If the initial theme is good - nobody should need to change it.
The initial theme can only be good enough for a certain percentage of users. There will be some percent that have minor problems with things such as eyesight or motor control which can be solved by changes to the theme, without the need for extensive accessability features. There will always be people that like something completely horrid for their desktop, but so long as it's their (and only their) desktop, who cares? Make the default as good as can be, but don't lock people into it, because everyone has their own way of approaching their computers.
I have long believed that the obsession with themability is a huge red-herring, and is totally unnecessary in a desktop OS. Select an attractive consistent theme for the various themeable applications, and 99.9% of users won't need to change it.
I agree that consistency is important, whether themeable or not. Still the obsession with themability goes far beyond the desktop OS, it reaches into everyday lives. The more someone uses a computer, the more likely they are to want to customize that environment. People customize their physical space, they should be able to customize the visual space of their OS' environment. The key, though, is presenting a solid first-time experience to get and keep users. Furthermore, user settings need to remain individualized for applications that provide customization independant of desktop-level modifications. If I change my media player's skin, another user logging into my computer shouldn't be able to change MY settings, and MY settings shouldn't be forced on THEM, they should see the default settings or their own customized settings, depending on circumstances.
I believe the real problem with themeability in general is that it gives developers an excuse for bad UI disign. Many themeable applications come with some fairly bad default UIs, and the most common excuse is 'if you dont like it, you can change it'. Certainly there's always going to be some percent of users that want to change things about their interface, but the default should never be so bad that most of your users immediately search for an alternative interface, if not a completely different program.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm still using floppy drives I bought over 5 years ago. I just move them from one system to the next when I load up the system, and occasionally pull some information off of old floppies (and promptly burn a CD when I'm done, wtf cares if it's only a couple MB on a CD when they cost next to nothing?). Maybe it's just because I don't use them all that much, but it seems that unless I do something like plug the power connector in reversed they just don't fail (now the floppy disks themselves are a different story).
I mean, how much does FMV add to most games? And yet, most have expensive CGI (*cough* Blizzard), voice actors and a whole squadron of artists just for cut scenes.
FMV is mostly dead, the notable exception being the C&C series. Similarly, Blizzard is almost the only company still using a large amount of CGI resources (and Squaresoft, maybe more common on consoles), whereas most of the FPS portion of the industry has moved to in-game-engine-rendered cutscenes or scripted events.
As for side scrollers and the like, I believe there was a recent Duke Nukem side-scroller release, but I could be wrong, as I don't normally pay attention to that genre. I played them a lot when I was a kid because I didn't have anything else to play (except old Atari games, which I also played alot). The notable exception in my mind is Metroid, which was a great game. Zelda is another one that stands out, though it was the top-down variety.
Of all the remakes I've seen of classic games, I think the Asteroids remake that was released under Activision was probably one of the best, since, for the most part, it was just a graphics update with only minor gameplay changes. Most of those games don't have the appeal they did when I was younger, though. I'll play for a while for nostalgia purposes, and maybe keep them installed on my computer for that reason, but they don't match the time I've spent on TFC or Diablo 2.
Over the years, profits and video game budgets have shot sky-high...and yet the entertainment facter has increased very, very little.
Cost to produce (in both money and time) have also increased a great deal, making the risk of funding a large video game project very high for the companies that do so. For every game that reaps huge profits, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of games that do not return the money invested, and still more games that never make the shelves. This is why there are fewer companies actually funding game development today than there were 5 or 10 years ago, and fewer development houses actually creating the games.
Of course, the obvious solution is to reduce the number of knock-off products and only invest in the projects with the best likelihood of success, but then we wouldn't have things like Half-life, which almost didn't get a Quake-engine license because the developers couldn't really impress anyone with their ideas.
The use of the library in the example given is actually the biggest problem, since libraries are specifically protected under most circumstances (even to copy entire books under certain circumstances) in the US copyright laws.
You pirating losers just LOVE to make that distinction don't you? Pirating is NEVER stealing to you guys. Its only "copyright violations". The only thing I want to know is HOW did your morals become so warped?
I have a fairly large collection of legal software, and, as far as I know, no illegally acquired software. I don't pirate software because, largely, if something costs too much for me to buy it, I can find a (legally) free solution that does nearly the same thing, but maybe takes a little more work to be productive with.
Still, I understand the difference between stealing and copyright violation. Copying something does not deprive someone of the original, it deprives them of a possible sale.
As for my morals, they came from a process of thought rather than accepting that which is repeated at face value. Morally speaking, there is absolutely nothing wrong with copying anything. However, because we live in a capitalist society, there are legal implications, and some moral implications regarding depriving people of a source of funds. The question then becomes one of whether or not they're actually being deprived of funds. That depends on individual circumstances. In my case, if I had pirated even half of the software I own, I could probably have paid off my car with that money. However, since I can afford to make payments on my car and buy the software, I choose to support the software companies (and the bank that loaned me the money for the car, and the insurance company that charges more because I don't own the car).
THERE IS SUCH A THING AS THEFT OF SERVICES YOU KNOW!
and this is not it. Theft of service implies that there is a service being provided which someone is using without paying the normal fee for that service. Now Microsoft and many others may like the idea of software as a service, but as of yet very little software is provided as a service. In fact, the acceptance of 'theft of service' as a more easily enforcable set of laws could easily be one major reason for so many software companies liking this idea in the first place. If all software was provided as a service, you'd be using their bandwidth and storage space when you used an illegal copy of their software, and therefore actually costing them money.
Theft of service in itself started with utilities, such as water and electricty, in which case you actually are taking something that is provided for the community at large which must be replaced. If you use 100 gallons of water, that's 100 gallons of water that the provider of water has to replace (in San Diego it would be bought from other areas, in most areas it comes from rainfall and/or snow/ice melt, in either case it has to be stored and transported to the user). It was extended to things like telecomms and cable (and satellite) because essentially they all still require a particular investment in infrastructure to be effective, as well as replacement and maintenanace of equipment over the long term. Still, if they wanted to make sure you didn't steal their service, all they'd have to do is cut your line and stick a monitor on it (in any of those cases, and there's a reason why there are specific laws against tampering with your meters).
When you copy a book, CD, DVD, or anything else, the original is still there, and they do not have to replace it. Now, if you would have bought that book, CD, DVD, etc then you have cost them a sale. If you would not have bought it, you cost them nothing. Unfortunately, since it's impossible to distinguish between the two once someone has copied it, most of the industries involved assume that everyone that copies something would have bought it, and publish figures accordingly. That's how you get multi-million (or -billion) dollar industries moaning about how they can't make even more money and the law needs to do something about it. Apparently making copyrights valid longer than anyone currently lives just isn't enough, and with software this is even more rediculous because so little software remains in use more than 5-10 years.
Legally, theft has absolutely nothing to do with whether something is a physical good. For example, if you tap into the cable system for free cable TV, you're guilty of Theft of Service. No physical good has changed hands.
Theft of service was created mostly to cover public utilities, and, in most cases, something actually is stolen (water, electricity, etc). Telecommunications (and then cable) merely adopted the same term and had laws changed or added to cover their service. In reality, if you don't want a customer to steal HBO, you don't broadcast it to them, but since you can cover it under theft of service, you just send them everything and expect them not to take it without paying your fees.
It's a question of ownership and possession. They had ownership and you took possession. The party who was the target of the theft doesn't even need to suffer any actual loss. It doesn't matter that you were never going to subscribe to cable TV; they own the feed and have licensed the content...they own it and you took it without permission. Same with that particular combination of bits on the hard drive.
Actually, it's not the same because there isn't a service involved. It's the same thing as copying CDs or books, and the same laws apply.
Of course, if you really want to equate it to theft, how does someone get more time for stealing something which the original owner still has than for stealing a car (or just about anything else), which definitely deprives the original owner of something?
Of course, he didn't get convicted of stealing anything, either, he was convicted of 'Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States', as were most of the others caught in the same operation (only 5 of the 16 were convicted of criminal copyright infringement). None of the copyright infringement terms carried jail time unless they were accompanied by conspiracy offenses. The largest sentence so far for infringement was 5 yrs probation + 6 mos home confinement + 200 hrs community service.
He still STOLE software, just because you break it down into whats actually occuring doesn't mean its any less stealing, he commited the crime, now hes going to jail. Justice served IMO.
The unlawful taking and removing of another's personal property with the intent of permanently depriving the owner; theft
No, actually he committed a series of copyright violations, and, as copyright implies, that means he copied something, not stole it. Stealing implies that the owner no longer has what is stolen, which is not the case with most software piracy (to steal software you walk into a store or warehouse and physically take that which is normally sold).
All I did is point this thing at someone and pull this thingy, why am I going to jail for the rest of my life?
Unless you did something more, you'd most likely not serve more than 20 years, assuming you're even talking about murder.
Closer? There *are* jaguars in the USA. In Florida & Colorado at least. Hint: a Mountain Lion isn't a lion.
While they are closely related, there are distinct differences between jaguars and mountain lions (perhaps you're thinking of cougars, panthers, or pumas?). The Jaguar is the largest cat in the Americas, and its coat is spotted, so people often confuse them with leopards (though where you are should make it obvious enough, even in zoos they tend to have markers telling you what you're looking at, leopards and jaguars don't live on the same continents normally; jaguars live in South and Central America (the continent(s), not the States)).
The commercials pronounced it Jagwar (with the a in war sounding like the a in wall), which is the 'correct' American pronunciation. Given that we in the US live closer to the areas in which jaguars are actually native, I tend to believe the british have little claim to correct pronunciation;p
As for Jagwire, only young children that have trouble learning proper pronunciation say it that way.
Bottom line is that the kids are just a product of their environment (in general), and unless they have someone to expose them to better alternatives than the groups on MTV, they're gonna take that allowance and buy shitty CDs.
I'd have to agree with that. The only reason I got into most of the bands I was into in high school was because my friends knew about particular bands and played the music. It's not that I would've bought music that I didn't like (because that's simply the way I've always been, no point buying something if I dont like it), simply that I wouldn't have heard most of the music if they hadn't had it. Friends knew I liked Metallica and Megadeth (I found a Metallica tape on the street one day while walking my dog and got hooked on it when I heard Anesthesia) and recommended Testament and Slayer. They knew I liked NIN (a friend had PHM which I quickly became addicted to) and Ministry (Psalm 69 got a lot of airplay when I was a freshman in high school), recommended Godflesh and Fear Factory (and in college, Skinny Puppy, Frontline Assembly, and Front 242). I started hearing Sepultura, Carcass, Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, and Napalm Death.
After a while I picked up the albums I liked, and started looking for information on my own (because a lot of my friends started bitching about how little good music there was rather than actually finding anything, mostly because Carcass broke up, Testament and Metallica changed their sound, and so on). The more I look, the more I can find, but most of this information wasn't as easy to come by then as it is now, and it's become even easier for me to just log on and download a few songs, run them through a quick play, trash half of it, and set the rest aside to give a little time to decide upon. Then when I make my every-other-week trip to the record store I have a better idea of what to look for, and if I still can't find what I'm looking for Ill buy it online (I'd rather support the small record stores around here that take the time to stock music I like that won't always sell as well than to buy online, plus I hate waiting for anything).
As a parent, if you don't want this to happen, EXPOSE THEM TO GOOD MUSIC!. Trust me, I plan on doing this as soon as my kid can breathe.
Obviously, a fair amount of the music I listen to doesn't exactly agree with most parents (especially with a lot of it being stuff that gets significant attention from the various parent and religious groups). Fortunately, my parents were very understanding as to why I listen to the music I do, and supported my choices, as long as they were made for the right reasons. They probably don't know every single band I listen to, but they know a fair number of them (and my dad likes to joke about quite a few of them, that's just the way he is). The point, of course, is that they took the time to make sure I understood what I was listening to before giving me full reign over those decisions. Over time I've even earned a great deal of respect for my dad's taste in music, and he in turn has earned some respect in mine, as both of us have found things in each other's music libraries that we enjoy (ie I found out my dad was a Rush fan and a Black Sabbath fan when I was playing them a little too loud, and I loaned him a few of my CDs when I overheard him watching a Flecktones concert). I can never thank him enough for exposing me to such a diverse selection of music when I was growing up.
There's plenty of good rap out there like there is plenty of good Nu Metal bands out there.
No, really, if they call themselves or let themselves be marketed as 'Nu Metal', they probably aren't that good. Nu Metal is just an extension and commercialization of something that started somewhere else, most notably with Fear Factory. There are good bands that have a sound similar to 'Nu Metal' bands, but most of them would never be considered 'Nu Metal', unless the label/sub-genre has extended beyond the commercial realm.
When it comes down to it, though, that's the point. Most of the commercial versions of various genres that we receive through the label's interests have little clear redeeming value. The label picks them up, polishes and molds them to fit what they view as something that will sell (witness the grunge bands that were all picked up after Nirvana's Nevermind hit the charts, the rash of boy/girl bands, the number of hip-hop and rap artists shovelled onto the airwaves, and 'Nu Metal' bands springing up left and right, sounding mostly the same). The labels learned in the 80's that all it takes to sell metal bands is to tone them down a bit, polish them up, and get them to write lyrics that will sell records, they just got hammered with the backlash when they overdid it in that decade and pumped out too much crap for the consumers to handle. They turned over most of metal to small labels, some of which are still owned by the larger labels, and then they pick up the ones they think they can mold and sell when they think they can sell it. In another 10-20 years rap will be the same way, if the major labels survive as they are today.
The biggest problem the labels are having now is that it's very hard for them to figure out what people want, because people are diversifying their tastes a great deal. How much should they spend on this act/album when by the time they finish it the public will have moved on to something else? Nothing they've been doing lately has been able to top the early 90's, when bands were coming out of (seemingly, to the labels)nowhere and topping the charts (with sales 10x or more with one album than what Britney Spears has sold total), for the most part outside of record industry influence. Now we've got people listening to punk, ska, rap, r&b, hip-hop, metal, industrial, and who knows what else tomorrow, each of which has their own small labels that are well known among the more focused consumers (Metal Blade and Earache for Metal, WaxTrax and others for Industrial, even Trent Reznor's Nothing records, which is just a small part of Universal pretty much left to his decisions). Ultimately, the major labels previously survived by controlling information, and the dam finally broke, they're just trying to keep it together.
They were a death metal (grindcore) band from the UK (Liverpool, England), which pioneered the grindcore genre (along with Napalm Death and a few others), and probably did more to evolve the form than any other band in their short time (their last new album having been released in 1996). They did a remix of a Bjork song for one of her single releases which hit the top 10 in the UK. Many bands currently in all forms of death metal show the influence of Carcass, especially notable in the lyrics on recent Cannibal Corpse albums, which started picking up some of the medical jargon from early Carcass work (reading old Carcass lyrics requires many references to at least a good dictionary, if not a medical dictionary, for most people), and in the extension of the music's format to longer, more complex pieces, rather than the 30-second blasts that both Carcass and Napalm Death started off with (Napalm Death's 2nd CD has 54 songs).
In other words, although they did well, fame is not so much an issue as influence. Of course, those that are not familiar with the genre are unlikely to hear a single name they're familiar with in that group, though Cannibal Corpse and Napalm Death both continue to do well. When people complain about their record companies screwing them over 250,000+ sales, these guys do fine with less, and occasionally accomplish more (I don't believe there's a single Cannibal Corpse album that hasn't gone at least gold; their first album was the first death metal album to hit the Billboard Top 200, appeared playing on stage in a scene in Ace Ventura, banned in Australia, New Zealand, and Korea, banned from playing material from their first three albums in Germany, where one of their albums is banned from sale, and most record store chains will not carry the albums with their original artwork, so they are sold with 2 different covers, if they're carried at all).
Frankly, I think it says more, though, that a band so many people have never heard of could get away with doing something like this to a major label. Columbia thought that they could mold Carcass into the next Metallica or Megadeth (who had the #1 and 2 spots on Billboard a couple years earlier), but what they got was at best (in Columbia's eyes) closer to the earlier works of both bands, which wasn't what the label was looking for (despite both Metallica and Megadeth selling millions of all of their albums).
I never thought of it like this before, but that's really what happens. What's worse - there's nothing more frustrating than a band changing labels -- the old label still owns all the band's old music, which unfortunately means that they take some pretty good stuff and stick it in a basement somewhere
This is exactly why artists should really strive to get a minor label deal in which they have more control before even thinking about a major label deal. Sure, the major labels have better distribution and get their crap played as much as they want, but they will take advantage of new artists in ways most would never imagine.
One of my favourite examples of a band doing it right was when Carcass signed with Columbia worldwide (they had done a previous album with Columbia distributing the international release) after 3 releases (plus an EP or two) on Earache. Columbia wanted them to tone down the album for Columbia's perceived audience, and the band refused, took the album (which Columbia had already paid the recording costs on), and released it on Earache. I'm sure it cost them a bit to break off from Columbia, but they had covered their bases on who owned their music before they signed the deal.
Of course, the singer/bassist decided that even the not-toned-down album was a little too far from his vision for the band and they broke up after that album was released (with members of the band scattering elsewhere, as is fairly normal in the genre, especially given the number of members Carcass had had over it's lifetime and the bands that some of them had come from (like Napalm Death, which might as well be a showcase for death metal musicians with the number of lineup changes, and the number of bands that have had past Napalm Death members)).
I think the real hypocrisy lies in the fact that his label went to bat for him when MTV refused to play black artists in the early 80's. They threatened to pull all of their videos if they didn't play his. Of course, at the same time, this shows that the labels can and do have too much influence over what does and does not get played, and if it had not been getting played because it sucked (as opposed to a racial issue), there'd be a very big problem with the label doing that.
What musicians need to to work together to promote themselves and others that they feel promote their style of music. In otherwords, it requires a lot of hard work and ass kissing, which might not be something most people are willing to do. However it is possible, the Offspring are evidence to that. Unfortunately, most musicians suffer from "rockstar" syndrome, and do not want to work and instead only think about the trappings that stardom will give them rather then producing music that moves people.
One example of this sort of thing I've seen recently is that a local band chartered a bus for a show they were doing about 2 hours away. The show had a total of 10 bands playing, and the band offered up the remaining seats on the bus at a fairly low price for anyone in the area that wanted to see the show. I'm not sure how it went for them, because I couldn't make the trip that weekend, but they seemed to be selling the tickets fairly quickly. Of course, the added effort was that they showed up at other shows in the area with similar music (which is admittedly few, as in most areas, given that it's death metal) and handed out cards with their website info, so that people would even know they were doing this in the first place.
It doesn't really matter much, all it's doing is making the reviewers listen to the albums on what might be an inferior player. A quick search on most file sharing programs will turn up 128K mp3s of most of the songs from the Tori album, they've been up for at least a week.
However, Linux already has perfectly acceptable development tools. Many people even prefer Linux's tools. And Linuxers are hard at work building development tools that are more Windows-like as well. So when the waves of Windows developers migrate to Linux they will be met with tools that are at least somewhat familiar, but they won't be Microsoft tools.
I learned how to write software on Linux, so I have a decent idea of what's available there, and it's definitely gotten much better in the last 6 years. Still, there's a lot more that needs to be worked on, though there are projects addressing many of those things. Now if only someone could put together a good replacement for X and a desktop environment that appeals to the masses without rehashing the same old crap things would be in good shape.
You see, Microsoft can't afford without the massive profits that it derives from Windows and MS Office.
Microsoft's been set up since very near the beginning with the idea that the company should be able to continue for at least a year with no income. Think about that for a bit, it certainly explains it's cash reserves, though they'd really have to streamline their development process to get something out the door in a year's time that would have the chance of changing the company from 0 income to a good profit margin. Then again, it would take something fairly catastrophic to put them at 0 income in the first place these days. Microsoft's been pressuring their MacBU to develop the next version of Office for the Mac as a.Net framework-based product, which essentially means that they'd have something that could be multi-platform which represents a large portion of their current earnings (though the Mac version of Office itself isn't huge for them compared to Windows and Office for Windows, it is at close to 100% market share). They could easily streamline their BSD implementation of the.Net framework as well as port it to Linux if they needed to shift gears as Windows market share decreases. Of course, going from 85-95% market share to 50% market share would most likely not happen over nite, let alone going to a minority market share.
As far as Microsoft's stock price goes, it currently is still less than half what it was before Judge Jackson's ruling in the anti-trust case. Given the current economic climate it's not likely to return to it's previous value until both the economy recovers and all of the antitrust cases are put behind the company (and if any of them comes out too bad for MS, it may never happen that their stock price recovers).
Yes, but Visual Studio isn't going to keep anyone on Windows. MS Office reinforces MS Window's dominance, but Visual Studio is simply the tool that people use when they want to write Windows software. If folks start switching to something other than Windows on the desktop, then developers will switch right along with them.
That's an interesting way of looking at it, though it's completely the opposite of what most successful platforms have done in the past. You get the developers first, which brings the applications, and that brings the users.
Then again, if you think Microsoft won't start developing applications for whatever platform is at the top, you're deluding yourself. They already develop their most important software for the top 2 desktop platforms, and they have more Unix development experience than most people are willing to admit. The whole purpose of the.Net framework in the firstplace is to give them a safety net that allows them to move their software to other platforms quickly if their Windows platform is taken away from them or drops in market share.
Now the trolls are not only going to call linux users commies, now we're gonna be called nazi's as well
Of course, both terms have worse connotations than were originally intended. The words (or the group in terms of nazi) were simply polluted by certain individuals. There's really nothing wrong with communism unless you're dead-set against the economic system it describes (though it may not actually work in any place other than Star Trek, that's another story). Even the Nazi party was just a political party until Hitler came along and screwed everything up, though, of course, some people may have issues with Socialism, which I could certainly understand in most cases.
I'm not fully confident that stringing together Perl, Apache, MySQL, etc is really going to produce a cohesive Web server.:-)
Isn't that really the Open Source Way(tm)? Why build some monolithic beast when most of the parts already exist?
The difficult-to-install issue is a function of your distribution. Debian unstable (possibly stable and testing too, I'm not sure) carries all of those programs (including the most current Cyrus).
Even Microsoft's stuff (most of it, anyway) is just a bunch of pieces created to do certain functions and configured to communicate with each other to perform specific tasks (the biggest difference being that Microsoft usually designs the smaller parts with the larger purpose in mind, whereas this is sort of like repurposing existing components).
All they really need to do once they've figured out how to get this to do what they want it to do, and done whatever coding and configuration is needed, is to put together a clean installer to make it happen. Check versions of existing components, prompt to find whether existing components should be replaced or new components should be installed in a different location (with info on any differences between 'standard' components and the ones in the 'kroupware' package), configure, and then drop to an options dialog. Easier said than done, perhaps, but if even Microsoft could get it right people would be a lot happier with their software.
Developers should NEVER work with bleeding edge computers...because then they develop for that platform so what turns out seems fine to them running a P4 2.8 GHZ computer totally blows on something like a pIII 500 mhz...which you are right really isn't that old!
Actually, they should just do all testing on old hardware. Build, code, etc on the best computer you've got, because especially with the compile it'll save you a lot of time, but never run the executable on the dev machine unless you're debugging. My main system here at work (the one I develop on) is a 1.7GHz system, but I've got a P3-500 on the other side of the desk for testing (actually, it's only there because I need an ISA slot for an I/O card, which the P4 system does not have, but the target system is a P3-750 so the 500 is a good test bed for components). Of course, if anything lags on the 500, it's not going to be acceptable with the amount of software running on our platform.
A highschool friend used to eat hotdogs right out of the package, they're usually pre-cooked so no fear of getting bugs. It seemed weird at the time, but it's effectively a stick of balogna, eh?
(depending on the hot dog, of course) It's usually less fat and has a better texture and flavour, too.
Because when you're sleeping, your metabolism slows waaaaay down. This is why you will get fat if you eat meals right before you go to sleep.
Yet your body's metabolism and brain activity are higher when you're sleeping than when you're sitting watching TV (what a large portion of the population does after dinner if the ratings are to be believed). How many people do you see in an average office that look like they're more active than they are when they're watching TV at home?
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If the initial theme is good - nobody should need to change it.
The initial theme can only be good enough for a certain percentage of users. There will be some percent that have minor problems with things such as eyesight or motor control which can be solved by changes to the theme, without the need for extensive accessability features. There will always be people that like something completely horrid for their desktop, but so long as it's their (and only their) desktop, who cares? Make the default as good as can be, but don't lock people into it, because everyone has their own way of approaching their computers.
I have long believed that the obsession with themability is a huge red-herring, and is totally unnecessary in a desktop OS. Select an attractive consistent theme for the various themeable applications, and 99.9% of users won't need to change it.
I agree that consistency is important, whether themeable or not. Still the obsession with themability goes far beyond the desktop OS, it reaches into everyday lives. The more someone uses a computer, the more likely they are to want to customize that environment. People customize their physical space, they should be able to customize the visual space of their OS' environment. The key, though, is presenting a solid first-time experience to get and keep users. Furthermore, user settings need to remain individualized for applications that provide customization independant of desktop-level modifications. If I change my media player's skin, another user logging into my computer shouldn't be able to change MY settings, and MY settings shouldn't be forced on THEM, they should see the default settings or their own customized settings, depending on circumstances.
I believe the real problem with themeability in general is that it gives developers an excuse for bad UI disign. Many themeable applications come with some fairly bad default UIs, and the most common excuse is 'if you dont like it, you can change it'. Certainly there's always going to be some percent of users that want to change things about their interface, but the default should never be so bad that most of your users immediately search for an alternative interface, if not a completely different program.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm still using floppy drives I bought over 5 years ago. I just move them from one system to the next when I load up the system, and occasionally pull some information off of old floppies (and promptly burn a CD when I'm done, wtf cares if it's only a couple MB on a CD when they cost next to nothing?). Maybe it's just because I don't use them all that much, but it seems that unless I do something like plug the power connector in reversed they just don't fail (now the floppy disks themselves are a different story).
I mean, how much does FMV add to most games? And yet, most have expensive CGI (*cough* Blizzard), voice actors and a whole squadron of artists just for cut scenes.
FMV is mostly dead, the notable exception being the C&C series. Similarly, Blizzard is almost the only company still using a large amount of CGI resources (and Squaresoft, maybe more common on consoles), whereas most of the FPS portion of the industry has moved to in-game-engine-rendered cutscenes or scripted events.
As for side scrollers and the like, I believe there was a recent Duke Nukem side-scroller release, but I could be wrong, as I don't normally pay attention to that genre. I played them a lot when I was a kid because I didn't have anything else to play (except old Atari games, which I also played alot). The notable exception in my mind is Metroid, which was a great game. Zelda is another one that stands out, though it was the top-down variety.
Of all the remakes I've seen of classic games, I think the Asteroids remake that was released under Activision was probably one of the best, since, for the most part, it was just a graphics update with only minor gameplay changes. Most of those games don't have the appeal they did when I was younger, though. I'll play for a while for nostalgia purposes, and maybe keep them installed on my computer for that reason, but they don't match the time I've spent on TFC or Diablo 2.
Over the years, profits and video game budgets have shot sky-high...and yet the entertainment facter has increased very, very little.
Cost to produce (in both money and time) have also increased a great deal, making the risk of funding a large video game project very high for the companies that do so. For every game that reaps huge profits, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of games that do not return the money invested, and still more games that never make the shelves. This is why there are fewer companies actually funding game development today than there were 5 or 10 years ago, and fewer development houses actually creating the games.
Of course, the obvious solution is to reduce the number of knock-off products and only invest in the projects with the best likelihood of success, but then we wouldn't have things like Half-life, which almost didn't get a Quake-engine license because the developers couldn't really impress anyone with their ideas.
The use of the library in the example given is actually the biggest problem, since libraries are specifically protected under most circumstances (even to copy entire books under certain circumstances) in the US copyright laws.
You pirating losers just LOVE to make that distinction don't you? Pirating is NEVER stealing to you guys. Its only "copyright violations". The only thing I want to know is HOW did your morals become so warped?
I have a fairly large collection of legal software, and, as far as I know, no illegally acquired software. I don't pirate software because, largely, if something costs too much for me to buy it, I can find a (legally) free solution that does nearly the same thing, but maybe takes a little more work to be productive with.
Still, I understand the difference between stealing and copyright violation. Copying something does not deprive someone of the original, it deprives them of a possible sale.
As for my morals, they came from a process of thought rather than accepting that which is repeated at face value. Morally speaking, there is absolutely nothing wrong with copying anything. However, because we live in a capitalist society, there are legal implications, and some moral implications regarding depriving people of a source of funds. The question then becomes one of whether or not they're actually being deprived of funds. That depends on individual circumstances. In my case, if I had pirated even half of the software I own, I could probably have paid off my car with that money. However, since I can afford to make payments on my car and buy the software, I choose to support the software companies (and the bank that loaned me the money for the car, and the insurance company that charges more because I don't own the car).
THERE IS SUCH A THING AS THEFT OF SERVICES YOU KNOW!
and this is not it. Theft of service implies that there is a service being provided which someone is using without paying the normal fee for that service. Now Microsoft and many others may like the idea of software as a service, but as of yet very little software is provided as a service. In fact, the acceptance of 'theft of service' as a more easily enforcable set of laws could easily be one major reason for so many software companies liking this idea in the first place. If all software was provided as a service, you'd be using their bandwidth and storage space when you used an illegal copy of their software, and therefore actually costing them money.
Theft of service in itself started with utilities, such as water and electricty, in which case you actually are taking something that is provided for the community at large which must be replaced. If you use 100 gallons of water, that's 100 gallons of water that the provider of water has to replace (in San Diego it would be bought from other areas, in most areas it comes from rainfall and/or snow/ice melt, in either case it has to be stored and transported to the user). It was extended to things like telecomms and cable (and satellite) because essentially they all still require a particular investment in infrastructure to be effective, as well as replacement and maintenanace of equipment over the long term. Still, if they wanted to make sure you didn't steal their service, all they'd have to do is cut your line and stick a monitor on it (in any of those cases, and there's a reason why there are specific laws against tampering with your meters).
When you copy a book, CD, DVD, or anything else, the original is still there, and they do not have to replace it. Now, if you would have bought that book, CD, DVD, etc then you have cost them a sale. If you would not have bought it, you cost them nothing. Unfortunately, since it's impossible to distinguish between the two once someone has copied it, most of the industries involved assume that everyone that copies something would have bought it, and publish figures accordingly. That's how you get multi-million (or -billion) dollar industries moaning about how they can't make even more money and the law needs to do something about it. Apparently making copyrights valid longer than anyone currently lives just isn't enough, and with software this is even more rediculous because so little software remains in use more than 5-10 years.
Legally, theft has absolutely nothing to do with whether something is a physical good. For example, if you tap into the cable system for free cable TV, you're guilty of Theft of Service. No physical good has changed hands.
Theft of service was created mostly to cover public utilities, and, in most cases, something actually is stolen (water, electricity, etc). Telecommunications (and then cable) merely adopted the same term and had laws changed or added to cover their service. In reality, if you don't want a customer to steal HBO, you don't broadcast it to them, but since you can cover it under theft of service, you just send them everything and expect them not to take it without paying your fees.
It's a question of ownership and possession. They had ownership and you took possession. The party who was the target of the theft doesn't even need to suffer any actual loss. It doesn't matter that you were never going to subscribe to cable TV; they own the feed and have licensed the content...they own it and you took it without permission. Same with that particular combination of bits on the hard drive.
Actually, it's not the same because there isn't a service involved. It's the same thing as copying CDs or books, and the same laws apply.
Of course, if you really want to equate it to theft, how does someone get more time for stealing something which the original owner still has than for stealing a car (or just about anything else), which definitely deprives the original owner of something?
Of course, he didn't get convicted of stealing anything, either, he was convicted of 'Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States', as were most of the others caught in the same operation (only 5 of the 16 were convicted of criminal copyright infringement). None of the copyright infringement terms carried jail time unless they were accompanied by conspiracy offenses. The largest sentence so far for infringement was 5 yrs probation + 6 mos home confinement + 200 hrs community service.
He still STOLE software, just because you break it down into whats actually occuring doesn't mean its any less stealing, he commited the crime, now hes going to jail. Justice served IMO.
The unlawful taking and removing of another's personal property with the intent of permanently depriving the owner; theft
No, actually he committed a series of copyright violations, and, as copyright implies, that means he copied something, not stole it. Stealing implies that the owner no longer has what is stolen, which is not the case with most software piracy (to steal software you walk into a store or warehouse and physically take that which is normally sold).
All I did is point this thing at someone and pull this thingy, why am I going to jail for the rest of my life?
Unless you did something more, you'd most likely not serve more than 20 years, assuming you're even talking about murder.
Closer? There *are* jaguars in the USA. In Florida & Colorado at least. Hint: a Mountain Lion isn't a lion.
While they are closely related, there are distinct differences between jaguars and mountain lions (perhaps you're thinking of cougars, panthers, or pumas?). The Jaguar is the largest cat in the Americas, and its coat is spotted, so people often confuse them with leopards (though where you are should make it obvious enough, even in zoos they tend to have markers telling you what you're looking at, leopards and jaguars don't live on the same continents normally; jaguars live in South and Central America (the continent(s), not the States)).
The commercials pronounced it Jagwar (with the a in war sounding like the a in wall), which is the 'correct' American pronunciation. Given that we in the US live closer to the areas in which jaguars are actually native, I tend to believe the british have little claim to correct pronunciation ;p
As for Jagwire, only young children that have trouble learning proper pronunciation say it that way.
Bottom line is that the kids are just a product of their environment (in general), and unless they have someone to expose them to better alternatives than the groups on MTV, they're gonna take that allowance and buy shitty CDs.
I'd have to agree with that. The only reason I got into most of the bands I was into in high school was because my friends knew about particular bands and played the music. It's not that I would've bought music that I didn't like (because that's simply the way I've always been, no point buying something if I dont like it), simply that I wouldn't have heard most of the music if they hadn't had it. Friends knew I liked Metallica and Megadeth (I found a Metallica tape on the street one day while walking my dog and got hooked on it when I heard Anesthesia) and recommended Testament and Slayer. They knew I liked NIN (a friend had PHM which I quickly became addicted to) and Ministry (Psalm 69 got a lot of airplay when I was a freshman in high school), recommended Godflesh and Fear Factory (and in college, Skinny Puppy, Frontline Assembly, and Front 242). I started hearing Sepultura, Carcass, Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, and Napalm Death.
After a while I picked up the albums I liked, and started looking for information on my own (because a lot of my friends started bitching about how little good music there was rather than actually finding anything, mostly because Carcass broke up, Testament and Metallica changed their sound, and so on). The more I look, the more I can find, but most of this information wasn't as easy to come by then as it is now, and it's become even easier for me to just log on and download a few songs, run them through a quick play, trash half of it, and set the rest aside to give a little time to decide upon. Then when I make my every-other-week trip to the record store I have a better idea of what to look for, and if I still can't find what I'm looking for Ill buy it online (I'd rather support the small record stores around here that take the time to stock music I like that won't always sell as well than to buy online, plus I hate waiting for anything).
As a parent, if you don't want this to happen, EXPOSE THEM TO GOOD MUSIC!. Trust me, I plan on doing this as soon as my kid can breathe.
Obviously, a fair amount of the music I listen to doesn't exactly agree with most parents (especially with a lot of it being stuff that gets significant attention from the various parent and religious groups). Fortunately, my parents were very understanding as to why I listen to the music I do, and supported my choices, as long as they were made for the right reasons. They probably don't know every single band I listen to, but they know a fair number of them (and my dad likes to joke about quite a few of them, that's just the way he is). The point, of course, is that they took the time to make sure I understood what I was listening to before giving me full reign over those decisions. Over time I've even earned a great deal of respect for my dad's taste in music, and he in turn has earned some respect in mine, as both of us have found things in each other's music libraries that we enjoy (ie I found out my dad was a Rush fan and a Black Sabbath fan when I was playing them a little too loud, and I loaned him a few of my CDs when I overheard him watching a Flecktones concert). I can never thank him enough for exposing me to such a diverse selection of music when I was growing up.
There's plenty of good rap out there like there is plenty of good Nu Metal bands out there.
No, really, if they call themselves or let themselves be marketed as 'Nu Metal', they probably aren't that good. Nu Metal is just an extension and commercialization of something that started somewhere else, most notably with Fear Factory. There are good bands that have a sound similar to 'Nu Metal' bands, but most of them would never be considered 'Nu Metal', unless the label/sub-genre has extended beyond the commercial realm.
When it comes down to it, though, that's the point. Most of the commercial versions of various genres that we receive through the label's interests have little clear redeeming value. The label picks them up, polishes and molds them to fit what they view as something that will sell (witness the grunge bands that were all picked up after Nirvana's Nevermind hit the charts, the rash of boy/girl bands, the number of hip-hop and rap artists shovelled onto the airwaves, and 'Nu Metal' bands springing up left and right, sounding mostly the same). The labels learned in the 80's that all it takes to sell metal bands is to tone them down a bit, polish them up, and get them to write lyrics that will sell records, they just got hammered with the backlash when they overdid it in that decade and pumped out too much crap for the consumers to handle. They turned over most of metal to small labels, some of which are still owned by the larger labels, and then they pick up the ones they think they can mold and sell when they think they can sell it. In another 10-20 years rap will be the same way, if the major labels survive as they are today.
The biggest problem the labels are having now is that it's very hard for them to figure out what people want, because people are diversifying their tastes a great deal. How much should they spend on this act/album when by the time they finish it the public will have moved on to something else? Nothing they've been doing lately has been able to top the early 90's, when bands were coming out of (seemingly, to the labels)nowhere and topping the charts (with sales 10x or more with one album than what Britney Spears has sold total), for the most part outside of record industry influence. Now we've got people listening to punk, ska, rap, r&b, hip-hop, metal, industrial, and who knows what else tomorrow, each of which has their own small labels that are well known among the more focused consumers (Metal Blade and Earache for Metal, WaxTrax and others for Industrial, even Trent Reznor's Nothing records, which is just a small part of Universal pretty much left to his decisions). Ultimately, the major labels previously survived by controlling information, and the dam finally broke, they're just trying to keep it together.
They were a death metal (grindcore) band from the UK (Liverpool, England), which pioneered the grindcore genre (along with Napalm Death and a few others), and probably did more to evolve the form than any other band in their short time (their last new album having been released in 1996). They did a remix of a Bjork song for one of her single releases which hit the top 10 in the UK. Many bands currently in all forms of death metal show the influence of Carcass, especially notable in the lyrics on recent Cannibal Corpse albums, which started picking up some of the medical jargon from early Carcass work (reading old Carcass lyrics requires many references to at least a good dictionary, if not a medical dictionary, for most people), and in the extension of the music's format to longer, more complex pieces, rather than the 30-second blasts that both Carcass and Napalm Death started off with (Napalm Death's 2nd CD has 54 songs).
In other words, although they did well, fame is not so much an issue as influence. Of course, those that are not familiar with the genre are unlikely to hear a single name they're familiar with in that group, though Cannibal Corpse and Napalm Death both continue to do well. When people complain about their record companies screwing them over 250,000+ sales, these guys do fine with less, and occasionally accomplish more (I don't believe there's a single Cannibal Corpse album that hasn't gone at least gold; their first album was the first death metal album to hit the Billboard Top 200, appeared playing on stage in a scene in Ace Ventura, banned in Australia, New Zealand, and Korea, banned from playing material from their first three albums in Germany, where one of their albums is banned from sale, and most record store chains will not carry the albums with their original artwork, so they are sold with 2 different covers, if they're carried at all).
Frankly, I think it says more, though, that a band so many people have never heard of could get away with doing something like this to a major label. Columbia thought that they could mold Carcass into the next Metallica or Megadeth (who had the #1 and 2 spots on Billboard a couple years earlier), but what they got was at best (in Columbia's eyes) closer to the earlier works of both bands, which wasn't what the label was looking for (despite both Metallica and Megadeth selling millions of all of their albums).
I never thought of it like this before, but that's really what happens. What's worse - there's nothing more frustrating than a band changing labels -- the old label still owns all the band's old music, which unfortunately means that they take some pretty good stuff and stick it in a basement somewhere
This is exactly why artists should really strive to get a minor label deal in which they have more control before even thinking about a major label deal. Sure, the major labels have better distribution and get their crap played as much as they want, but they will take advantage of new artists in ways most would never imagine.
One of my favourite examples of a band doing it right was when Carcass signed with Columbia worldwide (they had done a previous album with Columbia distributing the international release) after 3 releases (plus an EP or two) on Earache. Columbia wanted them to tone down the album for Columbia's perceived audience, and the band refused, took the album (which Columbia had already paid the recording costs on), and released it on Earache. I'm sure it cost them a bit to break off from Columbia, but they had covered their bases on who owned their music before they signed the deal.
Of course, the singer/bassist decided that even the not-toned-down album was a little too far from his vision for the band and they broke up after that album was released (with members of the band scattering elsewhere, as is fairly normal in the genre, especially given the number of members Carcass had had over it's lifetime and the bands that some of them had come from (like Napalm Death, which might as well be a showcase for death metal musicians with the number of lineup changes, and the number of bands that have had past Napalm Death members)).
I think the real hypocrisy lies in the fact that his label went to bat for him when MTV refused to play black artists in the early 80's. They threatened to pull all of their videos if they didn't play his. Of course, at the same time, this shows that the labels can and do have too much influence over what does and does not get played, and if it had not been getting played because it sucked (as opposed to a racial issue), there'd be a very big problem with the label doing that.
What musicians need to to work together to promote themselves and others that they feel promote their style of music. In otherwords, it requires a lot of hard work and ass kissing, which might not be something most people are willing to do. However it is possible, the Offspring are evidence to that. Unfortunately, most musicians suffer from "rockstar" syndrome, and do not want to work and instead only think about the trappings that stardom will give them rather then producing music that moves people.
One example of this sort of thing I've seen recently is that a local band chartered a bus for a show they were doing about 2 hours away. The show had a total of 10 bands playing, and the band offered up the remaining seats on the bus at a fairly low price for anyone in the area that wanted to see the show. I'm not sure how it went for them, because I couldn't make the trip that weekend, but they seemed to be selling the tickets fairly quickly. Of course, the added effort was that they showed up at other shows in the area with similar music (which is admittedly few, as in most areas, given that it's death metal) and handed out cards with their website info, so that people would even know they were doing this in the first place.
It doesn't really matter much, all it's doing is making the reviewers listen to the albums on what might be an inferior player. A quick search on most file sharing programs will turn up 128K mp3s of most of the songs from the Tori album, they've been up for at least a week.
However, Linux already has perfectly acceptable development tools. Many people even prefer Linux's tools. And Linuxers are hard at work building development tools that are more Windows-like as well. So when the waves of Windows developers migrate to Linux they will be met with tools that are at least somewhat familiar, but they won't be Microsoft tools.
.Net framework-based product, which essentially means that they'd have something that could be multi-platform which represents a large portion of their current earnings (though the Mac version of Office itself isn't huge for them compared to Windows and Office for Windows, it is at close to 100% market share). They could easily streamline their BSD implementation of the .Net framework as well as port it to Linux if they needed to shift gears as Windows market share decreases. Of course, going from 85-95% market share to 50% market share would most likely not happen over nite, let alone going to a minority market share.
I learned how to write software on Linux, so I have a decent idea of what's available there, and it's definitely gotten much better in the last 6 years. Still, there's a lot more that needs to be worked on, though there are projects addressing many of those things. Now if only someone could put together a good replacement for X and a desktop environment that appeals to the masses without rehashing the same old crap things would be in good shape.
You see, Microsoft can't afford without the massive profits that it derives from Windows and MS Office.
Microsoft's been set up since very near the beginning with the idea that the company should be able to continue for at least a year with no income. Think about that for a bit, it certainly explains it's cash reserves, though they'd really have to streamline their development process to get something out the door in a year's time that would have the chance of changing the company from 0 income to a good profit margin. Then again, it would take something fairly catastrophic to put them at 0 income in the first place these days. Microsoft's been pressuring their MacBU to develop the next version of Office for the Mac as a
As far as Microsoft's stock price goes, it currently is still less than half what it was before Judge Jackson's ruling in the anti-trust case. Given the current economic climate it's not likely to return to it's previous value until both the economy recovers and all of the antitrust cases are put behind the company (and if any of them comes out too bad for MS, it may never happen that their stock price recovers).
Yes, but Visual Studio isn't going to keep anyone on Windows. MS Office reinforces MS Window's dominance, but Visual Studio is simply the tool that people use when they want to write Windows software. If folks start switching to something other than Windows on the desktop, then developers will switch right along with them.
.Net framework in the firstplace is to give them a safety net that allows them to move their software to other platforms quickly if their Windows platform is taken away from them or drops in market share.
That's an interesting way of looking at it, though it's completely the opposite of what most successful platforms have done in the past. You get the developers first, which brings the applications, and that brings the users.
Then again, if you think Microsoft won't start developing applications for whatever platform is at the top, you're deluding yourself. They already develop their most important software for the top 2 desktop platforms, and they have more Unix development experience than most people are willing to admit. The whole purpose of the
Now the trolls are not only going to call linux users commies, now we're gonna be called nazi's as well
Of course, both terms have worse connotations than were originally intended. The words (or the group in terms of nazi) were simply polluted by certain individuals. There's really nothing wrong with communism unless you're dead-set against the economic system it describes (though it may not actually work in any place other than Star Trek, that's another story). Even the Nazi party was just a political party until Hitler came along and screwed everything up, though, of course, some people may have issues with Socialism, which I could certainly understand in most cases.
I'm not fully confident that stringing together Perl, Apache, MySQL, etc is really going to produce a cohesive Web server. :-)
Isn't that really the Open Source Way(tm)? Why build some monolithic beast when most of the parts already exist?
The difficult-to-install issue is a function of your distribution. Debian unstable (possibly stable and testing too, I'm not sure) carries all of those programs (including the most current Cyrus).
Even Microsoft's stuff (most of it, anyway) is just a bunch of pieces created to do certain functions and configured to communicate with each other to perform specific tasks (the biggest difference being that Microsoft usually designs the smaller parts with the larger purpose in mind, whereas this is sort of like repurposing existing components).
All they really need to do once they've figured out how to get this to do what they want it to do, and done whatever coding and configuration is needed, is to put together a clean installer to make it happen. Check versions of existing components, prompt to find whether existing components should be replaced or new components should be installed in a different location (with info on any differences between 'standard' components and the ones in the 'kroupware' package), configure, and then drop to an options dialog. Easier said than done, perhaps, but if even Microsoft could get it right people would be a lot happier with their software.
Developers should NEVER work with bleeding edge computers...because then they develop for that platform so what turns out seems fine to them running a P4 2.8 GHZ computer totally blows on something like a pIII 500 mhz...which you are right really isn't that old!
Actually, they should just do all testing on old hardware. Build, code, etc on the best computer you've got, because especially with the compile it'll save you a lot of time, but never run the executable on the dev machine unless you're debugging. My main system here at work (the one I develop on) is a 1.7GHz system, but I've got a P3-500 on the other side of the desk for testing (actually, it's only there because I need an ISA slot for an I/O card, which the P4 system does not have, but the target system is a P3-750 so the 500 is a good test bed for components). Of course, if anything lags on the 500, it's not going to be acceptable with the amount of software running on our platform.
Other than Office and Windows, MS does not have a single market leader on the desktop, out of all their many products.
Visual Studio is also the #1 IDE, though, of course, that's not often counted as a desktop product.
A highschool friend used to eat hotdogs right out of the package, they're usually pre-cooked so no fear of getting bugs. It seemed weird at the time, but it's effectively a stick of balogna, eh?
(depending on the hot dog, of course) It's usually less fat and has a better texture and flavour, too.
Because when you're sleeping, your metabolism slows waaaaay down. This is why you will get fat if you eat meals right before you go to sleep.
Yet your body's metabolism and brain activity are higher when you're sleeping than when you're sitting watching TV (what a large portion of the population does after dinner if the ratings are to be believed). How many people do you see in an average office that look like they're more active than they are when they're watching TV at home?