"the fragmentation of the Linux platform and the hurdles presented by..."alpha-quality" drivers for audio and video hardware made success elusive for the [Linux] Flash development team."
Okay, fair enough. But how does Adobe/Macromedia then explain the failure to deliver a decent plug-in on the two other major platforms, Mac OS X and Windows?
I'm guessing from that comment you're fairly young because the truth is there's a lot people do after 45. Many people (including CEOs, judges and surgeons) reach the peak of their career after 45. If you had kids at 28, they still wouldn't be adults by the time you turn 45.
In fairness, the fact that someone can crack a "your mum" joke in this discussion scares me a lot less than some of the other posts here that suggest "your life = your salary."
The truth is your life is worth more than your salary. For starters, even if you only wanted to focus on money, it's not just your salary that matters but your potential future salary. However this thinking is still severely flawed, humans do a lot of activities that aren't costed. They care for people, fall in love, contribute to the cultural and political life of society, write open source software, complete volunteer work and provide social engagement for others.
We should never underestimate the value of surviving, surviving is what humans do, everything else (including sex) is just a footnote.
It will take a while to understand and you'll probably need to read the instructions. But if you can imagine a more user-friendly version of this Wiki you'll begin to see why the Semantic Web is such a powerful idea. Yes, big corporations can really help launch a technology but they are not the be all and end all. Small businesses have played a big role in the emergence of new technologies. Remember those really small companies like Google, MySpace and Netscape?
My gut tells me the semantic web will take off. It won't be a utopia and won't fulfil all the promises, but like so many technologies, it will make things a little better than before.
Those people who cannot afford all the software "they would like" should use and contribute to open source software. By resorting piracy, they are ensuring cheaper or free alternatives don't get made (because in a world with rampant piracy such software won't get used). Software is not essential for living, stealing it is immoral regardless of your financial situation.
Your life shouldn't have to be important and your work shouldn't have to be productive to anyone else but *you*. I've been through a rough period recently (it's almost over if not over completely) and, as I get back to normal, I realize there's a joy in everyday life independent of whether anyone feels I am being productive. I think people need to treat life as a personal gift and make the most out of it for themselves while making sure to not do harm against anyone else. What you are writing seems to suggest that you think people are depressed because they aren't productive by other people's standards. The problem is, apart from being a stupid reason to be depressed, this claim doesn't really seem to be substantiated by any of the research on clinical depression. If you studied science or a related discipline in college maybe you ought to use the scientific skepticism that you should have learnt to evaluate your own opinions on clinical depression.
What's more important, a single unremarkable life or a highly influential piece of software? Lives aren't so valuable that they are automatically more valuable than everything else. You wouldn't say that a single life was more valuable than the U.S.S. Eisenhower (which costs billions of dollars).
Umm...I would say that a single life of a citizen (not guilty of a crime) is more valuable than the U.S.S. Eisenhower. We can rebuild the Eisenhower if it is lost, we can never replace a life. That said, lives and money shouldn't be a trade-off, money should enhance the lives of those around us. There was a comment above that the humorous comments were far less disturbing than some of the serious ones and I think your post illustrates that. It feels like you are missing a lot empathy.
I'm sorry but I don't believe you know what your talking about. This move is about returning to consumers their right to transcode music they own in spite of DRM protection. A right consumers had in the United States until the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. It has nothing to do with telling artists how much (or how little) they can sell their music for or with making piracy legal.
The right to transcode protected content allows users to make use of digital content in new and exciting ways that content producers may not have thought of. If users weren't allowed to transcode copyrighted content, the MP3 player would probably have never gained popularity. How would that benefit the market?
The right to transcode opens doors for engineers too. Firstly, in terms of allowing them to make and sell new devices without getting into bed with content producers (which often requires deep pockets). In this way, it actually lowers the barriers to market and promotes market diversity. And secondly, in terms of allowing them to conduct research on transcoded material. By opposing this move you are effectively constraining innovation in media delivery to a cartel of electronics companies that are big enough to work with content providers.
In the end, this move is about supporting market diversity and it is about deregulation not regulation. If you understood what the term market socialism means, you would understand that the system involves massive government regulation. Hence deregulation is actually a move away from market socialism not towards it.
I enjoy using GNOME and believe its philosophy trumps that of KDE. Most people would rather have a clean house to a cluttered one so why wouldn't people prefer a less cluttered interface? In the end, whether you notice it or not cluttered interfaces take longer to learn and generally soak up the productivity of most users - this is because of Fitt's law. People in this commentary have accused GNOME of merely following Apple's lead but I believe GNOME has proven that it is prepared to deviate from the mainstream and make the tough decisions when it needs to (e.g. the spatial navagation tool nautilus). Needless to say, I think Linus has it wrong on this one.
Just a bit of (attempted) humour for you all, no offence intended.:-)
Mr. Petersen, there's some concern about your doctoral thesis, "Cloning Cats".
What's that Professor?
Well, some of your peers are suggesting that you didn't actually clone the cat.
On what grounds?
Well, for starters, the suspicion started since the cats don't look anything like each other.
Oh.
Then, there was concern over the fact that your cloned cat looks exactly like Mr. Muddles owned by Mrs. Tileman four blocks down from you.
But look at the DNA print-outs they're identical.
Yes, well some are suggesting you simply printed the same chart twice...if we could just run the tests ourselves...
I told you the cat was run over.
Look I'm afraid no respectable journal will print your work with these results nor any news site worth its salt for that matter.
Soon after this conversation CNN did a full report on the findings, today Mr. Petersen is a multi-millionaire who sells a variety of bathroom products he claims to have mystical powers, he credits his wealth to CNN who did at least seven reports on the products.
To follow links in this message you will need to copy and then paste them in the HTML bar since Bugzilla won't let/.ers through directly.
Usually I'm delighted to hear when Mozilla releases a new browser as, up until recently, Mozilla was my browser of choice. But when I heard about the Mozilla 1.2 release I was just disappointed.
The Mozilla team had been alerted to major bugs which only recently appeared in the browser like this one and some of these (the latter link also has the comment in which a few poeple suggest Mozilla 1.2 should be unreleased) and yet still the team proceeded with this release. I'm not pretending that it's everyone's experience, but certainly as far as my own experience, Mozilla 1.2 is the first Mozilla browser to step further backwards than forwards - and I know I'm not the only one who thinks that. IMHO, it's a shame that such a great browser which was really beginning to show its potential had to make such a disappointing release. And for all that, I have to wonder what were the critical changes that led to all the aforementioned bugs (the implementation of type ahead searching!?!).
It's too late for me, I've stopped using Mozilla on my Mac (still using the Gecko-based Chimera though) and have halted upgrades of it on my PC, so I guess all there is to say is better luck next time and hopefully we'll be fortunate enough to never see a release as bad as this one ever again.
If you don't mind shameless self-promotion, I ported a version of Sokoban to Mac OS X which is now available here (no development tools required to play). It is of course free in both price and nature. It still needs a good icon though, e-mail me if you have one (my e-mail address is provided at the download page or inside the game package).
No, it's a development version and has a number of bugs. Crashing after 15-30 minutes is my experience too. The latest version (OS X binaries not available) crashes less, but still crashes. Hopefully we can get it working better in the future, but that will take time and work.
Firstly, this release was very much a development release. It was not really intended to be played, just to demonstrate the status of FreeCraft's support for Mac OS X. If you do play it, you will probably quickly discover some bugs. However with a bit of luck, we'll have a much improved version out soon.
If you're to interested in helping to develop this version please visit the FreeCraft home page. Also a Mac OS X icon for FreeCraft would be very much appreciated, e-mail me (quirinus AT mac DOT com) if you have one to offer or can design one. General questions on helping out are also welcome to that address too.
Next, as was pointed out, Mac.com homepages really aren't really suitable for wide-scale distribution (this version was actually intended to be an insiders-only release). So I'd suggest trying to download FreeCraft from here instead. It is quite a hefty download though (around 8 MB).
I'm quite frankly surprised how many people are coming out with some sort of support for Internet Explorer for Mac OS X. For me Mozilla offers the far better browsing experience, mainly because it's far less prone to crashes, more responsive and doesn't have that annoying bug where content sometimes fails to display on web pages which seem to load perfectly normal (yet the content displays fine if you force the window to be updated somehow). Text boxes also frequently update wrong as well. I find it hard to believe that no-one else is experiencing these major bugs in Internet Explorer. And if they are, I can't comprehend how anyone can live with such bugs. Mozilla is also open source so I am refreshed that if anything pissed me off too much about it I could just change it myself. The same can't be said about Internet Explorer.
I think it's great to see someone willing to stand-up and support market place diversity. If you saw someone shoot themselves in the street you'd probably think they were pretty foolish in giving up their right to live. Yet as consumers we're actively pursuing an assault on our right to product choice everyday. Not only do we have people excusing their support of inferior products (M$ Windows) or services with weak excuses such as, "they're more compatible." But then we have dim-witted individuals like Traxton actually criticising those who try to support diversity and competition in the market place. Yeh I use M$ products (Office X and IE 5.1) - I weighed up the competition and they were the best for me, but that doesn't mean I'd berate those who don't use M$ stuff, in fact I praise them for allowing the survival of a competitive market place. I don't want to live in a world where McDonald's, Microsoft and Nike ruthlessly dominate. That's why I limit my support of all of those companies. Remember "absolute power corrupts absolutely." As for the "pretty rare" comment, my Uni has a pretty good split of Linux, Macs and Windows machines and I don't use Windows (why would I want to use an inferior OS that makes computing a torturous experience?). Finally, don't underestimate the virtues of having a broad-based understanding, let's face it Microsoft's doing pretty well at the moment, so well I reckon it'd be far easier to fall from that position than climb.
Slashdot Mirror
"the fragmentation of the Linux platform and the hurdles presented by..."alpha-quality" drivers for audio and video hardware made success elusive for the [Linux] Flash development team."
Okay, fair enough. But how does Adobe/Macromedia then explain the failure to deliver a decent plug-in on the two other major platforms, Mac OS X and Windows?
I'm guessing from that comment you're fairly young because the truth is there's a lot people do after 45. Many people (including CEOs, judges and surgeons) reach the peak of their career after 45. If you had kids at 28, they still wouldn't be adults by the time you turn 45.
In fairness, the fact that someone can crack a "your mum" joke in this discussion scares me a lot less than some of the other posts here that suggest "your life = your salary."
The truth is your life is worth more than your salary. For starters, even if you only wanted to focus on money, it's not just your salary that matters but your potential future salary. However this thinking is still severely flawed, humans do a lot of activities that aren't costed. They care for people, fall in love, contribute to the cultural and political life of society, write open source software, complete volunteer work and provide social engagement for others.
We should never underestimate the value of surviving, surviving is what humans do, everything else (including sex) is just a footnote.
Will a GNU/Hurd version be released soon?
I challenge everyone to take a look at:
http://wiki.ontoworld.org/
It will take a while to understand and you'll probably need to read the instructions. But if you can imagine a more user-friendly version of this Wiki you'll begin to see why the Semantic Web is such a powerful idea. Yes, big corporations can really help launch a technology but they are not the be all and end all. Small businesses have played a big role in the emergence of new technologies. Remember those really small companies like Google, MySpace and Netscape?
My gut tells me the semantic web will take off. It won't be a utopia and won't fulfil all the promises, but like so many technologies, it will make things a little better than before.
Cedars.
Those people who cannot afford all the software "they would like" should use and contribute to open source software. By resorting piracy, they are ensuring cheaper or free alternatives don't get made (because in a world with rampant piracy such software won't get used). Software is not essential for living, stealing it is immoral regardless of your financial situation.
Surely the lab's directors should have seen this coming?
What is this library you speak of?
Perhaps you mean http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060 731fa_fact.
Your life shouldn't have to be important and your work shouldn't have to be productive to anyone else but *you*. I've been through a rough period recently (it's almost over if not over completely) and, as I get back to normal, I realize there's a joy in everyday life independent of whether anyone feels I am being productive. I think people need to treat life as a personal gift and make the most out of it for themselves while making sure to not do harm against anyone else. What you are writing seems to suggest that you think people are depressed because they aren't productive by other people's standards. The problem is, apart from being a stupid reason to be depressed, this claim doesn't really seem to be substantiated by any of the research on clinical depression. If you studied science or a related discipline in college maybe you ought to use the scientific skepticism that you should have learnt to evaluate your own opinions on clinical depression.
Cedars.
Cedars.
I'm sorry but I don't believe you know what your talking about. This move is about returning to consumers their right to transcode music they own in spite of DRM protection. A right consumers had in the United States until the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. It has nothing to do with telling artists how much (or how little) they can sell their music for or with making piracy legal.
The right to transcode protected content allows users to make use of digital content in new and exciting ways that content producers may not have thought of. If users weren't allowed to transcode copyrighted content, the MP3 player would probably have never gained popularity. How would that benefit the market?
The right to transcode opens doors for engineers too. Firstly, in terms of allowing them to make and sell new devices without getting into bed with content producers (which often requires deep pockets). In this way, it actually lowers the barriers to market and promotes market diversity. And secondly, in terms of allowing them to conduct research on transcoded material. By opposing this move you are effectively constraining innovation in media delivery to a cartel of electronics companies that are big enough to work with content providers.
In the end, this move is about supporting market diversity and it is about deregulation not regulation. If you understood what the term market socialism means, you would understand that the system involves massive government regulation. Hence deregulation is actually a move away from market socialism not towards it.
Cedars.
I enjoy using GNOME and believe its philosophy trumps that of KDE. Most people would rather have a clean house to a cluttered one so why wouldn't people prefer a less cluttered interface? In the end, whether you notice it or not cluttered interfaces take longer to learn and generally soak up the productivity of most users - this is because of Fitt's law. People in this commentary have accused GNOME of merely following Apple's lead but I believe GNOME has proven that it is prepared to deviate from the mainstream and make the tough decisions when it needs to (e.g. the spatial navagation tool nautilus). Needless to say, I think Linus has it wrong on this one.
Just a bit of (attempted) humour for you all, no offence intended. :-)
Mr. Petersen, there's some concern about your doctoral thesis, "Cloning Cats".
What's that Professor?
Well, some of your peers are suggesting that you didn't actually clone the cat.
On what grounds?
Well, for starters, the suspicion started since the cats don't look anything like each other.
Oh.
Then, there was concern over the fact that your cloned cat looks exactly like Mr. Muddles owned by Mrs. Tileman four blocks down from you.
But look at the DNA print-outs they're identical.
Yes, well some are suggesting you simply printed the same chart twice...if we could just run the tests ourselves...
I told you the cat was run over.
Look I'm afraid no respectable journal will print your work with these results nor any news site worth its salt for that matter.
Soon after this conversation CNN did a full report on the findings, today Mr. Petersen is a multi-millionaire who sells a variety of bathroom products he claims to have mystical powers, he credits his wealth to CNN who did at least seven reports on the products.
To follow links in this message you will need to copy and then paste them in the HTML bar since Bugzilla won't let /.ers through directly.
Usually I'm delighted to hear when Mozilla releases a new browser as, up until recently, Mozilla was my browser of choice. But when I heard about the Mozilla 1.2 release I was just disappointed.
The Mozilla team had been alerted to major bugs which only recently appeared in the browser like this one and some of these (the latter link also has the comment in which a few poeple suggest Mozilla 1.2 should be unreleased) and yet still the team proceeded with this release. I'm not pretending that it's everyone's experience, but certainly as far as my own experience, Mozilla 1.2 is the first Mozilla browser to step further backwards than forwards - and I know I'm not the only one who thinks that. IMHO, it's a shame that such a great browser which was really beginning to show its potential had to make such a disappointing release. And for all that, I have to wonder what were the critical changes that led to all the aforementioned bugs (the implementation of type ahead searching!?!).
It's too late for me, I've stopped using Mozilla on my Mac (still using the Gecko-based Chimera though) and have halted upgrades of it on my PC, so I guess all there is to say is better luck next time and hopefully we'll be fortunate enough to never see a release as bad as this one ever again.
If you don't mind shameless self-promotion, I ported a version of Sokoban to Mac OS X which is now available here (no development tools required to play). It is of course free in both price and nature. It still needs a good icon though, e-mail me if you have one (my e-mail address is provided at the download page or inside the game package).
No, it's a development version and has a number of bugs. Crashing after 15-30 minutes is my experience too. The latest version (OS X binaries not available) crashes less, but still crashes. Hopefully we can get it working better in the future, but that will take time and work.
I (Mark Pazolli) just wanted to add a few things.
Firstly, this release was very much a development release. It was not really intended to be played, just to demonstrate the status of FreeCraft's support for Mac OS X. If you do play it, you will probably quickly discover some bugs. However with a bit of luck, we'll have a much improved version out soon.
If you're to interested in helping to develop this version please visit the FreeCraft home page. Also a Mac OS X icon for FreeCraft would be very much appreciated, e-mail me (quirinus AT mac DOT com) if you have one to offer or can design one. General questions on helping out are also welcome to that address too.
Next, as was pointed out, Mac.com homepages really aren't really suitable for wide-scale distribution (this version was actually intended to be an insiders-only release). So I'd suggest trying to download FreeCraft from here instead. It is quite a hefty download though (around 8 MB).
Cheers. :-)
I'm quite frankly surprised how many people are coming out with some sort of support for Internet Explorer for Mac OS X. For me Mozilla offers the far better browsing experience, mainly because it's far less prone to crashes, more responsive and doesn't have that annoying bug where content sometimes fails to display on web pages which seem to load perfectly normal (yet the content displays fine if you force the window to be updated somehow). Text boxes also frequently update wrong as well. I find it hard to believe that no-one else is experiencing these major bugs in Internet Explorer. And if they are, I can't comprehend how anyone can live with such bugs. Mozilla is also open source so I am refreshed that if anything pissed me off too much about it I could just change it myself. The same can't be said about Internet Explorer.
I think it's great to see someone willing to stand-up and support market place diversity. If you saw someone shoot themselves in the street you'd probably think they were pretty foolish in giving up their right to live. Yet as consumers we're actively pursuing an assault on our right to product choice everyday. Not only do we have people excusing their support of inferior products (M$ Windows) or services with weak excuses such as, "they're more compatible." But then we have dim-witted individuals like Traxton actually criticising those who try to support diversity and competition in the market place. Yeh I use M$ products (Office X and IE 5.1) - I weighed up the competition and they were the best for me, but that doesn't mean I'd berate those who don't use M$ stuff, in fact I praise them for allowing the survival of a competitive market place. I don't want to live in a world where McDonald's, Microsoft and Nike ruthlessly dominate. That's why I limit my support of all of those companies. Remember "absolute power corrupts absolutely." As for the "pretty rare" comment, my Uni has a pretty good split of Linux, Macs and Windows machines and I don't use Windows (why would I want to use an inferior OS that makes computing a torturous experience?). Finally, don't underestimate the virtues of having a broad-based understanding, let's face it Microsoft's doing pretty well at the moment, so well I reckon it'd be far easier to fall from that position than climb.