If copyrights don't expire, you probably couldn't even make a table - there'd be copyrights on screws, on table legs and anything else you may want to make. For copyright to work for the next generation, it's important that the copyright of this generation expire. By endlessly extending copyright, you're doing a great disservice to future generations.
So you continue to use Windows. We're talking about the 90% of users who just want to browse, chat and maybe write a document or two. For them there is are viable alternatives.
Now if they would just wake up and start using these alternatives (yeah, I know... it ain't happening anytime soon).
I think the article and a lot of the posts can be summarized as basically saying "Waaah!!! It's different, bring things back the way they were!!! I can't handle change!".
If you really don't like shiny new things, you shouldn't have upgraded to Fx2.0 the day it was releasd. Wait a couple of weeks, or better still wait until they release 2.0.0.1 or whatever and then upgrade.
What you do need to remember is that in some countries, staying back and trying to fix the system in an easy way to land up in jail or even dead. Be thankful that you live in America or any other civilized country - you could have been living in much worse places.
The fact is that you only "start" up a browser once - after that what is of interest is the time it takes to actually render a page and the time it takes to view pages in your recent history. In both those categories, IMHO, both Opera and Firefox are faster than IE.
Where are my mod points when I need them? The parent poster is absolutely correct. If the Indian tax department goes ahead with this tax, it will stifle the fledgling broadband industry (and in turn IT industry).
However I'm pretty sure this rule was created by some over-zealous bureaucrat and it will eventually get removed. Unfortunately bureaucrats in India (and elsewhere) tend to pretty stupid.
True, but I really can't think of how to easily fix this without taking up too much real estate - some web pages have javascript from 4 or more sites. Maybe some way to distinguish between the primary site's javascript and other javascripts might be a good idea.
I.e., they need three states, not two. The 'untrusted', 'trusted', and...um...'distrusted'.
The noscript icon in the status bar does show three states - javscript enabled, disabled and partly enabled. I got rid of the popup bar (it's annoying) and just made it a habit to look at the status bar every so often. It's a good habit in any case, since even the "lock" icon for secure sites is displayed there. Plus the slashdotter extension's notification if I have mod points also appears there.
IF (and its a still a big if) Microsoft are actually against software patents, there are many ways that they can work to weaken software patents. I'm not sure I see that happening. Same is true of IBM, Sun and other big corporations. They all want to have their cake and eat it too, but this is not sustainable not work in the long run.
The stream of vultures with no products but a patent portfolio and a bunch of lawyers will only continue to increase as long as it is seen as a profitable business. In other words, as long as having software patents is profitable and as long as the PTO keeps granting silly patents, we're stuck with the current situation (and it may actually get worse).
Continuing the offtopic discussion, but Gandhi's protests did not cause mass riots. They caused mass protests (although there were the occassional riots) but most of the protests were peaceful. He was able to mobilize the ordinary people, people like you and me who would normally hesitate to take on the authorities, and he did this by sheer force of personality.
I agree that in the end Gandhi only succeeded because it became too expensive for the British to remain in India, especially after WWII. That was the beauty of Gandhi's solution - to cause massive economic disruptions by peaceful means.
Unfortunately it doesn't always work (see Tibet) but neither does "terrorism/fredom fighting/whatever".
P.S. 2006 is the centenary of Gandhi's first use of "satyagraha".
The GP talked about how Opera has less "known" problems. That does not mean that problems do not exist - just that with a closed source browser, we can't be sure.
Also of importance is the fact that Firefox souce code was recently scanned for bugs by Coverity and other static code analyzers. That would increase the number of known vulnerabilities, but would also make Firefox more secure in the long run.
Personally, I can't see myself using any closed source software to do something as potentially risky as web browsing. It doesn't matter if it's Firefox or Epiphany or Konqueror, if the source code is open to review, I feel more comfortable using it. Of course, out of these three, Firefox is the one that has so far been subjected to the most scrutiny.
Games are not art. Games and art serve two different cultural purposes. Art is about self-expression and developing critical thinking skills. Games are about following rules and dominating others.
There are many pieces of "art" that are not about developing critical thinking. On the other hand, there are a number of games that promote critical self-analysis (for instance Planescape: Torment).
I agree that most games do not rise to the level of "art". However, some games (or parts of them) are artistic. This whole argument is pretty silly, since there is no value (yet) for game developers to make "art". That some developers do attempt to make artistic games itself is enough. They don't need the sanctimonious approval of people like you (or of people like me). They do it because that's what they want to do. And that to me, is the exact definition of art.
While I tend to agree with your sentiments, the realist in me suggests that even the free software world is plagued by "marketing decisions" and feature creep, sometimes even more that the non-free software world.
I agree that this was a pretty stupid stunt, but I would expect that you would choose the best server, no matter what. And I'm sure Sun handles their support in a more "professional" manner.
Frankly, I would compare this stunt to Steve Ballmer shouting "Developers" - it's that stupid.
This is an old blog entry, I wonder why this news wasn't posted when Jonathan Schwartz first blogged about it. In any case, his latest blog entry is about Sun regaining market share from Dell.
One advantage I can see is that your documents will be available anywhere you can get access to the web, which can be a pretty compelling argument. I also suspect that Google will try to sell a complete Office server to corporates, which will let them keep their data secure on their private servers while still letting their employees access these documents from the web. In fact, I'd bet that's why MS is so scared of Google.
All of what you say is true and we should be working on fixing them. But I wonder why a "Joe Sixpack" user would need to configure X and whether they would even need to know about Samba or xorg. I would argue that if they are able to start up the computer at home and it work responsively and most importantly enables them to do their work (mostly just using a browser, writing docs, listening to music, etc), they will be happy.
Some parts of this are already there, some others need to be improved (like performance) or are not ideal because of DMCA (like music/movies). But I don't think we're that far off - and definitely do not think that we should start supporting proprietary software, even in the short term. If people didn't have an itch to scratch, many of the cool open source software would not have been written.
As for not needing a terminal for *anything*, I think that most of the simpler configurations should be manageable using GUIs, but when you really need to handle that corner case, nothing beats a terminal. A GUI that can handle all possible configurations ends up being ugly and too complicated (and this is very true in the Linux world). You do need to have a GUI that can handle everyday situations, and let the esoteric configurations be handled by a terminal.
Frankly there are multiple Linux distros that "just work", and even provide iPod support out of the box. There is absolutely no need to compromise on our ideals any longer. What I do feel needs to happen is that new users need to be guided to the simpler and easier distros instead of the distros that hardcode Linux fans use. The problem is that when most of us are asked about which distro a person should run, we tend to recommend what's good for us, instead of what would be good for the user. This needs to be changed.
You can oppose violence and violent people while still remaining pacifist. Gandhi was a great example of this, so were many others. Granted, it's harder to do, but it can be done.
Re:Running is not enough for GPLv3 - rootkit claus
on
The FSF, GPLv3 and DRM
·
· Score: 1
Let me get this straight - you're talking about DRM software which itself is GPL, so the GPLv3 would force the author to release the key to decrypt the DRM (and access the DRMed content) along with the source code. That's the only case where the GPLv3 would ignore the rights of others - and it's not the GPL's fault but the author's.
See, the GPLv3 is a very open public licence - it's not like someone is forcing any author to release their software under this licence. If they don't like the terms, or if the terms defeat the purpose of their software, they can very well choose another licence.
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If copyrights don't expire, you probably couldn't even make a table - there'd be copyrights on screws, on table legs and anything else you may want to make. For copyright to work for the next generation, it's important that the copyright of this generation expire. By endlessly extending copyright, you're doing a great disservice to future generations.
Add in Planescape: Torment and your list would be perfect.
Only if you can understand their wacky accents
So you continue to use Windows. We're talking about the 90% of users who just want to browse, chat and maybe write a document or two. For them there is are viable alternatives.
... it ain't happening anytime soon).
Now if they would just wake up and start using these alternatives (yeah, I know
I think the article and a lot of the posts can be summarized as basically saying "Waaah!!! It's different, bring things back the way they were!!! I can't handle change!".
If you really don't like shiny new things, you shouldn't have upgraded to Fx2.0 the day it was releasd. Wait a couple of weeks, or better still wait until they release 2.0.0.1 or whatever and then upgrade.
What you do need to remember is that in some countries, staying back and trying to fix the system in an easy way to land up in jail or even dead. Be thankful that you live in America or any other civilized country - you could have been living in much worse places.
The fact is that you only "start" up a browser once - after that what is of interest is the time it takes to actually render a page and the time it takes to view pages in your recent history. In both those categories, IMHO, both Opera and Firefox are faster than IE.
Where are my mod points when I need them? The parent poster is absolutely correct. If the Indian tax department goes ahead with this tax, it will stifle the fledgling broadband industry (and in turn IT industry).
However I'm pretty sure this rule was created by some over-zealous bureaucrat and it will eventually get removed. Unfortunately bureaucrats in India (and elsewhere) tend to pretty stupid.
True, but I really can't think of how to easily fix this without taking up too much real estate - some web pages have javascript from 4 or more sites. Maybe some way to distinguish between the primary site's javascript and other javascripts might be a good idea.
IF (and its a still a big if) Microsoft are actually against software patents, there are many ways that they can work to weaken software patents. I'm not sure I see that happening. Same is true of IBM, Sun and other big corporations. They all want to have their cake and eat it too, but this is not sustainable not work in the long run.
The stream of vultures with no products but a patent portfolio and a bunch of lawyers will only continue to increase as long as it is seen as a profitable business. In other words, as long as having software patents is profitable and as long as the PTO keeps granting silly patents, we're stuck with the current situation (and it may actually get worse).
Continuing the offtopic discussion, but Gandhi's protests did not cause mass riots. They caused mass protests (although there were the occassional riots) but most of the protests were peaceful. He was able to mobilize the ordinary people, people like you and me who would normally hesitate to take on the authorities, and he did this by sheer force of personality.
I agree that in the end Gandhi only succeeded because it became too expensive for the British to remain in India, especially after WWII. That was the beauty of Gandhi's solution - to cause massive economic disruptions by peaceful means.
Unfortunately it doesn't always work (see Tibet) but neither does "terrorism/fredom fighting/whatever".
P.S. 2006 is the centenary of Gandhi's first use of "satyagraha".
The GP talked about how Opera has less "known" problems. That does not mean that problems do not exist - just that with a closed source browser, we can't be sure.
Also of importance is the fact that Firefox souce code was recently scanned for bugs by Coverity and other static code analyzers. That would increase the number of known vulnerabilities, but would also make Firefox more secure in the long run.
Personally, I can't see myself using any closed source software to do something as potentially risky as web browsing. It doesn't matter if it's Firefox or Epiphany or Konqueror, if the source code is open to review, I feel more comfortable using it. Of course, out of these three, Firefox is the one that has so far been subjected to the most scrutiny.
And even with such a large list, you missed Fallout 1 & 2 *grin* That explains how stupid it is to even try to come up with such a list.
They used to have, you mean. It's all electronic voiting now. The advantage of the current system is that the voting machines are simple and cheap. The simplicity makes it harder to cheat (not impossible). You can read more at http://www.eci.gov.in/EVM/index.htm/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_voting_machine s/
There are many pieces of "art" that are not about developing critical thinking. On the other hand, there are a number of games that promote critical self-analysis (for instance Planescape: Torment).
I agree that most games do not rise to the level of "art". However, some games (or parts of them) are artistic. This whole argument is pretty silly, since there is no value (yet) for game developers to make "art". That some developers do attempt to make artistic games itself is enough. They don't need the sanctimonious approval of people like you (or of people like me). They do it because that's what they want to do. And that to me, is the exact definition of art.
While I tend to agree with your sentiments, the realist in me suggests that even the free software world is plagued by "marketing decisions" and feature creep, sometimes even more that the non-free software world.
I agree that this was a pretty stupid stunt, but I would expect that you would choose the best server, no matter what. And I'm sure Sun handles their support in a more "professional" manner. Frankly, I would compare this stunt to Steve Ballmer shouting "Developers" - it's that stupid.
This is an old blog entry, I wonder why this news wasn't posted when Jonathan Schwartz first blogged about it. In any case, his latest blog entry is about Sun regaining market share from Dell.
One advantage I can see is that your documents will be available anywhere you can get access to the web, which can be a pretty compelling argument. I also suspect that Google will try to sell a complete Office server to corporates, which will let them keep their data secure on their private servers while still letting their employees access these documents from the web. In fact, I'd bet that's why MS is so scared of Google.
All of what you say is true and we should be working on fixing them. But I wonder why a "Joe Sixpack" user would need to configure X and whether they would even need to know about Samba or xorg. I would argue that if they are able to start up the computer at home and it work responsively and most importantly enables them to do their work (mostly just using a browser, writing docs, listening to music, etc), they will be happy.
Some parts of this are already there, some others need to be improved (like performance) or are not ideal because of DMCA (like music/movies). But I don't think we're that far off - and definitely do not think that we should start supporting proprietary software, even in the short term. If people didn't have an itch to scratch, many of the cool open source software would not have been written.
As for not needing a terminal for *anything*, I think that most of the simpler configurations should be manageable using GUIs, but when you really need to handle that corner case, nothing beats a terminal. A GUI that can handle all possible configurations ends up being ugly and too complicated (and this is very true in the Linux world). You do need to have a GUI that can handle everyday situations, and let the esoteric configurations be handled by a terminal.
Frankly there are multiple Linux distros that "just work", and even provide iPod support out of the box. There is absolutely no need to compromise on our ideals any longer. What I do feel needs to happen is that new users need to be guided to the simpler and easier distros instead of the distros that hardcode Linux fans use. The problem is that when most of us are asked about which distro a person should run, we tend to recommend what's good for us, instead of what would be good for the user. This needs to be changed.
You can oppose violence and violent people while still remaining pacifist. Gandhi was a great example of this, so were many others. Granted, it's harder to do, but it can be done.
Let me get this straight - you're talking about DRM software which itself is GPL, so the GPLv3 would force the author to release the key to decrypt the DRM (and access the DRMed content) along with the source code. That's the only case where the GPLv3 would ignore the rights of others - and it's not the GPL's fault but the author's.
See, the GPLv3 is a very open public licence - it's not like someone is forcing any author to release their software under this licence. If they don't like the terms, or if the terms defeat the purpose of their software, they can very well choose another licence.
This is why I wish there was a mod called "Uninformed"