I agree, but dont put the cart before the horse. I'm not entirely sure it's like that because 'its the government', or because we're still not done buying more and more into this opinion, and thus more and more of the dead wood is left while those with higher levels of aptitude continue to equate salary with happiness (a value system that tends to eventually reach an apex in most cultures and societies).
But obviously, point taken. Just keep the pendulum of public opinion and value systems in mind, and dont judge against values you perceive to be 'absolute'.
> Read something else and don't waste his time with a lame reply.
Uh, Mr. AC, obviously I/wanted/ to give a lame reply. Things only seem to happen when you complain about them enough (look at Bush's attitude towards taxes, which makes absolutely no sense). I suppose you didn't want to give a lame reply (offtopic to boost!), or am I confusing your reply with a useful one?
Well, it's a start, but as soon as governments can proove that they can hire and keep qualified, intelligent and committed people, they could do something like this even cheaper, considering that they wouldn't have to worry about making a profit. Companies do a shoddy job anyways; anyone who owns a broadband connection from a private firm knows that the whole 'the private sector has to garauntee higher services levels' argument is bullshit. Cap this with the fact that they wouldn't have to turn a profit if they built and managed most of it themselves (just the pipes mind you.. there are tons of companies that could provide the email and webspace and all that extra crap lots of people won't even use thanks to hotmail etc), and I think you'd end up with a dynamite broadband infrastructure.
It's a shame no one likes the taxes and governments anymore tho, as I realize that it'll be a cold day in the next ice age before the pendulum starts swinging back to this mentality.
Someone who composes songs on the piano or keyboard: pianist.
Someone who composes songs on the sax: saxophonist.
Someone who composes songs using a computer and software synthesizers and trackers and sequencers and loop based software: PC-BASED MUSICIAN.
I couldn't tell if you were being glib or serious, but a PC-based musician is someone who uses the PC to actually/generate/ and/sequence/ music with respect to mixing down songs to media, or performing in a live venue.
Amen. So many of these slashdot questions (and I'm not usually so critical of them) are in the form of:
The rest of the world seems to have to do/pay X to make Y. I don't have X. How do I make Y?
Computer based musicians should know that it's a terribly expensive hobby. I say hobby, because, he's obviously not makin too much money off of it. What would he do if he actually had to pay for his software too (as the software will usually run you up into the 1000$'s once you have all the neccessary effect and software synth packages most comp based musicians need)? Oh wait, I guess he'd just ask where he could pick up Emagic Logic Audio on the cheap too;)
As for the original question, going the lunch box route would be lunacy. They were not built for mobile musicians, so why not realize that the best route would be to figure out what other musicians of his industry demographic are doing? His underlying question would be far more appropriate on a comp-musician's website like Sonic State or Harmony Central... you know you're on the right path when you're dealing with cheap enough gear thats not quite good enough, not when you're looking at aquiring super expensive gear thats likely overkill for your desired application and use on the cheap.
Like, say, Ferrarris share of the car market? Where people get the idea that one OS cures all that ails you is beyond me. I wouldn't buy a subcompact to win Le Mans, and I wouldn't buy a Ferrarri to make the trip to the corner store. Sheesh.
Just to bring that into perspective:
- Windows is nice for browsing the net, cause, well, duh, every website author thinks you're using Windows.
- Mac is nice to do serious (ie, industry level) graphics and audio. I'll tell you right now that the more services they keep adding to the back of Windows, with each new version, the more frusterating it is to tune it towards pure 'single task' applications.
Anyways, as for the 'use it' comment, people are always more comfortable using the interface style that has dominated the market. Seeing that windows is a laymans OS, and Mac is for people who'd rather spend money on their computer than time fixing/tuning it, it shouldn't be surprising that most people 'cant use it'.
I appreciate this was Barry's comment, but it irks me when people confuse ease of use with the most widely adopted interface. Many people couldn't drive an F1 car without training; does this make them bad cars? Of course not.. they are built for a specific purpose, and it's only natural that their interface will be different from that of the most widely adopted sibling in it's market. Heck, even Apple only makes half hearted attempts (a la 'just remember we're still here') at competing directly in the home/office OS market. As long as there are media industries, and associated trade papers and mags, Apple will continue to make sense for a significant amount of users out there who require an OS to get the job done.
Anyways, dunno if you're agreeing with Barry there, but I just had to vent in a controlled fasion there.;)
> is the study showing that frequent napster users bought many times more CDs than non napster users
Just to play devils advocate (cause I'm certainly on your side, see post below on this thread), keep in mind that its not surprising that napster users bought more CDs... it is natural that the types of consumers who used napster were simply more into music (placed more value into it) than those who didn't. In other words, to turn it around, you could say that in a survey of music listeners, those who listened to alot of music (and consequently bought more music) were more likely to download and install napster than their counterparts.
Well, you're right on the money. Lets not forget that it was the Disneys of the world that kept lobbying for greater and greater protection of IP and copyrights. Now they are finding out that law doth not a society-nor-its-values make; and that people, by in large, do not believe that the creation of one device, one invention, one album, one movie, should provide a right to decades of revenues by a corperate entity.
Copyright and patents were there in order to protect the inventor from having his idea usurped before the rest of the world knew who to credit, and to provide a few years of royalties to fund their next innovation. Now, we are seeing companies that believe that once you've secured the rights to a piece of IP, that no one else should EVER be able to touch/use it without paying that company.
It's a silly image, but according to the way I believe (and increasing numbers of others) IP should work, anyone with a sewing kit should be able to sell adorable Mikey Mouse tablecloths by now.
Imagine the IP laws of today had they been in place centuries ago. Much of the lore, fables, we recount to our kids would not exist today, as it would still cost money to propogate them. In my mind, that's a frightening image. Intellectual property protection is NOT a right; there should no doubt be some protection for the original inventor to ensure that they are properly compesated, and can continue to facilitate an envrionment in which they made the original discovery/invention/work, but I'm very much against the copyright-ad-infinitum that corperations seem to be pushing as 'the natural order of capitalism'.
Well, everyone else has illustrated to you why pirating is not stealing, so I won't touch on that all too obvious clarification.
But call it stealing, and you're still stuck with the Hilfingers of the world, who've actually admitted to telling department stores not to crack down on shoplifting of their products.
Why would they do that? Hillfinger astutely recognized that the demographics who steal clothes are the ones who set the trends for the suburban crowd thats all too happy to fork over the cash. They do NOT count every 'steal' of their products as a loss of sale, and neither should anywhere else. As usual, the truth is a nice big grey area. Unfortunately, computers only work in 1/0s, and thus the business types in the industry seem to believe that EVERYTHING should work (or can be explained in) such a way.
To call a pirated piece of software a loss of sale demonstrates a complete lack of desire to understand the true ups and downs of software pirating. If Windows XP cost 7000$, would you still be calling every illegal install of XP a loss of sale? Of course not; you'd recognize that people place a value on a product, and then decide whether or not to purchase it.
Anyhow, valid reasons why people feel its okay to copy software:
- don't use all the features of said software
::: Part of the purchase price is spent on developing Wizards, add-on software, supurfluous functionality, etc. People don't expect to have to pay for driving lessons when they buy a car, or advanced features like in-car GPS if they won't use it. Why should software be any different?
- lock-in
::: My personal bet on the most common reason, when it comes to MS software. I'm forced to use windows, because MS has engineered a monopoly on OS's and x86 hardware. I'm forced to use Word. And don't tell me that I could use other products, because the loss in doing so is not in less functionality, but in attempting to collaborate with other people who don't know how to share/work/collaberate nicely with users of other software due to MS's totalitarian attitude towards the marketplace, and in particular, the passive consumer. Any avid PC gamer MUST buy Windows to play the vast majority of PC games; this is MS's own damn fault that they were not interested in working nicely with other OS makers to develop common gaming or multimedia platforms (a la Open GL). If I'm a gamer, and I want to play the games, I see NO reason to pay MS for successfully driving the entire market onto their platform. This is called Just Deserts.
- students, 'trial' pirating
::: Students can NOT afford to spend 1000$ on Photoshop or Emagic Logic Audio in order to determine, after a fair usage trial of a few months, if they want to pursue a career in design, or music, or what-have you. Entry level software does NOT provide a means of a student making said decision, as that student will be working on Photoshop or Logic later in their career. A jr race car driver can go from go-karts to F1 cars, because there are a variety of car types; thus, racers must know 'generically' how to drive. Industry professionals who rely on software do not become experts in 'all design software' or 'all multimedia software'. In fact, professionals themselves often have to fork over much money in learning and training costs in order to learn just ONE professional level piece of software. If we saw a more collaberative and co-operative effort on the part of software makers to define conventions and standard subsystem platforms for software, we might see the professional learn what's inside those 1000$ black boxes, but right now, no such luxery exists. Thus, students feel justified in pirating these types of packages. The mission statements of pirate groups that specialize in these types of software have mission statements exactly to that effect. On the other side of the coin, I don't know a single professional artist or musician who hasn't paid and registered for the product once they've entered their career of choice. Considering that support and upgrades are factored into the cost of products, and that pirate users (usually) cannot use such services, even a pirated copy of Emagic logic being used in a professional commercial environment does not constitute a loss of the full cost of the product. (BTW, it would be interesting to figure out, given the legit:illegal ratio of installed copies of product X, just how much of a price chop could be done if people percieved that the software was worth the cost. Imagine Photoshop cost 100$.. I'd have bought it years ago, and I'm sure many other casual web page authors, designers, etc could justify that price. Adobe may price it there because of the piracy, but who's to say that Adobe isn't getting it backwards; ie, that the piracy is there because of the price?)
I'm not advocating piracy wholesale. I'm saying that there are legitimate reasons why it's not exactly stealing, even besides the obvious copy/steal argument.
And finally... is MS software the most commonly pirated software in the world? I'd put money on that, and if it's true, it says alot about the 'destructive' nature of casual piracy, given that MS went 10 years without even so much as a profit warning, even despite the rampant pirating of their products. I guess MS's argument is that they should be X times richer and more powerful than they already are, a mental image that should send even the most rabit capitalist quivering in his/her boots.
> Violent public crime would become obsolete, and violent criminals would find it hard to remain free.
Here's the thing people forget. Criminals are criminals for a reason. They do things because they don't think of the consequences. They don't know the difference between right and wrong. Their right is your wrong. You think all 'public violence' is committed these days because criminals calculate their probability in getting away with it?
Technical solutions to social problems don't really work, as much as we like to think they do. You might shuffle the numbers around, but you cant wipe out behaviour thats entrenched in a species for thousands of years with a new gadget.
> Is this a UK thing? Why would you not choose the most efficient way of doing something?
I think so. I think North American culture is still totally engrossed in the instant gratification of things. I have friends who've dropped 2 thousand dollars on computers for things like video production or music production, and have no clue how to use them. We are sold the image that computers need be no more complex than your microwave, but this is obviously not the case; not even in the wizard-laden windows world.
Everything seems to sell on the basis of accessibility here. I also believe that much of it is connected to where people see their means of livelihood coming from. I believe that NA are far more prone to beliving information if it comes from a wealthy organization as opposed to a poor one. We tend to equate previous success with smarts, for some silly reason.
Based on my knowledge of the history of music over the past 30 years, the UK consistantly turns out what becomes the 'next big thing' in the US (electronica, trip hop, even back to the pop in the 80s as pioneered by bands like Squeeze, Joe Jackson.. ), and thats my best bit of evidence to contend that UK-ers are generally more open to forgoing immediate accessibility in lieu of a payoff at a later date.
Those are all SWEEPING generalizations, but I feel comfortable saying that North Americans (disclosure: I'm in NA) generally place ALOT of weight on how 'transparent' a technology is; which isn't really a surprise, as our work hours are among the longest in the world, and we are being pressed to find more time for things like family, managing our mutual funds, and, of course, the commercial-friendly activies that represent attaining your goals, like sky diving or kick boxing.
Maybe it wasn't the best example, but North American history is indeed rife with adoption winners that are not technically the best-of-breed, but rather the most accessible. I don't think its a very refutable point, but I'm willing to entertain rebukes.
What's with the Mods? Windows HAS an OS, but it packaged with a window manager, a browser, and about a million other software tools that other people/could/ be writing better versions of for a living. So I don't think it's quite trollish (although off-topic, I'll admit;) to suggest that Windows isn't really an OS, if the authors of the article are so keen on suggesting (somewhat ironically) that Linux shouldn't be considered an OS.
Exactly. Witness the popularity of automatic over manual with respect to driving, and it's hard to deny that people will very rarely pick the option that requires more learning, even if it does pay off in effenciency, self sufficiency, and performance in the end.
Well, count me in. We run a website that compiles slang terms (again, no link, we get enough traffic as it is).. one day, we were linekd by memepool.com, and basically incurred 140$ extra dollars on a 30$ hosting plan.
We had to move hosts, but I dare say that we could outgrow the new one in a month or two if we made a concerned effort to bring in more traffic than we can handle.
One last point: the online advertising industry is still in the shitter, but it won't always be this way. Remember when the media placements (ie, sites) had all the leverage in negotiating inventory buys by the ad networks? Well, it won't be like that again, but the websites won't remain the advertisers' whipping boys for too much longer either. It should even out over time, and offset some of the charges incurred by bandwidth usage.
There is no common integrated development environment (IDE) for Linux. OS development is command-line driven and applications development requires a new set of tools for each device. Developers must either build their own tool-chain from piecing together Open Source tools or opt for a specific vendor's costly toolset.
Uh? Kdevelop? Code Crusader? Squid? And there are like, 4 or 5 others. Rediculous.
Slashdot Mirror
I know he's a troll. I can tell, cause he certainly ain't in the OS market .... ;)
I agree, but dont put the cart before the horse. I'm not entirely sure it's like that because 'its the government', or because we're still not done buying more and more into this opinion, and thus more and more of the dead wood is left while those with higher levels of aptitude continue to equate salary with happiness (a value system that tends to eventually reach an apex in most cultures and societies).
But obviously, point taken. Just keep the pendulum of public opinion and value systems in mind, and dont judge against values you perceive to be 'absolute'.
Laid? What's that, one of the moderating point types?
> Read something else and don't waste his time with a lame reply.
/wanted/ to give a lame reply. Things only seem to happen when you complain about them enough (look at Bush's attitude towards taxes, which makes absolutely no sense). I suppose you didn't want to give a lame reply (offtopic to boost!), or am I confusing your reply with a useful one?
Uh, Mr. AC, obviously I
Well, it's a start, but as soon as governments can proove that they can hire and keep qualified, intelligent and committed people, they could do something like this even cheaper, considering that they wouldn't have to worry about making a profit. Companies do a shoddy job anyways; anyone who owns a broadband connection from a private firm knows that the whole 'the private sector has to garauntee higher services levels' argument is bullshit. Cap this with the fact that they wouldn't have to turn a profit if they built and managed most of it themselves (just the pipes mind you .. there are tons of companies that could provide the email and webspace and all that extra crap lots of people won't even use thanks to hotmail etc), and I think you'd end up with a dynamite broadband infrastructure.
It's a shame no one likes the taxes and governments anymore tho, as I realize that it'll be a cold day in the next ice age before the pendulum starts swinging back to this mentality.
You have to ask?
/generate/ and /sequence/ music with respect to mixing down songs to media, or performing in a live venue.
Someone who composes songs on the piano or keyboard: pianist.
Someone who composes songs on the sax: saxophonist.
Someone who composes songs using a computer and software synthesizers and trackers and sequencers and loop based software: PC-BASED MUSICIAN.
I couldn't tell if you were being glib or serious, but a PC-based musician is someone who uses the PC to actually
Amen. So many of these slashdot questions (and I'm not usually so critical of them) are in the form of:
;)
... you know you're on the right path when you're dealing with cheap enough gear thats not quite good enough, not when you're looking at aquiring super expensive gear thats likely overkill for your desired application and use on the cheap.
The rest of the world seems to have to do/pay X to make Y. I don't have X. How do I make Y?
Computer based musicians should know that it's a terribly expensive hobby. I say hobby, because, he's obviously not makin too much money off of it. What would he do if he actually had to pay for his software too (as the software will usually run you up into the 1000$'s once you have all the neccessary effect and software synth packages most comp based musicians need)? Oh wait, I guess he'd just ask where he could pick up Emagic Logic Audio on the cheap too
As for the original question, going the lunch box route would be lunacy. They were not built for mobile musicians, so why not realize that the best route would be to figure out what other musicians of his industry demographic are doing? His underlying question would be far more appropriate on a comp-musician's website like Sonic State or Harmony Central
> has a pitiful market share, even to this day
.. they are built for a specific purpose, and it's only natural that their interface will be different from that of the most widely adopted sibling in it's market. Heck, even Apple only makes half hearted attempts (a la 'just remember we're still here') at competing directly in the home/office OS market. As long as there are media industries, and associated trade papers and mags, Apple will continue to make sense for a significant amount of users out there who require an OS to get the job done.
;)
Like, say, Ferrarris share of the car market? Where people get the idea that one OS cures all that ails you is beyond me. I wouldn't buy a subcompact to win Le Mans, and I wouldn't buy a Ferrarri to make the trip to the corner store. Sheesh.
Just to bring that into perspective:
- Windows is nice for browsing the net, cause, well, duh, every website author thinks you're using Windows.
- Mac is nice to do serious (ie, industry level) graphics and audio. I'll tell you right now that the more services they keep adding to the back of Windows, with each new version, the more frusterating it is to tune it towards pure 'single task' applications.
Anyways, as for the 'use it' comment, people are always more comfortable using the interface style that has dominated the market. Seeing that windows is a laymans OS, and Mac is for people who'd rather spend money on their computer than time fixing/tuning it, it shouldn't be surprising that most people 'cant use it'.
I appreciate this was Barry's comment, but it irks me when people confuse ease of use with the most widely adopted interface. Many people couldn't drive an F1 car without training; does this make them bad cars? Of course not
Anyways, dunno if you're agreeing with Barry there, but I just had to vent in a controlled fasion there.
> is the study showing that frequent napster users bought many times more CDs than non napster users
... it is natural that the types of consumers who used napster were simply more into music (placed more value into it) than those who didn't. In other words, to turn it around, you could say that in a survey of music listeners, those who listened to alot of music (and consequently bought more music) were more likely to download and install napster than their counterparts.
Just to play devils advocate (cause I'm certainly on your side, see post below on this thread), keep in mind that its not surprising that napster users bought more CDs
Well, you're right on the money. Lets not forget that it was the Disneys of the world that kept lobbying for greater and greater protection of IP and copyrights. Now they are finding out that law doth not a society-nor-its-values make; and that people, by in large, do not believe that the creation of one device, one invention, one album, one movie, should provide a right to decades of revenues by a corperate entity.
Copyright and patents were there in order to protect the inventor from having his idea usurped before the rest of the world knew who to credit, and to provide a few years of royalties to fund their next innovation. Now, we are seeing companies that believe that once you've secured the rights to a piece of IP, that no one else should EVER be able to touch/use it without paying that company.
It's a silly image, but according to the way I believe (and increasing numbers of others) IP should work, anyone with a sewing kit should be able to sell adorable Mikey Mouse tablecloths by now.
Imagine the IP laws of today had they been in place centuries ago. Much of the lore, fables, we recount to our kids would not exist today, as it would still cost money to propogate them. In my mind, that's a frightening image. Intellectual property protection is NOT a right; there should no doubt be some protection for the original inventor to ensure that they are properly compesated, and can continue to facilitate an envrionment in which they made the original discovery/invention/work, but I'm very much against the copyright-ad-infinitum that corperations seem to be pushing as 'the natural order of capitalism'.
Well, everyone else has illustrated to you why pirating is not stealing, so I won't touch on that all too obvious clarification.
.. I'd have bought it years ago, and I'm sure many other casual web page authors, designers, etc could justify that price. Adobe may price it there because of the piracy, but who's to say that Adobe isn't getting it backwards; ie, that the piracy is there because of the price?)
... is MS software the most commonly pirated software in the world? I'd put money on that, and if it's true, it says alot about the 'destructive' nature of casual piracy, given that MS went 10 years without even so much as a profit warning, even despite the rampant pirating of their products. I guess MS's argument is that they should be X times richer and more powerful than they already are, a mental image that should send even the most rabit capitalist quivering in his/her boots.
But call it stealing, and you're still stuck with the Hilfingers of the world, who've actually admitted to telling department stores not to crack down on shoplifting of their products.
Why would they do that? Hillfinger astutely recognized that the demographics who steal clothes are the ones who set the trends for the suburban crowd thats all too happy to fork over the cash. They do NOT count every 'steal' of their products as a loss of sale, and neither should anywhere else. As usual, the truth is a nice big grey area. Unfortunately, computers only work in 1/0s, and thus the business types in the industry seem to believe that EVERYTHING should work (or can be explained in) such a way.
To call a pirated piece of software a loss of sale demonstrates a complete lack of desire to understand the true ups and downs of software pirating. If Windows XP cost 7000$, would you still be calling every illegal install of XP a loss of sale? Of course not; you'd recognize that people place a value on a product, and then decide whether or not to purchase it.
Anyhow, valid reasons why people feel its okay to copy software:
- don't use all the features of said software
::: Part of the purchase price is spent on developing Wizards, add-on software, supurfluous functionality, etc. People don't expect to have to pay for driving lessons when they buy a car, or advanced features like in-car GPS if they won't use it. Why should software be any different?
- lock-in
::: My personal bet on the most common reason, when it comes to MS software. I'm forced to use windows, because MS has engineered a monopoly on OS's and x86 hardware. I'm forced to use Word. And don't tell me that I could use other products, because the loss in doing so is not in less functionality, but in attempting to collaborate with other people who don't know how to share/work/collaberate nicely with users of other software due to MS's totalitarian attitude towards the marketplace, and in particular, the passive consumer. Any avid PC gamer MUST buy Windows to play the vast majority of PC games; this is MS's own damn fault that they were not interested in working nicely with other OS makers to develop common gaming or multimedia platforms (a la Open GL). If I'm a gamer, and I want to play the games, I see NO reason to pay MS for successfully driving the entire market onto their platform. This is called Just Deserts.
- students, 'trial' pirating
::: Students can NOT afford to spend 1000$ on Photoshop or Emagic Logic Audio in order to determine, after a fair usage trial of a few months, if they want to pursue a career in design, or music, or what-have you. Entry level software does NOT provide a means of a student making said decision, as that student will be working on Photoshop or Logic later in their career. A jr race car driver can go from go-karts to F1 cars, because there are a variety of car types; thus, racers must know 'generically' how to drive. Industry professionals who rely on software do not become experts in 'all design software' or 'all multimedia software'. In fact, professionals themselves often have to fork over much money in learning and training costs in order to learn just ONE professional level piece of software. If we saw a more collaberative and co-operative effort on the part of software makers to define conventions and standard subsystem platforms for software, we might see the professional learn what's inside those 1000$ black boxes, but right now, no such luxery exists. Thus, students feel justified in pirating these types of packages. The mission statements of pirate groups that specialize in these types of software have mission statements exactly to that effect. On the other side of the coin, I don't know a single professional artist or musician who hasn't paid and registered for the product once they've entered their career of choice. Considering that support and upgrades are factored into the cost of products, and that pirate users (usually) cannot use such services, even a pirated copy of Emagic logic being used in a professional commercial environment does not constitute a loss of the full cost of the product. (BTW, it would be interesting to figure out, given the legit:illegal ratio of installed copies of product X, just how much of a price chop could be done if people percieved that the software was worth the cost. Imagine Photoshop cost 100$
I'm not advocating piracy wholesale. I'm saying that there are legitimate reasons why it's not exactly stealing, even besides the obvious copy/steal argument.
And finally
> Violent public crime would become obsolete, and violent criminals would find it hard to remain free.
Here's the thing people forget. Criminals are criminals for a reason. They do things because they don't think of the consequences. They don't know the difference between right and wrong. Their right is your wrong. You think all 'public violence' is committed these days because criminals calculate their probability in getting away with it?
Technical solutions to social problems don't really work, as much as we like to think they do. You might shuffle the numbers around, but you cant wipe out behaviour thats entrenched in a species for thousands of years with a new gadget.
Win 98 80178 (45%)
Win 2000 33183 (18%)
Unknown 17948 (10%)
Win NT 15051 (8%)
Mac 13085 (7%)
Win 95 11717 (6%)
Linux 2459 (1%)
Win 3.x 1055 (0%)
Unix 761 (0%)
WebTV 226 (0%)
OS/2 24 (0%)
Amiga 4 (0%)
The scariest thing is that win98 is still 45%. If not being part of that 45% is wrong, I don't wanna be right, baby!
> Can you tell I'm from the microkernel camp? :)
:)
Hehe
But yeah, I hear you, man.
> Is this a UK thing? Why would you not choose the most efficient way of doing something?
.. ), and thats my best bit of evidence to contend that UK-ers are generally more open to forgoing immediate accessibility in lieu of a payoff at a later date.
I think so. I think North American culture is still totally engrossed in the instant gratification of things. I have friends who've dropped 2 thousand dollars on computers for things like video production or music production, and have no clue how to use them. We are sold the image that computers need be no more complex than your microwave, but this is obviously not the case; not even in the wizard-laden windows world.
Everything seems to sell on the basis of accessibility here. I also believe that much of it is connected to where people see their means of livelihood coming from. I believe that NA are far more prone to beliving information if it comes from a wealthy organization as opposed to a poor one. We tend to equate previous success with smarts, for some silly reason.
Based on my knowledge of the history of music over the past 30 years, the UK consistantly turns out what becomes the 'next big thing' in the US (electronica, trip hop, even back to the pop in the 80s as pioneered by bands like Squeeze, Joe Jackson
Those are all SWEEPING generalizations, but I feel comfortable saying that North Americans (disclosure: I'm in NA) generally place ALOT of weight on how 'transparent' a technology is; which isn't really a surprise, as our work hours are among the longest in the world, and we are being pressed to find more time for things like family, managing our mutual funds, and, of course, the commercial-friendly activies that represent attaining your goals, like sky diving or kick boxing.
Point taken.
Maybe it wasn't the best example, but North American history is indeed rife with adoption winners that are not technically the best-of-breed, but rather the most accessible. I don't think its a very refutable point, but I'm willing to entertain rebukes.
What's with the Mods? Windows HAS an OS, but it packaged with a window manager, a browser, and about a million other software tools that other people /could/ be writing better versions of for a living. So I don't think it's quite trollish (although off-topic, I'll admit ;) to suggest that Windows isn't really an OS, if the authors of the article are so keen on suggesting (somewhat ironically) that Linux shouldn't be considered an OS.
Exactly. Witness the popularity of automatic over manual with respect to driving, and it's hard to deny that people will very rarely pick the option that requires more learning, even if it does pay off in effenciency, self sufficiency, and performance in the end.
> Perhaps Linux shouldn't be regarded as an operating system at all
.. well, that certainly puts it on equal terms with Windows.
.. what about the classic water to wine? I'd be far more interested in that - good thing I've got a vote in this country!
Now now. You are getting a little too exscited. (I suppose this could constitute troalling, but what the hell; you called me a Karma monkey!)
Well, count me in. We run a website that compiles slang terms (again, no link, we get enough traffic as it is) .. one day, we were linekd by memepool.com, and basically incurred 140$ extra dollars on a 30$ hosting plan.
We had to move hosts, but I dare say that we could outgrow the new one in a month or two if we made a concerned effort to bring in more traffic than we can handle.
One last point: the online advertising industry is still in the shitter, but it won't always be this way. Remember when the media placements (ie, sites) had all the leverage in negotiating inventory buys by the ad networks? Well, it won't be like that again, but the websites won't remain the advertisers' whipping boys for too much longer either. It should even out over time, and offset some of the charges incurred by bandwidth usage.
There is no common integrated development environment (IDE) for Linux. OS development is command-line driven and applications development requires a new set of tools for each device. Developers must either build their own tool-chain from piecing together Open Source tools or opt for a specific vendor's costly toolset.
Uh? Kdevelop? Code Crusader? Squid? And there are like, 4 or 5 others. Rediculous.
Indeed it is.
;)
But you must understand that at this point, the mere fact that you are aware of Nova Scotia's existance is enough to impresses a Canadian.
Puuuhlease, I'm Canadian. I could care less that I cannot spell some states' names properly. I've got more important beer to drink ...