I don't generally shop at Circuit City, but from what I hear a major complaint that many people have is that most of the sales staff have no idea what they hell they're talking about. If you're trying to sell electronic equipment, it helps to know what it is that you're selling.
I don't shop there generally myself but I go in occasionally. And while I sometimes find a worker there who knows what they're talking about most don't. When I go to a store I want to be left alone until I have questions, and I want someone who is knowledgeable. This is getting harder and harder.
What I tend to think about is the early history of the USA. Basically, you had bunch of monarchies in Europe with the attitude that "what's good for the king is good for the country". Then, some rather enlightened people in what was to become the USA looked at the situation and concluded that if you let the leaders act in their own best interest then they take just about everything for themselves and leave everyone else with very little.
Actually it wasn't in the US that these enlightened people came from. "As a movement", The Age of Enlightment "occurred solely in Germany, France, Britain, and Spain, but its influence spread beyond". From there it influenced the USA's Founding Fathers. The founding father of capitalism Thomas Paine, who served under Washington, was a big advocate, having written several tracts supporting democracy during the Revolution. He was the one who wrote "These are the times that try men's souls." And the 18th century's Age of Enlightenment was preceded by the 17th century's Age of Reason which also took place in Europe.
The way I see it, the key realizatoin was that, unless leaders are subjected to oversight and compelled to act in the best interest of everyone, leaders will instead act in their own best interest to the detriment of everyone else. At the time, these ideas were applied to the leaders of governments.
Unfortunately these ideas are no longer applied, to politicians or to others.
Otherwise Creative Commons, internet archives.org, Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads and others websites would never exist allowing legal music downloads, at least not in their current form.
But how can the musicians on those sites be absolutely sure that they didn't subconsciously copy substantial portions of a work that they had heard ten years earlier on commercial radio?
Maybe a person won't know if they subconsciously copied a song but if they file for a copyright they may find it was already copyrighted. Even if they don't the copyright will still offer some protection. Of course this would work a lot better if the text was digitized allowing quick text searchs.
GIMP can do 24 bit color - that's 8 bits per channel, RGB. 48-bit color is 16-bits per channel. Cinepaint can do 48 bits, Krita can do it, digiKam can do it, etc.
Yes, GIMP does 24 bit colours, 8 bits per colour channel. Photoshop does 24 bits per colour channel, with three colour channels that's 72 bits total versus GIMP's 24 bits. And though I don't know for sure I heard CS3 will do 32 bits per channel.
BTW Povray and other 3D software packages support 48-bit images in HDR or OpenEXR because lighting can be derived from the high dynamic range. Many 3D packages can also save renders to HDR formats for editing in capable software. I use this feature all the time.
Sorry I don't know of HDR or OpenEXR or if that 48 bits is all together or 16 bits per channel.
I think their web page is referring to design goals. In use it's almost identical to the Gimp, and I had no trouble using it for stills. If you're interested in 3D, you might want to take a look at Blender as well.
Their frontpage does say what some goals are but it also says, cut and paste:
Is CinePaint a Video Editor?
CinePaint is a deep paint tool that's used for retouching movies, not a movie editor like Avid or Final Cut Pro.
As for 3D and blender, I have downloaded Blender and may give it a try however I'm more interested in photography and photo editing right now as I don't work now but want to start working in photography.
And in the case of music, the vast majority of people are "landless". Or can you show me a way to tell whether my claim to "land" doesn't infringe someone else's claim to "land", given music cryptomnesia cases such as Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and given the current patent minefield situation?
First, I don't know about Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music so I won't remark on it. Secondly just because the RIAA "controls" most of the music sold does not mean no one else can't produce music too. Otherwise Creative Commons, internet archives.org, Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads and others websites would never exist allowing legal music downloads, at least not in their current form. Also it does not prevent others from making their own music. I might even create music myself, I have a flute by David Nighteagle I'd like to learn to play, unfortunately I haven't found someone who could teach me and I no longer learn well on my own.
CinePaint, aka FilmGimp already supports 32 bits per channel. Use it if that's what's important to you.
Ah, isn't Cinepaint for movies and not photo editing? The Cinepaint homepage even says it's for retouching and is not an editor. Even so, I may give it a try along with other programs such as POV-Ray.
I'm a professional. I even teach Photoshop classes. And this is not a big deal. Really you need the added bit depth for photography work. But when I do come across this shortcoming of GIMP from time to time, it DOES make itself annoying. So what do I do? Open the image in another open source image editor that can handle the extra bits. Make my edits. Back to GIMP.
Because I want to work in photography, I don't work now because of an injury and photography is something I can do and have experience both behind the camera and in darkrooms, I've been checking out different photo editors and I haven't been able to find any that come close to the capabilities of Photoshop nor has 24 bit colour depth. And I use film, develop it, and then I'd scan it. I'd use a dslr unfortunately ones with full frame sensors are priced out of my range right now (forgetting about medium format). Ooh I see POV-Ray does offer 24 bit colour depths. But it's more a general graphics program and not a photo editor. You say you use another OS program for higher colour depths then go back to GIMP. Don't you loose those "extra bits" once you save in gimp? If they are saved maybe I could use POV-Ray with it.
The only thing that Adobe's done for me (as someone who makes a living in computer graphics) is make me aware that they are attempting to force me to be their customer by monopolizing the industry. THAT feels really great to my sensitive, artistic side.
I'll have a problem with Adobe when they have patents issued and start going after others over violations of those patents, software should NEVER EVER be patented, only specific implementations as long as it is unique.
There's just no way GIMP comes close to being a dropin replacement for Photoshop!
I disagree - all it takes is a short discussion about Adobe to convince many pro artists that O/S software like GIMP is based on superior principles.
Idealism and reality are different, sure I agree ideally OS is better, but when it comes to what actually works, for photo editing Photoshop sets the ceiling, and it is high compared to other offerings. This is especially true for either commercial, fashion, or nature, photography, not that they can't be one and the same.
But does anyone have the ability? Once a monopoly buys most of the land, it can produce with greater efficiency than any newcomer due to economies of scale.
How can anyone buy even half of the land? Bill Gates, the richest person in the world, doesn't have enough money to buy half of the land in the US never mind the rest of the world. If anything, someone trying to buy up land will only raise the price of land as others will start buying land as well. Forget about $5,000 or $10,000 an acre, land could rise to $1,000,000 or more. Also there's already many people holding, owning, a lot of land. In Florida for instance, many think Disney owns a lot of land and they do but Coka Cola owns more. Sugar farmers around Lake Okeechobee own a lot land as do some Indian tribes. Others own large ranchs. In I believe OK Ted Turner owns tens if not hundreds of thousands of acres where he has a ranch.
If someone tried to buy up a lot of land many land owners would see their net wealth increase, the only who wouldn't see a benefit would be the landless. Which unfortunately there are too many.
Add Activation and WPA. A few months ago I got a new PC with Linux preinstalled for my desk and I plan on getting a Macbook Pro for a laptop. Unless I have to or MS changes it's policies I will never get another Ms OS or software.
My stepson is a dyed in the wool, and school trained PSer, and I TOTALY blew him away by doing everything he could do in phototshop faster in GIMP; then for an encore I did everything faster than he could in photoshop. The real secret to both is learning the keyboard shortcuts, not the click-streams, the shortcuts are the same, the click-streams are different.
Oh, GIMP can do 24 bit colour channels? If not it can't do everything Photoshop can do. And last I heard it couldn't even do 16 bit colour channels. Oh, it's 24 bits total not 24 bits per channel.
I've recently installed Open Office and Gimp on a few of my customers M$ machines when they were facing the option of a $$$$ M$ Office & Adobe photoshop purchase.
Your clients, customers, I dare say aren't graphic or photography pros, are they? There's just no way GIMP comes close to being a dropin replacement for Photoshop! It doesn't even have 16 bit colour channels whereas Photoshop has 24 bit channels. And I've hear CS3 will have 32 bit channels.
I rarely post, but I feel I should chime in. I've been conditioning my own self to using FOSS apps for a while now so that I can make the switch to Linux a lot easier down the road. There are only a couple applications left for me (Photoshop being the deal-breaker). I'm never going to upgrade to Vista, I'm just going to switch over to something like Ubuntu when I get to the point where I would need to upgrade. By then I hope we'll have a native Photoshop on Linux, or a more robust solution on WINE at least.
Yeah, Photoshop is one reason I've come across as to why people won't switch to Linux. Some FOSS advocates say, if not scream, "GIMP". However for graphics and photgraphy pros GIMP doesn't come close to being a replacement for Photoshop. For instance whereas PS has 24 bit colour channels (and CS3 may have 32 bits) GIMP doesn't even have 16 bit channels, last I heard it's coming RSN, which was more than a year ago. Now I don't know how well it runs in WINE but PS 7 does run in Crossover. Though I got a PC with Linux preinstalled several months ago, personally I hope to get a Macbook Pro in the next 2 or 3 weeks which will be my primary computer.
As I remember it, when DEC went belly-up the software assets went to Compaq and the hardware assets eventually to Intel, which buried the Alpha - strong competitor to their processor lines.
Actually a South Korean company, Samsung, was producing Alphas though I don't know if they still are. And until April HP will be selling the Alpha Server. Microway the company I got my Alpha from still sales Workstations & Servers using Alphas. Of course they also offer computers with Intel and AMD cpus.
if iTunes is the only service that provides the song, then the only way to buy it is through iTunes and thus, the only way to put it on a player is if the player is an iPod.
This is a common misconception I run into frequently. iPods aren't the oly way to play music from iTunes. You can play them on your PC, or you can burn them to disk. And iTunes can play as well as and the songs, on a cd to the iTunes music library. Sure there's one step more that's needed but a person can play a song bought from iTunes on another mpg3 player. Heck, though I neither have an iPod or iTunes installed on my PC, I wouldn't find it too hard to burn cds to play songs n something other than an iPod. In order to do what I'd really like to do I'd have to put much more effort into taking my music with me. I prefer my music analogue instead of digital, on top of that I prefer to get my music off of vinyl. So to take it with me I first have to play it on a turntable, capture the output and digitize it, then create flac, mpg3, or whatever files. Or I could plug the turntable into my tapedeck and record the vinyl onto tape, preferably a reel-to-reel!
Well, the irony of free-market capitalism is that free-market capitalism always tends toward strictly-ordered monopoly. (The most profitable company is the one that controls the most aspects of the market, right?)
How so? In a free market anyone with the abilitiy would be able to enter a market thus creating competition therefore there's no monopoly.
And what if I install a 3rd party piece of hardware or software which results in installing "unsupported drivers"? What if you tried listening to a Sony audio CD and got a rootkit?
If you're talking about Gateway, you would not get support if you installed anything. Almost ten years ago I bought a laptop from Gateway and every tyme I called tech support once they had the serial number and such the first thing they'd ask is if you installed any hardware or software and if so then "Sorry we don't support that." When it happened to me they won't even go through and try to diagnose the problem to see if what was installed even had anything to do with the problem. The only way I was able to get help from them was to first uninstall then reinstall the OS using the recovery disk then call. And I paid extra for extended coverage.
Do you wonder why most probably there are no Alpha or MIPS desktop computers around you? That's right - because there is no version of Windows and Office for them.
I do have an Alpha close enough so my knee can touch it. It runs Win NT 4 and though I don't have it MS did release a version of Office to run on it. I think the only reason Alpha didn't last long was because DEC dropped the ball. They didn't do enough to market Alphas, Amiga deja vu all over again. They also didn't work on FX!32 enough to get it working tranlating software. On my Alpha I was only able to install one commecial app and a few shareware programs.
The thing is, a serious Linux user will check out the hardware in advance and verify compatibility, and most serious users are knowledgeable in hardware to determine that there are hardware issues. However, newbies are not. You cannot categorically say that all Linux users know their hardware, because I have seen that this is not so. I have seen new users rage against companies like HP, Dell etc. when sometimes they have not bothered to RTFM.
Several years ago I found myself in a related problem. As someone new to Linux I wanted to get a new PC as the one I had then was dying and I wanted to install Linux on it. Back then there was a lot of press about how HP was working with and was going to be Linux friendly. So I went ahead and bought a Pavilion along with another hd and video card. The second hd was going to be for Linux and the video card was so I could use two monitors. I didn't have any trouble with either, the hd showed up in My Computer as did the video card. The video card worked fine with a second monitor. However when I tried to install Linux I found out the motherboard wasn't Linux compatible. It ended up being one of those combo boards with nic, sound, and video built onto the motherboard and there were no drivers for it.
I spent several hours searching through HP's tech support then emailing trying to see how I could install Linux on it and tech support just said it wasn't Linux compatible and they wouldn't support it. They said if I wanted Linux then I would have to order a PC with it from them. So I'm not supprized they wouldn't support this woman's laptop.
Thats why standards were invented. There will of course have to be some sort of rules created to define what constitutes porn. Hopefully standards that are very rigid and simple to cut down on the bickering. No "full nudity is ok if it somehow falls in the domain of "art". As much as I see an arguement for that, it's too easy to just call it all "art" and then the whole thing is useless. Nay, it has to be very simple...like "if the nipple or any identifyable portion thereof is shown in any form and any context, then it needs to go.xxx". Sure lots of people will complain about that...but that is the only way it can be clear, workable and enforacable.
And who's going to decide what's porn? Arabs? Say Wabis? Or is China going to decide? How about Europe? What's pron in one place isn't in another. This is even true in the US. The USSC ruled each locality can decide for themself what is obscene and what isn't.
IIRC the porn industry is pro xxx because it makes their sites easier to find.
If you had RTFA, you should of seen where it says: "I have not met one single webmaster or adult video producer that is in favor of `.xxx,' and I've met a lot of them." Further "Porn sites are largely concerned that the domain name, while billed as voluntary, would make it easier for governments to later mandate its use and 'essentially ghettoize sexual information on the Web,' "
In other words, some porn sites DO NOT support the.xxx domain.
But the first part of your argument is best I've read in this entire discussion. Deciding what is porn in the US is easy. Unfortunately, what we consider porn in the US is not considered porn in Germany, or Amsterdam, or Nigeria, or wherever else. So, who's standards do we use?
Deciding what's porn in the US is DIFFCULT. The USSC ruled everyplace can decide for themself what is and isn't obscene as regards porn and what's obscene in one place is not in another.
I don't have an answer for that except that maybe sites that end in.cn (is that correct for Canadian?)
Tough call, but there are porn laws on the books now. I don't see why ICANN just adopt some of the currently existing laws and use those. I get your point but I think something like foot-fetish sites would serve as a better example. It will be subjective, no doubt, but it is certainly doable.
As the post you replied to here brought up which country's laws are you going to use? What's porn in one country isn't in another and what art in one country can get your head chopped off in another. In no way, shape, or form is this doable!
And who decides if it is or isn't educational? You? Not everyone agrees what educational and what isn't.
If there's any doubt, you could set up a board or something to decide disputes.
SO they get to decide for everyone else what is educational?
It's really not that hard to figure out. (pun not intended!)
But it is HARD to figure out. What's one person's porn is another's art. Many Christians groups are against porn yet they read a pornographic book, even swearing by it, the "Bible". The Bible is filled with gratuitous violence; gender and sexual discrimination; pornography; and murder and genocide.
I fail to understand why we DON'T have.xxx domain names. If we did, we could lump all the porn sites together, making them both easier to find and easier to block. No one would accidentally stumble upon a porn site while looking for something completely unrelated (remember whitehouse.com?). This also gives the added advantage of freeing up porn sites to do more of whatever it is they wish to do. Gone is the excuse of "What about the children?" because blocking it would be so easy, than even an ISP could do it. Imagine, all you have to do is call your ISP and say, "Please block all html-based porn. Thank you." All your ISP would need to do is simply block all.xxx domain names. Your children are safe and porn operators have that much more freedom!
I used to support a.xxx domain, apparently as you do, but now I am against one. One reason I do is in what you bring up, requiring porn sites to use it. You don't explicitly state it but once such a domain is established it won't be long before some politicans decide they want all porn sites to be required to use it. Heck, even religious groups are against it, "religious groups worry that '.xxx' would legitimize and expand the number of adults sites". Also it won't prevent children from visiting and seeing porn. If ISPs block.xxx domains all a person would have to do to visit a porn site is type in the IP address, 255.000.000.000 and someone will come along with a.com listing the ip addies of porn sites.
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I don't generally shop at Circuit City, but from what I hear a major complaint that many people have is that most of the sales staff have no idea what they hell they're talking about. If you're trying to sell electronic equipment, it helps to know what it is that you're selling.
I don't shop there generally myself but I go in occasionally. And while I sometimes find a worker there who knows what they're talking about most don't. When I go to a store I want to be left alone until I have questions, and I want someone who is knowledgeable. This is getting harder and harder.
FalconWhat I tend to think about is the early history of the USA. Basically, you had bunch of monarchies in Europe with the attitude that "what's good for the king is good for the country". Then, some rather enlightened people in what was to become the USA looked at the situation and concluded that if you let the leaders act in their own best interest then they take just about everything for themselves and leave everyone else with very little.
Actually it wasn't in the US that these enlightened people came from. "As a movement", The Age of Enlightment "occurred solely in Germany, France, Britain, and Spain, but its influence spread beyond". From there it influenced the USA's Founding Fathers. The founding father of capitalism Thomas Paine, who served under Washington, was a big advocate, having written several tracts supporting democracy during the Revolution. He was the one who wrote "These are the times that try men's souls." And the 18th century's Age of Enlightenment was preceded by the 17th century's Age of Reason which also took place in Europe.
The way I see it, the key realizatoin was that, unless leaders are subjected to oversight and compelled to act in the best interest of everyone, leaders will instead act in their own best interest to the detriment of everyone else. At the time, these ideas were applied to the leaders of governments.
Unfortunately these ideas are no longer applied, to politicians or to others.
FalconFirst, I don't know about Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music so I won't remark on it.
See Wikipedia: My Sweet Lord#Legal controversy and Wikipedia: Cryptomnesia#Validity for an overview, and check out especially the latter article's references.
Thanks, I didn't know of this, or at least don't recall it. I loved both "He's so Fine" and "My Sweet Lord".
Otherwise Creative Commons, internet archives.org, Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads and others websites would never exist allowing legal music downloads, at least not in their current form.
But how can the musicians on those sites be absolutely sure that they didn't subconsciously copy substantial portions of a work that they had heard ten years earlier on commercial radio?
Maybe a person won't know if they subconsciously copied a song but if they file for a copyright they may find it was already copyrighted. Even if they don't the copyright will still offer some protection. Of course this would work a lot better if the text was digitized allowing quick text searchs.
FalconGIMP can do 24 bit color - that's 8 bits per channel, RGB. 48-bit color is 16-bits per channel. Cinepaint can do 48 bits, Krita can do it, digiKam can do it, etc.
Yes, GIMP does 24 bit colours, 8 bits per colour channel. Photoshop does 24 bits per colour channel, with three colour channels that's 72 bits total versus GIMP's 24 bits. And though I don't know for sure I heard CS3 will do 32 bits per channel.
BTW Povray and other 3D software packages support 48-bit images in HDR or OpenEXR because lighting can be derived from the high dynamic range. Many 3D packages can also save renders to HDR formats for editing in capable software. I use this feature all the time.
Sorry I don't know of HDR or OpenEXR or if that 48 bits is all together or 16 bits per channel.
FalconI think their web page is referring to design goals. In use it's almost identical to the Gimp, and I had no trouble using it for stills. If you're interested in 3D, you might want to take a look at Blender as well.
Their frontpage does say what some goals are but it also says, cut and paste:
Is CinePaint a Video Editor?
CinePaint is a deep paint tool that's used for retouching movies, not a movie editor like Avid or Final Cut Pro.
As for 3D and blender, I have downloaded Blender and may give it a try however I'm more interested in photography and photo editing right now as I don't work now but want to start working in photography.
FalconAnd in the case of music, the vast majority of people are "landless". Or can you show me a way to tell whether my claim to "land" doesn't infringe someone else's claim to "land", given music cryptomnesia cases such as Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and given the current patent minefield situation?
First, I don't know about Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music so I won't remark on it. Secondly just because the RIAA "controls" most of the music sold does not mean no one else can't produce music too. Otherwise Creative Commons, internet archives.org, Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads and others websites would never exist allowing legal music downloads, at least not in their current form. Also it does not prevent others from making their own music. I might even create music myself, I have a flute by David Nighteagle I'd like to learn to play, unfortunately I haven't found someone who could teach me and I no longer learn well on my own.
FalconCinePaint, aka FilmGimp already supports 32 bits per channel. Use it if that's what's important to you.
Ah, isn't Cinepaint for movies and not photo editing? The Cinepaint homepage even says it's for retouching and is not an editor. Even so, I may give it a try along with other programs such as POV-Ray.
FalconI'm a professional. I even teach Photoshop classes. And this is not a big deal. Really you need the added bit depth for photography work. But when I do come across this shortcoming of GIMP from time to time, it DOES make itself annoying. So what do I do? Open the image in another open source image editor that can handle the extra bits. Make my edits. Back to GIMP.
Because I want to work in photography, I don't work now because of an injury and photography is something I can do and have experience both behind the camera and in darkrooms, I've been checking out different photo editors and I haven't been able to find any that come close to the capabilities of Photoshop nor has 24 bit colour depth. And I use film, develop it, and then I'd scan it. I'd use a dslr unfortunately ones with full frame sensors are priced out of my range right now (forgetting about medium format). Ooh I see POV-Ray does offer 24 bit colour depths. But it's more a general graphics program and not a photo editor. You say you use another OS program for higher colour depths then go back to GIMP. Don't you loose those "extra bits" once you save in gimp? If they are saved maybe I could use POV-Ray with it.
The only thing that Adobe's done for me (as someone who makes a living in computer graphics) is make me aware that they are attempting to force me to be their customer by monopolizing the industry. THAT feels really great to my sensitive, artistic side.
I'll have a problem with Adobe when they have patents issued and start going after others over violations of those patents, software should NEVER EVER be patented, only specific implementations as long as it is unique.
There's just no way GIMP comes close to being a dropin replacement for Photoshop!
I disagree - all it takes is a short discussion about Adobe to convince many pro artists that O/S software like GIMP is based on superior principles.
Idealism and reality are different, sure I agree ideally OS is better, but when it comes to what actually works, for photo editing Photoshop sets the ceiling, and it is high compared to other offerings. This is especially true for either commercial, fashion, or nature, photography, not that they can't be one and the same.
FalconBut does anyone have the ability? Once a monopoly buys most of the land, it can produce with greater efficiency than any newcomer due to economies of scale.
How can anyone buy even half of the land? Bill Gates, the richest person in the world, doesn't have enough money to buy half of the land in the US never mind the rest of the world. If anything, someone trying to buy up land will only raise the price of land as others will start buying land as well. Forget about $5,000 or $10,000 an acre, land could rise to $1,000,000 or more. Also there's already many people holding, owning, a lot of land. In Florida for instance, many think Disney owns a lot of land and they do but Coka Cola owns more. Sugar farmers around Lake Okeechobee own a lot land as do some Indian tribes. Others own large ranchs. In I believe OK Ted Turner owns tens if not hundreds of thousands of acres where he has a ranch.
If someone tried to buy up a lot of land many land owners would see their net wealth increase, the only who wouldn't see a benefit would be the landless. Which unfortunately there are too many.
FalconSuSE on my main PC
Add Activation and WPA. A few months ago I got a new PC with Linux preinstalled for my desk and I plan on getting a Macbook Pro for a laptop. Unless I have to or MS changes it's policies I will never get another Ms OS or software.
FalconMy stepson is a dyed in the wool, and school trained PSer, and I TOTALY blew him away by doing everything he could do in phototshop faster in GIMP; then for an encore I did everything faster than he could in photoshop. The real secret to both is learning the keyboard shortcuts, not the click-streams, the shortcuts are the same, the click-streams are different.
Oh, GIMP can do 24 bit colour channels? If not it can't do everything Photoshop can do. And last I heard it couldn't even do 16 bit colour channels. Oh, it's 24 bits total not 24 bits per channel.
FalconI've recently installed Open Office and Gimp on a few of my customers M$ machines when they were facing the option of a $$$$ M$ Office & Adobe photoshop purchase.
Your clients, customers, I dare say aren't graphic or photography pros, are they? There's just no way GIMP comes close to being a dropin replacement for Photoshop! It doesn't even have 16 bit colour channels whereas Photoshop has 24 bit channels. And I've hear CS3 will have 32 bit channels.
FalconI rarely post, but I feel I should chime in. I've been conditioning my own self to using FOSS apps for a while now so that I can make the switch to Linux a lot easier down the road. There are only a couple applications left for me (Photoshop being the deal-breaker). I'm never going to upgrade to Vista, I'm just going to switch over to something like Ubuntu when I get to the point where I would need to upgrade. By then I hope we'll have a native Photoshop on Linux, or a more robust solution on WINE at least.
Yeah, Photoshop is one reason I've come across as to why people won't switch to Linux. Some FOSS advocates say, if not scream, "GIMP". However for graphics and photgraphy pros GIMP doesn't come close to being a replacement for Photoshop. For instance whereas PS has 24 bit colour channels (and CS3 may have 32 bits) GIMP doesn't even have 16 bit channels, last I heard it's coming RSN, which was more than a year ago. Now I don't know how well it runs in WINE but PS 7 does run in Crossover. Though I got a PC with Linux preinstalled several months ago, personally I hope to get a Macbook Pro in the next 2 or 3 weeks which will be my primary computer.
FalconAs I remember it, when DEC went belly-up the software assets went to Compaq and the hardware assets eventually to Intel, which buried the Alpha - strong competitor to their processor lines.
Actually a South Korean company, Samsung, was producing Alphas though I don't know if they still are. And until April HP will be selling the Alpha Server. Microway the company I got my Alpha from still sales Workstations & Servers using Alphas. Of course they also offer computers with Intel and AMD cpus.
Falconif iTunes is the only service that provides the song, then the only way to buy it is through iTunes and thus, the only way to put it on a player is if the player is an iPod.
This is a common misconception I run into frequently. iPods aren't the oly way to play music from iTunes. You can play them on your PC, or you can burn them to disk. And iTunes can play as well as and the songs, on a cd to the iTunes music library. Sure there's one step more that's needed but a person can play a song bought from iTunes on another mpg3 player. Heck, though I neither have an iPod or iTunes installed on my PC, I wouldn't find it too hard to burn cds to play songs n something other than an iPod. In order to do what I'd really like to do I'd have to put much more effort into taking my music with me. I prefer my music analogue instead of digital, on top of that I prefer to get my music off of vinyl. So to take it with me I first have to play it on a turntable, capture the output and digitize it, then create flac, mpg3, or whatever files. Or I could plug the turntable into my tapedeck and record the vinyl onto tape, preferably a reel-to-reel!
FalconWell, the irony of free-market capitalism is that free-market capitalism always tends toward strictly-ordered monopoly. (The most profitable company is the one that controls the most aspects of the market, right?)
How so? In a free market anyone with the abilitiy would be able to enter a market thus creating competition therefore there's no monopoly.
FalconAnd what if I install a 3rd party piece of hardware or software which results in installing "unsupported drivers"? What if you tried listening to a Sony audio CD and got a rootkit?
If you're talking about Gateway, you would not get support if you installed anything. Almost ten years ago I bought a laptop from Gateway and every tyme I called tech support once they had the serial number and such the first thing they'd ask is if you installed any hardware or software and if so then "Sorry we don't support that." When it happened to me they won't even go through and try to diagnose the problem to see if what was installed even had anything to do with the problem. The only way I was able to get help from them was to first uninstall then reinstall the OS using the recovery disk then call. And I paid extra for extended coverage.
FalconDo you wonder why most probably there are no Alpha or MIPS desktop computers around you? That's right - because there is no version of Windows and Office for them.
I do have an Alpha close enough so my knee can touch it. It runs Win NT 4 and though I don't have it MS did release a version of Office to run on it. I think the only reason Alpha didn't last long was because DEC dropped the ball. They didn't do enough to market Alphas, Amiga deja vu all over again. They also didn't work on FX!32 enough to get it working tranlating software. On my Alpha I was only able to install one commecial app and a few shareware programs.
FalconThe thing is, a serious Linux user will check out the hardware in advance and verify compatibility, and most serious users are knowledgeable in hardware to determine that there are hardware issues. However, newbies are not. You cannot categorically say that all Linux users know their hardware, because I have seen that this is not so. I have seen new users rage against companies like HP, Dell etc. when sometimes they have not bothered to RTFM.
Several years ago I found myself in a related problem. As someone new to Linux I wanted to get a new PC as the one I had then was dying and I wanted to install Linux on it. Back then there was a lot of press about how HP was working with and was going to be Linux friendly. So I went ahead and bought a Pavilion along with another hd and video card. The second hd was going to be for Linux and the video card was so I could use two monitors. I didn't have any trouble with either, the hd showed up in My Computer as did the video card. The video card worked fine with a second monitor. However when I tried to install Linux I found out the motherboard wasn't Linux compatible. It ended up being one of those combo boards with nic, sound, and video built onto the motherboard and there were no drivers for it.
I spent several hours searching through HP's tech support then emailing trying to see how I could install Linux on it and tech support just said it wasn't Linux compatible and they wouldn't support it. They said if I wanted Linux then I would have to order a PC with it from them. So I'm not supprized they wouldn't support this woman's laptop.
FalconThats why standards were invented. There will of course have to be some sort of rules created to define what constitutes porn. Hopefully standards that are very rigid and simple to cut down on the bickering. No "full nudity is ok if it somehow falls in the domain of "art". As much as I see an arguement for that, it's too easy to just call it all "art" and then the whole thing is useless. Nay, it has to be very simple...like "if the nipple or any identifyable portion thereof is shown in any form and any context, then it needs to go .xxx". Sure lots of people will complain about that...but that is the only way it can be clear, workable and enforacable.
And who's going to decide what's porn? Arabs? Say Wabis? Or is China going to decide? How about Europe? What's pron in one place isn't in another. This is even true in the US. The USSC ruled each locality can decide for themself what is obscene and what isn't.
And then how are you going to enforce it?
FalconIIRC the porn industry is pro xxx because it makes their sites easier to find.
If you had RTFA, you should of seen where it says: "I have not met one single webmaster or adult video producer that is in favor of `.xxx,' and I've met a lot of them." Further "Porn sites are largely concerned that the domain name, while billed as voluntary, would make it easier for governments to later mandate its use and 'essentially ghettoize sexual information on the Web,' "
In other words, some porn sites DO NOT support the .xxx domain.
FalconBut the first part of your argument is best I've read in this entire discussion. Deciding what is porn in the US is easy. Unfortunately, what we consider porn in the US is not considered porn in Germany, or Amsterdam, or Nigeria, or wherever else. So, who's standards do we use?
Deciding what's porn in the US is DIFFCULT. The USSC ruled everyplace can decide for themself what is and isn't obscene as regards porn and what's obscene in one place is not in another.
I don't have an answer for that except that maybe sites that end in .cn (is that correct for Canadian?)
Canada's country doamin is .ca.
FalconTough call, but there are porn laws on the books now. I don't see why ICANN just adopt some of the currently existing laws and use those. I get your point but I think something like foot-fetish sites would serve as a better example. It will be subjective, no doubt, but it is certainly doable.
As the post you replied to here brought up which country's laws are you going to use? What's porn in one country isn't in another and what art in one country can get your head chopped off in another. In no way, shape, or form is this doable!
FalconAnd who decides if it is or isn't educational? You? Not everyone agrees what educational and what isn't.
If there's any doubt, you could set up a board or something to decide disputes.
SO they get to decide for everyone else what is educational?
It's really not that hard to figure out. (pun not intended!)
But it is HARD to figure out. What's one person's porn is another's art. Many Christians groups are against porn yet they read a pornographic book, even swearing by it, the "Bible". The Bible is filled with gratuitous violence; gender and sexual discrimination; pornography; and murder and genocide.
FalconI fail to understand why we DON'T have .xxx domain names. If we did, we could lump all the porn sites together, making them both easier to find and easier to block. No one would accidentally stumble upon a porn site while looking for something completely unrelated (remember whitehouse.com?). This also gives the added advantage of freeing up porn sites to do more of whatever it is they wish to do. Gone is the excuse of "What about the children?" because blocking it would be so easy, than even an ISP could do it. Imagine, all you have to do is call your ISP and say, "Please block all html-based porn. Thank you." All your ISP would need to do is simply block all .xxx domain names. Your children are safe and porn operators have that much more freedom!
I used to support a .xxx domain, apparently as you do, but now I am against one. One reason I do is in what you bring up, requiring porn sites to use it. You don't explicitly state it but once such a domain is established it won't be long before some politicans decide they want all porn sites to be required to use it. Heck, even religious groups are against it, "religious groups worry that '.xxx' would legitimize and expand the number of adults sites". Also it won't prevent children from visiting and seeing porn. If ISPs block .xxx domains all a person would have to do to visit a porn site is type in the IP address, 255.000.000.000 and someone will come along with a .com listing the ip addies of porn sites.
Falcon