I'm not certain about the software I use, pocket-tunes's ability to stream formats other than mp3. It will play ogg's but I've had no success in getting a stream to work. I'm unaware of an AAC+ plugin for pocket-tunes, but tcpmp, a young but rapidly growing open source media player for palm, with play the files. I'm certain streaming is in the works.
On Sprint's CDMA cellular network, one can reasonably reliably listen to 56kbps shoutcast streams with a smart phone such as the treo. Lower bitrates are even more reliable. Sprint's unlimited data plan is $15/mo on top of your regular phone charges.
This can't compete with XM on quality and obviously not on signal reception. But a treo with a wifi card would beat the device referenced in this article hands down, in my opinion.
And journalism is withholding opinions and reporting facts without bias. Putting aside any political bias the Daily Show might have, they only report news stories that are funny. Which, again, is not wrong.. but if everything they report has to end with a punchline, then they are only reporting a small fraction of the total story.
On what do you base your claim that Stewart's viewers are better informed than those that view CNN and Fox? That's an absolutly assinine statement considering that at best The Daily Show covers maybe 3 stories a night and CNN and Fox are 24 hour networks that cover hundreds of stories every day. Their biases may be debatable, but you cannot reasonaby suggest that the Daily Show is somehow more informative than a 24 hours news network. And I say again, The Daily Show has not and will not touch the tsunami story because there's nothing funny about it. If you rely on the Daily Show as your sole source of information then you are unaware of this tragedy.
I find it troubling that you and many others are giving Stewart and the Daily Show undue journalistic credit. It's very funny, I give you that. And it is informative, but IT IS NOT JOURNALISM. IT IS COMEDY.
I'm not suggesting that Crossfire was journalism, either. I stand by my statement that it was mostly a gossip show. But Stewart's own words point out that the Daily Show is a FAKE NEWS show. The whole thing is a joke. and I think many people are taking it way too seriously.
And you can attribute the Daily Show's "accuracy" which you find so amusing to the hundreds of real journalists who write and report the news for AP, UPI, etc.. The Daily Show uses their reports as fodder for thier humor. Nobody at the Daily Show is a credentialed journalist.
Any journalistic credit issued the Daily Show is testament to the disgustingly sad state of the United States media.
Stewart has been a guest on dozens of hard news shows, soft news shows, and entertainment shows. In fact you'll be glad to know that the Daily Show and Crossfire both air on CNN International.
Politics is not really news. It's gossip. And this is what Crossfire was tasked with covering, leaving the real news to Wolf Blitzer.
I would hope you would be able to see what I think is blatently obvious in that the Daily Show is NOT a news show. No person on that show is a journalist. It's sole purpose is entertainment. In my opinion, if Stewart wants to become a media critic he is more than welcome to. But he can't be a comedian by day, and media watchdog by night. Like the boy who cried wolf, a comedian should not expect to be laughed at one second and taken seriously the next.
Again, I like Jon Stewart. I think he's smart, funny, and I agree with most of what he said about Crossfire. But he is not a journalist, and his opinion on Crossfire is simply that; an opinion.
Has anyone watched Tucker's PBS Show? Personally I don't see why people are hating on Tucker so bad. I get the impression that Novak actually believes the shit he spews, and that Tucker is spewing the shit for the purpose of debate, playing devil's advocate perhaps. In my opinion, the only time Crossfire was ever tolerable was when it was Begala vs. Carlson. Mostly because Begala is easier on the eyes than Carville.
Crossfire was pretty dumbass, but i found it interesting because it was a daily testing ground for the political operatives' spin of the day. If you've ever seen The War Room you'll see that this is how these guys actually act. The show never had any educational or informational value other than observing how political operatives think. Which to me is very interesting, especially in an election year. Plus, Crossfire and perhaps the McLaughlin Group are the only truly non-partisan politics shows. Both sides get equal time.
And I like Jon Stewart, but he's a comedian, not a journalist. Because of this he is able to protect what he says behind the guise of satire. Nothing he says on his show matters beyond humor, though obviously he is able influence his audience, and beyond.
I'm disappointed that Stewart chose to come out from behind the protective shield of satire only to attack some dumb TV show. Why does he not criticize the government without his tongue-in-cheek? I speculate that seriously criticizing officials without the protection of satire would open him up to counter criticsm and jeapordize his career. A 2-bit, non-partisan cable show, he can get away with that.
I use SprintPCS, the Palmonetreo600, and pssh. SprintPCS's network is CDMA so if you're not in the continental United States, and not in or near a metropolitian area, forget about it. For the rest of you I can tell you that it works splendidly, though latent. It'd be difficult to perform any complex task, though not impossible. On the treo the font-size will be tiny. One should consider the treo650 with it's high resolution screen as an alternative.
I should also mention PalmVNC. The bandwidth limitations of the sprintpcs network, and the resolution limitations of the treo600 render this application to little more than a novelty. Though again, in a pinch, it's a usefull app to keep around.
Perhaps you already have a phone that runs java midlets? If so you could try SSH & Telnet Floyd or MIDPSSH.
Cedega is a non-free version of wine with directx capabilities. You can browse their supported games here.
Of course not all games now-a-days require wine or cedega in order to run on linux. Games like unreal tournament and doom III include fully functional linux versions.
There are several open source games developed for but not limited to linux. torcs, flightgear, tuxracer are some examples.
Projects like libsdl are making cross-platform game development easier.
Probably the biggest problem you'll encounter is building drivers for your video card. I've heard it argued both ways but as I understand it, both nvidia and ati drivers are ass-pains in linux. Nvidia's drivers are free as in beer, not speech. If you don't really care about free-software principles and philosophy then this is not a problem for you. ATI's drivers I understand to perform less than ideally. If you haven't already purchased your video card, I would encourage you to do extensive research beforehand.
In reality, linux distributions have few differences. Any recent, major distribution should be able to accomodate gameplay. I myself use debian unstable for amd64.
As far as performance, it really boils down to hardware. My advice is to install the linux distribution of your choice. Once you get glxgears to run, give ut2004demo a try, and if you like the way it works, then stick with linux.
I saw a few comments requesting SSH clients and Text Readers so I thought I point some out.
First some free stuff:
plucker - Ebook reader. Really only supports it's own format but is very robust. iSilo is a non-free ebook reader that supports other formats including txt, but with the plucker tools you can convert almost any document into plucker format. pssh - There are other SSH clients for palmos, but this one doesn't crash my treo. palmvnc - Very neat, but less than practical on my low-res, low-speed treo. soundrec - Simple sound recording application, export to wav (usefull with Bhajis Loops) designed for the treo 600 but may work with other palm devices
Now some non-free stuff:
Pocket Tunes - Turn your palm device into an ipod only better with ogg and wma support. Worth the price. Bhajis Loops - Turn your palm device into a music studio. Also worth the price
Not too mention the countless games, calculators, calendars, and other knick-knacks.
There are limitations in hardware obviously. There's only so much stuff you can fit in such a tiny device. But I must say that my treo 600 does way more than I ever expected when I bought it.
Last I heard the entire point of open source code was using the code and redistributing it. As long as their product is open source and GPL'd as well, who cares? If they can use an OS project to aid the creation of a new OS project, I say more power to them.
You're not wrong, there are advantages to a large user community, and donations are certainly one of them. And there truly is no faster way to build a following than with advertising. But I do have to question the target audience. I know I tried firefox after reading an article in slashdot. I never would think to turn to the NYT to find out what browser I should be using. Obviously many people do rely on mainstream media for their technical news. But I question both if these people are ready for firefox, and if firefox is ready for these people.
I don't mean to sound caullous, but what good is a community of fools? The average NYT reader may try firefox because it's free, may even fall in love with it. But do you seriously expect them to participate in the community? They will not understand the general principles behind OSS. When they encounter a bug, rather than filing a bug report like we OSS veterans, they will only get frustrated.
I think that the fsf does a reasonably good job of spreading open source awareness. I think it would be best if the marketing of open source software was all inclusive. I know that I use firefox not because of tabbed browsing or pop-up blocking (even though they are super), but because it is open source. The software itself is better than internet explorer, but not by leaps and bounds. The project itself is better because it's open, it's freedom, it's community. The average NYT reader won't see it from my perspective, they'll see pop-up blocking and free beer.
In my opinion, it's not so much that firefox is right, it's that ie is wrong. I would like to equally encourage NYT readers to try the entire mozilla suite. I would like to encourage them to try knoppix, and gaim, and the countless other projects that could enhace their life, fatten their wallets, and enlighten their minds. I feel like this advertising campaign is analogous to flying someone all the way to paris to the the eiffel tower and then leaving without seeing the lovre.
A real campaign to generate users would be educating them about the benefits of open source in general, not just a single project. It's vain to believe that firefox will always be on the cutting edge. Right now it is a shining star in the open source community at large, and we are all proud of it. But by it's very nature it changes day to day. Mistakes will be made, microsoft will not just roll over and pay dead. They will come out with new versions of ie. Do you propose collect donations for new advertising every time they do? I say give the people a reason why firefox is better than ie that doesn't change everytime a new version is released by either party. I can think of a few slogans right now:
"Don't like Firefox? Then change it yourself"
firefox source code in shape of half naked sexy lady - "Want to see the rest? goto http://blah.."
That's all I've got for right now, but these are things microsoft cannot answer too. They can add pop-up blocking. They can add tabbed browsing. There are no patents on these things. In fact the code is right there in firefox for them to look at as they please. And that is the only reason firefox is better than ie.
My point exactly. There presently is not an active anti-firefox campaign being waged by microsoft, but I fear an preemptive campaign by firefox will trigger one.
You're right that the money cannot be simply given to the developers as many people donated specifically to have their name associated with this ad. However according to the faq, there is room for some of the money raised beyond the cost of the ad to goto their PR firm, other firefox launch related costs, and then possibly to developers.
Marketing is important when your goal is to profit. In fact it's crucial. But the goal of the mozilla foundation is not to profit. That's best left to Netscape.
If your goal is to encourage people to use firefox, then microsoft fixing their browser is about the worst thing that can happen. It would encourage everyone you spent tens of thousands of dollars converting to firefox to switch back. Quickly you decend into a marketing battle, which mozilla simply does not had the funds to fight.
And I am certainly aware of microsoft's campaigns against linux and apache. To my knowledge they have not targeted firefox or mozilla specifically. In my opinion, an ad campaign would make firefox a target.
bogie's quote seems to be speaking from the perspective of someone who's goal is to make money. Mozilla doesn't have any investors they need to answer to, they are next expected to turn a profit (in fact they are forbidden from turning a profit). If firefox has 10,000 users, or 10,000,000 users, mozilla is still a non-profit organization. Mozilla's mandate is not to take down microsoft, and I think that that mentality is actually counter productive to the cause. It's in the public's interest to have a diverse browser market. Competition does spawn innovation.
Don't expect microsoft to embrace competition anytime soon. Even though mozilla is not mandated to encourage competition, I would hope that they would respect that goal. A marketing campaign blasting their competitor is not in the public's interest, development and innovation is.
I simply used apache as a reference to perhaps a successful open source project. I could have also used linux, but I felt linux was a bad example because companies like IBM have taken it upon themselves to launch media campaigns on linux's behalf. Their linux campaign perhaps sold some servers for them, but it also forced microsoft into launching an anti-linux campaign. A campaign which you must admit has had an significant impact. I would hate to see firefox, a rather young project, drug through the mud.
According to the site, every dollar goes to the mozilla project, but is earmarked for PR, advertising, and other costs incurred during the "launch" of firefox 1.0.
In my opinion, this is money that should be awarded to developers, and used to further the project. I'm glad that people love firefox so much, but did apache ever buy an ad in the NYT? Apache is the most popular web server in the world by all estimates. They never had to launch a massive media campaign, because they were simply the best product. That's the way firefox should be.
Also, Microsoft is going to see this as a direct threat. They have far more access to media (MSNBC anyone?) than mozilla ever will. If they were to launch a counter-campaign, which is exactly what they're being baited into to doing, they could scare a lot of people away from firefox, and all open source projects.
The money should be given to the developers who go relativly un-rewarded, and to foster the development of mozilla.
Now it can't compete on storage space, I admit, but my palmonetreo 600 has been my exclusive portable music player for about 6 months now. Combined with the pocket-tunes software and a sd memory card, the treo 600 becomes a rather fancy mp3, wma, wav, and ogg player. In addition to that, it's also a cell phone, plays games, browses webs, etc. You can buy a 1gb sd card for about $80, and the pocket-tunes software is $30. The phone itself is only $350 with a contract from the evil phone company of your choice. If you get their unlimited data plans, then you can stream your favorite shoutcast streams straight to your phone.
Ever since I bought this phone, my archos jukebox 6000 has been sitting on the shelf collecting dust.
If you don't want the phone you could always get the tungsten t5. Also be sure to check out the yet unreleased treo 650.
Well.. my SprintPCS PalmOne Treo600 already has an internet connection through sprint, but a "broader-bander" connection would be nice. Last i heard there was not enough power in the SD slot of the treo to operate a wifi card. They don't explicitly mention support for the treo600, but I'm curious if it would work, or if there is a wifi card in the books for the treo. Or bluetooth for that matter.
Your store, and your parking lot are PRIVATE PROPERTY, upon which, you are right, you're the boss on your property. The sidewalk outside your store, however, is public. This is why abortion protests occur on the sidewalk in front of the clinic, and not in the operating room.
I'm not aware of a "Right to Ignorance" but I don't disagree that as a speaker in any medium, I cannot force you to hear it. Regardless, I have the right to speak it anyway. If I am in a public place, I have the right to assemble, speak, and protest until I'm blue in the face, at my own expense. Broadcast mediums are becoming more and more restricted, to my dismay. I'm not certain that the internet technically is defined as a broadcast medium.
You're absolutly right. I cannot tell my ISP what to do with THEIR PROPERTY. But the cable modem is NOT THEIR PROPERTY. It's MY PROPERTY. I paid for it. I overpaid for it, as a matter of fact.
Imagine there's a public park on an island. In order to get to it, you have to either buy a boat yourself, or rent one from someone else. What right does the renter have to demand that you can use their boat to get to the island, but once you're on the island, you cannot goto a specific part of it. It's a public island. The internet is a public place.
Again, I'm not saying that this method of blocking spam is neccesarily a bad idea. Instead, I think it sets a bad precedent, and as a cable modem user, I'm hesitant to yield my present right to send mass emails from my cable modem.
Well, in this particular case, if "You" are my ISP, I'm paying for the pulpit. I pay for a connection to the internet, and what I choose to do with it should be my business.
If by "You" you mean the average email user, I don't believe that you are providing spammers with a pulpit. Take for example the sidewalks of Las Vegas, where hundreds of people are paid to, rather forcefully, hand out flyers for adult entertainment. However persuasive they try to be to get you to take their flyer, they are forbidden to force it upon you. I beleive that email spam is very similar. Because of the automation of our email clients, we automatically download everything in our mailboxes to our inboxes. Our email clients accept this spam on our behalf. If you wish to manually go through your messages one by one, you could easily reject any email you wish without ever viewing it. But because of the volume and difficulty of a manual process like that, we forego our means of individually filtering our email and blindly entrust our email clients to accept everything. And it's this blind acceptance that spammers exploit. You certainly have the right to accept or reject any email that gets sent to you before you download it. It's this right that you waive to some extent by using a non-discerning email client.
Well, semantics aside. Non-governmental institutions hold no jurisdiction over public areas. Unless you're physically on private property, the government dictates the rules. In public spaces, I retain the right to free speech. Presuming the internet as a whole is a public place, as I'm sure few will contest, the right to speak should be protected for all individuals, or at least US Citizens.
Besides, you'll encounter few organizations that are wholly unaffiliated with the government and can therefore bypass such rules as Equal Oppritunity laws. By their affiliation with the government, be it through grants, contracting, or SEC participation, they are acting on behalf of the government and must adhere to and uphold the laws.
I think you're trying to suggest that it's legal for non-governmental institutions to infringe upon one's rights of free speech. Which is certainly not true. But regardless, the real question is weather email is considered of a medium of speech. Obviously email is not a right, it's a purchased privaledge. But so are most mediums of speech. Printing presses, radio transmitters, and ISPs are not free of financial cost. But my right to publish and broadcast my opinions and anything else i want, are (or should be) protected. Why not email?
Noone really complains about advertising on commercial radio and television broadcasts. I really don't see a significant difference between television advertising and email spam. If anything, for me, email spam is less frustrating, and certainly less time consuming. Any spam I encounter can be simply overlooked, and I can move on to the next message in my inbox. With televison or radio, other than changing channels, I have no control over the advertising I'm exposed to.
You as an individual can tell me to STFU all you want, but cannot actually take any action to prevent me from excercising my right to speak. If I am unwelcome at your store, you can have me arrested for trespassing, but you cannot infringe on my right to protest your store and speak about it. The loose metaphor being that you can have me arrested for sending you pornography, or violating a no-call-list, or damaging your computer; but you should not be allowed to prevent me from sending my emails.
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I'm not certain about the software I use, pocket-tunes's ability to stream formats other than mp3. It will play ogg's but I've had no success in getting a stream to work. I'm unaware of an AAC+ plugin for pocket-tunes, but tcpmp, a young but rapidly growing open source media player for palm, with play the files. I'm certain streaming is in the works.
On Sprint's CDMA cellular network, one can reasonably reliably listen to 56kbps shoutcast streams with a smart phone such as the treo. Lower bitrates are even more reliable. Sprint's unlimited data plan is $15/mo on top of your regular phone charges.
This can't compete with XM on quality and obviously not on signal reception. But a treo with a wifi card would beat the device referenced in this article hands down, in my opinion.
And journalism is withholding opinions and reporting facts without bias. Putting aside any political bias the Daily Show might have, they only report news stories that are funny. Which, again, is not wrong.. but if everything they report has to end with a punchline, then they are only reporting a small fraction of the total story.
On what do you base your claim that Stewart's viewers are better informed than those that view CNN and Fox? That's an absolutly assinine statement considering that at best The Daily Show covers maybe 3 stories a night and CNN and Fox are 24 hour networks that cover hundreds of stories every day. Their biases may be debatable, but you cannot reasonaby suggest that the Daily Show is somehow more informative than a 24 hours news network. And I say again, The Daily Show has not and will not touch the tsunami story because there's nothing funny about it. If you rely on the Daily Show as your sole source of information then you are unaware of this tragedy.
I find it troubling that you and many others are giving Stewart and the Daily Show undue journalistic credit. It's very funny, I give you that. And it is informative, but IT IS NOT JOURNALISM. IT IS COMEDY.
I'm not suggesting that Crossfire was journalism, either. I stand by my statement that it was mostly a gossip show. But Stewart's own words point out that the Daily Show is a FAKE NEWS show. The whole thing is a joke. and I think many people are taking it way too seriously.
And you can attribute the Daily Show's "accuracy" which you find so amusing to the hundreds of real journalists who write and report the news for AP, UPI, etc.. The Daily Show uses their reports as fodder for thier humor. Nobody at the Daily Show is a credentialed journalist.
Any journalistic credit issued the Daily Show is testament to the disgustingly sad state of the United States media.
Stewart has been a guest on dozens of hard news shows, soft news shows, and entertainment shows. In fact you'll be glad to know that the Daily Show and Crossfire both air on CNN International.
Politics is not really news. It's gossip. And this is what Crossfire was tasked with covering, leaving the real news to Wolf Blitzer.
I would hope you would be able to see what I think is blatently obvious in that the Daily Show is NOT a news show. No person on that show is a journalist. It's sole purpose is entertainment. In my opinion, if Stewart wants to become a media critic he is more than welcome to. But he can't be a comedian by day, and media watchdog by night. Like the boy who cried wolf, a comedian should not expect to be laughed at one second and taken seriously the next.
Again, I like Jon Stewart. I think he's smart, funny, and I agree with most of what he said about Crossfire. But he is not a journalist, and his opinion on Crossfire is simply that; an opinion.
Has anyone watched Tucker's PBS Show? Personally I don't see why people are hating on Tucker so bad. I get the impression that Novak actually believes the shit he spews, and that Tucker is spewing the shit for the purpose of debate, playing devil's advocate perhaps. In my opinion, the only time Crossfire was ever tolerable was when it was Begala vs. Carlson. Mostly because Begala is easier on the eyes than Carville.
Crossfire was pretty dumbass, but i found it interesting because it was a daily testing ground for the political operatives' spin of the day. If you've ever seen The War Room you'll see that this is how these guys actually act. The show never had any educational or informational value other than observing how political operatives think. Which to me is very interesting, especially in an election year. Plus, Crossfire and perhaps the McLaughlin Group are the only truly non-partisan politics shows. Both sides get equal time.
And I like Jon Stewart, but he's a comedian, not a journalist. Because of this he is able to protect what he says behind the guise of satire. Nothing he says on his show matters beyond humor, though obviously he is able influence his audience, and beyond.
I'm disappointed that Stewart chose to come out from behind the protective shield of satire only to attack some dumb TV show. Why does he not criticize the government without his tongue-in-cheek? I speculate that seriously criticizing officials without the protection of satire would open him up to counter criticsm and jeapordize his career. A 2-bit, non-partisan cable show, he can get away with that.
I use SprintPCS, the Palmone treo600, and pssh. SprintPCS's network is CDMA so if you're not in the continental United States, and not in or near a metropolitian area, forget about it. For the rest of you I can tell you that it works splendidly, though latent. It'd be difficult to perform any complex task, though not impossible. On the treo the font-size will be tiny. One should consider the treo650 with it's high resolution screen as an alternative.
I should also mention PalmVNC. The bandwidth limitations of the sprintpcs network, and the resolution limitations of the treo600 render this application to little more than a novelty. Though again, in a pinch, it's a usefull app to keep around.
Perhaps you already have a phone that runs java midlets? If so you could try SSH & Telnet Floyd or MIDPSSH.
Cedega is a non-free version of wine with directx capabilities. You can browse their supported games here.
Of course not all games now-a-days require wine or cedega in order to run on linux. Games like unreal tournament and doom III include fully functional linux versions.
There are several open source games developed for but not limited to linux. torcs, flightgear, tuxracer are some examples.
Projects like libsdl are making cross-platform game development easier.
Probably the biggest problem you'll encounter is building drivers for your video card. I've heard it argued both ways but as I understand it, both nvidia and ati drivers are ass-pains in linux. Nvidia's drivers are free as in beer, not speech. If you don't really care about free-software principles and philosophy then this is not a problem for you. ATI's drivers I understand to perform less than ideally. If you haven't already purchased your video card, I would encourage you to do extensive research beforehand.
In reality, linux distributions have few differences. Any recent, major distribution should be able to accomodate gameplay. I myself use debian unstable for amd64.
As far as performance, it really boils down to hardware. My advice is to install the linux distribution of your choice. Once you get glxgears to run, give ut2004demo a try, and if you like the way it works, then stick with linux.
I saw a few comments requesting SSH clients and Text Readers so I thought I point some out.
First some free stuff:
plucker - Ebook reader. Really only supports it's own format but is very robust. iSilo is a non-free ebook reader that supports other formats including txt, but with the plucker tools you can convert almost any document into plucker format.
pssh - There are other SSH clients for palmos, but this one doesn't crash my treo.
palmvnc - Very neat, but less than practical on my low-res, low-speed treo.
soundrec - Simple sound recording application, export to wav (usefull with Bhajis Loops) designed for the treo 600 but may work with other palm devices
Now some non-free stuff:
Pocket Tunes - Turn your palm device into an ipod only better with ogg and wma support. Worth the price.
Bhajis Loops - Turn your palm device into a music studio. Also worth the price
Not too mention the countless games, calculators, calendars, and other knick-knacks.
There are limitations in hardware obviously. There's only so much stuff you can fit in such a tiny device. But I must say that my treo 600 does way more than I ever expected when I bought it.
phpgroupware uses all free and open software. Printer friendly output.
Last I heard the entire point of open source code was using the code and redistributing it. As long as their product is open source and GPL'd as well, who cares? If they can use an OS project to aid the creation of a new OS project, I say more power to them.
You're not wrong, there are advantages to a large user community, and donations are certainly one of them. And there truly is no faster way to build a following than with advertising. But I do have to question the target audience. I know I tried firefox after reading an article in slashdot. I never would think to turn to the NYT to find out what browser I should be using. Obviously many people do rely on mainstream media for their technical news. But I question both if these people are ready for firefox, and if firefox is ready for these people.
I don't mean to sound caullous, but what good is a community of fools? The average NYT reader may try firefox because it's free, may even fall in love with it. But do you seriously expect them to participate in the community? They will not understand the general principles behind OSS. When they encounter a bug, rather than filing a bug report like we OSS veterans, they will only get frustrated.
I think that the fsf does a reasonably good job of spreading open source awareness. I think it would be best if the marketing of open source software was all inclusive. I know that I use firefox not because of tabbed browsing or pop-up blocking (even though they are super), but because it is open source. The software itself is better than internet explorer, but not by leaps and bounds. The project itself is better because it's open, it's freedom, it's community. The average NYT reader won't see it from my perspective, they'll see pop-up blocking and free beer.
In my opinion, it's not so much that firefox is right, it's that ie is wrong. I would like to equally encourage NYT readers to try the entire mozilla suite. I would like to encourage them to try knoppix, and gaim, and the countless other projects that could enhace their life, fatten their wallets, and enlighten their minds. I feel like this advertising campaign is analogous to flying someone all the way to paris to the the eiffel tower and then leaving without seeing the lovre.
A real campaign to generate users would be educating them about the benefits of open source in general, not just a single project. It's vain to believe that firefox will always be on the cutting edge. Right now it is a shining star in the open source community at large, and we are all proud of it. But by it's very nature it changes day to day. Mistakes will be made, microsoft will not just roll over and pay dead. They will come out with new versions of ie. Do you propose collect donations for new advertising every time they do? I say give the people a reason why firefox is better than ie that doesn't change everytime a new version is released by either party. I can think of a few slogans right now:
"Don't like Firefox? Then change it yourself"
firefox source code in shape of half naked sexy lady - "Want to see the rest? goto http://blah.."
That's all I've got for right now, but these are things microsoft cannot answer too. They can add pop-up blocking. They can add tabbed browsing. There are no patents on these things. In fact the code is right there in firefox for them to look at as they please. And that is the only reason firefox is better than ie.
My point exactly. There presently is not an active anti-firefox campaign being waged by microsoft, but I fear an preemptive campaign by firefox will trigger one.
You're right that the money cannot be simply given to the developers as many people donated specifically to have their name associated with this ad. However according to the faq, there is room for some of the money raised beyond the cost of the ad to goto their PR firm, other firefox launch related costs, and then possibly to developers.
Marketing is important when your goal is to profit. In fact it's crucial. But the goal of the mozilla foundation is not to profit. That's best left to Netscape.
If your goal is to encourage people to use firefox, then microsoft fixing their browser is about the worst thing that can happen. It would encourage everyone you spent tens of thousands of dollars converting to firefox to switch back. Quickly you decend into a marketing battle, which mozilla simply does not had the funds to fight.
And I am certainly aware of microsoft's campaigns against linux and apache. To my knowledge they have not targeted firefox or mozilla specifically. In my opinion, an ad campaign would make firefox a target.
bogie's quote seems to be speaking from the perspective of someone who's goal is to make money. Mozilla doesn't have any investors they need to answer to, they are next expected to turn a profit (in fact they are forbidden from turning a profit). If firefox has 10,000 users, or 10,000,000 users, mozilla is still a non-profit organization. Mozilla's mandate is not to take down microsoft, and I think that that mentality is actually counter productive to the cause. It's in the public's interest to have a diverse browser market. Competition does spawn innovation.
Don't expect microsoft to embrace competition anytime soon. Even though mozilla is not mandated to encourage competition, I would hope that they would respect that goal. A marketing campaign blasting their competitor is not in the public's interest, development and innovation is.
I simply used apache as a reference to perhaps a successful open source project. I could have also used linux, but I felt linux was a bad example because companies like IBM have taken it upon themselves to launch media campaigns on linux's behalf. Their linux campaign perhaps sold some servers for them, but it also forced microsoft into launching an anti-linux campaign. A campaign which you must admit has had an significant impact. I would hate to see firefox, a rather young project, drug through the mud.
According to the site, every dollar goes to the mozilla project, but is earmarked for PR, advertising, and other costs incurred during the "launch" of firefox 1.0.
You don't have to run it to use it. In fact you're using it right now.
In my opinion, this is money that should be awarded to developers, and used to further the project. I'm glad that people love firefox so much, but did apache ever buy an ad in the NYT? Apache is the most popular web server in the world by all estimates. They never had to launch a massive media campaign, because they were simply the best product. That's the way firefox should be.
Also, Microsoft is going to see this as a direct threat. They have far more access to media (MSNBC anyone?) than mozilla ever will. If they were to launch a counter-campaign, which is exactly what they're being baited into to doing, they could scare a lot of people away from firefox, and all open source projects.
The money should be given to the developers who go relativly un-rewarded, and to foster the development of mozilla.
Now it can't compete on storage space, I admit, but my palmone treo 600 has been my exclusive portable music player for about 6 months now. Combined with the pocket-tunes software and a sd memory card, the treo 600 becomes a rather fancy mp3, wma, wav, and ogg player. In addition to that, it's also a cell phone, plays games, browses webs, etc. You can buy a 1gb sd card for about $80, and the pocket-tunes software is $30. The phone itself is only $350 with a contract from the evil phone company of your choice. If you get their unlimited data plans, then you can stream your favorite shoutcast streams straight to your phone.
Ever since I bought this phone, my archos jukebox 6000 has been sitting on the shelf collecting dust.
If you don't want the phone you could always get the tungsten t5. Also be sure to check out the yet unreleased treo 650.
Try this.
Well.. my SprintPCS PalmOne Treo600 already has an internet connection through sprint, but a "broader-bander" connection would be nice. Last i heard there was not enough power in the SD slot of the treo to operate a wifi card. They don't explicitly mention support for the treo600, but I'm curious if it would work, or if there is a wifi card in the books for the treo. Or bluetooth for that matter.
Your store, and your parking lot are PRIVATE PROPERTY, upon which, you are right, you're the boss on your property. The sidewalk outside your store, however, is public. This is why abortion protests occur on the sidewalk in front of the clinic, and not in the operating room.
I'm not aware of a "Right to Ignorance" but I don't disagree that as a speaker in any medium, I cannot force you to hear it. Regardless, I have the right to speak it anyway. If I am in a public place, I have the right to assemble, speak, and protest until I'm blue in the face, at my own expense. Broadcast mediums are becoming more and more restricted, to my dismay. I'm not certain that the internet technically is defined as a broadcast medium.
You're absolutly right. I cannot tell my ISP what to do with THEIR PROPERTY. But the cable modem is NOT THEIR PROPERTY. It's MY PROPERTY. I paid for it. I overpaid for it, as a matter of fact.
Imagine there's a public park on an island. In order to get to it, you have to either buy a boat yourself, or rent one from someone else. What right does the renter have to demand that you can use their boat to get to the island, but once you're on the island, you cannot goto a specific part of it. It's a public island. The internet is a public place.
Again, I'm not saying that this method of blocking spam is neccesarily a bad idea. Instead, I think it sets a bad precedent, and as a cable modem user, I'm hesitant to yield my present right to send mass emails from my cable modem.
No, it isn't, but perhaps it should be.
Well, in this particular case, if "You" are my ISP, I'm paying for the pulpit. I pay for a connection to the internet, and what I choose to do with it should be my business.
If by "You" you mean the average email user, I don't believe that you are providing spammers with a pulpit. Take for example the sidewalks of Las Vegas, where hundreds of people are paid to, rather forcefully, hand out flyers for adult entertainment. However persuasive they try to be to get you to take their flyer, they are forbidden to force it upon you. I beleive that email spam is very similar. Because of the automation of our email clients, we automatically download everything in our mailboxes to our inboxes. Our email clients accept this spam on our behalf. If you wish to manually go through your messages one by one, you could easily reject any email you wish without ever viewing it. But because of the volume and difficulty of a manual process like that, we forego our means of individually filtering our email and blindly entrust our email clients to accept everything. And it's this blind acceptance that spammers exploit. You certainly have the right to accept or reject any email that gets sent to you before you download it. It's this right that you waive to some extent by using a non-discerning email client.
Well, semantics aside. Non-governmental institutions hold no jurisdiction over public areas. Unless you're physically on private property, the government dictates the rules. In public spaces, I retain the right to free speech. Presuming the internet as a whole is a public place, as I'm sure few will contest, the right to speak should be protected for all individuals, or at least US Citizens.
Besides, you'll encounter few organizations that are wholly unaffiliated with the government and can therefore bypass such rules as Equal Oppritunity laws. By their affiliation with the government, be it through grants, contracting, or SEC participation, they are acting on behalf of the government and must adhere to and uphold the laws.
I don't follow your counter-point.
I think you're trying to suggest that it's legal for non-governmental institutions to infringe upon one's rights of free speech. Which is certainly not true. But regardless, the real question is weather email is considered of a medium of speech. Obviously email is not a right, it's a purchased privaledge. But so are most mediums of speech. Printing presses, radio transmitters, and ISPs are not free of financial cost. But my right to publish and broadcast my opinions and anything else i want, are (or should be) protected. Why not email?
Noone really complains about advertising on commercial radio and television broadcasts. I really don't see a significant difference between television advertising and email spam. If anything, for me, email spam is less frustrating, and certainly less time consuming. Any spam I encounter can be simply overlooked, and I can move on to the next message in my inbox. With televison or radio, other than changing channels, I have no control over the advertising I'm exposed to.
You as an individual can tell me to STFU all you want, but cannot actually take any action to prevent me from excercising my right to speak. If I am unwelcome at your store, you can have me arrested for trespassing, but you cannot infringe on my right to protest your store and speak about it. The loose metaphor being that you can have me arrested for sending you pornography, or violating a no-call-list, or damaging your computer; but you should not be allowed to prevent me from sending my emails.