Is Prince not "The Artist Formally Known As..." any longer? Not that I have any interest in the over-rated little turd's "music" anyhow.
In either case, perhaps now would be a good time to change his name to "The Artist Currently Known As Dickhead".
And no, I don't believe that music should be free whatosever, I just find it very difficult to believe that corporate mult-millionaire puppets like Metallica and Prince are having to lead lives of poverty as a result of a few songs being copied.
...by the time you get to the grand old age of 45, you are absolutely sick to the back teeth of being constantly bombarded with advertising trying to sell crap at you, people knocking at your front door trying to sell crap at you and spam emails flooding your inbox trying to sell crap at you.
Answer me this - what is SO IMPORTANT about the 4 inch diameter circle on the top of a petrol (= gas for the Yanks) pump nozzle that they have to use it to advertise chocolate at me while I am filling my car!
...shop around, buy the CD as cheaply as possible and rip it yourself. No DRM plus a nice shiny disk and plastic case to file alphabetically on a shelf and gaze lovingly at.
And if you think a CD has "one or two good tracks on it" then please be a little more selective in your music choice. Don't buy the dross in the charts, there are thousands of classic albums out there that are good from start to finish and are worth every penny you pay for them.
Please don't entertain these idiot music moguls - they want to ***RENT*** you your music and rip you off in the process.
I would suggest that most customers who visit Starbucks are paying a premium simply because they know no better.
I'm not denying Starbucks (or any company) their success, they're exploiting a part of the populace who obviously have money to burn so good luck to them.
But the fact is that a £2.50 cup of coffee probably costs about £0.25 to make so therefore I'd suggest that Starbucks (and the other High Street coffee chains) are probably making a 1000% profit on each cup. Compare this to a retailer of CDs or clothes, where their profit markup is probably around 50-80%.
No, I read lots of O'Reilly books about programming - that's because I like good software.
And for your information, I am half-Ukrainian and, as you may already be aware, the Ukraine has a long political history with Russia. Therefore, any Russian/Marx books I choose to either read or to not read are as a result of whether I deem them worthwhile or not.
And to counter any potential further accusations from you, my political leanings are slightly to the left - but that is irrelevant here because I just like good software.
Since Mac users are invariably just a bunch of posers, it means nothing. It just means the Mac users arranged to get to the venue early to all sit together in the front row whilst one among their number took a photo.
Here in the UK, if I've ever been to a Starbucks it's because the missus and I are out shopping of a weekend and she seems to like their coffee.
I must admit that the coffee served in Starbucks and other chain coffee outlets is distinctly "average" and highly overpriced. The problem seems to be that these places are run by teenage kids who are just interested in churning out as much of the stuff as possible rather than delivering coffee drinks of any quality - bearing in mind we pay £2.50 (approx. $5 US) for a Starbucks coffee here, about 20% of the time I end up taking my (simple to make) Americano back to the counter because it tastes awful and for that kind of money, I'm not prepared to just sit and take it.
We also go out to Spain a lot and I have never yet had a bad cup of coffee out there. Unlike UK coffee shops, the ones in Spain seem to be run by proper "barristas" who know how to use and maintain their coffee machine. Out there you'll pay 1.20 (approx $1.50) for a coffee at the most.
The coffee shop chains are a rip-off - let's face it, how else could Starbucks have two shops within 2 minutes walk of each other in an average-sized town centre like mine.
As a primarily Linux user, I have to acknowledge what RMS has done for the free software movement and I do have some admiration for a man who is obviously driven by his beliefs and not by the accumulation of wealth.
But the fact is that his views that all software needs to be free are at the opposite end of, but as extreme as, Microsoft's (and other commercial vendors') views that all software needs to be profitable.
In reality, so far, the free software movement, be it Open Source, GNU, whatever, has not met the demands of some computer users who want (what they see as) easy-to-use but specialised software - heavy duty video editing is a classic example.
That means, in my view, that there is room for both commercial and free software to work side-by-side and that the main problem with this situation today is simply that far too many standards are closed. Force all commercial vendors to make all of their standards open and then, potentially, any free operating system or application can integrate easily with any commercial one.
In my view, I have far more admiration for Linus Torvalds than I do for RMS - at least Linus pretty much refuses to get involved in all the political arguing and just seems to get on and make decisions about what is ***TECHNICALLY*** the best thing to do with Linux.
The best thing the free software movement **AS A WHOLE** can do is keep pushing home the point that closed standards are **BAD**, end of story.
I'm afraid your ardent Microsoft fanboi-ism has caused you to completely ignore the whole point of my comment - so please calm down a little.
If you bought and like Vista then good luck to you, who am I to tell you otherwise? And that's why your comments to me, a Linux user, about Linux (note the capital L incidentally) are also of no consequence.
However, the point I tried to make was that what is the point of reading and contributing to Slashdot, seeing all the negative comments about it, buying Vista and then making even more negative comments about it? Doesn't that strike you as particularly stupid? And, as someone who is happy with Vista, surely you would also be sick and tired of seeing those negative comments also?
Then reject the Microsoft terms and conditions for Vista, go try and claim a refund for Vista and while you're waiting for the refund to come through, go check eBay or countless other places for a shrinkwrapped copy of XP.
Sorry, but my view is that whether you're a Vista, XP or Linux fan, the OS is an intrinsic part of your computer which will affect how well it works as much as any of the hardware components, if not more so. Therefore, if a PC vendor won't sell you what you want, including the OS you want, then don't buy from them.
Late last year I tried to buy a brand new Dell XPS laptop from them but they refused to sell me it with XP, only Vista, even though I explained to them the nVidia graphics board in the laptop only supported DirectX 9. So I went elsewhere, found a reputable eBay dealer who was selling Dell's cancelled order laptops that were otherwise brand new, and got the same specification laptop from him with XP on it for £600 less that what Dell were quoting.
YOU know that and I know that but as far as our brothers across the pond know, we're all still dressing as chimney sweeps and saying "Gor blimey, Mary Poppins" every five minutes.
And that of course means that they're more than willing to spend vast wads of their hard-earned dollars flying over to London and getting ripped-off by Cockney-sounding Dick Van Dyke wannabes which reduces our balance of trade deficit, thus keeping the interest down meaning the exchange rate stays up so it's easier for us to buy villas in Florida, go to Disney World and all talk and dress like chimney sweeps with really bad teeth.
Thus the myth is maintained, the circle is complete and at this rate, within about 25 years, we'll all be able to buy the state of Maine for about £1.50.
And when we're all living over there, then we'll give them a right good tupping... "Colony, my arse!"
And having your fly open is rather embarrassing, especially if you're not wearing underwear.
I think being embarrassed would much depend on the size of what is being displayed. If the target could, for example, truthfully respond with "Yes, but that pavement is really chafing the end of it", I doubt he would consider that he had too much to be embarrassed about...
The best and most interesting story I could think of publishing about myself was that I once tripped over the foot of Fish, the (then) lead singer of the British progressive rock band, Marillion, at a music festival.
It's not even as though I could give the story a comical ending by stating that either he or I fell over face first into a conveniently-placed pile of cow manure - all he said to me was "Mind yourself" in his strong Scottish brogue and went on his merry way.
p2pnet.net reports that the RIAA has egg on its face.
I'm not sure this is the correct euphimism to use for the RIAA in this sentence.
Over here in Blighty, the expression "you have egg on your face" is often said to a man who had forgotten to zip up his trouser flies, possibly after visiting a urinal. That's because we British are a quiet and genteel people who consider it quite rude in polite company to shout out "OI, MATE! YOUR F***IN' FLIES ARE OPEN!" and prefer to use this quaint euphemism instead. Of course, the fact that every other British person in hearing range already knows what the euphemism means and immediately starts staring at the target's gusset-region anyway, doesn't enter into it.
However, the fact that this euphemism implies that the target is no doubt displaying a flaccid, tiny, shrivelled willy while everyone else is pointing their fingers and laughing at him can hardly be applied to the RIAA now, can it?
So Firefox has problems with Hotmail? So what's the problem?
I've sent 20+ Gmail invites to Hotmail-using friends of mine complaining about endless spam, the slowness of it and the sudden removal of POP3 support. Not one of them since has ever sent me an email from a "hotmail.com" email address.
So start using up those 99 Gmail invites you can send out to "the great unwashed" - once they see Gmail, they won't go back and then Hotmail not working with Firefox won't be a problem any more because Hotmail will be dead.
I use a lot of Open Source software, like Linux and Mac OS X
Erm, last time I looked, Mac OS X wasn't Open Source. Apple and "your mate" Steve Jobs may be able to employ hordes of marketing people to give him a more friendly face than Gates or Ballmer, but Apple are still are a corporation that wants to make as much money as possible from the products they sell and, where possible, continue to lock you, the user, into their way of doing things - hence the DRM lock-in of iPod and iTunes and the mobile vendor lock-in of iPhone.
Slashdot Mirror
In either case, perhaps now would be a good time to change his name to "The Artist Currently Known As Dickhead".
And no, I don't believe that music should be free whatosever, I just find it very difficult to believe that corporate mult-millionaire puppets like Metallica and Prince are having to lead lives of poverty as a result of a few songs being copied.
He probably bought it off of a posting on an internal notice board in Microsoft:
FOR SALE - IBM-compatible PC from an age when 640K was enough for anyone. $2100. Contact: Billy G.
If it's good, a lot of us may end up buying it and playing it.
If it's bad, then we've lots of other shit we can be doing instead - it's really no biggie.
So give us a quick tinkle when it's out in the shops, otherwise just **BUGGER OFF** until it's ready.
Thanks for your time and understanding.
I have it on good authority that there are some owners of glass-topped coffee tables and a penchant for coprophilia who would disagree with you...
Answer me this - what is SO IMPORTANT about the 4 inch diameter circle on the top of a petrol (= gas for the Yanks) pump nozzle that they have to use it to advertise chocolate at me while I am filling my car!
And if you think a CD has "one or two good tracks on it" then please be a little more selective in your music choice. Don't buy the dross in the charts, there are thousands of classic albums out there that are good from start to finish and are worth every penny you pay for them.
Please don't entertain these idiot music moguls - they want to ***RENT*** you your music and rip you off in the process.
BUY THE CDs - then it's yours to KEEP.
I'm not denying Starbucks (or any company) their success, they're exploiting a part of the populace who obviously have money to burn so good luck to them.
But the fact is that a £2.50 cup of coffee probably costs about £0.25 to make so therefore I'd suggest that Starbucks (and the other High Street coffee chains) are probably making a 1000% profit on each cup. Compare this to a retailer of CDs or clothes, where their profit markup is probably around 50-80%.
And for your information, I am half-Ukrainian and, as you may already be aware, the Ukraine has a long political history with Russia. Therefore, any Russian/Marx books I choose to either read or to not read are as a result of whether I deem them worthwhile or not.
And to counter any potential further accusations from you, my political leanings are slightly to the left - but that is irrelevant here because I just like good software.
It's a set-up.
I must admit that the coffee served in Starbucks and other chain coffee outlets is distinctly "average" and highly overpriced. The problem seems to be that these places are run by teenage kids who are just interested in churning out as much of the stuff as possible rather than delivering coffee drinks of any quality - bearing in mind we pay £2.50 (approx. $5 US) for a Starbucks coffee here, about 20% of the time I end up taking my (simple to make) Americano back to the counter because it tastes awful and for that kind of money, I'm not prepared to just sit and take it.
We also go out to Spain a lot and I have never yet had a bad cup of coffee out there. Unlike UK coffee shops, the ones in Spain seem to be run by proper "barristas" who know how to use and maintain their coffee machine. Out there you'll pay 1.20 (approx $1.50) for a coffee at the most.
The coffee shop chains are a rip-off - let's face it, how else could Starbucks have two shops within 2 minutes walk of each other in an average-sized town centre like mine.
So please stop with the political bullshit, you're beginning to sound like someone reading from a book by Karl Marx.
I like GOOD SOFTWARE using OPEN STANDARDS - end of story.
As a primarily Linux user, I have to acknowledge what RMS has done for the free software movement and I do have some admiration for a man who is obviously driven by his beliefs and not by the accumulation of wealth.
But the fact is that his views that all software needs to be free are at the opposite end of, but as extreme as, Microsoft's (and other commercial vendors') views that all software needs to be profitable.
In reality, so far, the free software movement, be it Open Source, GNU, whatever, has not met the demands of some computer users who want (what they see as) easy-to-use but specialised software - heavy duty video editing is a classic example.
That means, in my view, that there is room for both commercial and free software to work side-by-side and that the main problem with this situation today is simply that far too many standards are closed. Force all commercial vendors to make all of their standards open and then, potentially, any free operating system or application can integrate easily with any commercial one.
In my view, I have far more admiration for Linus Torvalds than I do for RMS - at least Linus pretty much refuses to get involved in all the political arguing and just seems to get on and make decisions about what is ***TECHNICALLY*** the best thing to do with Linux.
The best thing the free software movement **AS A WHOLE** can do is keep pushing home the point that closed standards are **BAD**, end of story.
If you bought and like Vista then good luck to you, who am I to tell you otherwise? And that's why your comments to me, a Linux user, about Linux (note the capital L incidentally) are also of no consequence.
However, the point I tried to make was that what is the point of reading and contributing to Slashdot, seeing all the negative comments about it, buying Vista and then making even more negative comments about it? Doesn't that strike you as particularly stupid? And, as someone who is happy with Vista, surely you would also be sick and tired of seeing those negative comments also?
Sorry, but my view is that whether you're a Vista, XP or Linux fan, the OS is an intrinsic part of your computer which will affect how well it works as much as any of the hardware components, if not more so. Therefore, if a PC vendor won't sell you what you want, including the OS you want, then don't buy from them.
Late last year I tried to buy a brand new Dell XPS laptop from them but they refused to sell me it with XP, only Vista, even though I explained to them the nVidia graphics board in the laptop only supported DirectX 9. So I went elsewhere, found a reputable eBay dealer who was selling Dell's cancelled order laptops that were otherwise brand new, and got the same specification laptop from him with XP on it for £600 less that what Dell were quoting.
Yay!
Vista has an IPV6 problem, you're sticking with XP and you don't like Linux.
I got 20 lines into your boring monologue and lost the will to live.
...that a regular contributor on SLASHDOT would have to be pretty stupid to go and buy a PC with Vista on it?
And that of course means that they're more than willing to spend vast wads of their hard-earned dollars flying over to London and getting ripped-off by Cockney-sounding Dick Van Dyke wannabes which reduces our balance of trade deficit, thus keeping the interest down meaning the exchange rate stays up so it's easier for us to buy villas in Florida, go to Disney World and all talk and dress like chimney sweeps with really bad teeth.
Thus the myth is maintained, the circle is complete and at this rate, within about 25 years, we'll all be able to buy the state of Maine for about £1.50.
And when we're all living over there, then we'll give them a right good tupping... "Colony, my arse!"
I think being embarrassed would much depend on the size of what is being displayed. If the target could, for example, truthfully respond with "Yes, but that pavement is really chafing the end of it", I doubt he would consider that he had too much to be embarrassed about...
The best and most interesting story I could think of publishing about myself was that I once tripped over the foot of Fish, the (then) lead singer of the British progressive rock band, Marillion, at a music festival.
It's not even as though I could give the story a comical ending by stating that either he or I fell over face first into a conveniently-placed pile of cow manure - all he said to me was "Mind yourself" in his strong Scottish brogue and went on his merry way.
Ho hum.
I'm not sure this is the correct euphimism to use for the RIAA in this sentence.
Over here in Blighty, the expression "you have egg on your face" is often said to a man who had forgotten to zip up his trouser flies, possibly after visiting a urinal. That's because we British are a quiet and genteel people who consider it quite rude in polite company to shout out "OI, MATE! YOUR F***IN' FLIES ARE OPEN!" and prefer to use this quaint euphemism instead. Of course, the fact that every other British person in hearing range already knows what the euphemism means and immediately starts staring at the target's gusset-region anyway, doesn't enter into it.
However, the fact that this euphemism implies that the target is no doubt displaying a flaccid, tiny, shrivelled willy while everyone else is pointing their fingers and laughing at him can hardly be applied to the RIAA now, can it?
Oh wait...
Wow! And can you imagine THE SIZE of that bucket of the Colonel's Hot Wings???
I've sent 20+ Gmail invites to Hotmail-using friends of mine complaining about endless spam, the slowness of it and the sudden removal of POP3 support. Not one of them since has ever sent me an email from a "hotmail.com" email address.
So start using up those 99 Gmail invites you can send out to "the great unwashed" - once they see Gmail, they won't go back and then Hotmail not working with Firefox won't be a problem any more because Hotmail will be dead.
Erm, last time I looked, Mac OS X wasn't Open Source. Apple and "your mate" Steve Jobs may be able to employ hordes of marketing people to give him a more friendly face than Gates or Ballmer, but Apple are still are a corporation that wants to make as much money as possible from the products they sell and, where possible, continue to lock you, the user, into their way of doing things - hence the DRM lock-in of iPod and iTunes and the mobile vendor lock-in of iPhone.
I say put Jack Bauer in "Lost" - it would only take HIM 24 hours to get off the island...