Good riddance! Cassette tapes allowed easy duplication of music between friends that destroyed the music industry! Oh wait no it didn't.
Yes, very funny. But very distorted.
Sharing cassetes (which had a cost and imposed some limit) with a dozen friends is one thing. Sharing zero-cost mp3 material with millions of unknown people from all over the world is entirely different.
You surely understand that I consider mp3 files "zero cost" because hardly anyone has a computer just to use mp3 files, but for many other reasons. In other words, you'll have a computer anyway, with or without song swapping.
No, it won't kill music, of course. But the two things have completely different degrees of impact. It's like comparing someone blowing a little sand at your eyes with a desert sand storm.
Interesting article, with an interesting statement:
The install process is designed by Linux people for Linux people.
I see that as the major problem in all OSS. EVERYTHING is designed by Linux people for Linux people. Or, to be more generic and accurate at the same time, designed by geeks for the geek community. Even if Linux really had all applications someone may need (it certainly does NOT), most still look or behave substandard. And that is because while this army of coders writes software entirely free of charge, they are only interested in coding what is fun from the perspective of a programmer. They don't seem to care much about looks, usability, well thought-out GUI design. That part is boring. They do not have the burden of competition and the pressing need to please a given target audience so that more copies of the product are sold and the boss is happy with the bottom line. The vast majority of OSS programmers are only worried about satisfying themselves and/or their fellow OSS geeks. The result is software that has a very solid foundation and certainly impresses people who can read code, but very often comes across as lacking by Windows or Mac users. Besides, Qt and GTK widgets are incredibly ugly.
If Linux really wants to be popular and rightfully claim that it has "everything you need", examples like KDE, Gnome and Firefox must be followed more closely. Or else, non-techie people will always dislike Linux, important software that still is absent in the *nix platform will never be ported to it because there is no commercial interest, and buying compatible hardware for our *nix boxes will always a bit of a lottery. Which will drive lots of people ever farther away from it. It is a vicious circle that has to be broken.
About the sadness of seeing old rotaries disappear:
I am not a single bit sad about the introduction of new technology. Very much on the contrary (I even have this/. account). I still remember very clearly how dialing a rotary was such a PITA.
What really makes me sad, and I have found that many people agree with me, is the absolute lack of a notion of elegance and style of today's products. Everything really wants to look very "mawderrrrn-ish", future-ish, techie-ish. So what we get these days an awful fucking lot of gray/silver (or anything that makes sure it looks like metal) combined with those aggressive "johnny-too-slick" lines and contours. Most products today strive to look like those silly Matrix-Terminator-Blade Runner-inspired Macromedia Flash presentations (with metal-like looks AND metal-like sounds) or teenage Linux desktop screenshots submitted by kids called M0rpheus, D33struktor or L0rd ov da Ka0s.
Under this pile of downright ugly designs, yes, many things from the 80s begin to look really cool. Or some kind of product version "for adults", at least. And don't even get me started on things from the 30s or the 60s, when the human factor was taken into a lot more consideration and the general taste en vogue was not so obsessively attached to technology and 21st-century space cowboys.
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Good riddance! Cassette tapes allowed easy duplication of music between friends that destroyed the music industry! Oh wait no it didn't.
Yes, very funny. But very distorted.
Sharing cassetes (which had a cost and imposed some limit) with a dozen friends is one thing. Sharing zero-cost mp3 material with millions of unknown people from all over the world is entirely different.
You surely understand that I consider mp3 files "zero cost" because hardly anyone has a computer just to use mp3 files, but for many other reasons. In other words, you'll have a computer anyway, with or without song swapping.
No, it won't kill music, of course. But the two things have completely different degrees of impact. It's like comparing someone blowing a little sand at your eyes with a desert sand storm.
Interesting article, with an interesting statement:
The install process is designed by Linux people for Linux people.
I see that as the major problem in all OSS. EVERYTHING is designed by Linux people for Linux people. Or, to be more generic and accurate at the same time, designed by geeks for the geek community. Even if Linux really had all applications someone may need (it certainly does NOT), most still look or behave substandard. And that is because while this army of coders writes software entirely free of charge, they are only interested in coding what is fun from the perspective of a programmer. They don't seem to care much about looks, usability, well thought-out GUI design. That part is boring. They do not have the burden of competition and the pressing need to please a given target audience so that more copies of the product are sold and the boss is happy with the bottom line. The vast majority of OSS programmers are only worried about satisfying themselves and/or their fellow OSS geeks. The result is software that has a very solid foundation and certainly impresses people who can read code, but very often comes across as lacking by Windows or Mac users. Besides, Qt and GTK widgets are incredibly ugly.
If Linux really wants to be popular and rightfully claim that it has "everything you need", examples like KDE, Gnome and Firefox must be followed more closely. Or else, non-techie people will always dislike Linux, important software that still is absent in the *nix platform will never be ported to it because there is no commercial interest, and buying compatible hardware for our *nix boxes will always a bit of a lottery. Which will drive lots of people ever farther away from it. It is a vicious circle that has to be broken.
About the sadness of seeing old rotaries disappear:
/. account). I still remember very clearly how dialing a rotary was such a PITA.
I am not a single bit sad about the introduction of new technology. Very much on the contrary (I even have this
What really makes me sad, and I have found that many people agree with me, is the absolute lack of a notion of elegance and style of today's products. Everything really wants to look very "mawderrrrn-ish", future-ish, techie-ish. So what we get these days an awful fucking lot of gray/silver (or anything that makes sure it looks like metal) combined with those aggressive "johnny-too-slick" lines and contours. Most products today strive to look like those silly Matrix-Terminator-Blade Runner-inspired Macromedia Flash presentations (with metal-like looks AND metal-like sounds) or teenage Linux desktop screenshots submitted by kids called M0rpheus, D33struktor or L0rd ov da Ka0s.
Under this pile of downright ugly designs, yes, many things from the 80s begin to look really cool. Or some kind of product version "for adults", at least. And don't even get me started on things from the 30s or the 60s, when the human factor was taken into a lot more consideration and the general taste en vogue was not so obsessively attached to technology and 21st-century space cowboys.
BTW, I am only 32 years old.