huh... for some reason my emphasis didn't work (guess I should have previewed). In my quote, the words, "We want people to feel that they want it, no matter what." were supposed to be bold/italics. That's the part of the quote I was referencing.
"Our ideal," Kutaragi said, "is for consumers to think to themselves, 'OK, I'll work more hours and buy it.' We want people to feel that they want it, no matter what."
This part of the quote really turns the rest of the quote around for me. The idea that the PS3 costs too much, but I should work harder to buy it-- you're right, that sounds silly and insulting. However, that last part that I emphasized gives it all a different context. I think he's really just saying that they're aiming to make the PS3 so fricken good that $600 won't seem like an unreasonable price.
You might argue that he doesn't really mean it, and you can argue that Sony will fail at this aim. However, I don't mind the idea in the abstract. There are lots of instances where I appreciate someone going the extra mile, and I'll pay extra to get the high-end/high-quality version.
Building backwards compatible UIs that still fit in with the Vista model will be a very hard task for programmers
So it seems you're saying that Microsoft makes developers jobs hard.
Admittedly, I don't really know what developers think (I'm not a developer), but I'm trying to imagine. Microsoft is telling them to make sure their apps will only run on Vista, thereby limiting their market to early adopters, for the sake making the GUI look more like Vista. I don't think I'd go for it.
As a consumer, it pisses me off. If Microsoft cared about developers or their users at all, they'd figure out a way to make it easy to take advantage of the new stuff as much as possible without forcing them to make Vista-only apps. This just sounds like they're encouraging developers to force users to upgrade to Vista, as if acknowledging that there aren't enough real reasons. I'm sure it'd be MS's wet dream, for example, if Adobe made it's next suite all Vista only, but it wouldn't be good for either Adobe or Adobe users.
People are paid to break things in Fedora? Like, someone is given money and told "break Fedora", and this happens, and no one does anything about it?
I'm not saying I like Redhat or Fedora. I don't use either, and I do use Debian. However, I don't buy that people are paid to break things. Maybe they're paid to fix things that you don't think are important, and in the process they break things that the developers don't think are important, but that you think are important. I'd believe that, but that's a problem of you disagreeing with Fedora's development goals.
IMHO, disagreeing with the development goals of a distro is a fine complaint about that distro. "Another distro is based on it" is not a good complaint, especially when your favored distro is the base for many other distros.
Fedora is Fedora is Fedora. What you get for free is the best version of Fedora there is. Redhat is a different distro which is based on work done by the Fedora community.
Like I said, there are plenty of things for which you can criticize Redhat, bet criticizing the Fedora distro itself on the grounds that it's used to create another distro that you don't like doesn't make sense to me. Debian is used as a base for many distros, and not everyone likes all of those.
I really like the fact that the Debian I use is the same Debian everyone else is using, not a development playground or redheaded stepchild money pit.
So wait-- you seem to be saying that you like using Debian because there aren't any other organizations who are taking Debian, altering it, and using it as a base for their own distro...?
I'm not saying that you can't like Debian or think it has a better philosophy or something, but complaining about Fedora/OpenSuSE on the grounds that it's used as a base for another distro-- I don't get it. Isn't Debian used as the base of Ubuntu, Linspire, and Xandros (to name a few)?
Sending a truckload of seeds to come back as food for the Fantastic Four sounds more like a continuation of the tradition that brought us tiger penis, rhinoceros horn, and bear bile therapies. And here I was, worried we were losing our edge.
Damn. You waited until the second to last sentence, and then blew my hopes for a Fantastic Four joke.
Here's the thing. It's not too late. Fire some lawyers, hire more engineers, and mostly STOP MAKING MS SOFTWARE. Support Novell or work out some sort of corporate alliance to co-brand a commercial distro of something open source. get off the MS playing field and take your ball with you.
Hell, if they really wanted to, they could roll their own. Adobe in particular has enough resources and enough popular software that, if they can't find a Linux distro they like, they could make their own specifically to support their own products. There are enough people in this world who can operate on Linux with Firefox and OpenOffice and such, except that they need Adobe products. If Adobe offered their own distro that supported all of their current products (the combined Adobe/Macromedia catalog), you'd get a lot of converts to Linux, and they'd probably even be able to turn their Linux distro into a profitable business with only a small investment.
It's not an incoherent position. I would claim very strongly that OEMs should be free to bundle whatever software they like. If Dell wants to offer a security suite and PDF generation program bundle, pre-installed on delivery, I don't think anyone would complain. In fact, Dell does exactly that. The only difference is that Apple makes the software that they bundle with their systems.
Make no mistake-- iLife is commercial software. Last I checked, it was $80. Apple has also had a history of bundling non-Apple commercial software when they thought it was suitable.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has forced Dell to bundle additional Microsoft products on Dell machines, as well as making attempts to prevent Dell from bundling alternatives to Microsoft software. That's quite a different circumstance. One instance is a company deciding to use their own home-brewed software in their own devices, while the other is a company using its market position to force other companies to use its software and only its software.
So Symantec's tools suck. Fine. But if Microsoft is allowed to integrate an equally sucky version into its OS, it'll win by default, and we'll be stuck with suckiness forever.
That was exactly my thought. I don't like Symantec's software so much anymore, but at least I still have the choice to go with someone else. If security companies are saying that they've been locked out of Vista, that means I'm stuck with whatever Microsoft puts out, and they haven't been known for their success in security. I'm not hopeful about this.
Let Microsoft bring out their own software, very welcome! But as a seperate product, sold in a box. If there's special hooks for it in Windows, they should be openly documented.
In theory that's fine: Microsoft and Symantec both make their software, and Microsoft promises to "play fair". The problem is that Microsoft has shown an unwillingness to play fair. If nothing else, Microsoft can get an edge on their software by having a level of cooperation with their OS-makers that no other company can match.
I'm wondering if Microsoft needs to be broken up as a monopoly, resulting in one company that's forbidden from making software other than operating systems, and one company that's forbidden from making operating systems. Of course, it's a scary thing to undertake, and the US government doesn't seem to currently be in an anti-trust kind of mood, but I don't see how, given the history, we can trust Microsoft.
If he really is such an idiot, then you've foolishly given him too much information. Idiots don't know what to do with information. First of all: OGG Vorbis? It's just not well enough supported, and not worth mentioning to idiots at this point. Talking about bit rates? Idiots don't know what kbps are.
When an idiot asks you what format to use, just say "mp3" and be done with it, because like it or not, it's the most well supported format for audio right now, and they're least likely to have problems with it. If you must say anything else, tell them that they absolutely must not use WMA, or else Microsoft will know all the pirated software and MP3s they have, and Bill Gates will personally eat their children. Yeah, I know using WMA doesn't tell Microsoft what you've pirated, but idiots won't understand real reasons.
Ummmmm.... yeah. Microsoft has gotten away with quite a lot of anti-trust violations, but I think if they really started selling these things at a huge loss just to drive Apple out of the market, it can't go unnoticed. Yeah, sure, they sell the XBox at a loss, but that's how the console business works right now. You sell the console at a loss and make your money back through licensing to game developers.
But if Microsoft used Windows profits to bankroll selling Zunes at a loss, for the sole purpose of driving Apple out of the market, so that they could drive people to WMA and vendor lock-in to Windows? It just seems too text-book to me as "Monopolistic behavior". It would be sad if the US government didn't step in and break them up at that point.
The biggest factor in politics here is not changing the laws, its changing the way the budget is spent.
Especially so since, in the US, the Federal Government is severely limited in what laws it can make. Granted, they've snuck a whole lot of things in under the name of "interstate commerce", but technically most law-making ability is supposed to be held by the individual states. Therefore, spending money is a way to exert control. The more money they spend, the more control they exert.
i didn't even mean to imply that "Linux teaches you Linux". However, if you know nothing about Linux and don't wish to learn, it's not the distribution that I'd recommend.
I'm not sure what it would mean for a distro to "teach you Linux", but I must say that I learned a bit just by doing a stage 1 install a few years ago. Until then, I'd only really used graphical installers, so I don't think the idea of Gentoo as a "distro to learn on" is absurd. I mean, yeah, if you don't want to learn about configuration files, then it isn't necessary in order to run a desktop system, but it's not useless information. You could install Ubuntu or Fedora and have a very functional desktop, but it's hard to administer that desktop and trouble-shoot if you don't know where the config files are.
But my point was just that, if you know a bit or are willing to learn a bit, you can get Gentoo working. It's not impossible, or even all that frustrating, as long as you follow the directions and go to the forums when the directions don't work. However, if you just don't know anything about Linux and aren't interested in learning, Gentoo just isn't the easiest distro for getting a working desktop.
This gets touted as a great way around the Apple DRM, but as everyone always points out, burning to CD and re-ripping results in a loss of audio quality. Since I haven't used an audio CD in 5 years and don't own a stereo, a lossless solution that allows me to keep my AAC files is pretty important.
Now if you're talking about music that you've bought at $0.99 a song, I would think that it would keep working, but I suppose you never know.
I'm really curious about that. I'm not too familiar with the Napster service, but I've wondered about iTunes, for example-- what happens if, hypothetically, Apple goes out of business or decides to quit running the store? Sure, I can keep running iTunes on my current computer, but what about when I get a new computer? What if Apple is no longer running servers capable of authorizing computers to play your songs?
I think the fair solution is obvious: Upon ceasing functionality of servers that can authorize computers, Apple should have to provide a means to strip DRM from all of their content for free. But "fair" usually doesn't matter, so I wonder what the legal repercussions would be? Could Apple be compelled to release a means of stripping DRM? Could someone be prosecuted for providing a means to strip the DRM at that point?
I agree, more or less. I wouldn't quite say that lobbyists are a necessary evil, but maybe they're necessary for the current American system of government. I'm not sure how to fix that, but it should be fixed.
However, when one side is using lobbyists and media campaigns, the other side has to respond somehow. It's not as simple as bribery (as some people assume). A large part of the problem is that these campaigns taint the information sources where our representatives and fellow citizens get their information.
When people are arguing against net neutrality on the grounds that the internets are "like tubes", you need someone to step in inform people of the realities of how these things work. You need someone to explain what net neutrality is all about. You need someone to persuade everyone that the "tubes" guy doesn't know what he's talking about. I don't think that's evil.
What I think is bad in only that nobody will listen to you or me.
I'm an Ubuntu convert, but I was exclusively a Gentoo user for two or three years, and I recall there being extremely good documentation that, if followed exactly, would result in a working system in 99.99% of cases.
Well, I've run into a couple instances where the directions didn't work, but the Gentoo forums helped a lot. If you run into a problems, search for the answer in the forum. If you don't find an answer, post your question. You'll get a pretty good answer pretty quickly.
No, admittedly, Gentoo is not the quickest/easiest way to get a working desktop linux install. If that's what you're looking for, use a different distro. But if you're want to learn about Linux and are willing to put in the time and effort, I can't really see a complaint that you can't get it working.
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huh... for some reason my emphasis didn't work (guess I should have previewed). In my quote, the words, "We want people to feel that they want it, no matter what." were supposed to be bold/italics. That's the part of the quote I was referencing.
This part of the quote really turns the rest of the quote around for me. The idea that the PS3 costs too much, but I should work harder to buy it-- you're right, that sounds silly and insulting. However, that last part that I emphasized gives it all a different context. I think he's really just saying that they're aiming to make the PS3 so fricken good that $600 won't seem like an unreasonable price.
You might argue that he doesn't really mean it, and you can argue that Sony will fail at this aim. However, I don't mind the idea in the abstract. There are lots of instances where I appreciate someone going the extra mile, and I'll pay extra to get the high-end/high-quality version.
Building backwards compatible UIs that still fit in with the Vista model will be a very hard task for programmers
So it seems you're saying that Microsoft makes developers jobs hard.
Admittedly, I don't really know what developers think (I'm not a developer), but I'm trying to imagine. Microsoft is telling them to make sure their apps will only run on Vista, thereby limiting their market to early adopters, for the sake making the GUI look more like Vista. I don't think I'd go for it.
As a consumer, it pisses me off. If Microsoft cared about developers or their users at all, they'd figure out a way to make it easy to take advantage of the new stuff as much as possible without forcing them to make Vista-only apps. This just sounds like they're encouraging developers to force users to upgrade to Vista, as if acknowledging that there aren't enough real reasons. I'm sure it'd be MS's wet dream, for example, if Adobe made it's next suite all Vista only, but it wouldn't be good for either Adobe or Adobe users.
If you spend your Friday nights reading Slashdot, you might be addicted to the internet.
I'm not doubting you, but for the sake of the discussion (as well as my own curiosity), do you have any examples of what Excel does that OOo doesn't?
Not to mention that, unlike Google, Microsoft has to worry about cannibalizing Office sales, so they'll probably hobble it something fierce.
People are paid to break things in Fedora? Like, someone is given money and told "break Fedora", and this happens, and no one does anything about it?
I'm not saying I like Redhat or Fedora. I don't use either, and I do use Debian. However, I don't buy that people are paid to break things. Maybe they're paid to fix things that you don't think are important, and in the process they break things that the developers don't think are important, but that you think are important. I'd believe that, but that's a problem of you disagreeing with Fedora's development goals.
IMHO, disagreeing with the development goals of a distro is a fine complaint about that distro. "Another distro is based on it" is not a good complaint, especially when your favored distro is the base for many other distros.
Fedora is Fedora is Fedora. What you get for free is the best version of Fedora there is. Redhat is a different distro which is based on work done by the Fedora community.
Like I said, there are plenty of things for which you can criticize Redhat, bet criticizing the Fedora distro itself on the grounds that it's used to create another distro that you don't like doesn't make sense to me. Debian is used as a base for many distros, and not everyone likes all of those.
I really like the fact that the Debian I use is the same Debian everyone else is using, not a development playground or redheaded stepchild money pit.
So wait-- you seem to be saying that you like using Debian because there aren't any other organizations who are taking Debian, altering it, and using it as a base for their own distro...?
I'm not saying that you can't like Debian or think it has a better philosophy or something, but complaining about Fedora/OpenSuSE on the grounds that it's used as a base for another distro-- I don't get it. Isn't Debian used as the base of Ubuntu, Linspire, and Xandros (to name a few)?
Sending a truckload of seeds to come back as food for the Fantastic Four sounds more like a continuation of the tradition that brought us tiger penis, rhinoceros horn, and bear bile therapies. And here I was, worried we were losing our edge.
Damn. You waited until the second to last sentence, and then blew my hopes for a Fantastic Four joke.
Here's the thing. It's not too late. Fire some lawyers, hire more engineers, and mostly STOP MAKING MS SOFTWARE. Support Novell or work out some sort of corporate alliance to co-brand a commercial distro of something open source. get off the MS playing field and take your ball with you.
Hell, if they really wanted to, they could roll their own. Adobe in particular has enough resources and enough popular software that, if they can't find a Linux distro they like, they could make their own specifically to support their own products. There are enough people in this world who can operate on Linux with Firefox and OpenOffice and such, except that they need Adobe products. If Adobe offered their own distro that supported all of their current products (the combined Adobe/Macromedia catalog), you'd get a lot of converts to Linux, and they'd probably even be able to turn their Linux distro into a profitable business with only a small investment.
It's not an incoherent position. I would claim very strongly that OEMs should be free to bundle whatever software they like. If Dell wants to offer a security suite and PDF generation program bundle, pre-installed on delivery, I don't think anyone would complain. In fact, Dell does exactly that. The only difference is that Apple makes the software that they bundle with their systems.
Make no mistake-- iLife is commercial software. Last I checked, it was $80. Apple has also had a history of bundling non-Apple commercial software when they thought it was suitable.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has forced Dell to bundle additional Microsoft products on Dell machines, as well as making attempts to prevent Dell from bundling alternatives to Microsoft software. That's quite a different circumstance. One instance is a company deciding to use their own home-brewed software in their own devices, while the other is a company using its market position to force other companies to use its software and only its software.
So Symantec's tools suck. Fine. But if Microsoft is allowed to integrate an equally sucky version into its OS, it'll win by default, and we'll be stuck with suckiness forever.
That was exactly my thought. I don't like Symantec's software so much anymore, but at least I still have the choice to go with someone else. If security companies are saying that they've been locked out of Vista, that means I'm stuck with whatever Microsoft puts out, and they haven't been known for their success in security. I'm not hopeful about this.
Let Microsoft bring out their own software, very welcome! But as a seperate product, sold in a box. If there's special hooks for it in Windows, they should be openly documented.
In theory that's fine: Microsoft and Symantec both make their software, and Microsoft promises to "play fair". The problem is that Microsoft has shown an unwillingness to play fair. If nothing else, Microsoft can get an edge on their software by having a level of cooperation with their OS-makers that no other company can match.
I'm wondering if Microsoft needs to be broken up as a monopoly, resulting in one company that's forbidden from making software other than operating systems, and one company that's forbidden from making operating systems. Of course, it's a scary thing to undertake, and the US government doesn't seem to currently be in an anti-trust kind of mood, but I don't see how, given the history, we can trust Microsoft.
I thought "bipartisanship" was when the Republicans and Democrats in Washington joined forces to screw everyone else (i.e. you, me, the world).
D) All of the above
When an idiot asks you what format to use, just say "mp3" and be done with it, because like it or not, it's the most well supported format for audio right now, and they're least likely to have problems with it. If you must say anything else, tell them that they absolutely must not use WMA, or else Microsoft will know all the pirated software and MP3s they have, and Bill Gates will personally eat their children. Yeah, I know using WMA doesn't tell Microsoft what you've pirated, but idiots won't understand real reasons.
Ummmmm.... yeah. Microsoft has gotten away with quite a lot of anti-trust violations, but I think if they really started selling these things at a huge loss just to drive Apple out of the market, it can't go unnoticed. Yeah, sure, they sell the XBox at a loss, but that's how the console business works right now. You sell the console at a loss and make your money back through licensing to game developers.
But if Microsoft used Windows profits to bankroll selling Zunes at a loss, for the sole purpose of driving Apple out of the market, so that they could drive people to WMA and vendor lock-in to Windows? It just seems too text-book to me as "Monopolistic behavior". It would be sad if the US government didn't step in and break them up at that point.
Then again, maybe he'll be the kind that challenges dumb patents, and defends against ridiculous patent infringement lawsuits.
The biggest factor in politics here is not changing the laws, its changing the way the budget is spent.
Especially so since, in the US, the Federal Government is severely limited in what laws it can make. Granted, they've snuck a whole lot of things in under the name of "interstate commerce", but technically most law-making ability is supposed to be held by the individual states. Therefore, spending money is a way to exert control. The more money they spend, the more control they exert.
i didn't even mean to imply that "Linux teaches you Linux". However, if you know nothing about Linux and don't wish to learn, it's not the distribution that I'd recommend.
I'm not sure what it would mean for a distro to "teach you Linux", but I must say that I learned a bit just by doing a stage 1 install a few years ago. Until then, I'd only really used graphical installers, so I don't think the idea of Gentoo as a "distro to learn on" is absurd. I mean, yeah, if you don't want to learn about configuration files, then it isn't necessary in order to run a desktop system, but it's not useless information. You could install Ubuntu or Fedora and have a very functional desktop, but it's hard to administer that desktop and trouble-shoot if you don't know where the config files are.
But my point was just that, if you know a bit or are willing to learn a bit, you can get Gentoo working. It's not impossible, or even all that frustrating, as long as you follow the directions and go to the forums when the directions don't work. However, if you just don't know anything about Linux and aren't interested in learning, Gentoo just isn't the easiest distro for getting a working desktop.
This gets touted as a great way around the Apple DRM, but as everyone always points out, burning to CD and re-ripping results in a loss of audio quality. Since I haven't used an audio CD in 5 years and don't own a stereo, a lossless solution that allows me to keep my AAC files is pretty important.
Now if you're talking about music that you've bought at $0.99 a song, I would think that it would keep working, but I suppose you never know.
I'm really curious about that. I'm not too familiar with the Napster service, but I've wondered about iTunes, for example-- what happens if, hypothetically, Apple goes out of business or decides to quit running the store? Sure, I can keep running iTunes on my current computer, but what about when I get a new computer? What if Apple is no longer running servers capable of authorizing computers to play your songs?
I think the fair solution is obvious: Upon ceasing functionality of servers that can authorize computers, Apple should have to provide a means to strip DRM from all of their content for free. But "fair" usually doesn't matter, so I wonder what the legal repercussions would be? Could Apple be compelled to release a means of stripping DRM? Could someone be prosecuted for providing a means to strip the DRM at that point?
I agree, more or less. I wouldn't quite say that lobbyists are a necessary evil, but maybe they're necessary for the current American system of government. I'm not sure how to fix that, but it should be fixed.
However, when one side is using lobbyists and media campaigns, the other side has to respond somehow. It's not as simple as bribery (as some people assume). A large part of the problem is that these campaigns taint the information sources where our representatives and fellow citizens get their information.
When people are arguing against net neutrality on the grounds that the internets are "like tubes", you need someone to step in inform people of the realities of how these things work. You need someone to explain what net neutrality is all about. You need someone to persuade everyone that the "tubes" guy doesn't know what he's talking about. I don't think that's evil.
What I think is bad in only that nobody will listen to you or me.
I'm an Ubuntu convert, but I was exclusively a Gentoo user for two or three years, and I recall there being extremely good documentation that, if followed exactly, would result in a working system in 99.99% of cases.
Well, I've run into a couple instances where the directions didn't work, but the Gentoo forums helped a lot. If you run into a problems, search for the answer in the forum. If you don't find an answer, post your question. You'll get a pretty good answer pretty quickly.
No, admittedly, Gentoo is not the quickest/easiest way to get a working desktop linux install. If that's what you're looking for, use a different distro. But if you're want to learn about Linux and are willing to put in the time and effort, I can't really see a complaint that you can't get it working.