I think it's an organization trying to promote cooperation amoungst the debian based distro's. Cooperation towards better coordination (eg. bug fixing) and some standardizaton to make things easier for the end-user. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.
All the major debian derived distro's belong to it other than Ubuntu. Obviously this is a major ommision which, on it's own, is enough to kill it.
Yahoo charges $0.80 for a song. This doesn't do you much good if you have an iPod, but it does tell us that iTunes doesn't have to charge a dollar a song.
Also, keep in mind that iTunes makes Apple a huge amount of money. In other words, Apple is clearing a very large margin, so they are not really in a position to act like the friend of the consumer.
Come to think of it, Apple really is a very high margin company in general, aren't they?
The differences in the capabilities of the competing OS's is small compared to the differences in their philosophies.
MS and Apple both now have competent OS's - as of Win2K (in my opinion) and OS X - but they will always be driven by a different set of values than Linux and raw BSD.
So, I personally use Windows and sometimes even like it, but my hat goes off to those who use Linux, whether it is best or worst.
I've always been the type who likes to create a collection of my own music. In the last few years, that has meant ripping stuff myself into FLAC format and then generating compressed files as needed (usually Ogg).
But now that I've tried out a subscription service (Yahoo) I'm a convert.
I don't worry anymore about what I own or have access to. I have everything. All I worry about is what I like, which is expressed through the rating system. I love it, and in my opinion, this is the future of music.
Regarding the Yahoo service in particular, I'm finding it quite good. The music is all 192Kbps (WMA), the selection is very good, and the UI is good. On the downside, the client software is buggy (it is in beta still) and the lock-in factor is pretty huge.
But for me, the biggest problem is the that subscription services - though available from a variety of retailers - are only available on Windows. Give me a cross-platform version of Yahoo (where cross-platform includes Linux) and I'll sign up for life.
(DRM/WMA is a big issue and I won't get into it here.)
We don't have the time (or skill) to research the validity of every study ourselves. Even large and well designed studies can be biased by its choice of question. In other words, if a study was funded by an interested party, they will find a way to get the answer they want.
So, we must look at the source, and the funding. So 'who made the statement' is very important.
Thanks. You're right. But I wasn't being very clear.
I wasn't really thinnking of moving Rhapsody to Linux. I was thinking of the decision point prior to puchasing Next. Supposedly they were considering BeOS, Next, and Linux with an Apple (closed source) GUI on it.
I don't know this for a fact, but I think it is straight-forward... Apple is the king of lock-in, and if their software runs on a generic PC then they loose a very important element of their lock-in. And then their is image. They are a premium brand company and it would hurt their image to run on a generic PC.
I'm sure many of you will disagree (strongly) with some of my comments. But don't worry, according to the article we'll know who is right very soon.
(It would be great for consumers if I were wrong.)
Given (very) limited resources and tons of things to do, shouldn't the community focus on open source replacements for software/protocols which are not supported on a free platforms?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Adobe/Macromedia support flash for FLOSS browsers (eg. firefox) and FLOSS OS's (ie. Linux). The company is not aligned with MS or Apple, and appears to be committed to providing cross-platform support in the future.
It would be better if they provided source, but surely cross-platform is an important goal too.
I have no connection of any sort with Adobe/Macromedia or Flash.
Many software projects are unable to take advantage of modern C++ features because they want to support all sorts of old compilers.
I'd prefer to see some projects reduce their support to (for example) GCC 3.4+, the Intel Compiler, and MS VC 7.1+ (in strict mode). The three of these are very similar and all are highly conformant. Supporting just these three would be much, much easier than supporting a bevy of older and stranger compilers.
Hey, what about the fact that both OS clients are available to only a tiny portion of the market?
All those people who need an alternative to Outlook are using Windows.
It's great that these free programs look like Outlook - this will make it much easier and more comfortable for Outlook users to switch - but please port them to Windows.
The CBC radio content is great (and no commercials) so getting this content in podcasts would be fantastic.
A few months ago I was looking for an episode of the program 'ideas' that I had missed. I e-mailed the CBC asking whether they might make this stuff available as a podcast. Here is there response, but please don't hold the CBC to anything in this e-mail. Don't make them regret being so detailed and honest in their response...
"Thank you for taking the time to write to us.
There are a series of legal, financial and resource issues which have forced CBC Radio to change its policy about offering audio files on-line, after a program has aired. These issues have to do with copyright, contractual agreements, bandwidth and staff resources. For example, the musicians association would like to be compensated if we play their music on our website - understandable, but expensive. And so at this time CBC Radio has decided that resources need to go into programming rather than into websites.
We are also frustrated by this decision. We'd like to have as many people as possible listen to our programs.
We have begun to post programs which are clear of music rights/copyright issues. However, there are few IDEAS programs that fall into this category. We use short pieces of music in most of our documentaries, most of which is mixed under narration. We have been told by our business affairs department that any piece of music, of any length, that is posted on-line, needs to have a music license agreement with the music publisher. To acquire music licenses to post these programs would fall well outside of what our show budget can afford. Other programs like Quarks & Quarks can post their programs because any recorded music is cut out of the show. This is easily done for talk/interview format programs.
One of the reasons other broadcasters like the BBC and NPR post their audio on-line is that public that they have different agreements with the different stake holders (ie, Unions).
Our legal and business affairs staff are doing what they can to resolve these issues, and we hope that we will be able to continue the on-line service in the future.
We do offer audio copies and transcripts for sale, but I hasten to add that this is a service, not a profitable business. The fee covers the costs of employing the small staff that makes the copies and fills the orders. Any extra money goes directly back into radio programming. I have been told that some of our programs will be available for download, for a fee, by puretracks.com in the future.
So, again our apologies. We hope to be able to offer more of our programs for on-line listening in the near future."
Open-source companies will sometimes play games and be uncooperative.
But Mozilla is a foundation, so why should it care whether users get its code directly from it, or through Netscape, RedHat, etc., as long the user's code is properly patched.
So, instead of encouraging users to only get the code from them, they should work with others to setup good patch processes that work for everybody.
From the article... "Oh, brother. In the olden days, O'Gara would have been given a medal for generating readership. But in today's world of the so easily offended, she's apparently let go instead, and things calm down as the hissy fit subsides."
That sounds like progress to me!
Everyone, including Dvorak, seems aware that her journalism is crap and is innapropriate (to say the least) so why does he seem to prefer to see that sort of stuff rewarded? Is he that sort of journalist himself?
The internet provides us with such unlimited info that the problem is no longer finding information, it is deciding who to trust.
Everyone probably has some internal list of sources they trust, but maintaining such a list is very hard.
If TrustRank could be done and done right (???) then it would be a wonderful service.
But, can any corporation be trusted to do this? Surely they would eventually start to 'sell' higher trust ratings? I 'trust' google, but it is still a corporation and it's job is to make money.
I say 'you' because I'm here in Canada where we still have a semblance of democracy left. Or so I thought, but recently a classic and rather large scale case of political corruption has been uncovered here (Tom Delay style).
The one good thing I can find in this whole affair is that people here don't seem to have accepted this sort of corruption here to the degree they have in the states.
Let's not harass MS if they really are going to adopt unix-ish anything in Longhorn.
Typically, companies like MS identify that some other product has something bettter but they won't adopt it because that would be (a) admitting it, (b) giving credence to their competitor, and (c) reducing lock-in.
Think about how hard it is to get the Linux community to do things in a Windows like way.
So, there is much to abuse MS over; for this they should be congratulated (if they really do it in that way).
The importance of a piece of software being open source depends on the degree to which users and other software depend on it, since this determines the degree of lock-in.
- If the software is used by many users and has a non-trivial UI then it would be better if it were open source.
- More importantly though, if the software exposes an API and lots of other software is built on top of it (eg. a part of the OS) then it is important that it be open source.
The reason for this is because these factors determine the degree of lock-in. If there is no user interface, and no other software is built on top of it, then there is very little lock-in and the software can easily be replaced in the future.
For this reason, closed source drivers should be accepted.
A closed source project such as del.icio.us will be able to get financial backing and grow. It will work well and features will be added, but the features added will be geared to the interests of the financial backers, not the user. After a little while it will be sold to Google or Yahoo. Though I consider Yahoo and Google to be very well behaved and respectable companies, the ads will soon appear and possibly the data will start being sold (do they do this?).
I'm not suggesting that there is anything wrong with this. The owner has stumbled upon something potentially big, and it is natural that he should dream of making big money from it.
An open-source alternative will develop more slowly and the servers will probably be less responsive (ie. fast) due to the lack of funding, but it will likely develop features that serve you. A variety of competitors might appear, based on the same code base, with different visions. They will also share data, since it is cc. Even if one of the open-source versions find a good way to make money, they will always be responsive to the concerns of their users because they don't realy have any lock-in. If they add full-page ads (a la Yahoo groups) then user, code, and data will all migrate elsewhere.
Personally, I currently use and enjoy del.icio.us. I'll wait and see how the alternative fairs.
Slashdot Mirror
http://dccalliance.org/
I think it's an organization trying to promote cooperation amoungst the debian based distro's. Cooperation towards better coordination (eg. bug fixing) and some standardizaton to make things easier for the end-user. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.
All the major debian derived distro's belong to it other than Ubuntu. Obviously this is a major ommision which, on it's own, is enough to kill it.
On the whole it's wonderful what he's doing, but I'm sorry he isn't being more supportive of DCC.
If DCC does fail he will have contributed to this by not supporting it in some manner (even if just giving it his moral support).
In my opinion, DCC is good for debian, and good for LInux.
Personally, I've stopped promoting FF until they get auto-update working.
Security issues are a fact of life so they need a way to roll out security fixes to users. The current system sucks.
When I look at the system of a friend for whom I've installed FF, I invariably find that they have not upgraded at all. No surprise really.
Yahoo charges $0.80 for a song. This doesn't do you much good if you have an iPod, but it does tell us that iTunes doesn't have to charge a dollar a song.
Also, keep in mind that iTunes makes Apple a huge amount of money. In other words, Apple is clearing a very large margin, so they are not really in a position to act like the friend of the consumer.
Come to think of it, Apple really is a very high margin company in general, aren't they?
WiFi is becoming very common and it doesn't seem to get along very well with BT v1.1.
I'm told that BT v1.2 works better in WiFi environments, so I will wait for something that supports 1.2.
Are there any other products like this (that might usee 1.2)?
I'm not sure what you are referring to, but OOo 2.0 does not use native widgets - it fakes them.
There are a variety of ways to do native support - faking it is the worst in my opinion.
Yet another reason why there is a need for office suites other than OOo.
But please make KOffice available on Windows. You would multiply your potential user base hugely.
The differences in the capabilities of the competing OS's is small compared to the differences in their philosophies.
MS and Apple both now have competent OS's - as of Win2K (in my opinion) and OS X - but they will always be driven by a different set of values than Linux and raw BSD.
So, I personally use Windows and sometimes even like it, but my hat goes off to those who use Linux, whether it is best or worst.
I've always been the type who likes to create a collection of my own music. In the last few years, that has meant ripping stuff myself into FLAC format and then generating compressed files as needed (usually Ogg).
But now that I've tried out a subscription service (Yahoo) I'm a convert.
I don't worry anymore about what I own or have access to. I have everything. All I worry about is what I like, which is expressed through the rating system. I love it, and in my opinion, this is the future of music.
Regarding the Yahoo service in particular, I'm finding it quite good. The music is all 192Kbps (WMA), the selection is very good, and the UI is good. On the downside, the client software is buggy (it is in beta still) and the lock-in factor is pretty huge.
But for me, the biggest problem is the that subscription services - though available from a variety of retailers - are only available on Windows. Give me a cross-platform version of Yahoo (where cross-platform includes Linux) and I'll sign up for life.
(DRM/WMA is a big issue and I won't get into it here.)
I completely disagree.
We don't have the time (or skill) to research the validity of every study ourselves. Even large and well designed studies can be biased by its choice of question. In other words, if a study was funded by an interested party, they will find a way to get the answer they want.
So, we must look at the source, and the funding. So 'who made the statement' is very important.
Thanks. You're right. But I wasn't being very clear.
I wasn't really thinnking of moving Rhapsody to Linux. I was thinking of the decision point prior to puchasing Next. Supposedly they were considering BeOS, Next, and Linux with an Apple (closed source) GUI on it.
Absolutely NOT a PC.
I don't know this for a fact, but I think it is straight-forward... Apple is the king of lock-in, and if their software runs on a generic PC then they loose a very important element of their lock-in. And then their is image. They are a premium brand company and it would hurt their image to run on a generic PC.
I'm sure many of you will disagree (strongly) with some of my comments. But don't worry, according to the article we'll know who is right very soon.
(It would be great for consumers if I were wrong.)
It really is a shame that Apple didn't build their new OS around Linux rather than BSD/Mach. It would have been great for both OS X and for Linux.
I know it's more complicated than that (eg. it might have been bad for Apple long-term if they helped Linux), but it's a nice thought anyway.
Given (very) limited resources and tons of things to do, shouldn't the community focus on open source replacements for software/protocols which are not supported on a free platforms?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Adobe/Macromedia support flash for FLOSS browsers (eg. firefox) and FLOSS OS's (ie. Linux). The company is not aligned with MS or Apple, and appears to be committed to providing cross-platform support in the future.
It would be better if they provided source, but surely cross-platform is an important goal too.
I have no connection of any sort with Adobe/Macromedia or Flash.
Many software projects are unable to take advantage of modern C++ features because they want to support all sorts of old compilers.
I'd prefer to see some projects reduce their support to (for example) GCC 3.4+, the Intel Compiler, and MS VC 7.1+ (in strict mode). The three of these are very similar and all are highly conformant. Supporting just these three would be much, much easier than supporting a bevy of older and stranger compilers.
Hey, what about the fact that both OS clients are available to only a tiny portion of the market?
All those people who need an alternative to Outlook are using Windows.
It's great that these free programs look like Outlook - this will make it much easier and more comfortable for Outlook users to switch - but please port them to Windows.
The article talks about Apple using Intel chips.
If they actually made the MacOS available on PC's that would be fantastic! But extremely unlikely as that would threaten their markup.
The CBC radio content is great (and no commercials) so getting this content in podcasts would be fantastic.
A few months ago I was looking for an episode of the program 'ideas' that I had missed. I e-mailed the CBC asking whether they might make this stuff available as a podcast. Here is there response, but please don't hold the CBC to anything in this e-mail. Don't make them regret being so detailed and honest in their response...
"Thank you for taking the time to write to us.
There are a series of legal, financial and resource issues which have forced CBC Radio to change its policy about offering audio files on-line, after a program has aired. These issues have to do with copyright, contractual agreements, bandwidth and staff resources. For example, the musicians association would like to be compensated if we play their music on our website - understandable, but expensive. And so at this time CBC Radio has decided that resources need to go into programming rather than into websites.
We are also frustrated by this decision. We'd like to have as many people as possible listen to our programs.
We have begun to post programs which are clear of music rights/copyright issues. However, there are few IDEAS programs that fall into this category. We use short pieces of music in most of our documentaries, most of which is mixed under narration. We have been told by our business affairs department that any piece of music, of any length, that is posted on-line, needs to have a music license agreement with the music publisher. To acquire music licenses to post these programs would fall well outside of what our show budget can afford. Other programs like Quarks & Quarks can post their programs because any recorded music is cut out of the show. This is easily done for talk/interview format programs.
One of the reasons other broadcasters like the BBC and NPR post their audio on-line is that public that they have different agreements with the different stake holders (ie, Unions).
Our legal and business affairs staff are doing what they can to resolve these issues, and we hope that we will be able to continue the on-line service in the future.
We do offer audio copies and transcripts for sale, but I hasten to add that this is a service, not a profitable business. The fee covers the costs of employing the small staff that makes the copies and fills the orders. Any extra money goes directly back into radio programming. I have been told that some of our programs will be available for download, for a fee, by puretracks.com in the future.
So, again our apologies. We hope to be able to offer more of our programs for on-line listening in the near future."
Open-source companies will sometimes play games and be uncooperative.
But Mozilla is a foundation, so why should it care whether users get its code directly from it, or through Netscape, RedHat, etc., as long the user's code is properly patched.
So, instead of encouraging users to only get the code from them, they should work with others to setup good patch processes that work for everybody.
From the article... "Oh, brother. In the olden days, O'Gara would have been given a medal for generating readership. But in today's world of the so easily offended, she's apparently let go instead, and things calm down as the hissy fit subsides."
That sounds like progress to me!
Everyone, including Dvorak, seems aware that her journalism is crap and is innapropriate (to say the least) so why does he seem to prefer to see that sort of stuff rewarded? Is he that sort of journalist himself?
The internet provides us with such unlimited info that the problem is no longer finding information, it is deciding who to trust.
Everyone probably has some internal list of sources they trust, but maintaining such a list is very hard.
If TrustRank could be done and done right (???) then it would be a wonderful service.
But, can any corporation be trusted to do this? Surely they would eventually start to 'sell' higher trust ratings? I 'trust' google, but it is still a corporation and it's job is to make money.
You've got it backwards.
We should pick on any company (or person) who merits it.
We shouldn't give Apple a free ride because they aren't MS and have the most popular brand in the world (according to some article I saw here on
MS, Apple, Red Hat, IBM, etc. they should all be judged on their merits.
Not to mention Linux, Gates, Elison, etc.
More money in politics, yeah!
I say 'you' because I'm here in Canada where we still have a semblance of democracy left. Or so I thought, but recently a classic and rather large scale case of political corruption has been uncovered here (Tom Delay style).
The one good thing I can find in this whole affair is that people here don't seem to have accepted this sort of corruption here to the degree they have in the states.
Let's not harass MS if they really are going to adopt unix-ish anything in Longhorn.
Typically, companies like MS identify that some other product has something bettter but they won't adopt it because that would be (a) admitting it, (b) giving credence to their competitor, and (c) reducing lock-in.
Think about how hard it is to get the Linux community to do things in a Windows like way.
So, there is much to abuse MS over; for this they should be congratulated (if they really do it in that way).
The importance of a piece of software being open source depends on the degree to which users and other software depend on it, since this determines the degree of lock-in.
- If the software is used by many users and has a non-trivial UI then it would be better if it were open source.
- More importantly though, if the software exposes an API and lots of other software is built on top of it (eg. a part of the OS) then it is important that it be open source.
The reason for this is because these factors determine the degree of lock-in. If there is no user interface, and no other software is built on top of it, then there is very little lock-in and the software can easily be replaced in the future.
For this reason, closed source drivers should be accepted.
The difference is very significant.
A closed source project such as del.icio.us will be able to get financial backing and grow. It will work well and features will be added, but the features added will be geared to the interests of the financial backers, not the user. After a little while it will be sold to Google or Yahoo. Though I consider Yahoo and Google to be very well behaved and respectable companies, the ads will soon appear and possibly the data will start being sold (do they do this?).
I'm not suggesting that there is anything wrong with this. The owner has stumbled upon something potentially big, and it is natural that he should dream of making big money from it.
An open-source alternative will develop more slowly and the servers will probably be less responsive (ie. fast) due to the lack of funding, but it will likely develop features that serve you. A variety of competitors might appear, based on the same code base, with different visions. They will also share data, since it is cc. Even if one of the open-source versions find a good way to make money, they will always be responsive to the concerns of their users because they don't realy have any lock-in. If they add full-page ads (a la Yahoo groups) then user, code, and data will all migrate elsewhere.
Personally, I currently use and enjoy del.icio.us. I'll wait and see how the alternative fairs.