I have visual studio 6 sitting in front of me right now. There are three CD's plus a bunch of other service packs, et cetera. When I installed VC++, VB, VFP, and InterDev, I had to put only one CD into my computer. Unless CD's have some new technology where you no longer need to insert the CD into the drive to read data off it, then they are all on the same CD. There is another CD for visual j++, but I severly doubt that takes anywhere near 650MB. I have no idea what the other CD is for.
that's 3 CD's, not 1 as you "claim"...
So there are three CD's in the bunch, but only one is needed to install just about everything. On a side note, why is the word claim in quotes?
Ok...I think we are mostly in agreement here then. I am not trying to say that MS is not bloated and RH is bloated. All I am trying to say is that both most likely have some bloat. The guy who I responded to just put the MS bloat way out of proportion. That needed to be corrected, because it was just not true.
Now, if you would read the post carefully you would see that he claims that the c++ stuff alone takes two cds. Look at this for instance: How many CDs do MS development tools take up? Let's just use C++ and call it two.
Ok, I must admit, I definitely broke the cardinal rule of posting to slashdot. Never try to defend Microsoft no matter how asinine the argument against MS is. For this I must apologize. The delusions of slashdot are very sacred and should not be tampered with.
Ok, let me just say that MSVC++ does not involve two CDs. With one CD you can install VC++, VB, VFoxPro, VInterDev, and a whole bunch of other useful utilities. When you get Developer Studio, you get a whole slew of CDs, but they are not really necessary. I'm sure that things like Photoshop, et all don't really take up a whole CD either. Anyway, I am sure that there is a lot of bloat in a lot of products(this does not disclude linux software), but please try to be more accurate with your posts.
There is a significant difference between Daikatana and Mozilla which you seem to have overlooked. The difference is that I am using Mozilla right now. I couldn't get a full Daikatana version before they released it. I don't even have Netscape 4.x installed. Mozilla does everything I need. It's stable, its at least as fast as Netscape 4.x, and it renders all the pages I have tried the way they should be rendered. I don't really know what you mean by full version release, but Mozilla is full enough for me right now.
Check out MUSCLE...I think that is what you are looking for. The site for it is here. IIRC, this project was started/is maintained by someone attending the grandest university of them all
Ok, your post assumes two things which are incorrect. The first assumption is that KDE and GNOME are the only two Desktop Environment/Window Manager/Et Cetera. Second, people do have a tendency to make better products whether there is competition or not. The people writing X application probably use X application, so they are going to want it to be better regardless of whether there is competition or not.
I think the degree program you are looking for is called computer technology. If you do not like theory, get out of computer science. The counselers at my school made this pretty clear to me before I ever started classes. The statement that theory is useless is just ridiculous. Theory allows you to expand your horizons without having to be taught. If you know how to program in theory, you can easily teach yourself any programming language. If you know how to program a specific language, you are stuck using that language(and will probably have a hard time learning a new language if you do not understand theory). The difference between theory and practice is similar to the difference between a software engineer and a programmer.
I can see several reasons to put it on a CD as opposed to the internet. First of all, the publisher probably does not want it to be freely distributed. Of course, people can use cdr's and such, but cd piracy is not nearly as big a problem as internet piracy. Also, this guy is from England, and IIRC it is pretty expensive to stay connected to the internet in europe. If you have a CD full of information that is gonna take some time to download. And, what about those without access to the internet. I'd say just about everyone with a computer has a CD-ROM drive, but not everyone has internet access(or maybe you can't connect while you are travelling or something). What do you do if the site with the information is down? I'd say that the benefits of putting it on CD far outweigh the benefits of putting it on the internet. Then again the publisher does get to tell people how it is using the internet to revolutionize education, which sounds much better than using a CD to revolutionize eduction.
While this may work for a short term solution, it would be better to "infiltrate" these companies, and change them from the inside. It seems to me a better thing to convince someone that some way is the right way than to force them to go a way that they don't want to go. If a significant majority of geeks refused to work for these companies, they might back off. However, that is just because they have no other choice. If we can get a geek to work for them and convince them that they can make money without overcharging, extorting artists, et cetera, then I'd say we should do that. I recently read an article which relates to this idea to some degree. It can be found here.
I've actually had times where the windows install has told me that Windows CANNOT be installed. It didn't say why, but it was something with the partition table. I had to use the Mandrake install CD to make a fat32 partition for the windows installer before it would install. But I do have to admit that IIRC, I had a pretty weird partition setup that Windows couldn't get around.
The difference between the record companies screwing the artists the way they are currently doing it(with bad contracts or whatever) and the way napster is doing it is quite simple. The artists have a choice of whether or not they want to deal with a record company. As you said, Courtney Love left her record company behind, but she does not have the choice to leave napster behind. There is also plenty of uproar from musicians and music business professionals about napster too. Just look at Metallica, Dr. Dre, and the RIAA.
Hey man, I'm not saying I support the record companies, but I don't exactly think napster is standing on high moral ground here.
Ya...it is true that some geeks on/. support napster for the same reasons they support gun control. But, I would be surprised if this was the case with a majority(or even a plurality) of slashdotters. It seems to me that most slashdotters are in it for the free music. You have to keep in mind that posting is not going to reflect this accurately. It is easy for someone to come out and say, "I don't blame napster for their users being irresponsible," or, "The record companies are mistreating musicians, lets not support them," or INSERT_CAUSE_HERE. However, no one(or at least very few) are gonna stand up and say, "I just like violating the artists rights to control their music, so I am gonna control it for them."
I'm sorry to bust up your soap box here, but nothing you said contradicts what I said. The situation I was describing was purely hypothetical(thats why I used the words "imagine this"). I agree that the artists are being harmed to some degree by the record companies, but they are also being harmed by napster. At least the record companies give the artists "10%." I also agree that a new music distribution method would be nice, but I don't think outright piracy is the new method we are looking for.
The funny thing about a good portion of the slashdot community being so supportive about napster is that they are essentially screwing the artists they listen to. Imagine this:
The record companies one day decided they were no longer going to sell music. They were simply going to take the music and give it away without giving the artists who created it a cent in return. There would be an uproar on slashdot about how the record companies are not giving the artists the money they deserve. However, since a geeky start-up is fighting a big business,/. necessarily supports the geeky start-up. It is amazing how predictable any large group of people is.
I don't see how you arrived at the conclusion that they are just using linux as a marketing tool. I would not be surprised if that was a factor in their decision, but I would be extremely surprised if it was a major factor. The reasons I see for them choosing linux is that they don't have to pay licensing costs and they don't have they don't have to build an OS from the ground up. Also, the fact that it runs linux probably gives them a larger developer base than if they had used an in house developed OS.
My old school tried this. IMHO, it's absolutely terrible. EVERYONE hated it. The librarian, teachers, students all could not stand it. It was like everytime you got on the internet you got blocked to at LEAST one site that shouldn't have been blocked(usually more than that though). Then you'd tell the librarian, she would tell the sysadmin, and finally if you are lucky the sysadmin ads it to the allow list. It's really a pain. I suppose after a few years it would be working much better, but there will usually be someone around monitoring internet access in a school. At my old school half the computers were wasted because they would only let you use the ones facing the librarians desk! Finally I just have to say this: It really is not that big of a deal if some little kids get to see some porno. I can guarantee that almost everyone(especially guys) got to see porno on more than one occasion before he(or she) turned 18.
I doubt the actual monetary loss is more than 1%. I bet it is compensated for by people like me who use mp3s to find interesting music and buy the CD. I doubt the RIAA wants to bring either of these factors into the equation.
If the RIAA thought that Napster increased CD sales, they would not be spending money trying to shut it down. It is not that they dont want to bring them into the equation. They just feel Napster decreases their profits and infringes on their rights.
Anyway, if you think Napster increases CD sales, you are crazy. I am one of starving college students, and I don't have any cash to buy CD's. However, if I couldn't get the mp3's, I would make damn sure I had the cash to buy a CD I really want.
"Added performace"? I don't think performance is what you are looking for if you buy a transmeta chip. I believe they said their fastest model(700mhz I think) is roughly equivalent to a P3 550mhz or something. So if you want performance go buy a TBird, and if you want battery life go buy a Crusoe.
Actually, most newspapers are run by Republicans. Of course newspapers are not as influential as they used to be, but that is still a major source of news. As for other forms of media, I don't really know.
I find you statements that taxation is inevitable repulsive. Whoever named you will was sorely mistaken because clearly you have none. If enough people say they don't want the internet or anything else to be taxed, the government will respond. Now the problem is getting enough people who actually care, but it can definitely be done. I also think that there is a decent reason, other than people don't want to pay taxes, why the internet should not be taxed. Taxes have traditionally been used to prevent the use of a product (cigarettes for example) or for providing a service (toll roads for example). However, I doubt the government wants to curb the use of the internet, and we are not using a government provided service. A tax on the internet would remind me of the stamp tax in the colonial days which caused such an uproar, and I think an uproar would also follow an internet tax.
Slashdot Mirror
they should be raising their children in such a way that the kids would *freely choose* not to play them
How can you say children have a free choice when you have raised them in a way that will only allow them to make a certain chioce?
I have visual studio 6 sitting in front of me right now. There are three CD's plus a bunch of other service packs, et cetera. When I installed VC++, VB, VFP, and InterDev, I had to put only one CD into my computer. Unless CD's have some new technology where you no longer need to insert the CD into the drive to read data off it, then they are all on the same CD. There is another CD for visual j++, but I severly doubt that takes anywhere near 650MB. I have no idea what the other CD is for.
that's 3 CD's, not 1 as you "claim"...
So there are three CD's in the bunch, but only one is needed to install just about everything. On a side note, why is the word claim in quotes?
Ok...I think we are mostly in agreement here then. I am not trying to say that MS is not bloated and RH is bloated. All I am trying to say is that both most likely have some bloat. The guy who I responded to just put the MS bloat way out of proportion. That needed to be corrected, because it was just not true.
Funny you should say that(as ego inflates)...
Now, if you would read the post carefully you would see that he claims that the c++ stuff alone takes two cds. Look at this for instance: How many CDs do MS development tools take up? Let's just use C++ and call it two.
Ok, I must admit, I definitely broke the cardinal rule of posting to slashdot. Never try to defend Microsoft no matter how asinine the argument against MS is. For this I must apologize. The delusions of slashdot are very sacred and should not be tampered with.
Ok, let me just say that MSVC++ does not involve two CDs. With one CD you can install VC++, VB, VFoxPro, VInterDev, and a whole bunch of other useful utilities. When you get Developer Studio, you get a whole slew of CDs, but they are not really necessary. I'm sure that things like Photoshop, et all don't really take up a whole CD either. Anyway, I am sure that there is a lot of bloat in a lot of products(this does not disclude linux software), but please try to be more accurate with your posts.
There is a significant difference between Daikatana and Mozilla which you seem to have overlooked. The difference is that I am using Mozilla right now. I couldn't get a full Daikatana version before they released it. I don't even have Netscape 4.x installed. Mozilla does everything I need. It's stable, its at least as fast as Netscape 4.x, and it renders all the pages I have tried the way they should be rendered. I don't really know what you mean by full version release, but Mozilla is full enough for me right now.
Check out MUSCLE...I think that is what you are looking for. The site for it is here. IIRC, this project was started/is maintained by someone attending the grandest university of them all
Ok, your post assumes two things which are incorrect. The first assumption is that KDE and GNOME are the only two Desktop Environment/Window Manager/Et Cetera. Second, people do have a tendency to make better products whether there is competition or not. The people writing X application probably use X application, so they are going to want it to be better regardless of whether there is competition or not.
I think the degree program you are looking for is called computer technology. If you do not like theory, get out of computer science. The counselers at my school made this pretty clear to me before I ever started classes. The statement that theory is useless is just ridiculous. Theory allows you to expand your horizons without having to be taught. If you know how to program in theory, you can easily teach yourself any programming language. If you know how to program a specific language, you are stuck using that language(and will probably have a hard time learning a new language if you do not understand theory). The difference between theory and practice is similar to the difference between a software engineer and a programmer.
I can see several reasons to put it on a CD as opposed to the internet. First of all, the publisher probably does not want it to be freely distributed. Of course, people can use cdr's and such, but cd piracy is not nearly as big a problem as internet piracy. Also, this guy is from England, and IIRC it is pretty expensive to stay connected to the internet in europe. If you have a CD full of information that is gonna take some time to download. And, what about those without access to the internet. I'd say just about everyone with a computer has a CD-ROM drive, but not everyone has internet access(or maybe you can't connect while you are travelling or something). What do you do if the site with the information is down? I'd say that the benefits of putting it on CD far outweigh the benefits of putting it on the internet. Then again the publisher does get to tell people how it is using the internet to revolutionize education, which sounds much better than using a CD to revolutionize eduction.
While this may work for a short term solution, it would be better to "infiltrate" these companies, and change them from the inside. It seems to me a better thing to convince someone that some way is the right way than to force them to go a way that they don't want to go. If a significant majority of geeks refused to work for these companies, they might back off. However, that is just because they have no other choice. If we can get a geek to work for them and convince them that they can make money without overcharging, extorting artists, et cetera, then I'd say we should do that. I recently read an article which relates to this idea to some degree. It can be found here.
I've actually had times where the windows install has told me that Windows CANNOT be installed. It didn't say why, but it was something with the partition table. I had to use the Mandrake install CD to make a fat32 partition for the windows installer before it would install. But I do have to admit that IIRC, I had a pretty weird partition setup that Windows couldn't get around.
The difference between the record companies screwing the artists the way they are currently doing it(with bad contracts or whatever) and the way napster is doing it is quite simple. The artists have a choice of whether or not they want to deal with a record company. As you said, Courtney Love left her record company behind, but she does not have the choice to leave napster behind. There is also plenty of uproar from musicians and music business professionals about napster too. Just look at Metallica, Dr. Dre, and the RIAA.
Hey man, I'm not saying I support the record companies, but I don't exactly think napster is standing on high moral ground here.
Ya...it is true that some geeks on /. support napster for the same reasons they support gun control. But, I would be surprised if this was the case with a majority(or even a plurality) of slashdotters. It seems to me that most slashdotters are in it for the free music. You have to keep in mind that posting is not going to reflect this accurately. It is easy for someone to come out and say, "I don't blame napster for their users being irresponsible," or, "The record companies are mistreating musicians, lets not support them," or INSERT_CAUSE_HERE. However, no one(or at least very few) are gonna stand up and say, "I just like violating the artists rights to control their music, so I am gonna control it for them."
I'm sorry to bust up your soap box here, but nothing you said contradicts what I said. The situation I was describing was purely hypothetical(thats why I used the words "imagine this"). I agree that the artists are being harmed to some degree by the record companies, but they are also being harmed by napster. At least the record companies give the artists "10%." I also agree that a new music distribution method would be nice, but I don't think outright piracy is the new method we are looking for.
The funny thing about a good portion of the slashdot community being so supportive about napster is that they are essentially screwing the artists they listen to. Imagine this: /. necessarily supports the geeky start-up. It is amazing how predictable any large group of people is.
The record companies one day decided they were no longer going to sell music. They were simply going to take the music and give it away without giving the artists who created it a cent in return. There would be an uproar on slashdot about how the record companies are not giving the artists the money they deserve. However, since a geeky start-up is fighting a big business,
I don't see how you arrived at the conclusion that they are just using linux as a marketing tool. I would not be surprised if that was a factor in their decision, but I would be extremely surprised if it was a major factor. The reasons I see for them choosing linux is that they don't have to pay licensing costs and they don't have they don't have to build an OS from the ground up. Also, the fact that it runs linux probably gives them a larger developer base than if they had used an in house developed OS.
My old school tried this. IMHO, it's absolutely terrible. EVERYONE hated it. The librarian, teachers, students all could not stand it. It was like everytime you got on the internet you got blocked to at LEAST one site that shouldn't have been blocked(usually more than that though). Then you'd tell the librarian, she would tell the sysadmin, and finally if you are lucky the sysadmin ads it to the allow list. It's really a pain. I suppose after a few years it would be working much better, but there will usually be someone around monitoring internet access in a school. At my old school half the computers were wasted because they would only let you use the ones facing the librarians desk! Finally I just have to say this: It really is not that big of a deal if some little kids get to see some porno. I can guarantee that almost everyone(especially guys) got to see porno on more than one occasion before he(or she) turned 18.
If the RIAA thought that Napster increased CD sales, they would not be spending money trying to shut it down. It is not that they dont want to bring them into the equation. They just feel Napster decreases their profits and infringes on their rights.
Anyway, if you think Napster increases CD sales, you are crazy. I am one of starving college students, and I don't have any cash to buy CD's. However, if I couldn't get the mp3's, I would make damn sure I had the cash to buy a CD I really want.
"Added performace"? I don't think performance is what you are looking for if you buy a transmeta chip. I believe they said their fastest model(700mhz I think) is roughly equivalent to a P3 550mhz or something. So if you want performance go buy a TBird, and if you want battery life go buy a Crusoe.
Actually, most newspapers are run by Republicans. Of course newspapers are not as influential as they used to be, but that is still a major source of news. As for other forms of media, I don't really know.
Do you know about macster?
You can find it at: http://www.blackholemedia.com/macster
I find you statements that taxation is inevitable repulsive. Whoever named you will was sorely mistaken because clearly you have none. If enough people say they don't want the internet or anything else to be taxed, the government will respond. Now the problem is getting enough people who actually care, but it can definitely be done. I also think that there is a decent reason, other than people don't want to pay taxes, why the internet should not be taxed. Taxes have traditionally been used to prevent the use of a product (cigarettes for example) or for providing a service (toll roads for example). However, I doubt the government wants to curb the use of the internet, and we are not using a government provided service. A tax on the internet would remind me of the stamp tax in the colonial days which caused such an uproar, and I think an uproar would also follow an internet tax.
SDL runs on linux so there is no need to port.
If this interests you, I would recommend the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.