The difference is that Linux is not just another competitor like Apple, Sun, Adobe, whatever. Linux is not another company, it represents and entirely new (re-hashed?) philosophy surrounding computer technology. As I see it, the transistor was invented in academia, the internet in government labs and academia; both free-and-open-information-sharing friendly (well not always with the government). Then corporate America swoops in, like always, and takes these concepts to market. And life is good? Sure, why not, companies move in to innovate and compete, Apple is born, Microsoft is born, and everthing is good? Well, no, not this time. Microsoft, through their tremendous monopolistic power, begins to shape our philosophies surrounding software and how it should be implemented. There is a lot of history around UNIX, Novell, Microsoft, etc. that some of the older computer-folks could do a much better job of explaining...
What you say about Linux is true from a user point of view, but from the MS point of view, it's another competitor and thus they will treat it as one. They'll dump on it when they feel it suites them and they will acknowledge it when they feel it suites them. It's not "news" everytime they do it, because it's has been happening, and will continue to happen, all of the time. It reminds of the quarterly Dell considers AMD, Dell sticks with Intel stories that we see.
My point is that I think readers would be much better served if Slashdot posted stories on other topics. Hundreds of cool Linux related things happen every day, why focus so much attention on stories like these? They happen daily. There isn't a day when MS doesn't bash Linux, and there isn't a day when they don't acknowledge it in some manner.
Seriously, every time MS dumps on Linux, there's a story. Ever time MS acknowledges Linux, there's a story. What's the point? Linux is competition for MS, so they are going to dump on it every chance they get, and they are also going to acknowledge it from time to time. Aren't there better things to be reporting on? I realize that this is Slashdot, but come on, it's getting old.
The problem is that more advanced desktop searching will be the downfall of file organization.
I think in many cases, it's already dead. I'm amazed at how some of my co-workers choose to store their documents. They'll throw them all into a couple of folders and use file names that give you no idea as to what's actually in the document. It never ceases to amaze me. I don't need a search tool to find my documents, but I do need one to find theirs, which is why I think in the long run we will be better off with these search tools then we were without them.
The more organized among us will probably never use these search tools for our own files, but when a coworker calls and needs you to e-mail them a copy of some document they wrote six months ago and saved with a name they can't remember in one of 3 possible locations (each containg a few hundred other documents), these search tools will be a big help.
They went after a Russian dude who broke their encryption, and he even did it in Russia where it was entirely legal. They only threw him in the can when he entered the US.
Can someone fill me in on the details of this? They didn't actually get a conviction here did they? How would that be possible? How is it possible to prosecute someone for something they did when they were in another country if what they did was legal in that country? I don't get it.
How many "Dell may sell AMD", followed up a few days (or weeks) later by "Dell will remain Intel only" stories do we need? Dell announces every so often that it may offer systems with AMD processors to scare Intel into offering a better deal. I doubt they have ever seriously considered going with AMD, and I don't think that they will anytime soon. These stories are pointless.
Can we expect a news article every month blasting Microsoft for releasing security updates? Christ, where are the news articles when updates come out for other OS's? Or is it only a bad thing when Microsoft does it?
You must be new here....
Two small requests ...
on
Mapping the Mind
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
1) Map the female mind first
2) Ladies, before your relationship gets too serious, give your man a compimentary copy instead of expecting him to know what your thinking (and more importantly, feeling) all of the time
It would save us all a lot of time and trouble. Most guys are easy to figure out: sex, money, power, position, and a good time. The exact order depends on the person, and there may be a few other factors thrown in the mix and one or two on the list that I gave that may not be much of a factor, but that's basically it. Almost anything your typical guy will say or do can be explained by that list, with minor modifications based on his personality and personal traits.
You women, on the other hand. Many of you are impossible to figure out. We could use a little help.
I don't think any professor should be allowed to use a program of this type. I'm not shelling out all of this cash so that a computer can grade my papers. I want the professors to read, and comment on, what I'm writing. That's a part of learning. Listening, reading, researching, discussing, writing and having what you've written graded by a human being who can understand and comment intelligently on what you've written. If you don't get feedback from your professor, what's the point of going to a university? Just send me video tapes of the lectures, I'll send in my papers and tests to be graded electronically. Oh and since the university is no longer paying a boat load of professors to teach and grade or paying to maintain the school grounds, tuition should be reduce by 50% to 75%.
Amazing isn't it. A patent only lasts for 20 years, and copyright can be extended for over a hundrend many instances. IMHO, they should both be granted for 20 years. The current copyright laws are just plain crazy. I'm actually amazed that patent lengths haven't been extended as far as copyright lengths have been.
I'm no Microsoft apologist, but let's be fair here. Any operating system released by Microsoft is essentially going to be a public beta. There is simply no way, even with a huge beta test group, that they can test against every combination of software and hardware out there. It's simply not possible. There isn't a company in the world that could do it. Hell, look at all the problems with the first release of OS X. Apple only had to support a limited set of hardware, and there was still a lot of issue with the first release of that operating system.
So what are you supposed to do, wave for the entire hour? I can see it now, hundreds of geeks running outside and waiving up in the air everyday between 10 and 11. That's a scary thought....
I doubt he's afraid of being type cast. This is a negotiating tactic, plain and simple. Let it be known that you won't be around for a second run if you're not already contractually obligated to do so, and then they come at you with more money right out of the gate.
The difference is that if you don't like it, you can change the channel. But because it's going off the air, the people who do like it can't get it. Don't complain about me 'coming off like a total idiot' when you basically said you're glad it's off the air. As if your TV is stuck on UPN. It wasn't doing you any harm.
Networks exist to make money. If no one is watching, they dont' make money. It wasn't doing me any harm, but it was obviously harming UPN. If they could make money with it, they wouldn't be taking it off the air. Perhaps now they'll take the money they were wasting on Enterprise and use it do develop something that more than a small percentage of TV viewers will actually watch.
You didn't like it and somebody with a mod point agreed with you. Whoop-de-fuck.
Oh please! I'm the only one who doesn't like it? You might want to think about what it is your saying before opening your mouth in the future and coming off like a total idiot. Apparently I'm not the only one who didn't like it or the network would have picked it up for additional seasons. Networks aren't prone to canceling wildly successful and highly rated shows after only a few seasons. They do tend to cancel (or not pick up again) those shows that nobody is watching.
There hasn't been a good Star Trek movie or TV show in years. Quit beating a dead horse. It's over, move on. Hollywood has run this one into the ground. It reminds me of the Holloween movie franchise.
The Wireless services are being stupid on this. They could just add a 'iTunes Phone Access Fee' that's $5.00 to everyone who gets the phone. Then no matter how many songs they add they get their $5.00 and I think that if meant you got the phone for free most people who read the terms after they sign wouldn't care or would just want the shiny new phone.
I think your missing the point. The wireless carries see themselves as eventual competition to Apple. They see a world where the cell phone would replace the iPod and other mp3 players and become a sort of digital jukebox. You would download tracks from the carriers via their own online store. You could use them as ring tones or plug in some headphones and listen to your collection. Then you'd come home at night, place your phone in a craddle, music you've purchased would play through your stero.
Now back to reality. Given the "quality" of most of the phones I've had and of the different cell phone services I've used, I can tell you right now that the wireless providers pipe dream is never going to happen. I've never had a cell phone that approaches the eligance or ease of use of my iPod, and I've never come across jukebox software anywhere as cool and easy to use as iTunes. If you're cell phone were to become a digital jukebox as the wireless companies envision, you'd need good desktop software to manage your library, make playlists, etc and the phone itself would have to have a sleak enough interface to allow you to navigate through all of your tracks.
The wireless companies are fooling themselves if they think that they they will be able to come up with a device as slick as the iPod, along with an online store and music management software as slick as the iTMS / iTunes combination anytime soon. Purchasing a ring tone via Verizon's service is a nightmare. There's no selection, it takes forever to find what you're looking for and to preview and/or download it, and it's $2 for an actual clip and $1 for the MIDI version. It's a joke.
I do believe, however, that a cell phone could make a nice, flash like mp3 player that is usuable when you don't have your hard drive based player with you, but when I want to have all of my music with me, it's going to be an iPod for me from now and into the forseeable future.
I trust wireless companies to produce quality products and services about as much as I trust Micheal Jackson to keep his hands off of a 10 year boy sleeping with him in his bed at Neverland Ranch. That is to say, I don't trust them at all.
I can tell you this, the first wireless provider to support an uncrippled version of this new iPhone will be getting my business. I'm interested in a product like the iPhone that I could use to listen to music when I don't have my iPod with me, but I don't trust any of the wireless carries themselves to come up with a better alternative.
Convenience matters to me in this case. Generally I agree with you, but when it comes to an mp3 player / phone combination, I can actually see a use for it. I don't like taking my iPod with me everywhere I go, because I'm afraid that I would either lose it or it would get damaged. I'm a guy (no purse to put the iPod in) and my pockets are generally full with my wallet, keys, and cell phone. When I'm commuting or going on a long vacation or drive and I know that I want music, then I always take my iPod and its case with me, but there are times that I don't have it with me that I wish I did. I was considering getting an iPod Shuffle when it was first announced. It's so small that I could fit it in one of my pockets and always have it with me and it's inexpensive enough that if I ever lost or broke it, I could afford to replace it right away.
Enter the iPhone. Since I always have my cell phone with me anyway, why carry around both a cell phone and an iPod shuffle (which has no screen BTW), when I can have both on a single device (with a screen for browsing through the songs on the phone)? This would be the perfect device for someone like me. If I want my entire collection, I bring the iPod. If I get an unplanned opportunity to listen to some music and don't have my iPod with me, I can listen to music via the cell phone. The only issue I'd be concerned about is battery life. I don't like to have to recharge a phone everyday. Every two to three days is ideal for me, but every day just isn't practical.
Well call me crazy, but fuck the DCMA and fuck the media companies and the politicians they've paid off. I won't steel from them, but I am sure as hell not going to let them usurp my fair use rights.
Amen, brother! If Joe Sixpack would stop watching NASCAR for a few minutes and actually bother to take a look at what's going on and maybe even, gasp, go vote, we might actually have a say in the slow erosion of our rights. As it stands now, most people don't care as it's happening slowly, over time and most people have become lazy and complacent because they've got it too good. By the time it gets so bad that people really begin to notice, it might already be too late. I believe it was Jefferson who said "He who trades liberty for security deserves neither and will lose both." That quote ought to be updated to read "He who sits on his ass while his freedoms are slowly being errorded by elected politicians deserves a swift kick in the balls from those of us who recognize what's going on but can't get his attention because he's too busy watching the game."
The only type of DRM I accept for electronic media is DRM that is easily cracked, ala songs purchased from the iTunes music store. I'm no pirate, but if I pay for something, I want to make sure it's going to work in the future should the company that I purchase it from go out of business. You wouldn't purchase a CD or DVD that could only be played in a player produced by a single manufacturer would you? The same goes for any media I buy and then download that has DRM. If it can't easily be cracked so that I can be sure it will work in the future, regardless of what happens to the company I purchase it from or to the technology used to decode the DRM'd media, then I won't bother buying it.
The only copy protection I accept on physical media is copy protection that is easily circumvented because it is essential for backup purposes. I had lost a small fortune in scratched CD's that were no longer playable before I began ripping and making backup copies of them when that technology first became available. With digital media that's downloaded, it's easy to make backup copies, but when I'm buying some kind of physical media that has some form of DRM to prevent making copies, that DRM better be easy to crack as well if the media itself can be easily damaged (CD's, DVD, etc.). I never had to make backup copies of VHS tapes or the music tapes because they were a heck of a lot harder to damage accidentally , but I make sure to make backups of all of my CD's and DVD's now because of how easy it is to scratch them. Sure you can use that gadget to peel off a layer and that sometimes works, but I've noticed that when I do that to my scratched CD's some CD players can no longer play them.
I consider music, movies and software that I purchase to be an investment. I have no intention of defrauding those I purchase it from by making copies and giving them away or selling them, but I do want to protect my investment should the company go out of business or decide the technology is obsolete and stop making the software and/or hardware that I need to make the DRM'd media playable, listenable, or installable. When you buy something with uncrackable DRM, you're not buying anything, you're renting it.
Slashdot Mirror
Dell still won't sell servers with them ....
What you say about Linux is true from a user point of view, but from the MS point of view, it's another competitor and thus they will treat it as one. They'll dump on it when they feel it suites them and they will acknowledge it when they feel it suites them. It's not "news" everytime they do it, because it's has been happening, and will continue to happen, all of the time. It reminds of the quarterly Dell considers AMD, Dell sticks with Intel stories that we see.
My point is that I think readers would be much better served if Slashdot posted stories on other topics. Hundreds of cool Linux related things happen every day, why focus so much attention on stories like these? They happen daily. There isn't a day when MS doesn't bash Linux, and there isn't a day when they don't acknowledge it in some manner.
Seriously, every time MS dumps on Linux, there's a story. Ever time MS acknowledges Linux, there's a story. What's the point? Linux is competition for MS, so they are going to dump on it every chance they get, and they are also going to acknowledge it from time to time. Aren't there better things to be reporting on? I realize that this is Slashdot, but come on, it's getting old.
If RMS reads that line he'll have a freaking heart attack!
I think in many cases, it's already dead. I'm amazed at how some of my co-workers choose to store their documents. They'll throw them all into a couple of folders and use file names that give you no idea as to what's actually in the document. It never ceases to amaze me. I don't need a search tool to find my documents, but I do need one to find theirs, which is why I think in the long run we will be better off with these search tools then we were without them.
The more organized among us will probably never use these search tools for our own files, but when a coworker calls and needs you to e-mail them a copy of some document they wrote six months ago and saved with a name they can't remember in one of 3 possible locations (each containg a few hundred other documents), these search tools will be a big help.
Can someone fill me in on the details of this? They didn't actually get a conviction here did they? How would that be possible? How is it possible to prosecute someone for something they did when they were in another country if what they did was legal in that country? I don't get it.
How many "Dell may sell AMD", followed up a few days (or weeks) later by "Dell will remain Intel only" stories do we need? Dell announces every so often that it may offer systems with AMD processors to scare Intel into offering a better deal. I doubt they have ever seriously considered going with AMD, and I don't think that they will anytime soon. These stories are pointless.
I doubt Sony is all that worried about pleasing the 0.00005% of consumers who pick a player based soley on it's support .ogg files.
We all came from Africa, it's just a matter of when .....
You must be new here ....
1) Map the female mind first
2) Ladies, before your relationship gets too serious, give your man a compimentary copy instead of expecting him to know what your thinking (and more importantly, feeling) all of the time
It would save us all a lot of time and trouble. Most guys are easy to figure out: sex, money, power, position, and a good time. The exact order depends on the person, and there may be a few other factors thrown in the mix and one or two on the list that I gave that may not be much of a factor, but that's basically it. Almost anything your typical guy will say or do can be explained by that list, with minor modifications based on his personality and personal traits.
You women, on the other hand. Many of you are impossible to figure out. We could use a little help.
I don't think any professor should be allowed to use a program of this type. I'm not shelling out all of this cash so that a computer can grade my papers. I want the professors to read, and comment on, what I'm writing. That's a part of learning. Listening, reading, researching, discussing, writing and having what you've written graded by a human being who can understand and comment intelligently on what you've written. If you don't get feedback from your professor, what's the point of going to a university? Just send me video tapes of the lectures, I'll send in my papers and tests to be graded electronically. Oh and since the university is no longer paying a boat load of professors to teach and grade or paying to maintain the school grounds, tuition should be reduce by 50% to 75%.
Amazing isn't it. A patent only lasts for 20 years, and copyright can be extended for over a hundrend many instances. IMHO, they should both be granted for 20 years. The current copyright laws are just plain crazy. I'm actually amazed that patent lengths haven't been extended as far as copyright lengths have been.
I'm no Microsoft apologist, but let's be fair here. Any operating system released by Microsoft is essentially going to be a public beta. There is simply no way, even with a huge beta test group, that they can test against every combination of software and hardware out there. It's simply not possible. There isn't a company in the world that could do it. Hell, look at all the problems with the first release of OS X. Apple only had to support a limited set of hardware, and there was still a lot of issue with the first release of that operating system.
So what are you supposed to do, wave for the entire hour? I can see it now, hundreds of geeks running outside and waiving up in the air everyday between 10 and 11. That's a scary thought ....
I doubt he's afraid of being type cast. This is a negotiating tactic, plain and simple. Let it be known that you won't be around for a second run if you're not already contractually obligated to do so, and then they come at you with more money right out of the gate.
The two aren't always mutually exclusive, especially not in this case.
Networks exist to make money. If no one is watching, they dont' make money. It wasn't doing me any harm, but it was obviously harming UPN. If they could make money with it, they wouldn't be taking it off the air. Perhaps now they'll take the money they were wasting on Enterprise and use it do develop something that more than a small percentage of TV viewers will actually watch.
Oh please! I'm the only one who doesn't like it? You might want to think about what it is your saying before opening your mouth in the future and coming off like a total idiot. Apparently I'm not the only one who didn't like it or the network would have picked it up for additional seasons. Networks aren't prone to canceling wildly successful and highly rated shows after only a few seasons. They do tend to cancel (or not pick up again) those shows that nobody is watching.
There hasn't been a good Star Trek movie or TV show in years. Quit beating a dead horse. It's over, move on. Hollywood has run this one into the ground. It reminds me of the Holloween movie franchise.
I think your missing the point. The wireless carries see themselves as eventual competition to Apple. They see a world where the cell phone would replace the iPod and other mp3 players and become a sort of digital jukebox. You would download tracks from the carriers via their own online store. You could use them as ring tones or plug in some headphones and listen to your collection. Then you'd come home at night, place your phone in a craddle, music you've purchased would play through your stero.
Now back to reality. Given the "quality" of most of the phones I've had and of the different cell phone services I've used, I can tell you right now that the wireless providers pipe dream is never going to happen. I've never had a cell phone that approaches the eligance or ease of use of my iPod, and I've never come across jukebox software anywhere as cool and easy to use as iTunes. If you're cell phone were to become a digital jukebox as the wireless companies envision, you'd need good desktop software to manage your library, make playlists, etc and the phone itself would have to have a sleak enough interface to allow you to navigate through all of your tracks.
The wireless companies are fooling themselves if they think that they they will be able to come up with a device as slick as the iPod, along with an online store and music management software as slick as the iTMS / iTunes combination anytime soon. Purchasing a ring tone via Verizon's service is a nightmare. There's no selection, it takes forever to find what you're looking for and to preview and/or download it, and it's $2 for an actual clip and $1 for the MIDI version. It's a joke.
I do believe, however, that a cell phone could make a nice, flash like mp3 player that is usuable when you don't have your hard drive based player with you, but when I want to have all of my music with me, it's going to be an iPod for me from now and into the forseeable future.
I trust wireless companies to produce quality products and services about as much as I trust Micheal Jackson to keep his hands off of a 10 year boy sleeping with him in his bed at Neverland Ranch. That is to say, I don't trust them at all.
I can tell you this, the first wireless provider to support an uncrippled version of this new iPhone will be getting my business. I'm interested in a product like the iPhone that I could use to listen to music when I don't have my iPod with me, but I don't trust any of the wireless carries themselves to come up with a better alternative.
Convenience matters to me in this case. Generally I agree with you, but when it comes to an mp3 player / phone combination, I can actually see a use for it. I don't like taking my iPod with me everywhere I go, because I'm afraid that I would either lose it or it would get damaged. I'm a guy (no purse to put the iPod in) and my pockets are generally full with my wallet, keys, and cell phone. When I'm commuting or going on a long vacation or drive and I know that I want music, then I always take my iPod and its case with me, but there are times that I don't have it with me that I wish I did. I was considering getting an iPod Shuffle when it was first announced. It's so small that I could fit it in one of my pockets and always have it with me and it's inexpensive enough that if I ever lost or broke it, I could afford to replace it right away.
Enter the iPhone. Since I always have my cell phone with me anyway, why carry around both a cell phone and an iPod shuffle (which has no screen BTW), when I can have both on a single device (with a screen for browsing through the songs on the phone)? This would be the perfect device for someone like me. If I want my entire collection, I bring the iPod. If I get an unplanned opportunity to listen to some music and don't have my iPod with me, I can listen to music via the cell phone. The only issue I'd be concerned about is battery life. I don't like to have to recharge a phone everyday. Every two to three days is ideal for me, but every day just isn't practical.
It's been like 6 months ....
Amen, brother! If Joe Sixpack would stop watching NASCAR for a few minutes and actually bother to take a look at what's going on and maybe even, gasp, go vote, we might actually have a say in the slow erosion of our rights. As it stands now, most people don't care as it's happening slowly, over time and most people have become lazy and complacent because they've got it too good. By the time it gets so bad that people really begin to notice, it might already be too late. I believe it was Jefferson who said "He who trades liberty for security deserves neither and will lose both." That quote ought to be updated to read "He who sits on his ass while his freedoms are slowly being errorded by elected politicians deserves a swift kick in the balls from those of us who recognize what's going on but can't get his attention because he's too busy watching the game."
The only type of DRM I accept for electronic media is DRM that is easily cracked, ala songs purchased from the iTunes music store. I'm no pirate, but if I pay for something, I want to make sure it's going to work in the future should the company that I purchase it from go out of business. You wouldn't purchase a CD or DVD that could only be played in a player produced by a single manufacturer would you? The same goes for any media I buy and then download that has DRM. If it can't easily be cracked so that I can be sure it will work in the future, regardless of what happens to the company I purchase it from or to the technology used to decode the DRM'd media, then I won't bother buying it.
The only copy protection I accept on physical media is copy protection that is easily circumvented because it is essential for backup purposes. I had lost a small fortune in scratched CD's that were no longer playable before I began ripping and making backup copies of them when that technology first became available. With digital media that's downloaded, it's easy to make backup copies, but when I'm buying some kind of physical media that has some form of DRM to prevent making copies, that DRM better be easy to crack as well if the media itself can be easily damaged (CD's, DVD, etc.). I never had to make backup copies of VHS tapes or the music tapes because they were a heck of a lot harder to damage accidentally , but I make sure to make backups of all of my CD's and DVD's now because of how easy it is to scratch them. Sure you can use that gadget to peel off a layer and that sometimes works, but I've noticed that when I do that to my scratched CD's some CD players can no longer play them.
I consider music, movies and software that I purchase to be an investment. I have no intention of defrauding those I purchase it from by making copies and giving them away or selling them, but I do want to protect my investment should the company go out of business or decide the technology is obsolete and stop making the software and/or hardware that I need to make the DRM'd media playable, listenable, or installable. When you buy something with uncrackable DRM, you're not buying anything, you're renting it.