Maybe it's the license? maybe it's lack of marketing?
Well, I don't think the vast majority of browser users care much about the license. They do, however, care what their more-knowledgeable compatriots think.
Put it this way: Firefox has untold thousands of open-source fans promoting it for free. That kind of power you just can't compete with, unless you have substantial funds to spend on marketing. I mean, I've recommended and installed Firefox for many people over the past few years. It was generally stable, more secure than IE, and as well as free and open source. It also resulted in a lot fewer support calls from friends and family (as compared to Internet Explorer, just to be precise.)
Well, the contest used to be between who was the richest tech CEO in America. Gates pretty much took that crown, so now they slug it out as to who is the biggest asshole. And I gotta tell ya, it's tough picking between the likes of Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, and the Gates/Ballmer combine. They're all royal jerks.
True, although the term was generally limited to large-scale infringement. The dude that copied a book for his own use was never a pirate. The guy that mass-produced thousands of unauthorized copies and sold them was definitely a pirate. The RIAA is responsible for doing its level best to make grandmothers, teenagers and people who've never owned a computer into pirates.
So you're more willing to install spyware that records every second you play the game and monitors you while you're playing it then spend five seconds to put the right CD in the drive?
I don't think that's what he was saying. What he was pointing out is that the bulk of people who buy software don't understand what "phoning home" means, don't understand the consequences of spyware, and only care whether their software does what it says on the box.
And there I'm in total agreement. There's a definitely a widespread lack of awareness of these issues.
Can you list more useful uses of weapons than enriched uranium?
Certainly. I think if you were to educate yourself on the primary function of weapons in civilized society, the reason the Founders wanted us to have them, and the current most-common application of firearms in the U.S. you'd be surprised. Very surprised. Start with a researcher by the name of Gary Kleck if you want to know more about the defensive uses of firearms (which, by the way, most often involves individuals not discharging their weapons.)
Going up the scale to nuclear weapons, you'll find that with only two exceptions those weapons have had no place in war to date. The reason nations want nukes is not to destroy, but as a deterrent to military action by a hostile power, and as a tool for intimidation. Take India and Pakistan, for example... neither side ever wants to use the things but they both have them.
You do realize that you went to an unreasonable extreme in a vain attempt to discredit the original poster? That he was not, in fact, advocating the large-scale distribution of weapons of mass destruction to the general population?
You're absolutely right, but I'd say it's less a matter of fundamental hypocrisy as it is one of fear. And that's mostly from unfamiliarity... people are afraid of the unknown. We're pretty much hardwired for that, and in this case I think the government does us a disservice by discouraging people from owning firearms or learning how to use them properly. I'd rather have someone who knows what he's doing with a gun holding one on me, rather than someone who's never fired one before and is terrified of it. That applies as much to criminals as it does to us law-abiding types.
It's a machine people. Yes, it's one that requires some knowledge and self-discipline to own and use safely, but that's all it is. Would that We the People spent as much time bitching about the poorly-trained drivers we have in this country as we do about gun owners. The untold millions of four-wheeled sociopaths on the road today are responsible for a hell of a lot more death, destruction and general mayhem than all gun owners combined. But that's okay, you see, because cars are technology that we all find comfortable and familiar, in spite of the fact that a car is just as much of a weapon as a.44 Magnum. If everyone carried a gun, but only a few drove automobiles, we'd all be irrationally afraid of cars.
Personally, I'm far more concerned about being killed on the way to work by some lobeless, cell-phone-wielding, SUV-driving thimblebrain than I am about being shot. If the Feds really (I'm mean, really) want to make our lives safer, they should force the states to implement some serious training requirements for obtaining a driver's license. That should mean a CV (Commercial Vehicle) license for anyone that wants to drive a big SUV. Do that, and leave gun owners alone, and they would save a lot more lives each year.
You're not going to see everyone fight together, it's not in human nature.
More correctly, you won't see people fight together spontaneously for the greater good. Matter of fact, in this case they wouldn't be fighting together: they'd be independently fighting the same enemy. That usually doesn't end well, because a mob is rarely as effective as a well-organized force.
On the other hand, people fight together all the time once they are properly organized and facing a common enemy. What you're really saying is that there needs to be some organization with substantial funding whose only purpose is to fight these cases.
To a lot of overprotected-live-in-the-parent's-basement technojock types, a gun is scary, if nothing else because of unfamiliarity. Besides, if the ranchers were taking pictures of license plates, odds are they were planning on involving law enforcement, not gunning anyone down.
I think the GP's point is that DRM only has to fail once for a given release, and it's failed permanently and globally. That's the reason that MPAA has been targeting torrent indexers lately... they know very well that DRM cannot hold back the tide on its own. They still seem to think they can limit unauthorized distribution of cracked copies, though. Probably a futile effort, but we'll see.
Worse for them, as the Napster/MP3 debacle demonstrated very clearly, the vast majority of consumers aren't interested in "digitally perfect copies" of music or movies at all. Certainly not so much that it influences their purchasing decisions. They're interested in merely adequate copies, and are especially interested if said copies are free.
Ultimately, this is going to prove an expensive waste of time for the media outfits. Any victory they gain will likely be strictly Pyrrhic. Put it this way: they may very well succeed in reestablishing some approximation of the iron-fisted control of distribution that they once enjoyed. However, given the caliber of people running these corporations, and the attitude they exhibit towards their herd^h^h^h^hcustomer base, odds are they'll lose a big chunk of their market share. People have had a taste of what it's like to have control of their media, and I think the studios are going to have to acknowledge that at some point.
There are very few established brands anymore. Unfortunately for us and the Europeans, China has been using our brand-consciousness against us for some years now. Old-line American audio equipment manufacturers like Marantz sold their names and are now just marketing fronts. The point being, a particular model from a particular maker may be good quality and worth the money, but you can no longer depend upon branding as a reliable indicator of quality. You need to do your research first before you plunk down your money (good advice in any event, but it's especially true today.)
The analysis shows that the nucleobases contain a heavy form of carbon which could only have been formed in space. Materials formed on Earth consist of a lighter variety of carbon.
What are they talking about? Heavy carbon? Is that just a non-technical way of referring to an isotope? No, I didn't RTFA.
And the last time I checked, more people believed US is a bigger threat to world peace.
And what has that got to do with reality? More people believe in God than don't, but that doesn't make God any more factual. Get off your anti-U.S. pulpit for a moment, and grasp that the United States has been far more of a stabilizing factor in world affairs than otherwise. That's because any would-be Hitlers out there know very well what would happen if they tried anything nasty on a significant scale. Nobody but the Russians really tried to match us militarily, and they failed. However, that's in the process of changing.
Face it, China has the same aspirations towards world domination as Russia does, and I can pretty much guarantee that at some point within the next decade even people practicing hard-core denial like you will sit up and take notice. Unlike Russia, there's a damned good chance that China will be able to pull it off: they're not making the same mistakes as their Soviet neighbors. We won't be able to outdo them on military spending because a. they're gradually taking over supplying our military and b. have successfully decimated large portions of our manufacturing sector. Once China finally turns on us and stops providing us with critical manufactured goods we're as good as dead. We may very well see a repeat of the collapse of the Soviet Union, only this time it will be us. It doesn't have to be that way, but it will because they've found our weak spots and are exploiting them viciously.
That may not be a good thing for the rest of the world, no matter how much they may hate the U.S. at the moment. When China finally goes on the warpath, you'd better hope that the United States is still capable of taking them on. I don't think we will be: if nothing else China's government is almost preternaturally patient, and they'll bide their time until we're too weak to stop them.
The European Union had better take note: the United States' days are numbered. Start looking to your own defense because sooner or later, you're going to need it. Bigtime. We never went on an empire-building spree in spite of having the most powerful military force ever assembled by a single nation, but I do not believe that China will exercise the same level of restraint.
You could die, but the dead don't feel regret for failing to take a chance on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Yes, but if the dead could feel regret they probably would, as in, "Christ, that was stupid. What the hell was I thinking?" That's because most people don't bother to think very hard about their own mortality. If they did, they wouldn't do things like smoke and drive SUVs at a hundred miles an hour with a cell phone jammed in their ear. It's always the other guy that will get smeared. AT least, that's what we all think until the instant we say "Ah, shit!" and it's all over.
Furthermore, you don't necessarily come back dead from such amazing experiences: sometimes you just come back maimed or paralyzed or otherwise permanently fucked up. For myself, my life isn't so boring that I'd risk spaceflight at the current state-of-the-art, as appealing as such a fantasy might be.
On the other hand, human life does become more valuable the further we get from Earth. I mean, how many have died from spaceflight versus the number of people that are cremated each year in aircraft that prematurely hit the ground. Hell, we mow each other down in cars by the hundreds of thousands every year.
I guess maybe Superman was right after all. Flying is still the safest way to travel.
Surely our enemies with resource (and computer resource is cheap and abundant) are going to try to hack us. Shouldn't we be more focused on securing our system:
Enemies. Yes, that's a good point. Security is all well and good, but frankly we should be more focused on the consequences of our economic ties to a hostile totalitarian state.
Slashdot Mirror
The project -- completed neither on time nor on budget
including state-of-the-art datacenter-planning software
Am I missing something?
Maybe it's the license? maybe it's lack of marketing?
Well, I don't think the vast majority of browser users care much about the license. They do, however, care what their more-knowledgeable compatriots think.
Put it this way: Firefox has untold thousands of open-source fans promoting it for free. That kind of power you just can't compete with, unless you have substantial funds to spend on marketing. I mean, I've recommended and installed Firefox for many people over the past few years. It was generally stable, more secure than IE, and as well as free and open source. It also resulted in a lot fewer support calls from friends and family (as compared to Internet Explorer, just to be precise.)
I dunno ... my 800 Mhz. living room PC downloaded it at 500 kbytes/sec.
Well, the contest used to be between who was the richest tech CEO in America. Gates pretty much took that crown, so now they slug it out as to who is the biggest asshole. And I gotta tell ya, it's tough picking between the likes of Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, and the Gates/Ballmer combine. They're all royal jerks.
True, although the term was generally limited to large-scale infringement. The dude that copied a book for his own use was never a pirate. The guy that mass-produced thousands of unauthorized copies and sold them was definitely a pirate. The RIAA is responsible for doing its level best to make grandmothers, teenagers and people who've never owned a computer into pirates.
So you're more willing to install spyware that records every second you play the game and monitors you while you're playing it then spend five seconds to put the right CD in the drive?
I don't think that's what he was saying. What he was pointing out is that the bulk of people who buy software don't understand what "phoning home" means, don't understand the consequences of spyware, and only care whether their software does what it says on the box.
And there I'm in total agreement. There's a definitely a widespread lack of awareness of these issues.
Can you list more useful uses of weapons than enriched uranium?
... neither side ever wants to use the things but they both have them.
Certainly. I think if you were to educate yourself on the primary function of weapons in civilized society, the reason the Founders wanted us to have them, and the current most-common application of firearms in the U.S. you'd be surprised. Very surprised. Start with a researcher by the name of Gary Kleck if you want to know more about the defensive uses of firearms (which, by the way, most often involves individuals not discharging their weapons.)
Going up the scale to nuclear weapons, you'll find that with only two exceptions those weapons have had no place in war to date. The reason nations want nukes is not to destroy, but as a deterrent to military action by a hostile power, and as a tool for intimidation. Take India and Pakistan, for example
I think I speak for a lot of us here when I say: What a punch of pussies.
Ah, I believe you meant "punch of bussies".
To you city folks who think this is wrong, how would you like to wake up and find me in your living room?
Depends. Are you a seriously-hot blond nympho with huge tits who happens to have a thing for senior software engineers?
You do realize that you went to an unreasonable extreme in a vain attempt to discredit the original poster? That he was not, in fact, advocating the large-scale distribution of weapons of mass destruction to the general population?
You're absolutely right, but I'd say it's less a matter of fundamental hypocrisy as it is one of fear. And that's mostly from unfamiliarity ... people are afraid of the unknown. We're pretty much hardwired for that, and in this case I think the government does us a disservice by discouraging people from owning firearms or learning how to use them properly. I'd rather have someone who knows what he's doing with a gun holding one on me, rather than someone who's never fired one before and is terrified of it. That applies as much to criminals as it does to us law-abiding types.
.44 Magnum. If everyone carried a gun, but only a few drove automobiles, we'd all be irrationally afraid of cars.
It's a machine people. Yes, it's one that requires some knowledge and self-discipline to own and use safely, but that's all it is. Would that We the People spent as much time bitching about the poorly-trained drivers we have in this country as we do about gun owners. The untold millions of four-wheeled sociopaths on the road today are responsible for a hell of a lot more death, destruction and general mayhem than all gun owners combined. But that's okay, you see, because cars are technology that we all find comfortable and familiar, in spite of the fact that a car is just as much of a weapon as a
Personally, I'm far more concerned about being killed on the way to work by some lobeless, cell-phone-wielding, SUV-driving thimblebrain than I am about being shot. If the Feds really (I'm mean, really) want to make our lives safer, they should force the states to implement some serious training requirements for obtaining a driver's license. That should mean a CV (Commercial Vehicle) license for anyone that wants to drive a big SUV. Do that, and leave gun owners alone, and they would save a lot more lives each year.
You're not going to see everyone fight together, it's not in human nature.
More correctly, you won't see people fight together spontaneously for the greater good. Matter of fact, in this case they wouldn't be fighting together: they'd be independently fighting the same enemy. That usually doesn't end well, because a mob is rarely as effective as a well-organized force.
On the other hand, people fight together all the time once they are properly organized and facing a common enemy. What you're really saying is that there needs to be some organization with substantial funding whose only purpose is to fight these cases.
That I don't see happening any time soon.
To a lot of overprotected-live-in-the-parent's-basement technojock types, a gun is scary, if nothing else because of unfamiliarity. Besides, if the ranchers were taking pictures of license plates, odds are they were planning on involving law enforcement, not gunning anyone down.
I think the GP's point is that DRM only has to fail once for a given release, and it's failed permanently and globally. That's the reason that MPAA has been targeting torrent indexers lately ... they know very well that DRM cannot hold back the tide on its own. They still seem to think they can limit unauthorized distribution of cracked copies, though. Probably a futile effort, but we'll see.
Worse for them, as the Napster/MP3 debacle demonstrated very clearly, the vast majority of consumers aren't interested in "digitally perfect copies" of music or movies at all. Certainly not so much that it influences their purchasing decisions. They're interested in merely adequate copies, and are especially interested if said copies are free.
Ultimately, this is going to prove an expensive waste of time for the media outfits. Any victory they gain will likely be strictly Pyrrhic. Put it this way: they may very well succeed in reestablishing some approximation of the iron-fisted control of distribution that they once enjoyed. However, given the caliber of people running these corporations, and the attitude they exhibit towards their herd^h^h^h^hcustomer base, odds are they'll lose a big chunk of their market share. People have had a taste of what it's like to have control of their media, and I think the studios are going to have to acknowledge that at some point.
Reviews are hitting the net for the first Intel Atom-powered netbooks
If it really were atomic-powered, we wouldn't have to worry about battery life.
BPI Defends Anti-File-Sharing Partnership With Virgin Media
You're still a bunch of assholes.
There are very few established brands anymore. Unfortunately for us and the Europeans, China has been using our brand-consciousness against us for some years now. Old-line American audio equipment manufacturers like Marantz sold their names and are now just marketing fronts. The point being, a particular model from a particular maker may be good quality and worth the money, but you can no longer depend upon branding as a reliable indicator of quality. You need to do your research first before you plunk down your money (good advice in any event, but it's especially true today.)
maybe piss does too
Yes, but only if you are using a reciprocating internal combustion engine that has pisstons.
Orbiting HAMs ... brings new meaning to the phrase "High And Mighty".
The analysis shows that the nucleobases contain a heavy form of carbon which could only have been formed in space. Materials formed on Earth consist of a lighter variety of carbon.
What are they talking about? Heavy carbon? Is that just a non-technical way of referring to an isotope? No, I didn't RTFA.
And the last time I checked, more people believed US is a bigger threat to world peace.
And what has that got to do with reality? More people believe in God than don't, but that doesn't make God any more factual. Get off your anti-U.S. pulpit for a moment, and grasp that the United States has been far more of a stabilizing factor in world affairs than otherwise. That's because any would-be Hitlers out there know very well what would happen if they tried anything nasty on a significant scale. Nobody but the Russians really tried to match us militarily, and they failed. However, that's in the process of changing.
Face it, China has the same aspirations towards world domination as Russia does, and I can pretty much guarantee that at some point within the next decade even people practicing hard-core denial like you will sit up and take notice. Unlike Russia, there's a damned good chance that China will be able to pull it off: they're not making the same mistakes as their Soviet neighbors. We won't be able to outdo them on military spending because a. they're gradually taking over supplying our military and b. have successfully decimated large portions of our manufacturing sector. Once China finally turns on us and stops providing us with critical manufactured goods we're as good as dead. We may very well see a repeat of the collapse of the Soviet Union, only this time it will be us. It doesn't have to be that way, but it will because they've found our weak spots and are exploiting them viciously.
That may not be a good thing for the rest of the world, no matter how much they may hate the U.S. at the moment. When China finally goes on the warpath, you'd better hope that the United States is still capable of taking them on. I don't think we will be: if nothing else China's government is almost preternaturally patient, and they'll bide their time until we're too weak to stop them.
The European Union had better take note: the United States' days are numbered. Start looking to your own defense because sooner or later, you're going to need it. Bigtime. We never went on an empire-building spree in spite of having the most powerful military force ever assembled by a single nation, but I do not believe that China will exercise the same level of restraint.
You could die, but the dead don't feel regret for failing to take a chance on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Yes, but if the dead could feel regret they probably would, as in, "Christ, that was stupid. What the hell was I thinking?" That's because most people don't bother to think very hard about their own mortality. If they did, they wouldn't do things like smoke and drive SUVs at a hundred miles an hour with a cell phone jammed in their ear. It's always the other guy that will get smeared. AT least, that's what we all think until the instant we say "Ah, shit!" and it's all over.
Furthermore, you don't necessarily come back dead from such amazing experiences: sometimes you just come back maimed or paralyzed or otherwise permanently fucked up. For myself, my life isn't so boring that I'd risk spaceflight at the current state-of-the-art, as appealing as such a fantasy might be.
On the other hand, human life does become more valuable the further we get from Earth. I mean, how many have died from spaceflight versus the number of people that are cremated each year in aircraft that prematurely hit the ground. Hell, we mow each other down in cars by the hundreds of thousands every year.
I guess maybe Superman was right after all. Flying is still the safest way to travel.
Surely our enemies with resource (and computer resource is cheap and abundant) are going to try to hack us. Shouldn't we be more focused on securing our system:
Enemies. Yes, that's a good point. Security is all well and good, but frankly we should be more focused on the consequences of our economic ties to a hostile totalitarian state.
OTOH, I am pretty much totally in favor of firewalling off all of China's IP address space...
... oh, right.
Yes, but then China would immediately retaliate by firewalling us off
I can see that this topic is going to spark some heated debate.