Since you have posted at least one comment on Slashdot, it's probably safe to assume that you use the Internet.
Have you considered the possibilities that your (presumably) Windows desktop PC has (possibly) used a Sun Solaris DNS server to connect to (possibly) an Apache web server running on a BSD server on more than one occasion. But of course, you're not bothered about that because it's all happened pretty much transparently and without you needing to give it a second thought.
Hey, guess what... it's the good old TCP/IP ***OPEN STANDARDS*** that allowed all of this to work nicely for you - lots of different hardware on different operating systems, all working nicely together to deliver the ***experience*** you desire!
Please bear this in mind before you start turning every disagreement with your opinion into a "Linux/FOSS vs Windows" war - it has ***ABSOLUTELY NOTHING*** to do with which OS you run but having open standards that allow each and every one of us to choose whatever OS we want to use.
1. A "musician" is someone who takes the time and trouble to learn how to play an instrument (or indeed to sing) and then spends a considerable amount of effort writing new and original songs that the musician, possibly with other muscians, may then well present to an audience. An "entrepreneur" is some chap up on a stage behind two record decks who has come to the realisation that 2000 kids who are out of their heads on "e" will pay good money to jiggle around to any old rubbish being played over speakers providing there are enough flashing lights.
2. Any chap who can't even think of looking in the mirror to check his that his baseball cap is on the right way round before he leaves the house probably won't have much useful to say about anything.
3. Please consider wearing correctly tailored trousers if you are in the music scene. If you've got on a pair of jeans where the crutch is round by your knees, you probably won't be very good at running to catch the bloke who's just made off with your Nelly Furtado record collection.
4. Any good DJ knows that you finish off the evening with two slow smoochy songs by The Commodores followed by Jeff Beck's "Hi Ho Silver Lining" - so that all the drunk blokes without women can all get in a circle and kick their legs in the air.
5. I am amazed that all those clumsy DJs who keep knocking and scratching the LPs on their record decks have noe bothered to invest in a technology and format known as "Compact Disc". This allows the disc to be inserted into a playing device which can then be installed on a shelf or cabinet where it is unlikely to be knocked, meaning that the listening pleasure of the audience is not damaged by jumpy records.
6. Can somebody please find out who the names of those big black chaps who keep muttering away to themselves and waving their fingers at me over old classic records that have been jiggled about a bit? The last person who did this is my family was my grandmother and we put the poor old dear in a home.
Imagine I go down to my letterbox one morning to find two items of post - one is in a small plain envelope with a window and my name and address typed in a simple black font, the other is a larger, brightly coloured envelope with my name emblazoned on it in a huge colourful font.
Without even opening it, the first letter makes me think "bill", "credit card statement" or "tax refund" - therefore I'd better open it, read it and file it.
The second one, without even opening it, makes me think "junk mail" and invariably goes straight in the rubbish bin without me even opening it.
This conclusively shows why HTML is bad and a waste of time.
Shatner has actually (ghost) written a total of 9 books (so far) about the life and exploits of Captain Kirk after he was resurrected by Borg technology after his death in Generations.
When all said and done, I'm far too old to be geeky about Star Trek accuracy now anyhow and they're not a bad light-hearted read - just about every character and villain appears across the books - Janeway, Picard, Worf, Data, "Mirror Universe" Kirk, etc. etc.
On one hand we are being told that high definition video on home plasma LCD screens is what the consumer wants (whether it's HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or some other format) - but on the other hand, we're being told that the consumer wants content delivery via the Internet for movies.
But looking at it another way, if you can get an ADSL connection, then you probably have somewhere between 2-8 MB/s bandwidth at the moment. (Sure, some people can get more than this from cable providers but they're still in a minority.) This means that it probably takes around an hour to download a movie in, say, DivX or Xvid format. In other words, you probably get 720x480 resolution in a file about 1GB size. (Yes, the sums are a very rough estimate.) A DVD will take 4-8 hours, a 30GB HD-DVD over a day. It's therefore safe to assume that, as things stand currently, Internet delivery will be in a compressed format, albeit a DRMed one. Therefore, is the assumption being made by the movie studios that everyone will be buying everything at least *twice*? That is, on disc for the big LCD at home and also downloaded for a PC or handheld player?
Sure, most of us replaced our vinyl LPs with CDs and our VHS tapes with DVDs - so, yes, we've already bought a lot of the stuff we have at least twice. But getting people to part with their money twice for the same thing at the same time is surely something completely new.
The point I'm trying to make is that it seems this is as much a battle between disk formats and Internet delivery (in the same way as CDs and MP3/AAC/etc are) as much as it is about Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD.
I'm actually beginning to wonder if the movie/media/hardware/OS companies are now involved in so many different battles on so many different fronts that they have all completely lost any sort of direction anyway.
Would you allow your pregnant daughter to go through this procedure of donating amniotic fluid?
To the anti-stem cell people:
Would you allow your daughter, who suffers from a debilitating, ultimately fatal disease, to undergo curative treatment derived from stem cell research?
Sorry, people, but I'm in the 99.9% of people who DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH KNOWLEDGE ON THIS SUBJECT to be able to make an informed judgment yet on what is right and what is wrong here who is also prepared to ADMIT IT.
Well I'm afraid then that you are no less "evil" than Microsoft in my view - your continued activities (and the activities of others like you) will give Microsoft, the RIAA, the record companies & music companies all the justification they need to impinge on the rights of everyone (not just dishonest people like you but honest people like me also).
You see, most of the applications out there that most people use only run on Windows.
I'm afraid you've just contradicted your own argument - you used the word "most".
No-one's denying that he's in the minority of Dell users but the fact is that he wanted a Dell machine but not with Windows - end of story.
Why is this any different to you going to a car showroom and wanting the car in a specific colour with a specific set of extras. Didn't Henry Ford make only black Model-T Fords until people started to ask for different colours?
Isn't it the role of any corporation in this capitalist society of ours to offer what the consumer wants the way that the customer wants it?
And why are all the Windows people getting so heated about this? He's not asking Dell to support Linux so it's not as though Windows users will need to pay higher prices from Dell.
My point is that what he's doing is annoying and ineffective
It's probably annoying for Dell because they've been made to realise that they're not currently delivering what *ALL* of their potential customers want, just *MOST* of them. But then that can only be good for the consumer in the long run? So what's the problem?
And "ineffective"? He got a refund a made a very clear statement to Dell. I see that as successful direct positive action.
Erm, but in whatever advert he read before he bought the laptop, wouldn't if have been described as a "PC", not a "Windows-only computer"? Since (historically), PCs have run MSDOS, DrDOS, Windows, Linux, *BSD, OS2, even SCO UNIX, it would be a reasonable expectation to be able to run another OS on that laptop? Especially if he's not expecting Dell to support the OS he installs.
Please do not show your ignorance by equating "wanting to run an alternative OS" with a "hatred of Microsoft". I myself have one XP machine amongst a gaggle of Linux ones purely because about 20% of my computer time, I need MS Office or want to play a few games.
I don't hate Microsoft, I just recognise that I need MS stuff less than I need Linux stuff - end of story.
In a similar fashion, I love Indian food but I don't eat it every day of the week.
If Microsoft can create the WGA model that goes a long way to recognising valid and invalid Windows serial numbers, then surely it would be a simple task to generate a similar unique (to the PC) "EULA Rejection Code" - reject the EULA, the PC spits out a number, the PC vendor phones this through to Microsoft and they get a refund.
In that way, all you people who like Windows (and who am I to argue) are happy and so are the minority of us who prefer not to.
if not then I'll keep running the one I've downloaded.
I cannot believe that you say this like you're actually *PROUD* of it.
How about demonstrating *REAL* strength of conviction and character by running a *FREE LEGAL ALTERNATIVE* rather than an illegal Windowss Vista copy? Surely that would send a much stronger message to Microsoft about their pricing and give them less of a justification for punishing legal users with the likes of DRM because of your activities.
So, let's see. I can take several hours of my life out to talk through this on the phone (let's be optimistic and say three) all to make $52.50, or I could just stay at the office with those three hours and make more than that.
when you meant to say
So, let's see. I can take several hours of my life out to talk through this on the phone (let's be optimistic and say three) all to make $52.50, or I could just stay at the office and not bother to take any direct positive action myself, instead preferring someone else to fight all of my battles for me.?
The role of teachers and schools is to educate kids and reinforce the knowledge of right and wrong that should be being taught by the parents in the first place.
I do a lot of work fixing PCs for friends and family, especially when the PCs have been trashed by the kids accidentally downloading viruses from the Internet - yes, if they're paying for my services (not always) then they're probably from fairly well-off respectable families anyway; but the fact is I'm amazed how much the kids pick up and learn if you take time to explain how to update virus checkers and where not to go/what not to do on the Internet.
Would be interesting to know if you can get a refund form Apple for OSX if you plan to install some other OS on it.
Well, you learn something *EVERY* day on Slashdot! And there was me thinking OSX was just a pretty matching screensaver for an over-sized designer coffee table...
If you spend your time playing World Of Warcraft, your probably far too overweight, pallid and weak to get up from your computer chair and go down to the computer store for a refund anyway...
...who are going to have to unvelcro themselves from their armchairs in front of their HDTVs and actually go and spend some time educating and spending time with their kids in order to show them how to behave responsibly - both online and offline.
Parents need to start financing their own kids rather than expecting the rest of us to pay for them - via taxes for the salaries of politicians to make this unnecessary rubbish up.
Love Microsoft or not, Group Polices rock. They are very flexible, and can tweak very detailed settings right out of the box. You can even make custom ADM templates if you are so inclined.
For around 30 years UNIX has had a simple security model of "you", "your friends" and "everyone else in the world". Apply that simple model with diligent use of userIDs and groupIDs, add a sprinkling of NIS(+) or even LDAP, throw in some use of "sudo" and you can control just about anything you need to.
Yep, it took me a while to get used to it but compared to the complete and utter confusing mess Microsoft have made of users and policies, it's still a doddle...
...if you don't just sit there whinging about it and get off your backside and do something about it.
I won't admit to having a great enthusiasm for Windows and commercial software but I'm pretty happy with XP and MS Office for acting as a gaming & general surfing platform that I can knock out a few work-compatible documents on. However, because I've taken the time to learn about Linux and OSS, I don't have a 100% dependance on either.
These days, I use as many console-based apps as I do GUI ones, and I can build Linux machines which are appropriate to what I need to do with them - anything from GUI-less servers, through "quick and fast" machines with a "light" GUI like Fluxbox, to proper desktop machines with fully-fledged Gnome or KDE desktop environments on them. And if I want a piece of FOSS software to do something I need to, then I go look for it on the Internet.
No, FOSS isn't better than commercial software for everyone - but the fact is that by keeping a fairly open mind about both, I can usually complete most tasks I need to by finding a piece of software to complete that task.
It's more a case that "people suck" - at least those who can't be bothered to take on some degree of personal responsibility and go do a little searching and learning.
There are a large number of people out here, albeit a minority, that do want to just run, say, Linux, on the PCs that they buy. And the fact is that the more time you spend researching and selecting hardware carefully, especially in the case of laptops, means that the easier job you'll have getting Linux to recognise of all of it.
I've never put Linux on a Dell laptop so I don't know how Linux-friendly they are - but I have recently done so an IBM one (which was easy), on a HP one (which was a bit trickier) and finally on a Gateway one (which I never got 100% working).
No, the $52 is not an important sum of money but if a number of people do it, then it sends a clear message to Dell to offer OS-free laptops. If other people run XP and are happy with it then good luck to them and I hope it does what they want it to do - but there is no "one size fits all" in computing and please have some respect for those of us who aren't interested in getting involved in an OS "war" but do want the freedom to run the software that they want to.
There's only *ONE* thing that's guaranteed...
on
Bill Gates on Robots
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
...when there's a robot in every home, pornography will somehow be involved.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you considered the possibilities that your (presumably) Windows desktop PC has (possibly) used a Sun Solaris DNS server to connect to (possibly) an Apache web server running on a BSD server on more than one occasion. But of course, you're not bothered about that because it's all happened pretty much transparently and without you needing to give it a second thought.
Hey, guess what... it's the good old TCP/IP ***OPEN STANDARDS*** that allowed all of this to work nicely for you - lots of different hardware on different operating systems, all working nicely together to deliver the ***experience*** you desire!
Please bear this in mind before you start turning every disagreement with your opinion into a "Linux/FOSS vs Windows" war - it has ***ABSOLUTELY NOTHING*** to do with which OS you run but having open standards that allow each and every one of us to choose whatever OS we want to use.
That really isn't very "bunny", you know.
1. A "musician" is someone who takes the time and trouble to learn how to play an instrument (or indeed to sing) and then spends a considerable amount of effort writing new and original songs that the musician, possibly with other muscians, may then well present to an audience. An "entrepreneur" is some chap up on a stage behind two record decks who has come to the realisation that 2000 kids who are out of their heads on "e" will pay good money to jiggle around to any old rubbish being played over speakers providing there are enough flashing lights.
2. Any chap who can't even think of looking in the mirror to check his that his baseball cap is on the right way round before he leaves the house probably won't have much useful to say about anything.
3. Please consider wearing correctly tailored trousers if you are in the music scene. If you've got on a pair of jeans where the crutch is round by your knees, you probably won't be very good at running to catch the bloke who's just made off with your Nelly Furtado record collection.
4. Any good DJ knows that you finish off the evening with two slow smoochy songs by The Commodores followed by Jeff Beck's "Hi Ho Silver Lining" - so that all the drunk blokes without women can all get in a circle and kick their legs in the air.
5. I am amazed that all those clumsy DJs who keep knocking and scratching the LPs on their record decks have noe bothered to invest in a technology and format known as "Compact Disc". This allows the disc to be inserted into a playing device which can then be installed on a shelf or cabinet where it is unlikely to be knocked, meaning that the listening pleasure of the audience is not damaged by jumpy records.
6. Can somebody please find out who the names of those big black chaps who keep muttering away to themselves and waving their fingers at me over old classic records that have been jiggled about a bit? The last person who did this is my family was my grandmother and we put the poor old dear in a home.
Without even opening it, the first letter makes me think "bill", "credit card statement" or "tax refund" - therefore I'd better open it, read it and file it.
The second one, without even opening it, makes me think "junk mail" and invariably goes straight in the rubbish bin without me even opening it.
This conclusively shows why HTML is bad and a waste of time.
When all said and done, I'm far too old to be geeky about Star Trek accuracy now anyhow and they're not a bad light-hearted read - just about every character and villain appears across the books - Janeway, Picard, Worf, Data, "Mirror Universe" Kirk, etc. etc.
But looking at it another way, if you can get an ADSL connection, then you probably have somewhere between 2-8 MB/s bandwidth at the moment. (Sure, some people can get more than this from cable providers but they're still in a minority.) This means that it probably takes around an hour to download a movie in, say, DivX or Xvid format. In other words, you probably get 720x480 resolution in a file about 1GB size. (Yes, the sums are a very rough estimate.) A DVD will take 4-8 hours, a 30GB HD-DVD over a day. It's therefore safe to assume that, as things stand currently, Internet delivery will be in a compressed format, albeit a DRMed one. Therefore, is the assumption being made by the movie studios that everyone will be buying everything at least *twice*? That is, on disc for the big LCD at home and also downloaded for a PC or handheld player?
Sure, most of us replaced our vinyl LPs with CDs and our VHS tapes with DVDs - so, yes, we've already bought a lot of the stuff we have at least twice. But getting people to part with their money twice for the same thing at the same time is surely something completely new.
The point I'm trying to make is that it seems this is as much a battle between disk formats and Internet delivery (in the same way as CDs and MP3/AAC/etc are) as much as it is about Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD.
I'm actually beginning to wonder if the movie/media/hardware/OS companies are now involved in so many different battles on so many different fronts that they have all completely lost any sort of direction anyway.
I just wonder if anyone has had the time to create a Gentoo Linux source ebuild of it.
Would you allow your pregnant daughter to go through this procedure of donating amniotic fluid?
To the anti-stem cell people:
Would you allow your daughter, who suffers from a debilitating, ultimately fatal disease, to undergo curative treatment derived from stem cell research?
Sorry, people, but I'm in the 99.9% of people who DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH KNOWLEDGE ON THIS SUBJECT to be able to make an informed judgment yet on what is right and what is wrong here who is also prepared to ADMIT IT.
Nothing to see here...
Well I'm afraid then that you are no less "evil" than Microsoft in my view - your continued activities (and the activities of others like you) will give Microsoft, the RIAA, the record companies & music companies all the justification they need to impinge on the rights of everyone (not just dishonest people like you but honest people like me also).
I hate to say this but with Vista you probably won't be getting a paid for OS in a year that works correctly in a production environment...
I'm afraid you've just contradicted your own argument - you used the word "most".
No-one's denying that he's in the minority of Dell users but the fact is that he wanted a Dell machine but not with Windows - end of story.
Why is this any different to you going to a car showroom and wanting the car in a specific colour with a specific set of extras. Didn't Henry Ford make only black Model-T Fords until people started to ask for different colours?
Isn't it the role of any corporation in this capitalist society of ours to offer what the consumer wants the way that the customer wants it?
And why are all the Windows people getting so heated about this? He's not asking Dell to support Linux so it's not as though Windows users will need to pay higher prices from Dell.
It's probably annoying for Dell because they've been made to realise that they're not currently delivering what *ALL* of their potential customers want, just *MOST* of them. But then that can only be good for the consumer in the long run? So what's the problem?
And "ineffective"? He got a refund a made a very clear statement to Dell. I see that as successful direct positive action.
Please do not show your ignorance by equating "wanting to run an alternative OS" with a "hatred of Microsoft". I myself have one XP machine amongst a gaggle of Linux ones purely because about 20% of my computer time, I need MS Office or want to play a few games.
I don't hate Microsoft, I just recognise that I need MS stuff less than I need Linux stuff - end of story.
In a similar fashion, I love Indian food but I don't eat it every day of the week.
In that way, all you people who like Windows (and who am I to argue) are happy and so are the minority of us who prefer not to.
I cannot believe that you say this like you're actually *PROUD* of it.
How about demonstrating *REAL* strength of conviction and character by running a *FREE LEGAL ALTERNATIVE* rather than an illegal Windowss Vista copy? Surely that would send a much stronger message to Microsoft about their pricing and give them less of a justification for punishing legal users with the likes of DRM because of your activities.
So, let's see. I can take several hours of my life out to talk through this on the phone (let's be optimistic and say three) all to make $52.50, or I could just stay at the office with those three hours and make more than that.
when you meant to say
So, let's see. I can take several hours of my life out to talk through this on the phone (let's be optimistic and say three) all to make $52.50, or I could just stay at the office and not bother to take any direct positive action myself, instead preferring someone else to fight all of my battles for me.?
The role of teachers and schools is to educate kids and reinforce the knowledge of right and wrong that should be being taught by the parents in the first place.
I do a lot of work fixing PCs for friends and family, especially when the PCs have been trashed by the kids accidentally downloading viruses from the Internet - yes, if they're paying for my services (not always) then they're probably from fairly well-off respectable families anyway; but the fact is I'm amazed how much the kids pick up and learn if you take time to explain how to update virus checkers and where not to go/what not to do on the Internet.
Well, you learn something *EVERY* day on Slashdot! And there was me thinking OSX was just a pretty matching screensaver for an over-sized designer coffee table...
If you spend your time playing World Of Warcraft, your probably far too overweight, pallid and weak to get up from your computer chair and go down to the computer store for a refund anyway...
Parents need to start financing their own kids rather than expecting the rest of us to pay for them - via taxes for the salaries of politicians to make this unnecessary rubbish up.
For around 30 years UNIX has had a simple security model of "you", "your friends" and "everyone else in the world". Apply that simple model with diligent use of userIDs and groupIDs, add a sprinkling of NIS(+) or even LDAP, throw in some use of "sudo" and you can control just about anything you need to.
Yep, it took me a while to get used to it but compared to the complete and utter confusing mess Microsoft have made of users and policies, it's still a doddle...
I won't admit to having a great enthusiasm for Windows and commercial software but I'm pretty happy with XP and MS Office for acting as a gaming & general surfing platform that I can knock out a few work-compatible documents on. However, because I've taken the time to learn about Linux and OSS, I don't have a 100% dependance on either.
These days, I use as many console-based apps as I do GUI ones, and I can build Linux machines which are appropriate to what I need to do with them - anything from GUI-less servers, through "quick and fast" machines with a "light" GUI like Fluxbox, to proper desktop machines with fully-fledged Gnome or KDE desktop environments on them. And if I want a piece of FOSS software to do something I need to, then I go look for it on the Internet.
No, FOSS isn't better than commercial software for everyone - but the fact is that by keeping a fairly open mind about both, I can usually complete most tasks I need to by finding a piece of software to complete that task.
It's more a case that "people suck" - at least those who can't be bothered to take on some degree of personal responsibility and go do a little searching and learning.
There are a large number of people out here, albeit a minority, that do want to just run, say, Linux, on the PCs that they buy. And the fact is that the more time you spend researching and selecting hardware carefully, especially in the case of laptops, means that the easier job you'll have getting Linux to recognise of all of it.
I've never put Linux on a Dell laptop so I don't know how Linux-friendly they are - but I have recently done so an IBM one (which was easy), on a HP one (which was a bit trickier) and finally on a Gateway one (which I never got 100% working).
No, the $52 is not an important sum of money but if a number of people do it, then it sends a clear message to Dell to offer OS-free laptops. If other people run XP and are happy with it then good luck to them and I hope it does what they want it to do - but there is no "one size fits all" in computing and please have some respect for those of us who aren't interested in getting involved in an OS "war" but do want the freedom to run the software that they want to.
...when there's a robot in every home, pornography will somehow be involved.