I recognise that there are lots of important uses for linux-windows compatibility, but none of them apply to me personally.
sometimes it seems like loads of effort is spent trying to reproduce windows instead of just doing something better and it doesn't always seem worth it.
take wine for example, a good project but imo it could never be anything more than a "cheap and dirty" temporary fix anyway.
>Communication between businesses, schools, and the rest of the world is important to those instituions. There's no choice.
exactly, and it's MS who don't have the choice.
imagine instantly splitting the internet into 2: those using Windows, and those not using Windows. do you really think that those not using Windows will change, cos I think 99% of all changes would be to the non-Windows internet.
individuals who want to surf and do email would change to linux, but you won't get businesses, academics etc. to change to windows.
that's not the part I was talking about. I can't imagine academic institutions or businesses being told that they can't do something because they aren't running DRM-Windows.
e.g. "we just build a 300-node beowulf supercomputer, and you want us to buy 300 DRM cards and 300 copies of DRM-Windows!? hmmm... how about go fuck yourself!"
I refuse to believe the nightmare scenario where all hardware needs to be DRM.
business and academic institutions simply will not accept this kind of BS. the internet, or a better version of it (i.e. without the hacked XP spam systems) will continue to exist.
no it's not "threatening", at least not any more than any law is "threatening" - "if you murder someone, we'll lock you away!!!!!11" oh my god, won't someone please think of the civil liberties!
maybe at a later date they could cover the extra bandwidth by foreign subscriptions, but at least in the beginning there will be a fixed amount of bandwidth and they will be more concerned with getting it perfect for UK people before thinking about expanding to the rest of the world.
I do live in the UK, and I don't need a license, WHERE'S MY THREATENING LETTER dammit!
I have had letters, but it seems to me that if you're the kind of person who thinks they're "threatening", you're probably also the kind who gets really excited by "dear occupant, you may have already won 100,000 pounds!"
that site seems to consist of descriptions of 20 bad experiences (out of > 20 million families in UK) and links to other similar sites. most of them have nothing to do with licenses, just administrative mistakes.
it's about as convincing as people who want to do away with *all* health care because they themselves are not sick and don't like hospitals taking up land that could be used for sports or something.
exactly. this is one of the very important ideas that seems blatantly obvious to anyone not in charge of a major commercial media company, right next to "don't fucking sue your customers" and "ROI on customers liking you != 0"
almost certainly no. the BBC is held accountable not any shareholders or anything but to the UK public. you'd therefore need a very good argument on how it benefits UK people to have other people accessing it, whereas the argument against is obvious.
>I guess they have controls so that only one copy can be burned?
that might not be necessary, if you make a good value, easy to use product you automatically bypass potential for piracy by making it easier to just do things the legal way.
you end up asking yourself "should I go to some dodgy place and look if anyone happens to have burned a copy of $program and then pay them for it, or just download it myself for "free" (if you're paying for internet access and a TV license anyway it's free at point of use, like the NHS)?"
the perfect example of retarded developers is the new game Painkiller.
piracy was the only way to play this game if you happen to have any of the blacklisted software (CD-writer e.g. Nero, virtual drive software e.g. Alcohol) on your computer and don't want to uninstall legal programs just for a game.
I believe an official patch fixed or will fix this problem as even the 'tards in management can understand that an unusable product will sell poorly.
Slashdot Mirror
I recognise that there are lots of important uses for linux-windows compatibility, but none of them apply to me personally.
sometimes it seems like loads of effort is spent trying to reproduce windows instead of just doing something better and it doesn't always seem worth it.
take wine for example, a good project but imo it could never be anything more than a "cheap and dirty" temporary fix anyway.
no I don't own a set, no I didn't inform TVL, no they haven't bothered me.
>Communication between businesses, schools, and the rest of the world is important to those instituions. There's no choice.
exactly, and it's MS who don't have the choice.
imagine instantly splitting the internet into 2: those using Windows, and those not using Windows. do you really think that those not using Windows will change, cos I think 99% of all changes would be to the non-Windows internet.
individuals who want to surf and do email would change to linux, but you won't get businesses, academics etc. to change to windows.
that's not the part I was talking about. I can't imagine academic institutions or businesses being told that they can't do something because they aren't running DRM-Windows.
e.g. "we just build a 300-node beowulf supercomputer, and you want us to buy 300 DRM cards and 300 copies of DRM-Windows!? hmmm... how about go fuck yourself!"
I refuse to believe the nightmare scenario where all hardware needs to be DRM.
business and academic institutions simply will not accept this kind of BS. the internet, or a better version of it (i.e. without the hacked XP spam systems) will continue to exist.
no it's not "threatening", at least not any more than any law is "threatening" - "if you murder someone, we'll lock you away!!!!!11" oh my god, won't someone please think of the civil liberties!
maybe at a later date they could cover the extra bandwidth by foreign subscriptions, but at least in the beginning there will be a fixed amount of bandwidth and they will be more concerned with getting it perfect for UK people before thinking about expanding to the rest of the world.
I do live in the UK, and I don't need a license, WHERE'S MY THREATENING LETTER dammit!
I have had letters, but it seems to me that if you're the kind of person who thinks they're "threatening", you're probably also the kind who gets really excited by "dear occupant, you may have already won 100,000 pounds!"
that site seems to consist of descriptions of 20 bad experiences (out of > 20 million families in UK) and links to other similar sites. most of them have nothing to do with licenses, just administrative mistakes.
it's about as convincing as people who want to do away with *all* health care because they themselves are not sick and don't like hospitals taking up land that could be used for sports or something.
exactly. this is one of the very important ideas that seems blatantly obvious to anyone not in charge of a major commercial media company, right next to "don't fucking sue your customers" and "ROI on customers liking you != 0"
almost certainly no. the BBC is held accountable not any shareholders or anything but to the UK public. you'd therefore need a very good argument on how it benefits UK people to have other people accessing it, whereas the argument against is obvious.
>I guess they have controls so that only one copy can be burned?
that might not be necessary, if you make a good value, easy to use product you automatically bypass potential for piracy by making it easier to just do things the legal way.
you end up asking yourself "should I go to some dodgy place and look if anyone happens to have burned a copy of $program and then pay them for it, or just download it myself for "free" (if you're paying for internet access and a TV license anyway it's free at point of use, like the NHS)?"
what makes you think that?
it's only true if UK people start redistributing, in which case it's the same situation as at the moment with kazaa etc.
er, missed out the "never" which changes the meaning quite a bit...
no but it means your gf/mum will catch you doing it!
you and all the others in here who doubt quantum mechanics just got on my foe list.
next time find something that ISN'T the most successful (possbile tie with relativity) theory ever developed by humans to whine about.
you (plural) are the science-technology equivalent of the "think of the children" politcs trolls.
Artists Against 419... flash mobs... what are you on about?
the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Sun is dying but Java is good. Cut the umbilical cord so the baby lives when the mother dies. What kind of bitch would take her son down with her!?
the perfect example of retarded developers is the new game Painkiller.
piracy was the only way to play this game if you happen to have any of the blacklisted software (CD-writer e.g. Nero, virtual drive software e.g. Alcohol) on your computer and don't want to uninstall legal programs just for a game.
I believe an official patch fixed or will fix this problem as even the 'tards in management can understand that an unusable product will sell poorly.
"Civ 3... Its like crack"
lol, they should have used that in the ads.
>Of course most aren't worth playing
this is also true of the non-free games
Your ideas intrigue me. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
>And you just thought that green tea was good to drink.
don't tell me what I think you ignorant, arrogant prick.
it was paper launched a while ago but still a few days from being able to buy (not pre-order) - May 5th for UK.
I've just been reading some detals and found this nice jab at Intel:
"For example, a computer with an AMD Athlon 64 processor with 1.8 GHz is faster than a 32-bit computer with a Pentium(tm) 4 processor with 3.2 GHz."