people wonder why mozilla is such a big deal, the answer is simple. if you want to keep your browser up to date with all the newest frills you have to keep adding "features", sooner or later these features are so big and cumbersome that you have Internet Explorer. Eventually you have to totally re-write the browser to account for all the new technology that has been created over the years... enter in mozilla.
if you like a 90 MB download of a web browser, then go for IE, if you like a 5 MB download go get mozilla.
and besides, i never understood why people dont like th eidea of a new browser that is better. i understand sceptics and all, but shouldnt people want better products, and after all IE is far from perfect?
If a University has such a policy written into its contract then students are obliged to follow them as long as the student agrees to them upon enrollment. However if there is no such policy nor a precedent with the law then the students are not necessarily obliged to honor the Universities request. Therefor this problem can be solved by looking into the University in questions policy. I would suggest that every other college in the universe make a policy on this regardless of what your opinion is. Policies are what make the world go 'round.
What does it say about the culture we live in when people go to such extents to provide complete strangers with free stuff at their own expense?
to me it says alot about how the average joe feels ripped-off by large software companies. the only way to stop warez is to change the way people feel about the crimes they are committing, this means make the consumer feel loved again!!!! people are willing to spend money if they feel they are getting their $$$ 's worth, just look at every other market (cars, clothes, sneakers, soft-drinks).
bottom line: you cant stop warez by force, the only way to stop piracy on a mass scale is to make the consumer feel good about spending 50$ for a game.
there will be disposable cars. you drive them for a week then throw them away. maybe they will even be suv's (the most polluting class of cars on the planet). but hey as long as American's are happy who knows how far things will go in the name of progress.
they should have at least the common decency to not interfere with industry or technology critical to the civilian population. I know this would never happen, (especially with regards to the US style of war where anything goes) but it would be nice to know that civilian hospitals etc would not become targets.
Of course unless there is a communist threat.:P (this last comment was a joke, mocking the utterly stupid policies of the US toward democratic ideas)
OK here is the plan, Plan A). The boys from netscape keep cranking out Mozilla... Plan B). The boys from Wine keep working on Wine, with help from Corel etc. If we cant beat 'em, join 'em... Plan C). The people from Vmware will continue to improve upon vmware. If we still can't beat 'em we will pay money to join 'em. I figure that we have alot of tricks up our sleeves still. So the world is not as bleak as some people say. However the longer we wait, the more dearlt we will pay....
why would anyone ever want their cpu time to be spend doing the hardware's work? my guess is that people simply do mot realize that this is what winmodems do. maybe someday people will realize this, and they will buy hardware which actually does something, rather than pushing it onto the cpu. its like having a video card that uses the main cpu to render graphics.
yes corporations and governments have both done terrible things, but i argue that capitalism is what drives governments and corporations... look at the us, look at nazi germany, look at indonesia right now...
You are right about this being capitalisms destiny, but the negative effects can be tremendous sometimes. Just look at the most recent Shell/Chevron atrocity. That is a prime example of capitalism at work.
thank god we live in a world where women make a fraction of what men make:
Denmark women make 86% of men's pay USA women make 76% of men's pay Japan women make 50% of men's pay etc...
Oh and thank god 50 of the top 100 financial entities are corporations, and that the richest 350 billionaires have more wealth than the poorest 40% of the world...
but dont take my word for it, do some research of your own, the results are scary.
Take a look at any of the other huge industries right now, automobile, oil, sugar, and beef. Take any of these industries and their resource, technology, marketing, research, and distribution departments, and you could make a great difference to many people. But that will never happen because of the cut-throat nature of our ideology. There are enough resources in the world to provide every person with the basic necessities, however there is not enough money for every person to pay for it at the prices asked by corporations and business. This point is further shown by the fact that governments around the world pay farmers to NOT grow food. And my favorite one is the way the US government has always reacted to foreign democratically elected governments, e.g. Chile, Nicaragua, Guatamala, Iran, Congo... the list goes on. Do any research on the history of any of these countries and you will know what i mean. Ultimately economics drive us and what we do, and until our ideologies change nothing will ever happen to solve world problems.
The bottom line is that the internet industry is not the only industry which could be taken apart and used to benefit human-kind.
I reccomend this book: GLOBAL PROBLEMS AND THE CULTURE OF CAPITALISM, by Richard Robbins
linux doesnt give you the "segmentation fault at memory location 0010010x" errors. if anyone out there has ever tried to explain this type of error to an older computer user it is very difficult getting them to understand that microsoft products are buggy and produce errors which shouldnt be there. (not to say linux is bug free, but you will have less explaining to do with linux).
also linux doesnt "unconfigure" itself like microsoft windows does, and linux doesnt corrupt itself like microsoft windows does. both of these will give you headaches in the long run if you set a new computer user up with windows. after about two months they will be asking you why everything is so slow, and why does this icon not work anymore, etc.
this is where linux is good. you can set everything up, and the user cant screw anything up, unless he/she shuts the machine down improperly. this is probabally your greatest weakness because new computer users have a way of shutting things down improperly. so make sure you educate the user to shut stuff down right, because fsck'ing for a new user is very confusing.
now for a distro, i have heard caldera is very nice and easy. but even if you use like redhat6 or 6.1 or mandrake 6 or 6.1 or any other distro that boots into X, you will be all set.
you can set up icons for Staroffice, or Applixware. then you can set up icons for the web browser, and email. you could also set up some other icons for cd-player, icq, gaim, acrobat reader, realplayer, solitaire.
then leave all the rest of the applications under the start button. this will give the user something to explore on their own.:)
this is basically all i did to set up linux for my happy irish friend seamus, who had never really used a computer before in his life, and now two weeks later he wanted me to go through a reformat and clean install just so he could experience how to do it.
In the end you will have two hardships to over come. 1). the shutting down thing. 2). the whole idea of a file system. while this is not a hard concept to understand, but for a new user it is really foreign and needs to be explained. especially if they are gunna use linux. it wouldnt hurt to pull out a piece of paper and draw the file tree and then use kexplorer or some other file manager to go through the file system with them and show them where their home directory is etc.
The problem: The sad part about it is that many people are computer illiterate. For gods sake i had to help my friend install AOL Instant messenger, and when he was finished he held his hands up into the air and chanted, "I am the hacker God!".
Explanation of the problem: This is not to say that my friend meant it, or that he even wanted to be that type of person, but rather it shows a typical way that people view these so-called hackers.
Enter in a source of money: I am willing to bet that the majority of people, especially those that watch MTV or TV in general are as misinformed as my friend.
Finish up proof: Therefore it can be expected that television is going to appeal to these types of people, thus createing MTV's hacker show.
I have been waiting for this to come out so that i can more easily create a commercial zapper program. It would be similar to Adzapper, for all of you that have used that, but essentially it would play something else on TV while the commercials were playing, and then switch back to the normal program when the commercials were over. Thus avoiding those brain-washing commercials totally. I now the only problem is finding a way into the internals of their device. maybe they could leave me a telnet port open or something:) that would be nice, but then i suppose that i could more easily steal cable also.
the guy who wrote the article made some really good points, but frankly he looks out for the big company more than the little cable modem user. This is something that people should be very careful about. For instance a company can control the speeds at which data is sent to your computer. This could potentially allow companies like M$ to pay the ISP to allow M$ ads to download at an optimal speed, but every other ad out there download at a normal speed. If this was taken to the extreme M$ could pay money to allow IE 5.X to download fast, and Linux to download slow. Now i know i am being a little paranoid here, but when companies start making decisions which restrict the user i get scared, and so should you. The example i give from the article is the authors thoughts on the closure of a certain port unless you contact the company specifically and have them change it. If this is taken to the extreme bad things could be in store for us cable-modem users.
sorry for the paranoia, but we should always be weary of unjust threats.
what about the non-Corel developers that wrote all that software and now Corel says that nobody can redistribute any of the software on the cd including all the GPL'ed software. This is the problem, Corel could fix all of this by altering their license to not restrict the GPL'ed software. They do not have to distribute the source to their proprietary software but they better damn well stick to the GPL on GPL'ed software or people are gunna get angry.
Corel could keep cheapbytes from doing that just as easily by putting a clause in the license that targeted corel's software instead of the existing clause which targets all GPL'ed software.
you can reach them at corellinux@corel.com write them and let them know we are upset. Let them know that we wont support their distro on IRC, that we wont help new users using their product, that we will actively boycott their distribution and encourage others to do the same. Let them know that we will donate a few bucks each to organizations like the FSF who will persue them in court ($2 * 2 million linux users == $4,000,000 == lots of lawyers) and finally let them know that its not too late to win our trust back!
You would be surprised how much Corel needs our help on IRC and throughout the community to do their job of tech support for them. If they dont have our help they will have to spend many tens of thousands of dollars extra on tech support.
now that i have finished ranting i will go to class and turn my FORTRAN assignment in...
Slashdot Mirror
people wonder why mozilla is such a big deal, the answer is simple. if you want to keep your browser up to date with all the newest frills you have to keep adding "features", sooner or later these features are so big and cumbersome that you have Internet Explorer. Eventually you have to totally re-write the browser to account for all the new technology that has been created over the years... enter in mozilla.
if you like a 90 MB download of a web browser, then go for IE, if you like a 5 MB download go get mozilla.
and besides, i never understood why people dont like th eidea of a new browser that is better. i understand sceptics and all, but shouldnt people want better products, and after all IE is far from perfect?
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
If a University has such a policy written into its contract then students are obliged to follow them as long as the student agrees to them upon enrollment. However if there is no such policy nor a precedent with the law then the students are not necessarily obliged to honor the Universities request. Therefor this problem can be solved by looking into the University in questions policy. I would suggest that every other college in the universe make a policy on this regardless of what your opinion is. Policies are what make the world go 'round.
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
the difference is with the particular Universities policy...
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
What does it say about the culture we live in when people go to such extents to provide complete strangers with free stuff at their own expense?
to me it says alot about how the average joe feels ripped-off by large software companies. the only way to stop warez is to change the way people feel about the crimes they are committing, this means make the consumer feel loved again!!!! people are willing to spend money if they feel they are getting their $$$ 's worth, just look at every other market (cars, clothes, sneakers, soft-drinks).
bottom line:
you cant stop warez by force, the only way to stop piracy on a mass scale is to make the consumer feel good about spending 50$ for a game.
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
I think linux should adopt a symbol for its name just like the artist formerly known as prince did. maybe it could be a cute little penguin.
but the again people would argue about wether it was "the OS formerly known as LIE nucks," or the OS formerly known as LYNN ucks."
hmmm, maybe we should jsut shorten it to "ucks" since that is the only thing similar between the two...
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
Its nice to know that Redhat is spending its new found wealth buying up companies, when it could be helping the development of linux more.
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
there will be disposable cars. you drive them for a week then throw them away. maybe they will even be suv's (the most polluting class of cars on the planet). but hey as long as American's are happy who knows how far things will go in the name of progress.
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
they should have at least the common decency to not interfere with industry or technology critical to the civilian population. I know this would never happen, (especially with regards to the US style of war where anything goes) but it would be nice to know that civilian hospitals etc would not become targets.
:P (this last comment was a joke, mocking the utterly stupid policies of the US toward democratic ideas)
Of course unless there is a communist threat.
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
OK here is the plan, Plan A). The boys from netscape keep cranking out Mozilla... Plan B). The boys from Wine keep working on Wine, with help from Corel etc. If we cant beat 'em, join 'em... Plan C). The people from Vmware will continue to improve upon vmware. If we still can't beat 'em we will pay money to join 'em. I figure that we have alot of tricks up our sleeves still. So the world is not as bleak as some people say. However the longer we wait, the more dearlt we will pay....
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
why would anyone ever want their cpu time to be spend doing the hardware's work? my guess is that people simply do mot realize that this is what winmodems do. maybe someday people will realize this, and they will buy hardware which actually does something, rather than pushing it onto the cpu. its like having a video card that uses the main cpu to render graphics.
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
hahahah you are so right :P
yes corporations and governments have both done terrible things, but i argue that capitalism is what drives governments and corporations... look at the us, look at nazi germany, look at indonesia right now...
i think you get the point
good luck burning them, unless you print them out first...
maybe it should have been delete the gifs day...
oh well
You are right about this being capitalisms destiny, but the negative effects can be tremendous sometimes. Just look at the most recent Shell/Chevron atrocity. That is a prime example of capitalism at work.
Cheers
thank god we live in a world where women make a fraction of what men make:
Denmark women make 86% of men's pay
USA women make 76% of men's pay
Japan women make 50% of men's pay
etc...
Oh and thank god 50 of the top 100 financial entities are corporations, and that the richest 350 billionaires have more wealth than the poorest 40% of the world...
but dont take my word for it, do some research of your own, the results are scary.
Take a look at any of the other huge industries right now, automobile, oil, sugar, and beef. Take any of these industries and their resource, technology, marketing, research, and distribution departments, and you could make a great difference to many people. But that will never happen because of the cut-throat nature of our ideology. There are enough resources in the world to provide every person with the basic necessities, however there is not enough money for every person to pay for it at the prices asked by corporations and business. This point is further shown by the fact that governments around the world pay farmers to NOT grow food. And my favorite one is the way the US government has always reacted to foreign democratically elected governments, e.g. Chile, Nicaragua, Guatamala, Iran, Congo... the list goes on. Do any research on the history of any of these countries and you will know what i mean. Ultimately economics drive us and what we do, and until our ideologies change nothing will ever happen to solve world problems.
The bottom line is that the internet industry is not the only industry which could be taken apart and used to benefit human-kind.
I reccomend this book: GLOBAL PROBLEMS AND THE CULTURE OF CAPITALISM, by Richard Robbins
linux doesnt give you the "segmentation fault at memory location 0010010x" errors. if anyone out there has ever tried to explain this type of error to an older computer user it is very difficult getting them to understand that microsoft products are buggy and produce errors which shouldnt be there. (not to say linux is bug free, but you will have less explaining to do with linux).
:)
also linux doesnt "unconfigure" itself like microsoft windows does, and linux doesnt corrupt itself like microsoft windows does. both of these will give you headaches in the long run if you set a new computer user up with windows. after about two months they will be asking you why everything is so slow, and why does this icon not work anymore, etc.
this is where linux is good. you can set everything up, and the user cant screw anything up, unless he/she shuts the machine down improperly. this is probabally your greatest weakness because new computer users have a way of shutting things down improperly. so make sure you educate the user to shut stuff down right, because fsck'ing for a new user is very confusing.
now for a distro, i have heard caldera is very nice and easy. but even if you use like redhat6 or 6.1 or mandrake 6 or 6.1 or any other distro that boots into X, you will be all set.
you can set up icons for Staroffice, or Applixware. then you can set up icons for the web browser, and email. you could also set up some other icons for cd-player, icq, gaim, acrobat reader, realplayer, solitaire.
then leave all the rest of the applications under the start button. this will give the user something to explore on their own.
this is basically all i did to set up linux for my happy irish friend seamus, who had never really used a computer before in his life, and now two weeks later he wanted me to go through a reformat and clean install just so he could experience how to do it.
In the end you will have two hardships to over come.
1). the shutting down thing.
2). the whole idea of a file system. while this is not a hard concept to understand, but for a new user it is really foreign and needs to be explained. especially if they are gunna use linux. it wouldnt hurt to pull out a piece of paper and draw the file tree and then use kexplorer or some other file manager to go through the file system with them and show them where their home directory is etc.
The problem:
The sad part about it is that many people are computer illiterate. For gods sake i had to help my friend install AOL Instant messenger, and when he was finished he held his hands up into the air and chanted, "I am the hacker God!".
Explanation of the problem:
This is not to say that my friend meant it, or that he even wanted to be that type of person, but rather it shows a typical way that people view these so-called hackers.
Enter in a source of money:
I am willing to bet that the majority of people, especially those that watch MTV or TV in general are as misinformed as my friend.
Finish up proof:
Therefore it can be expected that television is going to appeal to these types of people, thus createing MTV's hacker show.
"The reasons for the growth are many, users say. Linux is dependable and easy to install"
I love it when a plan comes together...
I have been waiting for this to come out so that i can more easily create a commercial zapper program. It would be similar to Adzapper, for all of you that have used that, but essentially it would play something else on TV while the commercials were playing, and then switch back to the normal program when the commercials were over. Thus avoiding those brain-washing commercials totally. I now the only problem is finding a way into the internals of their device. maybe they could leave me a telnet port open or something :) that would be nice, but then i suppose that i could more easily steal cable also.
the guy who wrote the article made some really good points, but frankly he looks out for the big company more than the little cable modem user. This is something that people should be very careful about. For instance a company can control the speeds at which data is sent to your computer. This could potentially allow companies like M$ to pay the ISP to allow M$ ads to download at an optimal speed, but every other ad out there download at a normal speed. If this was taken to the extreme M$ could pay money to allow IE 5.X to download fast, and Linux to download slow. Now i know i am being a little paranoid here, but when companies start making decisions which restrict the user i get scared, and so should you. The example i give from the article is the authors thoughts on the closure of a certain port unless you contact the company specifically and have them change it. If this is taken to the extreme bad things could be in store for us cable-modem users.
sorry for the paranoia, but we should always be weary of unjust threats.
if so give me a message if you want to fight fire with fire and ill be sure to drop it to a bunch of warez puppies.
xjedi@usa.net
what about the non-Corel developers that wrote all that software and now Corel says that nobody can redistribute any of the software on the cd including all the GPL'ed software. This is the problem, Corel could fix all of this by altering their license to not restrict the GPL'ed software. They do not have to distribute the source to their proprietary software but they better damn well stick to the GPL on GPL'ed software or people are gunna get angry.
Corel could keep cheapbytes from doing that just as easily by putting a clause in the license that targeted corel's software instead of the existing clause which targets all GPL'ed software.
you can reach them at corellinux@corel.com
write them and let them know we are upset.
Let them know that we wont support their distro on IRC, that we wont help new users using their product, that we will actively boycott their distribution and encourage others to do the same. Let them know that we will donate a few bucks each to organizations like the FSF who will persue them in court ($2 * 2 million linux users == $4,000,000 == lots of lawyers) and finally let them know that its not too late to win our trust back!
You would be surprised how much Corel needs our help on IRC and throughout the community to do their job of tech support for them. If they dont have our help they will have to spend many tens of thousands of dollars extra on tech support.
now that i have finished ranting i will go to class and turn my FORTRAN assignment in...