I think many people buy the boxed sets because they want to support their distro, or are in a rush (i.e. need it right now). Others do it because they don't know they can get it online, have very low bandwidth connections, or they want support. I think very few people with highspeed broadband purchase the CDs out of convenience. The fact that Red Hat is getting rid of the in store boxes should be a good indicator for how often the boxed sets are purchased. Another indicator is seeing all those out of date boxes on store shelves and in bargain bins...
The point is, is that there is some perceived value in addition to the convenience of purchasing the CDs. Even so, I'd be willing to gamble that the vast majority of installed linux distros were downloaded for free.
I'm interested to see how well the online offerings work. However, once all music is digitally distributed, the convenience factor might be greatly diminished. Unless of course they cripple the tracks in some way to prevent distribution, however I don't think that would go over so well.
This is because the quality (audio) of radio sucks, and you don't get to listen to the song you want when you want. Plus with radio the RIAA gets money for each song played.
It does not make sense to compare radio with file sharing. File sharing results in perfect copies. With file sharing none of the money goes to the RIAA companies.
I think the RIAA has much to fear from freely available perfect digital copies of content that is extremely portable, costs nothing to reproduce, and is extremely easy to reproduce. After all, why would people bother to pay for CDs if they can get the -exact- equivalent for free?
Yes, but with CDRs you wouldn't have near the amount of sharing that happens now. The RIAA knows it won't stop all sharing, but certainly you can see where making sharing more difficult would be in their best interest.
I find it quite unlikely that the RIAA is going to succeed in stopping a promising communications protocol. If a legitamit need comes along that P2P will fill, someone will jump on it. It's not like the concept is somehow going to disappear.
You cannot stop sharing because there will always be people who will want to get something for nothing. This is like saying that the only way you will stop car theft is to gain the trust of buyers so that they pay out of free will.
In addition, to quote someone else who posted on this topic, "Would you look down upon a grocer that prosecutes someone for shoplifting even if they actually buy things from time to time?" I can just see that now, "Your honor, I was just taking this food to see if I like it, this helps them because I come back later and buy more of the stuff that I liked...besides their stuff is over priced and their chain is responsible for clubbing baby seals." To the RIAA these people are not buyers, they are thieves. Just because you distrust or dislike a vendor does not justify stealing their stuff. Likewise not being able to afford the stuff is not a justification either.
You may not approve of their methods, but the RIAA has every right to attempt to prevent/stop the wholesale theft of their material. In fact, lately the RIAA has been doing the right thing, that is going after people who are sharing the material. These are people that are clearly doing the wrong thing, unlike the grey area of downloading the material (i.e. you may actually own the album).
I think a better question would be why are people switching from linux?
People don't switch to linux because they are too entrenched in their current Microsoft solution. For these people switching to linux would require redesigning a lot of their current software.
I'm more curious as to what would make someone using a linux solution to switch.
I don't see what the big deal is...you can find out where someone has been based on what they've purchased...BFD.
Granted this info is electronically available if you use a card or a check, but who didn't know that already?
He didn't even do the site very creatively...scanning in receipts and placing the location on the map isn't particularly interesting. You get receipts when you pay with cash too. Just sift through the garbage of someone who doesn't shread their receipts. Now if he'd obtained the info electronically and presented it in real time, that may be cooler and scarier.
Find a way to correlate the above info with all the images taken of you by known public cameras within the vicinity of your purchases and you may even have a 1984 experience.
I use one of my old machines with 4 ide drives running software raid 5 under linux. Granted it won't protect against a fire or some other disaster that takes out the box, but it will protect against drive failure.
At work I encourage users to archive their own data to CD-R, however they typically only need to backup documents and what not so it only takes a fraction of a single cd. For the servers I use two rotating usb drives and rsync. This protects against hardware failure and I use two in case a hardware failure occurs right in the middle of a backup (i.e. I've still got the previous backup). The system doesn't handle archival, but that's why I encourage users to do it...our organization doesn't really have the resources to archive everyone's data anyway.
Junction wasn't so bad...it was the fact that you would draw and maybe get 2 or 3 points. If you got 100 so you only had to do it once in a while everything would've been ok, it's not like it's any harder to get 100 by 2s and 3s...just much more painful.
I've got nothing against junctioning and using magic provided you could replenish it in a reasonable manner. They could have even made exceptions for the most powerful spells like life 2 (or was it 3) and Ultima. In the special cases you should only be able to get draw points by finding draw points, thus encouraging a bit of exploration. However, it would be nice if in the special cases they implemented it more as a cap that slowly replenished itself so that you could use the spells without regretting it, but you couldn't just use them continuously. Finding draw points would increase this cap, both making your character stronger through junctioning and allowing you to cast the spell more times before having to replenish.
Ugg...I hated FFVIII. One of the things I enjoy most about RPG's is exploring the game world and finding unexpected things.
FFVIII had very few items, so it was pointless to play the card game, do any of the side quests, or explore any of the dungeons. Even after completing an important part of the story there was little that happened to increase the character's abilities.
This combined with the fact that the game was linear, basically meant that the whole purpose of the game was just to click buttons until you got a cut scene. If I wanted to simply watch cut scenes I'd rent a movie.
I might have been able to finish the game if it just had the above problems, but it gets worse. The magic system was horrible. Every battle was a draw fest and since you often got so few magic points (or whatever they call'm) with each draw you had to do it over and over and over and over, this is particularly true with some spells that could only be gained from bosses or certain monsters... This was necessary because the magic you had played a critical role in your character's abilities. While the idea was neat (i.e. get magic from monsters, increase your abilities) the implementation sucked because drawing was so painful that once I accumulated 100 of a certain spell I didn't want to cast it (hence lowering your abilities).
Another thing FFVIII did was increase the levels of the monsters as you increased in level. Thus when you went on your draw fests, often when you came back you found that the monsters you were grabbing magic to beat were much harder than before. Personally I like being able to take advantage of my character's increased abilities in the form of kicking the crap out of monsters that were once difficult. It gives one a sense of progression throughout the game...like you're accomplishing something, getting stronger, preparing for that final battle.
Finally, FFVIII's characters sucked. They were whiney and unlikeable. After the millionth cut scene of seeing Squall's complete indifference to everything I simply got tired of him and really didn't care whether he made it or not.
RPG's aren't just about completing a single objective and then moving to the next, they are supposed to immersive. A good RPG will have you going over the next hill just to see what's there, not because you know some monster that you have to kill is over there. Likewise, a good RPG will have you talking to people; hoping to get info, maybe getting a new quest...in a sense you do things you don't have to do because you enjoy the game world and its mechanics. It'll also have you caring about the characters and the story line surrounding them.
FFVIII failed miserably at this, and while it may have had lots eye candy it was still a crappy RPG in my opinion.
I don't know about M2's other features, but I do not think threading was copied from M2. Threading is a common feature in many email clients. I doubt M2 did it first.
Another case of not reading the article I see...He did call Dell and it got escalated to the Manager of Customer Service who told him that he could not send the licensing agreements and told him to lie by clicking through anyway without having read the agreements. The author of the article said this was unacceptable, and the customer service manager said that the only choice left was to return the computer.
As for the Dell license being different...it probably isn't, but I think it is quite ridiculous to force users to agree to a supposedly legally binding document without being able to read the details.
Far more people die every year because of heart disease than would die as a result of a train crash...dunno about a nuclear melt down (although I think this is highly unlikely, the analog backups weren't affected...) but I don't think it would result in genocide.
Regardless the people responsible for the above systems I would say are stupid (or at least suck at what they do) because it is their jobs to make sure the computers operate correctly. It's even worse because if they fail it is possible for people to die. We're not in disagreement here.
The typical person who uses their machine for web surfing and gamming really doesn't care about this crap just as long as their computer continues to work. The repercussions aren't nearly as high either. Don't truck out extraordinary circumstances and then use them to demonstrate that people who aren't in those circumstances are equally stupid.
Are you sure Michael Dell and Bill Gates barely passed high school? Gates went to Harvard, and Michael Dell wanted to be a doctor before doing the whole computer thing. They dropped out of college yes, but I don't know about barely passing. Regardless this is irrelevant.
Do you know for sure that Gates and Dell keep their virus definitions and updates up to date or if they even have virus checkers on their machines? You just assume so because you respect them for their knowledge. If they didn't would they be stupid now?
In my opinion not having a virus checker and patches installed is low on the list of dumb things for most people particularly when matched up against other things they do or don't do that are life threatening.
It's mind blowing to me when I see people born within the last 20 years start smoking...not having a virus checker...no.
Woah there tiger...they said they didn't like the Windows interface. Nothing wrong with that. The poster said nothing about KDE, Gnome, or linux at all.
Just because the Windows GUI is a standard doesn't mean you have to like it. It also doesn't mean you disagree with developers making linux interfaces look like Windows.
They aren't improving the interface to grab more market share. They are relying on the "oooooh...shiney" factor to get people to spend money on expensive upgrades. By revamping the interface Microsoft avoids having to add any groundbreaking features in order to entice people to upgrade.
Basically, it looks different and different == new and new == better right? At least most people think so.
Slashdot Mirror
I think many people buy the boxed sets because they want to support their distro, or are in a rush (i.e. need it right now). Others do it because they don't know they can get it online, have very low bandwidth connections, or they want support. I think very few people with highspeed broadband purchase the CDs out of convenience. The fact that Red Hat is getting rid of the in store boxes should be a good indicator for how often the boxed sets are purchased. Another indicator is seeing all those out of date boxes on store shelves and in bargain bins...
The point is, is that there is some perceived value in addition to the convenience of purchasing the CDs. Even so, I'd be willing to gamble that the vast majority of installed linux distros were downloaded for free.
I'm interested to see how well the online offerings work. However, once all music is digitally distributed, the convenience factor might be greatly diminished. Unless of course they cripple the tracks in some way to prevent distribution, however I don't think that would go over so well.
This is because the quality (audio) of radio sucks, and you don't get to listen to the song you want when you want. Plus with radio the RIAA gets money for each song played.
It does not make sense to compare radio with file sharing. File sharing results in perfect copies. With file sharing none of the money goes to the RIAA companies.
I think the RIAA has much to fear from freely available perfect digital copies of content that is extremely portable, costs nothing to reproduce, and is extremely easy to reproduce. After all, why would people bother to pay for CDs if they can get the -exact- equivalent for free?
Never before in history has this been possible.
Yes, but with CDRs you wouldn't have near the amount of sharing that happens now. The RIAA knows it won't stop all sharing, but certainly you can see where making sharing more difficult would be in their best interest.
I find it quite unlikely that the RIAA is going to succeed in stopping a promising communications protocol. If a legitamit need comes along that P2P will fill, someone will jump on it. It's not like the concept is somehow going to disappear.
You cannot stop sharing because there will always be people who will want to get something for nothing. This is like saying that the only way you will stop car theft is to gain the trust of buyers so that they pay out of free will.
In addition, to quote someone else who posted on this topic, "Would you look down upon a grocer that prosecutes someone for shoplifting even if they actually buy things from time to time?" I can just see that now, "Your honor, I was just taking this food to see if I like it, this helps them because I come back later and buy more of the stuff that I liked...besides their stuff is over priced and their chain is responsible for clubbing baby seals." To the RIAA these people are not buyers, they are thieves. Just because you distrust or dislike a vendor does not justify stealing their stuff. Likewise not being able to afford the stuff is not a justification either.
You may not approve of their methods, but the RIAA has every right to attempt to prevent/stop the wholesale theft of their material. In fact, lately the RIAA has been doing the right thing, that is going after people who are sharing the material. These are people that are clearly doing the wrong thing, unlike the grey area of downloading the material (i.e. you may actually own the album).
Too bad I'm out of mod points...I'd mod this up. I think this is quite likely the case.
Yeah, our land lines don't suck.
I think a better question would be why are people switching from linux?
People don't switch to linux because they are too entrenched in their current Microsoft solution. For these people switching to linux would require redesigning a lot of their current software.
I'm more curious as to what would make someone using a linux solution to switch.
Because while you may not get spam...no one will be able to remember your email address either.
I believe "take control of Iraq's oil supply" would be the answer to step 2.
Another possibility would be, "receive kickbacks from the $150 billion+ spent on the war".
I don't see what the big deal is...you can find out where someone has been based on what they've purchased...BFD.
Granted this info is electronically available if you use a card or a check, but who didn't know that already?
He didn't even do the site very creatively...scanning in receipts and placing the location on the map isn't particularly interesting. You get receipts when you pay with cash too. Just sift through the garbage of someone who doesn't shread their receipts. Now if he'd obtained the info electronically and presented it in real time, that may be cooler and scarier.
Find a way to correlate the above info with all the images taken of you by known public cameras within the vicinity of your purchases and you may even have a 1984 experience.
RTFT
As in...read the f*cking title...
I think that most people pick option 1.
I use one of my old machines with 4 ide drives running software raid 5 under linux. Granted it won't protect against a fire or some other disaster that takes out the box, but it will protect against drive failure.
At work I encourage users to archive their own data to CD-R, however they typically only need to backup documents and what not so it only takes a fraction of a single cd. For the servers I use two rotating usb drives and rsync. This protects against hardware failure and I use two in case a hardware failure occurs right in the middle of a backup (i.e. I've still got the previous backup). The system doesn't handle archival, but that's why I encourage users to do it...our organization doesn't really have the resources to archive everyone's data anyway.
Junction wasn't so bad...it was the fact that you would draw and maybe get 2 or 3 points. If you got 100 so you only had to do it once in a while everything would've been ok, it's not like it's any harder to get 100 by 2s and 3s...just much more painful.
I've got nothing against junctioning and using magic provided you could replenish it in a reasonable manner. They could have even made exceptions for the most powerful spells like life 2 (or was it 3) and Ultima. In the special cases you should only be able to get draw points by finding draw points, thus encouraging a bit of exploration. However, it would be nice if in the special cases they implemented it more as a cap that slowly replenished itself so that you could use the spells without regretting it, but you couldn't just use them continuously. Finding draw points would increase this cap, both making your character stronger through junctioning and allowing you to cast the spell more times before having to replenish.
Ugg...I hated FFVIII. One of the things I enjoy most about RPG's is exploring the game world and finding unexpected things.
FFVIII had very few items, so it was pointless to play the card game, do any of the side quests, or explore any of the dungeons. Even after completing an important part of the story there was little that happened to increase the character's abilities.
This combined with the fact that the game was linear, basically meant that the whole purpose of the game was just to click buttons until you got a cut scene. If I wanted to simply watch cut scenes I'd rent a movie.
I might have been able to finish the game if it just had the above problems, but it gets worse. The magic system was horrible. Every battle was a draw fest and since you often got so few magic points (or whatever they call'm) with each draw you had to do it over and over and over and over, this is particularly true with some spells that could only be gained from bosses or certain monsters... This was necessary because the magic you had played a critical role in your character's abilities. While the idea was neat (i.e. get magic from monsters, increase your abilities) the implementation sucked because drawing was so painful that once I accumulated 100 of a certain spell I didn't want to cast it (hence lowering your abilities).
Another thing FFVIII did was increase the levels of the monsters as you increased in level. Thus when you went on your draw fests, often when you came back you found that the monsters you were grabbing magic to beat were much harder than before. Personally I like being able to take advantage of my character's increased abilities in the form of kicking the crap out of monsters that were once difficult. It gives one a sense of progression throughout the game...like you're accomplishing something, getting stronger, preparing for that final battle.
Finally, FFVIII's characters sucked. They were whiney and unlikeable. After the millionth cut scene of seeing Squall's complete indifference to everything I simply got tired of him and really didn't care whether he made it or not.
RPG's aren't just about completing a single objective and then moving to the next, they are supposed to immersive. A good RPG will have you going over the next hill just to see what's there, not because you know some monster that you have to kill is over there. Likewise, a good RPG will have you talking to people; hoping to get info, maybe getting a new quest...in a sense you do things you don't have to do because you enjoy the game world and its mechanics. It'll also have you caring about the characters and the story line surrounding them.
FFVIII failed miserably at this, and while it may have had lots eye candy it was still a crappy RPG in my opinion.
Try fuckthatjob.com
SUS
SMS
I don't know about M2's other features, but I do not think threading was copied from M2. Threading is a common feature in many email clients. I doubt M2 did it first.
Another case of not reading the article I see...He did call Dell and it got escalated to the Manager of Customer Service who told him that he could not send the licensing agreements and told him to lie by clicking through anyway without having read the agreements. The author of the article said this was unacceptable, and the customer service manager said that the only choice left was to return the computer.
As for the Dell license being different...it probably isn't, but I think it is quite ridiculous to force users to agree to a supposedly legally binding document without being able to read the details.
Genocide?
Far more people die every year because of heart disease than would die as a result of a train crash...dunno about a nuclear melt down (although I think this is highly unlikely, the analog backups weren't affected...) but I don't think it would result in genocide.
Regardless the people responsible for the above systems I would say are stupid (or at least suck at what they do) because it is their jobs to make sure the computers operate correctly. It's even worse because if they fail it is possible for people to die. We're not in disagreement here.
The typical person who uses their machine for web surfing and gamming really doesn't care about this crap just as long as their computer continues to work. The repercussions aren't nearly as high either. Don't truck out extraordinary circumstances and then use them to demonstrate that people who aren't in those circumstances are equally stupid.
Are you sure Michael Dell and Bill Gates barely passed high school? Gates went to Harvard, and Michael Dell wanted to be a doctor before doing the whole computer thing. They dropped out of college yes, but I don't know about barely passing. Regardless this is irrelevant.
Do you know for sure that Gates and Dell keep their virus definitions and updates up to date or if they even have virus checkers on their machines? You just assume so because you respect them for their knowledge. If they didn't would they be stupid now?
In my opinion not having a virus checker and patches installed is low on the list of dumb things for most people particularly when matched up against other things they do or don't do that are life threatening.
It's mind blowing to me when I see people born within the last 20 years start smoking...not having a virus checker...no.
no...you're an 31337 h4x0r...
Right...
People don't smoke, eat too much, do drugs, and not wear helmets or seatbelts either.
Compared to the above things, which are proven to be life threatening, anti-virus software is pretty low on the list.
People, even educated ones, do bad stuff all the time even though they are constantly being told about the dangers of doing them.
So why not just backup her profile for her and restore on the new machine?
Keep the old machine around for a day or two and make sure the receptionist can do all her tasks...then format.
Sounds like bad user management to me.
I think the big roblem Apple had was backwards compatability. Buy a new Mac and you found that all your old software didn't work anymore.
I can see where that would kill the Mac in a business environment.
Woah there tiger...they said they didn't like the Windows interface. Nothing wrong with that. The poster said nothing about KDE, Gnome, or linux at all.
Just because the Windows GUI is a standard doesn't mean you have to like it. It also doesn't mean you disagree with developers making linux interfaces look like Windows.
So why would she buy a powerbook if she hates the OS and embedded mouse?
Just buy a pc laptop for less with the features you want and install linux.
They aren't improving the interface to grab more market share. They are relying on the "oooooh...shiney" factor to get people to spend money on expensive upgrades. By revamping the interface Microsoft avoids having to add any groundbreaking features in order to entice people to upgrade.
Basically, it looks different and different == new and new == better right? At least most people think so.