In reality, record companies sell plastic disks, not music, and people don't need plastic disks anymore, so record companies are now obsolete.
The previous role of the record company was more than "sell plastic disks". The record companies were the only entities that were capable of recording music, distribute the record and market it. Now, with the development and widespread adoption and use of computers and communication networks the role that the record company once played simply became obsolete. Now everyone can afford the tools necessary to record a song and can even do it in the comfort of their room, everyone can easily distribute an album worldwide with a simple click of a button and the marketing machine that the record companies had simply doesn't work as well as it once did. To put it shortly, the record companies simply aren't needed anymore. If you ask me, that change is more than welcomed. It's progress.
The contest would be far more interesting if it added a reasonable time/RAM restriction (e.g. 10 minutes and 500MB of RAM).
What's the point of adding processing and/or memory requirements if the sole point of this prize is to squeeze the most information into the smallest possible package? After all in this case it's the end product that matters, not what it takes to get there.
For those who are honorably ignorant of what I'm splitting hairs on (honorably in that you're not trying to write about something you don't know about): A 'watt' is already a rate of something per unit time. If the energy produced was to be quantified in units per year, it should be joules per year.
Now that you want to start split hairs, I inform you that in the field of civil engineering the unit of measurement for energy consumption (for heating a home, for example) is calculated in Watts per hour. Certain countries even incorporate that unit of measurement in their construction code tables. So it is easy to see that it isn't all that farfetched to calculate something in Watts per year, specially when the person doing the calculations wishes to put out a very big number to describe his product's power generation. You know, similar to the whole Gibibyte Vs Gigabyte thing.
I think that RMS has done a lot for us, but he might do even more if he were more palatable to the mainstream.
It isn't possible to look "palatable to the mainstream" when the people who are publishing things about him have some sort of personal crusade to discredit and ridicule him, possibly in order to try to attack and jeopardize all the good work he has done.
As far as I can tell, all the statements about Stallman's appalling personal habits are true.
Do you realize that someone's personal habits, whether they look good or bad, don't matter at all? Where in fact do we fit comments about rumors of someone's personal higiene in a discussion about software licenses?
I don't know if GPLv3 is going to die or not but I do know that the GPLv3 will cause irreparable harm to the open source community and it already has caused enormous harm to the reputations of RMS and GNU.
Are you stupid? In what way exactly will the creation of a new license "cause irreparable harm" to anyone? Do you even know what a license is? I'll explain
A license like the GPL is simply a set of conditions stated by the author (or copyright owner) that must be obeyed by whoever wants the privilege of using his product. To put it in other words, it states the author's wishes about how his work may be used. The author can state whatever conditions he sees fit, as long as they do not impose any legal problems. When the author states them, we can only choose between respecting the author's wishes or not using his work at all.
So where does the GPL come in? The GPL is simply a pre-defined set of conditions that were compiled by RMS and the FSF in the past. RMS and the FSF sat down, wrote them up, adopted them in their works and also made the set of conditions available to whoever wished to impose the same set of conditions in their works. So in the end no one is forcing any author to adopt a certain license for his work. Whoever wishes that the users of their work obey the conditions stated in the GPL can do so but no author is forced to do it. The author is always free to define the conditions, whether he devises them personally or adopts another pre-compiled list of conditions.
So, now that you know that, where exactly does the compilation of a new list of conditions affect anybody? Where in fact can a new set of conditions do "irreperable damage"? It doesn't and it cant. It will only be a list and nothing more. To really affect anyone, first an author must adopt it as his work's license. But even then it will still be the set of demands that all users must obey to have the privilege of using someone's work. And then what? Will the author's demands do irreparable damage to anything? To what exactly? It's his work and he bloody knows what he wants to do with it.
This "sky is falling" paranoia which revolves GPLv3 is mind bogling, really.
think in TFA it is meant that there is no VOIP Google Talk support
Once again, that isn't support for google talk. Google talk is simply a Jabber client written by google. When someone talks about google talk's VoIP functionality then that person is talking about Jingle, which is a Jabber standard element.
So please don't get confused about this one. Google talk is simply the client (like Psi, Gaim, Kopete, etc) while the protocol itself is Jabber.
Apple isn't blameless here. How in the world does a virus get into their product's production line?
Nonetheless, it seems that you are ignoring the fact that the simple action of connecting a MP3 player into a computer running windows is security problem. I mean, spreading a virus just by mounting a portable data storage unit? Come on, who finds that acceptable?
In the long lost times of 1996 Pitch Shifter released Infotainment?, which shipped with all the samples used in the album's songs. So it isn't that uncommon.
As for preferences, I usually do not bother with them.
Well, there you have it. You are trying to claim that a feature is too "obtuse" although you didn't even tried to invest the couple of mouse clicks which would solve yours so called problem. If you can't even do bothed doing that simple task and yet spend a considerable amount of time whining about how you can't do it, then it is safe to say that there isn't enough UI and usability know-how in the whole world to make things work out in your favor.
All I want is a simple option on the "Do you want to remember passwords for this site?" popups that says "no, and never ask EVER for ANY site". The only way to get rid of these worthless annoyances is some obscure setting buried in a menu.
In Firefox's preferences dialog, go to "Privacy", "passwords" and uncheck the "remember passwords" checkbox. I fail to see if this is an obscure setting or if it is even even burried in a menu.Have you even bothered to look at Firefox's preferences?
This is exactly what I wish firefox was and what I thought was the project's prime goal. It would be great if Firefox was as modular as it could be instead of seeing that feature getting eroded with time. For example, it would be great if the search bar was converted into a pure extension.
Even if advertising ceasses to be the media's prime source of income which is at the moment, no one in their right mind, specially businesses, refuses the opportunity to increase their bottom line. Extra cash is always welcomed with open arms.
Personally I prefer Ballmer's Gate. It's somewhat of a cheap clone of Donkey Kong, where you play a poor developer trying to climb the corporate ladder and you have to avoid the chairs a big monkey at the top throws at you.
If you loved Transport Tycoon then I bet you will get a kick out of OpenTTD. It's a Transport Tycoon Deluxe clone which comes with quite a few goodies, including multiplayer support. Since I discovered it I started playing it exclusively. Too much for the good sake of my health, in fact:]
Apple doesn't make a boatload of money on the hardware (why else are they able to effectively price-match other MP3 players)
Effectively price-match other mp3 players? Do you happen to know that Apple not only sells quite a few of the most expensive MP3 players in the market but also their mp3 players dominate every segment of the market? I mean, they sell MP3 players up to $350. Do you really believe that the company which sells an mp3 player for such a stupidly high price and still dominate the market isn't able to make a boatload of money from that product?
Following your train of thought, maybe you even believe that Apple doesn't make any money at all selling desktop and laptop computers.
This has absolutely nothing to do with development! I never developed and my technical background is very far away from IT and still, even I knew about that. For your information, what the apt tool family does is handle the system updates and application installation. It downloads packages from a repository, which can be a server or a CD/DVD, and then installs them into the system.
So, after you demonstrated that you never used a single linux install in your life and you have absolutely no clue about what you are talking about, how can you badmouth linux and OSS in general and still keep up a straight face? This has nothing to do with being some sort of linux zealot or even arrogance. The only thing this has to do is shock about how someone has the nerve to claim the dumbest things about something he clearly has no knowledge of.
You just demonstrated that you don't have a clue about how linux distributions handle updates. Have you ever heard of apt? I did and it didn't took me long to learn that with apt anyone can create and maintain his own software repository. It can be done online and even through uptade CDs/DVDs and all without ever depending on anyone or anything to manage and supply the updates.
So why exactly do you talk about "negotiating with the community to check changes into the public source tree" and other nonsense like that? O, I see. You don't have a clue about what you are talking about.
Come on! They will be dependent on a different platform (Linux) and different software (OO, etc).
Are you seriously trying to compare the adoption of a standards-compliant, free and open-sourced platform which guarantees backward compatibility and even compatibility with other standards-compliant platforms with the dependance on a platform which is as closed as it gets, has always compatible problems even with it's predecessor and even patched versions, has a history of very dangerous security problems and to top things off, costs hundreds of dollars per seat and per version?
Let's not even mention that by adopting linux they will not be tied down to a OS, let alone distribution. Are you capable of trying to compare both cases and still keep a straight face?
That's exactly what some FUD-spreading people don't get. What Munich is paying for isn't simply F/OSS. Munich is paying for the total replacement of it's software infrastructure. Munich is paying to get rid of a solution which costs them on software alone more than 500 per platform per upgrade cycle (which, by the way, is dictated by the software company) and replace it with a platform which is uncomparably cheaper. Tha is exactlly the point of Munich's migration and what every german tax payer should be happy for.
You obviously missed the part where they are paying this money to IBM, so your point was?
The point is that the government and the state institutions are the motor behind the adoptions in the private sector and personal use. By adopting open source solutions, Munich is incentivating the creation and growth of a local market for training, supplying and managing open source solutions. And having in mind that quite a few open source is produced in Germany (KDE, for example) then it is obvious that the people of Germany have a lot to win with that migration.
One other aspect to have in mind is that the money which Munich is paying isn't just for installing new software. Munich is paying the price for not being dependent on a certain platforms (windows) and certain software. It's like a drug addict paying for detox treatment. There are quite a few places that certain software was adopted and subsequently their business was built around it. Now, those solutions will have to be rethought and redone, which costs time and money to accomplish. Nevertheless, it does indeed pay off and pays off well.
On a side note, isn't it funny how the exact same FUD directed towards Ernie Ball's migration to Free/Open Source software is being used against Munich? And once again the FUDers will realize that the migration process, although it isn't always smooth, not only is perfectly possible but also ver positive for the organizations which adopt it.
These 'security' companies have created products and business models around Microsoft's flawed and insecure product. If Microsoft chooses to fix what they can, and beef up the security of their own product, whether it puts other companies out of business or not, do they not have the right to do this? How is it Microsoft's fault if by fixing their product, it renders another company's business model obsolete?
Are you sure that, if Vista is released as Microsoft wishes it to be released, the need for 3rd party anti-virus and security tools will vanish? Are you absolutely sure that Vista will be so much safer than all previous versions of windows that the anti-virus software will be reduced to a funny anectode in computing history?
There is absolutely no proof that Vista users will not suffer from virus problems or even that MS's own anti-virus will be the absolute best in the business. Nonetheless, Microsoft is trying to prevent all anti-virus vendors from being able to install anti-virus software on Vista by not only tying Microsoft's products into the OS but also not releasing any information about Vista's interfaces and reserving them to their in-house products. So, where exactly is that a good thing? What exactly is good about offering an unproven product as the only possible solution, barring every alternative from being able to be installd and locking out every 3rd party tool produced by the competition? Is it in the user's best interests to influence the security tool's offering not on the quality and efectiveness field (i.e., competing on a levelled playing field) but by restraining the security tool's ability to install and run on the platform (i.e., preventing the rival team from entering the court)?
...and I'm not even speaking about the validity and effectiveness of a karma point system. I mean, a visual queue to tell people what content to believe or not? What happened to reasoning, critical thinking and the scientific process? Do we need to think for ourselves or rely on someone's visually appealing color code to know what or what not to trust?
Slashdot Mirror
The previous role of the record company was more than "sell plastic disks". The record companies were the only entities that were capable of recording music, distribute the record and market it. Now, with the development and widespread adoption and use of computers and communication networks the role that the record company once played simply became obsolete. Now everyone can afford the tools necessary to record a song and can even do it in the comfort of their room, everyone can easily distribute an album worldwide with a simple click of a button and the marketing machine that the record companies had simply doesn't work as well as it once did. To put it shortly, the record companies simply aren't needed anymore. If you ask me, that change is more than welcomed. It's progress.
What's the point of adding processing and/or memory requirements if the sole point of this prize is to squeeze the most information into the smallest possible package? After all in this case it's the end product that matters, not what it takes to get there.
Now that you want to start split hairs, I inform you that in the field of civil engineering the unit of measurement for energy consumption (for heating a home, for example) is calculated in Watts per hour. Certain countries even incorporate that unit of measurement in their construction code tables. So it is easy to see that it isn't all that farfetched to calculate something in Watts per year, specially when the person doing the calculations wishes to put out a very big number to describe his product's power generation. You know, similar to the whole Gibibyte Vs Gigabyte thing.
It isn't possible to look "palatable to the mainstream" when the people who are publishing things about him have some sort of personal crusade to discredit and ridicule him, possibly in order to try to attack and jeopardize all the good work he has done.
Do you realize that someone's personal habits, whether they look good or bad, don't matter at all? Where in fact do we fit comments about rumors of someone's personal higiene in a discussion about software licenses?
Are you stupid? In what way exactly will the creation of a new license "cause irreparable harm" to anyone? Do you even know what a license is? I'll explain
A license like the GPL is simply a set of conditions stated by the author (or copyright owner) that must be obeyed by whoever wants the privilege of using his product. To put it in other words, it states the author's wishes about how his work may be used. The author can state whatever conditions he sees fit, as long as they do not impose any legal problems. When the author states them, we can only choose between respecting the author's wishes or not using his work at all.
So where does the GPL come in? The GPL is simply a pre-defined set of conditions that were compiled by RMS and the FSF in the past. RMS and the FSF sat down, wrote them up, adopted them in their works and also made the set of conditions available to whoever wished to impose the same set of conditions in their works. So in the end no one is forcing any author to adopt a certain license for his work. Whoever wishes that the users of their work obey the conditions stated in the GPL can do so but no author is forced to do it. The author is always free to define the conditions, whether he devises them personally or adopts another pre-compiled list of conditions.
So, now that you know that, where exactly does the compilation of a new list of conditions affect anybody? Where in fact can a new set of conditions do "irreperable damage"? It doesn't and it cant. It will only be a list and nothing more. To really affect anyone, first an author must adopt it as his work's license. But even then it will still be the set of demands that all users must obey to have the privilege of using someone's work. And then what? Will the author's demands do irreparable damage to anything? To what exactly? It's his work and he bloody knows what he wants to do with it.
This "sky is falling" paranoia which revolves GPLv3 is mind bogling, really.
Unfortunately it seems that Xubuntu 6.10 (Ubuntu+XFCE) hasn't been launched yet. It's a shame though because XFCE seems so promissing.
Once again, that isn't support for google talk. Google talk is simply a Jabber client written by google. When someone talks about google talk's VoIP functionality then that person is talking about Jingle, which is a Jabber standard element.
So please don't get confused about this one. Google talk is simply the client (like Psi, Gaim, Kopete, etc) while the protocol itself is Jabber.
Apple isn't blameless here. How in the world does a virus get into their product's production line?
Nonetheless, it seems that you are ignoring the fact that the simple action of connecting a MP3 player into a computer running windows is security problem. I mean, spreading a virus just by mounting a portable data storage unit? Come on, who finds that acceptable?
In the long lost times of 1996 Pitch Shifter released Infotainment?, which shipped with all the samples used in the album's songs. So it isn't that uncommon.
Well, there you have it. You are trying to claim that a feature is too "obtuse" although you didn't even tried to invest the couple of mouse clicks which would solve yours so called problem. If you can't even do bothed doing that simple task and yet spend a considerable amount of time whining about how you can't do it, then it is safe to say that there isn't enough UI and usability know-how in the whole world to make things work out in your favor.
In Firefox's preferences dialog, go to "Privacy", "passwords" and uncheck the "remember passwords" checkbox. I fail to see if this is an obscure setting or if it is even even burried in a menu.Have you even bothered to look at Firefox's preferences?
This is exactly what I wish firefox was and what I thought was the project's prime goal. It would be great if Firefox was as modular as it could be instead of seeing that feature getting eroded with time. For example, it would be great if the search bar was converted into a pure extension.
Why does anyone need more money?
Even if advertising ceasses to be the media's prime source of income which is at the moment, no one in their right mind, specially businesses, refuses the opportunity to increase their bottom line. Extra cash is always welcomed with open arms.
Personally I prefer Ballmer's Gate. It's somewhat of a cheap clone of Donkey Kong, where you play a poor developer trying to climb the corporate ladder and you have to avoid the chairs a big monkey at the top throws at you.
If you loved Transport Tycoon then I bet you will get a kick out of OpenTTD. It's a Transport Tycoon Deluxe clone which comes with quite a few goodies, including multiplayer support. Since I discovered it I started playing it exclusively. Too much for the good sake of my health, in fact :]
Effectively price-match other mp3 players? Do you happen to know that Apple not only sells quite a few of the most expensive MP3 players in the market but also their mp3 players dominate every segment of the market? I mean, they sell MP3 players up to $350. Do you really believe that the company which sells an mp3 player for such a stupidly high price and still dominate the market isn't able to make a boatload of money from that product?
Following your train of thought, maybe you even believe that Apple doesn't make any money at all selling desktop and laptop computers.
640 cores ought to be enough for everybody
This has absolutely nothing to do with development! I never developed and my technical background is very far away from IT and still, even I knew about that. For your information, what the apt tool family does is handle the system updates and application installation. It downloads packages from a repository, which can be a server or a CD/DVD, and then installs them into the system.
So, after you demonstrated that you never used a single linux install in your life and you have absolutely no clue about what you are talking about, how can you badmouth linux and OSS in general and still keep up a straight face? This has nothing to do with being some sort of linux zealot or even arrogance. The only thing this has to do is shock about how someone has the nerve to claim the dumbest things about something he clearly has no knowledge of.
You just demonstrated that you don't have a clue about how linux distributions handle updates. Have you ever heard of apt? I did and it didn't took me long to learn that with apt anyone can create and maintain his own software repository. It can be done online and even through uptade CDs/DVDs and all without ever depending on anyone or anything to manage and supply the updates.
So why exactly do you talk about "negotiating with the community to check changes into the public source tree" and other nonsense like that? O, I see. You don't have a clue about what you are talking about.
Are you seriously trying to compare the adoption of a standards-compliant, free and open-sourced platform which guarantees backward compatibility and even compatibility with other standards-compliant platforms with the dependance on a platform which is as closed as it gets, has always compatible problems even with it's predecessor and even patched versions, has a history of very dangerous security problems and to top things off, costs hundreds of dollars per seat and per version?
Let's not even mention that by adopting linux they will not be tied down to a OS, let alone distribution. Are you capable of trying to compare both cases and still keep a straight face?
That's exactly what some FUD-spreading people don't get. What Munich is paying for isn't simply F/OSS. Munich is paying for the total replacement of it's software infrastructure. Munich is paying to get rid of a solution which costs them on software alone more than 500 per platform per upgrade cycle (which, by the way, is dictated by the software company) and replace it with a platform which is uncomparably cheaper. Tha is exactlly the point of Munich's migration and what every german tax payer should be happy for.
The point is that the government and the state institutions are the motor behind the adoptions in the private sector and personal use. By adopting open source solutions, Munich is incentivating the creation and growth of a local market for training, supplying and managing open source solutions. And having in mind that quite a few open source is produced in Germany (KDE, for example) then it is obvious that the people of Germany have a lot to win with that migration.
One other aspect to have in mind is that the money which Munich is paying isn't just for installing new software. Munich is paying the price for not being dependent on a certain platforms (windows) and certain software. It's like a drug addict paying for detox treatment. There are quite a few places that certain software was adopted and subsequently their business was built around it. Now, those solutions will have to be rethought and redone, which costs time and money to accomplish. Nevertheless, it does indeed pay off and pays off well.
On a side note, isn't it funny how the exact same FUD directed towards Ernie Ball's migration to Free/Open Source software is being used against Munich? And once again the FUDers will realize that the migration process, although it isn't always smooth, not only is perfectly possible but also ver positive for the organizations which adopt it.
Are you sure that, if Vista is released as Microsoft wishes it to be released, the need for 3rd party anti-virus and security tools will vanish? Are you absolutely sure that Vista will be so much safer than all previous versions of windows that the anti-virus software will be reduced to a funny anectode in computing history?
There is absolutely no proof that Vista users will not suffer from virus problems or even that MS's own anti-virus will be the absolute best in the business. Nonetheless, Microsoft is trying to prevent all anti-virus vendors from being able to install anti-virus software on Vista by not only tying Microsoft's products into the OS but also not releasing any information about Vista's interfaces and reserving them to their in-house products. So, where exactly is that a good thing? What exactly is good about offering an unproven product as the only possible solution, barring every alternative from being able to be installd and locking out every 3rd party tool produced by the competition? Is it in the user's best interests to influence the security tool's offering not on the quality and efectiveness field (i.e., competing on a levelled playing field) but by restraining the security tool's ability to install and run on the platform (i.e., preventing the rival team from entering the court)?
...and I'm not even speaking about the validity and effectiveness of a karma point system. I mean, a visual queue to tell people what content to believe or not? What happened to reasoning, critical thinking and the scientific process? Do we need to think for ourselves or rely on someone's visually appealing color code to know what or what not to trust?