Wow, all of those great features, and still crippled by regions. Doesn't matter so much to Americans I suppose, but as an Australian I won't consider a region crippled player, as heaps of DVDs aren't avaliable Region 4 (Australia), so I have to get them from Amazon, of course mostly region 1.
What a legendary lawyer- it'd be nice if all were so theatrical.
'... he will aggressively exercise his legal remedies to the fullest extent to the law, and you and your applicable agents will rue the day that your agents practised fraud against him..'
If more lawyers wrote like this, it might even make people read EULA/software licences. "If you refuse to comply with this licence, you will rue the day you were born, for lo, our vengeance will be swift and mighty"
Sorry to reply to my own post, but just thought I'd clarify-
I'm not trying to troll or anything, and I'm all for the message, but it seems to me his prose could be a bit better if he wants people to notice the message. Just a bit of constructive criticism.
I have to say the article is written in a fairly strange style - I can't say something like
Companies like Microsoft steer like old Buicks, and
this issue has a lot of forward momentum that will be hard to
soak up without driving the engine block back into the driver's
compartment.
really ads much to his argument or is likely to MS to dump DRM or anything. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for papers written in a readable manner, but this guy just seems a bit off the mark.
Well, after reading the release notes (which I should have done in the first place, of course) I managed to install 0.9 completely from scratch. Copy and pasted my bookmarks file, and installed the extensions I use, and it all seems fine.
I suppose I could still be bitter about the song and dance I had to do to get it up and running, and I would if it was post 1.0, but I guess it's just test software still.
For sure. Don't get me wrong, I love Firefox and have been using it since 0.1, and Mozilla before that, but if it ever wants to get acceptance as a major player in the browser market, it needs some serious work before 1.0.
It's not as if I'm running some obscure Linux distro running on an Acorn or anything, this is a well-updated, clean version of XP. It should 'just work' this close to 1.0.
to say the least. I had quite a few problems with the 0.9RC, but I assumed they would be fixed for this more major release. So, I download the exe (yeah, I use Windows..) and run the installer. Everything's fine until it loads for the first time, when it says it's installing extensions. I leave it be for a while, but it's obviously not actually doing anything - no CPU cycles used etc. So I shut down the process, and load it again. Gives me an XML error. Try again, works but didn't port my bookmarks/settings and some of the buttons are missing (ie, the credits in help->about).
Needless to say I trashed it and reinstalled my 0.8 nightly. Maybe when it hits 1.0 I'll check it out again, but for me it's pretty unusable, and my system isn't anything special or out of the ordinary.
OK, just to clarify. I don't really consider myself to be an anti MS zealot - in fact, XP is one of my main OSs that I use on a daily basis. I think it's unfair to lock people into a specific program to play the music - I don't see why I should have to change from WinAmp for the privilege of purchasing their music, why Linux users should have to move from XMMS or Mac users from iTunes.
Oh well, a simple solution - don't use the service. Maybe they'll get the message, but I think I'm in the general minority in not being willing to use WMP9.
sod using WMP9. No way I could live with that. I'm not even asking for non-DRM'd files (although that would be ideal), but something a bit more cross platform is a pre-req for me. I should be able to play it on what software on whichever OS I choose.
I can second that. I've been using Firefox since 0.1, and I've never had any major problems until 0.9RC. First install completed, but crashed, none of my old bookmarks were imported, and some of the buttons were missing (in Help->About, IIRC) so I started from scratch, installing as a new profile. Installed OK but crashed on startup with some weird error message. I very much doubt it's my system. Just went back to a nightly 0.8 build, and it's as good as ever.
Listing fees aren't that bad - it's $4.80 for items of starting value $500 or over. It's the final fee that'd be the killer:
"5.25% of the initial $25 ($1.31),
plus 2.75% of the initial $25 - $1000 ($26.81),
plus 1.50% of the remaining closing value balance ($1000.01 - closing value)"
so around $1500, assuming it goes for *only* the starting price, no higher.
..but I wonder how much more he would have made if he'd listed each item individually, instead of a bulk lot? It'd be a fair bit of work (not massive, since he's already got the details for most of the items), but you think it'd probably be worth it.
Sorry, where did you get that NZ was 'NOT riddled with guns'? NZ has laws almost as liberal (as in free, as in you can own what you want) as the US. Indeed, full auto and so on is a lot cheaper because of the lack of import bans. I can't find any links that list the laws, but for proof look here:
http://www.imas.co.nz/
I think this cyclic nature of Slashdot is interesting - initially someone comes up with some mildly interesting (but usually verbatim from the/. party manual) comment, this post gets +5 whatever, and then others repeat this comment, or it's spirit, in the hope of catching some of the magic. Intersperse this with trolls, zealots and pedants, spiced with plenty of inane comments, and only the very occasional interesting, original post.
Of course, despite this, it's a wonderful time sink in which to soak up untold hours...
Coming from an educational family (father a principal, mother primary school teacher, many other relatives teachers or librarians) I can say that the amount of money the government here (Tasmania, Australia) throws at computers is obscene. My mum has (I think) 4 p3 class PCs in her classroom - she's computer illiterate, as are most of the teachers, and the kids use it every now and again to look at the Pokemon website.
Sure computers are a valuable learning tool when used properly by trained teachers and moderation, but you won't solve all the educational problems by getting a computer for every five students. With class sizes too large, kids with 'special needs' taking up way too much time thanks to not enough aide time and a lack of funding in more important areas, there are better ways to spend money in primary school education. Of course, good computer access gets much more important at secondary level and above.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, all of those great features, and still crippled by regions. Doesn't matter so much to Americans I suppose, but as an Australian I won't consider a region crippled player, as heaps of DVDs aren't avaliable Region 4 (Australia), so I have to get them from Amazon, of course mostly region 1.
'... he will aggressively exercise his legal remedies to the fullest extent to the law, and you and your applicable agents will rue the day that your agents practised fraud against him..'
If more lawyers wrote like this, it might even make people read EULA/software licences.
"If you refuse to comply with this licence, you will rue the day you were born, for lo, our vengeance will be swift and mighty"
Whatever, that's just pedantry. My general comments about style stand.
I'm not trying to troll or anything, and I'm all for the message, but it seems to me his prose could be a bit better if he wants people to notice the message. Just a bit of constructive criticism.
Companies like Microsoft steer like old Buicks, and this issue has a lot of forward momentum that will be hard to soak up without driving the engine block back into the driver's compartment.
really ads much to his argument or is likely to MS to dump DRM or anything. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for papers written in a readable manner, but this guy just seems a bit off the mark.
New version of my favourite email client, always a good thing. Keep up the good work Moz team.
Here.
I suppose I could still be bitter about the song and dance I had to do to get it up and running, and I would if it was post 1.0, but I guess it's just test software still.
That said, looking around there seems to be quite a few people who have significant problems with upgrading to 0.9.
It's not as if I'm running some obscure Linux distro running on an Acorn or anything, this is a well-updated, clean version of XP. It should 'just work' this close to 1.0.
Everything's fine until it loads for the first time, when it says it's installing extensions. I leave it be for a while, but it's obviously not actually doing anything - no CPU cycles used etc. So I shut down the process, and load it again. Gives me an XML error. Try again, works but didn't port my bookmarks/settings and some of the buttons are missing (ie, the credits in help->about).
Needless to say I trashed it and reinstalled my 0.8 nightly. Maybe when it hits 1.0 I'll check it out again, but for me it's pretty unusable, and my system isn't anything special or out of the ordinary.
GordianKnot is good, but for the supremely lazy AutoGK is even better.
Oh well, a simple solution - don't use the service. Maybe they'll get the message, but I think I'm in the general minority in not being willing to use WMP9.
sod using WMP9. No way I could live with that. I'm not even asking for non-DRM'd files (although that would be ideal), but something a bit more cross platform is a pre-req for me. I should be able to play it on what software on whichever OS I choose.
I can second that. I've been using Firefox since 0.1, and I've never had any major problems until 0.9RC. First install completed, but crashed, none of my old bookmarks were imported, and some of the buttons were missing (in Help->About, IIRC) so I started from scratch, installing as a new profile. Installed OK but crashed on startup with some weird error message. I very much doubt it's my system. Just went back to a nightly 0.8 build, and it's as good as ever.
"5.25% of the initial $25 ($1.31), plus 2.75% of the initial $25 - $1000 ($26.81), plus 1.50% of the remaining closing value balance ($1000.01 - closing value)"
so around $1500, assuming it goes for *only* the starting price, no higher.
Although notice all the images are hosted on the seller's homepage, sdk-team. So it's not eBay, it's his (or his company's) site :P
..but I wonder how much more he would have made if he'd listed each item individually, instead of a bulk lot? It'd be a fair bit of work (not massive, since he's already got the details for most of the items), but you think it'd probably be worth it.
Sorry, where did you get that NZ was 'NOT riddled with guns'? NZ has laws almost as liberal (as in free, as in you can own what you want) as the US. Indeed, full auto and so on is a lot cheaper because of the lack of import bans. I can't find any links that list the laws, but for proof look here: http://www.imas.co.nz/
Does this mean they're not cool any more?
Or he could have done something like this.. Now that's impressive.
Of course, despite this, it's a wonderful time sink in which to soak up untold hours...
Sure computers are a valuable learning tool when used properly by trained teachers and moderation, but you won't solve all the educational problems by getting a computer for every five students. With class sizes too large, kids with 'special needs' taking up way too much time thanks to not enough aide time and a lack of funding in more important areas, there are better ways to spend money in primary school education. Of course, good computer access gets much more important at secondary level and above.
Let me guess, the 80s?
That example is purely American English. In the Commonwealth, entree means appetizer.