Firmware release notes clearly show, "OtherOS is going bye bye."
You will lose features in any case.
If you upgrade, you lose "OtherOS" support.
If you don't, you lose online gaming capability and newer BluRay discs may not play.
"If you don't like the interface changes in Windows 7, you don't have the option to either change it yourself or pay someone who knows how to change it for you."
Last I heard, MSFT is a pubically traded company. You CAN buy it and have them change whatever you like in the code. While impractible, so would hiring a coder to custom modify any other OS be to most individuals.
Is this comment of yours for real? It sounds delirious.
"have them change whatever you like in the code"? This is going to cost you $billions.
Are you that much out of reality to compare hiring a coder to that?
Well, I'm not saying they don't have the right to sue (they do have).
My point is that, in their specific situation, the hassle is bigger than the potential benefits.
I think the old couple is better off enjoying their remaining time in peace.
Justice is very important, but if you're the one who got screwed and the process of seeking justice will pretty much only create more inconvenience for you while not giving much back... What's the point?
Unless there's something like: setting an precedent so other people won't suffer like you, you were outraged and it's a matter of principle or something along those lines. -- But it doesn't look like this in that case.
Paying for customization might cost more than buying a propriatary solution (especially for small businesses).
Oh, and customization is really an option for most proprietary software!
Concerning proprietary software, you pay for that and _hope_ the company will maintain/extend the software in a way suitable for you. If they don't, what are your options then?
If, for example, you participate in the Linux kernel development you will have a voice proportional to your contributions.
Which completely breaks the "democracy" argument.
I think you're mixing up things. I did not claim FOSS is inherently democratic, my point is about your claims that proprietary software is "closer to democracy" which I disagree.
Can you (binding) vote on the future Windows kernel features?
Each purchaser has the right to approve or disapprove of the complete package by buying it or not. The price is more or less the same for everyone. So, sorta. I certainly have no more control with Linux. My only option is to fork. Then you'll get a strict meritocracy as the most successful version will become the defacto standard.
I'll give you an example: Red Hat contributes heavily to several key projects. You may pay for a RHEL copy, thus voting with your wallet aswell, I don't see how proprietary software has an advantage in this aspect.
Microsoft, specifically, cannot claim even that. How much of "voting with your wallet" applies when almost every domestic PC comes, by default, with a Windows license?
Forking is not your only option if you want to affect the development directly. Contributors typically have a say on the project, just be one of those.
You don't even have to write a single line of code: you may sponsor a project, you may even hire developers.
When it comes to proprietary software, you don't have such options to begin with.
But that's not what a democracy means. Democracy means that everyone gets a vote and the government (or whatever the equivalent is in this analogy) is obliged to adopt that decision.
I've never voted for how the Linux kernel or any other open source project should work. I wouldn't be surprised if there was never a binding vote on any open source project. If I can leave and set up my own fork, that doesn't make it a democracy. In fact, the government analogy falls down entirely.
Proprietary consumer software is closer to a democracy. The design decisions made are based on an estimate of what the majority want. Companies use focus groups which will give a fairly good approximation of majority preference. This is why, for example, MS improved the boot speed for Windows XP. The majority wanted it.
Sorry, but that's a flawed argument.
Even you agree that Democracy is about the majority imposing their decisions. That alone breaks the argument of "closer-to-democracy prorietary software" because people cannot command a company to do anything. It's the company itself that decides, for its own good, to do this or that.
If, for example, you participate in the Linux kernel development you will have a voice proportional to your contributions. You don't need a nobility title or money to be in such position. -- While not really a Democracy (more like a Meritocracy), it's far more reachable to people than proprietary software.
Can you (binding) vote on the future Windows kernel features?
I hate the argument that "If you don't like how things are going in an OSS project, you can just make your own fork! It's so much better than proprietary software because of that!" The fact is that time and knowledge are barriers that bar most people from doing what you propose. I probably don't know the language the the project was built in, I don't have time to learn it, I don't have the time to get familiar with the project's code, I don't have time to figure out how change it, etc. So yeah, the code is right there, but it's useless to a large majority (probably near 99%) of users. There's a better chance of getting the current development team to make a change than me attempting to make that change on my own.
You're being oversimplistic.
You see, in most countries you have the right to property. You can have your own house, that's your right. The fact you don't have the _money_ to buy a house does not invalidate such right.
If you wanted to modify a FOSS yourself and lack the knowledge, nothing prevents you from learning how to program.
And it's even more insteresting that that: you don't have to program at all, in order to take advantage of the open-sourcedness. If you have money for that, you may simply pay other people to develop/customize the software as much as you want.
FOSS is not a right to enjoy from slave labour, don't expect people doing XYZ for you only because you want that. -- I would like someone to clean my house for free, would you do that for me?
Also, it's kind of an asshole thing for Canonical to lure people into their "community" and then outright ignore them.
I don't know how Ubuntu was advertised before, regarding development specifically (I don't use Ubuntu myself, so it's outside my radar range anyway).
Unless they claimed something not consistent with that position, they may develop their distro as they like. FOSS-ness alone does not give you the right to interfere in their decisions.
Why should you ever, with all this parallel hardware, ever be waiting for your computer?'
For a lot of problems, for the same reason that some guy who just married 8 brides will still have to wait for his baby.
Of course, he'll be able to get 8 babies at once, assuming none of the processes crash during the computation.
That improves bandwidth, but not latency: almost 1 baby/month, but 9 months of latency.
The guy could try interleaving the pregnancies, in order to get the illusion of lower latency.
Sue the police department? What for?
The couple is old and they probably want just to enjoy the rest of their lives, being visited by their grandchildren and things like that.
To sue, at this point, would just be an annoyance to themselves.
So we should all live with 15 people in a 3 bedroom house and cars parked all over the lawn?
I think what the GP meant is something about _not_ spending most your money in frivolities, and not indebting yourself to the neck while buying your SUV and a expensive house you simply cannot afford to begin with.
If an european decided to follow the "american way of life" to the full extent he/she would not last 10 years.
I have shares of healthy companies which lost much of their value (fortunately mostly recovered now) due to the financial debauchery in the US. Funny that neither I, nor the aforementioned companies, nor the country I live had anything to do with that.
That's how financially "solid" most US companies and US citizens are.
And you still mock the GP post?
Humans aren't altruistic in general. It's nothing to be ashamed of - we're programmed to think of ourselves first. Aligning altruistic acts and self-preservation sounds like a great way to encourage altruistic behavior.
There's nothing altruistic when you do something expecting to be rewarded somehow.
Well, GP was intended as a joke, not as useable code.
Still, it may be a good idea you posted that, in case someone tries something like that expecting a certain result.
In the case of PI, I would rather suggest checking if the includes define such constant instead, and otherwise fall back to a proper PI define.
Without stealing of ideas, we wouldn't have Open Office which implemented feature-for-feature what Microsoft Office has. Without stealing, we wouldn't have KDE and Gnome with implemented many features from Windows and OS X. How could open source survive without it?:)
Feeling trolly today?
Both Apple and Microsoft copied from Xerox, Lotus etc.
The difference is that, when a FOSS copies from something else, it does not have the chutzpah to claim originality.
What I find stupid, is the moving of the window "action" buttons.
Agreed, people are - since a long ago - used to have the buttons at the right side of the title bar.
I really would like some consistency. Changing things just for the sake of it is a bad idea.
Also, what's that thing with the high-contrast background picture? Is that because it's pretty in screenshots?
It's horrible to use in practice. It feels heavy and tiresome to the eyes. Also, icons and/or their names look bad in certain parts of the screen.
Move away from brownish colors, okay. Drop the "Linux for homo sapiens" motto, good.
But, please, keep the things you got right.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh... What ExxonMobil has to do with this?
Newsflash: April Fools' Day is not an universal celebration.
I have tattoos, and I used to have piercings.
According to people with piercings and tatoos that is "+4 Insightful".
I'm also a damn good coder.
Thanks for your unbiased opinion.
I seriously doubt the two are related.
I seriously doubt a person who uses him/herself as a positive example to prove a point.
You're being fatalist... How can you be so sure?
You had the choice not to upgrade the firmware.
Firmware release notes clearly show, "OtherOS is going bye bye."
You will lose features in any case.
If you upgrade, you lose "OtherOS" support.
If you don't, you lose online gaming capability and newer BluRay discs may not play.
No need for 4000% rises.
Brazil will be happy to sell more beef to EU.
"If you don't like the interface changes in Windows 7, you don't have the option to either change it yourself or pay someone who knows how to change it for you."
Last I heard, MSFT is a pubically traded company. You CAN buy it and have them change whatever you like in the code. While impractible, so would hiring a coder to custom modify any other OS be to most individuals.
Is this comment of yours for real? It sounds delirious.
"have them change whatever you like in the code"? This is going to cost you $billions.
Are you that much out of reality to compare hiring a coder to that?
Well, I'm not saying they don't have the right to sue (they do have).
My point is that, in their specific situation, the hassle is bigger than the potential benefits.
I think the old couple is better off enjoying their remaining time in peace.
Justice is very important, but if you're the one who got screwed and the process of seeking justice will pretty much only create more inconvenience for you while not giving much back... What's the point?
Unless there's something like: setting an precedent so other people won't suffer like you, you were outraged and it's a matter of principle or something along those lines. -- But it doesn't look like this in that case.
Paying for customization might cost more than buying a propriatary solution (especially for small businesses).
Oh, and customization is really an option for most proprietary software!
Concerning proprietary software, you pay for that and _hope_ the company will maintain/extend the software in a way suitable for you. If they don't, what are your options then?
If, for example, you participate in the Linux kernel development you will have a voice proportional to your contributions.
Which completely breaks the "democracy" argument.
I think you're mixing up things. I did not claim FOSS is inherently democratic, my point is about your claims that proprietary software is "closer to democracy" which I disagree.
Can you (binding) vote on the future Windows kernel features?
Each purchaser has the right to approve or disapprove of the complete package by buying it or not. The price is more or less the same for everyone. So, sorta. I certainly have no more control with Linux. My only option is to fork. Then you'll get a strict meritocracy as the most successful version will become the defacto standard.
I'll give you an example: Red Hat contributes heavily to several key projects. You may pay for a RHEL copy, thus voting with your wallet aswell, I don't see how proprietary software has an advantage in this aspect.
Microsoft, specifically, cannot claim even that. How much of "voting with your wallet" applies when almost every domestic PC comes, by default, with a Windows license?
Forking is not your only option if you want to affect the development directly. Contributors typically have a say on the project, just be one of those.
You don't even have to write a single line of code: you may sponsor a project, you may even hire developers.
When it comes to proprietary software, you don't have such options to begin with.
But that's not what a democracy means. Democracy means that everyone gets a vote and the government (or whatever the equivalent is in this analogy) is obliged to adopt that decision. I've never voted for how the Linux kernel or any other open source project should work. I wouldn't be surprised if there was never a binding vote on any open source project. If I can leave and set up my own fork, that doesn't make it a democracy. In fact, the government analogy falls down entirely. Proprietary consumer software is closer to a democracy. The design decisions made are based on an estimate of what the majority want. Companies use focus groups which will give a fairly good approximation of majority preference. This is why, for example, MS improved the boot speed for Windows XP. The majority wanted it.
Sorry, but that's a flawed argument.
Even you agree that Democracy is about the majority imposing their decisions. That alone breaks the argument of "closer-to-democracy prorietary software" because people cannot command a company to do anything. It's the company itself that decides, for its own good, to do this or that.
If, for example, you participate in the Linux kernel development you will have a voice proportional to your contributions. You don't need a nobility title or money to be in such position. -- While not really a Democracy (more like a Meritocracy), it's far more reachable to people than proprietary software.
Can you (binding) vote on the future Windows kernel features?
I hate the argument that "If you don't like how things are going in an OSS project, you can just make your own fork! It's so much better than proprietary software because of that!" The fact is that time and knowledge are barriers that bar most people from doing what you propose. I probably don't know the language the the project was built in, I don't have time to learn it, I don't have the time to get familiar with the project's code, I don't have time to figure out how change it, etc. So yeah, the code is right there, but it's useless to a large majority (probably near 99%) of users. There's a better chance of getting the current development team to make a change than me attempting to make that change on my own.
You're being oversimplistic.
You see, in most countries you have the right to property. You can have your own house, that's your right. The fact you don't have the _money_ to buy a house does not invalidate such right.
If you wanted to modify a FOSS yourself and lack the knowledge, nothing prevents you from learning how to program.
And it's even more insteresting that that: you don't have to program at all, in order to take advantage of the open-sourcedness. If you have money for that, you may simply pay other people to develop/customize the software as much as you want.
FOSS is not a right to enjoy from slave labour, don't expect people doing XYZ for you only because you want that. -- I would like someone to clean my house for free, would you do that for me?
Also, it's kind of an asshole thing for Canonical to lure people into their "community" and then outright ignore them.
I don't know how Ubuntu was advertised before, regarding development specifically (I don't use Ubuntu myself, so it's outside my radar range anyway).
Unless they claimed something not consistent with that position, they may develop their distro as they like. FOSS-ness alone does not give you the right to interfere in their decisions.
Why should you ever, with all this parallel hardware, ever be waiting for your computer?'
For a lot of problems, for the same reason that some guy who just married 8 brides will still have to wait for his baby.
Of course, he'll be able to get 8 babies at once, assuming none of the processes crash during the computation.
That improves bandwidth, but not latency: almost 1 baby/month, but 9 months of latency.
The guy could try interleaving the pregnancies, in order to get the illusion of lower latency.
Sue the police department? What for?
The couple is old and they probably want just to enjoy the rest of their lives, being visited by their grandchildren and things like that.
To sue, at this point, would just be an annoyance to themselves.
That's not the worst.
What about things like 40 y.o. Beatles albums? Wasn't everyone paid properly already?
Perhaps not... I mean, it seems that Paul McCartney is still unable to afford buying meat, after all those years!
Who burns CD's any more?
Interesting comment from someone with a nickname like yours.
So we should all live with 15 people in a 3 bedroom house and cars parked all over the lawn?
I think what the GP meant is something about _not_ spending most your money in frivolities, and not indebting yourself to the neck while buying your SUV and a expensive house you simply cannot afford to begin with.
If an european decided to follow the "american way of life" to the full extent he/she would not last 10 years.
I have shares of healthy companies which lost much of their value (fortunately mostly recovered now) due to the financial debauchery in the US. Funny that neither I, nor the aforementioned companies, nor the country I live had anything to do with that.
That's how financially "solid" most US companies and US citizens are.
And you still mock the GP post?
Slashdot should block tags such as and for anonymous posters.
Humans aren't altruistic in general. It's nothing to be ashamed of - we're programmed to think of ourselves first. Aligning altruistic acts and self-preservation sounds like a great way to encourage altruistic behavior.
There's nothing altruistic when you do something expecting to be rewarded somehow.
Well, GP was intended as a joke, not as useable code.
Still, it may be a good idea you posted that, in case someone tries something like that expecting a certain result.
In the case of PI, I would rather suggest checking if the includes define such constant instead, and otherwise fall back to a proper PI define.
I'm programming at this moment and it was just what I needed! Thanks!
#define PI_VALUE 22/7
...the phone still runs Windows. ;)
If I ever buy such a phone (again), please shoot me. Thanks.
If you think WinMo is that horrible... You didn't use Windows CE 1.0.
The difference is that, when a FOSS copies from something else, it does not have the chutzpah to claim originality.
I must have been delusional when I thought I read all those posts on Slashdot Games saying that Frozen Bubble and Battle for Wesnoth were original...
Dunno, it's possible someone wrote that. Still, I cannot find any originality claim in either projects' websites.
Personally, I could never understand the fanboyism behind Frozen Bubble. It looks like a (polished) 1980s game.
Without stealing of ideas, we wouldn't have Open Office which implemented feature-for-feature what Microsoft Office has. Without stealing, we wouldn't have KDE and Gnome with implemented many features from Windows and OS X. How could open source survive without it? :)
Feeling trolly today?
Both Apple and Microsoft copied from Xerox, Lotus etc.
The difference is that, when a FOSS copies from something else, it does not have the chutzpah to claim originality.
What I find stupid, is the moving of the window "action" buttons.
Agreed, people are - since a long ago - used to have the buttons at the right side of the title bar.
I really would like some consistency. Changing things just for the sake of it is a bad idea.
Also, what's that thing with the high-contrast background picture? Is that because it's pretty in screenshots?
It's horrible to use in practice. It feels heavy and tiresome to the eyes. Also, icons and/or their names look bad in certain parts of the screen.
Move away from brownish colors, okay. Drop the "Linux for homo sapiens" motto, good.
But, please, keep the things you got right.