I love it. It's the year 2004. We have sucessfully landed another probe on mars, and we're all hunting around in our junk drawers for 50's style 3D glasses.
I just hope we don't find any life on mars with this mission or we'll all be looking for tin foil to wrap around our heads.
My best experience with linux is when I used knoppix a few months ago. My hard drive on my dell laptop crapped out again but I could still use my computer while the replacement was being shipped. I mean it wasn't perfect and I wouldn't want to use it full time, but it was a definate lifesaver that weekend.
I like the idea of a live cd where if I fucked anything up, a simple reboot would fix everything. This is how linux should be taught to new users who are afraid of trying new things but still have some strange desire to use linux.
You forgot to mention we're the most productive though. and how many billions we give to other countries in aid. and freedom of speech isn't limited to what you like. And we have 300 years of history because 300 years ago we were all being kicked out of other countries that were a lot worse than us. How many people would die right now to come to your country and live with your laws?
All these posts about the "idiots who use windows 98 should be shot" or "they should all switch to linux so they can fix their own bugs" is stupid and it misses the point. People who use windows 98 have old computers. They would buy a nice shiny new computer but they don't have the money or desire. They could find a pirate copy of windows xp but their hardware couldn't handle it. Support for windows 98 has gone on a long time. I'd rather the time be put into longhorn development to make it more stable and secure than time put into patching windows 98.
And these people aren't going to switch to linux. Didn't you see that 1% piece of the pie? I found suse and mandrake to seem a lot slower than windows xp on my p4 1.8 so I don't think on older pentium 2 hardware anyone's going to enjoy the performance of kde over windows 98.
Yeah, a lot of people here spend a lot of their time on computers. They love to hunt out bugs and recompile their kernels. But a lot of people don't and it's very elitest to put them down for doing so. Just because you're gentoo installation runs 8% faster than my windows xp installation, doesn't mean you'll have anymore insight into how computers work for people.
No! Not wma! You're forever locked in! Any day now you'll get an error message saying your entire collection is lost. Or the horrid lossy compresion will degenerate to static noise. All I can say is hurry up and switch to Ogg Vorbis. Even if you have to buy another portable music player, it's worth not losing sleep over your music collection as I used to do before Ogg saved my life. And while you're at it, get rid of that windows crap and download linux.
Remember: choice, freedom, open source.
And if you disagree with me, you're contributing to the capitalist pigs profiting from something that should be given away for free that could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. I am an ogg user, and this is my manifesto.
Linux needs more than a room full of engineers reworking the code how they see fit. These large distro companies and other software companies that make programs to linux on the desktop need to find regular people who don't frequent slashdot 17 times a day to get some input and feedback.
If the average users can't figure out how the installer works, they the installer should be rewritten. What makes windows and mac so nice is that installation of good commercial software is generally pretty easy. Everytime I use RPMs I think to myself how few people consider software a package and understand how it is broken into data files and executables. People think of software of something they buy in a box. These specialized distros like Lindows are on the right path for average computer users because they see the importance of making the software intuitive.
Another thing linux needs is marketting. I'm not talking about the regular marketting that kills everything else. Just a little reworking of the names of software. I don't think I'd recommend linux to any regular computer user because I know soon after that I'd get a phone call asking me "what the hell does this mean?"
And to quell the responses, here is what those phone calls would entail: What the hell does "apt get" mean? What the hell is an "RPM." What does a kernel version mismatch mean? What is lib.so.... mean and how do I get it? How to I get to the "shell". How do I run a script? Why do I care about the "source"? And "I put the disc in and nothing happened."
Here's a bitter annoyance of mine. I type something in google and the first 30 responses are links to other fake search engines. They probably stay on top because everyone clicks on them thinking they are ligitimate hits.
This extends out of google though. Those damn web pages that exist for no reason drive me nuts. They should put a penny tax on these uneeded pages to stop these assholes that have a webpage that just says "Click here for Recipes"
I know they move by their surrounding air, I mean come on. Although, I see your point. I wonder if there has been experiments with turbines this powerfull? I think we're both taking our assumptions based on small fans that we can see and air we can feel, but the aerodynamics of something this large could be different. Maybe Myth Busters will do something like this in the future.
Here is something to consider though. If the air is moving fast high up off the ground and a bird is flying, it is most likely just gliding. It can still glide into the metal grate at a fast speed and the shock could knock it down to the ground where it would yet again die a painful death. I guess what I'm saying is that no matter what, any bird hitting an object at that speed will suffer pain so it probably can't be avoided.
A turbine at those speeds could catch a living bird and keep it stuck there for hours! I'd rather the bird be killed instantly and painlessly than have it stuck to the chicken wire until it dies.
I'm talking about downloading movies off the internet. CD burners were getting popular before napster. Napster just allowed people to make mixes of music copied off the internet and not from CDs. The point I thought was clearly made is that downloading movies is no where near as quick and easy as downloading music with the current technology and bandwidth constraints that most users would have to deal with. Of course you can copy DVDs easily, but I don't know of too many people who can/want to download a 4 gig dvd rip and burn it to a blank dvd.
This shouldn't be compared with the RIAA as much. Downloading mp3's and burning them to a cd gives you a product that is hardly distinguishable from the real deal. But comparing a divx movie to a DVD is like comparing a hyundai to a lexus. You can say they both get the job done but we all know that the lexus is going to do it better. Divx movies are pretty bad quality compared to a DVD. MP3's are just a few megs which can be downloaded in a minute over a reletively fast connection. It can take hours on a fast cable modem to download a movie. Storage is another consideration. If you download a movie that will fit on one cd it will look like shit. Or you can break it into two cds and you have to change it halfway through the movie. Either way, it's a hassel. The movie industry knows it does not face the same problems as the music industry because it's product can't be recreated as easily.
Now I have some movies on my hard drive and I only have them on there until I decide I want to cough up the $20 for a DVD. I have thousands of MP3s and I can hardly distinguish them from the cds I have sitting in a pile to my right. But in both cases, they're not shared on the internet.
Downloading movies off kazaa is certainly no fun. I'd be lucky if I can find the movie I want and if I set it up when I go to sleep and I'll have it in the morning. I've had good luck with bit torrent for downloading large files (not movies) so I'll have to try that later.
Anyway, computers have become high tech stereos, but they're not high tech televisions and they won't be for at least a few more years. The movie industry has a few years to figure out how to "handle" the internet.
It can withstand a nuclear blast, but what about an MS "blast"? And what if they catch the virus before microsoft decides it's time to put out an update. I guess they should just use linux which is resistant to kryptonite
So if I borrow a book on building bird feeders and accidentally nail my hand to my foot I can sue the librarian? God I love this country. But seriously, this would get so complicated for librarians that are having trouble accessing their books on their "digital card catalog." Librarians were probably English majors in college, not computer science. They'd lose it in this venture.
When I used to use a regular maginifying glass, I'd go nuts. Nothing was where I thought it should be. I kept getting "wacky" error messages. So I ditched the beige magnifying glass and bought and iMagnifying glass. My name is Paul Allen, and I'm an iMag user
This is a step in the right direction for computer users, I think. If Microsoft gets well thought out feedback from linux users they could then improve their product if they wished to. If they open up their source or at least document their software so that developers can make better programs for it, it would raise the standards. Face it, most people would rather use Windows over KDE or GNOME. Most people do not want to have to play around with their camera or scanner or printer to have to get it to work. Most people want to go to a store and buy software and have it work out of the box. Most people don't want 15 choices, they want something that works. The masses aren't going to switch to linux because it's free or open, they don't give a shit. If microsoft fixes some of the things that drives people to linux and then the people go back to windows, then the linux distros will have to work harder to get them back. All this is going to do is increase competition and make the end result, windows and/or linux better.
Craftsman Tools can not be held liable when people drive around town throwing hammers at innocent bystanders. The judge was quoted as saying "just because a tool can be used for something illegal, doesn't mean it encourages illegal activity and should be held liable for such activity."
Their customers wouldn't see it that way. They would want the portability and choice to play their music on other media players and digital music players. They would feel that their "walmart music" is in a proprietary format that WMP can't play. It's ironic, but this is how their customers would percieve the situation and ultimately what walmart must deal with.
"Think about the big picture. Demand MP3 and OGG files. This cannot be understated."
OGG? Then 99% of their customers will demand why they can not play the file they just paid 88 cents for. The record companies probably wouldn't let them distribute them in MP3 due to the lack of DRM that the record companies love.
Before everyone bitches about WMA, you have to realize the reality of the situation; most of their customers have WMP installed on their computer. Why would walmart give a shit about the small group of users who use ogg? If you want ogg's wait for a competitor to offer them, then buy exclusively from then, and put walmart out of the music business.
This lawsuit is crap. This is not like the browser wars where microsoft took on netscape and used it's power to crush them. Real player is just some bad proprietary format that people don't like. The audio was bad and the video was horrible. They never took off because no one distributed their formats because of choice. And I remember on old windows versions how microsoft included real player, but then since no one wants it anymore, no one cares that it's gone.
I'd like to see where they could come up with "billions of dollars of damages" on a free player. What, they were going to rake in billions from their expensive encoders and streaming software? Real's out because of divx, mpeg, and quicktime, not microsoft.
And how many times have people here gone through the task of removing the real player? I think of it as the original spyware, tough to kill. You couldn't pay me to put it on my computer.
You've basically summed up why a lot of good commercial software doesn't exists for linux. Photoshop anyone? This isn't meant to be a troll, but he makes the point that companies want to release closed source software without jumping through hurdles. However, this is not an attack on Linux, but more so on the distros for not agreeing on standards. Make standards, then compete. This is why people hate internet explorer so much, it broke away from standards and tried to make the www a microsoft application.
But I'm not trying to be negative, things are improving...
I mean I went there but there's no trusted computing logo. How can I trust software if it doesn't say I should. Linux will never be ready for the desktop until it's part of a trusted computing initiative.
Alright, now I'm confused. Everytime someone says something bad about open source software it's FUD. Now someone says OO.org is being adopted in some city I live nowhere near, and that's FUD because it might not be true. So basically everything I read about software could be FUD. CNET spreads FUD, and now apparently Newsforge spreads FUD. Life is getting too complicated and political...I need some FUDge. Shit, I might be spreading FUD! or even a weapon of mass FUD (WMFUD). And that could be Microsoft's next windows media file format! That's FUD too! I have to balance it out by preaching OGG Vorbis! But wait, then I make the assumption that no one uses and few media players support OGG. Wait, that could be FUD too. I guess my only solution is to filter all articles that contain the word FUD in them. Now I'm spreading FUD about FUD. FUDCK!
Slashdot Mirror
Twice huh? I'm glad I'm not the only one. At least they're replacement was fast and I keep all my data on an external firewire hard drive.
I love it. It's the year 2004. We have sucessfully landed another probe on mars, and we're all hunting around in our junk drawers for 50's style 3D glasses.
I just hope we don't find any life on mars with this mission or we'll all be looking for tin foil to wrap around our heads.
My best experience with linux is when I used knoppix a few months ago. My hard drive on my dell laptop crapped out again but I could still use my computer while the replacement was being shipped. I mean it wasn't perfect and I wouldn't want to use it full time, but it was a definate lifesaver that weekend.
I like the idea of a live cd where if I fucked anything up, a simple reboot would fix everything. This is how linux should be taught to new users who are afraid of trying new things but still have some strange desire to use linux.
good because we don't want you.
You forgot to mention we're the most productive though. and how many billions we give to other countries in aid. and freedom of speech isn't limited to what you like. And we have 300 years of history because 300 years ago we were all being kicked out of other countries that were a lot worse than us. How many people would die right now to come to your country and live with your laws?
All these posts about the "idiots who use windows 98 should be shot" or "they should all switch to linux so they can fix their own bugs" is stupid and it misses the point. People who use windows 98 have old computers. They would buy a nice shiny new computer but they don't have the money or desire. They could find a pirate copy of windows xp but their hardware couldn't handle it. Support for windows 98 has gone on a long time. I'd rather the time be put into longhorn development to make it more stable and secure than time put into patching windows 98.
And these people aren't going to switch to linux. Didn't you see that 1% piece of the pie? I found suse and mandrake to seem a lot slower than windows xp on my p4 1.8 so I don't think on older pentium 2 hardware anyone's going to enjoy the performance of kde over windows 98.
Yeah, a lot of people here spend a lot of their time on computers. They love to hunt out bugs and recompile their kernels. But a lot of people don't and it's very elitest to put them down for doing so. Just because you're gentoo installation runs 8% faster than my windows xp installation, doesn't mean you'll have anymore insight into how computers work for people.
No! Not wma! You're forever locked in! Any day now you'll get an error message saying your entire collection is lost. Or the horrid lossy compresion will degenerate to static noise. All I can say is hurry up and switch to Ogg Vorbis. Even if you have to buy another portable music player, it's worth not losing sleep over your music collection as I used to do before Ogg saved my life. And while you're at it, get rid of that windows crap and download linux.
Remember: choice, freedom, open source.
And if you disagree with me, you're contributing to the capitalist pigs profiting from something that should be given away for free that could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. I am an ogg user, and this is my manifesto.
Linux needs more than a room full of engineers reworking the code how they see fit. These large distro companies and other software companies that make programs to linux on the desktop need to find regular people who don't frequent slashdot 17 times a day to get some input and feedback.
If the average users can't figure out how the installer works, they the installer should be rewritten. What makes windows and mac so nice is that installation of good commercial software is generally pretty easy. Everytime I use RPMs I think to myself how few people consider software a package and understand how it is broken into data files and executables. People think of software of something they buy in a box. These specialized distros like Lindows are on the right path for average computer users because they see the importance of making the software intuitive.
Another thing linux needs is marketting. I'm not talking about the regular marketting that kills everything else. Just a little reworking of the names of software. I don't think I'd recommend linux to any regular computer user because I know soon after that I'd get a phone call asking me
"what the hell does this mean?"
And to quell the responses, here is what those phone calls would entail: What the hell does
"apt get" mean? What the hell is an "RPM." What does a kernel version mismatch mean? What is lib.so.... mean and how do I get it? How to I get to the "shell". How do I run a script? Why do I care about the "source"? And "I put the disc in and nothing happened."
Here's a bitter annoyance of mine. I type something in google and the first 30 responses are links to other fake search engines. They probably stay on top because everyone clicks on them thinking they are ligitimate hits.
This extends out of google though. Those damn web pages that exist for no reason drive me nuts. They should put a penny tax on these uneeded pages to stop these assholes that have a webpage that just says "Click here for Recipes"
I know they move by their surrounding air, I mean come on. Although, I see your point. I wonder if there has been experiments with turbines this powerfull? I think we're both taking our assumptions based on small fans that we can see and air we can feel, but the aerodynamics of something this large could be different. Maybe Myth Busters will do something like this in the future.
Here is something to consider though. If the air is moving fast high up off the ground and a bird is flying, it is most likely just gliding. It can still glide into the metal grate at a fast speed and the shock could knock it down to the ground where it would yet again die a painful death. I guess what I'm saying is that no matter what, any bird hitting an object at that speed will suffer pain so it probably can't be avoided.
A turbine at those speeds could catch a living bird and keep it stuck there for hours! I'd rather the bird be killed instantly and painlessly than have it stuck to the chicken wire until it dies.
I'm talking about downloading movies off the internet. CD burners were getting popular before napster. Napster just allowed people to make mixes of music copied off the internet and not from CDs. The point I thought was clearly made is that downloading movies is no where near as quick and easy as downloading music with the current technology and bandwidth constraints that most users would have to deal with. Of course you can copy DVDs easily, but I don't know of too many people who can/want to download a 4 gig dvd rip and burn it to a blank dvd.
This shouldn't be compared with the RIAA as much. Downloading mp3's and burning them to a cd gives you a product that is hardly distinguishable from the real deal. But comparing a divx movie to a DVD is like comparing a hyundai to a lexus. You can say they both get the job done but we all know that the lexus is going to do it better. Divx movies are pretty bad quality compared to a DVD. MP3's are just a few megs which can be downloaded in a minute over a reletively fast connection. It can take hours on a fast cable modem to download a movie. Storage is another consideration. If you download a movie that will fit on one cd it will look like shit. Or you can break it into two cds and you have to change it halfway through the movie. Either way, it's a hassel. The movie industry knows it does not face the same problems as the music industry because it's product can't be recreated as easily.
Now I have some movies on my hard drive and I only have them on there until I decide I want to cough up the $20 for a DVD. I have thousands of MP3s and I can hardly distinguish them from the cds I have sitting in a pile to my right. But in both cases, they're not shared on the internet.
Downloading movies off kazaa is certainly no fun. I'd be lucky if I can find the movie I want and if I set it up when I go to sleep and I'll have it in the morning. I've had good luck with bit torrent for downloading large files (not movies) so I'll have to try that later.
Anyway, computers have become high tech stereos, but they're not high tech televisions and they won't be for at least a few more years. The movie industry has a few years to figure out how to "handle" the internet.
It can withstand a nuclear blast, but what about an MS "blast"? And what if they catch the virus before microsoft decides it's time to put out an update. I guess they should just use linux which is resistant to kryptonite
So if I borrow a book on building bird feeders and accidentally nail my hand to my foot I can sue the librarian? God I love this country. But seriously, this would get so complicated for librarians that are having trouble accessing their books on their "digital card catalog." Librarians were probably English majors in college, not computer science. They'd lose it in this venture.
Think different!
When I used to use a regular maginifying glass, I'd go nuts. Nothing was where I thought it should be. I kept getting "wacky" error messages. So I ditched the beige magnifying glass and bought and iMagnifying glass. My name is Paul Allen, and I'm an iMag user
This is a step in the right direction for computer users, I think. If Microsoft gets well thought out feedback from linux users they could then improve their product if they wished to. If they open up their source or at least document their software so that developers can make better programs for it, it would raise the standards. Face it, most people would rather use Windows over KDE or GNOME. Most people do not want to have to play around with their camera or scanner or printer to have to get it to work. Most people want to go to a store and buy software and have it work out of the box. Most people don't want 15 choices, they want something that works. The masses aren't going to switch to linux because it's free or open, they don't give a shit. If microsoft fixes some of the things that drives people to linux and then the people go back to windows, then the linux distros will have to work harder to get them back. All this is going to do is increase competition and make the end result, windows and/or linux better.
Craftsman Tools can not be held liable when people drive around town throwing hammers at innocent bystanders. The judge was quoted as saying "just because a tool can be used for something illegal, doesn't mean it encourages illegal activity and should be held liable for such activity."
Their customers wouldn't see it that way. They would want the portability and choice to play their music on other media players and digital music players. They would feel that their "walmart music" is in a proprietary format that WMP can't play. It's ironic, but this is how their customers would percieve the situation and ultimately what walmart must deal with.
"Think about the big picture. Demand MP3 and OGG files. This cannot be understated."
OGG? Then 99% of their customers will demand why they can not play the file they just paid 88 cents for. The record companies probably wouldn't let them distribute them in MP3 due to the lack of DRM that the record companies love.
Before everyone bitches about WMA, you have to realize the reality of the situation; most of their customers have WMP installed on their computer. Why would walmart give a shit about the small group of users who use ogg? If you want ogg's wait for a competitor to offer them, then buy exclusively from then, and put walmart out of the music business.
when hell just froze over? Will microsoft actually have to acknowledge them? Thank them?
This lawsuit is crap. This is not like the browser wars where microsoft took on netscape and used it's power to crush them. Real player is just some bad proprietary format that people don't like. The audio was bad and the video was horrible. They never took off because no one distributed their formats because of choice. And I remember on old windows versions how microsoft included real player, but then since no one wants it anymore, no one cares that it's gone.
I'd like to see where they could come up with "billions of dollars of damages" on a free player. What, they were going to rake in billions from their expensive encoders and streaming software? Real's out because of divx, mpeg, and quicktime, not microsoft.
And how many times have people here gone through the task of removing the real player? I think of it as the original spyware, tough to kill. You couldn't pay me to put it on my computer.
You've basically summed up why a lot of good commercial software doesn't exists for linux. Photoshop anyone? This isn't meant to be a troll, but he makes the point that companies want to release closed source software without jumping through hurdles. However, this is not an attack on Linux, but more so on the distros for not agreeing on standards. Make standards, then compete. This is why people hate internet explorer so much, it broke away from standards and tried to make the www a microsoft application.
But I'm not trying to be negative, things are improving...
the biggest problem is when it hits 3.1. Everyone will think, "hey, I had windows 3.1 years ago"
I mean I went there but there's no trusted computing logo. How can I trust software if it doesn't say I should. Linux will never be ready for the desktop until it's part of a trusted computing initiative.
Alright, now I'm confused. Everytime someone says something bad about open source software it's FUD. Now someone says OO.org is being adopted in some city I live nowhere near, and that's FUD because it might not be true. So basically everything I read about software could be FUD. CNET spreads FUD, and now apparently Newsforge spreads FUD. Life is getting too complicated and political...I need some FUDge. Shit, I might be spreading FUD! or even a weapon of mass FUD (WMFUD). And that could be Microsoft's next windows media file format! That's FUD too! I have to balance it out by preaching OGG Vorbis! But wait, then I make the assumption that no one uses and few media players support OGG. Wait, that could be FUD too. I guess my only solution is to filter all articles that contain the word FUD in them. Now I'm spreading FUD about FUD. FUDCK!