"Free speech is great, if you understand it." Free speech is easy to understand, and it's easy to see that we don't completely have it. I am not saying that the 1st amendment applies here, I am saying that the 1st amendment does not provide completely free speech, and that it should. In other words, I am not misapplying the 1st; I am not applying it at all, and you are setting up a straw man.
I think that harm happens when people do something to you, not when they say something about you. Sure you might be in a better financial position if someone didn't talk about your trade secrets, or feel less offended if someone who hates you because of your race uses a generic term rather than a slur, but I think the law should be reserved for more tangible things.
Yeah. When I was little I thought freedom of speech actually existed and was something we North Americans could be proud of. As I grow older I find that, although we may have it better than some places, our freedom of speech is constantly trumped by libel laws, patent/copyright/trademark/trade secret laws, decency laws, hate speech laws, and that's just off the top of my head. And it seems to me that free speech should supercede all of those, especially if we're going to tell ourselves and others how great free speech is.
Preach on, brother. Wish I had mod points for you. Since I don't, I'll take this opportunity to point out that the music industry feels like another (slightly non-standard) example of high barriers to entry to me, due mostly to the costs of promotion.
-Adblock Plus: Blocks in-page banners. Includes whitelist support. -Nightly Tester Tools: When upgrading Firefox, it lets you "force" extensions that have been disabled to try to work. -Googlebar: A hugely enhanced Google search bar. Best feature (of many) is the one-click find in page. -Flashblock: Blocks Flash files. One click will play them. -Image Zoom: Zooms images easily. -Sage: A news feed reader. Useful if you like RSS feeds, otherwise don't bother. -QuickTabPrefToggle: Lets you toggle between two states of tab behaviour, provides more options than the default even if you never toggle. -ConQuery: Lets you highlight text on a web page, right click, and search for that text using your Firefox search plugins (and don't forget mycroft for adding more). Net result for me = very easy search in amazon, imdb, dictionary, wikipedia, etc. -Linkification: Converts plain text that should be links to links. -Greasemonkey: Allows you to change behaviour of pages with your own scripts or those contributed by others. Very powerful, but not for the faint of heart or the untrusting. -Fasterfox: Speeds up Firefox. Allegedly. My network is disturbingly highly used by the four of us, so I'm not actually sure it does anything.:) -SearchPluginHacks: Lets you remove search engines, the opposite of mycroft -IE Tab: Lets you view a page in an embedded Internet Explorer window inside Firefox. Useful for those rare things that just don't work right in Firefox.
"number-of-clicks-to-achieve task x" Yeah, good idea. It would be very interesting to me to see if there is a correlation (either positive or negative) between this and what I mentioned about users' ability to perform tasks and/or solve their own problems.
Different people like different things, so obviously take my preferences with a grain of salt. In addition to what you have, I highly recommend Googlebar. Indispensable for me. Here is the complete list of extensions I am currently using on my main Windows box:
Get people who are not experts, see how many problems they run into doing simple tasks that they're familiar with on Windows. See how many of these they can solve themselves. Start half of them on Gnome and move them to KDE, do the other half in the reverse order.
It is probably also worth noting that most people (apparently including Linus) consider KDE more powerful, so KDE is kinda at a disadvantage.
Re:Lets hope they open source it
on
Google to Buy Opera?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I'm a Firefox man myself, but I think Opera has one thing going for it: it's better "out of the box". I find that the Firefox browsing experience absolutely blows away that of any other browser, but only after I've taken 15 minutes getting and configuring all the right extensions, and possibly using nightly tester tools to make them work in the latest Firefox version.
Uh... Have you been smoking crack? They obviously cared because they put themselves on the DNC in the first place, which is entirely opt-in. It is not at all like an election, where we don't have a clear indication what someone would do.
If people on the DNC list stop complaining, the logical assumption is not that they don't care, it's that they don't believe the system will work (they particularly might think this since they're still getting unwanted calls) or possibly they don't consider a $4 fine worth their time to report it.
It costs less than $4 per COMPLAINT (not even per person) to advertise this way. I guess it's better than free, but is this really a harsh enough punishment to do anything?
I remember reading about girl-oriented pornography a while ago. It's interesting to me how similar it is, presumably because both situations are traditionally male-dominated, and because of how sexual video games can be. I'm always amazed at how much some video games (and even a lot of pop music, for that matter) can be about softcore pornography, making things as sexual as possible for the underager who can't get real porn yet.
"...is how One-Click Shopping can get patented, but Microsoft can get away with such blatant copies as this (of Google Maps), MSN Messenger (of ICQ), and so forth."
I think maybe my original point isn't getting through. It's probably my fault, since I've gotten troll mods as well as several responses like this. However, let me try to clarify: I am not bashing MS here. Google copied the concept of satellite maps, MS copied the draggable window, fine. As you say, everyone copies everyone else and it's a good thing when it improves the product.
What IS bothering me is patent law. It's stated goal is to protect innovation. Well, here are some examples of innovation (internet map availability, the draggable interface, and yes, even instant messaging) that are not at all protected. Now, as you say, everyone copies everyone else and it's a great thing. So what the hell good is patent law? All it does is end up protecting things like one-click shopping and not protecting real help.
Well, as I said in the above post, I'm still happily bashing patent law.
My personal opinion is that especially in the case of online apps like these, people will be vastly best served if nobody's allowed to patent anything. Google should not be allowed to patent their draggable interface (and they apparently didn't anyway) and MS should not be allowed to patent anything they add, and both can continue incorporating the others' improvements.
Of course it'd be better if they were open source, since they could then DIRECTLY incorporate the others' improvements... But hey.
Try Terraserver, and then try Windows Live Local. One of them seems suspiciously like Google Maps. One of them came to market at a time that seems suspiciously like they're trying to compete with Google Maps. Specifically, one of them uses the same draggable interface that Google Maps uses.
Also, my original post says 30% insightful, 30% informative, 20% flamebait. How does that get me modded down? And how does 30+30+20=100? Sigh.
I didn't say they were. Use the MS service for five minutes, think about the current market for five minutes, and it should be really obvious that MS is doing this in response to Google, not the others.
Specifically, the feature that MS copied that Google WAS the first to have (that I know of, anyway) was the map being draggable.
Slashdot Mirror
"Free speech is great, if you understand it."
Free speech is easy to understand, and it's easy to see that we don't completely have it. I am not saying that the 1st amendment applies here, I am saying that the 1st amendment does not provide completely free speech, and that it should. In other words, I am not misapplying the 1st; I am not applying it at all, and you are setting up a straw man.
I think that harm happens when people do something to you, not when they say something about you. Sure you might be in a better financial position if someone didn't talk about your trade secrets, or feel less offended if someone who hates you because of your race uses a generic term rather than a slur, but I think the law should be reserved for more tangible things.
I'm not "okay with it", in that I think you're an ignorant dick, but I'm not about to say the government should be involved.
Yeah. When I was little I thought freedom of speech actually existed and was something we North Americans could be proud of. As I grow older I find that, although we may have it better than some places, our freedom of speech is constantly trumped by libel laws, patent/copyright/trademark/trade secret laws, decency laws, hate speech laws, and that's just off the top of my head. And it seems to me that free speech should supercede all of those, especially if we're going to tell ourselves and others how great free speech is.
What it takes to get them home safely: stop declaring war on people. :P
You must have some very large feet.
Uh... That's exactly what I was getting at. Not sure why you said bullshit, since you seem to agree with me.
Preach on, brother. Wish I had mod points for you. Since I don't, I'll take this opportunity to point out that the music industry feels like another (slightly non-standard) example of high barriers to entry to me, due mostly to the costs of promotion.
Hey, the constitution never stopped him before. Perhaps he figured there was no need to bother with passing another PATRIOT act?
Sure, what the hell. :)
:)
-Adblock Plus: Blocks in-page banners. Includes whitelist support.
-Nightly Tester Tools: When upgrading Firefox, it lets you "force" extensions that have been disabled to try to work.
-Googlebar: A hugely enhanced Google search bar. Best feature (of many) is the one-click find in page.
-Flashblock: Blocks Flash files. One click will play them.
-Image Zoom: Zooms images easily.
-Sage: A news feed reader. Useful if you like RSS feeds, otherwise don't bother.
-QuickTabPrefToggle: Lets you toggle between two states of tab behaviour, provides more options than the default even if you never toggle.
-ConQuery: Lets you highlight text on a web page, right click, and search for that text using your Firefox search plugins (and don't forget mycroft for adding more). Net result for me = very easy search in amazon, imdb, dictionary, wikipedia, etc.
-Linkification: Converts plain text that should be links to links.
-Greasemonkey: Allows you to change behaviour of pages with your own scripts or those contributed by others. Very powerful, but not for the faint of heart or the untrusting.
-Fasterfox: Speeds up Firefox. Allegedly. My network is disturbingly highly used by the four of us, so I'm not actually sure it does anything.
-SearchPluginHacks: Lets you remove search engines, the opposite of mycroft
-IE Tab: Lets you view a page in an embedded Internet Explorer window inside Firefox. Useful for those rare things that just don't work right in Firefox.
"number-of-clicks-to-achieve task x"
Yeah, good idea. It would be very interesting to me to see if there is a correlation (either positive or negative) between this and what I mentioned about users' ability to perform tasks and/or solve their own problems.
Excellent question.
Different people like different things, so obviously take my preferences with a grain of salt. In addition to what you have, I highly recommend Googlebar. Indispensable for me. Here is the complete list of extensions I am currently using on my main Windows box:
-Adblock Plus
-Nightly Tester Tools
-Googlebar
-Flashblock
-Image Zoom
-Sage
-QuickTabPrefToggle
-ConQuery
-Linkification
-Greasemonkey
-Fasterfox
-SearchPluginHacks
-IE Tab
Hope this helps.
Get people who are not experts, see how many problems they run into doing simple tasks that they're familiar with on Windows. See how many of these they can solve themselves. Start half of them on Gnome and move them to KDE, do the other half in the reverse order.
It is probably also worth noting that most people (apparently including Linus) consider KDE more powerful, so KDE is kinda at a disadvantage.
I'm a Firefox man myself, but I think Opera has one thing going for it: it's better "out of the box". I find that the Firefox browsing experience absolutely blows away that of any other browser, but only after I've taken 15 minutes getting and configuring all the right extensions, and possibly using nightly tester tools to make them work in the latest Firefox version.
Uh... Have you been smoking crack? They obviously cared because they put themselves on the DNC in the first place, which is entirely opt-in. It is not at all like an election, where we don't have a clear indication what someone would do.
If people on the DNC list stop complaining, the logical assumption is not that they don't care, it's that they don't believe the system will work (they particularly might think this since they're still getting unwanted calls) or possibly they don't consider a $4 fine worth their time to report it.
It costs less than $4 per COMPLAINT (not even per person) to advertise this way. I guess it's better than free, but is this really a harsh enough punishment to do anything?
Seems to me the /. community these days is (sadly) far more fond of comments like "If this was Microsoft, not Google, you'd be pissed!"
I remember reading about girl-oriented pornography a while ago. It's interesting to me how similar it is, presumably because both situations are traditionally male-dominated, and because of how sexual video games can be. I'm always amazed at how much some video games (and even a lot of pop music, for that matter) can be about softcore pornography, making things as sexual as possible for the underager who can't get real porn yet.
You will like this page:
a nish
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=b
Uh...
"...is how One-Click Shopping can get patented, but Microsoft can get away with such blatant copies as this (of Google Maps), MSN Messenger (of ICQ), and so forth."
Seems to me like I mentioned patents.
I think maybe my original point isn't getting through. It's probably my fault, since I've gotten troll mods as well as several responses like this. However, let me try to clarify: I am not bashing MS here. Google copied the concept of satellite maps, MS copied the draggable window, fine. As you say, everyone copies everyone else and it's a good thing when it improves the product.
What IS bothering me is patent law. It's stated goal is to protect innovation. Well, here are some examples of innovation (internet map availability, the draggable interface, and yes, even instant messaging) that are not at all protected. Now, as you say, everyone copies everyone else and it's a great thing. So what the hell good is patent law? All it does is end up protecting things like one-click shopping and not protecting real help.
Well, as I said in the above post, I'm still happily bashing patent law.
My personal opinion is that especially in the case of online apps like these, people will be vastly best served if nobody's allowed to patent anything. Google should not be allowed to patent their draggable interface (and they apparently didn't anyway) and MS should not be allowed to patent anything they add, and both can continue incorporating the others' improvements.
Of course it'd be better if they were open source, since they could then DIRECTLY incorporate the others' improvements... But hey.
I'm not talking about the concepts of satellite imagery or map sites. I'm talking about the draggable interface. It feels exactly like Google Maps.
Try Terraserver, and then try Windows Live Local. One of them seems suspiciously like Google Maps. One of them came to market at a time that seems suspiciously like they're trying to compete with Google Maps. Specifically, one of them uses the same draggable interface that Google Maps uses.
Also, my original post says 30% insightful, 30% informative, 20% flamebait. How does that get me modded down? And how does 30+30+20=100? Sigh.
I didn't say they were. Use the MS service for five minutes, think about the current market for five minutes, and it should be really obvious that MS is doing this in response to Google, not the others.
Specifically, the feature that MS copied that Google WAS the first to have (that I know of, anyway) was the map being draggable.