I think you misread my post, I wanted to say that freedom is something (even in software) that you need to search for the practical issues that freedom brings (not the ideology). For example to understand this idea: I don't like to have my hands tied, I want to be free but that's not an ideological point, it's a practical one. Same with software, I want to have freedom for many point of view: less pricy software, more customization, lack of being tied in with one company and depend on the company for patches and support and upgrades and many more reasons -- so it's not ideology -- it's practical reasons.
I'm a big fan of Linux (not Red Hat necessarily) and I consider that's nothing wrong with the Linux user interfaces, Gnome is OK (but I personally don't like it too much) KDE offers all that I need.
It's a wrong assumption that people don't use Linux because KDE or Gnome is not good enough for that, reason are many but interface is not among the firsts (pain of installing other OS, hardware incompatibility, programs that don't work, lack of support in some cases, etc -- not "KDE is too bad GUI for me".
People that would use this laptop are just as unfamiliar with Mac OS as with KDE so that's not an issue.
"I guess this might appeal to PDA people, but don't they have everything that this offers for less, in a smaller package with the same or better battery life?"
Have you tried to browse the Internet on a PDA for three hours?
"I disagree. Principles is one thing, succeeding is another."
I disagree. Running a free OS is not (only) about principles it's about being practical. Actually as I said some other time being free is not just some "ideology" is about having more choices. "free" is not something about priciples that some loony people promote it's something that affects you imediately you directly.
Have you ever heard of assumptions? AAC being a open format can be implemented by other music players very easily, I'm not that passioned by the subject so I don't know for sure if there are or not music players that play AAC. HOWEVER the problem is clear when you talk about songs that you bought (and that's why my assumption) -- in which case Apple AAC is not better than WMA.
So, I guess the issue is not if you can play AAC on other players -- you can, I'm sure there are other players beside the one that I've found in 10 seconds, the issue is clearly about playing non-free AAC formats. I clearly don't support the idea that free AAC is just like WMA, what I'm saying is that AAC songs bought from iTunes are just as useless as WMA songs -- even worse actually since you can play WMA on more players than bought AAC which play only on iPod (and prepare to be surprised: there are people that don't like iPods or there are people that want something cheaper or different, or people that listen to radio and so on).
I don't argue with you, but if you read my comment in the context of what the parent said you'll see that AAC is just as bad as WMA for the songs that you buy. The songs that you rip you are free to use whatever standards you want anyway.
In my understanding AAC is an open format, but there's Apple adds a DRM wrapper that's not open format.
So, if you buy a song you'll get it in a so called AAC or MP4 format, but you can't do anything with it if you don't have an iPod or iTunes on your machine.
There's no difference between AAC with DRM and WMA from the point of view of open standards (actually as a side remark WMA is licensed to more players).
That's indeed a insightful comment and it shows what closed formats do.
Closed formats are more dangerous than closed source. If people care about freedom (yeah, I know it's a term that was abused by many people) you should insist on having open formats then you can use whatever programs and hardware you want.
Besides, it's usually easier (and more entitled) to ask for open formats or open standards than to ask somebody to reveal their code.
"And the fact that the police aren't up to the job and can't do whatever they need in a timely manner can't possibly be a reason to lock people up without trial for 3 months! WITHOUT TRIAL!"
US is holding people at Guantanamo for much longer, it's enough to claim (they don't have to prove that) that you are a terrorist that you cease to have any rights as a human.
"Nobody is ever going to argue Franklin's statement, the real debate is about what's "essential", what's "little" and what's "temporary". This observation has nothing to do with the keylogger thing you're commenting on, it's an unrelated thought."
Safety is always temporary and liberty is always essential (at least that's my opinion)
>> So I doubt any company is trying to "curb your freedom".
How do you doubt that? If they restrict the number of songs to 100 even though you can add more memory? Of course we could debate endless if that was my freedom or not but the fact remains: after I buy the device it's mine, I want to add more memory and more songs -- I can't.
I own a 512MB device but that's because it has radio, I was looking more for a portable radio than for a mp3 player those 512MB were kind of bonus... but I would be definitely pissed if they would impose me to use only 128MB out of 512MB or if they would limit my radio capabilities to only 5 radio station for example.
Yes it is, who likes this kind of limitations? This is not a technology limitation it's a business decission to curb your freedom. I would never purchase this kind of device.
"The 100 song limit is not a huge deal"
That's not the point, even if I listen to 10 songs I don't like my freedom to be limited by silly business considerations. And, BTW it is a big deal, that's why people buy devices that hold more than 100 songs, otherwise they would use only low end MP3 players (remember that a simple CD can hold around 100 MP3 songs).
"It's only a big issue if you don't believe in listening to any song longer than 30 seconds or something."
Well, I'm happy you don't work for Apple. Again you are missing the point, the point is that people like to have choices, they like to have if possible all their music collection and then play whatever they want, or they like diversity and if they use shuffle option they don't like to listen to the same songs during a day, they like simplicity, they don't want to load and unload the device every day with songs and to choose at that time what kind of songs will like to hear 5 hours latter.
Or maybe next time a patient from Kansas needs his appendectomy the doctor would explain very calm that the patient doesn't need one because we were all designed inteligently.
"But there is a problem, to quote Asimov, with saying that "Dragons must be pushing the moons."
Where is the problem, I heard lately that gravity doesn't explain thing perfectly -- and what it is gravity after all: force, field, particles?
Since we don't know we can assume that dragons are pushing the moons and you have no way to prove that's not right -- very hard to prove that something doesn't exist.
"A 150 decibel noise seems like a pretty minor convenience compared to blowing yourself up."
Blowing yourself up is something that doesn't take much time, while a 150 decibel noise can go on and on. The difference it between death and torture, some people prefer to die than to be tortured.
"So before you Mac-hating Linux kids start flaming another Apple article, most of us just want less Windows domination."
Nonsense, we enjoy watching Apple fanboys in action. Actually a market without being dominated by any company plays very well for Linux, if you have Apple with 30% market share it means (increses the chance) that we will also have open standards and if we have open standards we can use whatever software we want without problems -- and I prefer Linux because I am a cheap bastard (actually description would probably fit better BSD users;-) ).
I agree with you to some point -- but remember that in US many people believe that animals and people were made by God as they are now, I don't remember the percent but I think it was somewhere around 33% (if not more).
I'm too lazy to look for that statistic piece but if it's true it's a really large number of people, science is not a democratic process, if people would vote for different theories we'd not get very far.
Mr. Science: "I was testing to see if you knew how the wings of this bird evolved. The Theory Of Our Own Ignorance predicted that you would not know, and since you did not, this validates our theory - that we do not know how this bird developed wings!"
Actually this should be: "this validates our theory - that the wings were designed by somebody (we don't say who;-) ) and birds could not have evolved wings.
"Although the basic GNU/Linux system is free software, most of the GNU/Linux versions now available include a small amount of non-free software--just enough to spoil them as a way to attain freedom. But Linspire is in a class by itself; large and important parts of this system are non-free. No other GNU/Linux distribution has backslided so far away from freedom. Switching from MS Windows to Linspire does not bring you to freedom, it just gets you a different master."
-- Richard Stallman
"Wrong. IANAL, but many OSS projects use the "version 2 or greater" clause when making there projects GPL. This could *force* upgrades and use of the GPL to version 3.0, by simply releasing it... After all, people already agreed."
You can't agree to something that you don't know. Nobody can enforce such thing. (of course IANAL)
7)Does Linux have Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, and equivalent MS Office Replacements? "Until then I'll have to go with OS X since the only other choice I have is Windows."
It's nice that you speak in your name, not all the people use Quark. As for MS Office Replacements there are plenty and even better than MS Office in some respects for example: for example EIOffice (it's true that's not free, but you have free equivalents too, not to mention that you can run MS Office under Wine, it works just as well as in Windows at least in my tests). I do prefer free products and OO.o is pretty good and getting better, Abiword is another alternative for word processing, Gnumeric it's a really good Excell replacemen, KOffice is getting really nice -- all of those exceed _my_ needs of course they might not be enough for you, I'm sorry that you'll have to pay Apple or MS tax, I'm curious though if _most_ of the people needs are like yours or mine.... future will tell.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you misread my post, I wanted to say that freedom is something (even in software) that you need to search for the practical issues that freedom brings (not the ideology). For example to understand this idea: I don't like to have my hands tied, I want to be free but that's not an ideological point, it's a practical one. Same with software, I want to have freedom for many point of view: less pricy software, more customization, lack of being tied in with one company and depend on the company for patches and support and upgrades and many more reasons -- so it's not ideology -- it's practical reasons.
I'm a big fan of Linux (not Red Hat necessarily) and I consider that's nothing wrong with the Linux user interfaces, Gnome is OK (but I personally don't like it too much) KDE offers all that I need.
It's a wrong assumption that people don't use Linux because KDE or Gnome is not good enough for that, reason are many but interface is not among the firsts (pain of installing other OS, hardware incompatibility, programs that don't work, lack of support in some cases, etc -- not "KDE is too bad GUI for me".
People that would use this laptop are just as unfamiliar with Mac OS as with KDE so that's not an issue.
It might not be as simple as it looks to install software. It looks like it doesn't have a harddisk and it has limited memory.
"I guess this might appeal to PDA people, but don't they have everything that this offers for less, in a smaller package with the same or better battery life?"
Have you tried to browse the Internet on a PDA for three hours?
damn the lack of editing capability in slashdot...
"I disagree. Principles is one thing, succeeding is another."
I disagree. Running a free OS is not (only) about principles it's about being practical. Actually as I said some other time being free is not just some "ideology" is about having more choices. "free" is not something about priciples that some loony people promote it's something that affects you imediately you directly.
Have you ever heard of assumptions? AAC being a open format can be implemented by other music players very easily, I'm not that passioned by the subject so I don't know for sure if there are or not music players that play AAC. HOWEVER the problem is clear when you talk about songs that you bought (and that's why my assumption) -- in which case Apple AAC is not better than WMA.
D GE_M2000&partner=register
Actually.... just a quick look and I've found a music player that plays AAC
http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=SOUNDBRI
So, I guess the issue is not if you can play AAC on other players -- you can, I'm sure there are other players beside the one that I've found in 10 seconds, the issue is clearly about playing non-free AAC formats. I clearly don't support the idea that free AAC is just like WMA, what I'm saying is that AAC songs bought from iTunes are just as useless as WMA songs -- even worse actually since you can play WMA on more players than bought AAC which play only on iPod (and prepare to be surprised: there are people that don't like iPods or there are people that want something cheaper or different, or people that listen to radio and so on).
I don't argue with you, but if you read my comment in the context of what the parent said you'll see that AAC is just as bad as WMA for the songs that you buy.
The songs that you rip you are free to use whatever standards you want anyway.
In my understanding AAC is an open format, but there's Apple adds a DRM wrapper that's not open format.
So, if you buy a song you'll get it in a so called AAC or MP4 format, but you can't do anything with it if you don't have an iPod or iTunes on your machine.
There's no difference between AAC with DRM and WMA from the point of view of open standards (actually as a side remark WMA is licensed to more players).
That's indeed a insightful comment and it shows what closed formats do.
Closed formats are more dangerous than closed source. If people care about freedom (yeah, I know it's a term that was abused by many people) you should insist on having open formats then you can use whatever programs and hardware you want.
Besides, it's usually easier (and more entitled) to ask for open formats or open standards than to ask somebody to reveal their code.
"And the fact that the police aren't up to the job and can't do whatever they need in a timely manner can't possibly be a reason to lock people up without trial for 3 months! WITHOUT TRIAL!"
US is holding people at Guantanamo for much longer, it's enough to claim (they don't have to prove that) that you are a terrorist that you cease to have any rights as a human.
"Nobody is ever going to argue Franklin's statement, the real debate is about what's "essential", what's "little" and what's "temporary". This observation has nothing to do with the keylogger thing you're commenting on, it's an unrelated thought."
Safety is always temporary and liberty is always essential (at least that's my opinion)
>> So I doubt any company is trying to "curb your freedom".
How do you doubt that? If they restrict the number of songs to 100 even though you can add more memory? Of course we could debate endless if that was my freedom or not but the fact remains: after I buy the device it's mine, I want to add more memory and more songs -- I can't.
I own a 512MB device but that's because it has radio, I was looking more for a portable radio than for a mp3 player those 512MB were kind of bonus... but I would be definitely pissed if they would impose me to use only 128MB out of 512MB or if they would limit my radio capabilities to only 5 radio station for example.
"the 100 song limit isn't the real issue... "
Yes it is, who likes this kind of limitations? This is not a technology limitation it's a business decission to curb your freedom. I would never purchase this kind of device.
"The 100 song limit is not a huge deal"
That's not the point, even if I listen to 10 songs I don't like my freedom to be limited by silly business considerations. And, BTW it is a big deal, that's why people buy devices that hold more than 100 songs, otherwise they would use only low end MP3 players (remember that a simple CD can hold around 100 MP3 songs).
"It's only a big issue if you don't believe in listening to any song longer than 30 seconds or something."
Well, I'm happy you don't work for Apple. Again you are missing the point, the point is that people like to have choices, they like to have if possible all their music collection and then play whatever they want, or they like diversity and if they use shuffle option they don't like to listen to the same songs during a day, they like simplicity, they don't want to load and unload the device every day with songs and to choose at that time what kind of songs will like to hear 5 hours latter.
Or maybe next time a patient from Kansas needs his appendectomy the doctor would explain very calm that the patient doesn't need one because we were all designed inteligently.
"But there is a problem, to quote Asimov, with saying that "Dragons must be pushing the moons."
Where is the problem, I heard lately that gravity doesn't explain thing perfectly -- and what it is gravity after all: force, field, particles?
Since we don't know we can assume that dragons are pushing the moons and you have no way to prove that's not right -- very hard to prove that something doesn't exist.
"A 150 decibel noise seems like a pretty minor convenience compared to blowing yourself up."
Blowing yourself up is something that doesn't take much time, while a 150 decibel noise can go on and on. The difference it between death and torture, some people prefer to die than to be tortured.
"So before you Mac-hating Linux kids start flaming another Apple article, most of us just want less Windows domination."
;-) ).
Nonsense, we enjoy watching Apple fanboys in action. Actually a market without being dominated by any company plays very well for Linux, if you have Apple with 30% market share it means (increses the chance) that we will also have open standards and if we have open standards we can use whatever software we want without problems -- and I prefer Linux because I am a cheap bastard (actually description would probably fit better BSD users
I agree with you to some point -- but remember that in US many people believe that animals and people were made by God as they are now, I don't remember the percent but I think it was somewhere around 33% (if not more).
I'm too lazy to look for that statistic piece but if it's true it's a really large number of people, science is not a democratic process, if people would vote for different theories we'd not get very far.
Mr. Science: "I was testing to see if you knew how the wings of this bird evolved. The Theory Of Our Own Ignorance predicted that you would not know, and since you did not, this validates our theory - that we do not know how this bird developed wings!"
;-) ) and birds could not have evolved wings.
Actually this should be: "this validates our theory - that the wings were designed by somebody (we don't say who
That's what ID theory would say.
"Sometimes you just have to be a pragmatist."
It's not idealism... to be free it's a very pragmatic thing if you think about it.
"Although the basic GNU/Linux system is free software, most of the GNU/Linux versions now available include a small amount of non-free software--just enough to spoil them as a way to attain freedom. But Linspire is in a class by itself; large and important parts of this system are non-free. No other GNU/Linux distribution has backslided so far away from freedom. Switching from MS Windows to Linspire does not bring you to freedom, it just gets you a different master."
-- Richard Stallman
"Wrong. IANAL, but many OSS projects use the "version 2 or greater" clause when making there projects GPL. This could *force* upgrades and use of the GPL to version 3.0, by simply releasing it... After all, people already agreed."
You can't agree to something that you don't know. Nobody can enforce such thing. (of course IANAL)
"The order is alphabetical!
1. internet Explorer 2. Firefox 3. Konquerer 4. Netscape 5. Opera"
Really?! What happened with "Apple Safary" in that list? Do you like to twist facts?
6)Mac OS is free the machine is what costs the money."
Mac OS X 10.4 (Single User) $129.00 according to: http://www.apple.com/macosx/
7)Does Linux have Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, and equivalent MS Office Replacements?
"Until then I'll have to go with OS X since the only other choice I have is Windows."
It's nice that you speak in your name, not all the people use Quark. As for MS Office Replacements there are plenty and even better than MS Office in some respects for example: for example EIOffice (it's true that's not free, but you have free equivalents too, not to mention that you can run MS Office under Wine, it works just as well as in Windows at least in my tests). I do prefer free products and OO.o is pretty good and getting better, Abiword is another alternative for word processing, Gnumeric it's a really good Excell replacemen, KOffice is getting really nice -- all of those exceed _my_ needs of course they might not be enough for you, I'm sorry that you'll have to pay Apple or MS tax, I'm curious though if _most_ of the people needs are like yours or mine.... future will tell.
6) Mac OS costs more.
7) Applications on Mac OS cost more.
Result, Linux will win.