The examples you're citing in the second half of the post are more in the relam of the Adobe case - they are both situations where the folks doing the reselling are "unbundling" the software and in doing so, never had to install it, thus *never agreed to the EULA*. Even in the US, this was found to be OK.
However, in Bnetd, the end user had agreed to the EULA by clicking "OK", and the judge therefore found ALL of the terms of the EULA binding, even those prohibiting reverse engineering (protected under copyright AND DMCA) and resale (protected under first sale doctrine).
While your conclusion that European users can ignore EULAs may be true (I don't know much about laws in the EU), it doesn't quite follow from the case you mentioned, for the same reasons the Adobe case finding were different from the Bnetd findings.
As far as EULAs being available at time of sale: this one is still up in the air in the US. I think there was a more recent case that indicated that they should be, but I didn't read the finding. What companies have started doing is putting a URL on the box, and then having you visit the URL to read the EULA. Personally, to really look out for the consumer, I'd prefer there was a "boilerplate" license that everyone could read once, and then the compny would have to provide any *changes" to that license at the point of sale. This would allow people to see how they were really getting screwed in a compact format, which could then be used as a basis for buying (or not buying) the software. As it is, VERY few people want to wade through EULAs that are sometimes 10-15 pages long. I think the software publishers count on this, and can therefore put in the draconian clauses safe in the knowledge that the vast majoity won't know or care if it says "You have to give your firstborn to us, along with the first million dollars you earn if you click 'OK'".
OK, rant mode off... I find a lot of this truly annoying, and I think we're moving in the wrong direction. I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of lawsuit didn't come out of libmimic. It could be lawsuit material for almost the same reasons as DeCSS, I'd think.
Reverse engineering for interoperability is legal in the US too, even under the DMCA, as you point out. One of the problems we've been having is that courts are not only respecting the click-through EULAs, they have been enforcing them even when certain clauses in the EULAs remove actions protected by law, like reverse engineering for interoperability.
For example, look at the 30 Sept 04 finding in the Bnetd case. This case is the most recent that I know of (or have looked at), and is also the most draconian in its interpretation of the law. Not only did the judge deem EULAs enforeceable, but he made no stipulations about seeing the EULA before time of purchase. Further, while acknowledging certain "fair use" rights, he determined that you can sign away those rights under a EULA, as well as any rights you have under the First Sale doctrine, including reselling your personal copy of the software.
Please note this last bit, which is stunning: the judge found that it is illegal to sell your used software if the EULA prohibits it, even in cases where the First Sale Doctine apllies. This would include ANY software where you do not own the rights to the software and associated source code (i.e. pretty much any piece of software not in the public domain with a EULA that prohibits resale).
Which is to say, EULAs (so far) are enforceable, even to the point of removing customers "rights" under fair use and first sale.
I follow hardware pretty closely. Especially consumer level hard drives technology. That said, I don't remember any companies ever saying they had new hard drive technology that was going to be out by year end that didn't make it. Maybe there was once, but it's not like this has happened "a million times".
Sure, there are companies like IBM who put more money in to R&D than the GDP of a small Central American country, and they've been prototyping holographic drives and such for years. Yes, there were press releases, but they never said they were going to be releasing by year end.
Besides, this isn't some pie-in-the-sky technology, it's turning data stored on its side to data stored on its end...if they already having working prototypes in the field that are mass produced, why couldn't they put these on shelves by year end? I mean, it's not a new product, it'll just be the hard drive sizes we've been expecting for a while. Wouldn't surprise me if they started with 650GB in November/December and ramp up over a few years to 1.5-2.0 TB.
Oh, and also note that this isn't some no-name company (i.e. Bit Boys, Infinium) coming out with this release, it's one of the market leaders in hard drive technology (IIRC, Hitachi was the first to produce those CF-form-factor micro drives, even though they were IBM branded).
I don't think believing this makes someone a sucker; I think you're being a bit too cynical. But then again, any sucker would say that, wouldn't they?
I'm an old-school conservative - my basic philosophy is that if there is any question about whether to make a rule, there *is* no question: don't make it.
I'd like to think this philosophy would work here, but it won't, because you already have regulated monopolies in place, and normal market forces are not at work that would cause the plan to die in favor of a competitor that did not bundle.
Perhaps if we'd followed the phisophy from the the get-go and not had regulated monopolies, the free market forces would eventually take care of it. But as it stands, that won't work.
Which is part of the reason I believe in deregulation in general - once you start making special-case rules, you keep having to add rules to make sure the old ones don't screw things up, and eventually you have a mess of 10,000 laws just to regulate soemthing like a phone line.
This looks like another one of those cases where it seems like it's a good idea, but when all is said and done, it is not actually offering a product that is incrementally better than TV as we know (and use) it.
Downloading content leaglly sounds good, but it looks like it has a subscription price, and they'll be adding commercials to the front end of things. It also requires Windows, which cuts out a decent portion of geeks who are the type to be early adopters (like me).
Sure, it offers digial timeshifting, but this is something we already have with a TiVo and MythTV, the latter without any DRM of subscription fees.
I don't know...it looks like it has some advantages, but too many of the same old problems to be "the next big thing" in TV.
[CherryOS] are the only ones who are advertising that their product be used in a way that would necessarily violate the EULA for OS X.
In other words, the only way in which a customer could use their product would be a violation of the EULA the customer agreed to with Apple. I never said CherryOS was violating a EULA, I said users who purchase CherryOS and use it in the manner intended MUST be violating a EULA they agreed to.
But you missed the point of my post, which was a reply to someone saying that PearPC should get slapped with a lawsuit, which is patently absurd. After all, they are not the ones advertising that you should run OS X on their emulator, CherryOS is!
In Nintendo's official dead pixel policy, they state that they want you to play with the system for one to two weeks before requesting a return. They do not force you to do that, but neither does Sony.
We suggest you use your system for a few weeks to determine whether this interferes with your enjoyment of game play. If, after using your system for awhile, you feel that this tiny dot is too distracting, the Nintendo DS does carry a one-year warranty. We are happy to inspect and, if necessary, fix your system at no charge within the warranty period.
Their official policy is the same as Sony's. Whatever they may do above and beyond their policy is interesting, but not necessarily repeatable, and certainly not guaranteed, and is of no interest when dicussing options available to all customers.
If you really wish to bash Sony (as you are wont to do, apparently), do so on the basis of the sheer numbers of PSPs that have the dead pixel problem...it really is kind of ridiculous.
He didn't say his uptime was 11 years, he said his last "crash" was 11 years ago. When I shutdown my Linux boxen to upgrade, I don't call that a crash, do you?
Anyway, take it easy...some folks that run BSD or Linux are proud of the stability of their machines. I know I am...why be so edgy about it?
Umm, the DMCA has to do with circumventing copy protection measures.
It has nothing to do with "ading in the breaking of the EULA". It is always the end user's decision to whether or not to break the EULA.
Oh, and besides, PearPC is simply a PowerPC emulator - no one said you had to install OS X on it. Install a PowerPC distro for testing, like Yellow Dog or Gentoo.
If anyone should be getting sued by Apple, it would be CherryOS, since they are the only ones who are advertising that their product be used in a way that would necessarily violate the EULA for OS X. But honestly, even that is a stretch. They're in no way forcing an end user to break the agreement.
I hate to rain on your parade, but Sony and Nintendo have identical dead-pixel policies. I know, because I checked after I had problems with my PSP's screen.
They both ship units with dead pixels. Sony has had more problems though.
They both encourage you to play them for 1-2 weeks to make sure you actually care.
They both have 1 year warranties on their hardware.
They both will allow you to call in, get an RMA number, and return the unit for repair of dead pixels.
I don't know about Nintendo, but Sony offers an additonal 90 day warranty on a serviced PSP. This warranty does not negate the original 1 year warranty that came with the product. The longer of the two is in effect.
Side note: I've owned 4 PS2s (long story, don't ask), none of which have ever malunctioned, even after me tearing them apart, mod-chipping them, adding hard drives and in general, being mean to them. This included the two I had on a Navy ship that has *badly* regulated power, with lots of surges. No problems. Even after a few falls off the top of a closet. I put some crazy hours into those PS2s, too. It also includes a Slimline PS2 (not that many hours yet). I hear a lot about how crappy Sony's stuff is, but I own Sony TVs, VCRs, DVD players, PS2s, a PSP and a receiver, and have had no problems.
I cannot vouch for the original playstation though.
I bought my PSP at Target, because I knew they would take it back for pretty much any reason (flying UMD disks, stuck button, dead pixels...you guys know all the rumors as well as I).
Everything was actually great with the PSP, except the screen. 10 dead pixels on my first. I played for a bit, and didn't really notice them too much, but decided, "Hey, I did pay $250, let's get something that I feel is up to par..."
I headed back and got another unit at Target, this time with 9 dead pixels. Didn't know what to do. Figured I could live with it, checked online. This story was out by Saturday, and I decided I could live without my PSP for a while, so I called Sony customer support.
They urged me to play with it for a couple of weeks and make sure I really thought it was a problem, and I told them I'd rather get a service request now. They happily gave me one, along with instructions on what to send back. Good thing, too, you DON'T have to send back the memory card which has all your save games. When I returned the first PSP, I had to give back the entire value pack, including the card, so I lost that data. Anyway, they said they would ship me a "new or repaired" unit within 3-5 days of receiving my unit. I shipped it out Monday morning, so I'm figuring a couple of weeks, at least. I live in California and they're having me mail it to Texas.
Side note: Under Linux, I cannot seem to backup data from the cards. I can copy it to my hard drive, but when I put it back on the card, the PSP's games don't see their old savegames. I have it auto-detecting the format of the card, and it is coming up with vfat (no long filenames...you all know the filena~1.txt trick). Anyone know how to mount this thing so I preserve the data for copying back to the PSP? This was why I was excited to NOT have to send back my memory card.
Not true. Getting a hooker increases your health if it's low. Then you get your money back after you kill her. Free health!
I'm not quite in my 30s, but I'm close enough. I played a bit of GTA, but I actually don't even enjoy it that much. I'll take Killzone or Burnout 3.
Actually, I think computers *are* inherently complex. Ever taken a computer architecture course? I loved the course when I took it, even though it was a boatload of worl, but I have to admit, my initial reflections on the clas were "Wow, it a friggin' miracle those computer things work at all!"
When it comes to this issue, I think Neal Stephenson said it best...this is the last couple of paragraphs of what I view to be one of his best works, "In the Beginning was the Command Line":
Even if that fantasy came true, though, most users (including myself, on certain days) wouldn't want to bother learning to use all of those arcane commands, and struggling with all of the failures; a few dud universes can really clutter up your basement. After we'd spent a while pounding out command lines and hitting that ENTER key and spawning dull, failed universes, we would start to long for an OS that would go all the way to the opposite extreme: an OS that had the power to do everything--to live our life for us. In this OS, all of the possible decisions we could ever want to make would have been anticipated by clever programmers, and condensed into a series of dialog boxes. By clicking on radio buttons we could choose from among mutually exclusive choices (HETEROSEXUAL/HOMOSEXUAL). Columns of check boxes would enable us to select the things that we wanted in our life (GET MARRIED/WRITE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL) and for more complicated options we could fill in little text boxes (NUMBER OF DAUGHTERS: NUMBER OF SONS:).
Even this user interface would begin to look awfully complicated after a while, with so many choices, and so many hidden interactions between choices. It could become damn near unmanageable--the blinking twelve problem all over again. The people who brought us this operating system would have to provide templates and wizards, giving us a few default lives that we could use as starting places for designing our own. Chances are that these default lives would actually look pretty damn good to most people, good enough, anyway, that they'd be reluctant to tear them open and mess around with them for fear of making them worse. So after a few releases the software would begin to look even simpler: you would boot it up and it would present you with a dialog box with a single large button in the middle labeled: LIVE. Once you had clicked that button, your life would begin. If anything got out of whack, or failed to meet your expectations, you could complain about it to Microsoft's Customer Support Department. If you got a flack on the line, he or she would tell you that your life was actually fine, that there was not a thing wrong with it, and in any event it would be a lot better after the next upgrade was rolled out. But if you persisted, and identified yourself as Advanced, you might get through to an actual engineer.
What would the engineer say, after you had explained your problem, and enumerated all of the dissatisfactions in your life? He would probably tell you that life is a very hard and complicated thing; that no interface can change that; that anyone who believes otherwise is a sucker; and that if you don't like having choices made for you, you should start making your own.
Actually, I would hardly call Wipeout Pure and Lumines "lukewarm". I have actually been very impressed with those two titles in particular...lots of fun.
I also picked up Untold Legends, but that's because I'm a total sucker for hack n' slash games. And it is actually pretty damn good. Up until now, the hack n slash offerings on portables have been lame, but this one is full featured. I'm looking forward to playing games that don't feel "scaled down" on a portable on an airplane. I almost forget I'm using a handheld when I'm playing on the PSP.
The posts I always disagree most with always seem to be yours. I only notice who wrote it afer I think "Wow, I totally disagree!" No flame intended, I just think it is kind of funny that it keeps happening.
As far as the substance...I picked up a PSP and it really is a beautiful thing. WipeOut Pure and Lumines are both amazing.
I think the PSP is just a little ahead of its time. As more software comes out for it and manufacturing costs come down, I think we will see that it has a much longer shelf life than the DS. Flash capacity will increase, and people may actually being to carry these for serious movies and music, besides just high quality gaming. The screen has better resolution than a conventional TV (I think it's high def...it looks amazing).
Sure, it's not cheap, but hardware designed to be competitive in two years never is. The DS, on the the other hand, is just a hold over until the next gameboy rolls out. Nintendo was doing something quite different with the DS than Sony was with the PSP. For their respective timelines, I'd say they made pretty good decisions. The PSP is clearly meant to be longer lived than the DS, and the DS is clearly meant to be more affordable. And it is. Of course, we have to wait and see if the PSP will be longer lived. =)
Not to disgaree (I love Macs), but the cost of "just working" in almost all the cases is a lack of customization. What makes Linux such a difficult platform for folks that are new to it is that Linux exists only in our minds, and actually manifests itself as 1000 different distributions, each just different enough from each other to cause problems with interoperability. Combine this with the vast amount of customization within each distribution (including lots of variables, like IF something is installed in the first place, and then looking at library versions, desktop environments and program versions to determine how everything will inter-relate) Because we (Linux users) have complete choice in this manner, there are no "easy" answers when we seek help, because those helping us are not working with a system that is in a known state. In fact, most users probably don't know what state their machine is in.
Contrast this with Apple or Windows, and you'll see why troubleshooting is so much harder under Linux. This, by the way, is the exact same phenomenon you see in PC gaming versus console gaming. Bugs are very easy to reproduce on consoles, because everyone is running the exact same platform (or very close). On a PC, there are 1000 different variations in hardware and software configurations that could cause a bug.
Does this make PC gaming inferior? Does it make Linux inferior? No. It is simply a tradeoff. If your personality craves "just work"-itude, then play games on consoles and use Windows or OS X (please choose OS X). If you like the power-user feeling, like to customize your machines, and like to be on the bleeding edge of software development, downloading new versions of programs as soon as they come into beta, then the desktop Linux experience is probably right for you.
Neither is right for everyone, and the big mistake is to make the decision (either way) without knowing what you're getting yourself into.
Same here. I was scared I was becoming illiterate from hanging out on slashdot too much. I think I almost always catch it right after I do it, but I *hate* it when others make those mistakes...now maybe I know why they're doing it...
It has only started in the last year or so, but your post makes me feel a little better.
Yes, but no more than a 150GB in the same place. Drive space is cheap, and storing two copies of a 13 MB file is not very different from storing one copy. I never asserted that it cost the same as it does in a home computer. I said it was cheap, and was therefore not a driving factor in any company's choice of OS.
Are you disgareeing with that point, or are you looking for an interpretation of my posts that you can argue with?
If that final question is really the driver here, I think it is kind of moot.
Storage is dirt cheap. A 300GB drive would only run a couple hundred dollars. Since bandwidth usage would remain the same (each OS will only be downloading once, regardless of which copy they were downloading), and you can store images for every pseudo-mainstream Linux distribution on the planet on a 300GB drive, I don't think they *have* to justify spending the money. The time you'd spend justifying it would cost more than just buying the hardware.
No TCO analysis is going to pit the costs of hosting application binaries for 3 versions of Linux against hosting only one version for Windows...your whole set up is a specious argument. Disk space is simply not a limiting factor.
This next comment is not intended to be rude, but to inform: there is a big difference between a "shell" (in your topic), a "file manager" (in your first line), and a window manager/desktop environment (seperate in concept, sometimes combined in practice). A shell is an interface through which you access your system on a command line (sh, csh, bash, tcsh). A "file manager" is a tool used to manipulate files (which is irrelevant to this discussion), but it so happens that in Windows, the file manager is the same executable as its window manager, and its desktop environment. You may be confused because what is called a "shell" under Windows is in fact a window manager and desktop environment under Linux. Window managers are things like KWM, Sawfish, EvilWM, Ratpoison, etc. Desktop environments are things like GNOME and KDE.
Your central point, however, is correct, though a bit passe. Most desktop environments (programs that provide the equivalent of a "Start Menu") are readily capable of reading each others settings and automagically migrating menu items back and forth. In case something was missed, most have an automated program that can scour the system for new programs and add them automatically.
Windows in no way prevents pebkac. You're talking about an OS that has, until recently, had no notion of a user without administrator priviledges. Microsoft has yet to to produce a version of Windows that does not set a user as an administrator by default. Windows is pebkac heaven. And Microsoft has no excuse; *nix has had the notion of unpriviledged users since the 70's.
Next...package management. Most (but not all) mainstream programs already exist in good package management respositories. Debian has their own, Gentoo has their own, even Red Hat and SuSe have their own. This doesn't require the vendor of the product to do anything. The Mozilla foundation doesn't produce.deb,.ebuild and.rpm packages, and yet I can install Firefox and Thunderbird with no problem on all the above operating systems.
Oh, and to answer your question, apt-get works on both Fedora-based and Debian-based distros. Oh, and on Debian, I can use alien to install RPMs. Not that it matters, since they're different operating systems. This is like complaining that Windows and Mac OS X don't use the same installer. You pick an OS, you pick an installer.
So...I'm not really sure what you're saying. There IS one well known method for installation for each Linux operating system, and the makers of the OS use it, and (most times) provide packages through that system, whether it be portage, apt-get, yum, yast, up2date, or whatever.
You are errant in treating "GNU/Linux" as a single operating system. It isn't. SuSe is a single OS, Red Hat is a single OS, Debian is a single OS, Gentoo is a single OS. And they each have a way to install Firefox and Thunderbird that "just works", and is in fact quite superior to anything Windows offers, or ever has offered.
It doesn't matter why it doesn't work. The fact is that it doesn't.
Actually, it does work. Which "various flavors" have you tried? The whole post sounds like pebkac. I've been using Linux for 6 years, including Red Hat since 6.1, Gentoo, SuSe 9 (various versions), Ubuntu, Mepis, Fedora Core 1, 2 and 3, Debian Woody and Sarge, and none of those ever had me "hunting" through the filesystem for an executable.
I am also suspicious that your posts contain no actual references to anything specific, like a specific operating system, or a specific method of install.
What I'm assuming happened was you installed something without using a package management system. This will result in a few things: the program won't be registered with the install system, so you can have problems if you go back and install the same thing through the package manager, it makes removal difficult, and it can be hard to track down where executables are so you can create icons (and they sure won't be created for you!). But, as with Windows (or ANY operating system), if you don't use an installer the OS recognizes, there is a liklihood that no icons will be installed.
There are lots of legitimate gripes about Linux on the desktop, and various issues the community needs to deal with to make it ready for mainstream use, but icon addition to menus was nailed down years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
The examples you're citing in the second half of the post are more in the relam of the Adobe case - they are both situations where the folks doing the reselling are "unbundling" the software and in doing so, never had to install it, thus *never agreed to the EULA*. Even in the US, this was found to be OK.
However, in Bnetd, the end user had agreed to the EULA by clicking "OK", and the judge therefore found ALL of the terms of the EULA binding, even those prohibiting reverse engineering (protected under copyright AND DMCA) and resale (protected under first sale doctrine).
While your conclusion that European users can ignore EULAs may be true (I don't know much about laws in the EU), it doesn't quite follow from the case you mentioned, for the same reasons the Adobe case finding were different from the Bnetd findings.
As far as EULAs being available at time of sale: this one is still up in the air in the US. I think there was a more recent case that indicated that they should be, but I didn't read the finding. What companies have started doing is putting a URL on the box, and then having you visit the URL to read the EULA. Personally, to really look out for the consumer, I'd prefer there was a "boilerplate" license that everyone could read once, and then the compny would have to provide any *changes" to that license at the point of sale. This would allow people to see how they were really getting screwed in a compact format, which could then be used as a basis for buying (or not buying) the software. As it is, VERY few people want to wade through EULAs that are sometimes 10-15 pages long. I think the software publishers count on this, and can therefore put in the draconian clauses safe in the knowledge that the vast majoity won't know or care if it says "You have to give your firstborn to us, along with the first million dollars you earn if you click 'OK'".
OK, rant mode off... I find a lot of this truly annoying, and I think we're moving in the wrong direction. I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of lawsuit didn't come out of libmimic. It could be lawsuit material for almost the same reasons as DeCSS, I'd think.
Interesting territory here.
Reverse engineering for interoperability is legal in the US too, even under the DMCA, as you point out. One of the problems we've been having is that courts are not only respecting the click-through EULAs, they have been enforcing them even when certain clauses in the EULAs remove actions protected by law, like reverse engineering for interoperability.
For example, look at the 30 Sept 04 finding in the Bnetd case. This case is the most recent that I know of (or have looked at), and is also the most draconian in its interpretation of the law. Not only did the judge deem EULAs enforeceable, but he made no stipulations about seeing the EULA before time of purchase. Further, while acknowledging certain "fair use" rights, he determined that you can sign away those rights under a EULA, as well as any rights you have under the First Sale doctrine, including reselling your personal copy of the software.
Please note this last bit, which is stunning: the judge found that it is illegal to sell your used software if the EULA prohibits it, even in cases where the First Sale Doctine apllies. This would include ANY software where you do not own the rights to the software and associated source code (i.e. pretty much any piece of software not in the public domain with a EULA that prohibits resale).
Which is to say, EULAs (so far) are enforceable, even to the point of removing customers "rights" under fair use and first sale.
Sure, there are companies like IBM who put more money in to R&D than the GDP of a small Central American country, and they've been prototyping holographic drives and such for years. Yes, there were press releases, but they never said they were going to be releasing by year end.
Besides, this isn't some pie-in-the-sky technology, it's turning data stored on its side to data stored on its end...if they already having working prototypes in the field that are mass produced, why couldn't they put these on shelves by year end? I mean, it's not a new product, it'll just be the hard drive sizes we've been expecting for a while. Wouldn't surprise me if they started with 650GB in November/December and ramp up over a few years to 1.5-2.0 TB.
Oh, and also note that this isn't some no-name company (i.e. Bit Boys, Infinium) coming out with this release, it's one of the market leaders in hard drive technology (IIRC, Hitachi was the first to produce those CF-form-factor micro drives, even though they were IBM branded).
I don't think believing this makes someone a sucker; I think you're being a bit too cynical. But then again, any sucker would say that, wouldn't they?
I'm an old-school conservative - my basic philosophy is that if there is any question about whether to make a rule, there *is* no question: don't make it.
I'd like to think this philosophy would work here, but it won't, because you already have regulated monopolies in place, and normal market forces are not at work that would cause the plan to die in favor of a competitor that did not bundle.
Perhaps if we'd followed the phisophy from the the get-go and not had regulated monopolies, the free market forces would eventually take care of it. But as it stands, that won't work.
Which is part of the reason I believe in deregulation in general - once you start making special-case rules, you keep having to add rules to make sure the old ones don't screw things up, and eventually you have a mess of 10,000 laws just to regulate soemthing like a phone line.
This looks like another one of those cases where it seems like it's a good idea, but when all is said and done, it is not actually offering a product that is incrementally better than TV as we know (and use) it.
Downloading content leaglly sounds good, but it looks like it has a subscription price, and they'll be adding commercials to the front end of things. It also requires Windows, which cuts out a decent portion of geeks who are the type to be early adopters (like me).
Sure, it offers digial timeshifting, but this is something we already have with a TiVo and MythTV, the latter without any DRM of subscription fees.
I don't know...it looks like it has some advantages, but too many of the same old problems to be "the next big thing" in TV.
[CherryOS] are the only ones who are advertising that their product be used in a way that would necessarily violate the EULA for OS X.
In other words, the only way in which a customer could use their product would be a violation of the EULA the customer agreed to with Apple. I never said CherryOS was violating a EULA, I said users who purchase CherryOS and use it in the manner intended MUST be violating a EULA they agreed to.
But you missed the point of my post, which was a reply to someone saying that PearPC should get slapped with a lawsuit, which is patently absurd. After all, they are not the ones advertising that you should run OS X on their emulator, CherryOS is!
From their policy:
We suggest you use your system for a few weeks to determine whether this interferes with your enjoyment of game play. If, after using your system for awhile, you feel that this tiny dot is too distracting, the Nintendo DS does carry a one-year warranty. We are happy to inspect and, if necessary, fix your system at no charge within the warranty period.
Their official policy is the same as Sony's. Whatever they may do above and beyond their policy is interesting, but not necessarily repeatable, and certainly not guaranteed, and is of no interest when dicussing options available to all customers.
If you really wish to bash Sony (as you are wont to do, apparently), do so on the basis of the sheer numbers of PSPs that have the dead pixel problem...it really is kind of ridiculous.
He didn't say his uptime was 11 years, he said his last "crash" was 11 years ago. When I shutdown my Linux boxen to upgrade, I don't call that a crash, do you?
Anyway, take it easy...some folks that run BSD or Linux are proud of the stability of their machines. I know I am...why be so edgy about it?
Umm, the DMCA has to do with circumventing copy protection measures.
It has nothing to do with "ading in the breaking of the EULA". It is always the end user's decision to whether or not to break the EULA.
Oh, and besides, PearPC is simply a PowerPC emulator - no one said you had to install OS X on it. Install a PowerPC distro for testing, like Yellow Dog or Gentoo.
If anyone should be getting sued by Apple, it would be CherryOS, since they are the only ones who are advertising that their product be used in a way that would necessarily violate the EULA for OS X. But honestly, even that is a stretch. They're in no way forcing an end user to break the agreement.
Side note: I've owned 4 PS2s (long story, don't ask), none of which have ever malunctioned, even after me tearing them apart, mod-chipping them, adding hard drives and in general, being mean to them. This included the two I had on a Navy ship that has *badly* regulated power, with lots of surges. No problems. Even after a few falls off the top of a closet. I put some crazy hours into those PS2s, too. It also includes a Slimline PS2 (not that many hours yet). I hear a lot about how crappy Sony's stuff is, but I own Sony TVs, VCRs, DVD players, PS2s, a PSP and a receiver, and have had no problems.
I cannot vouch for the original playstation though.
I bought my PSP at Target, because I knew they would take it back for pretty much any reason (flying UMD disks, stuck button, dead pixels...you guys know all the rumors as well as I).
Everything was actually great with the PSP, except the screen. 10 dead pixels on my first. I played for a bit, and didn't really notice them too much, but decided, "Hey, I did pay $250, let's get something that I feel is up to par..."
I headed back and got another unit at Target, this time with 9 dead pixels. Didn't know what to do. Figured I could live with it, checked online. This story was out by Saturday, and I decided I could live without my PSP for a while, so I called Sony customer support.
They urged me to play with it for a couple of weeks and make sure I really thought it was a problem, and I told them I'd rather get a service request now. They happily gave me one, along with instructions on what to send back. Good thing, too, you DON'T have to send back the memory card which has all your save games. When I returned the first PSP, I had to give back the entire value pack, including the card, so I lost that data. Anyway, they said they would ship me a "new or repaired" unit within 3-5 days of receiving my unit. I shipped it out Monday morning, so I'm figuring a couple of weeks, at least. I live in California and they're having me mail it to Texas.
Side note: Under Linux, I cannot seem to backup data from the cards. I can copy it to my hard drive, but when I put it back on the card, the PSP's games don't see their old savegames. I have it auto-detecting the format of the card, and it is coming up with vfat (no long filenames...you all know the filena~1.txt trick). Anyone know how to mount this thing so I preserve the data for copying back to the PSP? This was why I was excited to NOT have to send back my memory card.
Not true. Getting a hooker increases your health if it's low. Then you get your money back after you kill her. Free health! I'm not quite in my 30s, but I'm close enough. I played a bit of GTA, but I actually don't even enjoy it that much. I'll take Killzone or Burnout 3.
In that case, we don't need any additional regulation of the internet to stop it - merely enforcement of existing laws. QED.
That should be "if I were a professor". It's the subjunctive mood. Betcha you wish you had a better grammar checker now!
I don't usually miss the joke around here, but I'm stumped. How is this funny?
I would have rated it "Interesting" or "Insightful"...
Actually, I think computers *are* inherently complex. Ever taken a computer architecture course? I loved the course when I took it, even though it was a boatload of worl, but I have to admit, my initial reflections on the clas were "Wow, it a friggin' miracle those computer things work at all!"
Even if that fantasy came true, though, most users (including myself, on certain days) wouldn't want to bother learning to use all of those arcane commands, and struggling with all of the failures; a few dud universes can really clutter up your basement. After we'd spent a while pounding out command lines and hitting that ENTER key and spawning dull, failed universes, we would start to long for an OS that would go all the way to the opposite extreme: an OS that had the power to do everything--to live our life for us. In this OS, all of the possible decisions we could ever want to make would have been anticipated by clever programmers, and condensed into a series of dialog boxes. By clicking on radio buttons we could choose from among mutually exclusive choices (HETEROSEXUAL/HOMOSEXUAL). Columns of check boxes would enable us to select the things that we wanted in our life (GET MARRIED/WRITE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL) and for more complicated options we could fill in little text boxes (NUMBER OF DAUGHTERS: NUMBER OF SONS:).
Even this user interface would begin to look awfully complicated after a while, with so many choices, and so many hidden interactions between choices. It could become damn near unmanageable--the blinking twelve problem all over again. The people who brought us this operating system would have to provide templates and wizards, giving us a few default lives that we could use as starting places for designing our own. Chances are that these default lives would actually look pretty damn good to most people, good enough, anyway, that they'd be reluctant to tear them open and mess around with them for fear of making them worse. So after a few releases the software would begin to look even simpler: you would boot it up and it would present you with a dialog box with a single large button in the middle labeled: LIVE. Once you had clicked that button, your life would begin. If anything got out of whack, or failed to meet your expectations, you could complain about it to Microsoft's Customer Support Department. If you got a flack on the line, he or she would tell you that your life was actually fine, that there was not a thing wrong with it, and in any event it would be a lot better after the next upgrade was rolled out. But if you persisted, and identified yourself as Advanced, you might get through to an actual engineer.
What would the engineer say, after you had explained your problem, and enumerated all of the dissatisfactions in your life? He would probably tell you that life is a very hard and complicated thing; that no interface can change that; that anyone who believes otherwise is a sucker; and that if you don't like having choices made for you, you should start making your own.
Actually, I would hardly call Wipeout Pure and Lumines "lukewarm". I have actually been very impressed with those two titles in particular...lots of fun.
I also picked up Untold Legends, but that's because I'm a total sucker for hack n' slash games. And it is actually pretty damn good. Up until now, the hack n slash offerings on portables have been lame, but this one is full featured. I'm looking forward to playing games that don't feel "scaled down" on a portable on an airplane. I almost forget I'm using a handheld when I'm playing on the PSP.
The posts I always disagree most with always seem to be yours. I only notice who wrote it afer I think "Wow, I totally disagree!" No flame intended, I just think it is kind of funny that it keeps happening.
As far as the substance...I picked up a PSP and it really is a beautiful thing. WipeOut Pure and Lumines are both amazing.
I think the PSP is just a little ahead of its time. As more software comes out for it and manufacturing costs come down, I think we will see that it has a much longer shelf life than the DS. Flash capacity will increase, and people may actually being to carry these for serious movies and music, besides just high quality gaming. The screen has better resolution than a conventional TV (I think it's high def...it looks amazing).
Sure, it's not cheap, but hardware designed to be competitive in two years never is. The DS, on the the other hand, is just a hold over until the next gameboy rolls out. Nintendo was doing something quite different with the DS than Sony was with the PSP. For their respective timelines, I'd say they made pretty good decisions. The PSP is clearly meant to be longer lived than the DS, and the DS is clearly meant to be more affordable. And it is. Of course, we have to wait and see if the PSP will be longer lived. =)
Not to disgaree (I love Macs), but the cost of "just working" in almost all the cases is a lack of customization. What makes Linux such a difficult platform for folks that are new to it is that Linux exists only in our minds, and actually manifests itself as 1000 different distributions, each just different enough from each other to cause problems with interoperability. Combine this with the vast amount of customization within each distribution (including lots of variables, like IF something is installed in the first place, and then looking at library versions, desktop environments and program versions to determine how everything will inter-relate) Because we (Linux users) have complete choice in this manner, there are no "easy" answers when we seek help, because those helping us are not working with a system that is in a known state. In fact, most users probably don't know what state their machine is in.
Contrast this with Apple or Windows, and you'll see why troubleshooting is so much harder under Linux. This, by the way, is the exact same phenomenon you see in PC gaming versus console gaming. Bugs are very easy to reproduce on consoles, because everyone is running the exact same platform (or very close). On a PC, there are 1000 different variations in hardware and software configurations that could cause a bug.
Does this make PC gaming inferior? Does it make Linux inferior? No. It is simply a tradeoff. If your personality craves "just work"-itude, then play games on consoles and use Windows or OS X (please choose OS X). If you like the power-user feeling, like to customize your machines, and like to be on the bleeding edge of software development, downloading new versions of programs as soon as they come into beta, then the desktop Linux experience is probably right for you.
Neither is right for everyone, and the big mistake is to make the decision (either way) without knowing what you're getting yourself into.
Same here. I was scared I was becoming illiterate from hanging out on slashdot too much. I think I almost always catch it right after I do it, but I *hate* it when others make those mistakes...now maybe I know why they're doing it...
It has only started in the last year or so, but your post makes me feel a little better.
Yes, but no more than a 150GB in the same place. Drive space is cheap, and storing two copies of a 13 MB file is not very different from storing one copy. I never asserted that it cost the same as it does in a home computer. I said it was cheap, and was therefore not a driving factor in any company's choice of OS.
Are you disgareeing with that point, or are you looking for an interpretation of my posts that you can argue with?
If that final question is really the driver here, I think it is kind of moot.
Storage is dirt cheap. A 300GB drive would only run a couple hundred dollars. Since bandwidth usage would remain the same (each OS will only be downloading once, regardless of which copy they were downloading), and you can store images for every pseudo-mainstream Linux distribution on the planet on a 300GB drive, I don't think they *have* to justify spending the money. The time you'd spend justifying it would cost more than just buying the hardware.
No TCO analysis is going to pit the costs of hosting application binaries for 3 versions of Linux against hosting only one version for Windows...your whole set up is a specious argument. Disk space is simply not a limiting factor.
This next comment is not intended to be rude, but to inform: there is a big difference between a "shell" (in your topic), a "file manager" (in your first line), and a window manager/desktop environment (seperate in concept, sometimes combined in practice). A shell is an interface through which you access your system on a command line (sh, csh, bash, tcsh). A "file manager" is a tool used to manipulate files (which is irrelevant to this discussion), but it so happens that in Windows, the file manager is the same executable as its window manager, and its desktop environment. You may be confused because what is called a "shell" under Windows is in fact a window manager and desktop environment under Linux. Window managers are things like KWM, Sawfish, EvilWM, Ratpoison, etc. Desktop environments are things like GNOME and KDE.
Your central point, however, is correct, though a bit passe. Most desktop environments (programs that provide the equivalent of a "Start Menu") are readily capable of reading each others settings and automagically migrating menu items back and forth. In case something was missed, most have an automated program that can scour the system for new programs and add them automatically.
Windows in no way prevents pebkac. You're talking about an OS that has, until recently, had no notion of a user without administrator priviledges. Microsoft has yet to to produce a version of Windows that does not set a user as an administrator by default. Windows is pebkac heaven. And Microsoft has no excuse; *nix has had the notion of unpriviledged users since the 70's.
.deb, .ebuild and .rpm packages, and yet I can install Firefox and Thunderbird with no problem on all the above operating systems.
Next...package management. Most (but not all) mainstream programs already exist in good package management respositories. Debian has their own, Gentoo has their own, even Red Hat and SuSe have their own. This doesn't require the vendor of the product to do anything. The Mozilla foundation doesn't produce
Oh, and to answer your question, apt-get works on both Fedora-based and Debian-based distros. Oh, and on Debian, I can use alien to install RPMs. Not that it matters, since they're different operating systems. This is like complaining that Windows and Mac OS X don't use the same installer. You pick an OS, you pick an installer.
So...I'm not really sure what you're saying. There IS one well known method for installation for each Linux operating system, and the makers of the OS use it, and (most times) provide packages through that system, whether it be portage, apt-get, yum, yast, up2date, or whatever.
You are errant in treating "GNU/Linux" as a single operating system. It isn't. SuSe is a single OS, Red Hat is a single OS, Debian is a single OS, Gentoo is a single OS. And they each have a way to install Firefox and Thunderbird that "just works", and is in fact quite superior to anything Windows offers, or ever has offered.
Actually, it does work. Which "various flavors" have you tried? The whole post sounds like pebkac. I've been using Linux for 6 years, including Red Hat since 6.1, Gentoo, SuSe 9 (various versions), Ubuntu, Mepis, Fedora Core 1, 2 and 3, Debian Woody and Sarge, and none of those ever had me "hunting" through the filesystem for an executable.
I am also suspicious that your posts contain no actual references to anything specific, like a specific operating system, or a specific method of install. What I'm assuming happened was you installed something without using a package management system. This will result in a few things: the program won't be registered with the install system, so you can have problems if you go back and install the same thing through the package manager, it makes removal difficult, and it can be hard to track down where executables are so you can create icons (and they sure won't be created for you!). But, as with Windows (or ANY operating system), if you don't use an installer the OS recognizes, there is a liklihood that no icons will be installed.
There are lots of legitimate gripes about Linux on the desktop, and various issues the community needs to deal with to make it ready for mainstream use, but icon addition to menus was nailed down years ago.