Your logic is, at least, very faulty and from the very start. First, you should not mix up two whole different concepts which are "stealing" and "not selling". When someone downloads something, it isn't stealing. Stealing results in the subtraction of property while "not selling" only results in a hypotetical loss of revenue. Although it can be discussedd that both have impact on the bottom line of any company, while the first one deals with tangible information and a concrete loss of capital the second only deals with speculation and a bunch of vagely formulated "what if"s.
One of those "what ifs" which is always assumed to be a fact by the proponents of the the "downloading is stealing" propaganda is that each download is a lost sale. That is false and misleading, to say the least. First of all the real cost of the product directly affects it's purchasing. For example, joe shmoe would never spend more than 500 for a photo editing suite just to resize his vacation pictures or 500 on a professional CAD application just to write a simple diagram. More, there are people who basically simply collect downloads. They keep their eMule client running after downloading a couple of ISOs although he never burned a CD with them.
Another fact is that the use of unauthorized copies leads to a more massive adoption of the product and in some cases it also contributes for it being the "de facto" standard. That, in turn, will lead to even more sales which would never happened in the first place.
So as it easy to see, not only is downloading not stealing but downloads do in fact have a positive impact on the acceptance and adoption of a product. So, a company can and should have the right to authorize who can and cannot use it's products but still, that doesn't mean that unauthorized use has such a clear negative impact on their bottom line as you and other anti-download propaganda-spreaders wish to make believe.
Copying a CD, whether it is music, data, software or whatever it is, isn't stealing. Copying a CD, and only when the copier doesn't have any authorization to do so, is copyright infringement. In come countries, where mine is included, copying CDs/DVDs/whatnot for private use isn't illegal at all and it is even clearly defended by law. So please get your facts straight and please try to avoid spreading that kind of propaganda.
It is true that KOffice is pretty much "the most comprehensive office suite in existence" and the direction it is going is really exciting. Yet, as it is right now KOffice is too buggy to even consider using it in a semi-reliable way. It has improved a lot but it still has a lot of annoying and painfully obvious bugs which get in the way of simple work like making a simple spreadsheet.
So yes, KOffice is going the right direction but it still has a whole lot to do to become a decent office package.
You forgot to say that (k)Ubuntu's live CDs are in fact the Dapper Beta CDs and that the (k)Ubuntu's developers are jumping through hoops to solve outstanding bugs before Dapper is released. That screen resolution problem is exactly one of those problems, which is extensively documented, and you can see for yourself if you browse (K)Ubuntu's bug reports at https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu .
This, again, is one of Linux's biggest problems: Too much fragmentation. If distro developers could put their egos aside and combine forces to create distros with some semblance of popular recognition, Linux's fortunes may change.
And this is one of the biggest, most recurring misconceptions that the general public has when trying to criticize the large number of available linux distributions: the idea that the number of developers is proportional to the quality of the final product. It is simply not true.
For starters, That idea is based on the principle that any developer can perform any task with at least the same efficiency that he is already performing on his current project. That, as it is easy to understand, isn't necessarily true. Other aspect that must be had in mind is that the number of developers participating in a project isn't directly proportional to the work being done. After a certain number of developers get involved, things tend to get a bit overcrouded, difficult to manage and people start to step on each other's toes. To put it in other words, after the number of developers reaches a certain point, it doesn't matter how many developers are added because the production level, wel... levels out.
As it wasn't enough, there is also the evolution problem. Evolution exists only if there are differences in the ecosystem. Then the good ideas succeed while the bad ideas are forgotten. So, the number of good ideas which are integrated into the linux distributions are certainly proportional to the number of different distributions that exist. For a small example, if it wasn't for Debian there wouldn't be a Knoppix and an Ubuntu, which meant there wouldn't be a Mepis, etc...
These were just a hand-full of examples that demonstrate that the linux community will not improve if cercain projects are terminated to redirect their assets to other, bigger distributions and to demonstrate also that the large number of linux distributions are a problem. They aren't. It's quite the opposite. As long as there is diversity, there will be inovation and that is the key to quality.
On the other hand, some standardization is in order but that doesn't have to do with this problem.
Let's look at it this way: how is New Zealand profiting from their sewage lines? How much does New Zealand save up by implementing these kind of plants in their sewage lines?
Even if New Zealand only produces 0.5% of their oil consumption through this method, can you imagine how is that translated into real money? Plus, producing something instead of importing it makes the country richer, not only financially but also in technically, which means that the country profits by these projects in multiple fronts.
The thing is, in the C programming language world a function() is the invocation of that function while function returns the address of that function. So in effect, what happened was that the coder meant to get the value from that function, i.e. meant to write it with parenthesis, but instead he got the address of that function, i.e. didn't put in the parenthesis.
Inded. After all, who in their right mind would want to use a heavy WYSIWYG text processor when tools like TeX and LaTeX exist for decades? Yet, people still wanted to try out new stuff like MS Word, OO Writer and KWord.
And by the way, diversity was, is and always will be a good thing. It's the key to evolution, after all.
According to the company's site, the company in question (SIBS) started offering their ATM services to the public in 1985. I don't believe that in 1985 the public had already adopted that whole home banking thing. Moreover, with all that evilware around (spyware, rootkits, etc...), frankly I don't trust more my personal computer than a regular-looking, bank-owned ATM machine. Yet, I use both and I do use them a lot.
//Hooray to Portugal's Multibanco system, where the user is able to do a lot of operations (buying concert/theatre/train tickets, do service payments, money transfers, etc..) free from any extra charge.
I don't see how they can be considered "super-ATMs". I'm from Portugal, which isn't a tech superpower, and in here the regular ATMs offer that kind of service since the early 90s.
Indeed. And let's not forget that it was Opera that embraced and kept alive the respect for standards compliance and openness in internet-related projects that we all admire, respect and appreciate so much.
For that reason alone we owe Opera oh so very much.
a - an engine can be turned off at will, and a mule cannot.
The two-stroke engine needs to be running in order for that robot to move. Therefore, whenever the troops need to move, they will have the sound of a two-stroke engine following them and giving up their position. If I was in a platoon which had to pick between the two, I would pick without a doubt the occational grunt made by a mule than the constant noise made by the moving robot.
Sand isn't exactly friendly to the lungs of an animal, either, and at least when the robot dies you have a chance of repairing it. Good luck repairing your dead mule.
You are kidding, right? Mule-killing sand?? Where do you come up with that?
But let's play along with that thought for a minute. If you are talking about "killer sand" that harms mules, then obviously it would also harm the soldiers. Therefore if a platoon was to be targetted by "killer sand" then obviously the least of their problems would be the maintenance of a cargo-carrying mule, whether it would be mechanical or not. So where's the need for a mule which outlives the troops?
The GP post served to prove (and it was very good at it) that precision really matters. The GP post wasn't a jab at java. It was a demonstration that FP precision is really important, whatever the machine is.
Next time just take a few secons before writing a post. Your blind java fan boy attitude got in the way with this one and it wasn't pretty.
While programming using SDL requires knowledge of C and access to a C compiler, using SDL_perl does not. This greatly decreases the amount of time it takes to get something up on the screen and working.
Yet, it does need knowledge of Perl, another programming language, and access to a Perl interpreter. So, indeed, in the end it needs the exact same thing that is needed to write a game in C or C++. A person needs knowledge of a programming language, knowledge of an API and access to software which will make the program happen. So, having this in mind, wtf is that intended to mean?
Sheesh....
FYI, there isn't an civil/mechanical engineer in the world who designs structures to hold the exact value of predicted load. Every structure project is designed with security coeficients which are applied to the the maximum possible load which will be applied in the structure (in certain countries the security coeficient ranges from 1.25 of housing structures to 10 of levees and damns). In civil engineering applications, those coeficients are specified by the country's regulations, which are decreed by the government after consulting an appointed board of experts in the field. All the construction projects must respect them and the engineers who designs a structure that doesn't obey those safety coeficients not only will be criminally prossecuted but he will also lose his practicing licence.
So parent post doesn't deservea +5 insightfull at all . It deserves a +5 f#cking obvious.
Sounds to me that Microsoft's spokesman redefined the previously imposed objective (distorted/reinterpreted what the company said before) so that it can be in a position to claim success. To make matters worse, after Microsoft redefinition of it's previously goal, it still isn't in a position to claim victory and defined the company's results as a success....which is sad, really. In the end what this action means is that they have failed and that they are claiming a defeat.
I've tried the link with Firefox 1.5 RC1 and firefox stood firm and fruity. The only thing which happened was a small rendering incorrection which, unfortunately, is frequent when running firefox in kubuntu with the gtk to qt plugin.
And when will Debian start a Debian GNU/MINIX project? There is already a Debian GNU/Hurd project and MINIX is alive, well and ready for production.
Now that would be cool.
As it curently is, Firefox 1.5 beta isn't for everyone. I installed it an ran it when it was launched and I simply can't use it. It just segfaults at startup without warning what caused it.
I don't know if this problem is frequent or if there is a fix for it but at least that little showstopper made it impossible for me to try 1.5.
That isn't the issue. The issue is that FEMA created a website for people to file claims and because if it's poor, incompetent and idiotic design (according to reports, the page works great with the IE user agent), people are barred from accessing that functionality. That's the problem. No one is advocating that the FEMA people stop all operations so that they can focus on fixing the site.
When a public institution sets up a service with the tax payer's money for the tax payers to use and in the end there are clients which *UNNECESSARILY* can't access the service, that is just plain incompetence.
I have a problem with this (apart from the obvious -- that Windows hasn't been around for the past 15-20 years) -- how is causing people to choose Windows as their first system?
This causes people to choose Windows as their first system because someone they know only used windows in his lifetime and suggest that the newbie adopts windows. And then the newbie becomes experienced and when someone he knows thinks of getting a computer, what does he suggests? You got it. Windows. An then that newbie becomes experienced and... It is a vicious circle.
And, of course, then the companies adopt windows because "everybody uses it" and then the newbies adopt windows because "all the companies use it". There's another vicious circle for you.
Slashdot Mirror
Your logic is, at least, very faulty and from the very start. First, you should not mix up two whole different concepts which are "stealing" and "not selling". When someone downloads something, it isn't stealing. Stealing results in the subtraction of property while "not selling" only results in a hypotetical loss of revenue. Although it can be discussedd that both have impact on the bottom line of any company, while the first one deals with tangible information and a concrete loss of capital the second only deals with speculation and a bunch of vagely formulated "what if"s.
One of those "what ifs" which is always assumed to be a fact by the proponents of the the "downloading is stealing" propaganda is that each download is a lost sale. That is false and misleading, to say the least. First of all the real cost of the product directly affects it's purchasing. For example, joe shmoe would never spend more than 500 for a photo editing suite just to resize his vacation pictures or 500 on a professional CAD application just to write a simple diagram. More, there are people who basically simply collect downloads. They keep their eMule client running after downloading a couple of ISOs although he never burned a CD with them.
Another fact is that the use of unauthorized copies leads to a more massive adoption of the product and in some cases it also contributes for it being the "de facto" standard. That, in turn, will lead to even more sales which would never happened in the first place.
So as it easy to see, not only is downloading not stealing but downloads do in fact have a positive impact on the acceptance and adoption of a product. So, a company can and should have the right to authorize who can and cannot use it's products but still, that doesn't mean that unauthorized use has such a clear negative impact on their bottom line as you and other anti-download propaganda-spreaders wish to make believe.
Copying a CD, whether it is music, data, software or whatever it is, isn't stealing. Copying a CD, and only when the copier doesn't have any authorization to do so, is copyright infringement. In come countries, where mine is included, copying CDs/DVDs/whatnot for private use isn't illegal at all and it is even clearly defended by law. So please get your facts straight and please try to avoid spreading that kind of propaganda.
It is true that KOffice is pretty much "the most comprehensive office suite in existence" and the direction it is going is really exciting. Yet, as it is right now KOffice is too buggy to even consider using it in a semi-reliable way. It has improved a lot but it still has a lot of annoying and painfully obvious bugs which get in the way of simple work like making a simple spreadsheet.
So yes, KOffice is going the right direction but it still has a whole lot to do to become a decent office package.
You forgot to say that (k)Ubuntu's live CDs are in fact the Dapper Beta CDs and that the (k)Ubuntu's developers are jumping through hoops to solve outstanding bugs before Dapper is released. That screen resolution problem is exactly one of those problems, which is extensively documented, and you can see for yourself if you browse (K)Ubuntu's bug reports at https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu .
And this is one of the biggest, most recurring misconceptions that the general public has when trying to criticize the large number of available linux distributions: the idea that the number of developers is proportional to the quality of the final product. It is simply not true.
For starters, That idea is based on the principle that any developer can perform any task with at least the same efficiency that he is already performing on his current project. That, as it is easy to understand, isn't necessarily true. Other aspect that must be had in mind is that the number of developers participating in a project isn't directly proportional to the work being done. After a certain number of developers get involved, things tend to get a bit overcrouded, difficult to manage and people start to step on each other's toes. To put it in other words, after the number of developers reaches a certain point, it doesn't matter how many developers are added because the production level, wel... levels out.
As it wasn't enough, there is also the evolution problem. Evolution exists only if there are differences in the ecosystem. Then the good ideas succeed while the bad ideas are forgotten. So, the number of good ideas which are integrated into the linux distributions are certainly proportional to the number of different distributions that exist. For a small example, if it wasn't for Debian there wouldn't be a Knoppix and an Ubuntu, which meant there wouldn't be a Mepis, etc... These were just a hand-full of examples that demonstrate that the linux community will not improve if cercain projects are terminated to redirect their assets to other, bigger distributions and to demonstrate also that the large number of linux distributions are a problem. They aren't. It's quite the opposite. As long as there is diversity, there will be inovation and that is the key to quality. On the other hand, some standardization is in order but that doesn't have to do with this problem.
Let's look at it this way: how is New Zealand profiting from their sewage lines? How much does New Zealand save up by implementing these kind of plants in their sewage lines?
Even if New Zealand only produces 0.5% of their oil consumption through this method, can you imagine how is that translated into real money? Plus, producing something instead of importing it makes the country richer, not only financially but also in technically, which means that the country profits by these projects in multiple fronts.
I don't believe that any reasonable person considers the spellchecker of any text editor to be bloat.
Yes. Basic knowledge of C or C++.
The thing is, in the C programming language world a function() is the invocation of that function while function returns the address of that function. So in effect, what happened was that the coder meant to get the value from that function, i.e. meant to write it with parenthesis, but instead he got the address of that function, i.e. didn't put in the parenthesis.
Aren't C/C++ pointers fun?
Inded. After all, who in their right mind would want to use a heavy WYSIWYG text processor when tools like TeX and LaTeX exist for decades? Yet, people still wanted to try out new stuff like MS Word, OO Writer and KWord.
And by the way, diversity was, is and always will be a good thing. It's the key to evolution, after all.
I don't see how they can be considered "super-ATMs". I'm from Portugal, which isn't a tech superpower, and in here the regular ATMs offer that kind of service since the early 90s.
Indeed. And let's not forget that it was Opera that embraced and kept alive the respect for standards compliance and openness in internet-related projects that we all admire, respect and appreciate so much. For that reason alone we owe Opera oh so very much.
The two-stroke engine needs to be running in order for that robot to move. Therefore, whenever the troops need to move, they will have the sound of a two-stroke engine following them and giving up their position. If I was in a platoon which had to pick between the two, I would pick without a doubt the occational grunt made by a mule than the constant noise made by the moving robot.
You are kidding, right? Mule-killing sand?? Where do you come up with that?
But let's play along with that thought for a minute. If you are talking about "killer sand" that harms mules, then obviously it would also harm the soldiers. Therefore if a platoon was to be targetted by "killer sand" then obviously the least of their problems would be the maintenance of a cargo-carrying mule, whether it would be mechanical or not. So where's the need for a mule which outlives the troops?
It seems you've entirely missed the point.
The GP post served to prove (and it was very good at it) that precision really matters. The GP post wasn't a jab at java. It was a demonstration that FP precision is really important, whatever the machine is.
Next time just take a few secons before writing a post. Your blind java fan boy attitude got in the way with this one and it wasn't pretty.
Yet, it does need knowledge of Perl, another programming language, and access to a Perl interpreter. So, indeed, in the end it needs the exact same thing that is needed to write a game in C or C++. A person needs knowledge of a programming language, knowledge of an API and access to software which will make the program happen. So, having this in mind, wtf is that intended to mean? Sheesh....
You got to be kidding me...
FYI, there isn't an civil/mechanical engineer in the world who designs structures to hold the exact value of predicted load. Every structure project is designed with security coeficients which are applied to the the maximum possible load which will be applied in the structure (in certain countries the security coeficient ranges from 1.25 of housing structures to 10 of levees and damns). In civil engineering applications, those coeficients are specified by the country's regulations, which are decreed by the government after consulting an appointed board of experts in the field. All the construction projects must respect them and the engineers who designs a structure that doesn't obey those safety coeficients not only will be criminally prossecuted but he will also lose his practicing licence.
So parent post doesn't deservea +5 insightfull at all . It deserves a +5 f#cking obvious.
Sounds to me that Microsoft's spokesman redefined the previously imposed objective (distorted/reinterpreted what the company said before) so that it can be in a position to claim success. To make matters worse, after Microsoft redefinition of it's previously goal, it still isn't in a position to claim victory and defined the company's results as a success. ...which is sad, really. In the end what this action means is that they have failed and that they are claiming a defeat.
I've tried the link with Firefox 1.5 RC1 and firefox stood firm and fruity. The only thing which happened was a small rendering incorrection which, unfortunately, is frequent when running firefox in kubuntu with the gtk to qt plugin.
For sure they didn't interviewed Ernie Ball for this study.
And when will Debian start a Debian GNU/MINIX project? There is already a Debian GNU/Hurd project and MINIX is alive, well and ready for production. Now that would be cool.
the new reply dialog looks great. Cleaner but yet, abusing a bit on the empty space. Still, this was a great improvement.
Kudos for all the contributors to the migration!
As it curently is, Firefox 1.5 beta isn't for everyone. I installed it an ran it when it was launched and I simply can't use it. It just segfaults at startup without warning what caused it.
I don't know if this problem is frequent or if there is a fix for it but at least that little showstopper made it impossible for me to try 1.5.
That isn't the issue. The issue is that FEMA created a website for people to file claims and because if it's poor, incompetent and idiotic design (according to reports, the page works great with the IE user agent), people are barred from accessing that functionality. That's the problem. No one is advocating that the FEMA people stop all operations so that they can focus on fixing the site.
When a public institution sets up a service with the tax payer's money for the tax payers to use and in the end there are clients which *UNNECESSARILY* can't access the service, that is just plain incompetence.
This causes people to choose Windows as their first system because someone they know only used windows in his lifetime and suggest that the newbie adopts windows. And then the newbie becomes experienced and when someone he knows thinks of getting a computer, what does he suggests? You got it. Windows. An then that newbie becomes experienced and... It is a vicious circle.
And, of course, then the companies adopt windows because "everybody uses it" and then the newbies adopt windows because "all the companies use it". There's another vicious circle for you.
So you see, that's why.
For those of us who don't have a clue of what a Captcha is: article on wikipedia