You couldn't go to kernel.org and download an updated kernel, as without all the patches, it wouldn't work. So you had to stick to the distro's kernels.
What's wrong with that? The job of the distro is to keep all that taken care of for you.
Things like that are what I consider one of the more embarrassing things about the design of Linux. In fact, it really surprises me that in 2006, there is still not a true, separate driver interface API. It's pretty backwards that device drivers are a part of the kernel source tree, to be frank. However, it's pretty clear now that Linux's niche is, and perhaps always will be, the server market, where that's not as much of a concern (since hardware doesn't change a lot anyway).
Clearly, based on your previous posts, you have an alarmist viewpoint that doesn't lend itself to rational discussion of the debate. DRM is not bad, and you don't have the right to tell me I can't make a piece of music, package it in a format that uses DRM, and sell it. I have every right in the world to do that if I want to. If you don't like the DRM, you have every right in the world not to buy it. The free market works these things out naturally.
FairPlay has a perfect legal right to exist. I would like to see your legal argument that it doesn't. DRM should not be illegal. A person can sell their product in any way they want to; that's called personal freedom.
If you don't like DRM, don't buy products with it, and encourage others to do the same. It's that whole "free market" thing at play. You apparently believe the government should step in and regulate, which is always the wrong solution. There's no need.
I think this cartoon goes over the line. If anti-piracy groups released a video portraying pirates as supervillians who invade your home and take your money and never give it back, we'd all be making fun of it.
The fact is, not all DRM is bad, and to paint the issue in absolutist terms does a disservice. Far too much is made over DRM on Slashdot. If DRM is too draconian on a product, customers simply won't buy it and will choose a different product. Rights aren't being violated, and society isn't being made to collapse--it's just another product on the market place to reject or accept, and life goes on as usual.
Five gets you ten that the movie comes up with some wild-ass conspiracy theory involving oil company influence at GM, though. After all, when an activist-favored technology fails utterly in the marketplace, it has to be the fault of Big Evil Corporations.
Today, you're enlightened and educated if you blame all problems on capitalist conspiracies (especially if they can be linked to Bush in some way) instead of looking at the facts and forming a common sense, moderate opinion. It's just too much work now to do any research in order to come to a conclusion. Instead, people do they reverse--they have a conclusion when they then select the evidence for and put into a book or film. A good example is Al Gore's factually challenged global warming film. I'm happy that the press is finally starting to report that man-made global warming is actually not a scientific consensus, as it has been reported for at least a decade.
Frankly, I'm confused why Microsoft thinks it needs to be designing a music player in the first place. This company enters so many markets for no valid reason. iTunes runs on Windows, and most iPod users are Windows users, so why is Microsoft wanting to take out a popular Windows-based service? I wonder the same about Microsoft's obsession with Google. Most Google users are browsing Google through Internet Explorer on Windows. Microsoft apparently believes that's not enough, or, more likely, Microsoft's managers are trying to please stockholders by making half-hearted attempts at every market they can.
I'm growing more concerned that some people apparently believe the mere fact Apple owns most of the music player market means there is an inherent legal right to open up FairPlay. If Apple has done no wrong and abused no one, there is no basis to punish Apple by doing that. Before anyone brings up the inevitable comparisons to Microsoft in the 90s, Microsoft specifically stifled competition by threatening Windows license removals from OEMs who shipped competing software. So they would force computer makers to stop shipping Netscape, then they bundled Internet Explorer for free with every copy of Windows. That is an example of leveraging a monopoly to stifle competition.
Releasing a music player and providing a first-party service or add-on for it to increase its value and appeal (just as companies like Nintendo do when they produce Metroid and Zelda), then watching as the music player goes on to be the most popular music player, is not an abuse.
No, it's not. What Microsoft did in the 90s was leveraging a monopoly, and I'll explain below.
Microsoft didn't hold a gun to your head and force you to use IE, either, but they got nailed for bundling it with windows. In a lot of ways, the Apple DRM is even more strong-arm than MS's inclusion of IE. But the Apple apologists always act like it's ok, because they are Apple.
You don't explain how exactly Apple's DRM is more strong-arm than Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer. To use an iPod or iTunes, you don't even have to ever touch FairPlay, and just listen to your own MP3s. Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer was targeted because it was a part of a series of behavior that included:
1.) Coercive OEM deals that threatened Windows license removals if manufacturers included rival software on new systems, including Netscape. Because of Windows dominance, a license removal would be commercial suicide. 2.) Vaporware announcements designed to lure customers away from buying existing competing products. 3.) Purposeful incompatibilities designed to make competing products appear as malfunctioning.
The big one is #1, and every time someone compares the iPod/iTunes tie-up to Microsoft's monopoly abuses of the 90s, I have to call them on it and point out Apple is doing absolutely no such thing. Apple is not calling up retail stores and telling them that if they don't remove all non-Apple music players from their shelves, Apple will no longer sell iPods through them. Apple doesn't really do anything about competing products. They, for the most part, completely ignore them and just let their own product design shine through.
But I'm not so gullible to think that the ipod/itunes lockin isn't a blatant abuse of the customer.
This is ridiculous. There is no abuse of customers going on. You're not forced to buy music from Apple, and if you do, it is of your own volition. You may also be disappointed to learn that if you buy an XBox 360, you can only play XBox games and not Playstation 2 games, even though they both use the same DVD format. Nobody is forcing the customer to do anything they don't want to do.
Apple has pretty much guaranteed I am going to keep downloading my music from bittorrent, by using an artificial extra layer to limit customer choice, and still have no effect on piracy.
You haven't explained how anybody's choice is being limited. You have free choice to buy music from Apple, with the implications that their service works only with other Apple products, as is their right. Or you have the free choice not to buy Apple's music, and just use MP3s you rip yourself. You also have the choice to buy any one of the myriad of competing music players that use PlaysForSure and other services. I fail to see what consumer choice is being limited here.
iTunes is specifically designed as part of Apple's vertical solution strategy, a medium for interacting with the iPod, and the iTunes Music Store specifically exists to provide music for people who have purchased the iPod. Apple is simply providing services to increase the value of an iPod to potential customers, just as they ship iLife only for Macs. It's adding value to a hardware purchase, just like when Nintendo releases first-party games to increase the value of a Nintendo hardware purchase. I may want to play New Super Mario Bros. on a PSP, but I'm not going to consider it monopoly abuse that I can't.
If people are buying it, even in the absence of good reasons, they're still relevant.
No, they're not. People are buying PCs, not Windows. Windows just comes with the PCs. And why are people buying PCs? As mediums to access the web and digital media, Google and Apple's turf. Why do you think Microsoft is spending so much to conquer those markets?
Right. That explains why people keep using their software.
Games are moving to consoles, office software is moving to OSS, web services are free...Windows is only around because it's what ships on the Dell. That could change in five years, easily.
Yeah, if you say so. Personally I think Microsoft is still very much a force to respect.
Yes, I fear Microsoft's power to develop something for six years!
You still need a computer to access the internet. The Web and Digital Media (redundant in one direction) don't remove the need for an operating system.
No, they just turn the computer and its operating system into a simple hub. Apple is the only company out there who is successfully embracing the idea, bundling iLife into every Mac and turning it into a digital media powerhouse. Windows has...Movie Maker.
Windows has massive momentum.
Hardly. The momentum is now in web development and digital media.
It may be dying, but it's going to be a long, slow process if it's true.
If by deflate you mean increase their profits yearly, like MS has, then yes, you are right.
I suggest you follow the news more closely. Microsoft recently announced that profits would be going down this year due to increased spending in an attempt to compete with Google's web services. Stockholders were so pissed that the price dropped.
OOOOOHHHH, from 2% to 6%. Watch out world, here comes Apple.
An increase to 6% would more than double Apple's revenues, which would mean more research and development funding, making Apple even more dangerous. Their worldwide install base is already 15%.
They've been saying that as long as they've been saying "This is the year for Linux on the destkop to finally dominate".
No, they haven't. In fact, the media mocked Apple in the 90s. Now, the Intel Macs are seeing massive sales, and the academic market is expected to gobble up MacBooks big-time. I suspect you'll be eating your words when the figures are released.
The web and digital media will not take off as long as the telco's in the US refuse to bring serious bandwith to the home.
I hate to break this to you, but the web and digital media took off years ago. The web broke through in the 90s, and digital media broke through 5 years ago with the iPod.
Until then, the desktop is still king, and the myth of the network is the computer will continue to be a myth.
Windows hasn't seen an update in six years. iPods are selling like hotcakes, and people eat up Google web services for breakfast. I really don't see what you're basing your position on since the actual state of the tech market seems to suggest the opposite. Web services and digital media are the new push. Desktop machines are hubs to the web and to media--the content people are consuming which the desktop is just a medium for.
Far from it. Microsoft's market share doesn't mean much if the company no longer innovates and takes seven years to release a new version of its flagship product. This is the tech market. That is a hugely long time. People don't take this company seriously anymore. Microsoft was once written as the threatening beast, but they are now mentioned sarcastically, often as punchline. Companies and small startups no longer fear them. The fire and energy is at Google and Apple.
Their stock price is flatline, they have an out-of-touch CEO, their #1 product hasn't been updated in six years, they bleed money in markets they don't belong in, companies internally refer to Vista and the process behind it as "broken" (See here). Hell, this news comes two days after the worst Patch Tuesday of 2006. I argue that they absolutely are irrelevant. All they can do now is lean on their entrenched install base, and that means they're no longer moving forward. Sadly, it makes them a relic.
Linux will continue to gobble up servers, and Windows will continue to sort of lamely deflate in the desktop market. Analysts are actually predicting a massive increase in Apple market share, as much as triple. But more importantly, the direction in tech now is the web and digital media--Google and Apple's #1 markets. Windows is "meh."
Is this not the clearest evidence yet that Microsoft is "dying" and on its way out? Already, it's become somewhat irrelevant as a tech industry player, leaning on its entrenched install base to survive. Now its most well-known figurehead is leaving.
What people have to keep in mind is that saving the world is great ("sexy," as Penn & Teller put it), but science is still gathering data. We just don't know if global warming is a natural trend, if it's even occuring (the global temperature record shows that the temperature hasn't risen since 1998), and if there's anything we can do to stop it in the first place. There is a lot of evidence showing that scientists are actually divided about global warming, but many don't want to risk their careers because of the politics involved in speaking out against the alarmist viewpoints of people like Al Gore (who flies around in a gas-guzzling private jet and whose own charts show global warming went up during his time in the Clinton administration).
Good question, sir, and I have the answer for you right behind this red curtain!
*drumroll*
*curtain rises*
Creative couldn't compete with Apple, so they're doing the next best thing--litigation! Didn't you know, Creative retroactively invented NeXTStep's column view?
Microsoft never hand signed a sheet of paper telling me that I would have my copy of "Longhorn" by the end of 2005 or even 2006.
Not only did they do so in what is called a press release, but they held public demos of Longhorn and proclaimed its target release date. And the original announced date was 2003.
In 2006, there were public statements made that Vista would be out by the end of the year, no matter what. That was another lie.
For those who don't know, "MAFIAA" is the common term being thrown around now (especially on Digg) to demonize the lobby groups known as the MPAA and RIAA by pirates who want to scapegoat others to remove the guilt from themselves over their illegal and immoral activities of not paying artists for their work. Apparently, whining over specific record label contracts (and bizarrely blaming the RIAA for it even though the RIAA is a lobby group and has nothing to do with artist contracts) somehow justifies making sure artists don't get paid by pirating everything.
No, because the RIAA is just a lobby group for the record labels. This is a contract issue between him and his record label. So the problem is how his contract stipulates that his record label handles this newfangled technology called the Internet. If he thinks he's being cheated, he should contact his lawyer. If his contract is clear on the matter; too bad. He signed it.
It's been said before, and it has to be said again--the RIAA is merely a lobby group that represents the labels. The RIAA has nothing to do with Weird Al's contract; his label does. People have been mindlessly referring to "the RIAA" for so long that they think it's interchangeable with the music industry and any and all record labels.
This is a contract issue between Weird Al and his label. However, I expect most of the Slashdot discussion to devolve toward another generalized music industry bashing session instead of focusing on the actual topic here of Weird Al and his label contract...
Can you prove he's a "paid shill?" Angry liberals call EVERYBODY they disagree with a paid shill. Heck, the lead hurricane scientist of the company said global warming isn't causing more hurricanes, and angry liberals held a protest to get him fired! I'll believe the scientist over an angry protest.
The official temperature record shows the temperature has not risen since 1998. Any response to that?
Slashdot Mirror
If only there was a stable driver ABI, you could just use the same driver as last time...
What's wrong with that? The job of the distro is to keep all that taken care of for you.
Can you cite a source for this? FreeBSD's hardware support is great.
Things like that are what I consider one of the more embarrassing things about the design of Linux. In fact, it really surprises me that in 2006, there is still not a true, separate driver interface API. It's pretty backwards that device drivers are a part of the kernel source tree, to be frank. However, it's pretty clear now that Linux's niche is, and perhaps always will be, the server market, where that's not as much of a concern (since hardware doesn't change a lot anyway).
Clearly, based on your previous posts, you have an alarmist viewpoint that doesn't lend itself to rational discussion of the debate. DRM is not bad, and you don't have the right to tell me I can't make a piece of music, package it in a format that uses DRM, and sell it. I have every right in the world to do that if I want to. If you don't like the DRM, you have every right in the world not to buy it. The free market works these things out naturally.
FairPlay has a perfect legal right to exist. I would like to see your legal argument that it doesn't. DRM should not be illegal. A person can sell their product in any way they want to; that's called personal freedom.
If you don't like DRM, don't buy products with it, and encourage others to do the same. It's that whole "free market" thing at play. You apparently believe the government should step in and regulate, which is always the wrong solution. There's no need.
I think this cartoon goes over the line. If anti-piracy groups released a video portraying pirates as supervillians who invade your home and take your money and never give it back, we'd all be making fun of it.
The fact is, not all DRM is bad, and to paint the issue in absolutist terms does a disservice. Far too much is made over DRM on Slashdot. If DRM is too draconian on a product, customers simply won't buy it and will choose a different product. Rights aren't being violated, and society isn't being made to collapse--it's just another product on the market place to reject or accept, and life goes on as usual.
Today, you're enlightened and educated if you blame all problems on capitalist conspiracies (especially if they can be linked to Bush in some way) instead of looking at the facts and forming a common sense, moderate opinion. It's just too much work now to do any research in order to come to a conclusion. Instead, people do they reverse--they have a conclusion when they then select the evidence for and put into a book or film. A good example is Al Gore's factually challenged global warming film. I'm happy that the press is finally starting to report that man-made global warming is actually not a scientific consensus, as it has been reported for at least a decade.
Frankly, I'm confused why Microsoft thinks it needs to be designing a music player in the first place. This company enters so many markets for no valid reason. iTunes runs on Windows, and most iPod users are Windows users, so why is Microsoft wanting to take out a popular Windows-based service? I wonder the same about Microsoft's obsession with Google. Most Google users are browsing Google through Internet Explorer on Windows. Microsoft apparently believes that's not enough, or, more likely, Microsoft's managers are trying to please stockholders by making half-hearted attempts at every market they can.
I'm growing more concerned that some people apparently believe the mere fact Apple owns most of the music player market means there is an inherent legal right to open up FairPlay. If Apple has done no wrong and abused no one, there is no basis to punish Apple by doing that. Before anyone brings up the inevitable comparisons to Microsoft in the 90s, Microsoft specifically stifled competition by threatening Windows license removals from OEMs who shipped competing software. So they would force computer makers to stop shipping Netscape, then they bundled Internet Explorer for free with every copy of Windows. That is an example of leveraging a monopoly to stifle competition.
Releasing a music player and providing a first-party service or add-on for it to increase its value and appeal (just as companies like Nintendo do when they produce Metroid and Zelda), then watching as the music player goes on to be the most popular music player, is not an abuse.
No, it's not. What Microsoft did in the 90s was leveraging a monopoly, and I'll explain below.
You don't explain how exactly Apple's DRM is more strong-arm than Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer. To use an iPod or iTunes, you don't even have to ever touch FairPlay, and just listen to your own MP3s. Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer was targeted because it was a part of a series of behavior that included:
1.) Coercive OEM deals that threatened Windows license removals if manufacturers included rival software on new systems, including Netscape. Because of Windows dominance, a license removal would be commercial suicide.
2.) Vaporware announcements designed to lure customers away from buying existing competing products.
3.) Purposeful incompatibilities designed to make competing products appear as malfunctioning.
The big one is #1, and every time someone compares the iPod/iTunes tie-up to Microsoft's monopoly abuses of the 90s, I have to call them on it and point out Apple is doing absolutely no such thing. Apple is not calling up retail stores and telling them that if they don't remove all non-Apple music players from their shelves, Apple will no longer sell iPods through them. Apple doesn't really do anything about competing products. They, for the most part, completely ignore them and just let their own product design shine through.
This is ridiculous. There is no abuse of customers going on. You're not forced to buy music from Apple, and if you do, it is of your own volition. You may also be disappointed to learn that if you buy an XBox 360, you can only play XBox games and not Playstation 2 games, even though they both use the same DVD format. Nobody is forcing the customer to do anything they don't want to do.
You haven't explained how anybody's choice is being limited. You have free choice to buy music from Apple, with the implications that their service works only with other Apple products, as is their right. Or you have the free choice not to buy Apple's music, and just use MP3s you rip yourself. You also have the choice to buy any one of the myriad of competing music players that use PlaysForSure and other services. I fail to see what consumer choice is being limited here.
iTunes is specifically designed as part of Apple's vertical solution strategy, a medium for interacting with the iPod, and the iTunes Music Store specifically exists to provide music for people who have purchased the iPod. Apple is simply providing services to increase the value of an iPod to potential customers, just as they ship iLife only for Macs. It's adding value to a hardware purchase, just like when Nintendo releases first-party games to increase the value of a Nintendo hardware purchase. I may want to play New Super Mario Bros. on a PSP, but I'm not going to consider it monopoly abuse that I can't.
No, they're not. People are buying PCs, not Windows. Windows just comes with the PCs. And why are people buying PCs? As mediums to access the web and digital media, Google and Apple's turf. Why do you think Microsoft is spending so much to conquer those markets?
Games are moving to consoles, office software is moving to OSS, web services are free...Windows is only around because it's what ships on the Dell. That could change in five years, easily.
Yes, I fear Microsoft's power to develop something for six years!
No, they just turn the computer and its operating system into a simple hub. Apple is the only company out there who is successfully embracing the idea, bundling iLife into every Mac and turning it into a digital media powerhouse. Windows has...Movie Maker.
Hardly. The momentum is now in web development and digital media.
I suggest you follow the news more closely. Microsoft recently announced that profits would be going down this year due to increased spending in an attempt to compete with Google's web services. Stockholders were so pissed that the price dropped.
An increase to 6% would more than double Apple's revenues, which would mean more research and development funding, making Apple even more dangerous. Their worldwide install base is already 15%.
No, they haven't. In fact, the media mocked Apple in the 90s. Now, the Intel Macs are seeing massive sales, and the academic market is expected to gobble up MacBooks big-time. I suspect you'll be eating your words when the figures are released.
I hate to break this to you, but the web and digital media took off years ago. The web broke through in the 90s, and digital media broke through 5 years ago with the iPod.
Windows hasn't seen an update in six years. iPods are selling like hotcakes, and people eat up Google web services for breakfast. I really don't see what you're basing your position on since the actual state of the tech market seems to suggest the opposite. Web services and digital media are the new push. Desktop machines are hubs to the web and to media--the content people are consuming which the desktop is just a medium for.
Far from it. Microsoft's market share doesn't mean much if the company no longer innovates and takes seven years to release a new version of its flagship product. This is the tech market. That is a hugely long time. People don't take this company seriously anymore. Microsoft was once written as the threatening beast, but they are now mentioned sarcastically, often as punchline. Companies and small startups no longer fear them. The fire and energy is at Google and Apple.
Their stock price is flatline, they have an out-of-touch CEO, their #1 product hasn't been updated in six years, they bleed money in markets they don't belong in, companies internally refer to Vista and the process behind it as "broken" (See here). Hell, this news comes two days after the worst Patch Tuesday of 2006. I argue that they absolutely are irrelevant. All they can do now is lean on their entrenched install base, and that means they're no longer moving forward. Sadly, it makes them a relic.
Linux will continue to gobble up servers, and Windows will continue to sort of lamely deflate in the desktop market. Analysts are actually predicting a massive increase in Apple market share, as much as triple. But more importantly, the direction in tech now is the web and digital media--Google and Apple's #1 markets. Windows is "meh."
Is this not the clearest evidence yet that Microsoft is "dying" and on its way out? Already, it's become somewhat irrelevant as a tech industry player, leaning on its entrenched install base to survive. Now its most well-known figurehead is leaving.
What people have to keep in mind is that saving the world is great ("sexy," as Penn & Teller put it), but science is still gathering data. We just don't know if global warming is a natural trend, if it's even occuring (the global temperature record shows that the temperature hasn't risen since 1998), and if there's anything we can do to stop it in the first place. There is a lot of evidence showing that scientists are actually divided about global warming, but many don't want to risk their careers because of the politics involved in speaking out against the alarmist viewpoints of people like Al Gore (who flies around in a gas-guzzling private jet and whose own charts show global warming went up during his time in the Clinton administration).
The specific implementation is NeXTStep's column view, now implemented in OS X. It even has the same scrolling animation.
Although, what's so specific about having a list that says "Music" and "Extras," and in the Music menu are "Artists," "Albums," etc.?
Creative just can't compete. They pulled out of the music player market already, so this should tell you something.
Good question, sir, and I have the answer for you right behind this red curtain!
*drumroll*
*curtain rises*
Creative couldn't compete with Apple, so they're doing the next best thing--litigation! Didn't you know, Creative retroactively invented NeXTStep's column view?
Not only did they do so in what is called a press release, but they held public demos of Longhorn and proclaimed its target release date. And the original announced date was 2003.
In 2006, there were public statements made that Vista would be out by the end of the year, no matter what. That was another lie.
For those who don't know, "MAFIAA" is the common term being thrown around now (especially on Digg) to demonize the lobby groups known as the MPAA and RIAA by pirates who want to scapegoat others to remove the guilt from themselves over their illegal and immoral activities of not paying artists for their work. Apparently, whining over specific record label contracts (and bizarrely blaming the RIAA for it even though the RIAA is a lobby group and has nothing to do with artist contracts) somehow justifies making sure artists don't get paid by pirating everything.
No, because the RIAA is just a lobby group for the record labels. This is a contract issue between him and his record label. So the problem is how his contract stipulates that his record label handles this newfangled technology called the Internet. If he thinks he's being cheated, he should contact his lawyer. If his contract is clear on the matter; too bad. He signed it.
It's been said before, and it has to be said again--the RIAA is merely a lobby group that represents the labels. The RIAA has nothing to do with Weird Al's contract; his label does. People have been mindlessly referring to "the RIAA" for so long that they think it's interchangeable with the music industry and any and all record labels.
This is a contract issue between Weird Al and his label. However, I expect most of the Slashdot discussion to devolve toward another generalized music industry bashing session instead of focusing on the actual topic here of Weird Al and his label contract...
"scientist of the company"
Haha, whoops. Meant to say country.
Can you prove he's a "paid shill?" Angry liberals call EVERYBODY they disagree with a paid shill. Heck, the lead hurricane scientist of the company said global warming isn't causing more hurricanes, and angry liberals held a protest to get him fired! I'll believe the scientist over an angry protest.
The official temperature record shows the temperature has not risen since 1998. Any response to that?
The issue is whether that is a natural cycle, and there is evidence to support that.
To paraphrase Penn & Teller, saving the world is sexy, but we don't know yet, and we're still gathering information.