Ted Turner is a human being. AOL/Time Warner is a corporation.
Ted Turner has a little more than 1% ownership of that corporation.
If you had RTFAed, you would understand why he is saying this... if he wanted start another venture like CNN (which I am sure he does), it would be impossible to compete with the conglomerates as they have such an anticompetitive stranglehold on all forms of media.
Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!
"can" being a very important qualifier. Whether it actually does or not is open for serious debate.
I use Linux as my main operating system, and I definitely agree that Free Software does perform better in some areas... but in ease of use, free software tends to provide you with way way more choices (that you don't want to make) than non-free software.
The abundance of choices/settings that you don't want to bothered with seems to be the columnist's main complaint about software. So, if he were using Free Software, I believe he would be complaining more, not less.
Free Software may have the potential to be better in the ease of use area... but that's a potential that is mostly untapped.
As much as I love the Gimp, the interface sucks in comparison to Photoshop.
I have heard this said many times before, and I don't think there is any justification for it. The GIMP's interface is not that different from Photoshop's.
It's hard for people who are used to Photoshop when they try to use the Gimp. But that's because they are used to finding things where Photoshop has them and not where the Gimp has them.
Recently I installed the Gimp on a friend of mine's iBook. This is someone who had never used Photoshop before. A few days later, she was designing logos for her business, using the Gimp.
sounds like they are realizing that eternal backwards compatibility isn't that important to most people...
and those who are forced to buy new software are probably going to be buying new Microsoft software (as if they had a choice).
same thing with the Xbox.
For instance, if I said "Slashdot editors don't read their own front page", this is patently true, but is offensive, so it would be a felony in Brazil.
What if disputes over spectrum arose? The answer is simple. Whoever owned the rights to that slice of virtual real estate would locate the illicit broadcaster, march into the local courthouse and get a restraining order to pull the plug on the transmitter. Trespass is hardly a new idea, and courts are well-equipped to deal with it.
Yeah, and how long do you expect that to take oh wise political correspondent?
Judges are busy enough dealing with ACTUAL property disputes. If the average time to hear a case in California is 6 years, how likely is it that the courts can effectively police the airwaves?
The next paragraph is even more laughable:
One fear is that some predatory monopolist, a Microsoft of the airwaves, would end up owning all of the spectrum. That won't happen. First, the market value of the spectrum would approach $1 trillion, out of the reach of any individual corporation. Second, antitrust laws would remain on the books. The Department of Justice could wield the Sherman Antitrust Act to challenge unlawful conduct and block mergers.
Uhm, if Justice wasn't willing to continue the fight against the actual Microsoft, what makes the author think it will fight against a "Microsoft of the airwaves"?
Yes, the FCC sucks. If it were up to me, I would take away its power to regulate "decency" and make it strictly a policeman of spectrum rights. But of course, the decency regulation is what validates its existence for average Americans who are afraid of Howard Stern and Janet Jackson's right breast.
So, unlike the author, I know that I won't get exactly what I want, and pigs won't fly.
The price from suse for five copies of linux is $598. Isn't this still almost half the price of Microsoft Operating Systems?
Um, except for about five lite-version proprietary applications from the Kompany. Everything else in SUSE (including Yast and Sax) is covered either under the GPL or an even less restrictive license.
So why would you need FIVE copies? One copy is enough as long as you don't install the proprietary apps more than once.
Any argument one can use against the Clinton administration (lack of disclosure, too much rhetoric) can be multiplied 10x with this administration.
Clinton had faults... but he also had one thing that this president does not: a brain.
We can force Microsoft to start operating fairly or ignore their practices until their business will be fined into financial hell in Europe and some German company takes over the desktop share (with a Linux/FreeBSD distro).
German company? Who could you be thinking of? SUSE/Novell? Oh! wait...
I'm a debian fan myself, but this past weekend I installed SUSE 9.1 on my dad's computer.
Having tried a lot of different distributions in the past, I expected that I would need to help him out, or that there would at least be some sort of trouble with hardware detection or a bug of some kind.
Wrong.
I believe SUSE will be the distro that brings Linux to the masses. It is easier to install than Windows. OTOH, if you know what you are doing, there are options to finetune it exactly the way you want.
Install went perfectly. The bootsplash screen and progress bar look great. There is none of this confusing text that people always comment on with Linux distros.
Things that take a long time to set up on Debian, such as java and realplayer plugins work out of the box with SUSE.
The SaX2 screen config program works amazingly well, letting you position the desktop on your screen just the right way. It autodetected my dad's monitor and videocard with no problem.
The only difficulty was that he wanted to listen to preview files from a website that sells classical music (classicalarchives.com). The format is.wax. So, I had to install mplayer and mplayerplug-in separately.
I have installed a lot of different distributions and this had to have been the easiest. We haven't run into a single bug yet.
If I had to recommend a distribution to someone who had never used Linux before, who didn't want to take the time necessary to understand and learn about their system which is necessary with Debian... I would recommend SUSE 9.1 without hesitation.
I can anticipate people who'll get the treatment, then use that as another item on their list of "why you should have unsafe sex with me tonight".
Eh, no.
The virus that they have invented can only survive if the HIV virus is present in the body. If you have no HIV in your body the "good" virus will simply die out.
"Hey baby, I have HIV, but don't worry, I also have the good virus."... Somehow I don't think that line will get you laid.
This is absolutely the wrong reason to be doing this. Not only does it not reflect well on the community trying to make this work, it also gives other console manufacturers reason to really lock down their machine. Frankly, for this reason alone, butting heads with Microsoft over this should be reconsidered. (Note: A good chunk of my bitterness here has to do with that idiot CEO of Lindows.com putting up a reward to break the system.)
Have to disagree with you.
If you buy a physical device, you should be able to do with it whatever you want, short of hitting someone over the head with it.
This is not copyrighted art or software we are talking about. It's a tool.
If I buy a screwdriver and the manufacturer says that I can only use the screwdriver for punching holes in cardboard, I am going to disregard them.
They cannot and should not be able to govern how I use the tool once I have purchased it.
Maybe the statement "while MS makes a loss on the Xbox" was a little over the top, but a lot of people dislike MS for valid reasons. There's nothing wrong with giving them a raw deal... it's just business!
You're saying that MS should be allowed to screw everyone over in their business practices, but as consumers we should not be allowed to screw over MS even when it is perfectly legal?
This would make some sense if it were part of on-campus housing fees. It would be similar to cable television and other services provided as part of room and board.
But to include it as part of a mandatory technology fee for ALL students is absurd. Not all students will even have internet access at home...
And that's just the point... This is a service that people would use at home. It has nothing to do with academics, or the health or social life of the students.
The administration at these universities must really have their heads up their asses to try a stunt like this.
We have no reason to assume that this phenomenon is not what lies behind Chinese policy: that people want it that way, or aren't bothered too much by it. The same goes for many of the things that we in the West consider bad about other countries - women in burkhas and what have you.
During the days of segregation, a black person in the Southern United States would step into the street when passing a white person on the sidewalk. Black men did not talk to white women. Black people and white people did not even use the same restrooms or water fountains.
Just because people live differently does not mean that they "choose" to live that way. They may not have a choice in the matter.
I do feel sympathy for the people in China who are oppressed by their own government, the people in Tibet who are oppressed by the same government, and anyone who is oppressed by tyranny, including women in countries where they have no rights.
I don't necessarily think I should do their dirty work for them (regime change ala Iraq). But I am not going to pull the wool over my eyes and pretend there isn't a problem.
They will definitely use the PS3 to leverage this. It's a device they already control, which people will be putting in their home entertainment systems.
The "PSX" already has a harddrive. So you've got to figure that the PSX/PS3 will be to this service what the iPod is to ITMS.
So what we will end up with is a bunch of different companies that don't have to compete with each other because the music is locked into one type of hardware. Whereas before, we had a nice simple standard.... the CD.
Wasn't the digital revolution supposed to increase competition and give the consumer a better deal?
The one good thing about this is that there are already so many DRM technologies in use now, so Microsoft may find it more difficult to impose its own standard and dominate the whole friggin thing.
I'm just a freshman community college kid. I don't understand what's so hard about the debian installer... will someone enlighten me with specific problems they've had?
You are smarter than you think. Going to community college is a very smart move. I went to a big city private university... I'm still in debt up to my eyeballs. Community college is VERY smart.
Back on topic... It sounds like your friend was also smart, and pointed you to a Debian cd that uses the new "debian-installer". The old debian installer (aka boot-floppies) really did suck. It had no auto-detection of hardware, and required you to google for every single piece of your computer to figure out which driver would work. It was a pain in the ass, but it was worth it, because afterward you had debian on your machine.
The new installer is at Beta-4 right now, and already works very well. The difference is startling.
As every Debian aficionado loves to point out, Debian had a crappy installer for so long because they have to get it to run on 11 different architectures, not just i386.
Slashdot Mirror
ehh, No.
Ted Turner is a human being. AOL/Time Warner is a corporation.
Ted Turner has a little more than 1% ownership of that corporation.
If you had RTFAed, you would understand why he is saying this... if he wanted start another venture like CNN (which I am sure he does), it would be impossible to compete with the conglomerates as they have such an anticompetitive stranglehold on all forms of media.
"can" being a very important qualifier. Whether it actually does or not is open for serious debate.
I use Linux as my main operating system, and I definitely agree that Free Software does perform better in some areas... but in ease of use, free software tends to provide you with way way more choices (that you don't want to make) than non-free software.
The abundance of choices/settings that you don't want to bothered with seems to be the columnist's main complaint about software. So, if he were using Free Software, I believe he would be complaining more, not less.
Free Software may have the potential to be better in the ease of use area... but that's a potential that is mostly untapped.
I have heard this said many times before, and I don't think there is any justification for it. The GIMP's interface is not that different from Photoshop's.
It's hard for people who are used to Photoshop when they try to use the Gimp. But that's because they are used to finding things where Photoshop has them and not where the Gimp has them.
Recently I installed the Gimp on a friend of mine's iBook. This is someone who had never used Photoshop before. A few days later, she was designing logos for her business, using the Gimp.
Yes, like being a sucky store in the first place.
Someone needs to tell them how successful they already are in this area.
The problem is that when these companies get your consent, they bury it in some end user license agreement that no one ever reads.
sounds like they are realizing that eternal backwards compatibility isn't that important to most people... and those who are forced to buy new software are probably going to be buying new Microsoft software (as if they had a choice). same thing with the Xbox.
It blows my mind that someone in Britain can sue another for saying something that is demonstrably true.
Maybe that's why the Brits are so polite. ;-)
A felony to say something that is true?
Holy s/h/it!
That is the best sig I have ever seen on Slashdot.
Using a recursive acronym for a bill that will make copyright holders even MORE powerful?
I'll bet Darl McBride is behind this somehow.
Yeah, and how long do you expect that to take oh wise political correspondent?
Judges are busy enough dealing with ACTUAL property disputes. If the average time to hear a case in California is 6 years, how likely is it that the courts can effectively police the airwaves?
The next paragraph is even more laughable:
One fear is that some predatory monopolist, a Microsoft of the airwaves, would end up owning all of the spectrum. That won't happen. First, the market value of the spectrum would approach $1 trillion, out of the reach of any individual corporation. Second, antitrust laws would remain on the books. The Department of Justice could wield the Sherman Antitrust Act to challenge unlawful conduct and block mergers.
Uhm, if Justice wasn't willing to continue the fight against the actual Microsoft, what makes the author think it will fight against a "Microsoft of the airwaves"?
Yes, the FCC sucks. If it were up to me, I would take away its power to regulate "decency" and make it strictly a policeman of spectrum rights. But of course, the decency regulation is what validates its existence for average Americans who are afraid of Howard Stern and Janet Jackson's right breast.
So, unlike the author, I know that I won't get exactly what I want, and pigs won't fly.
from a country that chooses ,a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3034600.st m">its own version of Rupert Murdoch to be the supreme leader.
Um, except for about five lite-version proprietary applications from the Kompany. Everything else in SUSE (including Yast and Sax) is covered either under the GPL or an even less restrictive license.
So why would you need FIVE copies? One copy is enough as long as you don't install the proprietary apps more than once.
Jesus, it sounds like the Matrix doesn't it?
Nothing ever happened to it, it was just a lie.
Any argument one can use against the Clinton administration (lack of disclosure, too much rhetoric) can be multiplied 10x with this administration.
Clinton had faults... but he also had one thing that this president does not: a brain.
We can force Microsoft to start operating fairly or ignore their practices until their business will be fined into financial hell in Europe and some German company takes over the desktop share (with a Linux/FreeBSD distro).
German company? Who could you be thinking of? SUSE/Novell? Oh! wait...
I'm a debian fan myself, but this past weekend I installed SUSE 9.1 on my dad's computer.
.wax. So, I had to install mplayer and mplayerplug-in separately.
Having tried a lot of different distributions in the past, I expected that I would need to help him out, or that there would at least be some sort of trouble with hardware detection or a bug of some kind.
Wrong.
I believe SUSE will be the distro that brings Linux to the masses. It is easier to install than Windows. OTOH, if you know what you are doing, there are options to finetune it exactly the way you want.
Install went perfectly. The bootsplash screen and progress bar look great. There is none of this confusing text that people always comment on with Linux distros.
Things that take a long time to set up on Debian, such as java and realplayer plugins work out of the box with SUSE.
The SaX2 screen config program works amazingly well, letting you position the desktop on your screen just the right way. It autodetected my dad's monitor and videocard with no problem.
The only difficulty was that he wanted to listen to preview files from a website that sells classical music (classicalarchives.com). The format is
I have installed a lot of different distributions and this had to have been the easiest. We haven't run into a single bug yet.
If I had to recommend a distribution to someone who had never used Linux before, who didn't want to take the time necessary to understand and learn about their system which is necessary with Debian... I would recommend SUSE 9.1 without hesitation.
Eh, no.
The virus that they have invented can only survive if the HIV virus is present in the body. If you have no HIV in your body the "good" virus will simply die out.
"Hey baby, I have HIV, but don't worry, I also have the good virus." ... Somehow I don't think that line will get you laid.
Have to disagree with you.
If you buy a physical device, you should be able to do with it whatever you want, short of hitting someone over the head with it.
This is not copyrighted art or software we are talking about. It's a tool.
If I buy a screwdriver and the manufacturer says that I can only use the screwdriver for punching holes in cardboard, I am going to disregard them.
They cannot and should not be able to govern how I use the tool once I have purchased it.
Maybe the statement "while MS makes a loss on the Xbox" was a little over the top, but a lot of people dislike MS for valid reasons. There's nothing wrong with giving them a raw deal... it's just business!
You're saying that MS should be allowed to screw everyone over in their business practices, but as consumers we should not be allowed to screw over MS even when it is perfectly legal?
I don't get your reasoning.
But to include it as part of a mandatory technology fee for ALL students is absurd. Not all students will even have internet access at home...
And that's just the point... This is a service that people would use at home. It has nothing to do with academics, or the health or social life of the students.
The administration at these universities must really have their heads up their asses to try a stunt like this.
Another downslide is that it's very slow due to its reliance on java.
During the days of segregation, a black person in the Southern United States would step into the street when passing a white person on the sidewalk. Black men did not talk to white women. Black people and white people did not even use the same restrooms or water fountains.
Just because people live differently does not mean that they "choose" to live that way. They may not have a choice in the matter.
I do feel sympathy for the people in China who are oppressed by their own government, the people in Tibet who are oppressed by the same government, and anyone who is oppressed by tyranny, including women in countries where they have no rights.
I don't necessarily think I should do their dirty work for them (regime change ala Iraq). But I am not going to pull the wool over my eyes and pretend there isn't a problem.
This will be awesome when these phones start coming out with VPN support and the ability to use your own VOIP provider.
Of course, that will probably not be the case initially.
Hmmm, may be a good time to invest in Vonage et al.
Because it's all about having options. The more options you have, the more likely you are to get what you want.
The "PSX" already has a harddrive. So you've got to figure that the PSX/PS3 will be to this service what the iPod is to ITMS.
So what we will end up with is a bunch of different companies that don't have to compete with each other because the music is locked into one type of hardware. Whereas before, we had a nice simple standard.... the CD.
Wasn't the digital revolution supposed to increase competition and give the consumer a better deal?
The one good thing about this is that there are already so many DRM technologies in use now, so Microsoft may find it more difficult to impose its own standard and dominate the whole friggin thing.
You are smarter than you think. Going to community college is a very smart move. I went to a big city private university... I'm still in debt up to my eyeballs. Community college is VERY smart.
Back on topic... It sounds like your friend was also smart, and pointed you to a Debian cd that uses the new "debian-installer". The old debian installer (aka boot-floppies) really did suck. It had no auto-detection of hardware, and required you to google for every single piece of your computer to figure out which driver would work. It was a pain in the ass, but it was worth it, because afterward you had debian on your machine.
The new installer is at Beta-4 right now, and already works very well. The difference is startling.
As every Debian aficionado loves to point out, Debian had a crappy installer for so long because they have to get it to run on 11 different architectures, not just i386.
And for anyone that wants a pretty graphical install of Debian to i386, there are plenty of unofficial options.