These guys have put together over a dozen episodes of a sitcom based on and in the XBOX game Halo. It's funnier and more entertaining than 99% of what I've seen on TV in the past year. They've done it all for free, although you can choose to support them if you want to.
See, the problem isn't that people won't create for free, they will. The problem isn't that people won't pay for the creations of another, they will. The problem is in the ratio of how much you have to pay to what you get... how much bang for your buck, if you will.
I've been watching the Red vs Blue episodes completely on the creators' terms. They decide if and when I ever get to see another episode. They are doing it for free, so of course this should be the way. How can I expect them to make more episodes for free? I can't. I just hope they do.
However, just as soon as money changes hands, the whole deal changes. Now that I have spent my hard earned money on something, I have some control over the deal. To what extent is for lawyers and philosophers to figure out. Personally, if I spend money on a creative work of another, I feel I should be able to decide when, where, and how often I can experience that creative work. Your opinion might, and most likely does, vary.
Ok, I'm talking about money changing hands and you are talking about no money changing hands, I'm not off topic, just hang in there....
People used to barter. If I wanted a loaf of bread I could go to the baker and offer him a dozen eggs. he could then accept or reject that offer. If the quality of his bread went down I could offer him less eggs and vice-versa.
People no longer barter. We are, for the most part, paid a wage of whatever corportate America decides and we use that money to purchase goods from corporate America at whatever price they choose. We are then instructed by corporate America when and how we are allowed to use those goods.
We have become slaves to corporate America. As of today, they own us.
I'm not anti-America, I love America and am proud and thankful to have been born on her shores. However, I am growing more and more tired of 'corporate America'. As they tug harder and harder at my leash, I grow increasingly resentful of their presense as the dictators of my intended to be free nation. I become resentful of their patenting and copyrighting, their market cornering and price fixing, and most of all, their blatant outright purchase of our elected officials.
Corporate America uses and abuses every law that was put in place to protect my rights. Patents were created for me, so that I, the little guy, would have some hope at competing with their unlimited resources. Copyrights where created for you, so that you might have some chance at competing against their unlimited budgets. Our elected representitives are supposed to represent the opion of the most people, not the people with the most money.
The problem people have with paying for creative content isn't in the act of payment, but in the terms of payment. We no longer have any control over the terms, it's their way or the information super hi-way.
I can see a light at the end of the tunnel though. Although corporate America has a monopoly on conventional means of production, promotion and distribution of creative content, with advances in technology your average Joe now has access to new forms of production, promotion, and distribution via computer and the internet. Corporate America's strangle hold on entertainment is dwindling, Red vs Blue may very well become Red vs Blue Vs. Corporate America.
The guys over at Red vs Blue don't need a dozen private jets to shuttle VIP's and public officials around, they just need a cheeseburger and fries. Therefore they do not need to make 8.5 bazillion dollars on the next episode to stay in the black.
A system that made it easy to find and pay for quality content direct from the manufacturer is all that is needed. If th
Because unlike Microsoft, Apple truely does have a monopoly. They have total control over the hardware and the operating system, whereas MS makes an OS that runs on many flavors of hardware.
What can MS really do? They can tell big system manufacturers that if they ship systems without Windows installed on them then they won't get the huge discount they give big system manufacturers. This sounds like a monopolistic practice to many, but in reality, I think most people can see if they are honest with themselves that systems that didn't ship with Windows would wind up with a pirated copy of Windows on them.
MS can't really MAKE anyone do anything. Anyone, you, me, Walmart, could start building systems today that MS would despise, yet MS has no power what so ever to stop us.
Apple on the other hand can and will sue your ass of at every turn. Did you know that it is illegal to run Mac OS on non Apple hardware, it's a violation of the EULA. So not only are you not supposed to do it in the privacy of your own home, if you tried to market a product that did, well, you wouldn't even make it to market.
Apple can do anything they want with their hardware and software to break 3rd party apps. The only recourse a developer would have is to rewrite the code. Sure, right now, Apple pretty much bends over backwards for most developers, but that's because they NEED apps. However, as in this case, when Apple is making an app themselves , I sure wouldn't want to be in competition with that app.
I shudder to think of the state the computer industry would be in if Apple's and Microsoft's market shares were reversed.
"I don't care if Michael Jackson came into my store. He's still gotta pay with cash, check, or major credit card."
If Jackson came in to your store his fame would not only be enough to purchase your product, you would pay him lots of money to take your product.
Depending on what you sell of course. If you sold child safety seats you might be better served by a different celeb, but if you sold skin bleach your business would sky rocket.
Fame isn't cash, but you can cash in on it. Sadly for Mr. T, you don't always get your money's worth.
"I could go on and on here, but the point is, I don't think you know what you are talking about. I have been using computers now for over two decades and have watched the industry evolve.
I'm bored with this now....."
I would bow to your superior intelect and experience, but it just doesn't exist. I don't normaly reply to/. posts that reply to mine. I feel I said what I wanted to say and other people will say what they've got to say. However, you not only replied to my reply, you had a lot to say about me as well and it was all wrong.
To set the record straight...
I do use OS X almost everyday, I'm using it right now on my iBook, hence my name iFlynn.
I'm not new to computers, I've been using them as long as you, over 20 years. My first computer was a TRS 80 with extended color BASIC, silver with a chicklet keyboard.
I don't think you actually read my post, and that's why you completely missed my point. Look at your comment on the one button mouse... you imply that I didn't know multi-button mice are supported when my whole point is that they are supported yet Apple can't admit that they should have implimented them a long time ago by shipping them now.
I stand by what I said in my post, Apple innovation is smoke and mirrors, just as your reply. Look at your list, over half the things in your list you credit Apple as innovating simply because they used someone elses product!
The worst example in your list is by far the first GUI. I'm pretty sure everyone here knows the whole story, you're not really fooling anyone with that one. You should have said they were the first to steal the idea of a GUI controlled by a mouse from Xerox, everyone would agree with that. Perhaps Apple's greatest innovation is how to steal a product and market it as their own.
A lot of your examples don't even make sense. Built in sound with the Mac? Have you ever heard of a Commodore 64?
Talk about bored, your list of great Apple innovations is not only tired, it proves my point. Apple's only real innovation is marketing other peoples' products as their own.
"After all, the rest of the computer industry has been copying Apple Computer for years right?"
Everyone uses things that they know for a fact work. How many times have you told a joke that you didn't make up yourself? Why? You knew it would get laughs because you saw people laugh when you heard someone else tell it.
Most cars have 4 tires. They have 4 tires because everyone knows for a fact that 4 tires work. You could use more or less tires on a car, but most likely you would be thinking different merely for the sake of being different, not because it's a better way of doing things.
When I say everyone copies, I mean everyone, that includes Apple. Look at OS X. I can't count the number of times I've heard about how innovative it is. If you look past the flash (which I admit can be difficult) it's easy to see it's nothing new.
Apple did what just about every little dog in every industry does... they looked at what the big dog was doing and tried to emulate it. Despite the general perception of the planet, and the neverending chatter of the majority of/.'ers, Windows works, and that's a fact. Apple knew this and knew they had to step up. However, after years of propaganda slamming Windows about copying Mac OS they had to put several coats of paint over anything they borrowed from Windows. That's just what they did.
The biggest thing OS 9 was missing, as far as the UI was concerned, was a way to switch between apps quickly and easily. It's obvious the taskbar is what they needed, yet, how could they bring a taskbar into Mac OS after all these years of slamming Windows? The answer is simple, don't. Enter the Dock. A whiz bang, smoke and mirrors, solution to bring an existing technology into your product and make it look like you thought it all up on your own.
Apple came out with colorful computers, everone exclaimed innovation, a couple years later shows what I had expected from day one... glowing colors really don't fit into most environments. A couple years go by and all their computers are white. Were extreme color schemes really innovative? I guess they didn't think so since they went white across the board a couple years after their great innovation. Commodore went white straight from beige almost 20 years ago.
My point is that Apple is no more or less innovative than anyone else. They just have thicker smoke and shinier mirrors. What's a HUGE limitation of Macs right now? Something everyone has been talking about for years? Something so obvious that their lack of doing anything about it this long prevents them from doing anything about it now? The ONE BUTTON MOUSE.
Everyone that has used a scroll wheel mouse knows they couldn't live without it after just a few hours. Yet Apple has waited so long to do anything about it, they can't now without admitting they were wrong all these years for sticking to one button. However, their OS fully supports 2 button scroll wheel mice! Plug one in and the scroll wheel works right off the bat. The right button works as well, and works just like it does in windows. So they know everyone wants 2 buttons and a scroll wheel, they had to support it, but they just couldn't bring themselves to openly admit it by shipping 2 button scroll wheel mice.
Now they are patenting some sort of track pad mouse. They want to incorporate the functionality of 2 button scroll wheel mice, but they need to make it look like they came up with the idea themselves.
It didn't take the innovative eye of Steve Jobs to point out the short comings of the Segway, 90% of the population saw them the instant they saw it. It's a high priced scooter. It uses 2 wheels where 4 wheels have done the job for centuries, just for the sake of being different.
Playing a bunch of apps at the same time, ok, I can buy that I guess. Lot's of RAM, a couple processors, sure, it could happen.
However, let's consider how this yanking the plug and restarting right were everything left off deal would work...
When the power is cut off suddenly, not even the mighty BeOS would have time to save the position of even one MP3, let alone a couple dozen. Therefore, if it were able to restart where it left off, it would have to have been keeping track of its place constantly, for ever app, on the HDD!
That means everytime it read a byte from each MP3 file, it would have to write at least a byte, if not several bytes, as a place holder. Think about that for a second, reading a byte from each file and writing 2-3 bytes back to the drive, continuously, for dozens of multimedia files, that would be a ton of overhead.
I could kinda see if it was supported thought hardware and was writing place holder information to battery backed RAM or something, but I can't see making hardware so that if the power goes out you can start your movie trailer in the place where you left off. Especially considering UPS would keep you from losing power instantly in the first place.
I'm not saying it didn't happen, I wasn't there, and anything is possible. However, as I've said, the only way I can see it possibly happening would seem to me to create so much overhead that playing that many media files at the same time wouldn't be possible.
Linux is better than Windows because it's so complex and difficult to use?
It's funny how hypocritical the crowd here on/. can be. One day they are making out a bug in IE that crashes the browser to be a HUGE deal. Something that just about has to be purposely coded and would take 2 seconds out of your day to relaunch the window if you did run across a site with the code.
Two seconds was a huge amount of time in the average Linux user's day yesterday, but today, hours and hours spent installing software is but a small price to pay.
I know I am oversimplifying this, I'm doing it on purpose to make a point. When the slightest problem is found with Windows, Linux users will type for hours telling how damaging it is and how it is just another reason not to use Windows. However, when a HUGE flaw in the very foundation of Linux is brought into discussion, it is trivialized to the point that the common concensus is that there is no problem at all.
Blind loyalty does no good for anyone but a dictator. Windows isn't the perfect OS, X isn't the perfect OS, and niether is Linux the perfect OS. Each has advantages and disadvantages. However, if you only focus on the advantages and do nothing to improve the disadvantages, or even admit they exist, they will always exist.
I'm gonna be honest here, I couldn't care less how long it takes to install something in Linux. I'm not posting this in hopes that the Linux Community will come together and work on solving the biggest problems facing Linux. I don't use Linux, probably never will, but I have tried it a couple times in the past. To me, Linux isn't even close to an alternative to XP and X (both of which I use daily). I feel Linux has years of catching up to do before I would even consider using it for anything but a web server.
I'm posting this for two reasons. Primarily, because I would like to see Linux users on/. start focusing on their own hurdles instead of beating to death every little issue that pops up with Windows. Alternately I would like to see more than the handful of truly devoted Linux users admit, or even just realize, that Linux is far from perfect.
This might sound like flames to many slashdotters here, but that's only because I'm not slamming Windows as a creation of satan while singing the praises of Linux as a gift from the gods. If you really take the time to read what I've said with an open mind you will see I have said nothing defamatory about Linux, and in fact everything I have said would benefit Linux if people would take it to heart. Too many Linux users have become zealots and, at least here on/., those vocal zealots have become the voice of the Linux community.
As proof, I offer this entire thread into evidence. The complexity of installing apps on Linux is quite probably the very largest single problem holding Linux back as a mainstream OS. As a computer user that started on the Commodore 64 and used UNIX in college as a CS major, I can testify that the main reason I wiped the Linux partition mere hours after installing both of the times that I tried it was the complexity of installing even the most basic of apps. However, if you read through this entire thread you will see that the majority of replies deny this problem even exists.
Of course whenever MS is mentioned on/. everyone has to jump on the bandwagon and start taking pot shots, but in this case I feel it has backfired.
I've been using XP since its release and from the start I've enjoyed the overall system integrity it provides. I can't say that IE has never crashed before on me, but it has been very rare and I surf dozens of different sites every day. One thing I had noticed in the past, but wasn't entirely sure about until now, is that if a page crashes IE then it only shuts down the window that page was in.
With this bug I was able to test this and found it to indeed be the case. With several IE windows open I clicked on the link in one of them and only that window crashed.
Since no browser in the world is immune to crashing, this bug is more a testiment to the integrity of XP than a an example of bad programming in IE.
Let's face the facts, there have been many examples of real problems that have been found in IE that actually have potential for danger, this is not only minor, it borders on nothing. HTML is code right? Code is written by programmers right? Should not the integrity of the code be the responsibility of the programmer? You point the finger at the MS programmers because their code won't handle every possible code error of another programmer?
Have you ever written code that crashed? What did you do, debug your code or start firing off letters to/.?
This is such a simple subject it's very easy to over complicate it. While there are a variety of reasons to write any software, the overwhelming motivation for most open source software is obvious.
Someone wants an app that does X in a certain way Y. They could only find an app that does X-3 and it does it in a round about way Z. So they write an app that does X in the certain way Y and release it with the source so that others can modify it to suit their needs as well. Perhaps their mods will be benefitial to the original author as well.
Linux, Perl, blah blah blah, all started this way. It's not complicated or difficult to understand.
What's difficult to understand is why so many people release shareware that does one simple thing and expect people to pay them 20 bucks for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Trust has to be earned. In my experience people with your attitude usually have something to hide.
www.redvsblue.com
These guys have put together over a dozen episodes of a sitcom based on and in the XBOX game Halo. It's funnier and more entertaining than 99% of what I've seen on TV in the past year. They've done it all for free, although you can choose to support them if you want to.
See, the problem isn't that people won't create for free, they will. The problem isn't that people won't pay for the creations of another, they will. The problem is in the ratio of how much you have to pay to what you get... how much bang for your buck, if you will.
I've been watching the Red vs Blue episodes completely on the creators' terms. They decide if and when I ever get to see another episode. They are doing it for free, so of course this should be the way. How can I expect them to make more episodes for free? I can't. I just hope they do.
However, just as soon as money changes hands, the whole deal changes. Now that I have spent my hard earned money on something, I have some control over the deal. To what extent is for lawyers and philosophers to figure out. Personally, if I spend money on a creative work of another, I feel I should be able to decide when, where, and how often I can experience that creative work. Your opinion might, and most likely does, vary.
Ok, I'm talking about money changing hands and you are talking about no money changing hands, I'm not off topic, just hang in there....
People used to barter. If I wanted a loaf of bread I could go to the baker and offer him a dozen eggs. he could then accept or reject that offer. If the quality of his bread went down I could offer him less eggs and vice-versa.
People no longer barter. We are, for the most part, paid a wage of whatever corportate America decides and we use that money to purchase goods from corporate America at whatever price they choose. We are then instructed by corporate America when and how we are allowed to use those goods.
We have become slaves to corporate America. As of today, they own us.
I'm not anti-America, I love America and am proud and thankful to have been born on her shores. However, I am growing more and more tired of 'corporate America'. As they tug harder and harder at my leash, I grow increasingly resentful of their presense as the dictators of my intended to be free nation. I become resentful of their patenting and copyrighting, their market cornering and price fixing, and most of all, their blatant outright purchase of our elected officials.
Corporate America uses and abuses every law that was put in place to protect my rights. Patents were created for me, so that I, the little guy, would have some hope at competing with their unlimited resources. Copyrights where created for you, so that you might have some chance
at competing against their unlimited budgets. Our elected representitives are supposed to represent the opion of the most people, not the people with the most money.
The problem people have with paying for creative content isn't in the act of payment, but in the terms of payment. We no longer have any control over the terms, it's their way or the information super hi-way.
I can see a light at the end of the tunnel though. Although corporate America has a monopoly on conventional means of production, promotion and distribution of creative content, with advances in technology your average Joe now has access to new forms of production, promotion, and distribution via computer and the internet. Corporate America's strangle hold on entertainment is dwindling, Red vs Blue may very well become Red vs Blue Vs. Corporate America.
The guys over at Red vs Blue don't need a dozen private jets to shuttle VIP's and public officials around, they just need a cheeseburger and fries. Therefore they do not need to make 8.5 bazillion dollars on the next episode to stay in the black.
A system that made it easy to find and pay for quality content direct from the manufacturer is all that is needed. If th
"why is it that they cannot compete with Apple"
Because unlike Microsoft, Apple truely does have a monopoly. They have total control over the hardware and the operating system, whereas MS makes an OS that runs on many flavors of hardware.
What can MS really do? They can tell big system manufacturers that if they ship systems without Windows installed on them then they won't get the huge discount they give big system manufacturers. This sounds like a monopolistic practice to many, but in reality, I think most people can see if they are honest with themselves that systems that didn't ship with Windows would wind up with a pirated copy of Windows on them.
MS can't really MAKE anyone do anything. Anyone, you, me, Walmart, could start building systems today that MS would despise, yet MS has no power what so ever to stop us.
Apple on the other hand can and will sue your ass of at every turn. Did you know that it is illegal to run Mac OS on non Apple hardware, it's a violation of the EULA. So not only are you not supposed to do it in the privacy of your own home, if you tried to market a product that did, well, you wouldn't even make it to market.
Apple can do anything they want with their hardware and software to break 3rd party apps. The only recourse a developer would have is to rewrite the code. Sure, right now, Apple pretty much bends over backwards for most developers, but that's because they NEED apps. However, as in this case, when Apple is making an app themselves , I sure wouldn't want to be in competition with that app.
I shudder to think of the state the computer industry would be in if Apple's and Microsoft's market shares were reversed.
"I don't care if Michael Jackson came into my store. He's still gotta pay with cash, check, or major credit card."
If Jackson came in to your store his fame would not only be enough to purchase your product, you would pay him lots of money to take your product.
Depending on what you sell of course. If you sold child safety seats you might be better served by a different celeb, but if you sold skin bleach your business would sky rocket.
Fame isn't cash, but you can cash in on it. Sadly for Mr. T, you don't always get your money's worth.
"I could go on and on here, but the point is, I don't think you know what you are talking about. I have been using computers now for over two decades and have watched the industry evolve.
/. posts that reply to mine. I feel I said what I wanted to say and other people will say what they've got to say. However, you not only replied to my reply, you had a lot to say about me as well and it was all wrong.
I'm bored with this now....."
I would bow to your superior intelect and experience, but it just doesn't exist. I don't normaly reply to
To set the record straight...
I do use OS X almost everyday, I'm using it right now on my iBook, hence my name iFlynn.
I'm not new to computers, I've been using them as long as you, over 20 years. My first computer was a TRS 80 with extended color BASIC, silver with a chicklet keyboard.
I don't think you actually read my post, and that's why you completely missed my point. Look at your comment on the one button mouse... you imply that I didn't know multi-button mice are supported when my whole point is that they are supported yet Apple can't admit that they should have implimented them a long time ago by shipping them now.
I stand by what I said in my post, Apple innovation is smoke and mirrors, just as your reply. Look at your list, over half the things in your list you credit Apple as innovating simply because they used someone elses product!
The worst example in your list is by far the first GUI. I'm pretty sure everyone here knows the whole story, you're not really fooling anyone with that one. You should have said they were the first to steal the idea of a GUI controlled by a mouse from Xerox, everyone would agree with that. Perhaps Apple's greatest innovation is how to steal a product and market it as their own.
A lot of your examples don't even make sense. Built in sound with the Mac? Have you ever heard of a Commodore 64?
Talk about bored, your list of great Apple innovations is not only tired, it proves my point. Apple's only real innovation is marketing other peoples' products as their own.
"After all, the rest of the computer industry has been copying Apple Computer for years right?"
/.'ers, Windows works, and that's a fact. Apple knew this and knew they had to step up. However, after years of propaganda slamming Windows about copying Mac OS they had to put several coats of paint over anything they borrowed from Windows. That's just what they did.
Everyone uses things that they know for a fact work. How many times have you told a joke that you didn't make up yourself? Why? You knew it would get laughs because you saw people laugh when you heard someone else tell it.
Most cars have 4 tires. They have 4 tires because everyone knows for a fact that 4 tires work. You could use more or less tires on a car, but most likely you would be thinking different merely for the sake of being different, not because it's a better way of doing things.
When I say everyone copies, I mean everyone, that includes Apple. Look at OS X. I can't count the number of times I've heard about how innovative it is. If you look past the flash (which I admit can be difficult) it's easy to see it's nothing new.
Apple did what just about every little dog in every industry does... they looked at what the big dog was doing and tried to emulate it. Despite the general perception of the planet, and the neverending chatter of the majority of
The biggest thing OS 9 was missing, as far as the UI was concerned, was a way to switch between apps quickly and easily. It's obvious the taskbar is what they needed, yet, how could they bring a taskbar into Mac OS after all these years of slamming Windows? The answer is simple, don't. Enter the Dock. A whiz bang, smoke and mirrors, solution to bring an existing technology into your product and make it look like you thought it all up on your own.
Apple came out with colorful computers, everone exclaimed innovation, a couple years later shows what I had expected from day one... glowing colors really don't fit into most environments. A couple years go by and all their computers are white. Were extreme color schemes really innovative? I guess they didn't think so since they went white across the board a couple years after their great innovation. Commodore went white straight from beige almost 20 years ago.
My point is that Apple is no more or less innovative than anyone else. They just have thicker smoke and shinier mirrors. What's a HUGE limitation of Macs right now? Something everyone has been talking about for years? Something so obvious that their lack of doing anything about it this long prevents them from doing anything about it now? The ONE BUTTON MOUSE.
Everyone that has used a scroll wheel mouse knows they couldn't live without it after just a few hours. Yet Apple has waited so long to do anything about it, they can't now without admitting they were wrong all these years for sticking to one button. However, their OS fully supports 2 button scroll wheel mice! Plug one in and the scroll wheel works right off the bat. The right button works as well, and works just like it does in windows. So they know everyone wants 2 buttons and a scroll wheel, they had to support it, but they just couldn't bring themselves to openly admit it by shipping 2 button scroll wheel mice.
Now they are patenting some sort of track pad mouse. They want to incorporate the functionality of 2 button scroll wheel mice, but they need to make it look like they came up with the idea themselves.
It didn't take the innovative eye of Steve Jobs to point out the short comings of the Segway, 90% of the population saw them the instant they saw it. It's a high priced scooter. It uses 2 wheels where 4 wheels have done the job for centuries, just for the sake of being different.
Playing a bunch of apps at the same time, ok, I can buy that I guess. Lot's of RAM, a couple processors, sure, it could happen. However, let's consider how this yanking the plug and restarting right were everything left off deal would work... When the power is cut off suddenly, not even the mighty BeOS would have time to save the position of even one MP3, let alone a couple dozen. Therefore, if it were able to restart where it left off, it would have to have been keeping track of its place constantly, for ever app, on the HDD! That means everytime it read a byte from each MP3 file, it would have to write at least a byte, if not several bytes, as a place holder. Think about that for a second, reading a byte from each file and writing 2-3 bytes back to the drive, continuously, for dozens of multimedia files, that would be a ton of overhead. I could kinda see if it was supported thought hardware and was writing place holder information to battery backed RAM or something, but I can't see making hardware so that if the power goes out you can start your movie trailer in the place where you left off. Especially considering UPS would keep you from losing power instantly in the first place. I'm not saying it didn't happen, I wasn't there, and anything is possible. However, as I've said, the only way I can see it possibly happening would seem to me to create so much overhead that playing that many media files at the same time wouldn't be possible.
Linux is better than Windows because it's so complex and difficult to use?
/. can be. One day they are making out a bug in IE that crashes the browser to be a HUGE deal. Something that just about has to be purposely coded and would take 2 seconds out of your day to relaunch the window if you did run across a site with the code.
/. start focusing on their own hurdles instead of beating to death every little issue that pops up with Windows. Alternately I would like to see more than the handful of truly devoted Linux users admit, or even just realize, that Linux is far from perfect.
/., those vocal zealots have become the voice of the Linux community.
It's funny how hypocritical the crowd here on
Two seconds was a huge amount of time in the average Linux user's day yesterday, but today, hours and hours spent installing software is but a small price to pay.
I know I am oversimplifying this, I'm doing it on purpose to make a point. When the slightest problem is found with Windows, Linux users will type for hours telling how damaging it is and how it is just another reason not to use Windows. However, when a HUGE flaw in the very foundation of Linux is brought into discussion, it is trivialized to the point that the common concensus is that there is no problem at all.
Blind loyalty does no good for anyone but a dictator. Windows isn't the perfect OS, X isn't the perfect OS, and niether is Linux the perfect OS. Each has advantages and disadvantages. However, if you only focus on the advantages and do nothing to improve the disadvantages, or even admit they exist, they will always exist.
I'm gonna be honest here, I couldn't care less how long it takes to install something in Linux. I'm not posting this in hopes that the Linux Community will come together and work on solving the biggest problems facing Linux. I don't use Linux, probably never will, but I have tried it a couple times in the past. To me, Linux isn't even close to an alternative to XP and X (both of which I use daily). I feel Linux has years of catching up to do before I would even consider using it for anything but a web server.
I'm posting this for two reasons. Primarily, because I would like to see Linux users on
This might sound like flames to many slashdotters here, but that's only because I'm not slamming Windows as a creation of satan while singing the praises of Linux as a gift from the gods. If you really take the time to read what I've said with an open mind you will see I have said nothing defamatory about Linux, and in fact everything I have said would benefit Linux if people would take it to heart. Too many Linux users have become zealots and, at least here on
As proof, I offer this entire thread into evidence. The complexity of installing apps on Linux is quite probably the very largest single problem holding Linux back as a mainstream OS. As a computer user that started on the Commodore 64 and used UNIX in college as a CS major, I can testify that the main reason I wiped the Linux partition mere hours after installing both of the times that I tried it was the complexity of installing even the most basic of apps. However, if you read through this entire thread you will see that the majority of replies deny this problem even exists.
Of course whenever MS is mentioned on /. everyone has to jump on the bandwagon and start taking pot shots, but in this case I feel it has backfired.
/.?
I've been using XP since its release and from the start I've enjoyed the overall system integrity it provides. I can't say that IE has never crashed before on me, but it has been very rare and I surf dozens of different sites every day. One thing I had noticed in the past, but wasn't entirely sure about until now, is that if a page crashes IE then it only shuts down the window that page was in.
With this bug I was able to test this and found it to indeed be the case. With several IE windows open I clicked on the link in one of them and only that window crashed.
Since no browser in the world is immune to crashing, this bug is more a testiment to the integrity of XP than a an example of bad programming in IE.
Let's face the facts, there have been many examples of real problems that have been found in IE that actually have potential for danger, this is not only minor, it borders on nothing. HTML is code right? Code is written by programmers right? Should not the integrity of the code be the responsibility of the programmer? You point the finger at the MS programmers because their code won't handle every possible code error of another programmer?
Have you ever written code that crashed? What did you do, debug your code or start firing off letters to
This is such a simple subject it's very easy to over complicate it. While there are a variety of reasons to write any software, the overwhelming motivation for most open source software is obvious.
Someone wants an app that does X in a certain way Y. They could only find an app that does X-3 and it does it in a round about way Z. So they write an app that does X in the certain way Y and release it with the source so that others can modify it to suit their needs as well. Perhaps their mods will be benefitial to the original author as well.
Linux, Perl, blah blah blah, all started this way. It's not complicated or difficult to understand.
What's difficult to understand is why so many people release shareware that does one simple thing and expect people to pay them 20 bucks for it.