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Wouldn't you rather have those calls for 5 months and then never hearing from them ever again once they have gotten used to the desktop environment, apps and menus? I mean, once it's part of their everyday use, they are going to stop calling as long as they aren't attempting anything wild on their own risk all of a sudden that they end up feeling lost with; think: "Hmmm, what does this mysterious button in the system maintenance section do that I just a moment ago gave my root password to access?"
I wouldn't suggest there's a conspiracy theory behind it, just stupid-as-hell users who they have experience with in the past. Perhaps they don't want to see a headline on cnn.com where it says "computer user bought a Dell and there was no Windows on it - sues Dell for having a broken PC".
Or, a simple way to not get a billion unnecessary support calls, I don't know. But it's probably why they in the first place do not list these Linux computers on the front page with a huge splash saying "NEW! Dell starts offering Ubuntu, a Desktop-friendly Linux! Buy one today! Look at the revolutionary OS that's gotten easier to use!", etc, etc. The usual marketing slogans anyway:)
However, maybe it will only be a year from now we'll see them offering Ubuntu 8.04 OEM as a normal option listed among most their computer choices. Or maybe not. But I think there will either be more to come, or it will just stay there as a silent option, a long-term experiment.
Yes, this is an easy misconception indeed! An operating system ready to use with desktop applications is one thing (that should matter the most!). Another thing is comparing other operating systems with Windows and, what are the things people distinguish the most between Windows and another operating system? Games. Why? Because it's the only highly visible strength seen there, or have I missed out on something else unique for Windows today? Yes, hardware support is usually the 2nd argument although it's a matter of opinion and personal experience rather than a fundamental truth.
What else? Not sure.
I know that KDE 3.5 was my primary desktop for a long time, months at a time, with minor switches to GNOME for testing purposes - other than that, KDE was the standard desktop for me. Worked fine, even though my hardware was slow (650 Mhz Pentium-III with 256 MB SDRAM @ 100 Mhz).
Ready on the Desktop(TM) is really a matter of opinion and bias, it's not facts anymore.
Isn't the reason to this due to the home user pirating of corporate versions of Windows XP as a way to circumvent activation with regular versions of the OS?
This is the kind of thing I have a hunch wouldn't exist if vendors like Dell would push Linux distributions (such as Ubuntu, since that's what has been agreed upon with Dell) to be sold in Europe, in this case specifically United Kingdom. Then at LEAST the BBC's People In Charge so to speak, would treat Linux as "a real market operating system" instead of what I sort of suspect now is seen as "Linux - the random Hacker Operating System almost no one in the UK is using".
Before I get any flaming for what I just said, let me add I'm a former long-time Linux OS-exclusive user. I used it all the time, from 2001 to 2006, with a little side jump over to Windows Millennium Edition for a month between March and April of 2002 (one of the few coasy Windows operating systems I've used in my life WHEN you had the right hardware and know-hows, otherwise it was a bomb waiting to tic off at any time).
In my view, like a lot of other Slashdot readers' views, Linux on the desktop is a very viable alternative to Windows and Mac OS X. It's also a growing market that just keeps getting bigger and bigger for every day, at the same time the operating system components get more and more advanced and automized as well. Even though a lot of non-Linux people complain about the Linux OS today, that doesn't mean BBC should ignore it.
And, let me also point out that this decision of locking into Microsoft has less to do about Linux and alternative operating systems than it has to do with the decision to lock in users, when BBC is what it is. Here in Sweden, we have the same system as in the UK. We have a non-commercial public broadcasting company called Sveriges Television, SVT for short (Swedish Television in English). They play the same role as BBC and it's always forbidden to every extent to advertize things in news shows, you can't wear a Nike T-shirt on air because it's seen as product placement and so on (it's only allowed to show brands and talk about them if it's in the consumer programs where they talk about issues with products and frauds - that kind of stuff).
Anyway, so.. Swedish Television has this site with an archive of TV shows and also classical archives that have been digitalized. All these shows have been made accessible for two players: Windows Media Player and RealPlayer. I think that's as bad as BBC using protection, but in this case there is at least a radically higher chance that someone will be able to access the content from any mainstream operating system, and in some cases older ones too. The file playback will work on Windows OSes, Linux operating system today including those dating back a good while, Mac OS X and other UNIX operating systems which have support from Real. Even if you find there is no support, MPlayer might help you out with this one, providing ways to playback Real media content if you're a good enough hacker.
It would be great if BBC (and SVT for that matter - heck, all public service companies) could decide to release public material in an unprotected format since it's material that is already paid for. But, I have also read Frequently Asked Questions about WHY they lock in content to DRMed formats. It's usually the production companies that want to protect their content, not really the television channel itself, necessarly. They have also said they have wanted to upload material in DRMed formats that does not show up online currently, but can't do it because they have not been able to get permission from the copyright owners to do that. So, even when they want to upload it DRMed, they get a "no no" from the owner. Very sad facts.
Note, this is a painfully long explanation of my own cellphone using situation...
I'm not screwed, either. The SMS tariff is the highest in the country at 14 per SMS on default, but there are solutions to solve that issue if I so wish. Rright now I leave it be, though, because I'm one of those FREAKS in peoples' eyes that don't do SMS more than three times per month or less, so it never adds up to anything more than the price of half a soda can. There are optional 30-day running sub contracts I can electronically sign up for directly from my mobile phone using the Planet 3 service if I one day need to. What you do is that you buy a pre-billed set of SMS messages at 30, 100 or 250 per month, depending on what you expect to use up. However, my high SMS tariff has to do with the fact that the prices have gone down drastically since the contract was written by the operator. Again, for SMS I don't care. My call pricing is explained below...
I use Three in Sweden and have done so since May 2004 when they had only been on the market for one year in this country. I have a call plan on 500 minutes per month which I pay $42:50/month for. My contract has been updated & renewed a couple of times over the years, but my latest contract renewal has got a lock-in expiration date for November this year, an extension of 18 extra months I agreed upon volunteerly because I really wanted to lock myself in as much as possible. The reason: my contract has got some candy in it you don't find on new contracts anymore, because the Swedish cellphone user market changed and so the operator restructured their new offerings to target a new audience for a hopeful subscriber growth.
What I pay for is comfort. Comfort in knowing my bills will look almost the same every month regardless how much I call people in a given month. I have found myself to never talk on the phone more than the 8 hours I pay for in advance.
Summary of the Features:
* All calls within the Swedish Three UMTS network are without costs and fees (dubbed BetweenFriends(TM)) * * All videophone calls within the Swedish Three UMTS network are without costs and fees (dubbed BetweenFriends(TM)) * * 500 minutes per month, cirka 8 hours of talk (videocalls to other cell operators' networks are immensly expensive at $0.7 per minute) * Voicemail service (standard) with the usual listening to messages * Visual Video & Voice Mail service (pioneered by Three on May 5th, 2005 and it seems to be exclusive) **
* = they decided to remove these brilliant flatrate-capable features on new contracts, and so their biggest advantage among operators is now gone ** = It is not accessable from a phone menu. Instead you initiate a video call to your voice mail service and a get animated letters flying in on your screen telling you how many new voice and video messages you have got to listen at and view. Unfortunately no one has ever left me any video messages at all, only voice. Yeah, I know, my friends are low-tech "good enough"- thinking people, I have come to accept that as of late!
Mind you that there is something different when the source code is open and validated against md5 checksums (doesn't Gentoo do that?), as opposed to binary blob.exe files which you must scan through using an antivirus tool and there is no security certification coming along with it.
There are millions of Linux users (to say the least), and that's enough to target the platform from a "enough users" point of view, isn't it? I don't buy into the whole argument with "viruses will flood, comets will crash down on Earth, once Linux users reach a milestone with X billion users on the market". Anyone thinking this obviously hasn't got a clue what the differences are between a proprietary system based on a Windows NT kernel and a UNIX-like system full of white hat hackers who make sure it stays safe. And what about SELinux that NSA thought was a good idea? You still think Linux will become unsafe merely from reaching a higher market share?
I vote for "extremist Jehovas doomsday prediction" on this.
I think you will find a genetic connection between P2P users and Swedes, to some extent, since a lot of people... err, chefs?;).. up here, happily ignore peer to peer filesharing prohibitions, and they also aren't afraid of having FBI agents knocking on their doors if they do it, because:
A) there are no FBI agents knocking on people's doors here B) if there had been, they would be sliced in a claim of self-defense by the almighty chef's kitchen knives C) knocked down on the floor by blue-eyed women's big natural boobs
Remember, resistance is futile! Borg, the tennis player, will defeat the agents!
Swedes aren't crazy.. wuhahahaha! Vi är inte galna, vi är smarta människor med högt intellekt!
Okay, sorry. Couldn't resist. Mod me down all you want *hides in the corner of shame*
Yes, exactly, well said! There are people out there who actually aren't gamers and don't pay an interest for it. It might come as a shocking revelation to those that take it for granted that a computer is "obviously" used for gaming firsthandedly and "the occasionally needed" school project.
I myself spend my time playing games on my Playstation 2, and not even as a radical and politically extreme substitute - it's something I only do once a week on weekends because it's fun. The things I use my computer for right now is mainly for doing school assignments, reading news on the web, occasionally I search for jobs online, talk with friends over IM and Skype, write and reply to e-mails (although not frequent).
I'm also in talks with an editor to get published in a Swedish computer magazine for a potential career as a journalist whether it will be ambitious or not, which means I will use my Mac even more to get work done rather than spend my days with games. However, I don't blame people who use their ultrafast (or mediocre for that part) computer to mostly play games with it. I know it's fun and entertaining, but it's not something that every computer user in the whole world use their machine for.
Please:)
Are PC games crucial in every situation? I think it's naive to believe that there can't be a success for a technology just because it means it doesn't apply for demanding 3D games. I'm sure they can live without PC gamers and focus on the multi-billion dollar companies who want their applications to work seamless no matter the operating system.
DVB-T, DVB-C and DVB-S, yes. Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial, Cable, Satellite.
The DVB-C (Cable) will probably (it's preferred to be certified) work with ComHem, but no channels are unencrypted. I raised an eyebrow when I noticed that they have unencrypted digital cable content in the US - very interesting. You can only hope the digital cable companies in Sweden some day in the future offers that as well, but according to comments I have read on other news sites on the web, it seems that ComHem at least, wants to charge a distribution fee even for free channels, because there is a cost involved in the distribution itself, according to them. Well for me it tells me that they don't have enough paying digital customers to cover costs for those who aren't interested in trying out digital cable until you can get some free content to start out with.
But still, ComHem aren't taking digital cable seriously anyway, as they are always squeezing out propaganda about their wonderful analog cable they are proud to distribute in Sweden while at the same time pushing tv channels to exist in both analog and digital worlds. Terrestrial airings are soon to a complete end, there are only about 5 more months left. Satellite distribution is nothing but digital here now, so it's up to the few analog cable companies on the market to decide when our TV future will start getting exciting. I know Tele2Vision (former KabelVision) does digital now, after reading an article about issues with the customers not getting a digital set-top box on time to watch tv.
It's a big subject and preferrably brought up in its own forum. Actually I haven't found any forum online for digital tv that is worthwhile, so I might go and start one myself.
I have Minority Report on DVD (yes, legally actually). That's really the technology they have there. Who came up with the idea first? (Just curious, seriously, maybe it's the same research team behind it?).
I do exactly that myself too. I'm a Macbook owner who chatted with two other Macbook owners over built-in iSight video, all of us using GTalk with iChat and we were all in all three people videochatting + audio with each other at the same time, with great quality since one of them had his connection on 100 Mbit down/10 Mbit up, participant number two had ADSL2+ and I had ADSL2+ as well, all using the same ISP.
I highly recommend GTalk for audio, video regardless of client choice, but especially iChat is optimized for it.
I haven't yet tried audio and video with iChat over AOL, I figure that I probably can make it happen with my ICQ account?
I also welcome.win32virus and.spyware domains as well. They should start at great prices so it becomes lucrative to buy them for those who want to lure people. This way antivirus companies can block them and the problems will go away!
Yes, social engineering seems to work even when the e-mails they get "from their bank" (yeaaaaah...) says:
Hello, me is the president of AOL, aiiight! Yo usaz out there shou' know there are some issuez with our website right now. You must go to this link and fill in your credit card number so we can get you back yo numbaz!
Chill!
The president of your bank
I have seen one of the bank e-mails that people were tricked by. It was a big joke how incompetent it was written. Clearly people don't read them thoroughly and know nothing about the fact that professional e-mails are usually spell-checked and grammar-corrected before sent to thousands of customers. I laughed loud at the idiots who actually fell for it (we're not talking about a copy from a Paypal letter that had changed it hyperlinks but rather a text written badly from scratch), very obvious it was a fake e-mail. So immensly obvious:). What's wrong with people? Even more, I wasn't even a customer of their bank but still got the e-mail, so that raised an alert before even reading that text through.
That's very enlightening and explains a lot. I had wished this for be more well-known to the public and talked about. So, Intel can't do anything about it but they get disappointments from users who aren't aware of the situation. Hmm.
I have to agree to 100 % here. It's all about what morals your parents teach you. What's right and what's wrong. Be nice to people in the real world, a game is a just a game made for entertainment. The person playing should know this, doesn't matter what age the player is at. When I was 12 I knew it was awfully wrong and disgusting to kill people, but that didn't mean you could pretend to do it in a virtual world. I was intelligent enough to understand the difference between a video game and the world outside the house, which I think a lot of children do - again, as long as they have been raised well by their parents - right and wrong.
I'm the oldest of the siblings in my family. I have GTA: San Andreas for Playstation2 and my brother (half-brother) is soon turning 10 years old. I had a brief talk with him before letting him see the game in action one day when he wanted to try it out because he hadn't played it before and saw it in my collection of games. Even though I know he's very intelligent and a bright kid, I just had to check his view on reality vs. videogames. Always good to know how his mind works. He thought it was an okay game but never looks for realistic violent games in game stores, he is more interested in - yes, Sonic Heroes and that game what's it called Shadow the Hedgehog, both for his Gamecube, also a huge fan of the Zelda series of games as well. Children really aren't necessarly interested in the Doom and Quake games, just not as fun as what you can find on the shelves today. But since I'm not a kid anymore, it's pure speculation. I haven't surveyed my brother about why he enjoys innocent Gamecube games much more than "adult" games.
Same in Sweden, but in specific neighbourhoods we have both 10 and 100 Mbit full duplex deals for prices between 20 and 45 USD per month, and those are unlimited, both in terms of lawyer speak and advertisement speak. There is nothing weird going on here and no magic either. Those who doubt it's true must also be told why households pay a cheap price for it.
Cost of fibreoptic investment ranges between 300 USD one-time in pay per household, and then the rest comes from the neighbourhood funding. The neighbourhood funds it from residential rent income, and have accumulated these investment money over a longer time. It takes careful planning and enough households to be interested - otherwise no fibre gets invested because it doesn't get affordable, bargain deals with ISPs wanting to operate the internet connection equipment won't be as interested. That's why ADSL is still so popular here: not all neighbourhoods invest lots and lots of hundreds of thousands of Swedish Kronor (SEK) in the infrastructure cost, so the households who want broadband need to find other ways of getting that.
The infrastructure investment is worth it in the longrun, but it hurts finances in the short run, naturally. I'm sure there are other examples of this somewhere else in the world? Or is it just Sweden..? Maybe it's part of wanting to collaborate and help each other getting quality of life:)
No no no... tax money *avoids* having any ads. It would be a scandal to have ads supported by tax money, that doesn't make any rational sense:). Public buses here introduced ads sometime around 2000 maybe, it was pretty recently in a historic perspective. Now they have ads both in and outside of the buses.
That public bus company has been around since the 1970s (before that I think this city was not big enough to fill that need, I live in a city that is tiny in comparison to United States population and area measures). Also, we have no 100 % privately held bus companies in this city. We have however a recently agreed upon privately run bus company that are licensed by the municipal to handle the traffic (a bit complex).
This city has got about 110,000 inhabitants where 30,000 of them are university students.
License plates never have advertisements in the traditional sense at least. Some of them have the dealer name listed, I mean the place the car was bought from, along with a web address sometimes. But, as you probably already know, taxes are high in Sweden to cover expenses that other countries cover through ad means instead.
Road signs and police cars? That advertising doesn't exist in Sweden, sounds terribly awful. That's supposed to be paid entirely with tax money when done right, no?
This is very encouraging to read. Hopefully in the future, the quote from Einstein, "The only thing that stops me from learning is education" (hope I got that right) will be read by people and not grasped at all: "what did he mean by that?". The people of today and yesterday unite in conversations about how education is boring, dull and a part of life that sucks terribly, either through violence, bullying or just obsolete learning techniques by teachers that don't really know how to reach out for their pupils when VH-1 or their MySpace profile page is more exciting.
So it's great to hear that, in another part of the world, there are politicians and communities to know how to make education fun and exciting. How do we best learn things? By getting excited about it, right?
Ohh! Yes, I misunderstood you completely regarding quotation marks, the fault is mine. I thought you meant French sayings and meanings that are put in English sentences sometimes. Sorry for the confusion. When you mention it I have seen the use of ",," but never given it a deeper thought on why it's used.
This only shows how much (read: little) you might learn in school after five years of studying a third language when things are not optimal. You would expect the teachers to mention this during grammar classes, but it's never been on the curriculum, ever. Else I wouldn't have been in this awkward position of explaining myself. I didn't get high grades in English classes [either], but that I have compensated through my own learning. Irony is to learn more about German language through Slashdot than in school;P
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Couldn't help it
Wouldn't you rather have those calls for 5 months and then never hearing from them ever again once they have gotten used to the desktop environment, apps and menus? I mean, once it's part of their everyday use, they are going to stop calling as long as they aren't attempting anything wild on their own risk all of a sudden that they end up feeling lost with; think: "Hmmm, what does this mysterious button in the system maintenance section do that I just a moment ago gave my root password to access?"
I wouldn't suggest there's a conspiracy theory behind it, just stupid-as-hell users who they have experience with in the past. Perhaps they don't want to see a headline on cnn.com where it says "computer user bought a Dell and there was no Windows on it - sues Dell for having a broken PC".
:)
Or, a simple way to not get a billion unnecessary support calls, I don't know. But it's probably why they in the first place do not list these Linux computers on the front page with a huge splash saying "NEW! Dell starts offering Ubuntu, a Desktop-friendly Linux! Buy one today! Look at the revolutionary OS that's gotten easier to use!", etc, etc. The usual marketing slogans anyway
However, maybe it will only be a year from now we'll see them offering Ubuntu 8.04 OEM as a normal option listed among most their computer choices. Or maybe not. But I think there will either be more to come, or it will just stay there as a silent option, a long-term experiment.
Yes, this is an easy misconception indeed! An operating system ready to use with desktop applications is one thing (that should matter the most!). Another thing is comparing other operating systems with Windows and, what are the things people distinguish the most between Windows and another operating system? Games. Why? Because it's the only highly visible strength seen there, or have I missed out on something else unique for Windows today? Yes, hardware support is usually the 2nd argument although it's a matter of opinion and personal experience rather than a fundamental truth. What else? Not sure. I know that KDE 3.5 was my primary desktop for a long time, months at a time, with minor switches to GNOME for testing purposes - other than that, KDE was the standard desktop for me. Worked fine, even though my hardware was slow (650 Mhz Pentium-III with 256 MB SDRAM @ 100 Mhz). Ready on the Desktop(TM) is really a matter of opinion and bias, it's not facts anymore.
Isn't the reason to this due to the home user pirating of corporate versions of Windows XP as a way to circumvent activation with regular versions of the OS?
This is the kind of thing I have a hunch wouldn't exist if vendors like Dell would push Linux distributions (such as Ubuntu, since that's what has been agreed upon with Dell) to be sold in Europe, in this case specifically United Kingdom. Then at LEAST the BBC's People In Charge so to speak, would treat Linux as "a real market operating system" instead of what I sort of suspect now is seen as "Linux - the random Hacker Operating System almost no one in the UK is using".
.. Swedish Television has this site with an archive of TV shows and also classical archives that have been digitalized. All these shows have been made accessible for two players: Windows Media Player and RealPlayer. I think that's as bad as BBC using protection, but in this case there is at least a radically higher chance that someone will be able to access the content from any mainstream operating system, and in some cases older ones too. The file playback will work on Windows OSes, Linux operating system today including those dating back a good while, Mac OS X and other UNIX operating systems which have support from Real. Even if you find there is no support, MPlayer might help you out with this one, providing ways to playback Real media content if you're a good enough hacker.
Before I get any flaming for what I just said, let me add I'm a former long-time Linux OS-exclusive user. I used it all the time, from 2001 to 2006, with a little side jump over to Windows Millennium Edition for a month between March and April of 2002 (one of the few coasy Windows operating systems I've used in my life WHEN you had the right hardware and know-hows, otherwise it was a bomb waiting to tic off at any time).
In my view, like a lot of other Slashdot readers' views, Linux on the desktop is a very viable alternative to Windows and Mac OS X. It's also a growing market that just keeps getting bigger and bigger for every day, at the same time the operating system components get more and more advanced and automized as well. Even though a lot of non-Linux people complain about the Linux OS today, that doesn't mean BBC should ignore it.
And, let me also point out that this decision of locking into Microsoft has less to do about Linux and alternative operating systems than it has to do with the decision to lock in users, when BBC is what it is. Here in Sweden, we have the same system as in the UK. We have a non-commercial public broadcasting company called Sveriges Television, SVT for short (Swedish Television in English). They play the same role as BBC and it's always forbidden to every extent to advertize things in news shows, you can't wear a Nike T-shirt on air because it's seen as product placement and so on (it's only allowed to show brands and talk about them if it's in the consumer programs where they talk about issues with products and frauds - that kind of stuff).
Anyway, so
It would be great if BBC (and SVT for that matter - heck, all public service companies) could decide to release public material in an unprotected format since it's material that is already paid for. But, I have also read Frequently Asked Questions about WHY they lock in content to DRMed formats. It's usually the production companies that want to protect their content, not really the television channel itself, necessarly. They have also said they have wanted to upload material in DRMed formats that does not show up online currently, but can't do it because they have not been able to get permission from the copyright owners to do that. So, even when they want to upload it DRMed, they get a "no no" from the owner. Very sad facts.
Agreed. There is more in the world than the continent known as United States of America.
I recommend http://www.magnatune.com/ as a substitute for iTunes. Also, amaroK affiliates with them too, afaik.
Note, this is a painfully long explanation of my own cellphone using situation ...
...
I'm not screwed, either. The SMS tariff is the highest in the country at 14 per SMS on default, but there are solutions to solve that issue if I so wish. Rright now I leave it be, though, because I'm one of those FREAKS in peoples' eyes that don't do SMS more than three times per month or less, so it never adds up to anything more than the price of half a soda can. There are optional 30-day running sub contracts I can electronically sign up for directly from my mobile phone using the Planet 3 service if I one day need to. What you do is that you buy a pre-billed set of SMS messages at 30, 100 or 250 per month, depending on what you expect to use up. However, my high SMS tariff has to do with the fact that the prices have gone down drastically since the contract was written by the operator. Again, for SMS I don't care. My call pricing is explained below
I use Three in Sweden and have done so since May 2004 when they had only been on the market for one year in this country. I have a call plan on 500 minutes per month which I pay $42:50/month for. My contract has been updated & renewed a couple of times over the years, but my latest contract renewal has got a lock-in expiration date for November this year, an extension of 18 extra months I agreed upon volunteerly because I really wanted to lock myself in as much as possible. The reason: my contract has got some candy in it you don't find on new contracts anymore, because the Swedish cellphone user market changed and so the operator restructured their new offerings to target a new audience for a hopeful subscriber growth.
What I pay for is comfort. Comfort in knowing my bills will look almost the same every month regardless how much I call people in a given month. I have found myself to never talk on the phone more than the 8 hours I pay for in advance.
Summary of the Features:
* All calls within the Swedish Three UMTS network are without costs and fees (dubbed BetweenFriends(TM)) *
* All videophone calls within the Swedish Three UMTS network are without costs and fees (dubbed BetweenFriends(TM)) *
* 500 minutes per month, cirka 8 hours of talk (videocalls to other cell operators' networks are immensly expensive at $0.7 per minute)
* Voicemail service (standard) with the usual listening to messages
* Visual Video & Voice Mail service (pioneered by Three on May 5th, 2005 and it seems to be exclusive) **
* = they decided to remove these brilliant flatrate-capable features on new contracts, and so their biggest advantage among operators is now gone
** = It is not accessable from a phone menu. Instead you initiate a video call to your voice mail service and a get animated letters flying in on your screen telling you how many new voice and video messages you have got to listen at and view. Unfortunately no one has ever left me any video messages at all, only voice. Yeah, I know, my friends are low-tech "good enough"- thinking people, I have come to accept that as of late!
Mind you that there is something different when the source code is open and validated against md5 checksums (doesn't Gentoo do that?), as opposed to binary blob .exe files which you must scan through using an antivirus tool and there is no security certification coming along with it.
There are millions of Linux users (to say the least), and that's enough to target the platform from a "enough users" point of view, isn't it? I don't buy into the whole argument with "viruses will flood, comets will crash down on Earth, once Linux users reach a milestone with X billion users on the market". Anyone thinking this obviously hasn't got a clue what the differences are between a proprietary system based on a Windows NT kernel and a UNIX-like system full of white hat hackers who make sure it stays safe. And what about SELinux that NSA thought was a good idea? You still think Linux will become unsafe merely from reaching a higher market share?
I vote for "extremist Jehovas doomsday prediction" on this.
I think you will find a genetic connection between P2P users and Swedes, to some extent, since a lot of people ... err, chefs? ;) .. up here, happily ignore peer to peer filesharing prohibitions, and they also aren't afraid of having FBI agents knocking on their doors if they do it, because:
A) there are no FBI agents knocking on people's doors here
B) if there had been, they would be sliced in a claim of self-defense by the almighty chef's kitchen knives
C) knocked down on the floor by blue-eyed women's big natural boobs
Remember, resistance is futile! Borg, the tennis player, will defeat the agents!
Swedes aren't crazy.. wuhahahaha! Vi är inte galna, vi är smarta människor med högt intellekt!
Okay, sorry. Couldn't resist. Mod me down all you want *hides in the corner of shame*
Yes, exactly, well said! There are people out there who actually aren't gamers and don't pay an interest for it. It might come as a shocking revelation to those that take it for granted that a computer is "obviously" used for gaming firsthandedly and "the occasionally needed" school project.
I myself spend my time playing games on my Playstation 2, and not even as a radical and politically extreme substitute - it's something I only do once a week on weekends because it's fun. The things I use my computer for right now is mainly for doing school assignments, reading news on the web, occasionally I search for jobs online, talk with friends over IM and Skype, write and reply to e-mails (although not frequent).
I'm also in talks with an editor to get published in a Swedish computer magazine for a potential career as a journalist whether it will be ambitious or not, which means I will use my Mac even more to get work done rather than spend my days with games. However, I don't blame people who use their ultrafast (or mediocre for that part) computer to mostly play games with it. I know it's fun and entertaining, but it's not something that every computer user in the whole world use their machine for.
Please :)
Are PC games crucial in every situation? I think it's naive to believe that there can't be a success for a technology just because it means it doesn't apply for demanding 3D games. I'm sure they can live without PC gamers and focus on the multi-billion dollar companies who want their applications to work seamless no matter the operating system.
DVB-T, DVB-C and DVB-S, yes. Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial, Cable, Satellite.
The DVB-C (Cable) will probably (it's preferred to be certified) work with ComHem, but no channels are unencrypted. I raised an eyebrow when I noticed that they have unencrypted digital cable content in the US - very interesting. You can only hope the digital cable companies in Sweden some day in the future offers that as well, but according to comments I have read on other news sites on the web, it seems that ComHem at least, wants to charge a distribution fee even for free channels, because there is a cost involved in the distribution itself, according to them. Well for me it tells me that they don't have enough paying digital customers to cover costs for those who aren't interested in trying out digital cable until you can get some free content to start out with.
But still, ComHem aren't taking digital cable seriously anyway, as they are always squeezing out propaganda about their wonderful analog cable they are proud to distribute in Sweden while at the same time pushing tv channels to exist in both analog and digital worlds. Terrestrial airings are soon to a complete end, there are only about 5 more months left. Satellite distribution is nothing but digital here now, so it's up to the few analog cable companies on the market to decide when our TV future will start getting exciting. I know Tele2Vision (former KabelVision) does digital now, after reading an article about issues with the customers not getting a digital set-top box on time to watch tv.
It's a big subject and preferrably brought up in its own forum. Actually I haven't found any forum online for digital tv that is worthwhile, so I might go and start one myself.
I have Minority Report on DVD (yes, legally actually). That's really the technology they have there. Who came up with the idea first? (Just curious, seriously, maybe it's the same research team behind it?).
I do exactly that myself too. I'm a Macbook owner who chatted with two other Macbook owners over built-in iSight video, all of us using GTalk with iChat and we were all in all three people videochatting + audio with each other at the same time, with great quality since one of them had his connection on 100 Mbit down/10 Mbit up, participant number two had ADSL2+ and I had ADSL2+ as well, all using the same ISP. I highly recommend GTalk for audio, video regardless of client choice, but especially iChat is optimized for it. I haven't yet tried audio and video with iChat over AOL, I figure that I probably can make it happen with my ICQ account?
I also welcome .win32virus and .spyware domains as well. They should start at great prices so it becomes lucrative to buy them for those who want to lure people. This way antivirus companies can block them and the problems will go away!
Yes, social engineering seems to work even when the e-mails they get "from their bank" (yeaaaaah...) says: Hello, me is the president of AOL, aiiight! Yo usaz out there shou' know there are some issuez with our website right now. You must go to this link and fill in your credit card number so we can get you back yo numbaz! Chill! The president of your bank I have seen one of the bank e-mails that people were tricked by. It was a big joke how incompetent it was written. Clearly people don't read them thoroughly and know nothing about the fact that professional e-mails are usually spell-checked and grammar-corrected before sent to thousands of customers. I laughed loud at the idiots who actually fell for it (we're not talking about a copy from a Paypal letter that had changed it hyperlinks but rather a text written badly from scratch), very obvious it was a fake e-mail. So immensly obvious :). What's wrong with people? Even more, I wasn't even a customer of their bank but still got the e-mail, so that raised an alert before even reading that text through.
That's very enlightening and explains a lot. I had wished this for be more well-known to the public and talked about. So, Intel can't do anything about it but they get disappointments from users who aren't aware of the situation. Hmm.
I have to agree to 100 % here. It's all about what morals your parents teach you. What's right and what's wrong. Be nice to people in the real world, a game is a just a game made for entertainment. The person playing should know this, doesn't matter what age the player is at. When I was 12 I knew it was awfully wrong and disgusting to kill people, but that didn't mean you could pretend to do it in a virtual world. I was intelligent enough to understand the difference between a video game and the world outside the house, which I think a lot of children do - again, as long as they have been raised well by their parents - right and wrong. I'm the oldest of the siblings in my family. I have GTA: San Andreas for Playstation2 and my brother (half-brother) is soon turning 10 years old. I had a brief talk with him before letting him see the game in action one day when he wanted to try it out because he hadn't played it before and saw it in my collection of games. Even though I know he's very intelligent and a bright kid, I just had to check his view on reality vs. videogames. Always good to know how his mind works. He thought it was an okay game but never looks for realistic violent games in game stores, he is more interested in - yes, Sonic Heroes and that game what's it called Shadow the Hedgehog, both for his Gamecube, also a huge fan of the Zelda series of games as well. Children really aren't necessarly interested in the Doom and Quake games, just not as fun as what you can find on the shelves today. But since I'm not a kid anymore, it's pure speculation. I haven't surveyed my brother about why he enjoys innocent Gamecube games much more than "adult" games.
Same in Sweden, but in specific neighbourhoods we have both 10 and 100 Mbit full duplex deals for prices between 20 and 45 USD per month, and those are unlimited, both in terms of lawyer speak and advertisement speak. There is nothing weird going on here and no magic either. Those who doubt it's true must also be told why households pay a cheap price for it. Cost of fibreoptic investment ranges between 300 USD one-time in pay per household, and then the rest comes from the neighbourhood funding. The neighbourhood funds it from residential rent income, and have accumulated these investment money over a longer time. It takes careful planning and enough households to be interested - otherwise no fibre gets invested because it doesn't get affordable, bargain deals with ISPs wanting to operate the internet connection equipment won't be as interested. That's why ADSL is still so popular here: not all neighbourhoods invest lots and lots of hundreds of thousands of Swedish Kronor (SEK) in the infrastructure cost, so the households who want broadband need to find other ways of getting that. The infrastructure investment is worth it in the longrun, but it hurts finances in the short run, naturally. I'm sure there are other examples of this somewhere else in the world? Or is it just Sweden..? Maybe it's part of wanting to collaborate and help each other getting quality of life :)
No no no ... tax money *avoids* having any ads. It would be a scandal to have ads supported by tax money, that doesn't make any rational sense :). Public buses here introduced ads sometime around 2000 maybe, it was pretty recently in a historic perspective. Now they have ads both in and outside of the buses.
That public bus company has been around since the 1970s (before that I think this city was not big enough to fill that need, I live in a city that is tiny in comparison to United States population and area measures). Also, we have no 100 % privately held bus companies in this city. We have however a recently agreed upon privately run bus company that are licensed by the municipal to handle the traffic (a bit complex).
This city has got about 110,000 inhabitants where 30,000 of them are university students.
License plates never have advertisements in the traditional sense at least. Some of them have the dealer name listed, I mean the place the car was bought from, along with a web address sometimes. But, as you probably already know, taxes are high in Sweden to cover expenses that other countries cover through ad means instead.
Road signs and police cars? That advertising doesn't exist in Sweden, sounds terribly awful. That's supposed to be paid entirely with tax money when done right, no?
This is very encouraging to read. Hopefully in the future, the quote from Einstein, "The only thing that stops me from learning is education" (hope I got that right) will be read by people and not grasped at all: "what did he mean by that?". The people of today and yesterday unite in conversations about how education is boring, dull and a part of life that sucks terribly, either through violence, bullying or just obsolete learning techniques by teachers that don't really know how to reach out for their pupils when VH-1 or their MySpace profile page is more exciting.
So it's great to hear that, in another part of the world, there are politicians and communities to know how to make education fun and exciting. How do we best learn things? By getting excited about it, right?
Ohh!
;P
Yes, I misunderstood you completely regarding quotation marks, the fault is mine. I thought you meant French sayings and meanings that are put in English sentences sometimes. Sorry for the confusion. When you mention it I have seen the use of ",," but never given it a deeper thought on why it's used.
This only shows how much (read: little) you might learn in school after five years of studying a third language when things are not optimal. You would expect the teachers to mention this during grammar classes, but it's never been on the curriculum, ever. Else I wouldn't have been in this awkward position of explaining myself. I didn't get high grades in English classes [either], but that I have compensated through my own learning. Irony is to learn more about German language through Slashdot than in school