Are you kidding? I would LOVE running around as bad-ass Marcus Fenix and blasting the crap out of all the whimpy new avatar-people. I would laugh all the way to hell:)
I've only played with the dashboard for half an hour, but I like it overall. It's fast, responsive and looks so much better than bland, 2D cardboard slides being pushed around on my screen. The first thing I did was use the new "install game to harddrive" feature. Since I only have the 20GB harddrive, installing Gears of War 2 pretty much took up half the disk. Even so, I appreciated not having to listen to the DVD drive whine while playing.
I'm looking forward to trying out the party system as well, as soon as my lazy friends get their update and come online.
Hey, yank, quit your damn whining! Paying taxes won't kill you, and seriously, who did you expect would pay that huge debt to China, pay for the war or help rebuild the economy? Money may just be ink printed on paper, but it still has to come from somewhere. That somewhere has been YOUR POCKETS for the last eight years.
It's just that no one told you until now.
So grow up, start living responsibly and quit whining
The law says that the government has the right to listen, nowhere does it demand that everyone speaks loud enough to be heard. We still have every right to encrypt everything we want, and newspapers/tabloids here in Sweden have already been running articles like "5 ways to not get wiretapped" and guides on encryption techniques.
Can Do vs. Will Do is a non-issue. I'm perfectly fine with the fact that they're not allowed to read my mail, but the mere suggestion that they COULD read if they wanted to is intolerable!
I refuse to to allow such a thing, on principle. If they CAN read my e-mail it doesn't matter if the want to or not, eventually someone will abuse this power and read them anyway.
The problem, however, is that not all users are trained Windows users, like this one. Should you implement a dock by default, just so Mac OS X users can feel at home? How about getting rid of that damn GUI for the hardcore UNIX users?
I can understand the need for Ubuntu to be simple, I just can't see the need for Ubuntu to somehow be Windows. They're two different systems, and a user who doesn't get that needs to learn that first, then move on to the details of Ubuntu in particular, and GNU/Linux in general.
I wrote in the comments that it was an interesting read, but it was in no way a good scientific way of establishing what parts of Ubuntu need tweaking. A lot of the complaints are not because the program is unintuitive, but merely that it's not exactly like Windows
I like how you didn't have time to wipe the disk before, but you DID think "Hmm, maybe I should change all my passwords before throwing away this perfectly good 200GB harddrive in a blind rage?"
Seriously, you fail at Google. It's as simple as that.
What's the point in publishing the answers, when the answers are so vague that people actually have to interpret what he means by them. If people can't even agree about the answer being a yes or a no, then it's not really an answer.
Basically, his answer to the fair use question was "yes, no and maybe" all at once. He answered whatever you wanted him to answer, depending on how you interpret his answer.
It's called advertising, and it affects people more than you think. Take any kid, say around 10 years old. What is he/she going to listen to? Why, the latest publicly advertised artist, of course! They don't even know anything else, since they're too young to have formed a lasting taste in music, and they don't have any real experience with other kinds of music than that which they are being force fed by the record industry. It's the same thing in adults, only less forceful and obvious. We obviously won't like a band we've never even heard, and the only music that gets played publicly is the industry-promoted crap.
Of course, some people like the "diet" kind of music, the cheap techno/rap/dance crap that gets spewed out by music factories all over the place. But I honestly think they are the minority. If the smaller scene got as much exposure as todays pop music, I'm sure a lot of people would flock around that as well. Actually, that's already happening!
A lot of smaller bands got free exposure on sites like Myspace, and grew to be big pop sensations. They weren't manufactured by the labels, they weren't backed up by millions of dollars in promotion. They went big because people got a chance to hear them, know them and ultimately like them.
It's hard to get any clear facts out of this, but this is what I believe. I really don't think people WANT to be spoon-fed pop music, but that's the only think they'll know. Until the revolution.
Yeah, there are more than enough wanky ISPs in Sweden as well. I'm just fortunate not to have to deal with any of them.
Since I'm renting my apartment second hand, I got whatever internet connection was there previously. Thankfully, this is a "city network" that covers just the area I live in, but runs mostly through fiber and cat5 LANs. The fact that my entire building is on the same subnet means that I can't share folders or printers between my computers though. I get 5 IP addresses through DHCP, so a router would do nothing but slow down my connection.
When I turned on my printer a few weeks after we moved in, there was already a job in the queue. Someone had sent a text file with the message "You should probably consider not sharing your printer with the entire building, and putting some passwords on your user accounts". Cheeky bastard... But helpful:)
My ISP (here in Sweden) has this to say about P2P:
P2P-nätverk Vi har inga synpunkter på att du använder abonnemanget för fildelning via P2P-nätverk. Våra tjänster fungerar mycket bra för detta. Om du laddar från andra datorer som också finns i Bredband2:s nät får du maximal prestanda. Om du vill kan du använda förkortningen [BB2] för att visa att du sitter i Bredband2:s nät. Tänk på upphovsrättslagen när du tar del av andras filer och själv delar ut.
(in english):
P2P Networks We have no objections to you using your connection to share files over P2P networks. Our services work very well for this. If you connect to other computers that are also in the Bredband2 network you will get maximum performance. If you like, you can use the prefix [BB2] to show others that you are using the Bredband2 network. Please respect copyright laws when you download and share your files.
And it's dirt cheap too. 100mbit both directions, full duplex for 200SEK a month, or ~$15.
I don't know if it's just me... but I'm not going to listen to a band that only has a few good songs per album. That doesn't sound like a very good band at all, so why support them?
I don't mean to flame anyones taste in music, but it's just an observation I made. To me, "a la carte" music is worthless, because I'l probably but the entire album, or not buy anything at all.
I just bought a new computer last month. Total price, converted to US dollars, was $1482.
That might seem like a lot of money, but considering I don't have any kids, no car and a pretty decent salary I figured I could afford it. Not to mention, I hadn't spent a dime on computer parts since 2003, and with the Orange Box coming out, well.. You do the math:)
If your hobby is PC gaming then no, $500 is not a lot of money. It's actually a very good price for upgrading your PC to play the latest games. I'd actually worry more about the prices of the games themselves:)
Why is that a hollow protest? If McDonald's were to start serving meat from cows that were abused and tortured, and you wanted to boycott them, does that mean you also boycott every single hamburger joint in existance? Probably not.
I refuse to give money to the record labels. It really isn't more complicated than that. Whether you think that automatically means I pirate it is up to you. I know what I do and what I don't do.
I'd stand up and volunteer as a living example proving this study, if it weren't for the fact that I now refuse to buy most CDs. The only CD I will ever buy from now on is one sold by the band itself. If there is any connection to a major record company, I won't buy it. Simple as that.
Same with downloads. I'll gladly pay $5 for the new Saul Williams when it comes in DRM-free FLAC lossless and with all the album art. Money isn't the issue, neither is motivation. I just don't want to - in any way, shape or form - support the dying record companies.
I have no idea if "piracy" actually leads to substantial damages, but I do know this. If it does damage anyone, it's mostly the record companies. The artists could always sell their music somewhere else, if the record companies would allow them to.
I, too, have noticed that while I download a hell of a lot of music, whenever I've had the income to buy music legally, I would. The only problem is that I've spent most of my current life in school, depending on my parents to either buy me music or give me the money to do so. Now that I have a full time job and a decent salary, I can afford to buy music again.
It's just too bad I'm also aware enough to boycott all major record companies from now on. Had they not been such absolute assholes, I'd have been buying lots more music than I currently am. Nowadays, I always check www.riaaradar.com before I buy a record. Most recently, I've bought the soon-to-be-released live DVD of The Gathering (http://shop.gathering.nl) and the newly released single of Agua de Annique (www.aguadeannique.com), where in both cases the artists themselves are running the shops and receiving all my money. When I pay for music, I pay for music, not for some slimeball company lawyers.
You Apple haters are such a bunch of whiny sissies. iTunes is for those people that WANT to manage their music, that WANT to have a well-organized library of songs and that WANT to sync their MP3-player as easily as just plugging it in.
If you want to do it the hard way, i.e. having to manually add songs to your player everytime, as well as maintaining your songs in whatever software you use, be my guest. Just don't go crying to all of us who'd rather LISTEN to our music than looking through our harddrives trying to FIND it first.
I bought an 80GB iPod because it's slim, looks nice, has great battery life and excellent sound quality (really, anyone who says otherwise probably hasn't heard an iPod since the 1G) and a very usable interface. On top of that, I got a great price that couldn't be matched by any other 80GB player I could find.
As for "locks you down to using iTunes", that's bullshit. My previous MP3-player, an iAudio M3, came with some piece-of-crap software I was supposed to use. Did I ever even install it? Nope. The iPod is exactly the same thing. There are hundreds of alternatives to iTunes out there, and not a single person is ever forced into using iTunes (well, maybe not until now:/)
Sure, some of my friends use iPods as well, and that did influence my decision greatly. However, I decided on the iPod not simply because they each had one, but because they let me try it out and decide for myself if I liked it or not.
My girlfriend bought an 8GB iPod Nano even though she hated the fact that everyone else had one too. It was simply the superior player at that price.
I love my 80GB iPod, because it does exactly what I want it to, and nothing else. It's slim, easy to use and holds a whole lot of music and video.
Guess what, I can make it show up as a USB drive as well. But if I want to transfer files, I'd rather use my 2GB USB keychain memory instead of carrying along a big MP3-player with an extra cable.
Use things the way they were meant to be used, and don't complain if they don't do stuff they're not supposed to do.
I can't help but chuckle a little whenever I encounter people that think teaching religion as in ALL religions is relly something new and interesting:)
I have no idea how long this has been mandatory here in Sweden, but I do know it's quite a while now. Religion is a mandatory subject up to and including high school. We're taught how religions came about, how they developed and branched off into the major religions we have today, their differences and similarities, how they are being practiced today and finally, we get to write a report on either all religions, or one specifically, and explain in detail how they work and what they mean.
This is normal. At least it should be. I just can't grasp that a country like America doesn't seem to have this. Then again, looking at a lot of the news that comes through here, It's also really obvious that you don't. Of course there is racism in Sweden as well, but we don't wage war on muslims because we know what Islam is really about. And it really has nothing to do with terrorism.
Again, what explanation could there possibly be for NOT teaching religion in school? Why would you not want to know everything there is to know about all religions, so that you can make a conscious decision for yourself what teaching you want to follow? As a Swedish citizen who, admittedly, has never been in the USA, I just can't understand that.
I'm the same, I watch movies in theaters and I buy DVDs. I'll probably buy an HD-DVD/Bluray player someday, and start collecting those movies as well. None of this stops me from downloading movies like there's no tomorrows.
Why?
Because 80% of the movies I download either don't go up in theaters where I live, or are really hard/overly expensive to import from abroad.
I admit that what I'm doing is wrong... but if I hadn't downloaded these movies, I really wouldn't have seen them. I couldn't have.
Instead, watching downloaded movies from up-and-coming directors made me more probable to watch their later movies in the theater, or buying their DVDs.
I'm a movie/music buff, and I do support artists and movie makers. I just don't personally feel like I should have to miss out on so many great movies simply because no one allows me to pay a reasonable price for them.
I feel exactly the same. I've used plenty of different window managers and desktops, and I settled with KDE because it's the fastest one to set up, the easiest to use and the most stable to keep working in, year after year.
I'm not very fond of having to write my own menus and configurations, it's time that could've been spent *using* the system. I also like the fact that KDE is very big on hotkey usability, with pretty much every application being configurable down to the last detail. For example, I have turned off window decorations on Firefox (with 1024x768, it's always maximized anyway), locked it to my second desktop and bound it to alt+f. Now, whenever I need a new firefox window, whichever desktop I'm currently in, I just press alt+f and up it comes, maximized and on my chosen desktop. Couldn't be easier.
No other window manager or desktop (especially Gnome) has offered me the same usability and customization options as KDE. It's rock solid, fast (yes, it's even more responsive than many others I've tried) and easy to look at (even though I've hidden most of it away:>)
Most of those things are, really, the fault of hardware producers. IBM, with their OSS-friendly approach, make some of the very best Linux laptops with the ThinkPad series. I'm running Feisty on a ThinkPad T43, and there is not a single piece of hardware not supported. I can hibernate and suspend whenever I please, wireless works OOTB and performance is absolutely terrific.
It all comes down to hardware support in the form of firmwares and drivers. Unfortunately, there's not much Ubuntu can do about that, since most hardware manufacturers don't care even a little about their OSS using customers.
So if you want to blame someone, don't blame the Ubuntu team. They're doing the best they can with that they've got.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you kidding? I would LOVE running around as bad-ass Marcus Fenix and blasting the crap out of all the whimpy new avatar-people. I would laugh all the way to hell :)
I've only played with the dashboard for half an hour, but I like it overall. It's fast, responsive and looks so much better than bland, 2D cardboard slides being pushed around on my screen.
The first thing I did was use the new "install game to harddrive" feature. Since I only have the 20GB harddrive, installing Gears of War 2 pretty much took up half the disk. Even so, I appreciated not having to listen to the DVD drive whine while playing.
I'm looking forward to trying out the party system as well, as soon as my lazy friends get their update and come online.
Hey, yank, quit your damn whining! Paying taxes won't kill you, and seriously, who did you expect would pay that huge debt to China, pay for the war or help rebuild the economy? Money may just be ink printed on paper, but it still has to come from somewhere. That somewhere has been YOUR POCKETS for the last eight years.
It's just that no one told you until now.
So grow up, start living responsibly and quit whining
Shift and 4, you say? So, what is supposed to represent?
The law says that the government has the right to listen, nowhere does it demand that everyone speaks loud enough to be heard. We still have every right to encrypt everything we want, and newspapers/tabloids here in Sweden have already been running articles like "5 ways to not get wiretapped" and guides on encryption techniques.
Can Do vs. Will Do is a non-issue. I'm perfectly fine with the fact that they're not allowed to read my mail, but the mere suggestion that they COULD read if they wanted to is intolerable!
I refuse to to allow such a thing, on principle. If they CAN read my e-mail it doesn't matter if the want to or not, eventually someone will abuse this power and read them anyway.
The problem, however, is that not all users are trained Windows users, like this one. Should you implement a dock by default, just so Mac OS X users can feel at home? How about getting rid of that damn GUI for the hardcore UNIX users?
I can understand the need for Ubuntu to be simple, I just can't see the need for Ubuntu to somehow be Windows. They're two different systems, and a user who doesn't get that needs to learn that first, then move on to the details of Ubuntu in particular, and GNU/Linux in general.
I wrote in the comments that it was an interesting read, but it was in no way a good scientific way of establishing what parts of Ubuntu need tweaking. A lot of the complaints are not because the program is unintuitive, but merely that it's not exactly like Windows
I like how you didn't have time to wipe the disk before, but you DID think "Hmm, maybe I should change all my passwords before throwing away this perfectly good 200GB harddrive in a blind rage?"
Seriously, you fail at Google. It's as simple as that.
What's the point in publishing the answers, when the answers are so vague that people actually have to interpret what he means by them. If people can't even agree about the answer being a yes or a no, then it's not really an answer.
Basically, his answer to the fair use question was "yes, no and maybe" all at once. He answered whatever you wanted him to answer, depending on how you interpret his answer.
It's called advertising, and it affects people more than you think. Take any kid, say around 10 years old. What is he/she going to listen to? Why, the latest publicly advertised artist, of course! They don't even know anything else, since they're too young to have formed a lasting taste in music, and they don't have any real experience with other kinds of music than that which they are being force fed by the record industry.
It's the same thing in adults, only less forceful and obvious. We obviously won't like a band we've never even heard, and the only music that gets played publicly is the industry-promoted crap.
Of course, some people like the "diet" kind of music, the cheap techno/rap/dance crap that gets spewed out by music factories all over the place. But I honestly think they are the minority. If the smaller scene got as much exposure as todays pop music, I'm sure a lot of people would flock around that as well. Actually, that's already happening!
A lot of smaller bands got free exposure on sites like Myspace, and grew to be big pop sensations. They weren't manufactured by the labels, they weren't backed up by millions of dollars in promotion. They went big because people got a chance to hear them, know them and ultimately like them.
It's hard to get any clear facts out of this, but this is what I believe. I really don't think people WANT to be spoon-fed pop music, but that's the only think they'll know. Until the revolution.
Yeah, there are more than enough wanky ISPs in Sweden as well. I'm just fortunate not to have to deal with any of them.
:)
Since I'm renting my apartment second hand, I got whatever internet connection was there previously. Thankfully, this is a "city network" that covers just the area I live in, but runs mostly through fiber and cat5 LANs. The fact that my entire building is on the same subnet means that I can't share folders or printers between my computers though. I get 5 IP addresses through DHCP, so a router would do nothing but slow down my connection.
When I turned on my printer a few weeks after we moved in, there was already a job in the queue. Someone had sent a text file with the message "You should probably consider not sharing your printer with the entire building, and putting some passwords on your user accounts". Cheeky bastard... But helpful
(in english):
And it's dirt cheap too. 100mbit both directions, full duplex for 200SEK a month, or ~$15.
Why yes, I AM a bastard
I don't know if it's just me... but I'm not going to listen to a band that only has a few good songs per album. That doesn't sound like a very good band at all, so why support them?
I don't mean to flame anyones taste in music, but it's just an observation I made. To me, "a la carte" music is worthless, because I'l probably but the entire album, or not buy anything at all.
I just bought a new computer last month. Total price, converted to US dollars, was $1482.
:)
:)
That might seem like a lot of money, but considering I don't have any kids, no car and a pretty decent salary I figured I could afford it. Not to mention, I hadn't spent a dime on computer parts since 2003, and with the Orange Box coming out, well.. You do the math
If your hobby is PC gaming then no, $500 is not a lot of money. It's actually a very good price for upgrading your PC to play the latest games. I'd actually worry more about the prices of the games themselves
Why is that a hollow protest? If McDonald's were to start serving meat from cows that were abused and tortured, and you wanted to boycott them, does that mean you also boycott every single hamburger joint in existance? Probably not.
I refuse to give money to the record labels. It really isn't more complicated than that. Whether you think that automatically means I pirate it is up to you. I know what I do and what I don't do.
I'd stand up and volunteer as a living example proving this study, if it weren't for the fact that I now refuse to buy most CDs. The only CD I will ever buy from now on is one sold by the band itself. If there is any connection to a major record company, I won't buy it. Simple as that.
Same with downloads. I'll gladly pay $5 for the new Saul Williams when it comes in DRM-free FLAC lossless and with all the album art. Money isn't the issue, neither is motivation. I just don't want to - in any way, shape or form - support the dying record companies.
I have no idea if "piracy" actually leads to substantial damages, but I do know this. If it does damage anyone, it's mostly the record companies. The artists could always sell their music somewhere else, if the record companies would allow them to.
I, too, have noticed that while I download a hell of a lot of music, whenever I've had the income to buy music legally, I would. The only problem is that I've spent most of my current life in school, depending on my parents to either buy me music or give me the money to do so. Now that I have a full time job and a decent salary, I can afford to buy music again.
It's just too bad I'm also aware enough to boycott all major record companies from now on. Had they not been such absolute assholes, I'd have been buying lots more music than I currently am. Nowadays, I always check www.riaaradar.com before I buy a record. Most recently, I've bought the soon-to-be-released live DVD of The Gathering (http://shop.gathering.nl) and the newly released single of Agua de Annique (www.aguadeannique.com), where in both cases the artists themselves are running the shops and receiving all my money. When I pay for music, I pay for music, not for some slimeball company lawyers.
Don't like iTunes? Don't use it.
You Apple haters are such a bunch of whiny sissies. iTunes is for those people that WANT to manage their music, that WANT to have a well-organized library of songs and that WANT to sync their MP3-player as easily as just plugging it in.
If you want to do it the hard way, i.e. having to manually add songs to your player everytime, as well as maintaining your songs in whatever software you use, be my guest. Just don't go crying to all of us who'd rather LISTEN to our music than looking through our harddrives trying to FIND it first.
Ok, I'll bite...
:/)
I bought an 80GB iPod because it's slim, looks nice, has great battery life and excellent sound quality (really, anyone who says otherwise probably hasn't heard an iPod since the 1G) and a very usable interface. On top of that, I got a great price that couldn't be matched by any other 80GB player I could find.
As for "locks you down to using iTunes", that's bullshit. My previous MP3-player, an iAudio M3, came with some piece-of-crap software I was supposed to use. Did I ever even install it? Nope. The iPod is exactly the same thing. There are hundreds of alternatives to iTunes out there, and not a single person is ever forced into using iTunes (well, maybe not until now
Sure, some of my friends use iPods as well, and that did influence my decision greatly. However, I decided on the iPod not simply because they each had one, but because they let me try it out and decide for myself if I liked it or not.
My girlfriend bought an 8GB iPod Nano even though she hated the fact that everyone else had one too. It was simply the superior player at that price.
I love my 80GB iPod, because it does exactly what I want it to, and nothing else. It's slim, easy to use and holds a whole lot of music and video.
Guess what, I can make it show up as a USB drive as well. But if I want to transfer files, I'd rather use my 2GB USB keychain memory instead of carrying along a big MP3-player with an extra cable.
Use things the way they were meant to be used, and don't complain if they don't do stuff they're not supposed to do.
Heh, in Swedish it's actually called "arm breaking". Maybe that machine was manufactured here? o_O
I'd say the "n00b" here is the one who chooses his OS on pure ideology. I use Ubuntu because it suits me better than Debian. Simple as that.
You're free to use Debian all you want, just don't EVER go around telling everyone else what they should use.
I can't help but chuckle a little whenever I encounter people that think teaching religion as in ALL religions is relly something new and interesting :)
I have no idea how long this has been mandatory here in Sweden, but I do know it's quite a while now. Religion is a mandatory subject up to and including high school. We're taught how religions came about, how they developed and branched off into the major religions we have today, their differences and similarities, how they are being practiced today and finally, we get to write a report on either all religions, or one specifically, and explain in detail how they work and what they mean.
This is normal. At least it should be. I just can't grasp that a country like America doesn't seem to have this. Then again, looking at a lot of the news that comes through here, It's also really obvious that you don't. Of course there is racism in Sweden as well, but we don't wage war on muslims because we know what Islam is really about. And it really has nothing to do with terrorism.
Again, what explanation could there possibly be for NOT teaching religion in school? Why would you not want to know everything there is to know about all religions, so that you can make a conscious decision for yourself what teaching you want to follow? As a Swedish citizen who, admittedly, has never been in the USA, I just can't understand that.
I'm the same, I watch movies in theaters and I buy DVDs. I'll probably buy an HD-DVD/Bluray player someday, and start collecting those movies as well. None of this stops me from downloading movies like there's no tomorrows.
Why?
Because 80% of the movies I download either don't go up in theaters where I live, or are really hard/overly expensive to import from abroad.
I admit that what I'm doing is wrong... but if I hadn't downloaded these movies, I really wouldn't have seen them. I couldn't have.
Instead, watching downloaded movies from up-and-coming directors made me more probable to watch their later movies in the theater, or buying their DVDs.
I'm a movie/music buff, and I do support artists and movie makers. I just don't personally feel like I should have to miss out on so many great movies simply because no one allows me to pay a reasonable price for them.
I feel exactly the same. I've used plenty of different window managers and desktops, and I settled with KDE because it's the fastest one to set up, the easiest to use and the most stable to keep working in, year after year.
:>)
I'm not very fond of having to write my own menus and configurations, it's time that could've been spent *using* the system. I also like the fact that KDE is very big on hotkey usability, with pretty much every application being configurable down to the last detail. For example, I have turned off window decorations on Firefox (with 1024x768, it's always maximized anyway), locked it to my second desktop and bound it to alt+f. Now, whenever I need a new firefox window, whichever desktop I'm currently in, I just press alt+f and up it comes, maximized and on my chosen desktop. Couldn't be easier.
No other window manager or desktop (especially Gnome) has offered me the same usability and customization options as KDE. It's rock solid, fast (yes, it's even more responsive than many others I've tried) and easy to look at (even though I've hidden most of it away
Most of those things are, really, the fault of hardware producers. IBM, with their OSS-friendly approach, make some of the very best Linux laptops with the ThinkPad series. I'm running Feisty on a ThinkPad T43, and there is not a single piece of hardware not supported. I can hibernate and suspend whenever I please, wireless works OOTB and performance is absolutely terrific.
It all comes down to hardware support in the form of firmwares and drivers. Unfortunately, there's not much Ubuntu can do about that, since most hardware manufacturers don't care even a little about their OSS using customers.
So if you want to blame someone, don't blame the Ubuntu team. They're doing the best they can with that they've got.