The cost of the operating system on your hardware is an effect that should be minizimed.
I disagree, because you have to take the feature set into account, and subject it to a cost/benefit analysis. You might think that XP is a better OS than Vista, because it's not bloated by the Aero interface. Fair enough. But someone using DOS might say that DOS is a better OS than XP, because it isn't bloated by a graphical interface at all. Most people these days would disagree, and say that the benefit of having a GUI outweighs the cost in processing power.
The problem is that while 'cost' can be enumerated in terms of system load, 'benefit' is in the eye of the beholder. It will always be a value statement. So Microsoft might think that the Aero interface justifies the cost. A lot of Slashdotters think otherwise. It's for this reason that alternative operating systems exist.
Wow, lucky you. I remember some of my university maths lectures where a problem used front and back of both boards, then went back to the first side of the first board and erased the start of the problem to make more room. There were silent screams every time the board was rolled or when the duster was brought out, from the people that saw what they were still copying out disappear from view.
It was all but impossible to copy everything out, because of the speed it was written on the board, the delay between things being written and the lecturer getting out of the way (different depending on what side of the lecture theatre you were sitting on), and because you were actually trying to understand it at the same time as writing it down. Not getting it down meant you had no notes. We almost prayed for the lecturer to be over-zealous and break the chalk while writing which, apart from being funny, gave you a little break, and meant that the lecturer would slow down a bit because the size of the chalk was now less than optimal for fast writing.
Equipment for photographing the blackboard would have been nice, as we would have been able to take in what we were copying down, but there's the inevitable problem that if you know the notes are available online, there's the temptation not to turn up to the lecture.
Proponents of the GPL defend their license for enforcing that their code can always be shared.
Well yes, this is true, but I don't think that's what the differentiating factor between the GPL and BSD licences is. Both licences ensure that code licensed under them can always be shared. The GPL enforces that derivatives of their code can always be shared, and the BSD licence does not.
The whole point of the BSD licence is to assert your own copyright over your own code, while assuring that it can be shared, and recognising that the author has no rights over others' code, even when that code is a derivative. Any whinging over the fact that derivative code can't be shared back misses the whole point of the BSD licence when compared with the GPL.
English, Welsh and Northern Irish I think. I'm unsure in what way education is devolved to the Welsh and NI Assemblies, but the article talks about GCSEs without any other qualification.
I've only ever experienced the Scottish education system, but my impression of the rest of the UK's system is that they seem to have many more crazy, controversial 'initiatives', and their concentration on core subjects is less than it is north of the border. Mind you, that impression might be formed by the under-reporting of Scottish issues on the 'national' news.
I'm hesitant to offer unqualified defence of the Scottish system, primarily because I was caught up in the Higher Still fiasco in 5th year.
What features are you looking for in a real office suite, out of interest? I'm one of those people that's only vaguely aware of what MS Office/OpenOffice can do.
Well, targeting a niche in the market is a tried and tested business strategy. Especially if you target a niche that is easily parted from their cash, as Apple have managed;)
I've downloaded the trial as well, and I'm considering buying it as an upgrade to iWork 05 which I have at the moment. Pages seems to have improved drastically in terms of usability since then, and with Numbers I now have no real reason to open NeoOffice at all.
I think all the iWork/OpenOffice/LaTeX arguments (and occasional fanboyism) are a bit beside the point, because they're all going after different markets. iWork is perfectly acceptable for writing documentation for internal company use, which is what I'm using it for at the moment. I find the control over page layout that I have quite useful, as it helps with readability. If I ever wanted to do a mail merge, or some collaborative work, I'd use MS Office or OpenOffice, depending on my audience. If I was writing a major report, I'd use LaTeX.
A few people have mentioned that Pages doesn't cut it as a word processor. But why would Apple write a MS Word clone? MS Office and Open/NeoOffice are already available for OS X. What they've done is write something for those people that think MS Word and OO.o Writer are overkill. An alternative rather than a clone.
It's a problem with the media as a whole, I'd say. To be honest, I'd be shocked if he received anything more than a slap on the wrist for this. The Computer Misuse Act allows a prison term of up to six months plus a fine, but that would be intended for more serious cases than this.
The article even mentions that a similar case led to the police giving a caution. I'd hope that that's what happens here.
Ah, yes. *reads TFA again*. As he admitted that he was not authorised to access the wireless network then he could be prosecuted under the Computer Misuse Act.
If he had claimed that he did not know that the connection was unauthorised (an easy claim to make with regards to an unprotected network), then the Communications Act could be used to prosecute him if he used it to gain access to the internet.
I'm assuming that section 125 of the Communications Act is the relevant section... somebody else further up the page posted it.
Whether or not you are avoiding a charge seems to be the important point, and makes the difference between connecting to, say, an anonymous FTP server on the internet (where there is no charge), and the internet via a home wireless network (where there is a charge for the broadband connection being avoided).
The crime should be correctly defined as "stealing broadband access," and stealing requires both knowledge of wrong-doing and an intent to deprive the victim at a bare minimum.
QFT. The article states that "To do so potentially breaches the Computer Misuse Act and the Communications Act". I can't speak for the Communications Act, but the very first item of the Computer Misuse Act states that:
A person is guilty of an offence if--
he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer;
the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and
he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case
Emphasis mine. So unless he knew that his access to the wireless network was unauthorised, the Computer Misuse Act doesn't apply. From the detail in the article, we don't know if he knew or not.
The question of stealing broadband access is a different one. The Computer Misuse Act doesn't make any reference to resources used, i.e. broadband download limits. There may be a case to answer here under the terms of the Communications Act, I don't know.
While the price of Windows is set by a single entity, the price that the consumer pays is not necessarily uniform. You'll pay a lot for a retail copy. You'll pay less for an OEM copy from Dabs, bought with hardware. You'll pay even less when you buy it as part of a package from Dell. Given that most consumer* copies of Windows are in the latter category, you have to take into account the fact that system builders are free to charge whatever they want for those copies, and may either subsidise them, pass the cost on to the consumer or even make a little profit on them, depending on the pricing of their package as a whole. So to say that the market for Windows operating systems is uncompetitive isn't strictly true.
*ignoring business purchases, not really the iPlayer target market.
Devil's Advocate: So, you don't consider buying the computer hardware you need to view the content additional fees? I certainly do.
Having said that (and as a Mac user), I'm disappointed that a Mac version of the iPlayer seems to be a higher priority for the BBC than a Linux version. People are complaining that the BBC are releasing the iPlayer for a proprietary platform, and they're turning round and saying, "Actually, we really want to release it for two proprietary platforms!"
Because the problem with my Devil's Advocate statement there is that, while lots of companies make computing hardware, only one makes Windows. Similarly, what we really want is a version for a non-proprietary, (practically) free-as-in-beer platform, i.e. Linux, that in theory anybody can download and install.
The problem here is: IMHO (and RMS's opinion) non-free software is unethical, because it's basically a scam: making software is a service with value; making copies of software is of (marginally) zero value.
You're confusing value and cost. The cost of making copies of software is (marginally) zero. The value of a copy is dictated by the market. If the value of software was (marginally) zero, then nobody would pay money for software.
So essentially what you're saying is that you think it's unethical to sell a product above cost, i.e. make a profit. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that point, but I think you're being incredibly unrealistic.
I don't know what the operating costs are now, but given enough investment in renewable energy generation, they should come down as more facilities become available to manufacture hydrogen cleanly. Compare that with oil prices - unless vast new reserves are discovered, these are only going to go up. At some point those two lines on the graph will cross, and car manufacturers have to make sure that they have products available to take advantage of the new-found demand.
Big deal. I can crash Safari 2.0.4 in two clicks. Enable Slashdot's new discussion system and click on a 'Reply to This' link. Press the Back button. Crash.
Yeah. I have a Macbook pro, almost a $3000 computer; and the keyboard is terrible.
If it's anything like the PowerBook keyboards (identical I suspect), then I agree, it's a really awful keyboard. I don't particularly care about travel (my favourite keyboard is the Logitech DiNovo), but the keys don't have that 'clicky' feel. And the right shift key is absolutely awful. You have to press it either dead centre, or really hard, for it to register.
This is compounded by the OS's taking over all the function keys. For a *nix-based OS, this is a pretty inconvenient and poorly thought-out choice.
Actually there's an up-side to this. When using X11 apps like OpenOffice and Gimp, the apps retain their Unix keystrokes (generally using Ctrl and Alt) while the X11 container app can use standard Mac keystrokes (predominantly using the Swedish campsite key). For example, Ctrl-Q to quit Gimp, and SwedishCampsite-Q to quit the container.
I have not seen a Linux bistro for sale in a store for 3+ years.
I'm not surprised. Cybercafés are so 1990s.
Seriously though... the Scottish uni that I went to had a few labs with Linux and Solaris, but in the Computing Science department only. The CSD also had a Windows lab or two, for.NET stuff. In the rest of the uni, all the lab computers used Windows, although to be fair their servers all used Solaris. I don't think they'd dream of using Windows servers.
Fortunately I'm out of uni, into the workforce, and my boss is amenable to using Linux where practical (which may be more through his hatred of Vista than anything else...)
I don't have a mobile phone or an iPod or anything.
I am such a Luddite when it comes to making music. All I can do is write at the piano.
And there's the problem. He's stuck in his ways, and the internet is a threat to those ways. Lets be clear - the internet is helping new artists make music and distribute it (for free and for money) without requiring a restrictive contract with a record company.
Consider The Boy Lacks Patience. He's an amazing performer, and he is all the things that you said Elton John is. Yet, despite that I lived in the same city as him for about five years, I would never have heard of him if it wasn't for the internet.
Much as I would like to believe that it's a lack of demand for Acer computers rather than Linux, I suspect it has more to do with the fact that buying it with Windows pre-installed basically amounts to getting a virtually free copy of Windows, which as a monopoly OS is always nice to have. Linux, on the other hand, is almost universally a free-as-in-beer download.
Better to buy a computer with Windows and then decide you want Linux, than buy a computer with Linux and decide that you need Windows.
I remember minidisc players having a moderate amount of success a few years back, because they were aimed at the right market. By targeting the personal stereo market, their advantages were played up (smaller than CDs, durable) and their disadvantages were played down (who really cares about sound quality when you're listening through earbuds?). The digital optical recording aspect was of its time, allowing near-perfect copies of CDs straight from the stereo, at a time when requiring a PC was still unacceptable. And they were luggable, when HDD players still hadn't taken off and flash memory was still expensive.
I really wish they'd made more car stereos with built-in minidisc players. This would've been an excellent market to tap. I can't count how many CD-Rs I've lost due to scratches picked up in my car. And having an MP3 player sitting in the front of the car somewhere is still comparatively awkward to having full control through your stereo (some iPod-compatible stereos notwithstanding).
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree, because you have to take the feature set into account, and subject it to a cost/benefit analysis. You might think that XP is a better OS than Vista, because it's not bloated by the Aero interface. Fair enough. But someone using DOS might say that DOS is a better OS than XP, because it isn't bloated by a graphical interface at all. Most people these days would disagree, and say that the benefit of having a GUI outweighs the cost in processing power.
The problem is that while 'cost' can be enumerated in terms of system load, 'benefit' is in the eye of the beholder. It will always be a value statement. So Microsoft might think that the Aero interface justifies the cost. A lot of Slashdotters think otherwise. It's for this reason that alternative operating systems exist.
Wow, lucky you. I remember some of my university maths lectures where a problem used front and back of both boards, then went back to the first side of the first board and erased the start of the problem to make more room. There were silent screams every time the board was rolled or when the duster was brought out, from the people that saw what they were still copying out disappear from view.
It was all but impossible to copy everything out, because of the speed it was written on the board, the delay between things being written and the lecturer getting out of the way (different depending on what side of the lecture theatre you were sitting on), and because you were actually trying to understand it at the same time as writing it down. Not getting it down meant you had no notes. We almost prayed for the lecturer to be over-zealous and break the chalk while writing which, apart from being funny, gave you a little break, and meant that the lecturer would slow down a bit because the size of the chalk was now less than optimal for fast writing.
Equipment for photographing the blackboard would have been nice, as we would have been able to take in what we were copying down, but there's the inevitable problem that if you know the notes are available online, there's the temptation not to turn up to the lecture.
Well yes, this is true, but I don't think that's what the differentiating factor between the GPL and BSD licences is. Both licences ensure that code licensed under them can always be shared. The GPL enforces that derivatives of their code can always be shared, and the BSD licence does not.
The whole point of the BSD licence is to assert your own copyright over your own code, while assuring that it can be shared, and recognising that the author has no rights over others' code, even when that code is a derivative. Any whinging over the fact that derivative code can't be shared back misses the whole point of the BSD licence when compared with the GPL.
English, Welsh and Northern Irish I think. I'm unsure in what way education is devolved to the Welsh and NI Assemblies, but the article talks about GCSEs without any other qualification.
I've only ever experienced the Scottish education system, but my impression of the rest of the UK's system is that they seem to have many more crazy, controversial 'initiatives', and their concentration on core subjects is less than it is north of the border. Mind you, that impression might be formed by the under-reporting of Scottish issues on the 'national' news.
I'm hesitant to offer unqualified defence of the Scottish system, primarily because I was caught up in the Higher Still fiasco in 5th year.
What features are you looking for in a real office suite, out of interest? I'm one of those people that's only vaguely aware of what MS Office/OpenOffice can do.
Well, targeting a niche in the market is a tried and tested business strategy. Especially if you target a niche that is easily parted from their cash, as Apple have managed ;)
I've downloaded the trial as well, and I'm considering buying it as an upgrade to iWork 05 which I have at the moment. Pages seems to have improved drastically in terms of usability since then, and with Numbers I now have no real reason to open NeoOffice at all.
I think all the iWork/OpenOffice/LaTeX arguments (and occasional fanboyism) are a bit beside the point, because they're all going after different markets. iWork is perfectly acceptable for writing documentation for internal company use, which is what I'm using it for at the moment. I find the control over page layout that I have quite useful, as it helps with readability. If I ever wanted to do a mail merge, or some collaborative work, I'd use MS Office or OpenOffice, depending on my audience. If I was writing a major report, I'd use LaTeX.
A few people have mentioned that Pages doesn't cut it as a word processor. But why would Apple write a MS Word clone? MS Office and Open/NeoOffice are already available for OS X. What they've done is write something for those people that think MS Word and OO.o Writer are overkill. An alternative rather than a clone.
It's a problem with the media as a whole, I'd say. To be honest, I'd be shocked if he received anything more than a slap on the wrist for this. The Computer Misuse Act allows a prison term of up to six months plus a fine, but that would be intended for more serious cases than this.
The article even mentions that a similar case led to the police giving a caution. I'd hope that that's what happens here.
Ah, yes. *reads TFA again*. As he admitted that he was not authorised to access the wireless network then he could be prosecuted under the Computer Misuse Act.
If he had claimed that he did not know that the connection was unauthorised (an easy claim to make with regards to an unprotected network), then the Communications Act could be used to prosecute him if he used it to gain access to the internet.
I'm assuming that section 125 of the Communications Act is the relevant section... somebody else further up the page posted it.
Whether or not you are avoiding a charge seems to be the important point, and makes the difference between connecting to, say, an anonymous FTP server on the internet (where there is no charge), and the internet via a home wireless network (where there is a charge for the broadband connection being avoided).
QFT. The article states that "To do so potentially breaches the Computer Misuse Act and the Communications Act". I can't speak for the Communications Act, but the very first item of the Computer Misuse Act states that:
Emphasis mine. So unless he knew that his access to the wireless network was unauthorised, the Computer Misuse Act doesn't apply. From the detail in the article, we don't know if he knew or not.
The question of stealing broadband access is a different one. The Computer Misuse Act doesn't make any reference to resources used, i.e. broadband download limits. There may be a case to answer here under the terms of the Communications Act, I don't know.
Having thought about this a bit more...
While the price of Windows is set by a single entity, the price that the consumer pays is not necessarily uniform. You'll pay a lot for a retail copy. You'll pay less for an OEM copy from Dabs, bought with hardware. You'll pay even less when you buy it as part of a package from Dell. Given that most consumer* copies of Windows are in the latter category, you have to take into account the fact that system builders are free to charge whatever they want for those copies, and may either subsidise them, pass the cost on to the consumer or even make a little profit on them, depending on the pricing of their package as a whole. So to say that the market for Windows operating systems is uncompetitive isn't strictly true.
*ignoring business purchases, not really the iPlayer target market.
Devil's Advocate: So, you don't consider buying the computer hardware you need to view the content additional fees? I certainly do.
Having said that (and as a Mac user), I'm disappointed that a Mac version of the iPlayer seems to be a higher priority for the BBC than a Linux version. People are complaining that the BBC are releasing the iPlayer for a proprietary platform, and they're turning round and saying, "Actually, we really want to release it for two proprietary platforms!"
Because the problem with my Devil's Advocate statement there is that, while lots of companies make computing hardware, only one makes Windows. Similarly, what we really want is a version for a non-proprietary, (practically) free-as-in-beer platform, i.e. Linux, that in theory anybody can download and install.
You're confusing value and cost. The cost of making copies of software is (marginally) zero. The value of a copy is dictated by the market. If the value of software was (marginally) zero, then nobody would pay money for software.
So essentially what you're saying is that you think it's unethical to sell a product above cost, i.e. make a profit. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that point, but I think you're being incredibly unrealistic.
Well then, don't buy American cars.
First, BMW are German. Second, they're obviously already spending money on R&D. That's what the article's about.
I don't know what the operating costs are now, but given enough investment in renewable energy generation, they should come down as more facilities become available to manufacture hydrogen cleanly. Compare that with oil prices - unless vast new reserves are discovered, these are only going to go up. At some point those two lines on the graph will cross, and car manufacturers have to make sure that they have products available to take advantage of the new-found demand.
By all accounts, BMW will be ready.
I read "two litre stock market". I read on for a bit before thinking, "that's not right...."
Big deal. I can crash Safari 2.0.4 in two clicks. Enable Slashdot's new discussion system and click on a 'Reply to This' link. Press the Back button. Crash.
If it's anything like the PowerBook keyboards (identical I suspect), then I agree, it's a really awful keyboard. I don't particularly care about travel (my favourite keyboard is the Logitech DiNovo), but the keys don't have that 'clicky' feel. And the right shift key is absolutely awful. You have to press it either dead centre, or really hard, for it to register.
Actually there's an up-side to this. When using X11 apps like OpenOffice and Gimp, the apps retain their Unix keystrokes (generally using Ctrl and Alt) while the X11 container app can use standard Mac keystrokes (predominantly using the Swedish campsite key). For example, Ctrl-Q to quit Gimp, and SwedishCampsite-Q to quit the container.
The armed forces aren't being used to round up dissenters yet.
That SUV you bought last month hasn't been used to ram an airport yet.
You haven't shot the president with that gun yet.
Good thing we have presumption of innocence.
Here? A £60 fine and 3 points on their licence.
I'm not surprised. Cybercafés are so 1990s.
Seriously though... the Scottish uni that I went to had a few labs with Linux and Solaris, but in the Computing Science department only. The CSD also had a Windows lab or two, for .NET stuff. In the rest of the uni, all the lab computers used Windows, although to be fair their servers all used Solaris. I don't think they'd dream of using Windows servers.
Fortunately I'm out of uni, into the workforce, and my boss is amenable to using Linux where practical (which may be more through his hatred of Vista than anything else...)
FTFA:
And there's the problem. He's stuck in his ways, and the internet is a threat to those ways. Lets be clear - the internet is helping new artists make music and distribute it (for free and for money) without requiring a restrictive contract with a record company.
Consider The Boy Lacks Patience. He's an amazing performer, and he is all the things that you said Elton John is. Yet, despite that I lived in the same city as him for about five years, I would never have heard of him if it wasn't for the internet.
Much as I would like to believe that it's a lack of demand for Acer computers rather than Linux, I suspect it has more to do with the fact that buying it with Windows pre-installed basically amounts to getting a virtually free copy of Windows, which as a monopoly OS is always nice to have. Linux, on the other hand, is almost universally a free-as-in-beer download.
Better to buy a computer with Windows and then decide you want Linux, than buy a computer with Linux and decide that you need Windows.
I remember minidisc players having a moderate amount of success a few years back, because they were aimed at the right market. By targeting the personal stereo market, their advantages were played up (smaller than CDs, durable) and their disadvantages were played down (who really cares about sound quality when you're listening through earbuds?). The digital optical recording aspect was of its time, allowing near-perfect copies of CDs straight from the stereo, at a time when requiring a PC was still unacceptable. And they were luggable, when HDD players still hadn't taken off and flash memory was still expensive.
I really wish they'd made more car stereos with built-in minidisc players. This would've been an excellent market to tap. I can't count how many CD-Rs I've lost due to scratches picked up in my car. And having an MP3 player sitting in the front of the car somewhere is still comparatively awkward to having full control through your stereo (some iPod-compatible stereos notwithstanding).