"The only solution" - right. Windows can do all of that, and the hardware is much cheaper.
Standard hardware? There's only 1 or 2 Firewire chipsets out there (funnily enough, the same ones Macs use). Windows provides cross-hardware support (via DirectX drivers and DirectShow filters), so you don't have to worry about your graphics card, sound card or even codecs. The old "standard hardware" argument is years old now, and holds no water.
Premiere Pro on XP is just as good as any video editing software on any platform, period. Anyone who says else hasn't used it - it's that simple.
I'm not big into zeal - I'm just fed up of people banging out the same old rubbish about different OSs.
"System Restore" is a feature XP has, where you simply click a calendar to restore your PC to how it was on that day. It's fixed everything I've needed it to fix (dodgy ATI driver installs, crappy shareware, etc.) and can be used by any end user. It even knows when you're doing something that could screw your machine (ie unsigned drivers) and makes a restore point automatically.
It's not perfect, but it's as close as anyone's got to a self-fixing OS. I'm no microsoft zealot but Linux has to achieve that just to stay on par with windows' usability. If an end user is given a choice between an OS they're familiar with that can mostly fix itself, or an OS they hardly know which can dump them to a command prompt with no automated fixing tools, it's a pretty obvious outcome...
You've not used system restore on XP, have you? It gives you a calendar and asks you which point to restore to. It reverts the registry, drivers, device knowledge and critical files. You can screw your computer up big time (delete system files, rename system directories) and it'll fix it.
I'm not pro-microsoft (I use it, out of personal preference for my desktop, linux all the way for my servers), but I recognise this is one huge point that needs addressing. As we all know, it's easy-as-pie to write software. It's writing in resistance to failure that's hard.
I've mentioned this before, but I think I should again. The only way to beat their sort of organisation/barratry is by their own game. If P2P networks could include functionality to act as a proxy, it blows all ISP "evidence" and RIAA snooping out of the water. It provides a water-tight defense for anyone accused of downloading/sharing copyrighted content. All they have to do is demand RIAA prove the files downloaded "from" their box weren't downloaded via their box (which they obviously can't, as there's a million-and-one ways to get traffic into a machine). They can't punish people routing copyrighted material, otherwise AT&T would be getting their asses sued off RIAA for owning all those backbones, and the academic networks would be closed immediately. The beauty is, you don't even have to use the proxy - just having it present in the software raises serious doubts over any claims anyone can make over the true source/destination of any data on that network (as it could be going through 3 gazillion PCs, or just one).
They're using the law against us, why not use it to fight them? They're soon going to stop suing people if they know they can get their cases beaten in the courts.
I'm pretty sure this is the fastest way to beat them, or at least slow them down a bunch.
That's not entirely true... Lots of DSL operators use PPPoE to synthesize the more familiar "dial-up" experience for their users. Horrible. Anyway - they're not always-on services, so they could oversubscribe their IP range substantially.
This is no different from Windows. XP can be turned back to a bare-bones 2K box if you want, or it can be themed to the teeth. Longhorn is where the real desktop innovation is going to happen.
Shouldn't linux work on getting a 100%-hardware accelerated desktop first, though? Or a unified multimedia codec/filter system? Those are the sorts of things that matter to home users the most.
Do you really have any idea how many laptops pass through British airports every day? Thousands. They can't check the serials of every single laptop as they pass through. They don't care about laptops. The difference between laptop price and plane tickets means no-one's going to be smuggling them in that way. They'd waste more money trying to stop it then just letting it go on. I've taken my laptop (and lots of other expensive electronics) through customs loads of times, and I've never had any problem. Just make sure it looks worn, and you're fine.
Just take it out of the box and pretend you took it with you. They can't possibly charge you tax on something you took out and brought back in again... I've done this trick a few times, and it never fails. Just make sure you take it out of the box, and get rid of any cable ties or plastic bags (heck - just use it and throw away what you remove - you'll be sorted).
And when your wifey comes to update her software, or something breaks? That's where the real difference is. Getting an OS to be usable is one thing, but to get is user-resistant is another, which Linux hasn't addressed quite nearly enough. RPM anyone?
By the time this reaches the majority of users, your KDE will be a stripped down version of Windows and the Mac... you gotta remember that. Those companies have a foothold and millions to invest in the technology. Sun just have the cash. And, once it's out there, someone has to put it in a distro otherwise no-one'll use it. The barriers before this goes mainstream are immense, whereas for Windows and Mac, the barriers are pretty much non-existant.
Microsoft chose to include 2 themes with XP, allowing the user to select the one they want, or get their own. Your analogy is like going to get the car, and VW telling you it has to be green. Wouldn't you prefer to choose the colour of that Golf car yourlself? That's the real issue... not everyone's the same.
It's like saying a blank piece of canvas "looks shit" because it's blank. You make it what you want. Head on over to deviantart.com and check out their visual styles if you're not convinced. With the right style, it's the best looking OS out there (OSX included, seeing as it can graphically emulate it to near completion).
It's an interface, not an app. What would you use this "killer app" for, anyway? Opening up your not-quite-microsoft-office-compatible Office suite?
Nice idea, but a killer app has to be an application. This, at best, could be a killer interface. But, to be a real success, it has to have something to interface with, ie good software.
If Linux wants to get into more homes, the fragmentation needs to be reduced. Microsoft has a unified cohesive view of their operating system. In the OS world, it can vary completely between two colleagues, let alone communities. Until that's sorted, this is just expensive pissing in the wind.
We're talking about molecular physics here - speeds are very fast. As for degradation, as it's molecular, I seriously doubt that's going to be an issue. As they said, the molecules are stable, which is half the battle won:-P
Of course, I'm not anything even remotely like a molecular physicist.
Money can't be protected? Care to tell that to all the banks! And all the guys who write the laws specifically protecting money... Not the best argument I've ever heard starting a rebuttal, I must say:)
I think America is insular because it is surrounded by two politically insigificant neighbors and two oceans
Again, you're proving your point. I'ts not about geographical closeness, but political and financial. In those respects, the US is a member of the world and as such has an obligation to at least try to exist with everyone else.
The Al Qaida/Israel link is true - but that can be said for many people around the world (and not just Muslims - Christians, Jewish people, Hindus, Sikhs, whatever - anyone with a sense of decency). Before you start saying Islam is a violent religion, I must ask you - have you read the Koran? Obviously not from your reply.
Your next point is the most revealing:
This is part of almost every culture
No, it isn't. Most other countries are well aware that, like people, they're equal. No-one's self-righteousness or staunch beliefs make them better, or indeed worse, than anyone else. In my experience, it's only the USA that thinks like this.
When I talk about baseless patriotism, I'm talking about the quiet pride you can experience inside. I'm not talking about waving a flag or screaming a national anthem before a baseball game - I'm talking about true patriotism. The kind that's so strong you don't even have to mention it, let alone salute something 3 times a day to "prove". Patriotism in the US is not what it is elsewhere in the world, not by a long shot.
Saying the US has unbridled capitalism isn't necessarily a good thing. In the process, the needy are more needy than ever, and the gap between rich and poor is growing. If you care for your fellow man, you should be outraged at that. Also, saying the US has smart leaders (especially at this time) is pretty laughable. The very act of putting US troops on foreign soil lead directly to 9/11. Most of the US's military bases were effectively blackmailed from the US's allies during WWII in exchange for the weapons the US insisted on not using against the Germans & Japanese in the half of the war the US didn't take part in. Extortionate and immoral practices are common place in the American political world. Again, this boils down to the "We're American, so it's OK" mentality. There's a difference between a large military and a strong one. The US's is the former. Just because it's large doesn't mean it's any good. Take a look at Iraq - woefull lack of training has meant they're killing themselves and innocents at a startling rate. Hardly the action of a strong military.
Individual property rights are a good thing. Peoples inventions/creations/posessions should be protected. You seem to have caught the wrong end of your propaganda stick. What the left is against is rich people getting rich and not helping the less fortunate. It's easy to decide who's needy - the poverty line. Work out how much money a family needs to survive, and if they earn less than that, they're needy. It's a simply mathematical formula which has been employed by people for hundreds of years. People should be free to make as much money as they want, but in doing so, have to help the very society which helped them. That's not socialism or leftism but moral. You can't argue that.
America isn't "on top". American culture is crass, loud and ruled by the dollar. American culture will gladly rape another culture for its own ends. What pisses off normal, everyday people is Americans keep saying stupid stuff like "America is on top". On top of what, exactly? I guess Fox News didn't tell you that one...
America is a young country, founded by religious zealots. It's very insecure about its identity, and is quite frankly scared by the rest of the world (seeing as the rest of the world isn't mentioned in US news much - "scary dark place with monsters"). All of this has come together to create a self-serving, institutionally biassed country. Kinda like a 500lb kid with a skimmed knee. It's all "Me! Me! Me!"...
Keeping a domain for 100 years is a great idea. All it does is add to the value of the domain.
If you buy a domain for cheap, build up a decent web site (profitable would help), your 100-year lease on your domain becomes one hell of an asset.
Take the property market in the UK, for example. In London, most properties are "lease-holds", which means even though they're owned by private entities, when the lease-hold runs out (about 100 years), the property is given back to the Queen (so people can't just buy up all the expensive real-estate, and keep it). Most people use a long lease-hold as a selling point to buying their house. It guarantees you the house for as long as the lease-hold. It's the same with domains. You can't just look at the obvious financial aspects, but see how it pans out over time. A guarantee is sometimes worth more than the product itself.
www.microsoft.com isn't very useful if it's only yours for 2 minutes. A 100-year lease, however, would be worth billions.
I'm well aware of the geographical differences (I didn't go to school in the US:-P)
The RIAA, however, has long enjoyed using improper, emotive language when they can. Piracy and criminals are the two biggies. That was all I was referring to:)
"providing your original is the genuine article you're not a criminal"
Even if your original was copied from a mate, you'd still not be a criminal unless you were profiteering off the copying. Copyright infringement is a civil offense, not criminal in all but a handful of cases. As soon as people realise that copying music isn't a crime but an offense, they'll see that this whole thing has been pulled out of RIAA's ass and promptly blown out of all proportion to help their flagging bank balance.
Actually dude...
I hate to break it to ya... Lots of it is simply because America spawns lots of the worlds problems, and makes life worse for many people around the world. America's commercially-powered government and responsibilities means its true nature isn't one of protection of people, but protection of money. It all stems from that. America is insular because Americans want American money in America. Al Qaida are after the US because the US put its troops in Saudi Arabia to launch planes into Iraq (to protect its money in the area, during the first war), yet never took them out (Saudi Arabia having some of the holiest lands in the Islamic world, so having infidels wandering around scratching their nuts with M16s probably isn't the most respectful thing).
It's all come to the point where you get Americans seemingly under the impression America is "better" than other countries, and that everything America does is, by very definition, "good". The only thing America is better at than the rest of the world is impregnating incredibly baseless patriotism into its citizens, and gun crime. America isn't about freedom, liberty or justice - it's about stock, shareholders and dividends. I think that's what pisses most people off. It would be like if Jesus came back and decided to be a slave trader. Lots of promise, but no balls to carry it out.
I bet that American dream seems pretty silly now. Capitalism is great when the money's flowing in. As soon as it starts ebbing away, people are up in arms.
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Standard hardware? There's only 1 or 2 Firewire chipsets out there (funnily enough, the same ones Macs use). Windows provides cross-hardware support (via DirectX drivers and DirectShow filters), so you don't have to worry about your graphics card, sound card or even codecs. The old "standard hardware" argument is years old now, and holds no water.
Premiere Pro on XP is just as good as any video editing software on any platform, period. Anyone who says else hasn't used it - it's that simple.
I'm not big into zeal - I'm just fed up of people banging out the same old rubbish about different OSs.
It's not perfect, but it's as close as anyone's got to a self-fixing OS. I'm no microsoft zealot but Linux has to achieve that just to stay on par with windows' usability. If an end user is given a choice between an OS they're familiar with that can mostly fix itself, or an OS they hardly know which can dump them to a command prompt with no automated fixing tools, it's a pretty obvious outcome...
I'm not pro-microsoft (I use it, out of personal preference for my desktop, linux all the way for my servers), but I recognise this is one huge point that needs addressing. As we all know, it's easy-as-pie to write software. It's writing in resistance to failure that's hard.
They're using the law against us, why not use it to fight them? They're soon going to stop suing people if they know they can get their cases beaten in the courts.
I'm pretty sure this is the fastest way to beat them, or at least slow them down a bunch.
That's not entirely true... Lots of DSL operators use PPPoE to synthesize the more familiar "dial-up" experience for their users. Horrible. Anyway - they're not always-on services, so they could oversubscribe their IP range substantially.
Some people, really...
Shouldn't linux work on getting a 100%-hardware accelerated desktop first, though? Or a unified multimedia codec/filter system? Those are the sorts of things that matter to home users the most.
Do you really have any idea how many laptops pass through British airports every day? Thousands. They can't check the serials of every single laptop as they pass through. They don't care about laptops. The difference between laptop price and plane tickets means no-one's going to be smuggling them in that way. They'd waste more money trying to stop it then just letting it go on. I've taken my laptop (and lots of other expensive electronics) through customs loads of times, and I've never had any problem. Just make sure it looks worn, and you're fine.
Just take it out of the box and pretend you took it with you. They can't possibly charge you tax on something you took out and brought back in again... I've done this trick a few times, and it never fails. Just make sure you take it out of the box, and get rid of any cable ties or plastic bags (heck - just use it and throw away what you remove - you'll be sorted).
And when your wifey comes to update her software, or something breaks? That's where the real difference is. Getting an OS to be usable is one thing, but to get is user-resistant is another, which Linux hasn't addressed quite nearly enough. RPM anyone?
By the time this reaches the majority of users, your KDE will be a stripped down version of Windows and the Mac... you gotta remember that. Those companies have a foothold and millions to invest in the technology. Sun just have the cash. And, once it's out there, someone has to put it in a distro otherwise no-one'll use it. The barriers before this goes mainstream are immense, whereas for Windows and Mac, the barriers are pretty much non-existant.
You should check out our server room.
Microsoft chose to include 2 themes with XP, allowing the user to select the one they want, or get their own. Your analogy is like going to get the car, and VW telling you it has to be green. Wouldn't you prefer to choose the colour of that Golf car yourlself? That's the real issue... not everyone's the same.
It's like saying a blank piece of canvas "looks shit" because it's blank. You make it what you want. Head on over to deviantart.com and check out their visual styles if you're not convinced. With the right style, it's the best looking OS out there (OSX included, seeing as it can graphically emulate it to near completion).
Nice idea, but a killer app has to be an application. This, at best, could be a killer interface. But, to be a real success, it has to have something to interface with, ie good software.
If Linux wants to get into more homes, the fragmentation needs to be reduced. Microsoft has a unified cohesive view of their operating system. In the OS world, it can vary completely between two colleagues, let alone communities. Until that's sorted, this is just expensive pissing in the wind.
I'm talking about London... it's nearly allll owned by the Crown of some sort :)
Of course if you'd read the article, you'd know the main bit was about using molecules to store data, not integrating it all together...
Of course, I'm not anything even remotely like a molecular physicist.
I think America is insular because it is surrounded by two politically insigificant neighbors and two oceans
Again, you're proving your point. I'ts not about geographical closeness, but political and financial. In those respects, the US is a member of the world and as such has an obligation to at least try to exist with everyone else.
The Al Qaida/Israel link is true - but that can be said for many people around the world (and not just Muslims - Christians, Jewish people, Hindus, Sikhs, whatever - anyone with a sense of decency). Before you start saying Islam is a violent religion, I must ask you - have you read the Koran? Obviously not from your reply.
Your next point is the most revealing:
This is part of almost every culture
No, it isn't. Most other countries are well aware that, like people, they're equal. No-one's self-righteousness or staunch beliefs make them better, or indeed worse, than anyone else. In my experience, it's only the USA that thinks like this.
When I talk about baseless patriotism, I'm talking about the quiet pride you can experience inside. I'm not talking about waving a flag or screaming a national anthem before a baseball game - I'm talking about true patriotism. The kind that's so strong you don't even have to mention it, let alone salute something 3 times a day to "prove". Patriotism in the US is not what it is elsewhere in the world, not by a long shot.
Saying the US has unbridled capitalism isn't necessarily a good thing. In the process, the needy are more needy than ever, and the gap between rich and poor is growing. If you care for your fellow man, you should be outraged at that. Also, saying the US has smart leaders (especially at this time) is pretty laughable. The very act of putting US troops on foreign soil lead directly to 9/11. Most of the US's military bases were effectively blackmailed from the US's allies during WWII in exchange for the weapons the US insisted on not using against the Germans & Japanese in the half of the war the US didn't take part in. Extortionate and immoral practices are common place in the American political world. Again, this boils down to the "We're American, so it's OK" mentality. There's a difference between a large military and a strong one. The US's is the former. Just because it's large doesn't mean it's any good. Take a look at Iraq - woefull lack of training has meant they're killing themselves and innocents at a startling rate. Hardly the action of a strong military.
Individual property rights are a good thing. Peoples inventions/creations/posessions should be protected. You seem to have caught the wrong end of your propaganda stick. What the left is against is rich people getting rich and not helping the less fortunate. It's easy to decide who's needy - the poverty line. Work out how much money a family needs to survive, and if they earn less than that, they're needy. It's a simply mathematical formula which has been employed by people for hundreds of years. People should be free to make as much money as they want, but in doing so, have to help the very society which helped them. That's not socialism or leftism but moral. You can't argue that.
America isn't "on top". American culture is crass, loud and ruled by the dollar. American culture will gladly rape another culture for its own ends. What pisses off normal, everyday people is Americans keep saying stupid stuff like "America is on top". On top of what, exactly? I guess Fox News didn't tell you that one...
America is a young country, founded by religious zealots. It's very insecure about its identity, and is quite frankly scared by the rest of the world (seeing as the rest of the world isn't mentioned in US news much - "scary dark place with monsters"). All of this has come together to create a self-serving, institutionally biassed country. Kinda like a 500lb kid with a skimmed knee. It's all "Me! Me! Me!"...
Argument by analogy? Too much for you? Cheers! :)
If you buy a domain for cheap, build up a decent web site (profitable would help), your 100-year lease on your domain becomes one hell of an asset.
Take the property market in the UK, for example. In London, most properties are "lease-holds", which means even though they're owned by private entities, when the lease-hold runs out (about 100 years), the property is given back to the Queen (so people can't just buy up all the expensive real-estate, and keep it). Most people use a long lease-hold as a selling point to buying their house. It guarantees you the house for as long as the lease-hold. It's the same with domains. You can't just look at the obvious financial aspects, but see how it pans out over time. A guarantee is sometimes worth more than the product itself.
www.microsoft.com isn't very useful if it's only yours for 2 minutes. A 100-year lease, however, would be worth billions.
The RIAA, however, has long enjoyed using improper, emotive language when they can. Piracy and criminals are the two biggies. That was all I was referring to :)
Even if your original was copied from a mate, you'd still not be a criminal unless you were profiteering off the copying. Copyright infringement is a civil offense, not criminal in all but a handful of cases. As soon as people realise that copying music isn't a crime but an offense, they'll see that this whole thing has been pulled out of RIAA's ass and promptly blown out of all proportion to help their flagging bank balance.
It's all come to the point where you get Americans seemingly under the impression America is "better" than other countries, and that everything America does is, by very definition, "good". The only thing America is better at than the rest of the world is impregnating incredibly baseless patriotism into its citizens, and gun crime. America isn't about freedom, liberty or justice - it's about stock, shareholders and dividends. I think that's what pisses most people off. It would be like if Jesus came back and decided to be a slave trader. Lots of promise, but no balls to carry it out.
And there have been no crappy US games, I take it... Oh wait...
It seems you can't have your cake and eat it...