While I think your argument has merit and I definitely agree with some of your points, I think it's a bit short-sighted. You bring it up yourself when you mention "OS-wide (or at least GUI toolkit-wide) themes" - this is why it's great to be able to skin things. On my computer, I use KDE but I also run a bunch of Gnome applications. It's great to able to run the GTK-QT theme against all my programs. Similarly, in Windows, if I were to run some GTK program it wouldn't look as great if I weren't provided the opportunity to at least change the skin of the program to a Windows look. You might argue that this isn't skinning but instead "theming" a GUI toolkit, but I would say that this is just an example of a skin applied to a bunch of programs.
Why is the parent modded insightful? "None at all" isn't really a choice. A program has to look like something, skinned or not. And it's a matter of every user for the application to look "exactly like every other application" that he might be running. The default Winamp skin sure as hell doesn't look anything like any version of Windows. Perhaps you could use some of that "unusable artistic garbage" to make it look and work like all the other programs you run.
While I agree that helping people understand computers is partly the issue here, there's an even bigger issue and that's educating the public in general to be more aware of scams. Remember, though the internet is a haven for scammers, there are plenty of them out there sending direct mailings or using infomercials. People still fall for those and not just the tricks on the net.
I think a big part of it is people are simply more lazy these days. As a result, they are more willing to believe in a get-rich quick scheme or an identification check for a bank or sweepstakes or whatever (especially the old who are more trusting). But who knows, maybe it's not that, it could very well be that people are just stupid and gullible by nature (which many/.'ers seem to think given the number of times I've seen references to "sheeple" and the like).
If the editors can't even get it right (c'mon editors! dupes I can understand, but spellchecking is just an aspell away), how do you expect Slashdotters to spell properly.
I definitely agree with a lot of sentiments here that SP2 is going to help Windows security. We should (hopefully) have a lot fewer clueless lusers opening up malicious e-mail attachments, grabbing spyware, etc. However, I think this all comes as a big blow to OSS. My friend recently 'obtained' (we'll say through MSDN) a copy of XP with SP2 slipstreamed. Suffice to say, the new security checks are suffocating.
He downloaded some nVidia drivers and tried to run them. Immediately an alert box came up saying that the application wasn't signed and if he would allow it. Then he wanted to surf the web and opened up IE. When he discovered that the new version has no tabbed browsing he said, "fsck this" and quickly proceeded to mozilla.org. Upon clicking the win32 binary download link for Firefox, what comes up? Another alert box along the lines of: "This looks like dangerous software. It could be a virus. Are you sure you want to download it?" Then, it's not very intuitive that you have to click this little strip at the top of the browser window to actually be able to download the executable. Then, after downloading, of course, another box pops up because the binary isn't properly signed.
Luckily, my friend and I both know how to use computers fairly well so we had no problems with this. But for the people who are going to start relying on these alert boxes for better security, I think this is going to be a set back for adoption of OSS. I can imagine a geek telling his non-geek friend (yes, geeks can have non-geek friends) to get a copy of [better open-source alternative] only to turn it into either a hassle to install (because of all the figuring out how to let Windows download and install it) or have the non-geek scared off because of all the warnings.
This article strikes of FUD. How is it that supposedly hundreds of thousands of jobs are disappearing, yet, at the exact same time, we are in such a need of more corporate software engineers that there's a university trying to pump them out at the rate of 1500 per year? I can understand fluctuations in employment, but these numbers seem way off, especially now. I mean, it's not 2001 anymore.
I don't really think that this is the case. Think about it, it's not so much the comparative cost of the game, but the advantage of the price of the game over pirating the game!
Say in a few years, all the games do start costing $20. A worker makes say $20/hr. It's pretty much worth it to spend that hour of labor for the game as opposed to risking lots of legal fees, jail time, hassle, etc. and just the plain old effort to pirate the game itself. If it takes an hour of effort to pirate the game (finding it, downloading it, getting a good crack, etc.), he might as well just go buy it and avoid all the risks associated with it. Even if it takes fifteen minutes or even less, the price will be low enough such that the cost of his labor to pirate + possible penalties, etc. will simply be MORE than the cost of the game.
I can't bring myself to download games, even the things at a place like The Underdogs which specializes in supposedly 'out of print' games to download. Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something.
Out of print also means a variety of other things. In this case, it's just as likely that no one cares about the game except for the few thousand who will download it from The Underdogs.
One great way to do that is including good stuff in the box. Give me a color manual or include a poster. Maybe a CD with all the music from the game? How about liner notes with each game describing some part of development?
Or how about just lowering the damn price tag on these games?! $50 is just too much for a game, even Doom3 (though I'll probably still buy it at this price). Sure, putting some "good stuff" into the box might entice me more to buy it, but generally, one man's good stuff is most people's trash. Do I really want a color poster that will no doubt clash with the rest of my room? The CD with music will be pirated just like the game, so that's not anything. Color manuals get scanned, etc. You need to include physical things that are not easily digitized, e.g. action figures, 3D glasses (whatever, kids games), etc. But ultimately, I don't think many people care so much about these games. It's all about the bottom line. If the price is right, people will buy these games instead of pirating them.
Prime example: this past weekend, I saw an ad on TV for ESPN NFL2k5 (coincidence that it just got a/. story) and saw that it was advertised for only $19.99. I checked the IGN review, and a couple hours later, I came home from the mall with a new copy of NFL2k5. I barely even gave a thought to looking for a torrent or checking FTPs or whatever. Why waste my time when it's only twenty bucks.
If publishers and developers drop the prices of their games, they will capture all of the people that would have bought it anyways, but pirated it instead because the price was too high and it was more convenient to pirate it. Once the prices drop lower, then it's not that much more convenient to pirate the game and the only people pirating the game are those who wouldn't have bought it in the first place.
Despite most people's, including my own, annoyance at RMS constantly tooting the GNU horn, there is simply no doubt that Linux would not be where it is today with gcc from RMS and the rest of the tools from the GNU project.
Let's remove some of that misinformation, shall we?
First of all, things are not as easy as they seem. Maybe you think it is easy to distribute the wealth in China to all its people, but think about the logistics of it. China has a landmass comparable to the US with over 1.3 billion citizens. Getting the wealth from the coast to the inland areas is not easily feasible and it is one of the major economic reforms China is trying right now. In fact, the government attempts more and more to encourage development inland.
Party officials certainly do not "drive Ferraris." Yes, some party officials are better off than the people, but that's case even in the US. The salaries that the politicians make in the US put them into the upper-middle class.
If you think the Bush attitude to global warming, pollution and the rights of the citizen is backward, it's probably better for your blood pressure not to ask about China. China actually does care about the environment. For example, during all years of schooling, children are required to learn about environmental issues in ways ranging from lectures to taking care of plants. Yes, citizens' rights is a concern, however, refer to a comment I have posted previously, It's 2004 People.
Last week there was a large pro-democracy rally in Hong Kong, which was (shamefully) handed over to the Chinese by the British in 1997, in circumstances that were never envisaged in the original treaty. It was certainly not "shamefully" handed back to the Chinese. First, HK was rightfully part of China until the British took it by force and trickery. Instead of assuming the eurocentric viewpoint (you seem to imply a preference of Western education and government), let's examine the history: The opium wars... where the British addicted millions of Chinese to opium and then used force to get better trade negotiations and Hong Kong. It's not a shame that HK was returned to its rightful owner. Hong Kong is still a major economic center in Asia today under China's rule.
The British built Hong Kong into a capitalist economy, educated the Chinese and taught them all about Western systems of government I disagree. Regardless of who ruled Hong Kong, it would have turned into a great economic force. It is one of the most important ports in Asia and it cannot be ignored.
we're handing you over to the 800lb gorilla who thinks Genghis Khan was an enlightened ruler You want to cite your sources on this one? Genghis Khan ruled China by force, no one liked him, and he was overthrown by the Chinese because they hated him (Yuan dynasty, one of the only non-Han dynasties). That's hardly the kind of action the people would show for "an enlightened ruler."
I'm not criticizing you in particular, there are a lot of posts similar to yours on/. in general. Yours happened to have a bunch of the topics I wanted to address. I'm not saying China is the greatest place to live either, but let's give it some credit.
More magazines should do this and go with paperless alternatives. I'd definitely subscribe to adult magazines that do this so that I can get the magazines online... wait... nevermind.
But in the midst of probing the geomagnetic field, the satellites will accidentally cause our Earth's core to stop spinning. This will undoubtedly cause mass chaos in the world. As a result, we will require the services of a geophysicists and a gung-ho team of scientific explorers who will risk their necks by attempting to detonate a nuclear device in order to jump start the core and get it spinning again. Wow, this would be a great plot for a movie... wait... nevermind.
Slashdot Mirror
What better children's book to help explain your geekiness than The Story of Ping
Eye am yousing dis tex knowledge E all ready
I knew this article looked familiar
Cringley is adding nothing new here. We've all already seen this on Slashdot. Hell, the websiteeven mentions how it's like P2P but not.
Hell, we don't even need that reason. He should be modded down just for his use of "paradigm shift"
I doubt it. I am guessing their 2004Q3 refers to the fiscal calendar, which seems both possible and more likely than in the next 29 days.
Sure. I guess that's what I meant. LOL, man, worst typo ever... "rejoice"
"Huzzah!" should be the cry from all Harry Potter fans as this news must mean that they have finally found the real "Chamber of Secrets."
While I think your argument has merit and I definitely agree with some of your points, I think it's a bit short-sighted. You bring it up yourself when you mention "OS-wide (or at least GUI toolkit-wide) themes" - this is why it's great to be able to skin things. On my computer, I use KDE but I also run a bunch of Gnome applications. It's great to able to run the GTK-QT theme against all my programs. Similarly, in Windows, if I were to run some GTK program it wouldn't look as great if I weren't provided the opportunity to at least change the skin of the program to a Windows look. You might argue that this isn't skinning but instead "theming" a GUI toolkit, but I would say that this is just an example of a skin applied to a bunch of programs.
Why is the parent modded insightful? "None at all" isn't really a choice. A program has to look like something, skinned or not. And it's a matter of every user for the application to look "exactly like every other application" that he might be running. The default Winamp skin sure as hell doesn't look anything like any version of Windows. Perhaps you could use some of that "unusable artistic garbage" to make it look and work like all the other programs you run.
While I agree that helping people understand computers is partly the issue here, there's an even bigger issue and that's educating the public in general to be more aware of scams. Remember, though the internet is a haven for scammers, there are plenty of them out there sending direct mailings or using infomercials. People still fall for those and not just the tricks on the net.
I think a big part of it is people are simply more lazy these days. As a result, they are more willing to believe in a get-rich quick scheme or an identification check for a bank or sweepstakes or whatever (especially the old who are more trusting). But who knows, maybe it's not that, it could very well be that people are just stupid and gullible by nature (which many /.'ers seem to think given the number of times I've seen references to "sheeple" and the like).
So do these new numbers show that Windows actually has a better tc0 than original estimates?
However, "grammar nazis" never slack off. The correct usage in your question is "whom" not "who."
Have we finally come to the point where we must Ask Slashdot to Ask Yahoo?
If the editors can't even get it right (c'mon editors! dupes I can understand, but spellchecking is just an aspell away), how do you expect Slashdotters to spell properly.
I definitely agree with a lot of sentiments here that SP2 is going to help Windows security. We should (hopefully) have a lot fewer clueless lusers opening up malicious e-mail attachments, grabbing spyware, etc. However, I think this all comes as a big blow to OSS. My friend recently 'obtained' (we'll say through MSDN) a copy of XP with SP2 slipstreamed. Suffice to say, the new security checks are suffocating.
He downloaded some nVidia drivers and tried to run them. Immediately an alert box came up saying that the application wasn't signed and if he would allow it. Then he wanted to surf the web and opened up IE. When he discovered that the new version has no tabbed browsing he said, "fsck this" and quickly proceeded to mozilla.org. Upon clicking the win32 binary download link for Firefox, what comes up? Another alert box along the lines of: "This looks like dangerous software. It could be a virus. Are you sure you want to download it?" Then, it's not very intuitive that you have to click this little strip at the top of the browser window to actually be able to download the executable. Then, after downloading, of course, another box pops up because the binary isn't properly signed.
Luckily, my friend and I both know how to use computers fairly well so we had no problems with this. But for the people who are going to start relying on these alert boxes for better security, I think this is going to be a set back for adoption of OSS. I can imagine a geek telling his non-geek friend (yes, geeks can have non-geek friends) to get a copy of [better open-source alternative] only to turn it into either a hassle to install (because of all the figuring out how to let Windows download and install it) or have the non-geek scared off because of all the warnings.
This article strikes of FUD. How is it that supposedly hundreds of thousands of jobs are disappearing, yet, at the exact same time, we are in such a need of more corporate software engineers that there's a university trying to pump them out at the rate of 1500 per year? I can understand fluctuations in employment, but these numbers seem way off, especially now. I mean, it's not 2001 anymore.
Make sure to vote up the reviews that discuss the website/Katie Jones
I don't really think that this is the case. Think about it, it's not so much the comparative cost of the game, but the advantage of the price of the game over pirating the game!
Say in a few years, all the games do start costing $20. A worker makes say $20/hr. It's pretty much worth it to spend that hour of labor for the game as opposed to risking lots of legal fees, jail time, hassle, etc. and just the plain old effort to pirate the game itself. If it takes an hour of effort to pirate the game (finding it, downloading it, getting a good crack, etc.), he might as well just go buy it and avoid all the risks associated with it. Even if it takes fifteen minutes or even less, the price will be low enough such that the cost of his labor to pirate + possible penalties, etc. will simply be MORE than the cost of the game.
I can't bring myself to download games, even the things at a place like The Underdogs which specializes in supposedly 'out of print' games to download. Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something.
Out of print also means a variety of other things. In this case, it's just as likely that no one cares about the game except for the few thousand who will download it from The Underdogs.
One great way to do that is including good stuff in the box. Give me a color manual or include a poster. Maybe a CD with all the music from the game? How about liner notes with each game describing some part of development?
Or how about just lowering the damn price tag on these games?! $50 is just too much for a game, even Doom3 (though I'll probably still buy it at this price). Sure, putting some "good stuff" into the box might entice me more to buy it, but generally, one man's good stuff is most people's trash. Do I really want a color poster that will no doubt clash with the rest of my room? The CD with music will be pirated just like the game, so that's not anything. Color manuals get scanned, etc. You need to include physical things that are not easily digitized, e.g. action figures, 3D glasses (whatever, kids games), etc. But ultimately, I don't think many people care so much about these games. It's all about the bottom line. If the price is right, people will buy these games instead of pirating them.
Prime example: this past weekend, I saw an ad on TV for ESPN NFL2k5 (coincidence that it just got a /. story) and saw that it was advertised for only $19.99. I checked the IGN review, and a couple hours later, I came home from the mall with a new copy of NFL2k5. I barely even gave a thought to looking for a torrent or checking FTPs or whatever. Why waste my time when it's only twenty bucks.
If publishers and developers drop the prices of their games, they will capture all of the people that would have bought it anyways, but pirated it instead because the price was too high and it was more convenient to pirate it. Once the prices drop lower, then it's not that much more convenient to pirate the game and the only people pirating the game are those who wouldn't have bought it in the first place.
Despite most people's, including my own, annoyance at RMS constantly tooting the GNU horn, there is simply no doubt that Linux would not be where it is today with gcc from RMS and the rest of the tools from the GNU project.
Let's remove some of that misinformation, shall we?
First of all, things are not as easy as they seem. Maybe you think it is easy to distribute the wealth in China to all its people, but think about the logistics of it. China has a landmass comparable to the US with over 1.3 billion citizens. Getting the wealth from the coast to the inland areas is not easily feasible and it is one of the major economic reforms China is trying right now. In fact, the government attempts more and more to encourage development inland.
Party officials certainly do not "drive Ferraris." Yes, some party officials are better off than the people, but that's case even in the US. The salaries that the politicians make in the US put them into the upper-middle class.
If you think the Bush attitude to global warming, pollution and the rights of the citizen is backward, it's probably better for your blood pressure not to ask about China.
China actually does care about the environment. For example, during all years of schooling, children are required to learn about environmental issues in ways ranging from lectures to taking care of plants. Yes, citizens' rights is a concern, however, refer to a comment I have posted previously, It's 2004 People.
Last week there was a large pro-democracy rally in Hong Kong, which was (shamefully) handed over to the Chinese by the British in 1997, in circumstances that were never envisaged in the original treaty.
It was certainly not "shamefully" handed back to the Chinese. First, HK was rightfully part of China until the British took it by force and trickery. Instead of assuming the eurocentric viewpoint (you seem to imply a preference of Western education and government), let's examine the history: The opium wars... where the British addicted millions of Chinese to opium and then used force to get better trade negotiations and Hong Kong. It's not a shame that HK was returned to its rightful owner. Hong Kong is still a major economic center in Asia today under China's rule.
The British built Hong Kong into a capitalist economy, educated the Chinese and taught them all about Western systems of government
I disagree. Regardless of who ruled Hong Kong, it would have turned into a great economic force. It is one of the most important ports in Asia and it cannot be ignored.
we're handing you over to the 800lb gorilla who thinks Genghis Khan was an enlightened ruler
You want to cite your sources on this one? Genghis Khan ruled China by force, no one liked him, and he was overthrown by the Chinese because they hated him (Yuan dynasty, one of the only non-Han dynasties). That's hardly the kind of action the people would show for "an enlightened ruler."
I'm not criticizing you in particular, there are a lot of posts similar to yours on /. in general. Yours happened to have a bunch of the topics I wanted to address. I'm not saying China is the greatest place to live either, but let's give it some credit.
More magazines should do this and go with paperless alternatives. I'd definitely subscribe to adult magazines that do this so that I can get the magazines online... wait... nevermind.
So how many monkeys sitting at terminals connected to this page before we get a real Kandinsky?
But in the midst of probing the geomagnetic field, the satellites will accidentally cause our Earth's core to stop spinning. This will undoubtedly cause mass chaos in the world. As a result, we will require the services of a geophysicists and a gung-ho team of scientific explorers who will risk their necks by attempting to detonate a nuclear device in order to jump start the core and get it spinning again. Wow, this would be a great plot for a movie... wait... nevermind.