell your music on the net in mp3 format? Hey, it'll only cost you 1% of the price you charge per mp3 (1 cent minimum), again with that pesky $15,000 annual minimum. Such a bargain.
Now, compare that with an encoder/decoder that costs you exactly $0, and makes better sounding files to boot. The musician makes an extra $15,000/year minimum just for switching formats. Diamond gets to keep another $0.50 per Rio (and this in an industry where they spend millions to whittle a few cents off the per unit price); those selling encoders get to keep an extra $2.50 - $5.00 per unit. Do you really think the Vorbis guys will have a hard time getting people to use their format?
It may take a while for the finale to come, but I think it's a good bet that mp3 is already the walking dead.
My kids currently attend a school that has a mandatory music program because of studies that show kids with music education learn math more quickly and easily.
Since programming is also largely a mathematical pursuit, it should come as no surprise that the two are related. Most of the engineers I know are also musicians...
I should also point out that while I know how to program (to an extent, anyway) I am no programmer; I don't do it for a living and never have. I have a passing familiarity with C, I know no Perl, and PHP was a dead cinch to pick up. Have you actually given it a try, or are you relying on something someone else told you? I should think anyone with even a little programming background (and since it appears you do this for a living I would hope that includes you) would find it easy.
Did I say anything about whether or not you own your comment? I said that by posting to a public forum, you have given implicit permission to have that post disseminated to the public. If anything, it presumes you do have ownership (or the implicit grant of permission wouldn't be needed).
I'm also really amazed by the attitude so many here seem to have that "if somebody is making money from something that includes my post, I want some". First off, Rob has made millions (at least on paper) from your posts; when's the last time you hit him up for some cash? As well, to see this attitude on the same site where people are constantly complaining that musicians and programmers might actually want to get paid for their work is downright offensive. Yes, I know people with all kinds of attitudes post here, but I have seen posts complaining about the possibility of being used in a 'Slashdot compilation' from the same people who say musicians should give away their recordings and make money from touring (easy to say when you don't play, I suppose).
Can we please get over the wanting something for nothing attitudes and just get on with things?
Say Linux goes on to explode on the desktop the way it has on the server market. When Joe graphics artist leaves Windows behind and goes to ask his Linux using buddy what graphics program he recommends, his buddy will tell him he uses Canvas (which he got for free several months ago) and it's awesome. So Joe goes to pick up Canvas, which is now $375. Also, when Joe's buddy goes to upgrade, he will most likely stick with Canvas, the program he knows, and pick up the new version at the upgrade price. So one copy of the program given away early on can translate into several copies sold down the road (or so goes the theory).
It's actually a very common strategy, and often quite successful. Whether it will be successful on Linux where there may be several 'good enough' free competitors will be interesting to see.
Note that I realize we are talking about much more than cell phones; I just picked that as the most obvious (to me) example of something people wouldn't be likely to upgrade.
Then it would still be someone else making decisions about my children for me; wrap it in any kind of rhetoric you want, I find that unacceptable.
System Requirements: Windows 95 OSR2 or Windows98 or WindowsNT 4.0 SP4 or higher
So much for standards. If I have an original version of Windows 95 or NT4, I'm forced to change the operating system or download a 70 MB service pack. By contrast, if I get something for Linux that has specific requirements, I can just update that specific thing and be done with it.
People need to stop thinking that something is better just because that's how Windows does (or purports to do) it. In this example, the Linux way is better.
I would also point out that most of the people saying 'Linux needs a standardized desktop' are from companies hoping to be the ones to control that desktop; and don't make the mistake of thinking that because the standard desktop is GPL'ed, one company can't control it. All it takes is one company's version of GNOME or KDE to get substantial market share, and they can do whatever they want with it and the market will follow. The community can make whatever changes and additions they want, but if nobody uses them, what good will they be?
Having said that, I think that five years from now, the people that this mythical 'easy to use standard desktop' that everybody is trying to remake Linux for are going to be using something fitting the model of 'internet appliance'. It'll be a black box with defined functions, one way to accomplish those functions, and a user interface simple enough to use while driving (not that that will be recommended practice ;).
The way to get your grandmother into computing is not to try to shoehorn the computer into a model it doesn't fit. It's to build a new kind of computer that fits that model from the beginning.
No it's not. The only thing that even remotely forbids this is the provision in most EULA's that prohibits it, but most companies with a reasonable legal budget will have no problem getting that shot down should the need arise.
I think the big thing here is that the software industry wants an exception to law that no other industry gets; reverse engineering is actually protected by law in this country. The software industry is still just trotting out the tired old 'software is different' mantra that keeps them out of trouble with things like the consumer protection laws, and unfortunately, people are still falling for it.