And yet here you are, posting to slashdot. Are you posting using lynx? I somewhat doubt that you are. GUIs most definitely _are_ the way.
Ask any information theorist -- a GUI can present far more data, far more clearly.
Ask any user-interface designer or ergonomics expert about Emacs. They'll laugh at you.
And anyway, the metric of success in software has always been the size of the userbase. Ask ANYONE what the most successful OS is. They'll all say MS Windows -- every last one of them. There may be no "universal" computing machine, but in the desktop arena there can be only one and it's winner take all.
plan9's 14 years of use is quite a bit more than KDE's few.
KDE's millions of users are hard to argue with, as are Gnome's. And people are still using Windows 3.11 after however many years -- does that make it better still? I'd say that age doesn't recommend an OS, but rather condemns it.
Gnome will die under the weight of it's pointless complexity...
If pointless complexity could hold back an OS, would Windows have replaced DOS? Would Windows XP be the number OS in use worldwide?
... and Miguel's MS wannabe nature.
Some would suggest that copying the most successfull GUI of all time isn't a bad thing. Being different just for difference's sake is comedic at best.
Plan9 is just another Hurd -- a theoretically great OS that only gets used by a few people. The most it can hope for is that its best principles are adopted by a real OS.
Isn't it reasonable to think that the success of BSD as a server OS is due to its complete and utter lack of concessions to the desktop-user?
Frankly, I'd be much inclined to have BSD focus on rock-solid stability and security for server applications, and let Linux focus on GUIs and other user-comforts. That way each has a better chance of excelling at what it does.
Linux is also for people who hate Unix. Unix is a nasty, primitive, backwards OS. All the worst parts of Linux are the things that come from Unix (the filesystem, for example).
Linux succeeds because of a willingness among its developers to not create another Unix. The original was bad enough.
The thing is, there's lots of good Canadian content out there. It's just not the stuff that's shoved down our throats. Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly are two of the best bands in Industrial music, but you'll never hear them on MuchMusic or the CBC.
Basically, quality Canadian music is no more rare than quality American music. It just gets drowned out completely by the crap from both sides of the border. America and Canada both have a nasty tendency to only promote and export their worst "art".
Well, they haven't been suing people here yet. Frankly, I'd be surprised if they ever do unless some draconian legislation favouring them is passed first.
All it would take is one person with a good lawyer getting sued to cause irreparable harm to Canadian copyright law. You're totally right -- Canadian copyright organizations want it both ways, and they know that puts them in a tenuous position.
The RIAA has at least been clear in methods; lawsuits and harassment. The tax in a lot of way compromises any chance of seriously going after media pirates.
Video game developers are just seen as an easy target because they don't have the massive financial backing of the MPAA or RIAA (movies and music routinely have far more offensive content).
The supposed Haitian community leaders (9 times out of 10, "community leaders" are just obnoxious individuals who decide that they speak for everyone else) are simple using this as a chance to grab some attention at Rockstar's expense.
The state of Florida is just going after the cash, because they know that video games don't have enough popular esteem yet among those with power to be well-defended.
I'm going to go out and buy GTA3, just to spite them.
This will only be a hit among stupid people. Smart people will realize that the information conveyed by the labels will be, for the most part, outright fabrications. Fruit producers don't want you to know if fruit is ripe. They want you to buy unripe fruit and think it's ripe. This will just be another way to delude people.
I just think that fact is funny, is all. I'm Canadian, so it's doubly irrelevant. As far as I'm concerned, Americans have it pretty easy. We have to pay taxes to the RIAA whenever we buy blank CDs or blank memory sticks for cameras, MP3 players, etc. And we'll probably have to pay an internet-bandwidth tax to the RIAA soon too.
As far as I'm concerned, I've already paid for every song I download, and downloading more just means I'm getting a bulk-discount.
What was the point again?... Oh yeah. Like all issues, it would be easily solved if more people voted. Homosexuality? There are more American homos than there are active voters. Poverty? There are 9x as many poor people as there active voters. All these issues could be easily solved if the people concerned voted. America's next president could be a homeless black lesbian, if homeless black lesbians simply united and voted.
What a freak. That's really the best solution he could come up with to deal with the noise of his roommates X-Box? (I presume it was the noise that bothered him... otherwise he's an even bigger freak)
Seriously, people like that don't need jail time; they need to be put in psychiatric hospitals.
Linux could have 10 times as many security holes as Windows, and it wouldn't matter. The freedom to fix a problem yourself or contract out to have it fixed, makes Linux infinitely preferable for enterprises.
With Windows, there's no guarantee that a security problem will get fixed, ever. There's no guarantee Microsoft will even let you make the existence of the problem publically known. And you certainly can't fix it yourself or hire a third party to fix it.
The National Post is barely better than a tabloid. Seriously -- this is a "newspaper" that has Celebrity gossip as its frontpage headline almost 50% of the time. This is not a newspaper with journalistic integrity.
I frickin' HATE guns (I'm uncomfortable just being near cops!), but even I find this outrageous. Blocking sites that are actually about weapons is one thing -- but blocking sites discussing the second amendment and gun control law is not only a free speech violation, but damages the credibility of the anti-gun-nut movement itself.
I've already complained, and all they would do is suggest that I return my CD for a refund.
Fortunately, I have access to a Windows workstation (to play the CD). Also fortunately, all modern soundcards can record whatever they are playing. Presto-chango, CD copy-protection is rendered all but meaningless.
Most CD Rips are performed by "playing" the CD, but informing the sound card to record the audio stream rather than playing it. This is analog data though (unless you're the ONE guy who has a digital CD-ROM hookup). Only a very few CD Rippers (like CDex) do digital "raw" reading to extract music.
The latest radiohead album can't be played in Linux AT ALL. As my computer IS my CD player, my sheer love of Radiohead has compelled me to nab their latest songs off Gnutella. Why would the RIAA deliberately drive non-windows and non-Mac users into the arms of the file-sharing community? That's just stupid.
Back to your sig... I'd suggest that one way of getting your voice heard is to vote and encourage others to do the same. Assuming that your sig is in fact correct, you should have no problem mobilizing an enormous number of Kazaa users. It's not hard to get your voice heard if you just bother to speak up.
It turns out that the last part is enormously difficult. Pot smokers are an absolutely massive group in the US, and yet their voice is never heard is mainstream politics. The equal rights amendment has yet to be ratified, and it's one of the most strongly supported changes to the US constitution ever.
Mobilizing people is very difficult. And speaking out in support of something illegal is nigh-impossible outside of a liberal forum such as slashdot.
Wasn't vigilanteism and anarchy how the American Rrevolution started? Americans said "laws be damned, no more taxes to the British"? Those aren't necessarily bad things. In fact, they're usually the only way of getting your voice heard once the government is corrupted (in this case by the RIAA's bribes... I mean, campaign contributions;) ).
Slashdot Mirror
Lets be clear on this -- the proper term is sand-nigger. He was a middle-eastern dude, by all accounts.
Isn't that exactly how Freenet works?
And yet here you are, posting to slashdot. Are you posting using lynx? I somewhat doubt that you are. GUIs most definitely _are_ the way.
Ask any information theorist -- a GUI can present far more data, far more clearly.
Ask any user-interface designer or ergonomics expert about Emacs. They'll laugh at you.
And anyway, the metric of success in software has always been the size of the userbase. Ask ANYONE what the most successful OS is. They'll all say MS Windows -- every last one of them. There may be no "universal" computing machine, but in the desktop arena there can be only one and it's winner take all.
plan9's 14 years of use is quite a bit more than KDE's few.
KDE's millions of users are hard to argue with, as are Gnome's. And people are still using Windows 3.11 after however many years -- does that make it better still? I'd say that age doesn't recommend an OS, but rather condemns it.
Gnome will die under the weight of it's pointless complexity ...
If pointless complexity could hold back an OS, would Windows have replaced DOS? Would Windows XP be the number OS in use worldwide?
Some would suggest that copying the most successfull GUI of all time isn't a bad thing. Being different just for difference's sake is comedic at best.
Plan9 is just another Hurd -- a theoretically great OS that only gets used by a few people. The most it can hope for is that its best principles are adopted by a real OS.
Have you seen the screenshots of Plan 9? That, my friend, is an OS doomed to failure of the most crushing kind.
Linux, because of KDE and Gnome, actually has a future in the real world now.
Isn't it reasonable to think that the success of BSD as a server OS is due to its complete and utter lack of concessions to the desktop-user?
Frankly, I'd be much inclined to have BSD focus on rock-solid stability and security for server applications, and let Linux focus on GUIs and other user-comforts. That way each has a better chance of excelling at what it does.
Linux is also for people who hate Unix. Unix is a nasty, primitive, backwards OS. All the worst parts of Linux are the things that come from Unix (the filesystem, for example).
Linux succeeds because of a willingness among its developers to not create another Unix. The original was bad enough.
The thing is, there's lots of good Canadian content out there. It's just not the stuff that's shoved down our throats. Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly are two of the best bands in Industrial music, but you'll never hear them on MuchMusic or the CBC.
Basically, quality Canadian music is no more rare than quality American music. It just gets drowned out completely by the crap from both sides of the border. America and Canada both have a nasty tendency to only promote and export their worst "art".
Well, they haven't been suing people here yet. Frankly, I'd be surprised if they ever do unless some draconian legislation favouring them is passed first.
All it would take is one person with a good lawyer getting sued to cause irreparable harm to Canadian copyright law. You're totally right -- Canadian copyright organizations want it both ways, and they know that puts them in a tenuous position.
The RIAA has at least been clear in methods; lawsuits and harassment. The tax in a lot of way compromises any chance of seriously going after media pirates.
First, the blank-tape tax.
Then, the blank-CD tax (20$ for 10 blank CDs? Madness!)
The proposed internet bandwidth tax. Grrr!
Now a hard-drive tax?
I'm going to have to pirate music extra-hard from now on, just to get my money's worth!
Video game developers are just seen as an easy target because they don't have the massive financial backing of the MPAA or RIAA (movies and music routinely have far more offensive content).
The supposed Haitian community leaders (9 times out of 10, "community leaders" are just obnoxious individuals who decide that they speak for everyone else) are simple using this as a chance to grab some attention at Rockstar's expense.
The state of Florida is just going after the cash, because they know that video games don't have enough popular esteem yet among those with power to be well-defended.
I'm going to go out and buy GTA3, just to spite them.
Rewritable CDs -- the floppy disks of the present.
You might want to look into them. :)
This will only be a hit among stupid people. Smart people will realize that the information conveyed by the labels will be, for the most part, outright fabrications. Fruit producers don't want you to know if fruit is ripe. They want you to buy unripe fruit and think it's ripe. This will just be another way to delude people.
I just think that fact is funny, is all. I'm Canadian, so it's doubly irrelevant. As far as I'm concerned, Americans have it pretty easy. We have to pay taxes to the RIAA whenever we buy blank CDs or blank memory sticks for cameras, MP3 players, etc. And we'll probably have to pay an internet-bandwidth tax to the RIAA soon too. As far as I'm concerned, I've already paid for every song I download, and downloading more just means I'm getting a bulk-discount. What was the point again? ... Oh yeah. Like all issues, it would be easily solved if more people voted. Homosexuality? There are more American homos than there are active voters. Poverty? There are 9x as many poor people as there active voters. All these issues could be easily solved if the people concerned voted. America's next president could be a homeless black lesbian, if homeless black lesbians simply united and voted.
What a freak. That's really the best solution he could come up with to deal with the noise of his roommates X-Box? (I presume it was the noise that bothered him... otherwise he's an even bigger freak) Seriously, people like that don't need jail time; they need to be put in psychiatric hospitals.
This should be modded "funny", not "interesting". It's a joke -- get it? 5000 BC? Sigh...
Linux could have 10 times as many security holes as Windows, and it wouldn't matter. The freedom to fix a problem yourself or contract out to have it fixed, makes Linux infinitely preferable for enterprises.
With Windows, there's no guarantee that a security problem will get fixed, ever. There's no guarantee Microsoft will even let you make the existence of the problem publically known. And you certainly can't fix it yourself or hire a third party to fix it.
The National Post is barely better than a tabloid. Seriously -- this is a "newspaper" that has Celebrity gossip as its frontpage headline almost 50% of the time. This is not a newspaper with journalistic integrity.
I frickin' HATE guns (I'm uncomfortable just being near cops!), but even I find this outrageous. Blocking sites that are actually about weapons is one thing -- but blocking sites discussing the second amendment and gun control law is not only a free speech violation, but damages the credibility of the anti-gun-nut movement itself.
I've already complained, and all they would do is suggest that I return my CD for a refund. Fortunately, I have access to a Windows workstation (to play the CD). Also fortunately, all modern soundcards can record whatever they are playing. Presto-chango, CD copy-protection is rendered all but meaningless.
Most CD Rips are performed by "playing" the CD, but informing the sound card to record the audio stream rather than playing it. This is analog data though (unless you're the ONE guy who has a digital CD-ROM hookup). Only a very few CD Rippers (like CDex) do digital "raw" reading to extract music.
The latest radiohead album can't be played in Linux AT ALL. As my computer IS my CD player, my sheer love of Radiohead has compelled me to nab their latest songs off Gnutella. Why would the RIAA deliberately drive non-windows and non-Mac users into the arms of the file-sharing community? That's just stupid.
It turns out that the last part is enormously difficult. Pot smokers are an absolutely massive group in the US, and yet their voice is never heard is mainstream politics. The equal rights amendment has yet to be ratified, and it's one of the most strongly supported changes to the US constitution ever.
Mobilizing people is very difficult. And speaking out in support of something illegal is nigh-impossible outside of a liberal forum such as slashdot.
Wasn't vigilanteism and anarchy how the American Rrevolution started? Americans said "laws be damned, no more taxes to the British"? Those aren't necessarily bad things. In fact, they're usually the only way of getting your voice heard once the government is corrupted (in this case by the RIAA's bribes... I mean, campaign contributions ;) ).