Here in the UK they have a huge screen from FACT (the Federation Against Copyright Theft) with a "Do not tape this, as that would be bad" (paraphrased) message.
Not only do I habitually give this screen the finger (yes, I know, it's immature), but if anything it makes me WANT to sit in the place with a camcorder.
3) Is there really a situation where this sort of thing would actually be useful or nessecary?
Well, there are certainly programs which seem to work perfectly on local drive, and bomb out if you try to either install them on a network, or store some of the files on a network.
Then again, maybe it's just that I'm doing something wrong, but Mavis Beacon 9 crashes out every time when I tell it to look to the Network for the User Save Files.
But some sort of hack to stop the OS from telling the difference between a local drive and a mapped network-share would be an absolute godsend.
And how many people do you know who skip the opportunity to watch their favorite program on free TV, and wait until they can d/l it over the Internet?
None.
However, living in the UK I know a lot of people who skip the opportunity to watch their favourite programs on free TV, 'cos they've already seen them off the Internet 2 years ago (without all the cuts we inevitably get), and seen the version a mate recorded off Cable one year ago (with on the cable-level cuts). If something's popular, like Buffy, they'll always show ti at an earlier timeslot than it was meant to be shown Stateside. As a result, cuts happen.
Hell, one episode of something finally came on in the UK, and I stopped watching halfway through. Sure, it was higher quality than the RealVideo encode I had from the US showing, but they'd cut out a major action scene. Shortly after I imported the R1 DVD.
Am I babbling on about nothing? Probably.
But the average viewer doesn't care about advertising revenues, they want to be entertained. And any kind of content protection/restriction is destined for failure.
No problem. Every law-abiding citizen will simply pay the licensing costs to obtain a broadcast flag of their own. Obviously.
Meanwhile, the other 98% of the population will buy the nifty little bypass-device that will inevitably be openly available at your local electronics store.
I don't exactly agree with the way that Sony are going around this, but I do wish that rabid anti-**AA types would shut up.
Sony are trying. True, they're still on what is (in my opinion) the losing side of the battle, but they are trying. They're actually trying to find a solution that everyday consumers (not geeks and slashdotters) might actually not complain about.
To be honest, what do people expect?
The internet is a distribution medium that surpasses what has gone before. And data is just so easy to copy and send. But record companies are still built around the older model, and they rely on their products not being easily distributed for "free". Protecting their business model makes perfect sense. I don't agree with their model, but I do know that trying to protect/adapt your business model makes perfect business sense.
Remember, the Internet's data distribution model isn't an "adaptation" of current practices. It smashes them to pieces. It takes everything from the current record companies, and puts it squarely in the hands of the coders, the ISPs, and the CDR/DVD+R/volatile-storage media companies.[*]
If you combine consumer desires with the Internet's distributions, then the Industry doesn't get a look in. And even though they're trying to protect a technologically obsolete business model, we'd be awfully naiive to expect them to just "roll over and play dead".
* - Remember, contrary to what the companies would have people believe, it's hardly "free" to get things over the Internet. Except for the schoolkids who use their parent's connections, 'net-users will be either paying their broadband provider, or their ISP and/or phone company.
We're already paying the new content providers. And, to be honest, the only way for the record companies (and book publishers and movie companies) to actually gain income from thigns these days is probably to buy shares in the ISPs and hosting-providers. (Oh, and subscription services for non-DRM files.)
But record-companies as we know them are reaching the end of the line. And to expect them to go down without a fight is expecting too much.
Now, I agree with you. I honestly do. It's these things, in part, that are holding off "Joe Sixpack" mass-adpotion of Linux as their Desktop OS.
But Windows can't do half of these, either.
The user can add a new PCI card and install a driver for it
Oh Gods. The amount of times in Windows that this has brought me up short. Though, admitedly, more so with older versions and newere hardware. or certain hardware-makers making their products all so different that a member of the same hardware "family" needs a whole other driver.
True, with Windows you can usually use Windows update or a websearch to find the driver. But this causes problems if it's your LAN or Modem that you don't have the right driver for.
(Or for a work/school environment where all your desktop PCs have a non-standard NIC,so it's pointless having the drivers on the network and they're always the ones where the drivers won't fit on a floppy)
The user can insert a hotplug device (USB or Firewire or even Bluetooh) and get a fixed, known location in the file system for it, the same one every time
Windows might run USB devices easier than Linux, but still not easy enough. *fume*
The user can click on any audio/video file and it will "just play"
Damn! Needs a new codec. Damn! Needs another new codec. Double-damn, sodding proprietary-format that is the only way the company-X releases the files. Arse! Codec #5 corrupted the way stuff in Codec #4 plays.
And all of the above must be possible WITHOUT the user EVER seeing a command line, and without ever hearing or reading the word "compile."
Windows still doesn't quite win on this, either. There are still one or two things (usually networking-related) where I have to use the Windows command-line.
Though, it does have to be said that if Windows was a new upcoming OS rather than "what everyone uses", this would work against MS's favour.
But, yeah, whilst the prevalence of Windows means that these thigns don't really harm Windows' use (at the moment, anyway...), they're certainly going to slow down the takeup of Linux by non-geeks.
Firstly, it's rather inconsistent to call IBM's statement "Bullshit", and then more or less agree with it by saying "of course we know..." that Linux isn't desktop-ready.
They're right. It isn't. And, to us, it's merely preaching to the converted. But you've got to looker at the audience that goes deeper than the/. crowd.
Remember, they said "is not ready" and not "is not suitable".
And coming from a big-shot like IBM, this is a good thing. They're saying that Linux can become ready for use as a Desktop-OS. And when a major-player says it, then the average User is likely to pay at least a little more attention than when Joe Geek in cubicle#2 says it.
Maybe Lindows, Mandrake et al are a lot closer to being ready than some distributions, but I still wouldn't recommend it to a new computer-user. I want to be able to recommended it to a new user. I want to be able to recommend a viable alternative to Windows XP. But I can't. Not yet.
I sure as hell don't like the way that Windows simplifies things, but the simple fact is that it is desktop-ready. The problems are in stability and security. But it's got the Desktop part right.
Just because it changes direction does not mean that was not intended in the first place. It may take a turn or two that I disagree with, but...
The parent post has hit the nail on the head.
Reloaded and Revolutions are good films. They're enjoyable. But they don't really live up to the first film.
But that's working under the premise that the important thing for a sequel is to live up to the original standard/hype/whatever.
The very nature of the first Matrix film is one that doesn't allow for a direct "more of the same, only better" that many people want.
Reloaded was "more of the same, with some new stuff as well". Many people didn't like the new stuff, it seems. But it was necessary for the next stage in the story.
Maybe the direction it took isn't the one that people wanted. But it was telling the story that the Wachowskis wanted to tell. If that's not the story people wanted to see, then tough. Don't see the film. Don't buy the DVD.
In the end, the only important thing (to the writer) about a story is whether you're happy with what you wrote.
Other people liking it is a bonus - a big bonus, true - but not as important as being satisfied with your own work.
Aye. There are parts of Leeds at the moment that sound like a war-zone.
And I'm not trying to belittle war-zones. More like point out it must be weeks of living hell for anyone who's lived through a war, or is a refugee from a war-torm country.
The interface of Windows is simple enough that when I manage to generate a problem, which I'm fairly good at not doing, I can dig through help files and the internet to fix it.
Actually, I find the opposite true.
With Windows, the "something has gone wrong" style error boxes are a headache, as they rarely give me enough information to find the right answer online. There have been times when it's taken me several days before I've finally searched for the right combination of error codes/messages to get a working solution.
Linux programs might generate error messages which I don't understand and scare the crap out of me, but a string-search on the scary-looking-error-message often leads me to a page telling me exactly what i did wrong and how to fix it.
We prefer the command line to double-click voodoo. "Unable to browse network" is not a useful piece of information to me, but running smbclient in verbose mode is. The CLI isn't dead for normal people, any more than it ever was. "normal people" never used the CLI to begin with.
I have to say, AC or not, this is a valid point.
As confusing as CLIs are for Joe Average-Windows-User, the Windows "Double-click with few user-settable flags and crap error messages" make troubleshooting a real problem.
Hell, even in Windows I have to open a command prompt to run a DOS command if I want any hope of getting an error message that I can use.
And even then, the DOS comands often have fewer flags and less verbose setting than their Linux equivalents.
And then you get in the the Windows Registry habit of squirrelling settings away in places that are hard to find. Several times (home and work) I've had to boot into Linux just to see whether a problem is the computer or the OS. (Bootable Knoppix CDs are a Godsend!)
KDE (and probably GNOME, but I don't use it so can't comment) has gone a great way into making GUI-interfaces to a lot of the "arcane configuration" settings. And being on top of linux, there's still on the command-line overrides. So, in theory, Desktop Linux should make things easier for an average User to manage.
But, sadly, it still has a way to go until it's as "User Friendly"* as Windows.
* - Except that I'm a Windows User most of the time, and don't find it very friendly.
Unfortunately the hardware/software makers do.
What is it that makes Linux more difficult to use for Joe Dummy?
Windows basically tries to do all the "background" stuff for you. For "Joe Dummy" who sees a computer as a near-arcane item, this is a Good Thing.
Amusingly, it's this same reason why, as a geek, I don't like Windows too much.
It tries to do all the stuff I want to set myself, and won't let me override it.
A Linux distro that Joe Dummy could use would probably be a godsend. The automation than newbies need, but a clearly documented set of options for advanced users to tweak to their heart's content.
Yeah. Gentoo's really good for learning more about what goes on "under the hood" during a Linux install. Even a Stage 3 requires more low-level intervention than a standard sitro-install, yet it also has enough pre-sets to not risk screwing things up too much.
Only make sure you have several hours free. The "wait for the kernel to compile" stage is a real bugger.
Actually, does anyone know how to make genkernel more verbose? Then at least I can tell whether it's doing anything.
Netscape's problem wasnt MS. If they had put out a better product (more stable, mostly), they could have retained their lead. I personally switched because I was tired of Netscape crashing every five minutes, and taking all my other browser windows with it.
Kinda like why I switched from IE to Moz. I was tired of IE crashing daily, and taking out my entire graphical shell.
Then again, that happened less and less when i switched to LiteStep.
Currently I don't think Google has that kind of threat hanging over it.
Running a search doesn't cause your PC to bomb out, and at this moment in time[*] they have several useful features that the alternatives lack.
[*] Yes, this will last only as long as they manage to keep one innovation ahead of the opposition.
There's nothing wrong with following the mainstream, and liking the same things as everybody else. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Yeah, so fall into line, you fucking independent thinkers! And while you're at the mall shopping at "Game" store, stop by the mall and pick up the latest Britney Spears album for when you are happy and Linkin Park album for when you are sad,
Seriously, there's nothing wrong with actually liking modern games. Personally I enjoyed Final Fantasy X. I don't wish that all games worked in exactly the same way, mainly 'cos I likes FFX as it wasn't like any game I'd perosnally encountered before.
Plus you don't need to diss all current popular culture. Besides, what's wrong with Linkin Park? I happen to like them. I hate that most 13-year-olds tend to like them as "they're cool", but that doesn't stop me from liking the band on their own merit.
It's nice that X allows remote windowing. But how many users actually need that?
Me, for one.
Right now, it's only the lack of a decent free XServer for Windows that's keeping me from getting rid of the Linux box's 14" monitor which currently hogs my other desk.
Having recently (last night...) installed Cygwin on my WinBox, if I can get it to connect to my Linux box properly (tweaking stuff until it works not being one of my strong points) then I can finally reclaim my actual desk without having to fork out for a KVW I can't afford yet.
And that's just "casual home use". If I used Linux at work, I'd definitely appreciate the ability to graphically log into the machine without being right next to it.
Watch out for oddities such as the Daylight to Standard time switch, though.
This is a bitch with DeepFreeze too. (Though a worthwhile one compared to the havoc Students/Tutors can cause on the PCs).
I was just lucky this week that it coincided with both a no-lessons week and the latest Virus Signature update.
Slashdot Mirror
Here in the UK they have a huge screen from FACT (the Federation Against Copyright Theft) with a "Do not tape this, as that would be bad" (paraphrased) message.
Not only do I habitually give this screen the finger (yes, I know, it's immature), but if anything it makes me WANT to sit in the place with a camcorder.
Tiggs
"Spam", naturlich.*
Aber, ist das mit Der, Die oder Das?
Tiggs
(* Well, that's my guess anyway. Some 'net-culture words seem to be international)
Well, there are certainly programs which seem to work perfectly on local drive, and bomb out if you try to either install them on a network, or store some of the files on a network.
Then again, maybe it's just that I'm doing something wrong, but Mavis Beacon 9 crashes out every time when I tell it to look to the Network for the User Save Files.
TiggsBut some sort of hack to stop the OS from telling the difference between a local drive and a mapped network-share would be an absolute godsend.
And how exactly is this going to stop us Brits from demeaning the US legal system?
Tiggs(Seeing that a lot of us think our own Legal System is crap anyway)
None.
However, living in the UK I know a lot of people who skip the opportunity to watch their favourite programs on free TV, 'cos they've already seen them off the Internet 2 years ago (without all the cuts we inevitably get), and seen the version a mate recorded off Cable one year ago (with on the cable-level cuts).
If something's popular, like Buffy, they'll always show ti at an earlier timeslot than it was meant to be shown Stateside. As a result, cuts happen.
Hell, one episode of something finally came on in the UK, and I stopped watching halfway through. Sure, it was higher quality than the RealVideo encode I had from the US showing, but they'd cut out a major action scene. Shortly after I imported the R1 DVD.
Am I babbling on about nothing? Probably.
TiggsBut the average viewer doesn't care about advertising revenues, they want to be entertained. And any kind of content protection/restriction is destined for failure.
Meanwhile, the other 98% of the population will buy the nifty little bypass-device that will inevitably be openly available at your local electronics store.
TiggsI don't exactly agree with the way that Sony are going around this, but I do wish that rabid anti-**AA types would shut up.
Sony are trying. True, they're still on what is (in my opinion) the losing side of the battle, but they are trying. They're actually trying to find a solution that everyday consumers (not geeks and slashdotters) might actually not complain about.
To be honest, what do people expect?
The internet is a distribution medium that surpasses what has gone before. And data is just so easy to copy and send. But record companies are still built around the older model, and they rely on their products not being easily distributed for "free".
Protecting their business model makes perfect sense. I don't agree with their model, but I do know that trying to protect/adapt your business model makes perfect business sense.
Remember, the Internet's data distribution model isn't an "adaptation" of current practices. It smashes them to pieces. It takes everything from the current record companies, and puts it squarely in the hands of the coders, the ISPs, and the CDR/DVD+R/volatile-storage media companies.[*]
If you combine consumer desires with the Internet's distributions, then the Industry doesn't get a look in. And even though they're trying to protect a technologically obsolete business model, we'd be awfully naiive to expect them to just "roll over and play dead".
* - Remember, contrary to what the companies would have people believe, it's hardly "free" to get things over the Internet. Except for the schoolkids who use their parent's connections, 'net-users will be either paying their broadband provider, or their ISP and/or phone company.
We're already paying the new content providers. And, to be honest, the only way for the record companies (and book publishers and movie companies) to actually gain income from thigns these days is probably to buy shares in the ISPs and hosting-providers.
(Oh, and subscription services for non-DRM files.)
But record-companies as we know them are reaching the end of the line. And to expect them to go down without a fight is expecting too much.
Tiggs
Now, I agree with you. I honestly do. It's these things, in part, that are holding off "Joe Sixpack" mass-adpotion of Linux as their Desktop OS.
But Windows can't do half of these, either.
Oh Gods. The amount of times in Windows that this has brought me up short. Though, admitedly, more so with older versions and newere hardware. or certain hardware-makers making their products all so different that a member of the same hardware "family" needs a whole other driver.
True, with Windows you can usually use Windows update or a websearch to find the driver. But this causes problems if it's your LAN or Modem that you don't have the right driver for.
(Or for a work/school environment where all your desktop PCs have a non-standard NIC,so it's pointless having the drivers on the network and they're always the ones where the drivers won't fit on a floppy)
Windows might run USB devices easier than Linux, but still not easy enough. *fume*
Damn! Needs a new codec. Damn! Needs another new codec. Double-damn, sodding proprietary-format that is the only way the company-X releases the files. Arse! Codec #5 corrupted the way stuff in Codec #4 plays.
Windows still doesn't quite win on this, either. There are still one or two things (usually networking-related) where I have to use the Windows command-line.
Though, it does have to be said that if Windows was a new upcoming OS rather than "what everyone uses", this would work against MS's favour.
But, yeah, whilst the prevalence of Windows means that these thigns don't really harm Windows' use (at the moment, anyway...), they're certainly going to slow down the takeup of Linux by non-geeks.
TiggsFirstly, it's rather inconsistent to call IBM's statement "Bullshit", and then more or less agree with it by saying "of course we know..." that Linux isn't desktop-ready.
They're right. It isn't. And, to us, it's merely preaching to the converted. But you've got to looker at the audience that goes deeper than the /. crowd.
Remember, they said "is not ready" and not "is not suitable".
And coming from a big-shot like IBM, this is a good thing. They're saying that Linux can become ready for use as a Desktop-OS. And when a major-player says it, then the average User is likely to pay at least a little more attention than when Joe Geek in cubicle#2 says it.
Maybe Lindows, Mandrake et al are a lot closer to being ready than some distributions, but I still wouldn't recommend it to a new computer-user. I want to be able to recommended it to a new user. I want to be able to recommend a viable alternative to Windows XP. But I can't. Not yet.
I sure as hell don't like the way that Windows simplifies things, but the simple fact is that it is desktop-ready. The problems are in stability and security. But it's got the Desktop part right.
TiggsYeah. There's no way they'd want to show an open-source project finding and warning about a problem within 48 hours in a positive light.
They'd find their customers wanting timely patches and accountability.
The parent post has hit the nail on the head.
Reloaded and Revolutions are good films. They're enjoyable. But they don't really live up to the first film.
But that's working under the premise that the important thing for a sequel is to live up to the original standard/hype/whatever.
The very nature of the first Matrix film is one that doesn't allow for a direct "more of the same, only better" that many people want.
Reloaded was "more of the same, with some new stuff as well". Many people didn't like the new stuff, it seems. But it was necessary for the next stage in the story.
Maybe the direction it took isn't the one that people wanted. But it was telling the story that the Wachowskis wanted to tell. If that's not the story people wanted to see, then tough. Don't see the film. Don't buy the DVD.
In the end, the only important thing (to the writer) about a story is whether you're happy with what you wrote.
TiggsOther people liking it is a bonus - a big bonus, true - but not as important as being satisfied with your own work.
Aye. There are parts of Leeds at the moment that sound like a war-zone.
And I'm not trying to belittle war-zones.
More like point out it must be weeks of living hell for anyone who's lived through a war, or is a refugee from a war-torm country.
Tiggs
Actually, I find the opposite true.
With Windows, the "something has gone wrong" style error boxes are a headache, as they rarely give me enough information to find the right answer online. There have been times when it's taken me several days before I've finally searched for the right combination of error codes/messages to get a working solution.
Linux programs might generate error messages which I don't understand and scare the crap out of me, but a string-search on the scary-looking-error-message often leads me to a page telling me exactly what i did wrong and how to fix it.
TiggsI have to say, AC or not, this is a valid point.
As confusing as CLIs are for Joe Average-Windows-User, the Windows "Double-click with few user-settable flags and crap error messages" make troubleshooting a real problem.
Hell, even in Windows I have to open a command prompt to run a DOS command if I want any hope of getting an error message that I can use.
And even then, the DOS comands often have fewer flags and less verbose setting than their Linux equivalents.
And then you get in the the Windows Registry habit of squirrelling settings away in places that are hard to find. Several times (home and work) I've had to boot into Linux just to see whether a problem is the computer or the OS. (Bootable Knoppix CDs are a Godsend!)
KDE (and probably GNOME, but I don't use it so can't comment) has gone a great way into making GUI-interfaces to a lot of the "arcane configuration" settings. And being on top of linux, there's still on the command-line overrides. So, in theory, Desktop Linux should make things easier for an average User to manage.
But, sadly, it still has a way to go until it's as "User Friendly"* as Windows.
* - Except that I'm a Windows User most of the time, and don't find it very friendly.
TiggsUnfortunately the hardware/software makers do.
Windows basically tries to do all the "background" stuff for you. For "Joe Dummy" who sees a computer as a near-arcane item, this is a Good Thing.
Amusingly, it's this same reason why, as a geek, I don't like Windows too much.
It tries to do all the stuff I want to set myself, and won't let me override it.
A Linux distro that Joe Dummy could use would probably be a godsend. The automation than newbies need, but a clearly documented set of options for advanced users to tweak to their heart's content.
TiggsRight up until the point he Bluejacks a copper.
Can you imagine the "Oh shit" expresison on a Dealer's face when he notices a ticked off policeman holding a mobile?
Well, there'll be the inevitable "bored geek" game of sending "You really should turn 'discoverable' off" messages to unguarded phones takes off.
Tiggs
Personally, I don't really like Novell. But the more they work with Linux, the better things can get.
Linux-based NetWare adminitration tools would be niiiice for those of us forcecd to keep NW networks running.
I conceded defeat, and put Mandrake back on for the moment. I'll set Gentoo running again on Friday night.
My Linux box is a P200mmx. So, yeah, a little slower. ;)
Yeah. Gentoo's really good for learning more about what goes on "under the hood" during a Linux install. Even a Stage 3 requires more low-level intervention than a standard sitro-install, yet it also has enough pre-sets to not risk screwing things up too much.
Only make sure you have several hours free. The "wait for the kernel to compile" stage is a real bugger.
Actually, does anyone know how to make genkernel more verbose? Then at least I can tell whether it's doing anything.
Kinda like why I switched from IE to Moz. I was tired of IE crashing daily, and taking out my entire graphical shell.
Then again, that happened less and less when i switched to LiteStep.
Currently I don't think Google has that kind of threat hanging over it.
Running a search doesn't cause your PC to bomb out, and at this moment in time[*] they have several useful features that the alternatives lack.
[*] Yes, this will last only as long as they manage to keep one innovation ahead of the opposition.
Seriously, there's nothing wrong with actually liking modern games. Personally I enjoyed Final Fantasy X. I don't wish that all games worked in exactly the same way, mainly 'cos I likes FFX as it wasn't like any game I'd perosnally encountered before.
Plus you don't need to diss all current popular culture. Besides, what's wrong with Linkin Park? I happen to like them. I hate that most 13-year-olds tend to like them as "they're cool", but that doesn't stop me from liking the band on their own merit.
Me, for one.
Right now, it's only the lack of a decent free XServer for Windows that's keeping me from getting rid of the Linux box's 14" monitor which currently hogs my other desk.
Having recently (last night...) installed Cygwin on my WinBox, if I can get it to connect to my Linux box properly (tweaking stuff until it works not being one of my strong points) then I can finally reclaim my actual desk without having to fork out for a KVW I can't afford yet.
And that's just "casual home use". If I used Linux at work, I'd definitely appreciate the ability to graphically log into the machine without being right next to it.
TiggsThis is a bitch with DeepFreeze too. (Though a worthwhile one compared to the havoc Students/Tutors can cause on the PCs).
I was just lucky this week that it coincided with both a no-lessons week and the latest Virus Signature update.